Delphine Red Shirt. Photo by Rich Luhr / Flickr
Native Americans: Let’s not forget that they were here first
By Delphine Red Shirt
Native Sun News Columnist
nsweekly.com I am Native American or American Indian or Indigenous in the United States of America by birth. I wake up every morning on land that was stolen from Indigenous peoples. All my life I have heard people argue that Indigenous people’s land being taken wasn’t so bad (Oklahoma land rush included) because American Indian/Native American lands were bought for pennies or often taken without payment. Those who say that raise tired myths about a benevolent government, especially the politicians today who look past us. They refuse to look at the poverty that plagues American Indian/Native Americans today. When we consider the most recent round of political speeches we as American Indians/Native Americans need to be acknowledged historically. That the White House, a symbol of all that the U.S. wants to project out to the Free World was built on land taken from Indigenous peoples. In the words of one of the first English colonists who came in the year 1607, on April 20, George Percy wrote: “”[W]ee descried the Land of Virginia: …faire meddowes and goodly tall Trees, with such Fresh-waters running through the woods as I was almost ravished at the first Sight thereof.” He describes “the Bay of Chesupioc” where the colonists “got good store of Mussels and oysters, which lay upon the ground as thicke as stones … We passed through excellent ground full of Flowers of divers kinds and colours … Going a little farther, we came into a little plot full of fine and beautiful strawberries, foure times bigger and better than our in England." At the time, the Indigenous peoples wounded two of Percy’s group, as what are described as the Tidewater tribes, the leader of them, Powhatan, watched the first settlers with distrust. Powhatan’s nation had already been in contact with other colonists.
Find the rest of the story on the all-new Native Sun News website: Native Americans: Let’s not forget that they were here first (Delphine Red Shirt can be reached at redshirtphd@gmail.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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