Indigenous

A to Z Challenge

Indigenous. I picked that for last year.  I typed and deleted several words for this topic.  I feel like there has been enough written about, by and for or been talked about, by and for indigenous people that anything more would be repetitious.  

Being that there are people who haven’t paid attention to or looked further than their own social circle doesn’t mean that I have to find words to say what has already been said or written.  Those who go outside of their social circle shouldn’t be surprised to find that there are different outlooks, views and attitudes about life that are different from theirs whether they are “People of Color” or not.  

Getting a bit tired of the debate concerning whether words, slogans or other such things as appropriating cultural dress only belong to one race, ethnicity or nation.  Partly this is due to the fact that I’ve been involved with the Constitutional Convention within the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and find this debate within the organization.  Yep. That’s right.  

The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe isn’t actually a Tribe as such.  It started as an organization back in 1934, ratified in 1936 when Bands took too long to take advantage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934.  There was a deadline and the tribe’s various Bands were too busy trying to get consensus that the Constitution was written by a couple non-Indian lawyers and sent to the Secretary of the Interior who approved it for Referendum.  

90 years and we’re still debating this.  Indigenous.  Yeah and we have people out there actively promoting this division amongst the tribes.  Indigenous.