Thank
you for inviting me. I know… I don’t think you’ve probably ever had an
Arawak speaker here and probably haven’t ever heard of Arawak speaker.
We, the indigenous people of the Americas, are refugees. We exist
despite an unacknowledged, attempted genocide. Most people associate
refugees with being forced to leave one’s country, but a refugee, by
definition, has lost their land and way of life, often through war or
genocide. There is a long history of genocidal programs initiated by the
early colonial settlers and, later, by the United States government.
In
1755, the lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay,
issued a proclamation that called for British subjects “to embrace all
opportunities of pursuing, [capturing], killing, and destroying all and
every Indian.” A bounty was paid by the colonial government for every
Penobscot captured and brought to Boston.
- For every Male above the age of 12 years, 50 pounds. For their Scalp, 40 pounds
- For every Female under the age of 12 years, 25 pounds. For every Scalp, 20 pounds.
Within a year of the proclamation,
the Massachusetts assembly voted to raise the ceiling on the bounty to an
unprecedented 300 pounds. This Bounty
Proclamation was signed by Lt. Gov. Spencer Phips just a short walk from
here in the Old State House on State Street.
At the Sand Creek Massacre in
1864, John Chivington said, “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians... Kill
and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”
We were marched, relocated, and
put in reserves like animals, ending up no longer being on the land which provided
all our needs… where our stories and songs came from… where our ancestors’
bones lay in the ground.
In the 19
th and 20
th
centuries, boarding schools were established. Our children were immersed in
European-American culture. They were given haircuts, forbidden to speak their indigenous
languages, and their traditional names were replaced by European-American names
to both “civilize” and “Christianize.” 20
th century investigations have
revealed many documented cases of sexual, physical, and mental abuse in these
boarding schools.
In 1892, the U.S. Army officer
Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School, said, “…all the
Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the
man.” On reservations, children were taken from our homes and forcibly sent to
boarding schools until 1978, systematically destroying Native American cultural
continuity.
Today in 2017,
we are still fighting for sovereignty and treaty rights; hunting and fishing access;
clean water and healthcare; and political and legal justice. On some
reservations, Native women are murdered at more than 10 times the national
average. Hollywood films, sports mascots, and many other racist images continue
to dehumanize us.
On some
reservations, families live on roughly seven gallons of water per day per
person, since uranium mining has poisoned the wells and radioactive waste
leaves no clean water. 40% of the 173,000 Diné living on the reservation do not
have running water.
Today, in the United
States.
As First Nations People, we have
been made invisible, starting with the first maps that were created showing
empty land where none of our languages or nations were identified. Towns were
incorporated without any thought to the indigenous inhabits. Each “first”
became a colonizer’s first – the first house, the first successful harvest, the
first thanksgiving, the first marriage, the first baby – while our “firsts” were
ignored and erased.
How does
cultural genocide translate into today’s experience? I did not grow up speaking
my indigenous language or hearing Native Nations’ music on the radio. I did not
see people like me reflected in the literature I read, the television I watched
and movies I saw, or even on the walls of my classroom. I did not learn the
contributions of Indigenous People to this country, and certainly not the
actual history of the United States. I did not have First Nations role-models
who resisted and stood up for our culture, only those who helped the white
Europeans, like Squanto, Sacagawea, and Pocahontas. There’s nowhere in the
world where out story, my story, should even be required to be told, except
here.
I’ve raised my children in a
world that has not recognized our holidays and observances… In a world with stereotypes
that have become the only way we are known and recognized… With peers who have
harassed them about their long hair… When my son was in high school, a few boys
danced around him singing, “woo woo woo.” They weren’t mimicking something they
had seen at a pow wow, they were acting out all they knew from when they were much
younger and saw movies, like
Peter Pan.
The racist images of Hollywood and athletic teams have been their loudest
teachers.
Other people tell our story or
stereotypes about it. We have no control over our own narrative in our own
country. I am not currently fighting for food, or water, or heat, or housing, or
healthcare, so I must use the privilege and platforms, the ones that I do have,
to temporarily, even if temporary, to stand beside my indigenous sisters and
brothers and be an ally to support their access, and all people’s, to these
fundamental rights in a country as wealthy as ours.
We are refugees from our
original lands. We cannot stay silent about genocide here or anywhere, anymore.
Please consider joining an indigenous organization, like the Massachusetts
Center for Native American Awareness, to learn more about us. We’re still alive
- traditional people in a contemporary society.
