Young people are host to Native history event
By S. Hedgecoke
New York
People's Video Network youths hosted a program
called "Native History for Today's Youth" on April 17 in
preparation for the Summer 2004 PVN Youth Camp trip to Oklahoma
to visit the Seminole Nation.
The PVN youths are spending months studying Native history
and culture to prepare for their summer trip. PVN Youth member
Dalia, age 8, opened the program. Shani, age 14, and Kafele,
age 12, introduced the speakers. And Aya, age 10, intro duced a
video the young people made of a previous trip to the Gullah
Islands off Georgia.
On earlier trips or "camps" the young people have studied
video editing in New York and gone to Cuba to see how children
live there, even visiting with the families of the Cuban Five
U.S. political prisoners.
This night the children learned from Usti Salegugi ("Little
Snapping Turtle"), council member of the Cherokee Language and
Cultural Circle, that April 17 is the anniversary of the U.S.
invasion of Florida led by Andrew Jackson in 1818. That attack
marked the beginning of three U.S. wars against the Seminole
Nation. The Seminoles never surrendered to the United States in
their guerrilla war to maintain their lands and
sovereignty.
"'America the Beautiful' is a myth woven out of lies:
bald-faced lies, half truths, lies of omission, and the lies of
benign neglect," Little Snapping Turtle said. "The American
Revolution was about stealing Indian land. The founding fathers
planted the seeds of the Removal and they settled down to
establish fortunes."
Little Snapping Turtle spoke about European and U.S.
colonization of the Southeast Indigenous Nations, which led up
to the genocidal Trail of Tears. "Disease, warfare and
environmental devastation, millions of acres of land stolen and
centuries of knowledge and culture disappeared," culminating
with "eviction at bayonet point."
Mahtowin Munro, co-leader of United American Indians of New
England, touched on the many historical examples of Black and
Native unity from the first European settlement in South
Carolina up to the Robeson County, N.C., struggle against the
Ku Klux Klan.
Describing Native people's modern living conditions, she
explained: "We are not living in teepees anymore. We live in
apart ments, in cities and rural areas. Over half of us are not
living on reservations today.
"We are in our own country, but we are treated as strangers.
The U.S. government actively hates us.
"In the books and media, we either do not exist, or else it
is a racist stereotypical misrepresentation."
Munro discussed the U.S. military's racist naming of
weaponry, such as "Apache" helicopters and "Tomahawk" missiles.
She connected the struggle to free Native political prisoner
Leonard Peltier with theft of uranium reserves on Indian lands,
and said of the incident for which Peltier was extradited and
convicted: "The FBI shoot-out at Pine Ridge was a diversionary
tactic. One-eighth of the uranium-rich land at Pine Ridge was
signed over that same day."
Discussion after the talks covered the potential for
building unity between the Indigenous and Black communities,
controversies of the tribal enrollment process, and the
connection between the struggle against racist sports team
mascots and the stereotypical depictions of Native people in
the 2004 Grammy Awards performance by Outkast. Many in the
audience clearly explained that within the context of racist
society, it is necessary to constantly struggle against
divisions actively fomented by capitalism.
Videotapes of the event held at the International Action
Center will be made available. Order from PVN by telephone
(212) 633-6646 or from pvnnyc@peoplesvideo.org.
Reprinted from the April 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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