Members of the Navajo Nation rallied in April 2016 after Loreal Tsingine was shot and killed by a police officer in Winslow, Arizona. Photo by Navajo Nation OPVP
The Native Lives Matter movement should be about more than protesting police violence, argues radio show host Harlan McKosato, citing mistreatment of Native people in border towns and urban areas:
Statistically speaking, based on numbers and percentages, more Natives are killed by the police than any other group of people in this country. That’s a fact. The national media never mentions that more Natives are killed by police, per capita, than any other racial or ethnic group. The media’s excuse about their lack of attention is that American Indians and Alaska Natives make up only about two percent of the U.S. population, so therefore reporting about our people who have been killed by the cops doesn’t matter. Well, guess what? Native lives do matter. What I want to think about is how we, as Native Americans, should attempt to capitalize on the attention being paid to how minorities in this country are unfairly treated on far too many occasions by law enforcement. It is time our tribal leaders start to give a voice to the unfair treatment and sentencing our tribal people have to suffer through, especially here in the cities of America and border towns. . . . We should lobby President Obama to at least bring up the facts about Native deaths, emphatically, in one of his press conferences and along the campaign trail. We should lobby the mainstream media to pay attention to what’s happening amongst our Indian people. We should get our tribal leaders to take a good, hard look at the disparities within the country’s justice systems and start a coalition of Native Lives Matter – but the focus doesn’t have to just be on police racism and prejudice.Read More from Harlan McKosato:
Harlan McKosato: More Natives Killed By Police Than Any Other Group (Indian Country Today 8/18) Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice Report:
Who Are Police Killing? (August 2014)
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