Page 46 - April 2016

flagstaff Moves forward to recognize indigenous people’s day
now the hard part Begins
sTORY BY kyle boggs
on March 9, Flagstaff City Council voted unanimously to move forward with recognizing In- digenous Peoples Day on the second Monday in October. The move is the product of many months of meaningful collaboration between city officials, specifically Councilwoman Eva Putzova, and local indigenous activists and community members.
Councilwoman Coral Evans likened the recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day to the removal of the Confederate Flag. “nikki Haley the governor of south Carolina said on June 22 2015, ‘this is a moment in which we can say that that flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state.’ I think the same can and should be said of Columbus Day,” said Ms. evans.
But Flagstaff is not taking down any symbol, but resurrecting a new one. Unlike other munici- palities, the City does not currently recognize Columbus Day, and therefore honoring Indigenous Peoples Day would not “replace” the national holiday. Instead, it would set a new tone of dignity and respect for native people in and near Flagstaff.
Rather than simply recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day, as many cities have done across the country — a move that would be incredibly easy, but achieve arguably little — Councilwoman Put- zova has introduced a three-step process designed to improve the lives of native people.
The first step requires City staff to examine and report on how well the city is implementing the memorandum of understanding between the City of Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission. The second step would include multiple public town hall meetings regarding the relationship between the City, its native citizens, and nearby tribes regarding issues that dis- proportionately affect native people, such as political inclusion and homelessness, among others. Given that native Americans make up just fewer than 12% of the population, yet make up approxi- mately 45% of all arrests, the process will necessarily account for racial profiling as well.
In other words, now that the process has been approved, the real work begins. Indeed there is much racism that persists across the west and has been ignited by this issue.
A week prior to the Flagstaff meeting, Utah defeated a similar proposal to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day at the state level. Utah state senator Todd Weiler was the most out- spoken in his rejection of the proposal, proving that those who have inherited the legacy of white settler colonialism still have a long way to go when it comes to reckoning with history, and building communities that foster racial justice, respect, and dignity.
Mr. weiler’s comments revealed an egregious abuse of logic and historical fact, if not an outright racist distain for native people. “The native population gave the early explorers syphilis, which they brought back to europe,” he said. while the claim that syphilis came from native people has only been hypothesized and never proven, we do know that europeans introduced scores of illnesses from bubonic and pneumonic plague, small pox, cholera, diphtheria, measles, to scarlet fever, ty- phus, tuberculosis, and whooping cough among others.
Mr. weiler continued, “Blaming Columbus for the extermination of the native population is as fair as blaming the native population for people who die using tobacco and cocaine, which the natives introduced to the europeans” he said. either Mr. weiler is forgetting that it was white people who added 599 toxic chemicals to tobacco to produce modern cigarettes, and it was white people who refined the cocoa leaf to produce, manufacture, and then eventually criminalize cocaine — or he is reaching for ways, logical or otherwise, to disparage native people.
Mr. weiler ended his statement frustrated, saying, “I’m not going to sit here and listen to history being rewritten,” and said the Us has a “great history” and can “honor Columbus and our indigenous people without disparaging either side.” But of course the version of American history that he — and many of us in this country — grew up with sounds “great” to him, because in those stories people who look just like him are the heroes; they’re the explorers. They’re part of a history told by those who have — for decades — reinforced the false narrative that Columbus discovered this continent, that the lands now occupied by the Us were given willingly and legally, and the estimated 112 mil- lion native people who lived here in 1492 were reduced to 6 million in less than 200 years because of few diseases. such dilutions ignore the fact of genocide and the daily, lived experience of racism.
nevertheless, europeans brought much more than a handful of afflictions to this continent. They also brought guns and swords, which they wielded to displace and/or exterminate whole villages, marching them across the continent, often to their deaths. Many of those diseases and illnesses did not just exist, but were wielded deliberately at times as early examples of chemical warfare. early white settlers were literally paid to kill native people — proving each kill with a native scalp, or “red- skin.” Rape was used as a tactic to devastate and destabilize communities, and they brought death to the buffalo in order to starve native people. They brought religiously influenced notions of educa- tion, which accompanied phrases like, “kill the Indian, save the man.” All of this has and continues to produce historical trauma that impacts native people to this day, as well as relationships between
46 • APRIL 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
PHOTO BY oMar victor
native and non-native peoples.
Fortunately, there were no comments like those of Mr. weiler at the Flagstaff City Council meeting,
but similar sentiments have been expressed elsewhere. when the Arizona Daily Sun posted its article announcing the decision to move forward with recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day, the usual rac- ism came out of the woodwork, underscoring the importance of a process that accounts for racism.
“so I guess white people don’t have rights anymore,” says “Libh8ter.”“The goal is to eliminate another white man from the calendar,” writes “Komondor.” “A pathetic attempt to erase American history,” says “Matthew Quigley.”
Professor Robin DiAngelo of Westfield State University has observed this knee jerk reaction to race and racism among white folks so often that she came up with a name for it: “white Fragility.” she defines it as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, trig- gering a range of defensive moves.” white people who are defensive over Indigenous Peoples Day believe they are losing something, which actually reveals how fragile, how deeply insecure they are. while “Matthew Quigley” claims that those offended by Columbus are a “bunch of cry babies” he is the one terrified of having his history challenged.
settler colonialism is about seeing and understanding the contemporary world differently, and forces those of us of european ancestry to reckon with the simple and complex ways we perform and sustain colonialism today, everyday, and in seemingly innocent ways.
More than diseases, europeans also brought and enforced their values, morals, and ethics, their own ideas of what it means to be civilized; they brought hierarchical social systems based on race, gender, and sexuality — ideas of what it means to be a man, a woman; they brought and enforced their ideas of hegemony, of normalcy, of superiority. They brought a particular view of the natural world, of property, of ownership, of how to grow food and raise livestock; they brought their own economic systems, educational systems, and political systems.
In this way, every day is Columbus Day in this country, in the same way that every month is “white history month.”The national shift toward Indigenous Peoples Day is therefore related to Black Lives Matter and other movements across the country that are mobilized by dismantling white suprema- cy, heteropatriarchy, and exploitive capitalist systems that negatively and disproportionally impact communities of color.
Therefore, to honor Indigenous Peoples Day honestly also means to confront those systems of privilege and oppression that are so often taken for granted as simply, “the way things are.” Indig- enous Peoples Day in Flagstaff is about challenging the way we see, interact with, and organize the world at the local level.
“Flagstaff is not a ‘border town,’” said Diné activist Klee Benally. “It is occupied stolen land where the struggle for Indigenous lives and sacred lands continues today. There are profound reasons why 13 Indigenous nations hold the San Francisco Peaks holy and why this young settlement maintains such strong anti-indigenous politics. This area was only recently violently colonized in 1876 with the city being incorporated in 1928 and up until the 1960s, businesses had signs reading ‘no Indians or
dogs allowed,’” he said.
As a settler-society, Flagstaff has to contend with its role in producing and sustaining anti-Indig-
enous racism. Mr. Benally mentioned several examples, including the “cultural genocide that occurs when 180 million gallons of treated sewage is sprayed on the holy Peaks each year. every time a toilet is flushed in Flagstaff, the city sells that wastewater to snowbowl ski area for snowmaking.” He also mentioned homelessness, “extreme racial profiling, and the obscenely high rate of native people arrested each year.” Regionally, there is also the legacy of uranium mining, coal mining, poi- soned water, collapsed aquifers, and forced relocation.
For Mr. Benally, “Indigenous Peoples Day is not just a challenge to the celebration of the murderer Columbus, but the ideals set forth that have propelled the anti-Indigenous violence that is colonial- ism.” For the City of Flagstaff to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day is a good first start, but it was also the easiest part. Indigenous Peoples Day is about taking responsibility and mending tarnished relationships. For white settlers who are honest with their histories, there is much dignity in not just recognizing the existence of privilege and oppression — as simply recognizing Indigenous People’s Day would do for the City — but to find creative ways to challenge and ultimately dismantle those systems. The real work, individually and collectively, has yet to begin.
| kyle Boggs salutes this vast great nativity. kyle@thenoise.us Opine