In the face of an avalanche of brain-numbing and spiritual-lobotomizing wrong “truths” and miseducated citizens, it is still incumbent upon the misinformed, ill-informed and uninformed to attempt to learn.
Deep learning deploys a set of lenses that takes the complexities of contradictions and not-so-self-evident truths and focus into some sense of why “they” are where “they” are economically, culturally and spiritually.
The US election is over (as of Nov. 5 midnight?), but the dangerous clown show of misanthropy and hegemony marches on. I am writing this for National American Indian Heritage Month (Nov.), because Native Peoples in this part of the world are actually way beyond the rhetoric and knee-jerk responses of the bad history books of the children of the colonizers.
My Native brothers and sisters everywhere, but specifically in New Mexico, West Texas and Northern Arizona, have a deeper understanding of their own history and that of the current indigenous people undergoing eradication, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
“Dehumanization is the first step in genocidal incitement. However, counter-annihilation is also a key feature of settler colonialism. It is the belief and practice that colonial society must annihilate Native people; otherwise, the colonizers, in turn, will be annihilated in a zero-sum calculus. It is a pre-emptive ‘self-defense’ against any real or imagined anti-colonial attack. It makes invasion look like ‘self-defense.’ It is why the chorus of Western media outlets repeat the mantra: ‘Israel has the right to defend itself.’ But the colonized are never granted the authority of self-defense or the right not to be annihilated.” — Nick Estes
Again, ‘open those eyes,’ is what I insist with students and others I intersect with in Lincoln County. Those words above are from someone most Lincoln County Leader readers have never heard of: Nick Estes, an enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and the co-host of The Red Nation Podcast.
We can jump through superficial hoops with this 34th year of National American Indian Heritage Month, a 1990 congressional resolution signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.
The irony isn’t lost on many of us who have parsed our history, or the Bush Family’s dark legacy.
George H.W. Bush’s father, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
Journalists 20 years ago discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave laborers at Auschwitz.
Moreover, the cry by Estes and others in the Native American rights community announce their own declaration of liberation: “Until Decolonization, Liberation, and Landback.”
This November’s not limited to those here on Turtle Island to find a space for deep reflection and education. Others around the world who are indigenous are collectively traumatized by the current genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Many of the lessons people are learning are not new to me; for many this moment has been a realization that their governments are not just corrupt, but also complicit in the evils of the world, that their media is biased and that the people around them will turn their backs on a genocide being live-streamed on their social media. As an Aboriginal person living in so-called Australia, these truths have been a reality for me and my people for decades and nor am I shocked to learn of the ignorance of so many others,” states Dominic Guerrera, a Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna poet, community organizer, artist and curator.
Closer to my Central Oregon Coast home, we have groups fighting for cultural preservation and land acknowledgement. View the Future is a Yachats nonprofit collaborating with our two confederated tribes from the central Oregon Coast who are the descendants of the first people: The Confederated Tribe of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribe of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians.
Land Acknowledgment for tribes is more than a ceremonial point in cultural fluency. Words and declarations are the soul and spirit of Native people. You can read the two land acknowledgments at (https://viewthefuture.org/)
Find something to “hook into” this month (and every month), to acknowledge our own temporary “holding” of land here in Lincoln County or wherever you live. Forget about the elections.
Be deep in understanding why this month can be important for individual and societal change. Don’t parrot the bad history taught or just live life in an echo chamber of your choosing with “monkey do as monkey sees” superficial engagement with the issues.
Find Native writers on alternative sources like Red Nation.
Listen to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, academic and musician and member of Alderville First Nation.
“Although our ancestors lived through the genocide of Indigenous peoples in North America, this past year we have witnessed genocide in real-time, with technologically advanced warfare, destruction and obliteration on a spectacular scale. We’ve watched daily video footage and photos of unimaginable violence targeting families and children. We’ve read social media posts, news reports and poetry coming from Palestinians inside Gaza. And we’ve watched the very states that have dispossessed us of our homelands, supply the weapons and unwavering political support to Israel to do the same to the Palestinian people.”
Be Native Aware.
The post Hold onto Your Ethical and Intellectual Integrity with All Your Might first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.
Paul Haeder | Radio Free (2024-11-06T18:58:27+00:00) Hold onto Your Ethical and Intellectual Integrity with All Your Might. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/06/hold-onto-your-ethical-and-intellectual-integrity-with-all-your-might/
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