Indigenous Rights Activists Respond to White Supremacists

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http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/this-is-our-land-indigenous-rights-activists-respond-to-white-supremacist-rhetoric-20170824


“This Is Our Land”: Indigenous Rights Activists Respond to White Supremacist Rhetoric

At the Trump rally Tuesday, indigenous and Latino rights advocates stood together to protest racial inequality in Arizona’s justice system. For these groups, facing militarized police is nothing new.

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Half a city block away, a peaceful gathering had erupted in rapid but short-lived chaos after, police say, someone lodged a burning projectile at an officer, and in response, police fired back. The city’s police chief said pepper balls, tear gas, and other nonlethal chemicals were used. The drama disrupted what had otherwise been an hours-long nonviolent demonstration held by many protesting President Donald J. Trump. He chose Phoenix to host a campaign-style rally, his first event since the deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For the indigenous people who attended the rally, this police response was a familiar narrative.

“The historical trauma is still happening today. We’re still suffering but in different ways,” said Anthony Thosh Collins, a citizen of the Onk Akimel O’odham with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. His tribe’s land base is surrounded by the nearby sprawling suburbs of Scottsdale, Mesa, and Tempe. But for Collins and dozens of other indigenous rights activists protesting Tuesday night, their message in response to recent white supremacist rhetoric was simple: “This is our land.”

“I would hope in the future the mainstream media [start] recognizing us as the original inhabitants of the land and that we too are still suffering today,” Collins said.

The voices of indigenous people—and Latinos—have largely been muted in the wake of violence at Charlottesville and now in the aftermath of Trump’s Phoenix rally. Tuesday’s spurt of sudden clashes between police and demonstrators—and to a lesser extent, Trump’s bashing of the media in his speech—dominated the news cycle. The reaction to America’s tension combined with Trump’s shock politics has meant an unsteady focus paid to broader-based issues impacting communities of color.

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