Native Activism across Time and Space

These documents are related to two conferences held by the Mvskoke nation in the summers of 1990 and 1991. The primary interest of these documents is the scope of the guests and the topics on the agenda. 

This conference brought together people from every corner of Indian country. The panelist list includes people from all over North America from the Haudenosaunee in the Northeast to the Navajo Nation in the Southwest, as well as guests from Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, and Maryland. The panelist list included activists, chiefs, elders, radio hosts, authors, and faith keepers.

The topics on the agenda are still largely relevant to Indian country today.

Communication and the Media

Mainstream United States media has historically and continues to misrepresent and misconstrue the words, images, and histories of Native people. From the Declaration of Independence itself:

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

All the way to contemporary mascots, such as the recently re-named Washington team. 

Environmental Concerns

Historical environmental concerns for Native communities often had to do with overhunting disrupting the local ecosystem. Such as the overhunting of buffalo during the late 19th century with the explicit purpose of depriving the Great Plains region of a primary food source. Environmental concerns continue today in the form of pipelines like the Dakota Access Pipeline (protested by the #NoDAPL movement) and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (abandoned in 2021 after over 15 years of protests). The Indigenous Environmental Network, formed in 1990, cites hazardous waste and industrial runoffs as the primary issues faced when they were first formed.

Forced Removal

Forced removal has been an issue since the colonization of North America started. The United States government officially endorsed forced removal with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which legalized the atrocities like the Trail of Tears and the Trail of Death. Aside from mass-forced migration, in the late 19th and early 20th century, the creation of Indian Boarding Schools was another tactic of removal. Under the guise of compulsory education, government officials were able to take children from reservations away from their parents to boarding schools sometimes on the other side of the country. On the tails of the American Indian Movement/Red Power Movement, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978 -- this act gave tribes legal jurisdiction over the custody of their children (as opposed to the United States government) which significantly lessened the number of Native children removed from the reservation and put into boarding schools or into the care of non-Native families. Today there are still issues concerning diaspora from reservations due to a lack of economic opportunities, as well as issues surrounding stewardship of the original homelands that Indigenous people were removed from.

Grave and Sacred-Site Desecration

Similar to the Forced Removal issue, Grave and Sacred Site Desecration has been going on since the start of colonization. Many tribes East of the Mississippi are descendants of the Mound Builder civilization, and as such have historically had large mounds of earth used for ceremonial purposes throughout their homelands. As settlers moved further West, many of these mounds were destroyed by farmers. Surviving mounds can be found at preserved sites like the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio and the aptly named Moundville in Alabama.

Just 6 months after the mentioned conference took place, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed in November of 1990. As the name implies, the act requires federally affiliated/funded institutions to repatriate human remains and sacred artifacts to their living descendants. But the reality of the process is quite slow and bureaucratic, and older remains may have contested ownership claims between groups that have since split (via removal, war, or other means).

(for a discussion of Economic Development, Sovereignty, and Treaty Rights in Indian Country see the "Tradition vs. Economic Development" section)