Monday will be Indigenous Peoples Day, and it got me thinking. In many ways, Indigenous people’s very existence is an act of activism. Their every breath defies America’s record of state-sanctioned genocide and attempts to erase their identities and cultures.
Over the years, Native American activism has taken many forms: revolts against colonizers throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island, a nearly 1,500-people protest against racial violence and mistreatment by the police, and “The Longest Walk,” a five-month march from Alcatraz to Washington D.C. that protested anti-treaty legislation.
That legacy of resistance remains well and alive. Here are the key issues at stake for Indigenous activists today:
1. Nations continue to fight for tribal sovereignty more than 500 years after colonizers forcibly took their land.
In September, five Kumeyaay Nation tribes filed a lawsuit against three government agencies involved with building the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The tribes reside in southern California and Mexico, and they argue that border wall construction has “hampered their ability to practice their religious beliefs and cultural traditions,” according to Native News Online. The government claims the lawsuit is moot because courts have previously rejected similar arguments.
Native Americans also reacted in outrage earlier this week when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) handed Oklahoma wide-ranging environmental regulatory control on nearly all tribal lands in the state. The move strips 38 tribes of their sovereignty over critical environmental issues, Ti-Hua Chang writes for The Young Turks.
“After over 500 years of oppression, lies, genocide, ecocide, and broken treaties, we should have expected the EPA ruling in favor of racist Gov. [Kevin] Stitt of Oklahoma, yet it still stings.”
—Casey Camp-Horinek, environmental ambassador and elder and hereditary drum keeper for the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, as told to The Young Turks
Photo courtesy of Democracy Now!
After Native Americans’ years-long battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a federal court ruled in favor of Indigenous activists in July, ordering for the pipeline to cease operations pending a full environmental review. Tribal nations have continually protested the pipeline because of its environmental consequences and infringement on treaty territory. The Center for Public Integrity has also reported that “man camps” — temporary housing built for transient oil workers on or near Native land — enable attacks on Indigenous women.
2. Native Americans, like many people of color, still face barriers to voting.
A case study: Montana tribal citizens nabbed a major victory in September when a district judge ruled that the Ballot Interference Prevention Act (BIPA) is unconstitutional. BIPA placed restrictions on ballot collection methods, such as prohibiting voters from returning more than six ballots per person. Native American voters often rely on get-out-the-vote organizers to transport ballots because of distance-related inaccessibility — especially for those living on rural reservations — and other socioeconomic factors. Indigenous citizens viewed BIPA as a method of voter suppression.
Other disenfranchising factors remain, however. In the year of COVID, a significant chunk of voters have switched to mail-in ballots, but homes on reservations don’t always contain a standard number and street name. Most residents receive mail at P.O. boxes instead. Sometimes, a reservation only has one post office. Other times, Indigenous folks have to travel to a different state to access their P.O. box due to the way state lines cross through tribal land. Delayed delivery also throws things off. Activists have pushed for voting reform for years, like in Montana. Despite challenges unique to the pandemic, Native American advocacy groups continue to widen efforts to increase voting access, whether through research and policy recommendations, community organizing, or legal means.
3. American Indians and Alaska Natives are 5.3 times more likely than white people to face hospitalization for COVID. It’s the largest disparity for any racial group.
An evocative headline. Read the piece here.
More than 10 percent of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians have contracted the coronavirus. That’s 81 people since March. Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation has lost at least 560 people as of this week: a death rate higher than that of any state. Because Native Americans are often overlooked in data collection, actual numbers are probably even higher.
“The SARS-CoV-2 virus is novel, but pandemic threats to Indigenous peoples are anything but new. Diseases like measles, smallpox, and the Spanish flu have decimated Native American communities ever since the arrival of the first European colonizers.”
—Lindsey Schneider, Joshua Sbicca, and Stephanie Malin, for The Conversation
The coronavirus has taken a “disproportionate toll on tribes’ health and economy,” Harvard experts have said. This is in part due to poverty, multigenerational housing, and pre-existing health conditions like heart disease. It’s worsened by the fact that the U.S. Indian Health Service is perpetually underfunded. Other inequities cause additional risk factors.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, Indigenous people are even more averse to going to hospitals after a video surfaced showing an Atikamekw woman crying for help and writhing in pain to no avail. At the Quebec hospital, “staff called her an idiot, told her that she was only good for sex, and said she was better off dead,” according to VICE News. Joyce Echaquan died hours after facing the racist comments.
Native Americans are finding ways to build solidarity, however, and preserve aspects of their cultures. One has made and distributed more than 1,700 face masks. Another has given away 500 microgrants to help Indigenous people in economic strain. Some participate in online conversations to discuss solutions to Indigenous communities’ pandemic-related concerns. Many language revitalization professionals are expanding their projects to accommodate increased interest and creating accessible language lessons for youth.
Tribal nations are also pushing federal scientists to conduct disease research that “serves Indigenous peoples in a meaningful way,” according to High Country News’ Kalen Goodluck. Concerned about ownership, privacy, and control of data, they are advocating to ensure research practices are developed with tribal consultation. This comes after the Indigenous data sovereignty movement emerged in 2015.
4. Missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW): an epidemic.
Native American women are murdered at rates more than 10 times the national average. Four out of five Native American women experience violence. They are also 2.5 times more likely than all American women to experience sexual assault. One out of three Native American women reports being raped in her lifetime, and over 80 percent of the time, it’s non-Native men committing the crime.
There’s no definitive number of missing Indigenous women and girls. In 2016, 5,712 cases were reported to the National Crime Information Center. But racial stereotypes about substance abuse, criminal activity, or sex work often lead law enforcement to take missing person reports less seriously. Even if a perpetrator is located, tribal nations are not always able to prosecute them. A 1978 Supreme Court decision holds that tribal nations with their own justice systems are not allowed to arrest and prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes on Indigenous land — unless Congress changes the law. In 2013, that change came about in part, with lawmakers granting tribal nations jurisdiction over specific domestic and dating violence crimes committed by non-Natives. The provisions do not cover murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, rape, sex trafficking, or child abuse.
“There’s so much racism in this country that is targeting Native people as less than. You add that to the piece where they don’t actually have legal protection as much as non-Native women do and you just have this mess that is largely invisible to the rest of the population.”
—Willow O’Feral, filmmaker, as told to WUWM
Multiple grassroots efforts have grown over the years to draw attention to the missing and murdered women. The hashtag #MMIW has become a transnational movement. Indigenous folks use #MMIW to promote education and awareness, publicize advocacy, and share information about missing loved ones or law enforcement updates. Other groups have held vigils, offered workshops on self-defense and internet safety, and assisted victims and families. Indigenous communities are also pushing lawmakers to address data collection gaps and reform federal and state responses to violence against Indigenous women.
Learn more from The Seattle Times’ docuseries on missing and murdered Indigenous women, titled “Not Invisible: Confronting a crisis of violence against Native women.”
5. Law enforcement kills Native Americans at a rate higher than any other racial group.
This isn’t new. State-sanctioned violence is embedded in the history of Indigenous peoples. But their long tradition of resistance continues, too. In the days following George Floyd’s death by police officer Derek Chauvin, “there was a noticeable Indigenous presence among the protesters,” writes Katrina Phillips, member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and history professor at Macalester College.
“[A] person in beaded earrings and a red and black mask calling attention to the violent acts perpetrated against Indigenous women, someone carrying a hand drum and another protester wearing a ‘Free Leonard Peltier’ shirt with a sign that read ‘Derek Chauvin is a murderer.’ Protesters flew the flag of the American Indian Movement and wore shirts, jackets, or vests that bore the organization’s insignia.”
—Katrina Phillips, for Washington Post
In other parts of the U.S., Native Americans are raising their voices, too. In Washington, activists spoke out in remembrance of Jackie Salyers, a Puyallup tribal member who was killed by police in 2016 while pregnant with her fifth child. In 2018, her family successfully advocated for a change in state law to mandate independent investigation when an officer uses deadly force. Now, they refuse to let her name hit the dust as the country grapples with police brutality.
6. Lack of internet access remains a widespread problem among Indigenous communities. The federal government hasn’t exactly helped by trying to steamroll tribal sovereignty.
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced plans to expedite 5G deployment in 2018, the agency attempted to exempt 5G cellular network construction from laws protecting Indigenous sites and cultural resources. Tribal nations took issue with the government’s overreach into Indigenous territory and expressed concern about protecting sacred sites. After a group of nations sued the FCC, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the order.
For years, Indigenous nations have suffered poor broadband and 5G connectivity, in part because of “decades of FCC neglect,” according to Public Knowledge, a nonprofit that promotes an open internet and access to affordable communications. A 2019 FCC report shows that 36 percent of housing units on tribal land have no access to broadband — compared to 8 percent of units on non-tribal land. In January, the FCC invited tribes to apply for free spectrum licenses (used for mobile coverage and 5G broadband access), granting nations ownership over how and where networks are built after years of activism.
More on Indigenous communities:
The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan launched a portrait exhibition in September that centers missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The virtual exhibition of 94 portraits, which includes Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), is titled “Boontak! (Stop it!): Stolen Daughters of Turtle Island.” Willow O’Feral’s documentary, also focused on MMIW, will be available for viewing from Oct. 22 to Oct. 24 through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Trafficking and Migration Initiative. “Sisters Rising” follows six women who “refuse to let this pattern of violence continue in the shadows,” according to the film’s website.
Haven’t heard of the American Indian Movement? Learn more about one of the most prominent activist groups in Native American history with this profile from ThoughtCo’s Nadra Kareem Nittle.
HuffPost has your round-up of Indigenous activists around the globe who made an impact in 2019.
This week’s plug for The Yappie:
The Yappie collaborated with the podcast Fresh Off the Vote on an episode discussing misinformation on ethnic media. In “Breaking (Fake) News!” FOTV founder Helen Li and I dive into the mechanisms that allow misinformation to spread on WeChat and WhatsApp, and chat with the team behind The WeChat Project on engaging in fact-checked political discourse across generations. Tune in on your favorite podcast platform.
Just for fun:
Gonna leave this here. That is all.
See you next week!