Racism
Race is not simply about the physical description of human variation. Since its origin in Western science in the eighteenth century, race has been used both to classify and rank human beings according to inferior and superior types.
Not too long ago, the United States’ explicit policy regarding Native Americans was termination. The goal was to marginalize and eradicate Native people and cultures.
Madeline Colliflower, known to her relatives as Si-Siya, walked on in her 81st year back in 2000, the cusp of the 21st century. She was one of a few surviving FBI (Full-Blooded Indian) citizens of the Gros Ventre.
Media, for many indigenous peoples of this country, continues to be a double-edged sword, with a history containing moments of both immense pride and interminable consequences.
Growing-up on the Indian-Negro color line (I am the daughter of a European mother and a black and Indian father), I lived with mixed signals and coded information by the dominant
In 1898, just eight years after the Wounded Knee Massacre, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that created a new federal facility: The Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians.
We know that acts of genocide were perpetrated on our people because we refused to be separated from our lands.
It is predictable. At Halloween, thousands of children (and adults) trick-or-treat in Indian costumes. At Thanksgiving, thousands of children parade in school pageants wearing plastic headdresses and pseudo-buckskin clothing.
Halloween is fast approaching, and little monsters everywhere are scrambling for costumes.
A few weeks ago, I read the following paragraph in an NPR article about the Cherokee Freedmen:
"This is not a club; you can't just claim to be Cherokee and show up and be included," says Cara Cowan Watts, a vocal member of the Cherokees' tribal council.
All journeys have a beginning and an ending. No matter how large or small the endeavor, it begins, and—at some point—it will most assuredly come to an end. The substance of the journey is everywhere in between the start and finish of it.
The Cherokee Nation based out of Tahlequah, Oklahoma has decided to strip “Freedmen” of their Cherokee rights and to expel them from their nation. Freedmen are African American descendants of slaves.