I'm sure that you
all agree that the First Lady is a government official?
John Paul Brammer is a Contributing
Editor at BNR. His writing on LGBT and Latino issues has appeared in The
Advocate and Huffington Post. Find him on twitter.
What strikes me most
about this statement is the ownership.
Michelle Obama
Stands Up for Native Americans, Says Natives Were Stripped of Their Culture
“We” passed a law.
“We” made their
culture illegal.
It’s a showing of
respect. No one thinks the Obama's are responsible for creating the conditions
under which Native Americans must live and survive.
Michelle Obama, a
black woman, obviously shares in the disenfranchisement and historical trauma
that are hallmarks of the minority experience in the United States.
But in taking
ownership – in that powerful moment of
“we,”
she acknowledges a
truth that Native Americans have been trying to get people to understand for
years:
that the United
States government committed acts of ethnic and cultural cleansing against the
tribes.
Native Americans are
still facing enormous uphill battles in this nation, battles over land,
hunting rights, representation,
and autonomy.
It’s nice to know
they have powerful allies in the Obama's.
The
First Lady recognizes and affirms that many of the challenges Native American
communities face have roots in systemic discrimination.
“You see, we need to be very clear about where the challenges in
this community first started. Folks in Indian Country didn’t just wake up one
day with addiction problems. Poverty and violence didn’t just randomly happen
to this community. These issues are the result of a long history of systematic
discrimination and abuse.”
“Let me offer just a few examples from our past, starting with
how, back in 1830, we passed a law removing Native Americans from their homes
and forcibly re-locating them to barren lands out west. The Trail of Tears was
part of this process. Then we began separating children from their families and
sending them to boarding schools designed to strip them of all traces of their
culture, language and history. And then our government started issuing what
were known as ‘Civilization Regulations’ – regulations that outlawed Indian
religions, ceremonies and practices – so we literally made their culture
illegal.”
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