#native tribes

Is available on Ao3 and Wattpad!!!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/77009796/chapters/206926096

So… the name Katniss comes from the Lenape language, an indigenous tribe of the North American woodlands

Europe didn't know about the Americas before Columbus (and the native americans didn't know about europe either) so, to them, he discovered that land. That first point of contact was a big deal, acknowleding that is perfectly fine, even if one could argue semantics.

The part that becomes objectively racist is when people, educational systems and even governments basically act as if the people who already lived there were an irrelevant, homogenous mass that were essentially hippies before hippies were a thing, not separate tribes with their own cultures and own dynamics with one another and with different europea nations, and thus "he "discovered" it" is a condescending way of saying the story of the continent only "begins" with Columbus.

Again, to use my own education as an exemple: as a brazilian, ever since I was first taught how to read and write, I had heard my teachers constantly repeating that Brazil's culture was a mix of influences from three larger groups: the portuguese, the native tribes and slaves brought from Africa (mainly Angola).

Guess which one of those groups had their influence in Brazil's culture explained to me in detail since I was little and which ones only were considered relevant in college and only because I was taking a history course? Pretty much all I knew about pre-colonial Brazil for the longest time was "It was called Pindorama, aka land of the palm trees."

Upper Sioux Agency state park in Minnesota, where bodies of those killed after US-Dakota war are buried, to be transferred

— Associated Press | Sunday 3 September, 2023

The Upper Sioux Agency State Park near Granite Falls, Minnesota. Photograph: Trisha Ahmed/AP

Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Now their descendants are getting the land back.

The state is taking the rare step of transferring the park with a fraught history back to a Dakota tribe, trying to make amends for events that led to a war and the largest mass hanging in US history.

“It’s a place of holocaust. Our people starved to death there,” said Kevin Jensvold, chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, a small tribe with about 550 members just outside the park.

The Upper Sioux Agency state park in south-western Minnesota spans a little more than 2 sq miles (about 5 sq km) and includes the ruins of a federal complex where officers withheld supplies from Dakota people, leading to starvation and deaths.

Decades of tension exploded into the US-Dakota war of 1862 between settler-colonists and a faction of Dakota people, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. After the US won the war, the government hanged more people than in any other execution in the nation. A memorial honors the 38 Dakota men killed in Mankato, 110 miles (177km) from the park.

Jensvold said he has spent 18 years asking the state to return the park to his tribe. He began when a tribal elder told him it was unjust Dakota people at the time needed to pay a state fee for each visit to the graves of their ancestors there.

Native American tribe in Maine buys back Island taken 160 years ago! The Passamaquoddy’s purchase of Pine Island for $355,000 is the latest in a series of successful ‘land back’ campaigns for indigenous people in the US. Pine Island. Photograph: Courtesy the writer, Alice Hutton. Friday 4 June, 2021

Lawmakers finally authorized the transfer this year when Democrats took control of the house, senate and governor’s office for the first time in nearly a decade, said State Senator Mary Kunesh, a Democrat and descendant of the Standing Rock Nation.

Tribes speaking out about injustices have helped more people understand how lands were taken and treaties were often not upheld, Kunesh said, adding that people seem more interested now in “doing the right thing and getting lands back to tribes”.

But the transfer also would mean fewer tourists and less money for the nearby town of Granite Falls, said Mayor Dave Smiglewski. He and other opponents say recreational land and historic sites should be publicly owned, not given to a few people, though lawmakers set aside funding for the state to buy land to replace losses in the transfer.

The park is dotted with hiking trails, campsites, picnic tables, fishing access, snowmobiling and horseback riding routes and tall grasses with wildflowers that dance in hot summer winds.

“People that want to make things right with history’s injustices are compelled often to support action like this without thinking about other ramifications,” Smiglewski said. “A number, if not a majority, of state parks have similar sacred meaning to Indigenous tribes. So where would it stop?”

In recent years, some tribes in the US, Canada and Australia have gotten their rights to ancestral lands restored with the growth of the Land Back movement, which seeks to return lands to Indigenous people.

‘It’s a powerful feeling’: the Indigenous American tribe helping to bring back buffalo 🦬! Matt Krupnick in Wolakota Buffalo Range, South Dakota. Sunday 20 February, 2022. The Wolakota Buffalo Range in South Dakota has swelled to 750 bison with a goal of reaching 1,200. Photograph: Matt Krupnick

A National Park has never been transferred from the US government to a tribal nation, but a handful are Co-managed with Tribes, including Grand Portage National Nonument in northern Minnesota, Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona and Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles of the National Park Service said.

This will be the first time Minnesota transfers a state park to a Native American community, said Ann Pierce, director of Minnesota State Parks and trails at the natural resources department.

Minnesota’s transfer, expected to take years to finish, is tucked into several large bills covering several issues. The bills allocate more than $6m to facilitate the transfer by 2033. The money can be used to buy land with recreational opportunities and pay for appraisals, road and bridge demolition and other engineering.

Chris Swedzinski and Gary Dahms, the Republican lawmakers representing the portion of the state encompassing the park, declined through their aides to comment about their stances on the transfer.

Today, I ask you to use this map tool to find the name(s) of the indigenous tribes that occupied the land you are on, that belonged to those natives prior to occupation and colonization.

And then I ask you to go one step further, and research to learn about those people, on this day The National Day of Mourning.

General Robert Lee Bullard is made a blood brother of the Arapahoe tribe, March 15, 1924. The ceremony was held on Governors Island.

Duwamish Tribe of Seattle sings for Palestinians in Gaza and protesters.