On Holiday Myths And State Violence
By Kelly Hayes for Lifted Voices - One of the common refrains that Indigenous people in the United States are confronted with when they speak to this country’s history of genocide and repression is the claim that the harms Natives have historically endured are confined to the past. We are told that we are no longer living out the reality or the legacy of losing 100 million of our people in much the same way that Black Americans are told that they are no longer suffering the aftereffects of slavery. The social demand that oppressed peoples behave as though they are no longer experiencing the consequences of colonialism, mass kidnappings, dehumanization and genocide would be absurd enough on its face, given that the violence inflicted upon Brown and Black bodies...