Why You Should care about Native American Land Rights

I am not a Native American, my roots were transplanted here from Africa, but both of us have been thrown into the fire of American oppression. My own oppression has been built into and onto their system of oppression due to the functioning of America as a settler colony. Land stolen without the trading of deeds, through conquest and war, all in the name of a manifest destiny, relegating the descendants of those who taught their grandfathers and great grandfathers how to survive the coldest and harshest winters to mere corners of the land they once roamed. In addition, the same land which was bought and paid for with the blood of 100 million Natives was used to forcibly contain Africans on when the White settler colonialists discovered that the Native Americans could not withstand the long hours in the sun and the harsh labor. Into America and out of Africa they brought human chattel to work this land they did not justifiably obtain, but kept with force while subjugating its former inhabitants to slave quarter accommodations. This is the American legacy I’m certain that they gloss over in textbooks or offhandedly refer to it as the “Trail of Tears” without even so much as an acknowledgement of the brutality involved in the massacre of humans for land rights; a land grab which the American government had no actual basis for other than that these indigenous people were in the way of their assumed destiny.

That was the distant past injustice, today the injustice is that there are many Native American tribes who are not officially recognized and who have unjustly had their most sacred lands stolen from them by the United States government, as if it has not already taken more than enough from the Native population. There are legal disputes in several states brought by the Native tribes, some involve the poisoning of their water supplies by corporations, some involve corruption charges of local tribe governors which can be seen as an offshoot of the poverty in many Native communities, some involve the theft of land which Natives consider sacred and it is here where I wish to pause. America’s government has already stolen land, killed people, and essentially created humane concentration camps for Native Americans, but somehow these injustices are not enough. American politicians want to perpetuate the most heinous slap in the face that they can of these communities, to essentially tell them that their sacred lands are not as important as the National Parks are to the American government. Remember that standoff in Oregon? That land is Native land and it doesn’t even belong to the Bundy bunch that attempted to take over a federal building. That land doesn’t even belong to the federal government. That is Native land which has become a staging ground for White Libertarians, who in a rather ironic twist would not be able to make these claims of government oppression were both they and the government who they fight with not directly responsible for the oppression of the Native Americans.

Now, as oppressed people in America, we understand the police brutality and the over policing and the increasing militarization of these forces that Native Americans face. We share that common oppression. What is less clear to us is the way in which we indirectly have profited from the way that America has operated its settler colonialism. We have access to land, land that was not ours and truthfully is still not ours. We are occupying Native land which was stolen. In truth, we are no better than the American government who stole this land from Natives in the first place. It’s a complicated truth, it’s a messy truth, but it is nonetheless the truth. However, if we are to create a lasting change that will address the massive injustices of both the past and present America then we must understand that a demand for true and real reparations must be paid to both African Americans and Native Americans. Land, political power, autonomy, income levels, ending systemic and structural racism and the occupation and sale of tribal/Native/sacred lands must end. These are not radical demands or demands which shouldn’t be considered seriously when America in general has vastly profited from the enacting of all of these evils over generations while robbing us of both resources and opportunity. There is a debt to be paid, and if America is really seriously interested in ensuring that all of its citizens receive justice, then it must start by restoring equity to those who were most deprived of it during its history. If America is not interested in justice, then it deserves destruction, because you cannot have a country that wants to police the world, but cannot even be trusted to police and rectify its own bloody history.