On Indigenous Peoples Day, We Fight for Our Existence -- and Our Liberation

We all need to learn our true history and also be conscious of the oppression, violence, lies, distortions, denials, and utter heartlessness and cruelty toward Indigenous Peoples and others that continues to this day. More and more of us who have been in the dark, like I have personally been (we are not alone!), need to role up our sleeves and embrace with a fierce caring and passion the deeper truths that are so vital to know. We can heal, individually and collectively, but only as we are brave enough to see consciously and clearly how it is that we have been sick. May we all visualize and wish and seek wellness and peace for ourselves and for all beings. The grave injustices that plague our nation and the world and so many of our hearts, minds, and souls need our attention and attending to now. Here, now, today and every day. - Molly

A Water Protector looks on at burned tractors at the Standing Rock camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, on October 12, 2016. (Photo: Irina Groushevaia)

 By Jennifer Denetdale

It is as predictable as any other annual US holiday or commemoration: National mainstream media devote sound bites to Columbus Day and the meaning of Christopher Columbus' voyage to the "New World," while Columbus Day sales hit the stores. Meanwhile, op-eds and letters to the editor register Indigenous people's objections to Columbus as worthy of commemoration. In recent Octobers, it seems, asking Indigenous people what they think of Columbus Day has also become a sound bite.

In the last few years, however, increasingly perceptible is an Indigenous resolve to refuse to accept the American exceptionalist narrative that the United States is a nation that embraces multiculturalism. In fact, it is still common practice today to deny that Indigenous peoples were the first victims of the US's genocidal policies, and that those surviving Natives, once militarily subjugated, were then subjected to ethnic cleansing, which is more commonly known as "assimilation."

Once Indigenous reactions to nationalist US forms of remembrance -- whether they be histories, national event reenactments, or monuments and statutes -- are registered, apologists for the US, having acknowledged "two perspectives" or "two sides," intimate that a level of understanding has been reached, and that we might move to some sort of reconciliation and healing. However, as the growing Indigenous liberation movement has emphasized, reconciliation and healing cannot take place until the US stops celebrating Indigenous genocide. As historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz makes clear in An Indigenous People's History of the United States, since its founding, the US and its settler citizens have habitually committed crimes of inhumanity against Indigenous peoples in order to lay claim to their lands and territories, and have systematically laid waste to these lands as they extract natural resources with little regard for the treatment of Mother Earth.

Further, as the current chair of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, I know firsthand that the US was one of four nations that initially voted against the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) when the General Assembly adopted the declaration in 2007. The US was also the last country to reverse its vote. Any complaints Indigenous peoples lodge against the US for human rights violations in the international arena are quickly denied by the US, and its leaders point to the US Constitution as proof that it is a nation that embraces equality. However, Indigenous peoples' struggles against settler states like the US are older than the Constitution -- as old as the day Columbus disembarked from his ship and stepped onto Indigenous lands. They continue today: For example, the Navajo Nation has taken its complaint of the desecration of sacred sites -- in a specific case, the use of wastewater to make snow on the San Francisco Peaks in northern Arizona -- to the Inter-Commission on Human Rights.

For Indigenous peoples, our memories are not sound bites to be brought out once a year alongside the supermarket shelves stocked with Halloween costumes and candies.

Indigenous resistance against foreign invaders is steadfast in our memories, and in the present moment, it takes many forms, including Indigenous peoples calling for cities and towns to rename Columbus Day "Indigenous Peoples Day." Cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Berkeley and Portland passed resolutions to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day. Two years ago, Albuquerque, New Mexico, followed suit and declared October 7, 2015, Indigenous Peoples Day. More recently, Salt Lake City named the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day, as did Farmington, New Mexico.

Navajo leader Moroni Benally, who was a lead organizer for the efforts in Salt Lake City, said, "The resolution is a symbol with power and meaning in acknowledging a wrong done to Native Americans. It represents a step towards correcting a history that has been sanitized." Navajo leader Chili Yazzie, who praised Farmington, New Mexico's recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day, said he hoped relationships between the city, white citizens and Navajos would improve.

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