Millions of Americans gathered around their dinner tables to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends last week. Though most no longer observe the holiday for its origins as a get-together of the Native Americans and Pilgrims, there are many Native Americans who cannot forget the scars colonization left on their culture and way of life.
The specter of colonialism still hangs over indigenous communities around the globe. You would hope that our country and others, with the legacy of colonization that resulted in the oppression and destruction of indigenous peoples and their way of life, would try to right the wrongs of our ancestors hundreds of years ago. Yet we continue to fail the indigenous peoples by denying their most basic requests for autonomy and respect.
It is clear from recent events that the ideology of colonialism still pervades many people’s thinking, and it is time we address that fact and make reparations in any way we can.
Despite decimating the populations and destroying much of the way of life of Native Americans, the United States has failed to reconcile with or improve the treatment of Native Americans to this day. The Standing Rock protests in 2016 are one of the most recent acts to challenge the disrespect of the Native American people and their territory. The clash that ensued between protestors and the army showed that we have not progressed whatsoever from our dark past.
More recently, the Medford Public Library in Massachusetts attempted to auction off sacred Native American artifacts. It was only halted after a petition was circulated where Native American leaders demanded the auction be stopped.
Still, this auction highlights a greater issue with how many people treat Native Americans — they feel entitled to what is not theirs, what were, in all likelihood, stolen artifacts, and they fail to consider the feelings of Native Americans by failing to consult tribal leaders on the property rights of the artifacts.
It is disgraceful that in the hundreds of years since the founding of this country, some people’s views have not progressed compared to the colonizers.
Other former colonies around the world still deal with similar disrespect and mistreatment from their former colonizers. Like many museums, the British Museum in England continues to house stolen artifacts from colonial times, such as Hoa Hakananai’a, a “moai” statue from Easter Island.
Last week, Tarita Alarcon Rapu, the governor of Easter Island, visited the museum and pled with its curators to give the statue back to the people of Easter Island — its rightful owners for whom the statue has deep spiritual and cultural meaning.
Another incident relating to colonialist issues is the death of John Allen Chau, an American missionary who travelled illegally to North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean. He had the explicit goal of converting the Sentinelese people to Christianity. The Sentinelese are protected by the Indian government, and their island is completely isolated from the outside world.
The most inconceivable aspect of this event is that in 2018 — over 400 years since the European settlers invaded America, devastated the native population and colonized the land — a Christian American man still believes he has the right to invade a native community and upend their way of life.
After all of the lessons that have been learned from the decimation of indigenous populations and cultures, a man still believed good would come from the infliction of his religion upon the native people.
It is disgraceful that our nation and others have not learned, from the hundreds of years of suffering native peoples endured at the hands of European colonizers, to have basic respect and regard for these communities.
It is now or never that people will finally acknowledge the evils that were committed during these shameful eras of human history and acknowledge it in a genuinely meaningful and tangible way. At the very least, this means returning stolen artifacts as a show of respect to those communities.
In the United States in particular, this means paying reparations to the relatives of Native Americans whose lives were destroyed by the colonization of this country, whether that be in the form of government benefits, returning stolen lands, artifacts and artwork, or recognizing the sovereignty of Native American territory.
The Native American Rights Fund and the National Congress of American Indians are just two of the many Native American organizations working to hold the U.S. government accountable for the destruction it caused their people and culture, and these goals can be achieved by joining or donating to the cause.
We must ensure that the voices of indigenous communities are heard and that we respect their cultures and ways of life, once and for all.
