What does truth have to do with it?
“All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.”
Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the US (the day also known as Columbus Day). If you’re at all confused as to why the two names, I encourage you to read this very short article and this NPR piece. I’ve included a quote from Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, an Indigenous woman and the first to hold that prestigious title. More on her below in the resources section.
Stock photo of water protectors.
While a certain administration may not recognize true American history and even doubled down on recognizing deadly colonizers, I will always stand with the truth of history. It’s also yogic. Satya - truthfulness - isn’t just about speaking our own truth, it’s about listening to others’ truths. It’s learning from history - seeing where power and privilege are bending the story in one way and leaving out details like, say, “discovering” a land mass where many Indigenous peoples have lived for thousands of years. This is also a great time to remember (I say this as a Western, white yoga teacher) that yoga is a set of ancient tools (some as old as 5K years) that yoga comes from South Asia - the Indus Valley. It is an ancient set of practices that is in no way Western, tied to yoga “pants” or any major corporation. If you want to dive deeper into understanding this, I have shared Susanna Barkataki’s book below in resources; I took my 300 hour yoga teacher training with Susanna and it was nothing short of life-changing. (If you read other posts of mine on this blog, you’ve heard me reference my white anti-racist cohort in that training, which further reinforced the social justice piece that is yoga.)
A small but crucial part, to me, in understanding truly that unless you are Indigenous to Turtle Island you are on stolen land, is to understand who was on the land you live on, work on, visit, and play on. This website offers the names of the tribes, clans, and groups known to be on all parts of Turtle Island. You can look up any city or zip code and you’ll get back the names of those people. A common way that this is shared is “I’m on the land of the Choctaw and Chitimacha, colonized as New Orleans, LA,” for example.
Simply saying a land acknowledgement won’t rewrite history or give land back, but it is a step in saying that you understand that you’re on Indigenous land that was stolen and colonized. You’re living in truth. The next step could be to learn more about those contemporary groups. For example, those in the greater New Orleans area, The United Houma Nation opens up their lands to outsiders for certain events.
Resources related to this blog post (note: this is not exhaustive, but a sample:)):
Joy Harjo, 23rd Poet Laureate of the US
Susanna Barkataki’s book - Embrace Yoga’s Roots
Indigenous-led non-profits to follow, learn from, and support:
Indigenous writing/media - news outlets, books (fiction & nonfiction), television, movies
Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity - Joseph Lee
Tommy Orange - prolific Indigenous author from Oakland, CA
Robin Wall Kimmerer - prolific Indigenous author, botanist, and carrier of the Potowatami language
Decolonizing Wealth - by Lumbee author and philanthropy advisor, Edgar Villanueva
Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools - by Mary Annette Pember, journalist and citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe
Reservation Dogs - Hulu, Indigenous created and acted series
The American Buffalo - Ken Burns documentary about the history of the buffalo, Indigenous people, and the US government
Native America - a PBS two-season series covering the long history of Indigenous peoples in the Americas
Learn about and donate to Leonard Peltier, Indigenous political prisoner freed earlier this year after nearly 50 years behind bars!
