I'm all for 3-day weekends. But honoring Christopher Columbus with a holiday in 2015 remains an abomination, a disgrace, and an embarrassment. An insult to indigenous peoples in particular, and to all of our humanity.
I am offering my “Write to Rebel” blog space today as a humble space of protest against this wretched American ritual.
First, I’m reposting this essay that I wrote back this summer, after some creative activists went and dumped a bucket of red paint on the big Columbus Statue here in Boston.
On Blood Tags and White Washing
Up here in Boston, just days ahead of July 4th, someone hit Christopher Columbus with a big bucket of blood. Or what looked like blood. Local media stations were all over the story. But no one on TV would say the word. Paint, said reporter after reporter, Paint. Not paint made to look like blood. Not blood-coloredpaint. Just paint. Someone had poured paint on the "historic" marble statue of Christopher Columbus. A senseless act of vandalism.
Read the rest here.
Second, it is my honor to be able to share with Red Wedge readers a couple of other items, in support of the Red Nation Indigenous Peoples' Day actions that will be taking place today in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Red Wedge contributor, Frances Madeson, whose inaugural RW essay, on the artwork of Leonard Peltier made quite a stir: http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/online-issue/sovereign-imagination-peltier?rq=Madeson returns to us with abrief report from the ground in Albuquerque. (Frances informs me that she’ll have a more full report on today’s actions for us soon!)
Ongoing De-Facto Genocide By The Numbers (by Frances Madeson)
Last spring The Red Nation, a trans-tribal coalition of Native American activists in Albuquerque, New Mexico, called attention to a very large and putrefying dead elephant in the state's political and moral living room. Since 2013, one hundred and eighty (180) Natives had perished from unnatural causes in one New Mexican town named Gallup (population 22,261 (2013). Paige Murphy lays it all out in Liberation Newspaper for the Party of Socialism and Liberation: http://www.liberationnews.org/gallup-nm-stop-racist-violence-against-natives-2/ .
Indigenous people are confronting the sharp increase of unnatural deaths since the change of management of a local detox center, Na Nihzhoozhi Center Inc. More than 180 people have died since then due to the negligence of services, which disproportionately target poor and homeless Natives. This can be seen as nothing other than a continuation of settler-colonial violence against Indigenous people.
More recently, The Red Nation has been skillfully agitating for a City Council Resolution to supplant the obsolescent Columbus Day with the more real Indigenous Peoples Day. They succeeded. On Oct. 7th, the Albuquerque City Council made it so in a six-three vote
Nick Estes, co-founder of The Red Nation, explained how Columbus' legacy lives on in present day America:
In the U.S., a settler colonial nation-state that actively attempts to erase Indigenous histories and presence, Native peoples are subject to the highest forms of persecution and state violence, from birth to death.
One Senate report found, “[Native] children experience post-traumatic stress disorder at the same rate as veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.” Another report found Native children are three times more likely to be held in juvenile detention and two times more likely to be transferred to adult prison. Seventy percent of the juvenile population committed to the Bureau of Prisons are Natives, with 31 percent of that population committed as adults. Eighty-five percent of those committed to these federal institutions come from Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota, states with high Native populations.
On any given day, one in 25 Native adults are currently imprisoned within the U.S. justice system, at rates four times higher than whites for Native men and six times higher for Native women. Law enforcement kills Native people at the highest rate of any group. Most contact with the U.S. justice system happens off-reservation in border towns.
While making up less than one percent of the U.S. population, four percent of the nation’s homeless population is Native. Two and one-half percent of unsheltered veterans are Native, and 4.8 percent of sheltered families are Native. Most of these people live in border towns.
In Albuquerque, Natives make up 13 percent of city’s chronic homeless population, while making up only 4.6 percent of the city’s total population. Native poor and homeless are frequent targets of police and community harassment and violence. Since 2010, Albuquerque law enforcement has shot 50 people, killing 28. In 2014, after a record low of homicides, the Albuquerque Police Department committed 20 percent of city homicides. New Mexico has one the highest rates of police violence, with much of it directed towards Native people.
With these grim realities in mind, the fact that Native peoples in Albuquerque have demanded and succeeded in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day shows the power of Native people in coalition with other oppressed groups. It is also a testament to the power of ongoing Native resistance to settler colonialism and the resiliency of Indigenous life.
Melanie Yazzie, co-founder of the Red Nation explained the full impact of the victory at a press conference held on Friday, October 9th:
"I’d like to start the press conference by making a few comments about this historic event and its significance for Native people in Albuquerque, NM, and the Southwest. In 1599, Don Juan de Onate, who is a celebrated and monumentalized figure in NM, ruthlessly murdered 800 Acoma men, women and children, and famously cut off the right foot of over 80 Acoma men. In 1864, my people, the Dine’, along with several hundred Mescalero Apaches, were deported from our homelands and force marched to a military concentration camp at Bosque Redondo. In 1979, the United Nuclear Corporation spilled over 1100 tons of radioactive waste and tailings into the Rio Puerco River basin, a watershed shared by Dine and Pueblo peoples. In 2014, two Dine men, Alison Gorman and Kee Thompson, also known as Cowboy and Rabbit, were brutally bludgeoned to death on Albuquerque’s Westside, and Patricia Platero, a Dine woman from Tohajilee, was found half buried in a vacant lot, also one ABQ’s Westside. In 2015, US Congress under the guidance of AZ Sen John McCain authorized the illegal sale of Oak Flat, a sacred site, to a multinational mining company against the will of the San Carlos Apache people. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency in August 2015 let loose over 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into the San Juan river basin, devastating hundreds of Dine farmers and causing widespread mourning for the violation of these waters we hold sacred.
What do all of these histories have in common? They arise from a 416 year history of consistent violence against Native people by agents of a colonial system that constantly seeks our erasure in order to maximize profits and power by forcibly procuring resources and permanent settlement in our homelands. But, these histories also have one other thing in common. They have all been met with brilliant, organized, and strong resistance by Dine, Pueblo and Apache peoples who would not tolerate dehumanization and consignment to disappearance. On Monday, October 12th, we, Native people of Albuquerque and NM, reclaim this day normally set aside to celebrate and monumentalize genocide, to instead celebrate this tradition of Native resistance and resilience. In a region where the violence of colonialism continues, unabated, through military, nuclear, mining, and urban development, all with little if any consideration—and often open contempt—for how these highly profitable economic cornerstones for ABQ and NM affect Native people and the lands and waters we hold sacred, our victory at the ABQ city council this past Wed, Oct 7, to have the second Monday of October recognized as IDP, is nothing short of extraordinary. This victory is the result of 416 years of Native resistance and resilience in this place, and it continues this legacy.
What is remarkable about The Red Nation is that instead of ending her comments there, Yazzie continued with a set of serious political demands. The Red Nation is not accepting the symbolic victory of a holiday name change and going off to fund raise on the back of that impressive victory. Rather, they are using the opportunity that the victory provides to pursue justice for their people.
Melani Yazzie continued:
On October 12th, we honor all of our relatives and ancestors who have gone before us to lay a path so that we may live and continue to fight against a system that seeks our elimination. And it marks the beginning of a resurgence in this historical moment of a strong, skilled, vocal, and highly organized Native political presence in ABQ. This is why, on Oct 12th, we are reclaiming ABQ for Indigenous people, marching, yes, to celebrate, but also to issue four resounding demands on behalf of the many Native Nations that call ABQ home:
1. - Stop racist bordertown violence against Natives, this includes police violence, neglect by the state, anti-Indian racism from non-Native citizens
2. -Evict corporate polluters from Native sacred sites, lands and waters, this includes uranium, coal, and copper mines
3. -Uphold and defend treaty law for all Natives, on reservation and off, which would include adequate healthcare, homes, and support for ABQ’s poor
4. -And the abolition of Columbus Day in state and the nation.
As we look forward to next Monday, TRN does not forget our relatives who are struggling elsewhere to pass similar city proclamations. On Tuesday of next week, Native activists will go before the OKC and Denver city councils to argue for a name change to IDP. We stand with those communities and encourage the press to pay attention to abolish Columbus Day movements like those in ABQ, OKC, and Denver cropping up all over the country. What you are seeing is the re-emergence and coming together of widespread, grassroots Native political organizing. This is only the beginning, and we are here to stay."
In a flourish of poetic stature, the epic kind, The Red Nation has invited Leonard Peltier, AIM activist wrongfully imprisoned for over forty (40) years in the U.S. federal prison system, to lead today's march as the Grand Marshal.
The march will commence at 5:00 pm at First Street and Central Avenue in downtown Albuquerque.
Finally, we present in this space this short prose poem statement from prolific author and San Diego State professor Harold Jaffe, in honor of Red Nation’s day of action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Jaffe
Red Nation
Jackie Fawn
Ethnocide is irreversible.
Survivors may / may not be able to gather the pieces.
Respond, re-gather.
Current ethnocides are confounded because of global warming, looming finitude.
Finitude is irreversible.
Native Americans prophesied that the US and global “community” would murder the planet for power-lust and profiteering.
Earth has suffered through 5 mass extinctions, the worst 220 million years ago when 96% of marine and 70% of terrestrial organisms disappeared.
Scientists believe planet earth is threatened with the 6th mass extinction and that it has already begun.
Radical change in the chemical composition of ocean water is the crucial factor in the gradual sliding to mass extinction.
The worst extinction crises in history were dependent on chemical changes in oceans.
Earth’s oceans are contaminated beyond reclaim.
Prophets attribute the sixth mass extinction to man and his institutions.
Mass extinction is irreversible.
At stake is not immortality but dignity, grace, acknowledgement and respect in the 11th hour for all creatures alive and among the vegetable dead.
Long sufferers and survivors, Native Americans have
understood this better than the rest of us.
Red Nation.
Support from the heart for our sisters and brothers.
Harold Jaffe
Harold Jaffe is the author of 24 books, including novels, fiction and “docufiction” collections, and essays, which have been translated widely. Death Cafe, Revolutionary Brain, Othello Blues, and Induced Coma are among his most recent volumes. Jaffe is editor-in-chief of the social activist, literary-cultural journal Fiction International.