In a statement sent to Native News Online last week, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a tribally enrolled citizen of the White Earth Ojibwe tribe, had some choice words about Donald Trump’s selection for his vice presidential running mate:
“J.D. Vance has a long record of anti-Indigenous policies and rhetoric. Representation matters, and Vance has demonstrated that neither representation nor Indigenous people will have a voice at his table. There is no doubt in my mind that if he is elected vice president, our country will go backwards, not forwards.”
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan
His past statements about women have a special resonance for Indigenous people. Flanagan continued: “I am also equally deeply concerned about Vance’s beliefs that women should stay in abusive relationships. When Native women experience violence at 2.5 times more than any other population, it is shameful that Vance would encourage women to endure physical and mental abuse. The rights of Indigenous women are on the ballot this year more than ever before and we have the opportunity to defend them at the ballot box in November.”
When it comes to Native sovereignty, the complex legal status that governs the relationship between the U.S. government, the states, and the tribes, Senator Vance isn’t on board. For instance, he sought to override that sovereignty with the Freedom to Breathe Act. The bill, with a dozen ultra-right Republican co-sponsors, would forbid tribes from enacting their own mask mandates in schools and in public transit on their lands. This despite the fact Native peoples were disproportionately harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, partly as a consequence of the inadequate funding of the Indian Health Service.
Vance also has shown disdain for Native peoples on social media and in a whiny letter about a proposed renaming of Ohio’s only National Forest.
You can’t really know what Vance believes. Perhaps he is just tabula rasa for plutocrat Peter Thiel as permanent intern. Certainly “flip-flopper” is way too tame to describe Vance’s reversals even if you choose only to compare his scathing statements about Trump back in 2016 with the pap he’s spreading these days about his partner on the GOP ticket.
We know Trump’s only in it for retribution, future grift, and, of course, protection from past grift and parts of the law the Supreme Court has not (yet) immunized him from. Vance may be just another opportunistic wind vane attuned to the mercurial breezes of the moment. Or maybe he’s a newly converted fervent true believer wholly plugged into wrecking America to save it. If what he says he believes is what he truly believes—which overlaps rather heavily with Project 2025 and Agenda 47—it makes him as dangerous as Trump since he’s the supposed inheritor of the MAGA apocalypse.
Vance, of course, is only an accessory in the Trumplican Party, a necessary nuisance in the narcissistic world of the Donvict. It’s not Vance at the top of the ballot. Plus, it appears from the rumor mill that Trump is not so happy with Vance’s solo debut, so maybe he won’t even be on the ballot by November. After all, we have three big surprises in June and July. Who knows what’s yet to come? However, if Trump manages to hang onto him and they win, Vance might soon have worse to say than FDR’s Vice President John Nance Garner who characterized the post in 1932 as “not worth a bucket of warm piss,” which was laundered in the press to “spit.” Bur then, according to one of the rich friends that Thiel cajoled into hiring Vance, he was let go because “he didn’t seem to do much work.” So Vance might not be all that unhappy to make the Veepship a sinecure.
However, with the Democratic Party still euphorically united after more than 96 hours, the chances of his getting that job and his boss getting to plunk his feet onto the Oval Office desk again are, arguably, dwindling. But we’re not even close to any finish line yet. So, in case you need for GOTV purposes yet another example of J.D. Vance at the barricades of reaction, here’s one I take personally.
Vance shows his disdain for Indigenous Americans
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this week resurrected written remarks by Vance in a letter last year to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack in which the Senator stood against renaming the Wayne National Forest. The proposed renaming follows a 2021 order from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) that formed a committee to reconsider place names deemed offensive. Among other changes already made are 650 names that included a racist and misogynistic slur for Native American women—s****.
The U.S. Forest Service proposed changing the name of the 244,000-acre National Forest in Southern Ohio now named for Anthony Wayne, a Revolutionary War hero and slaveholder who—after his 1794 victory over the Northwest Confederacy, a coalition of tribes armed and otherwise aided by the British—proceeded to “open” Ohio for “American” settlement. That opening involved a scorched-earth policy, wiping out entire villages, and pushing the survivors at gunpoint onto lands inhabited by other Natives. It was the first of the Indian Wars on the continent after the U.S. became the U.S., a process that only ended a century later after all the tribes coast to coast had been shattered or corralled. Now, Wayne’s name disgraces the entrance to Ohio’s only National Forest.
"The current forest name is offensive because of this history of violence," a press release from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service on August 21, 2023, stated. Vance responded with his letter to Vilsack saying the name change "denigrates Ohio history and represents a lack of fidelity to our nation’s founding generation." He continued: "[Wayne] fought wars and won peace for our government, the government you now serve, and hewed Ohio out of rugged wilderness and occupied enemy territory."
Occupied by its inhabitants. Peace at gunpoint. Move or die. Ours now.
Marin Webster Denning, a citizen of the Oneida tribe, told the Journal-Sentinel at the time that Native Americans are "not the enemy. There is an occupation, and there are enemies, but revisions of history like this erase us."
Logan York, a representative of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, said in a statement that Wayne “may be a Revolutionary War hero to some, but he is also the main villain in our story of resistance, trying to keep our homes and maintain our lives.”
It appears that Vance won’t get his way. After studying public comments submitted about any name-change, the Forest Service is still considering whether to change the name to Buckeye National Forest, a name chosen from among several that were proposed. Buckeye is the state tree and Ohio’s most common nickname. The final decision is up to Vilsack.
Forest Manager Lee Stewart told the Associated Press last year that various of the 41 tribes with ancestral ties have for decades sought a name change of the 381-square-mile forest. “In thinking of the offensive nature [of the name] to tribes, it’s the opportunity to begin to heal, to begin to connect our forest deeper than just around a name,” he said. “Ohio has thousands of years of history. The history here is very, very deep—pre-history to historic times, where Wayne occupies his space, to the history once we became a state. So Buckeye, we feel, reflects that.”
aren’t there more important things to deal with?
Okay. Let’s pause for a moment. The Battle of Fallen Timbers that ended the war with the Northwest Confederacy of tribes and forced them to sign over their homelands happened 230 years ago. On the scale of things that government should right now be doing in general, and what it should be doing in particular regarding U.S. relations with and obligations to the tribes, way, way down everybody’s list is renaming a national forest, a mountain, or a city street because the current name honors somebody whose evils drastically outweighed the good for which they were awarded those honors.
This is true for Indigenous people, too. Urban or rural, ritually traditional or less so, thriving or not so much, we have many of the exact same issues as other Americans, but unique ones, too. And changing place-names is not, by far, the highest priority. Ask any Native. Not even in the ball park with better funding for the Indian Health Service. Or better schooling for the 50,000 Native children at Bureau of Indian Education schools. Or legislation and funding to preserve Indigenous languages. Or dealing with continuing clashes with state and local governments. This does not, however, mean that renamings are of no consequence.
Some might say Vance was only talking about the 1790s when some Indigenous people were enemies, but not about now. So this name-change is just erasing history, an example of “presentism.” But Vance seems to see not just Natives of the past but those in the present as enemies. Here’s what he tweeted when President Biden took note of Indigenous People’s Day:
He went on to write: "A half a millennium ago Columbus used technology developed in Europe to sail across a giant ocean and discover a new continent. Today we celebrate that daring and ingenuity," and he proclaimed "Happy Columbus Day!"
Clara Pratte (Navajo), chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Native Caucus, said in a statement to to Native News: “Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not a ‘fake holiday created to sow division,’ it’s a celebration of tribal nations as well as our relatives from the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders communities. It recognizes our countless contributions to our country and the resilience of our ancestors. J.D. Vance, just like Donald Trump, is someone who actively tries to sow division in this country. He wants to pull this nation, including tribal issues, backward, and is a threat to our nation's democracy and the progress that we have made under the Biden-Harris administration.”
Is it because Ohio was a ferociously Union state that Vance isn’t waving a Confederate battle flag as his part in the culture war? This Columbus as hero, “fake holiday” stuff has to suffice, I guess. He says the history is complicated and it certainly is, and not one-sided, but he offers no hints of any nuances in the telling of his version.
Complaints about “fake holidays,” paeans to the murderous “discoverer” of the Americas, and anachronistic assertions about the ”enemy” make Vance’s supposed concerns about “fidelity” to U.S. origins pathetic.
The Senator may be unaware that American Indians have served in the U.S. armed forces in some capacity even back in the 1790s. The rate of Native military service compared with their numbers in the population has been higher than other racial groups at least since World War I when more than 12,000 served in Europe, along with 800 Native nurses. The 1924 Snyder Act granting all American Indians the right to vote was in great part sparked by that service. In World War II, a Native died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navajo and other Native “code talkers” made life hell for Japanese code breakers. All told, 44,000 Natives served in that war. Five hundred of them landed with the troops on Normandy. Hundreds of Natives died in the war against fascism. Natives fought in Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq War. Hundreds serve now.
Vance is pretty busy at the moment, so I wouldn’t expect to see him checking out the National Native American Veterans Memorial commemorating the service and sacrifice of Indigenous Americans, most of whom suffered racist indignities their whole lives. Many gave their lives. Maybe when the campaign is over, he’ll drop by and apologize for the slander. Enemies? Fake holiday? Friggin’ Columbus? Or maybe he’ll propose privatizing the reservations and fulfill the dream of Manifest Destiny.
If the Republicans win the presidency, Vance might become no more than a cipher for the next four years, ignored by both his boss and the media. But, actuarially speaking, a reelected Trump would have about a 20% chance of passing into the great beyond before completing his term. His replacement would not be an improvement.
