Friends and Relatives,
In the federal occupation of MSP, Americans – regardless of race, citizenship, power or privilege – are finally seeing what U.S. foreign and domestic policy has been all along.
We are at a pivotal point in our democracy. Not because politicians are creating laws and policies that enrich and empower those manipulating the levers of government. Not because the powerful are extending the power and privilege at the expense of those without power and privilege. Not even because the government is disregarding the highest law in the land – the United States Constitution – in the name of “law and order.” All of this has happened before. But, until now, it has happened, largely, to Indigenous and communities of color for the benefit of White Americans.
As one NativeNewsOnline article declares in the wake of Renee Good’s murder, “For Native people, nothing about this scene is new. This is our history — more than 500 years of it.” The writer continues: “From Sand Creek to Wounded Knee, from forced removals to boarding schools, federal authority has long wrapped violence in the language of ‘order,’ ‘law’ and ‘public safety.’ After the Wounded Knee Massacre, where hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children were slaughtered, the federal government awarded some of the soldiers Medals of Honor. That tells you everything you need to know about how this federal system — and the current administration operating it — defines heroism.”
It also tells us something about the foundational principles this country’s institutions were founded upon and still reinforce: the bedrock belief that some of us are the “chosen” beneficiaries of American Exceptionalism and the rest of us are just fuel for its furnace. Some of us are destined to “inherit the land” and all its riches, and the rest of us are impediments to be removed. Friends, this bedrock principle of our American democracy is the Doctrine of Discovery, a system of laws and policies that justify the removal of certain people, seize their land, and resources for the power, profit, and privilege of other people.
Why else when federal agents broke down the door of a Minneapolis man’s home without a judicial warrant and arrested him, would they take “trophy” pictures of him in his holding cell at the Whipple Federal Building? Such dehumanizing photography was common in the so-called “Indian Wars,” all the way up to present day Afganistan.
Why else would questions about the rising death rate of ICE detainees be construed by the government as “trying to twist data to smear ICE law enforcement,” while the most recent death, a Minneapolis man, is being dismissed as a “presumed suicide,” pending “official investigation.”
Of course, Renee Good’s death did not even warrant investigation, as she was labeled a “domestic terrorist” within minutes of her killing, while the agent who killed her will not be investigated. Instead, federal officials decided the investigation should center on Good’s wife, which led to the resignation of six U.S. Attorneys who refused the Administration’s pressure tactics.
Friends, when will we recognize that our liberation is bound up together? As long as our political systems can freely perpetuate oppression of the least powerful for the benefit of the most powerful, there can be no justice for any of us. And without justice, there can be no peace.
Join us in the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, as we organize in MSP and across the country to dismantle these systems of oppression. Support our organizers on the ground in MSP, here (with Minneapolis noted on your contribution). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or our blog and join us in our weekly prayer vigil.
You are helping us build a world that doesn’t yet exist. And, our futures all depend on it.
