Of note: part of the reason Mashpee Wampanoags & Mashantucket Pequots are overly discriminated against both legally & socially, including social discrimination from other indigenous communities at times, down to local derogatory nicknames, is their populations largely consist of Black NDNs.
The history of European colonizations in the Americas & the ways settlers constructed concepts of race has consistently established Blackness as a corruption & delegitimization of any other ethnic or cultural heritage, and while in some ways that forced the Black community (both during & after slavery) to expand & gel in a way it otherwise may not have done, the impact on Black Natives has consistently been to legally have indigeneity erased & “status” as an Indian “revoked.”
To this day some of the most visible examples of this history are the people & groups fighting for recognition of Freedmen descended from the Five Civilized Tribes in the American southeast, but this pattern of genocidal erasure of Blackness & of Black people & of Black culture & history from what and who is “allowed” to be Indigenous extends beyond “just” Indian Country to quite literally the entire hemisphere, coast to coast to coast.
Mashpee Wampanoags & Mashantucket Pequots have been fighting this same fight for sovereignty with up-and-down success for at least as long as I’ve been alive, though they’ve only made big-big news under the current administration’s undermining of tribal rights— and Native + First Nations communities have come together on the subject I think more out of both the precedent that potentially sets for everyone else & the heightened visibility of social media in the 2010s-2020+ than any especial dedication to them as Nations… because this was not the vibe towards them at all in the ‘80s-'90s, even from other Native crowds.
So when you talk about supporting people, don’t ONLY think of it in terms of spiting Trump, or of who met which pilgrims or settlers of conquistadors when & where— and don’t forget the people you say need tbat support once the Trump moment passes, or lose all this beautiful intertribal sentiment once you see photos of folks not looking like woodcarvings of Squanto. Don’t forget who was quiet before but loud now & pay attention to who gets quiet again once legal changes do or don’t start getting underway. Pay attention to if & when “supporters” of these tribes don’t rock with BLM, or go back to calling them nasty names at other pow-wows, because Black NDNs & their welfare only “counts” if what they’re going through COULD happen to other Indians, too.
This is structural & deliberate, and if folks refuse to acknowledge why, they pave the way for it to happen again and for “acceptable targets” to continue to be swept under the rug, even racially “undesirable” “acceptable targets” within already marginalized groups, whether designated as such by outsider/oppressor genocide efforts, by intracommunity bigotry, or, shamefully, willingly designated as such by both.
2087
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