Six on Native Americans: Resources For Learning About Indigenous Peoples; We have come a long way toward reconciliation. But we are not there yet; the Kikotan Massacre Prepared the Ground for the Arrival of the First Africans in 1619; Un-Columbus D
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But the optimism comes with a warning. Expectations are high; we are not there yet. We must capitalize on the momentum to ensure that progress continues – to take advantage of it.
This can be a real challenge because sincere intent leads to genuine action, which drives change, and change is hard to implement and sustain. While people often talk about the need for change, actually making it happen is something else. And to be clear, the changes that reconciliation brings are, and will be, significant. They touch on all dimensions of our public and private lives, including how governments make decisions, how economies function, how children are educated, how our justice system operates and is structured, and how our environment is cared for. It is hard work. And not surprisingly, as individuals, we are often confused about what we should be doing. Indeed, in speaking with Canadians across the country, the two questions I am most often asked are “What can I do?” and “How can I make a difference?”
While individual Canadians are acting and seeking further direction on the constructive steps they can take, within government one confronts the challenge of how to shift course when things have been focused in another direction for so long and patterns of behaviour so engrained.
The analogy I often use is that government is like a massive ship that has been heading through the ocean in one way for 150 years. Our task now is to turn that ship and send it off in another direction. I know government systems are not designed to adjust course quickly, and politicians tend to bias the near term, focusing on electoral cycles and prospects. And this is why we must move beyond partisanship: to set and keep the course so that, in time, the ship will inevitably turn.
This analogy can also apply to Indigenous peoples, nations and their evolving governments. In many respects, Indigenous peoples have become accustomed to patterns that have been imposed upon us, including, for First Nations, having our lives controlled and administered by the Indian Act. In the fog created by layers upon layers of colonial imposition – including multiple generations being told that, as “Indians,” they are nothing more than numbers, with identity cards, whose lives and well-being are subject to a system of band administration on a reserve – it is sometimes hard to know what the future could look like and to set the course on how to get there."
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"Commemorating the 400th anniversary of what the English colonizer John Rolfe described as the “20 and odd Negroes” (a number that was actually closer to 30) has dominated social media and the summer’s newscycle. But there’s an aspect of this commemorative activity that hasn’t received much attention. I refer specifically to the violence that occurred at Point Comfort less than a decade before the slave ship White Lion made anchor in August 1619. On that spot, a bloody event worthy of historical introspection took place: the massacre of the Kikotan Indians.That bloody event is important because it made it possible for the English to take Native lands and build Fort Henry and Fort Charles. The Kikotan massacre prepared the ground for the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.
The history of English North America and what became the United States is a complex and often-violent story involving the enslavement of African peoples and the territorial dispossession and genocide of Native American communities. This is an uncomfortable history and neither the British nor Americans have fully reconciled itwith the contemporary economic, political, and social dimensions of their respective societies.
Most Americans don’t like to think about genocide as a foundational part of US history, while the English certainly don’t view their forebears as capable of perpetrating the mass killing of indigenous people. However, historian Jeffrey Ostler makes a compelling case for how genocide is woven into the fabric of North American history in his most recent book, Surviving Genocide. In Virginia, English colonization sparked dramatic population declines among Native American communities. While Virginia Indians numbered about 50,000 in 1607, by the early twentieth century, only a little over 2,000 remained. ...
Colonial officials initiated a plan to “drive” the remaining “savages” from the land. The violence directed against the Kikotan people in July 1610 became known as the Kikotan massacre. The exact number of Kikotan deaths is unknown. Those who did survive the massacre fled their homelands and took refuge among neighboring indigenous communities. The Kikotan’s connection to their homeland was lost.
For the Kikotans, the physical and psychological toll of the 1610 massacre were compounded by English actions in the proceeding years. To reinforce the sense of loss that Kikotan people undoubtedly felt, the Virginia General Assembly agreed to “change the savage name of Kicowtan” to Elizabeth City in 1611. The Kecoughtan name remained to demarcate the foreshore, but in 1619 English families pushed to have the Kikotan erased from memory and the Corporation of Elizabeth City established. As the "20 and odd negroes" stepped onto Virginia should, the colonizers were writing their name over a Native landscape.
The English were changing the landscape that Virginia’a Indians had nurtured for as long as anyone could remember. When Wahunsenacawh died in 1618, less than a year before the White Lion set anchor at Port Comfort, Opechancanough, Chief Powhatan’s brother, took up the fight against English incursions into Powhatan homelands"
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"Here are some tips on how to reframe how we teach Columbus Day:
Teach Only Truth
Teach about both Columbus and Native Americans. Do not suggest that they were friends.
If your students are too young to learn about genocide, don’t teach them about genocide. But don’t teach them falsehoods that they will have to later unlearn. Falsehoods that go in early form the template of our assumptions and common knowledge, and are very hard to unlearn.
For older grades, read the truth about Columbus in age-appropriate ways.
Teaching untruths about the racial history of the U.S. alienates people of color from school, especially in history/social studies, and this widens the performance gap.
De-Center Columbus and Make Native People Visible
Teach enough about Columbus to help students be willing and able to make the choice not to honor him.
Some schools, districts, and counties have changed the name “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous Peoples' Day.”
Invite Native people from your area to come to speak.
Ask yourself, “Does my curriculum teach students to identify with Columbus, European colonizers, and settlers?” If so, create opportunities for students to identify with Native Americans.
Do your books and novels “other” Native Americans, or help students see from the perspectives of Native People?
Columbus was not the first to “discover” North and South America. These lands were already inhabited when he arrived. There had been explorers who came before him, whose impact is not remembered as well because they were not there to “conquer.” Columbus was not merely an “explorer,” he was an “exploiter.”
Do Not Dress Children as Native Americans"
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"The environment at Atlanta’s SunTrust Park mirrors the youthful verve of the team. Catch a Braves game in Atlanta and you’ll see it — the fans are raucous, serenading the players with a chant that accompanies every high-leverage situation, “chopping” a sea of foam tomahawks in concert as they go. And the players feed off of their energy.
The postseason provides the requisite pretext for an otherwise athletically illiterate pundit class to dip its toes into the world of professional baseball. So, naturally, the “tomahawk chop” chant has of late drawn the ire of those wont to have their ire drawn. Amid a growing swell of Twitter outrage, a reporter with the St. Louis Dispatch asked St. Louis Cardinals rookie pitcher and Cherokee Nation member Ryan Helsley what he thought of the chant. Helsley, who had just pitched against the Braves in the National League Division Series, said that he found the chant to be “a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general,” one that “depicts them in this kind of caveman-type people way who aren’t intellectual.” He lamented that Natives are “used as mascots” by the Braves and other teams.
While some in the press have since disseminated Helsley’s view as if it were representative of all Native peoples, among Native Americans themselves there has long been a diversity of opinion on the merits of Native iconography and mascots. Indeed, the lack of consensus among tribes and Native people on the issue continues to stymie the efforts of activists who want to eliminate all Native-themed mascots from the sports world. To take but one example of the frequently surprising results pollsters get when they ask self-identified Natives about the issue, a Wolvereye poll from earlier this year found that the adjective such respondents most commonly associated with the Washington Redskins’ team name —a brand far more fraught and controversial than that of the Braves — was “proud.”
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"If you’re looking for what all this means for the Natives on the ground, consider this monumental and heartbreaking series published by the Argus Leader last fall. Looking at the Rosebud Sioux and Oglala Sioux, the Leader found that life expectancy for Natives in South Dakota is twenty-one years shorter than the state average. Individuals treated at these IHS facilities have mistakenly had their limbs amputated; suicidal patients were abandoned and found dead; one man with mental health ailments and heart conditions was pepper-sprayed to death by hospital security. In the most horrific scenario, a doctor that worked at the Pine Ridge IHS hospital, in addition to prior stops at IHS facilities in Montana, was charged with the sexual abuse of minors, with reports of pedophilia dating back decades.
All of this is the direct result of underfunding. Because of the convoluted way Congress funds the Indian Health Service—it is run by the Department of Health and Human Services, but its funding comes through the Department of the Interior, which also houses the Bureau of Indian Affairs—the IHS is choked to the point of catastrophe on a yearly basis.
When stories like those above surface, outrage and shock are the natural reactions. Hearings are held, and Congressional committee members puff out their chests and scream at the very administrators they underfund. Last December, it was the Bureau of Indian Affairs spokesperson being exorcised by Senator Jon Tester for failing to find a solution to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. In May, it was the Bureau of Indian Education that found itself facing the wrath of Representative Ruben Gallego, following the death of three Native students connected with Chemawa Indian School. Yesterday, it was the BIA official, meekly commenting that he was “not in a position today to be able to state an official agency position” on the two advanced appropriations bills being considered.
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In every single scenario, the blood is very much on Congress’s hands. They simply refuse to look down at their stained palms"
Alan J. Singer
What Shall We Do About Columbus Day? Alan Singer of Daily Kos
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/14/1892310/-What-Shall-We-Do-About-Columbus-Day?_=2019-10-14T03:16:44.262-07:00
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John S. Elfrank-Dana
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John Elfrank-Dana
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Hunter College of the City University of New York
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What Shall We Do About Columbus Day? Alan Singer of Daily Kos
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/14/1892310/-What-Shall-We-Do-About-Columbus-Day?_=2019-10-14T03:16:44.262-07:00
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