Indigenous Peoples' Day

Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors Native American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures.

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Its no secret, my name is Hai-Na-Nu. which was given to me by and elder on the reservation i grew up on. the name is based on an old native american folktale character from the area - handed down through generations of rural storytelling.

i can’t say my upbringing was good, or bad based on growing up there - all i can say with absolute certainty was it was my personal experience to own and make something better out of it.

i never try to make excuses for myself for why i couldn’t do something or be something - i like a lot of people of color have experienced some kind of prejudice - i never let it define who i was or what i was going to do.

and to be honest i really can’t tell you a time when i remember it all that vividly, i never held on to it - if you didn’t like me? cool, i just didn’t deal with you. outta sight outta mind.

I will tell you all this though -

i grew up on a reservation and around other native people - for the most part all i know as a “book cover”. my mother is half filipino and half native american.

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i have a french last name…probably from the french and indian war.

the point being, i am just like all of you. we are all mixed up and fucked up, so its all good.

just because my “book cover” says this and looks like this - doesn’t make me any more / less human than all of you.

i love you all and support you all.

but…it was brought to my attention what our president did on oct 9th.

i can’t sit here in good conscience & accept someone opening supporting and glorifying a fn merchant slaver.

also i hate the term “indian” - i am not from india nor adopt a term given to a people by a slaver.

in honor of indigenous people day:

native american slavery co existed with african american slavery from the 16th all the way through the late 19th century.
because african slavery was legal (at that time), its victims were easy to spot in the historic records - they were taxes upon arrival at ports, appear on bills of sale, wills and other documents. because these slaves had to cross the atlantic ocean they were scrupulous, one could say obsessively counted along the way.
The final tally of 12.5 million enslaved africans…until recently we didn’t have a ballpark estimate of native people held in bondage since it was largely illegal, so this had to be done in dark corners or behind locked doors.
native slaves didn’t have to cross the ocean, there were no documentation or port records.

yet…if we were able to count the number of native slaves counted in the new world from the time of

Columbus

until the end of the 19th century…the figure would run somewhere between 2.5 & 5 million slaves.

at the height of the slave trade west africa had a population decline of 20%
but in relative terms of the new world the indigenous people of the new world experienced a more catastrophic decline in the 16th and 17th centuries - in the caribbean basin along the golf coast and across large regions of northern mexico and the american south west - native populations were reduced by
70 - 90%
(ref: the other slavery by Andrés Reséndez)
other fun facts:
native american removal act (for example moved to reservations): 1830
womans rights: 1848
african americans freed: 1863
african american citizenship: 1866
african american vote: 1870
womans vote: 1920
native american citizenship: 1924
native american vote (snyder act): 1924
- though it was state decided (arizona & new mexico were last 1948)
asian american citzenship / vote: 1940-1950s

to me its crazy when you look at the timeline - that the people who were here first were almost the last to be recognize as actual people to the country.

one question you should as yourself - if africans were freed in 1863 & native americans were not saw as actual people by law until 1924, what do you think was happening to them during that time?

i am not saying this in want of a different outcome (my daughters are half indonesian) or a change in history - i am telling you this so we don’t repeat this behavior - know it - remember it - we must learn from our failures as humans and be better for the lesson.

shit…if you check out that book (the other slavery) you will see why i don’t care for navajos…i have a half sister that is navajo.

navajos were huge slavers of other nomadic native tribes including my own “paiute"
they weren’t the only ones - the comanche also dabbled in the slave trade of other native people.

i know, i know forgive and forget. its hard sometimes.

happy indigenous people day.