November is Native American Heritage Month and this year marks the 25th anniversary of the first NAHM. Here's President Barack Obama's proclamation for 2015. As part of this month's commemoration, Meteor Blades (Seminole) and I have been spotlighting some renowned and not-so-well-known American Indians, hoping to correct some myths and other misinformation along the way.
I'm immersed in all things American Indian. But, I wonder about you. Are you aware of those of us out there, living among you? We are one of the smallest minorities (1.6 percent of the entire U.S. population, U.S. Census). BUT we are still here and we shall remain.
Matika Wilbur (Swinomish/Tulalip), photographer and founder of Project 562—more on that later—recently conducted an informal survey in New York, and the results should be surprising to you:
New York’s infamous Columbus Circle memorializes the founding of a new world and perpetuates the myth of American exceptionalism, while denying the violence against Indigenous people—a will to ignorance. With a crew of Natives, we asked over 100 New Yorkers to identify the "origin" of our Native models to understand where contemporary Native lives exist in popular consciousness. [...] Indigenous in New York:
[Published on Oct 12, 2015 - 3:47 mins.] Observing a holiday in honor of Christopher Columbus perpetuates and exploits ignorance. It hurts Native Americans by reinforcing our absence from our national consciousness and celebrating our genocide and it hurts non-Natives by reinforcing the arrival of a European as a more impressive story than the indigenous story of survival, stewardship and sovereignty. We know that the "Columbus consciousness" has left a deep impression on us [...] If Columbus had his way, we'd all be dead. But indigenous erasure from the national consciousness has had a similar effect. When we celebrate Columbus, we celebrate the beginning of our erasure. The continued celebration of Columbus continues to silence us, continues to render us invisible and extinct.
The history of Columbus taught in schools is based on the writings of Washington Irving, who wrote the fictional pieces Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Irving traveled to Spain in the early 1800s and pored over the documentation of Columbus's voyages. Irving deliberately left out the accounts of the barbarous carnage Columbus inflicted on the Tainos in the Caribbean and produced a romantic account of history, calling it the discovery of America.
But we were not "discovered." We had existed with thriving populations in the millions across North America. (The exact numbers are the subject of much dispute.) However, in the 1900 census, just 237,000 of us remained as a result of the European invasion.
I'm glad to see cities across our nation begin to adopt Indigenous People's Day and reject Columbus Day. Yet the video above illustrates how invisible we are to the general population. To counter that, Matika Wilbur set out with her Project 562 to photograph and document members of each of what, when she started, were the 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States. Since her project began in 2013, four more tribes have been recognized.
Her photographs have been featured at the Seattle Art Museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum of Fine Arts, the Nantes Museum of Fine Arts and the Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center in Washington. Please enjoy the TED-x presentation below in which Wilbur shows photos of various tribes across the nation and provides unique commentary about their modern-day presence.
Changing the way we see Native Americans | Matika Wilbur | TEDxTeachersCollege
[Published on Jul 23, 2014 - 19:44 mins.] In 2013 Matika Wilbur took on a project of massive scope: to photograph members of each federally recognized tribe in the United States. "My dream," Wilbur says, "is that our children are given images that are more useful, truthful, and beautiful."
Wilbur seeks to change the stereotypes the media use to shape young minds. One questions she asks participants is whether there are any interesting details about their tribe they would like to share. Maybe some details that aren't written down in the history books?
From those she interviewed, you will learn about the fighting Cheyenne and how they treasure the memory of the ancestors who were killed defending themselves from the Army. They are the reason we have Cheyenne survivors today.
You will learn that our first choice for identifying ourselves is not as “Indians” or “Native Americans.” Speaking collectively about all the American indigenous people we use “Indian,” “American Indian,” “Native American” and “Native” interchangeably. But we prefer to be called by the name of our tribe. That name usually means "the human beings" in English. But the definition of human beings in our individual tribes is based on humility, not pride.
There's a story about a Pacific Northwest tribal man taking his case to the Supreme Court to maintain his fishing rights in the Klamath river, fishing rights his tribe had before the Supreme Court existed. The San Carlos Apache refer to the other three colors of people, black, white and yellow with one word, our relatives. And that we should treat each like brothers and sisters. And many more stories of how we endure with a special prayer for healing at the end.
"By exposing the astonishing variety of the Indian presence and reality at this juncture, we will build cultural bridges, abandon stereotypes, and renew and inspire our national legacy."
I first wrote about Matika Wilbur here in 2013.
Do You Live Near Any American Indians?
Are They Urban Indians?
Do You Live Near Any Tribes? Know Any REZidents?
If Yes, What Do You Know About Them?