words by Nikkita Oliver
photos by Sharon H Chang
Each year more and more cities are celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day and rightly so.
Columbus did not discover the Americas as many sovereign Native nations were already living here on Turtle Island (also known as the United States). His arrival was followed by diseases, which decimated Native communities, and left a painful history of colonialism and genocide. We should question why we would ever celebrate someone who left such devastation as his legacy!
That said, and more importantly, it is powerful truth telling to celebrate Indigenous Peoples and acknowledge the depth of culture which makes this place, especially cities like Seattle, the rich and vibrant places they have always been—before here was here.
It is not enough though. Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island have always been here and will always been here, but are grossly invisibilized. It is time to pay much more than lip service to Native peoples.
Seattle, named after Suquamish/Duwamish Chief Sealth, is built on Native land and routinely capitalizes from Native culture. Yet Native people face the highest rates of housing instability, displacement, unemployment, and health disparities.
As Colleen Echo-Hawk said beautifully at the City of Seattle Indigenous Peoples Celebration [paraphrase]: A city named after a Suquamish/Duwamish chief built on Native land is only truly just when it is built and functions in ways that honor Native peoples and ensures Native people have a real place in all facets and functions of the land and the City.
Below are images from the Indigenous People’s Day – Honoring Our Women celebration which took place at the Washington State Capitol on Tuesday.
Maybe we should call it Heritage Day and celebrate everyone’s roots. Rather than singling out any group regardless of who got here first. Our indignenous population did come here via a land bridge. We should celebrate togetherness of all groups. This is particularly true of S. E. Seattle. As soon as we select one group we put down other groups.
Scientists several years ago admitted the Bering Strait theory of such a “land bridge” was wrong. Before that admittance I heard a leader of the American Indian Movement, the late Bill Wahpepah, say “The Bering Strait is a BS.Theory.” We always knew it was a lie and to hear it stated many times by our people confirmed it.
This place where I live (Washington state) is only one small part of the Western Hemisphere of which I am a landlady and I am aware it is our time to express ourselves and the long-awaited time for others to listen.
Does it rally matter? Can’t we all just celebrate one Heritage Day. Rather than every national, ethnic, religious, racial, social or other group singling out a day that is theirs and then we start trying to deciding which group has more right than another to that day.
Thank you for your information. I did a little research.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-americans-lived-on-bering-land-bridge-for-thousands-of-years/
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/land-bridge/
http://www.history.com/news/native-americans-hailed-from-siberian-highlands-dna-reveals
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2172522/The-First-Americans-Humans-arrived-THREE-great-migrations-land-bridge-Siberia–DNA-differences-detected-today.html
http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/how-did-the-first-people-get-to-the-americas-today-this-issue-is-hotly-debated
The migration may have been across the land bridge maybe several different times, maybe across the ice from Europe or on boats from SE Asia or all three or maybe more. Does it really matter? It appears we all came out of Africa.
The Bering Strait migration is actually a hypothesis, not a theory.
Regardless of the ‘how’, it is irrefutable that the people of the First Nations arrived in the Americas via Asia. Homo sapiens did not just appear in the Americas. Early humans originated in east Africa, and it was from there that our ancestors spread across the rest of the globe.