First Nations, White Privilege, & the Red Struggle
I get upset easy. Many people know that, some people say I try to be controversial. I don’t. I really don’t. Honest to God, I wished I could just not give a damn. I wished sometimes my life was a routine of waking up, drinking lattes, going to a 9 to 5, coming home and knowing I have a 401k, life, health, dental, vision and a subscription to The Evening Post. I don’t have that. Any of it. Nor do I have the comfort of knowing that the world is ok. Hunky dory and such.
I see the wrongs of the world. I don’t search them out, but I see them. You see, the person who serves you a meal, should be able to afford a meal. The person who flips your burger should be able to have a roof over their head. And corporations who gross the most amount of money, like McDonalds, should not flip out because they have to provide some sort of health insurance plan to even their part time workers. It shouldn’t be that way, EVER! Corporations should not be able to take advantage of their workers because they don’t want to take a chance they might get sick and have to pay for it.
I see how colonization has ruined the world, beautiful cultures and countries poofed out of existence in the name of Manifest Destiny, greed, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the quest to rule the world.
To have it all.
So what I am trying to explain here is while one race of people were crawling the globe like cockroaches and proclaiming discovery of lands that had already been occupied by brown people, nations of Indigenous, Aboriginal people who already had their customs, governments, histories, stories, spirituality, for thousands upon thousands of years. Yet the very same people have to fight every day to prove their history. To prove to the world, that their history didn’t start with white people.
That is the power of white privilege, you never have to prove anything.
See white privilege goes deeper than not getting a ticket for no insurance, expired tabs, no drivers license, or going 75 in a 55. White privilege is more than a cop laughing and joking with you instead of treating you as if you just robbed a bank or robbed an old lady’s purse. White privilege is about NOT having to prove your history. White privilege is about shorter prison sentences. White privilege is about not having to fight for your rights, basic rights such as religion, voting, etc. White privilege is about never having to be called illegal alien while others know for a fact their people occupied the very same land without borders for thousands of years.
The way people look at me when I say my people didn’t cross the Bering Strait is almost funny. They are shocked beyond belief although the concept of so many cultures crossing a thin piece of icy land and occupying it all the way to the tip of South America is silly to me. Why do I have to prove to people that my people were always here? And why can’t I believe that? What the hell is up with that?
In our very own land that we have ALWAYS occupied we have to fight, struggle, and reclaim our own very basic needs and rights. We are the only ethnic group who has a set of laws in place to keep our children with our own people because our children are targeted for foster care and years before boarding schools. Acts of genocide placing our children with other groups of people. We had to fight for the right to practice our own spirituality which we got in 1978. We had to buy our own stolen sacred land back.
We fight for clean drinking water, or even to have water. We are fighting for the right to honor our very own dead murdered in bloody snow by the government. We even have to fight against our own people who lost their will to continue our ways. We have to defend who we are among the Bureau of Indian Affairs who for many years put programs in place to change us and change our children to make them more white.
We have to defend the right to not be made fun of in costume form. The right to not have our women raped legally. The right for our women to not be forced into sterilization. The right to climb, struggle, and crawl our way out of the oppression and poverty the colonized good ol’ red, white, and blue that our very own people fight to defend in wartime, put us in.
And then people think we cry around too much? They think that we get everything for free. Somehow, they think that putting us on land that is poor for farming and will always be held in trust by the United States Government is a privilege we should be thanking them for. Food that made diabetes an epidemic? Exactly what do we get for free that they would be happy with?
See its hard for us, for me to understand why people get so mad thinking we live for free in the same land that they occupy. Land that was ours. To me this is why the belief of the “Bering Strait Theory” is essential to white people. Because they want to think that we weren’t always here, that makes the theft of the United States easier to forget.
So while this country keeps carrying the necessity of white privilege, our red struggle will make us stronger. Our way of life will help us when the economy is wasted and the planet is in ruins from the disaster of the quest for oil and other resources greed sucks out of our Grandmother Earth.
While others fight to keep their white privilege, our Red Struggle will continue to fight to save Grandmother Earth and to live very basic and happy.
The Red Struggle is not a bad thing by far, it insures us of our warrior ways, we will survive in the land we come from. The power of the Red Struggle will go further than the power of white privilege. Further than I will live to see.
“I will follow the white man’s trail. I will make him my friend, but I will not bend my back to his burdens. I will be cunning as a coyote. I will ask him to help me understand his ways, then I will prepare the way for my children, and their children. The Great Spirit has shown me – a day will come when they will outrun the white man in his own shoes.” – Tasunke Ota, Oglala Lakota
“There are gonna be two roads. A muddy road, and a easy road. The rich kid takes the easy road and the poor kid takes the muddy road. The kid on the muddy road builds up strength to become a warrior.” – Robert Looks Twice, Oglala Lakota
To learn more, watch the video below:
