Indianz.Com > News > Jennifer Denetdale: Four centuries of state sanctioned terror against Indigenous peoples
Four centuries of state sanctioned terror against Indigenous peoples.
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
I spent the weekend in sorrow and listening for updates on Jacob Johns (Hopi and Akimel O’odham), who was shot in the chest by Ryan Martinez in Espanola, New Mexico, on Thursday, September 28, 2023. Martinez was wearing a red hat emblazoned with MAGA.
Moments before Martinez pulled the gun out of his waistband, he was seen exchanging remarks with Hispanos who supported the reinstallation of the Juan de Oñate statue, which had been removed from the public eye amid public protests demanding its removal. One Hispano was heard to say “that it’s been this way for four hundred years.” Four hundred years of state sanctioned terror against Indigenous peoples.
For Indigenous people, Oñate represents the terror of the Spaniards who systematically violated our ancestors in the seventeenth century. He is the symbol of systemic violence, anti-Indianism, that Indigenous people endure into the present.
Johns was among the Indigenous people who had gathered to protest the planned reinstallation of the statue. Upon learning that Rio Arriba County commissioners decided to postpone the event because they recognized the possibilities of violence, organizers of the protest turned the gathering into a celebration.
Dr. Denetdale (Diné) serves as chair of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission.
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