Campaign Action
I am typing this from my home, which sits on land stolen from the Nacotchtank people. Twice this year I have heard leaders of a panel discussion start out with facts related to whose land we were on. Both times I was struck by the fact that this wasn't a normal practice in progressive spaces already. I do not mean that it had occurred to me as necessary before but that it hadn't.
The first time I heard someone start a panel discussion with the facts about which indigenous tribes called our current location home was at the People's Congress of Resistance at Howard University. During the Freeing Political Prisoners; Ending Mass Incarceration panel, Norm Clement of the American Indian Movement (AIM) started with a moment of silence for the Native tribes that were violently displaced from the land that Howard University sits on today.
Clement, along with Betty Davis of the New Abolitionist Movement, Ralph Pointer of Justice for Lynn Stewart, Robert King of the Angola three, a representative of the campaign to bring Mumia home and Nasime Chata of the Global Alliance for Justice all stressed the importance of centering political prisoners in our work to end mass incarceration. So that is what I would like to do this November and every month going forward. And I want to start with Leonard Peltier.
Gyasi Ross of the Blackfeet nation recently wrote about the simultaneous impotence and importance of Native American Heritage Month as well as Black History Month. Before reading his piece, the impotence of these token months was easier for me to understand than the true importance, unfortunately. To illustrate the impotence, Ross writes,
Even with all of the incredible activism that happened around evolving the horrible Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples Day in Seattle, Los Angeles and other cities, still there has been no connection shown between changing these days and making the cities actually better for Indigenous people. We do not have better success rates in school or access to more colleges or housing as a result of any of these programs or events.
He then goes on to explain how these history months are important even if not in the way many (white) people think.
The importance is this: they serve as a placeholder, keeping the conversation fresh for future generations to have a more formal conversation about reparations.
Reparations and the discussion around them for Native Americans and African Americans is never discussed as possible in the progressive circles that I spin in. And yet reparations must happen before true "progress" can be made. Until reading Ross's piece I didn't see the connection between these symbolic months dedicated to people that America has done great and irreversible harm to. Before I was only able to see them through a lens of rage at the history taught throughout the rest of the year. Ross articulates this rage very well.
When I was younger and more radical I literally loathed multi-cultural and diversity programs like Native American Heritage Month, Black History Month, even affirmative action etc. They were corny, condescending and ultimately pointless.
A box to check off.
To me, they were a way for schools to say, “Sure, let me pay attention to these darkies really quick and then get back to teaching the same destructive things that were intended to crush the spirits of Native and black students.” Crazy. Despite Native American Heritage Month and Black History Month, schools quickly get back to exactly the same lesson plans that almost completely erases Native and black (and Latinx and Arab and Asian and…) contributions to this Nation. And teaching something about Natives or Africans before 1492? Fuggedaboutit.
We didn’t exist before white people got here, apparently. Or if we did exist, we were running around butt nekkid in the woods.
But he channels that rage into understanding and he has me asking myself - as a white descendant of Scandinavian and German immigrants who fully participated in the mass murder of indigenous people - how can I center the importance, instead of living the impotence of Native American Heritage month and all the other months to channel this new found understanding into action on behalf of Native American people?
I actually came back to Leonard right before Native American Heritage month when I read of the passing of Dennis Banks, co-founder of AIM who died from heart surgery complications at the end of October. Leonard Peltier, who is in his 38th year of 2 life sentences because of his work with AIM, also just recently had heart surgery. In a letter Peltier wrote last week, My Brother Dennis Banks, he asks,
In my most humble way, I ask that we never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice to try to make a better world for the coming generations. Please, sing their songs with honor, in their memory, tell their stories with pride with every opportunity you have, and always, please remind our young people and each other, that every battle that was ever fought, every life that was ever taken, every ceremony being performed, is with our future generations in mind.
Peltier's song, while known and sung by many is not known by enough people to result in his release from prison. So if you already know this story, then take time to write Leonard at this address. Let him know you are singing his song and willing to work to demand his release from prison.
If you don't know Leonard Peltier's story Wikipedia has a detailed account. The story is all too familiar. After becoming involved in various Native American civil rights initiatives in the late ‘60s early ‘70s the FBI began a file on him. By December of 1975 he was on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shoot-out at Pine Ridge. He had been there to help ease political tensions that were still high after the Wounded Knee incident.
The panel articulated that his crime was standing up to the U.S. government. Think stand your ground laws. Legally it's hard to put white people away for defending themselves. Being an indigenous American though, Peltier was charged with murdering two FBI agents, a crime that the general population of America accepted fully (see Whiteness). It worked, and he has been in prison ever since. He has always maintained his innocence. Until we, the general population of America, start paying attention again, and commit to supporting the release of Leonard Peltier he will remain in prison.
The genocide waged against the indigenous people of this country are so heinous, so large, so irrefutable that beginning to address them seems too large a task to undertake and so the general population of American's does nothing but comment on how sad it all is. But this genocide isn't happening in the past. It is happening now and we can do more than shed a tear for the Native peoples of this land. We can fight with them. By demanding that Leonard Peltier be freed we not only work towards his freedom, we create an environment where it isn't as easy to lock up an indigenous man for standing up for his people because he isn't alone, he is surrounded by non-indigenous people dedicated to ending this genocide and giving reparations to the people who have survived against all odds.