Native people are accustomed to simply getting the scraps of any “civil rights/human rights/equal rights” discussion. I’m not positive exactly why that is. For some reason our stories do not resonate with the mainstream public like the Black, Hispanics and LGBTQ narratives.

This lack of interest toward the Native narrative and struggle has, at times, created a Jan Brady/middle-child syndrome in which we feel completely overlooked and just plain invisible—a sadly understandable state of affairs. Indeed, our experience as invisible people causes us to fall victim to the fallacy that the civil rights/human rights/equal rights struggles are a zero-sum game and that our group’s advancement comes at the expense of another group.

“Hold on—don’t talk about Trayvon Martin getting killed by a cop. Don’t you know that there were six young Natives killed that same month by cops for simply being Native.”

“What about us?” A fair thought.