Support Native Americans, part 5

[credit to Simon Moya-Smith, Vice magazine]

 41. I know it’s tempting, but even if your grandma told you so (or you just got your 23AndMe results back), if you are distantly related to someone who was Native, we don't immediately need to know.
42. Read books by Indigenous writers like Vine Deloria Jr., Louise Erdrich, and N. Scott Momaday. Please don't read fiction by white authors and think you know anything about Native culture.
43. Stop using (and stop your friends from using) the Bering Strait Theory to justify aggressive land theft. This theory (emphasis on theory) suggests Natives crossed a land bridge, but the latest research continues to debunk this antiquated idea.
44. When someone says, “America is a land of immigrants,” inform them that America is a land of immigrants...and Indigenous peoples and enslaved people who were brought here against their will.
45. Remind your friends/family/foes that English is a foreign language. Lakota, Ojibwe, Diné, Cherokee, Choctaw, Osage, etc. are the languages of the land. English is from where? Yep. England. [note: our Potawatomi language, Bodewadmimwen, is an Ojibwe/Algonquin language.]
46. Stop touching our hair if it's long. Stop questioning our hair if it's short.
47. Stop referring to early Europeans as “pilgrims” and “settlers.” They were invaders, colonizers, and terrorists.
48. Please do not dictate, talk over, or suppress actual Indigenous voices during an important dialogue on Native issues and topics.
49. Your western university degree does not always equal factual knowledge about us, nor does your settler professor have authority in our oral histories. Our elders do.
50. You don’t have to travel to another continent to find oppression. Ask a Native.

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