Hundreds flocked to Harriet Island Regional Park in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Monday to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day. URL Media partner Sahan Journal reported the event included music, dancing, a fashion show, and informational booths. It was just one of many events held across the nation to mark the holiday.
“Indigenous Peoples’ Day provides an opportunity to admire and recognize the extraordinary contributions of Indigenous peoples to our society in fields ranging from public service to entrepreneurship and the arts,” said Mary L. Smith, American Bar Association (ABA) president, in a statement on behalf of the organization. Smith is a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation and is the first Native American person to lead the ABA.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day is also a day of action. This year, ahead of the holiday, 33 members of Congress sent a letter to the Biden Administration calling for the release of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist. Peltier was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to two life sentences for the murders of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler during a confrontation on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in 1975. URL Media partner Native News Online reports that Peltier, now 75 years old and in declining health, was convicted following “a trial marked by procedural errors and a lack of evidence.”
“The story of America’s Indigenous peoples is a story of their resilience and survival; of their persistent commitment to their right to self-governance; and of their determination to preserve cultures, identities, and ways of life,” President Joe Biden said in his proclamation commemorating the day.
That resilience is something Verna Volker, who founded Native Women Running, exemplifies in her daily life.
Last month, URL Media partner Sahan Journal profiled Volker, a 49-year-old mother of four. Volker launched the running initiative to honor the lost traditions of her Navajo Nation tribe while building community with other Native runners and helping to change the face of long-distance trail running, a predominantly white sport according to the Running Industry Diversity Coalition.
“It’s our medicine,” Volker told Sahan Journal. “Our women run in honor of loved ones, and I think that’s been really powerful.
But in celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we are also compelled to confront what Biden called a “shameful policy of our Nation to remove Indigenous peoples from their homelands; force them to assimilate; and ban them from speaking their own languages, passing down ancient traditions, and performing sacred ceremonies” in his remarks.
Just one day after issuing that proclamation—following unprecedented attacks on Israel by Hamas militants that were swiftly, unequivocally and rightfully condemned—Biden expressed his administration’s “unwavering” support for a government Amnesty International has said “create[s] and maintain[s] a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians.”
The incongruity in Biden’s statements highlights the inconsistency—and hypocrisy—in how the U.S. handles conflict both at home and abroad.
That inconsistency has bred resistance at home, including through artistic expression. One week from today, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) will unveil its new photography exhibit titled “In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now.” It’s a first-of-its-kind exhibition exclusively dedicated to featuring photography of Native people by Native photographers, reports Sahan Journal.
“We’ve been told that this exhibition should have happened a long time ago, and it’s unfortunate that it didn’t,” said photojournalist, producer and beadwork artist Jaida Grey Eagle (Oglala Lakota), who became fascinated with photography’s impact within Indigenous communities during her time in graduate school.
Grey Eagle, who brought the idea for the exhibit to Mia, adds: “I just want people to know that communities are more than capable of telling their own story—and they always have been.”
Indigenous Peoples’ Day resonates with a collective pursuit of justice for all oppressed groups. In 2018, as more cities and states in the U.S. began to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Al-Haq, an independent Palestinian human rights organization, tied the holiday to Palestinians’ human rights struggle, issuing a statement of solidarity with Indigenous people in the U.S.
“Centering the lived experiences of those impacted by oppression lays a foundation of collective knowledge upon which society can construct just legal, social and political solutions,” the group wrote. “By first publicly reclaiming critical facts about the injustices of the past, restorative practices such as the right of return, reparations for stolen land and labor, and deep institutional changes can usher in a future of justice and decolonization.”
In the five years since that letter was published, conditions in the Gaza Strip have continued to deteriorate, a reality Palestinian artist Malak Mattar writes about in this moving essay for URL Media partner Scalawag.
“To be a painter in Gaza is to expect death at any moment while knowing that your artworks will live forever,” she writes.
Mattar details the killing of her elderly neighbor during the 51-day Israeli military assault on Gaza in 2014 when she was just 13 years old.
“Since my neighbor’s murder in 2014, I have never stopped making art. It’s not only a way of self-expression, but a challenge to the media stereotypes that portray us as either terrorists or heroes, victims or perpetrators of violence. We are just humans wanting love, safety, and hope for the future.”
As tensions both abroad and in the U.S. continue to increase, Arab New Yorkers fear this most recent escalation will lead to a resurgence of post-9/11 Islamophobia and persecution.
“Muslims, Palestinians, Arabs, and vocal allies are being threatened, fired from jobs, bullied at school, and even attacked in the street,” attorney Omar Jamal told URL Media partner Documented. “Our community members have told us that the reckless and dangerous rhetoric of the politicians has created an Islamophobic environment we experienced post 9/11.”
This concern only further highlights the fact that the liberation of one is contingent upon the liberation of all oppressed people across the globe.
