“We ignore the history of past experience and past strength in solidarity movements,” Joy SpearChief-Morris, a Black member of the Kainai Blood Tribe in Alberta Canada said. “There is the Red Power movement and the civil rights movement that went hand-in-hand with each other in the United States and that both groups supported each other.”
Native American youth started the The Red Power movement in the 1960s to demand self-determination for Native Americans in the United States following a seven year span from 1953 to 1964, where the US government terminated recognition of more than 100 tribes and bands as sovereign dependent nations with the House Concurrent Resolution 108.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as a national day of recognition of the exploits of colonization, had several key moments. Gaining significant traction in 1977, the UN Conference of International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas proposed replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Domestically, Native American activists in 1992, the Bay Area Indian Alliance and Indigenous delegates worldwide protested the “Quincentennial Jubilee” celebration of Columbus Day, marking 500 years since Christopher Columbus went to the Americas. The protest marked national attention and more recognition for replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which increased each subsequent year.
The initiative convinced the Berkeley, California city council to declare October 12 as a “Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People” and 1992 as the “Year of Indigenous People” and pushed to incorporate Indigenous history in schools, libraries, and museum programs.
In 1992, the group convinced the city council of Berkeley, California, to declare October 12 as a “Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People” and 1992 as the “Year of Indigenous People”. The city implemented related programs in schools, libraries, and museums. The city symbolically renamed Columbus Day as “Indigenous Peoples Day” beginning in 1992 to protest the historical conquest of North America by Europeans and to call attention to the losses suffered by the Native American peoples and their cultures through diseases, warfare, massacres, and forced assimilation.
The initiative drove home the point that a vast amount of Native American peoples and their cultures were either lost or fought bitterly to preserve against foreign diseases, warfare, massacres, and finally, forced assimilation.
In the colonial era {YEARS}, the two groups shared a struggle against brutal colonization, slavery to an extent and later assimilation as a legally subjugated class.
During the Trail of Tears, many enslaved Black people joined the Native Americans when the US government forced them out of their lands in the 1830s.
In Florida, the Seminole and escaping enslaved Africans formed alliances; the ‘Black Seminoles’ were critical to Native resistance against US forces.
Native Americans exchanged culturally with the South Black community with staples like beans, corn, and squash combined with African cooking traditions to form many dishes now considered soul food.
Some Black historical figures with Native American ancestry include Frederick Douglas, Jimi Hendrix and W E B Du Bois.
The post Indigenous People’s Day: Highlighting the intersections between the Native American and Black American struggle appeared first on St. Louis American.
