What Is the Indigenous Peoples Movement?
This week, social media lit up with a series of videos and images showing a group of high school teens bullying an Indian marching for indigenous rights in Washington, DC. need to know.
What is the Indigenous Peoples Movement?
Broadly speaking, the Indigenous Peoples movement refers to any Indigenous people (other than Native Americans) seeking legal, political, and cultural recognition in a given country where they feel underrepresented.
It is also the name of a massive initiative recently launched by indigenous peoples around the world to seek greater representation from their respective nations. This initiative is supported by larger organizations such as the Sierra Club (an environmental group).
What is the March of Indigenous Peoples?
According to the group, on January 18, Indigenous Peoples Movement supporters planned to hold a joint march in Washington, D.C., hoping to draw attention to issues of police brutality, corporate greed, and government power (among other things) affecting some indigenous peoples.
Lately, Native American communities have been heavily influenced by decisions made by the current presidential administration. These decisions include the construction of the Dakota pipeline, contamination of water supplies for the Standing Rock Sioux community in North Dakota, and ongoing government closures affecting Native American federal employees who rely on its funding.
At present, two Indian tribe also filed in the court on the administration Trump for approved construction of another pipeline, Keystone XL, which will pass through the ancestral lands and sacred Fort Belknap Indian community in Montana and Sioux rosebuds in South Dakota.
The Indigenous Peoples’ March was scheduled to take place on the same day as the March for Life, a pro-life organization.
What does the wall between the US and Mexico have to do with it?
In the context of videos showing theconfrontation , it is unclear how this relates to the wall, but the construction of the border will affect at least one Native American nation, whose land will be halved.
Since 2006, the nation of Tohono O’odham, a nation stretching from Arizona to Mexico, has been allowed to cross the border at three different points. The wall would actually stop their ability to go back and forth.
“It would be as if I walked into your home and felt that your home was unsafe, but I want to build a wall right in the middle of your home and allow me to divide your family,” said Verlon Jose, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Tohono O Nation Odham told NPR . “It is blocking our way of life, what we have been doing for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
How can I help?
If you would like to help, you can donate directly to the Indigenous Peoples Movement on their website .
A fellowship fund was also created through GoFundMe on behalf of Nathan Phillips, the Indian at the center of the discussion. All proceeds will go to the American Indian College Foundation, a charitable organization that supports scholarships for Native American seeking college degrees.