My thought for the month of June is immigration. The United States claims that 99 percent of its people are immigrants from another country. One percent of the people in America are Native Americas.
To this day, Native Americans are known as Indians and are now even called “Western Hemisphere Indians (RED).” In other words, the 99 percentile of Americans are immigrants and want to claim that the 1 percent who is Native American is from another country like India. Is this really another way to forget about the Native Americans, the real Americans?
The word Indian came from Christopher Columbus and his mistake in 1492 in thinking American was India. When he made that mistake and believed he had landed in India, a mistake made by a European, it resulted in labeling Native Americans as “Indian”.
Here is a little brainteaser, what is the longest racial injustice in America? Can you figure it out yet? Let me give you a hint. It is over 520 years old. Now have you figured it out yet? It starts with “I” and ends in “N”, got it now!?
I wonder when our chiefs go up to Washington and ask for support what they might be asking? Perhaps they should be asking more important questions like, “Will Native Americans ever get more than just money? Will we ever get our land back?”
Or, do they just ask us to show our culture and put on dances? This is a time for all of our Tribe to come together to stop this injustice, to demand and take off this label, and demand we become first class citizens, and 520 years of racial injustice be corrected.
Tsali Shaheen
Murphy
