Black Lives Matter, Native Lives Matter

  [This is another essay I wrote as part of my current coursework. It builds on the prior essay, "Who am I, What am I?"]

            “Black Lives Matter” is an important phrase. Some people argue it is a ridiculous phrase because, they say, all lives matter. Yes all lives matter, but “Black Lives Matter” is important because when the Declaration of Independence was written, Black lives (and Native lives) were not included within “...all men are created equal;” the Constitution went on to count slaves as three-fifths of a person. When the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892, nearly three decades after the Civil War, Black lives (and Native lives) were not included within  “...liberty and justice for all.”  

I argue that Native Americans likewise have had, and continue to have, a tortuous relationship as citizens of a sovereign nation versus citizens of the United States. A significant difference in the British-American approach to Blacks versus Natives is they wanted more Blacks, for labor, but less Natives, to take the land. Let’s look at some historical context of Native Americans’ struggles: taking of land, forced migration, residential schools, and other missteps. Then let’s look at current practices, policies and impacts. I must caution that there are nearly 600 tribes, with different histories and experiences. Hundreds of treaties were made and broken. Please realize there were similar yet varying impacts across the continent.

History, taking of land: Thomas Jefferson’s administration (1801-1809) had two goals with Natives: peace and land acquisition. Peace was offered as a “choice” to assimilate, or be wiped out by the army. One way land was acquired was by driving Natives into debt through US trading posts, and taking land to repay the debt. 

History, forced migration: Andrew Jackson, as a general under President Jefferson, fought to clear land from Creek and Cherokee nations, telling the troops to also kill Native women and children to complete the extermination. Later as President (1829-1837), Jackson signed his Indian Removal Act which forced 46,000 Natives from their homelands east of the Mississippi in the 1830’s, one of many “trails of tears” or “trails of death.” Somewhere between 20 - 25% of Natives died. These removals continued long after his term.  All because the Whites wanted the land for gold and tobacco. 

My nation, now called Citizen Potawatomi, was gathered in three separate round-ups in 1838. Our people walked, “accompanied” by soldiers on horseback with rifles, September to November, from the Michigan/Indiana woodlands area to Kansas. For those who survived, there was no shelter when they arrived and little food. People dug trenches in hillsides and lined and covered them with blankets for shelter through the winter.

With the removals, Natives became (as Supreme Court Justice Marshall opined) essentially wards of the state, with the federal government as guardians. The Natives were expected to give up their “savage” ways and learn to be farmers. This expectation of course disregards most tribal histories of farming (the Three Sisters of corn, squash, and beans is common across tribes), along with gathering and processing wild foods such as game, fish, berries, and rice. But in a new place, different climate, different soil, little water, they had a hard time and had to rely on federal food commodities. 

So the removals led to food commodities which led to multi-generational health issues. Our people were not able to move around like they used to, and the foods they were given were high fat and calories, lower fiber -- just bad stuff. If you go to a PowWow you may hear a native say, “I’ve got to hit the fry bread and get my comod-bod on.” Comod-bod is short for commodity body, a humorous spin on a bad program. Fry bread was created by Native women as a way to use the stale flour and lard that was distributed.  I will assume nobody needs a nutritionist to explain how that doesn’t align with traditional foods like wild rice and squash and maple syrup.

History, residential schools: Henry Pratt, who modeled the Indian Boarding Schools, famously, horrifically, said, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” He intended to kill the Indian culture. Children were beaten for speaking their native language or singing their songs, ignored or starved for not taking an English name, and had their long hair cut.  The last one seems simple but in fact violates the belief through most Native nations that a person’s spirit is in our long hair, a tie to Mother Earth and her hair of long grasses. 

I called a second cousin to find out if her grandfather, my great grandfather, had been sent to one of the Indian Boarding Schools. My fear of the answer had kept me from making that call for the last year. I did not expect to uncover any stories of our heritage, but I was afraid I would be told that he did go, and he was beaten. She did not know if he had been at one of the schools. In fact, she did not know the history of the schools, so I had to relay those sad stories to her.

 

Current practices: Fast forward to see if progress has been made. Great Plains tribes have a suicide rate 10 times that of the national average. In 2010, Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation was in the midst of a youth suicide epidemic. Dalton Gourneau’s mother relates what happened with her son:

“...in the middle of a school day, they kicked him off the wrestling team and, without trying to contact me, cast him out in tears into a blizzard. Dalton went home and took his own life.” 

 

More recently, in 2018, two Native teens drove from New Mexico to Colorado State University for a campus tour. They were pulled by campus security after a mom called and said they were acting strange and looked different, “don’t look like they belong.”. Later that year, a New Mexico high school teacher cut a braid on a Native girl, then asked another girl, “Are you a bloody Indian?”  The teacher was soon fired.

We have all heard that Black persons are stopped by police, and searched, more often than Whites.  Here are the rates Washington State Patrol searched various groups of motorists compared to Whites (covering data from 2009-2015): 

Natives five times; 

Blacks two times; and 

Latinos and Pacific Islanders 80% more.  

Oh, but Whites who are searched are more likely to have drugs or contraband. 

Current policies: Native women are from 2 to 10 times more likely to be stalked, assaulted, missing, or murdered; the true rates are unknown because of underreporting by local law enforcement, especially when native teenage girls are more automatically dismissed as runaways instead of missing. The Trump administration announced last fall the creation of a task force, Operation Lady Justice, to address the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). But there were missteps, such as not consulting with tribes and only including federal officials on the task force. Also, funding for the Violence Against Women Act expired last year and the GOP-led Senate failed to pass the new funding, which directly affects state and local efforts toward MMIW. 

Impacts: I mentioned earlier the statistic on Native suicides in the Great Plains (10x the national average). Here are just a few other high level points: nationally, Natives 15-24 years old have three times the national average for suicide in their age group. Natives have two times the national average for depression, 5.5 times for alcoholism, and two times for heart disease. This is in a time when the federal government has failed to adequately fund and provide leadership for the Indian Health Services, which is the primary source of health care for about two million Natives.

            Conclusion: Do I have a conclusion? Sure, the situation for Natives isn’t good; the policies to relocate, remove, terminate tribes and massacre people have largely succeeded in damaging tribal histories.  Do I have any solutions? 

First, the federal government could live up to its treaty obligations. 

Second, the federal government could follow the 1975 law for Indian Self-Determination and Education; some of that means support, and other parts mean get out of the way. 

Third, I have seen movements to make land acknowledgments in plaques or videos or opening ceremonies, something Colorado State University did in a video in the year following the Native teens removal from the campus tour. I also saw Portland State’s graduation ceremony last year which opened with a Native drum circle and land acknowledgement. If you ever have the opportunity to be part of one in any way, seek out the local tribe whose original land you are on. I hope you can see it as a way to inspire others to support the local tribe, not as a guilt-ridden apology trip. Don’t treat the tribe as a thing of the past; we are alive and the echoes of the ancestors are still with us. The drum is the heartbeat of the ancestors. The eagle feathers are still the Eagle which flies high and carries messages between us and Creator. Mother Earth still recognizes our footsteps.

Fourth, people like me with White privilege need to step up and be a voice.  It’s precarious for me because I am a tribal member but did not grow up with any tribal knowledge, so I risk the “White savior” complex, coming to the rescue without knowing        what I’m talking about. I can’t, and shouldn’t, speak for the local tribes such as Siletz, Grand Ronde, and Cowlitz. But I can use my privilege to open a space for discussion, and have the experts step into the space.

What I will do is continue to learn, and to share that learning with my extended family. I will also share in my continued studies, raising my voice for awareness and cultural sensitivity as appropriate. I hope I have increased your compassion and curiosity. Migwetch (thank you).