Your first two point are little more than deflection of responsibility. Imagine a Fox News host running a story on police practices. The conclusion reached is that the police actually prevent a lot of crime based on arrest data. However, without the social context and in-depth analysis of policing in the United States, the news host has, explicitly or implicitly, misrepresented the situation and cause a harm to the black community by preventing and understanding of reality.

In your second point, you assume an America where the Indigenous population isn’t affected by your “testimony.” Considering that the Indigenous people are intimately connected to the land, to think that there could be a discussion that involves a matter that occurs on said land that does not affect Indigenous peoples is simply ignorant.

Also to your third point, I did not ask you to clarify all Indigenous issues. I simply said if you wish to bring up colonization in the Americas, make sure that you speak about the colonized peoples. You don’t have to go in-depth about it. I, or others, can bring the needed clarification in the comment section. You simply have to make your audience aware that colonization should be investigated and, considering Indigenous people have been the primary victim of American colonization, we have done most of the heavy lifting for you as we have been in continuous conflict with the process since its inception so our voices should be respected when discussing the topic. Simply witnessing something is pointless. If I witness an unarmed black man get shot down by police and I remain silent, I am implicit in the crime.

To your fourth point, this is true. Colonialism has continually adapted itself as a means of self-preservation. However, it’s basic premise, that of land, has not changed. It has simple become more flexible with dealing with land it has already colonized.

Again to your fourth point, my people are not dead. Anything built on top of this land is built not only on my ancestors’ bones, as you phrased it, but also at the diminishment of my relatives who have not been killed by the process.

Again to the fourth point, pointing out a single Indigenous nation (admiringly this is not the only nation that has attempted this) excluding Africans from citizenship grossly ignores the fact that it is happening to our own people. Indigenous people in many tribes are being excluded from citizenship. This is not to say that there is not a core racial issue at play here but that our governments have been colonized to be run more as business than national bodies and in business, less competition means more profit.

Again to the fourth point, your acknowledgement that black bodies were been turned into profit is undoubtable. However, in your discussion of gentrification, you have accepted the colonial concept of property as valid, you simply want your own piece of the pie. In reality, there is no pie.

To your final point, you have failed to understand the basic difference between Indigenous and colonial peoples. Indigenous people base their actions not on a return but on trust. We don’t do shit because we are guaranteed a large profit. We do things because we have developed trust with our own people and we must act responsibly in executing that trust. If you were to ask this question in 1709 to my ancestors, well, I’ll let you do that research (I’m Comanche). Our people are broke, our nations are broke. We don’t attempt to strengthen our nations with the intent to profit. We do it because this is our home, and we will wholly be destroyed with a smile on our faces before we give it up.

A couple ideas you might think about.

You now know who I am and I know you have had the pleasure (maybe a little objective in this context) of communicating with a couple other Indigenous women. Should you want to open a line of communication and discuss our issues and work towards a solution that will break free of the colonial structures, many of which are hard to see, I would love to be apart of the journey. I am available on Facebook, my name is Gable Roubideaux. Send me a friend request and we can begin to work towards a radical future that will benefit my people as well as yours.

Conceptual metaphors like the one you used have been, and still are, very damaging to my people (yours as well). Before you use a conceptual metaphor, you should seek to understand who might be affected and how it will affect them. You must understand yourself in relation to the conceptual reality that we are constructing.