Strategies

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Nez Perce Tribe reclaims 148 acres of ancestral land in Eastern Oregon

by Cassandra Profita | December 2020
The Nez Perce Tribe is reclaiming an ancestral village site in the Eastern Oregon town of Joseph more than a century after being pushed out the area. This month, the tribe purchased 148 acres of an area known as “the place of boulders,” or Am’sáaxpa. Chief Joseph held council on the ridge above, before a sweeping view of the Wallowa Mountains. Hundreds of tribal members would camp there at the peak of the fishing season and catch sockeye salmon along the Wallowa River. “There’s a lot of excitement buzzing around,” Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Chairman Shannon Wheeler said. “We feel fortunate to be at this juncture in time to be able to say that we are on our way home. We feel the landscape misses us, and we miss the landscape.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Environment] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Advocacy]

New Native American Memorial Offers Peace in the Heart of One of the City’s Few Wild Spaces

by Philip Kennicott | December 2020
The wetlands on the grounds of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian are one of the most serene and magical spots in all of Washington. It counters by example the larger argument of the Mall, which is all about symmetry, extended vistas and monumental scale. With trees and grass and a bit of water, this garden is a quiet but forceful rejoinder to the bombast and imperial ambition that surrounds it. With a little imagination, you might pretend that somehow the great brush of history missed this one small spot where the landscape looks just as it did in pre-Columbian times.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Art & Culture]

How Urban Planning and Policy Decisions Created the Current Racial Segregation and Injustice in America’s Cities

by Bart Orr, Veronica Olivotto, and Timon McPhearson | June 2020
From Ferguson to Minneapolis, protests over the killing of Black and brown people by police have ignited difficult conversations around race, forcing us to confront the reality that racism exists and perpetuates itself in ways we’ve neglected to fully appreciate. In northern cities generally thought of as progressive enclaves, there’s often a tendency to absolve ourselves and think of racism as primarily a rural problem, or one associated with the deep south and the legacy of Jim Crow. But, as the protests over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis show, racism is very much an urban problem, even in the bluest cities of the blue states. New York City, for example, is home to the most segregated school system in the country and some of the highest levels of economic inequality in the nation.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Social Justice] [Housing] [Economics] [Health Disparities] [Environment] [Implicit Bias] [History] [Silencing POC] [Racial Covenants] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Black Lives Matter] [White Blindness]

National Congress of American Indians Statement on U.S. Capitol Storming by Trump Supporters

by Native News Online Staff | January 2021
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) Administrative Board Officers met in response to the events surrounding the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and released the following statement: “This week, as hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to die on a daily basis and millions more suffer the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the President of the United States chose to incite his supporters to launch a violent and uncivilized attack on our democracy, which led to destruction of public property and unfortunately the death of several American citizens. The actions of those who breached the U.S. Capitol building put the lives and liberties of many in danger. These actions, incited by President Trump and his enablers, are rooted in systemic and acute racism and hate, and represent direct attacks on our democracy. As leaders of our own tribal nations, we understand the sacred duty undertaken by those chosen to serve their people to uphold the rule of law and the will of the people.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Indigenous] [Social Justice] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [Politics] [Health Disparities] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness]

The Lies We Tell Ourselves about Race

by Sam Sanders | January 2021
There is a lie some Americans tell themselves when America is on its worst behavior: “This isn’t America!” or “This isn’t who we are!” or “We’re better than this!” You heard versions of this lie again this past week after armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on urging from President Trump, attempting to undo the results of last November’s election. Even in the halls of Congress, after the broken glass was cleared and U.S. senators and representatives were allowed back into their chambers from undisclosed locations, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska came back to this refrain: “Our kids need to know that this isn’t what America is.” We are a country built on fabrication, nostalgia and euphemism. And every time America shows the worst of itself, all the contradictions collapse into the lie I’ve heard nonstop for the last several years: “This isn’t who we are.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Civil War] [White Blindness] [White Defensiveness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Fragility/Tears] [Economics] [Politics] [Cognitive Dissonance] [Myths]

On the Anniversary of His Death, Theodore W. Allen’s Analysis Still Resonates

by Jeffrey B. Perry |January 2021
“White supremacy” wrote Allen, is “both the keystone and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy.” “White identity had to be carefully taught.”Theodore W. “Ted” Allen (August 23, 1919-January 19, 2005) was an anti-white supremacist, working class intellectual and activist. He developed his pioneering class struggle-based analysis of “white skin privilege” beginning in the mid-1960s; authored the seminal two-volume “The Invention of the White Race” in the 1990s; and consistently maintained that the struggle against white supremacy was central to efforts at radical social change in the United States. Born on August 23, 1919, in Indianapolis, Indiana, he grew up in Paintsville, Kentucky and Huntington, West Virginia (where he graduated from high school), and then went into the mines and became a United Mine Workers Local President. After hurting his back in the mines he moved to New York City and lived his last fifty-plus years in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn where he worked various jobs including as a postal worker at the Bulk Mail Center in Jersey City, NJ and as a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Social Justice] [History] [Slavery] [Economics] [Civil War] [Systemic Racism] [Politics]

Teaching Indigenous Star Stories; Educators like Wilfred Buck Know that Astronomy Did Not, in Fact, Start with Aristotle and End with Neil DeGrasse Tyson

by Kelly Boutsalis | November 2020
When some Cree people look at the sky during summer months, they see Ochekatchakosuk, a group of stars in the shape of a fisher, a weasel-like animal related to the wolverine. According to Cree teaching, a long time ago (likely during the Ice Age), there was no summer in the northern hemisphere. The animals of the region wanted to find summer and bring it back, and the fisher, Ochek, was selected for the task. After he succeeded, he escaped into the sky, and the Creator stamped his shape into the stars. In spring and summer evenings, Ochek is located high in the sky, inviting celebrations of warmer weather; in autumn and winter, he appears closer to the horizon—a reminder to be grateful of the passing seasons.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Silencing POC] [Advocacy] [Role Model] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Denial]

From Most Hated to American Hero: The Whitewashing of Martin Luther King Jr.

by Michael Harriot | April 2018
This week, America will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the most famous and beloved civil rights leader in the nation’s history. Lost in the remembrance of the death of our nation’s most heralded warrior for social justice is the fact that—at the time of his death—King was a man in exile. Contrary to popular belief, when King died, he was not an icon of freedom and equality. In fact, most of the country disliked him. Sadly, on April 4, 1968, a bullet splattered bits of Martin Luther King Jr.’s brains and blood across the balcony of Memphis, Tenn.’s Lorraine Motel. Then, and only then, was white America ready to make him a hero.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Myths] [History] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Collective Action] [Role Model] [Social Justice] [Assumptions] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism]

Richmond Police Seize Guns from Group of Black Men at Gun Rights Rally While White ‘Boogaloo Boys’ Admit They Faced No Issues

by Niara Savage | January 2021
Richmond police seized at least two firearms from a group of Black men present at a gun rights rally in Virginia on Monday, Jan. 18, while white gun rights activists were not confronted by authorities. During the annual “Lobby Day” demonstration in Richmond, Black protesters expressed frustration about law enforcement’s disparate treatment of Black and white activists. … Just an hour before the group of Black men was stopped, the white leader of the Boogaloo Boys shared via megaphone that his group of anti-government, far-right extremists was violating gun and ammunition laws. The group of all white men called themselves the “Last Sons of Liberty.” Leader Mike Dunn, 20, shared with reporters and police alike that his group was openly carrying semiautomatic rifles “in pure defiance” of local laws, and “rocking mags (ammunition magazines) with double the legal limit.” Dunn told Reuters that the group did not face any issues. “We are here openly defying these laws, these unconstitutional city ordinances,” he said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [-ing While Black] [Implicit Bias] [Justice System]

Black Professor at Loyola University Maryland Creates a Place for Positive Conversations about Race

by John-John Williams IV | December 2020
A series of deadly events culminated with Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead helping create a place at Loyola University Maryland where she wants positive conversations about race to exist and flourish. … Whitehead wants to bring students, teachers, community members and academics into the institute to train, discuss and devise solutions to combat racism. That means offering a curriculum and diversity equity and inclusion training for K-12 teachers through the institute’s Center for Teaching and Learning, which will be offered starting summer 2022. Junior fellowships will be offered to college students around the country so they can participate in discussions and research focused on race through the institute’s Center for Research and Culture as soon as this spring.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Advocacy] [Systemic Racism] [Teachers] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Role Model] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Anti-Racism] [History] [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]