GO BACK TO THE RESERVATION

WRITER ASKS,

"WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN PEOPLE SAY 'GO BACK TO THE RESERVATION? ' "

Feeling Rebloggy

EMU Alumni Photo 

Kids go to college to learn. 

Some will learn to become teachers.

Some will learn to become programmers.

Some will learn to become researchers.

Some will learn to become racists [before or after they even leave home for college]

Eastern Michigan University used to have an Indian mascot—the Eastern Michigan Hurons. It was changed to the Eagles in 1991. [But that hasn't stopped white students and others who are bidding for acceptance into whiteness from putting on red-face and dressing up as Hurons even now.]

[It's news to some people that all of North America is indigenous people's land and that treaties are still being broken. There's a congressional bill on the table right now, a bid to take Native American land in 2016]

Never mind that most Natives actually don’t live on reservations, ask yourself: Why did Native people lose their homeland when they used to live free on the whole continent? What happened? Which side broke treaty after treaty (and is still breaking treaties now – just the other day the state of Michigan transferred [9,000] acres of treaty-protected land to a mining company)?

Which side took away children and sent them to boarding schools where they weren’t allowed to speak their languages, got beaten if they did, and got abused in countless other ways? Which side didn’t have religious freedom until 1979? Which side had generations of children stolen and “adopted” to families outside of their community?

~GoodMenProject.com

Enjoy your Thanksgiving. But have a real, age appropriate conversation about Thanksgiving with the kiddos -- especially if your child's school is smoothing things over. Children led to denial become adults that bask in denial -- denial that's deep enough that they can't even try to understand what's happening at the DAPL Protests.


Read More: 

https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/what-does-it-mean-to-say-to-an-indian-go-back-to-the-reservation-jfkl/