On this edition of Your Call, Native American historians discuss this political moment and Trump's second term as he quickly moves to whitewash US history.
A few weeks ago, Trump said he would no longer recognize Indigenous People’s Day and would instead "bring Columbus Day back from the ashes."
He also brought a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, back to the Oval Office. According to Native News Online: among Native people, Jackson is commonly referred to as the "removal president" and the "Indian killer" because he signed the Indian Removal Act that stole millions of acres of lands from tribes that led to the forced removal from tribal ancestral lands to west of the Mississippi. The harsh removal campaign is commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears, which resulted in thousands of deaths of Native Americans.
The Trump administration temporarily deleted federal websites featuring information about the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II, and cut $1.5 million in grants to Indian boarding school research projects.
This kind of historical erasure has long served as a warning sign of authoritarian leadership, which seeks to rewrite the past to control the future. What insights can Native scholars give us about what's to come?
Guests:
K. Tsianina Lomawaima, scholar of Indigenous studies, previous faculty at the University of Washington, University of Arizona, and Arizona State University, and author of They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School, Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law, and To Remain an Indian: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education
Rosalyn LaPier, award-winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, ethnobotanist, Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and author of Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet and City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934
