#promisedlanddoc

"It's not just up to members of Congress. It's up to average individuals saying 'I want my country to be better.'"

--Former Congressman Brian Baird

To this day, the federal government is still screwing over the native peoples in this country. We've seen it big headlines, like the seizure of Indian land for the Keystone Pipeline, but it also continues in so many insidious, un-talked of, un-publicized ways around the nation.

The Duwamish are the people of Chief Seattle--yes, that Seattle. The one we named the city after. They were supposed to receive a reservation just south of Seattle, but every white guy in King County voted in a "local petition" to cancel the reservation. The Duwamish tried to remain in the city (their original homeland), but settlers crept up to their longhouses in the dead of night, and burned them to the ground. When the agent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs came out, he decided who was and wasn't a tribe by counting reservations. 

Hundreds of years later, the Duwamish are still here, in Seattle. They're still fighting for the federal government to acknowledge their existence and sovereignty. Their burial grounds, archaeological sites, and artifacts get bulldozed, thrown out, and built over regularly. Because the federal government refuses to acknowledge them, the Duwamish aren't even allowed to keep their own artifacts, or fight to preserve the bones of their ancestors. 

The Chinook were the great traders of the Pacific Northwest, who had settled along the Columbia river, establishing great plankhouses and trade routes for thousands of years.  Lewis and Clark--when they arrived on their way to the Pacific--were unprepared, wee babes in their eyes and would've died if not for their compassion. 

Despite allowing and helping settlers thrive along the Columbia River, the paperwork promising rights to the Chinooks was shelved when it reached Congress. Legislators were told that the people were so infested with disease, that it wouldn't be long before the Chinook people were wiped out completely. Today, there are 3,000 members who refuse to leave their tribe, even though the federal government won't acknowledge them. 

Both of these tribes are fighting desperately for the right to exist. To possess even a small portion of the land that was once theirs in entirety, and promised to them. This documentary, Promised Land, isn't about money or tax dollars--it's about the continued violation of the rights of Native American people, hundreds of years later, and how goddamn much this needs to be fixed. 

"We never choose to give up our governments--we're not immigrants." 

--Rev. John Norwood, Nanticoke Lenni-Lanape Nation