#MuslimID Isn’t New, It’s Federal Policy
The other day I had a conversation with my daughter, who is nine years old. We were talking about history and why history is important. This is a serious subject for us as indigenous people because in our history lies part of ourselves, part of our narrative. Our history informs the way we view the most important aspects of our lives, most notably our families. It was during this conversation that my daughter turned to me, and with a serious and stern look on her face, said, “People need to know their history. They need to know where they come from and they need to know it so they don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.“ As a parent, my children never cease to amaze me.
There’s a conversation happening right now among conservatives – and more specifically, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump – in light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, France. Their current rhetoric goes something like this: Muslims are terrorists, Mexicans are illegal, and essentially, if you are brown, you are bad. In a November 19th interview with Hunter Walker, Trump suggested that Muslims should be documented and required to carry carry IDs that set them apart from the rest of Americans. And while this is disgusting, and while any American with a head on their shoulders reels over how horrific a concept this is, it dawns on me that my daughter is absolutely correct: we need to know our history.
The idea that "the other” must be documented because they are a perceived threat, that they are savages, are primitive, are different, or are simply inhuman in comparison with “us” is not new. Unfortunately, when it comes to conversations of social injustice, equal rights, minority lives matter, indigenous people are overlooked.
That fact is, American federal policy has long dictated that indigenous people must be documented. At its heart, this documentation specifically served to keep track of indigenous people in an effort to control them. It is worth remembering that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was, at its beginning, housed within the Department of War. Under a banner of Manifest Destiny and in the name of “progress,” it was widely understood that the greatest threat to that “progress” was the Indian. Resolving that problem, Indians were placed into prisoner of war camps, known to most as “reservations.” Indians were to be forced into submission, tamed, assimilated, and all accounted for.
Indigenous people are the only race within the United States that must possess a number to prove that they are who they say they are. In their contemporary form, these documents are meant to validate indigenous identity and tribal citizenship, making them distinct from those that would pose as Indian for financial or personal gain (a real issue that existed before the Rachael Dolezals of the world, but that’s a whole other issue). These numbers did not originate for this purpose but instead to corral and quantify indigenous people, and then along the way eliminating Indian them through what’s come to be known as paper genocide.
Today the issue is far more nuanced than this, especially as indigenous people have to navigate the imposition of American ideas about who is and isn’t Indian, but none of this changes the fact that the practice of ID numbers and databases for a minority group of people in the United States is not a new. As tribal enrollees, we’re assigned identification numbers that are as unique as your Social Security Number (and for us, in addition to Social Security numbers), as well as a database that exists at the federal level controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (now part of the Department of the Interior, as any other resource to be managed). Some of this may seem fantastic, and in the spirit of knowing your history, you should remember that indigenous people were not considered citizens and thus could not vote until the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. It would be another 32 years until, in 1956, Utah would allow indigenous people on or off reservation to vote. When you begin to look at the history of federal policies thrust upon indigenous people for the whole of contact, it begins to look stranger and stranger and begins to diminish the foundation of the values we claim to have as Americans.
I believe the suggestion to number Muslims and put them into a database is horrific. I find the lack of understanding Americans have of the history and political treatment of the Nation’s first peoples, indigenous people, to be upsetting. In truth, no one seems to care until they care.
As indigenous people continue to fight for equal rights and consideration within a country founded upon our own backs, we are often shouting on of our people only to find our cries landing on deaf ears. Indigenous people understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what the consequences of the absurd “Muslim ID” will be because we have been at the receiving end of policies of dehumanization and elimination for over 500 years. But perhaps that history is conspicuously absent from the nationalist narrative because it undermines the very values this country claims to stand upon: freedom and independence. Freedom of expression. Freedom of religion. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet what could undermine those values more than this country and its relations with its first peoples? Perhaps if people took a look at this history and a look at this nation’s first inhabitants, they might realize that the injustices faced by people today are part of America’s creation story, and that the words of my daughter may ring true. “People need to know their history. They need to know where they come from and they need to know it so they don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.“ Perhaps also, those on the receiving end of these repeated mistakes may stand with us in solidarity as we stand with them. I can attest to you that not only are indigenous people still here, but we love, understand, fight for you. Just as much as we fight for ourselves.
