Erasure is the Point
A Call to Remember and Uplift Native and Indigenous Voices
I (unfortunately) feel completely validated and stand firm in my belief that, in America, Native and Indigenous Peoples bear the worst brunt of post-colonialism than any other culture or ethnicity.
The attempts at erasure are the most significant to me. When white men and women dehumanize other races and ethnicities by spreading lies and spewing hateful rhetoric and vitriol, American Indigenous are left out of the confrontation that should follow; which is almost worse — it's as if they are forgotten or non-existent; the erasure is the point.
When we, as a People or nation, talk about the plights of “our ancestors,” oftentimes those conversations revolve around African American slavery — which, of course, is crucial — but those conversations unfortunately fail to acknowledge the genocide of the People that inhabited this land long before.
I believe we have to go much further back than that — to the reason why slavery existed: European colonization. Native Americans were their first targets on this stolen land.
I like to refer to this as the “white man’s burden,” which I’ll explain through an excerpt from a paper I recently wrote in my Global Politics + International Relations class (Many thanks to my professor, Stuart Kaufman, for his wisdom and guidance):
While Europeans quarreled over superiority, their egocentric, chauvinistic views, as a collective, blatantly aired and impressed their beliefs — beliefs in racial and religious superiority — upon peoples and cultures that they saw as inferior — oftentimes, Indigenous, African, and Latin peoples were the unfortunate victims of European barbarianism, indoctrination, and slavery, as Europeans made successful attempts to force conformity when and where they saw fit.
I’m not sure why Native American history is not taught in schools. And it’s honestly not something I thought hard about until recently. When Delaware passed a law requiring all K-12 schools to teach and implement African American history within their curricula, I was thrilled!
But why isn’t Native and Indigenous American history taught as well? After all, this is their land, and yet, they barely get an honorable mention.
I can only imagine how different my lens of life in America would’ve been had we all been taught the true, thorough, in-depth history of Indigenous Peoples in school. I can only imagine how all of us might move through life differently had we learned from an early age the truth about what Europeans and white men had savagely done to them and continue to do today. Had the tall tales we all learned been reversed and true — the lie that emerged from “Columbus sailing the ocean blue” — we might all be in a better place.
But erasure is the point.
The current U.S. regime is doing everything it can to eliminate non-white people. Our systems and institutions are being destroyed as I write this. Our Department of Education is currently being dismantled before our very eyes — but we must continue to fight for truth and what is just and what is right. I can’t let go of that, and so, I’m demanding it from anyone who is willing to join in this fight.
Let’s demand more. Speak out more. Elevate Indigenous and Native Americans more. Their stories and tragedies are what formed the beginning of the “America” we know. And I believe we must all make a collective effort from this point forward to ensure that they are not buried, forgotten, or erased — but instead, demand that their stories and experiences be taught, recognized, received, and learned from.