This month, November, observes Indigenous Peoples here in the USA - Native American Heritage Month. Such an observance is long past due. There's lots to mourn, and lots of celebrate. And lots of work still to do.
Recently I have been reading a lot about justice, restitution, Native (Indigenous) Americans and the dominant (white) culture here in the United States. I was already familiar with the pattern of land grab, treaties, deceit, violence and more land grabs that been the pattern of dealing with the indigenous peoples during the last centuries in the USA. I hadn't known as much about the situation in the last century, but more recently I have read about the boarding schools, the reorganization of tribes to steal yet more land from them, the violence toward natives, and the poverty on the reservations.
Much of the reading I've been doing has been simply educational - telling the stories of the injustices and current problems. But what I'm looking for is an answer (or answers) to this question:
What can I, as an ordinary American with little power and voice, do to help find justice for those who have been oppressed by my culture and perhaps by my own ancestors? How can I help to make up for the injustices of the past and those of the present?
Hopefully this is a question that many dominant (white) culture Americans would like to have an answer to, not just towards the Native peoples, but also towards other groups as well.
I've found few suggestions other than the suggestion to educate myself and speak up to politicians about issues of importance to indigenous peoples in this country. But surely there must be more.
As I was thinking about this over the last few weeks, I thought of the mill levy. If you own property in the US, chances are you know about mill levies. A mill levy is a tax of one dollar per $1000 of value usually paid to a government entity. It is usually paid on real estate such as a house or other property. Similar taxes are levied on vehicles. You pay a certain amount per $100 or $1000 of value of the property.
What if we non-Indigenous people paid a "tax" similar to a mill levy to various Indigenous groups that would help them in health care, food, food sufficiency, culture and language preservation and growth, and land acquisition?
For example, if I paid $1 per $10,000 value on my house, and my house were worth a half a million dollars, then I would pay $50. That's not much, but it's a beginning. And if that were multiplied by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people who were giving money to Native groups then think of the impact - financial, emotional, social, and spiritual.
Those giving the money would be acknowledging the faults of the dominant culture that they are part of (whether or not their own ancestors participated in the evils of the past), and the role that culture has played in harming other people. As they give the money to various organizations, they must also give up control of their money to the receiving group to use as they see fit. Of course, the recipients must be honest and use the donated funds ethically. But they should be in charge of their own resources to meet their own needs as they deem best.
So where would an interested person give? A lot would depend on your own interests and geography. A Christian might give to various Christian groups that work with Native Americans or to various Native American ministries. People interested in language and cultural preservation might give to some groups, and those interested in meeting physical needs might give to health, housing or food organizations. The link immediately below has a tremendous wealth of resources about various tribes and tribal governments and how to contact them. If you live in an area with a lot of Native American people, either on a reservation or off, then directly contacting them might be a first place to start. Or one might want to give one's "rent" to a nation that used to live where you do now.
https://nativemi.org/all-things-native/
Christian groups
Language preservation (a few samples I found. There are a lot of others as well.)
- NativeLanguages.org Scroll down a ways
- Lakhota language
- https://www.stjo.org/programs/lakota-language/
- Native American Language resources
- Endangered Language Fund
- Navajo Language Resources
- Northern Arapaho Immersion program
Cultural preservation
Health
Housing
Food
- Tanka Fund
- Indigenous Seeds
- Alliance of Native Seedkeepers
- Indigenous Seedkeepers Network
- Southwestindian.com
Under no circumstances do I think that paying a 1/10 of a mill levy is enough to make restitution for what has been lost and for the current conditions of many Native Americans. No, it's just a beginning. Hopefully others will see the vision and begin to do this and increase this amount so that real help can be given.
