by Brown Continent
June 3, 2013
The so-called Hispanics, Latinos, immigrants and illegal aliens, being focused upon today, are in fact Americans Native to America. They are Native Americans. They are all our cousins. We are all indigenous people, all Indian! We are all Americans and the original owners of this land. Why then are they called Hispanics and Latinos? Since the 1492 European invasion, the intentional mislabeling of Native Americans has long been a tactic to disenfranchise brown Native Americans, and steal and maintain control of indigenous Native American land and wealth. The mislabeling of Native Americans coupled with racist borders and racist laws for 516 years have been tools used to control us, our land and our wealth. For example the racist one-drop rule in Virginia and the South enabled the theft of millions of acres of land. With the stroke of a pen people who were Native American were converted into Negro or colored. And since black people were not indigenous to America, their Native American land was free for the taking by the Europeans. Later in the 1900’s, registrar for the state of Virginia Walter Pleckler, systemically changed birth certificates of Native American people from Indian to Negro. The terms Hispanic, Colored, Latino, Negro,Mulatto, Mestizo and Black are names given to Native Americans so that they could have no land claims. This paper and identity genocide was part of a much larger genocidal process that started in 1492 as I explain later.
In 1492 Europeans invaded the Americas. It was the beginning of the greatest holocaust and genocide in all of human history, with over 90% of our population being tortured and murdered, amounting to tens of millions of Native Americans massacred. Part of the genocide was cultural where our surviving ancestors were brainwashed, tortured and forced into forgetting our culture, languages, history and spirituality. We were forced to accept new identities that disconnected us from our land—black, white, colored, Hispanic, Negro, Latino, mulatto, Mestizos. We were give names from Europe and forced to forget our own names. The slaughter, genocide, holocaust, and brainwashing inflicted upon our peaceful ancestors were intentionally done for one reason—to steal the wealth and land of the peaceful peoples of the Americas. The Americas makeup 25% of the world’s wealth.
The intention of Europeans since 1492was the theft of an entire continent from the bottom tip of South America to the top of Alaska, as can be traced back to the Papal Bulls Inter Cetera of May 4, 1493 where the pope and theChristian church gave the American continent to European. The same sentiment is shown in the Manifest Destiny painting below by John Gast in 1872. Clearly this painting shows the intent of what was being done to Native Americans—they were being pushed off the earth and the Native stragglers missed by the Manifest Destiny bulldozer would have to assimilate into white culture.
The intent to exterminate Native people and culture was deeply planted into the European mindset. Even seemingly innocent children’s stories, such as The Wizard ofOz, were written with the intent of socializing white children that allIndians must be exterminated. Don’t take my word for this. Do a google search on the term, “Wizard of Oz, hating Indians, You will find many articles on the subject. Frank Baum, the author of Oz, also wrote newspaper editorials calling for the complete extermination of all Indians.
Borders, immoral laws, lies, brainwashing, murder, rape, assimilation and misinformation have always been apart of the theft process. For 500years borders have been placed on our land that we never agreed to. We were and are prevented from crossing these borders and were and are considered “illegal aliens” when we cross these borders in our own homeland.
This happened right here inVirginia. In 1492 my Siouan Native American ancestors’ territory covered the majority of what is today the state of Virginia and our population was approximately two million people. By 1701 we were relegated to a small 23,000 acre reservation called Fort Christanna in what is now called Brunswick County VA. In 200years two million of our people had been murdered and we had less than 600people remaining. Our “border” was theJames River and our hunting territory was the land south of the James. According to the treaty of 1714, I would have been an illegal alien in the area where Richmond Virginianow resides without papers. The following is from the Treaty of 1714.
“There shall be set out and assigned for the Settlement of the said nation of Indians who shall hereafter be deemed as incorporated into one Nation a Tract of Land upon the south side of James River above the inhabitants equal to six miles square whereon they may build a Fort and make improvements for the convenience and Subsistence of their families, And moreover all the unpatented lands between JamesRiver and Roanoke shall be assigned for the hunting grounds of the said Nation. . . none of the said Indians shall depart off the grounds allotted for their habitation nor repair to the Towns of the otherTributary Indians expert [sic] in company with some of the English residing at the said Fort neither shall any of the said Indians depart off their hunting grounds or come among the Inhabitants without the License of the Governor or the Captain of the Fort or in company of some Englishman belonging to thesaid Fort on pain of being punished at the Governor’s discretion…”
Our border was the James River and we were illegal aliens in our own homeland. Slowly the border has moved. With the Trail of Tears, and thousands of additional murdered Native Americans,United States President Andrew Jackson in 1830 shifted the border to theMississippi river. He proudly proclaimed there were no more Indians east of the Mississippi and we were illegal aliens if we crossed the Mississippi River. Next came more reservations and more borders. We were illegal aliens when we crossed the borders of these reservations. Eventually the border was moved as far as the Rio Grand River where it is today. With each of these borders we have been illegal aliens whenever we crossed them without white papers and there have always been laws stripping our indigenous rights away when we cross these racist borders. For 500 years, there have been lies, propaganda, racist laws and racist borders used to systematically disenfranchise brown, indigenous, Native Americans in America. Our only crime is being born brown and indigenous to the Americas and tobe the owners of 25% of the world’s wealth. And to attain this wealth the European invaders exterminated an estimated 70 million of our people. And yes it was extermination as documented in Bartolomé De Las Casas writings.
To give perspective regarding what is happening today with the immigration debate, we can look to see how things would look if the Louisiana Purchase had never happened. Please see the map below. The USA border would stop at the Mississippi River. Spanish speaking and identified Mexico would extend up and include Texas, California, Arizona and the other western states.
There would be a French identified and French speaking country west of the Mississippi River, just as we now have a Spanish identified and Spanish speaking county, Mexico, south of the Rio Grande. In addition, just as today the Spanish identified country, Mexico is named for the Mexica Indians, the French identified country, east of the Mississippi could be named something like Lakotia after the Lakota (Sioux) Indians. The people from the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River, such as the Lakota and Choctaw, would not be seen as Native Americans or Indian, because they don’t live in the United States. They would perhaps be Lakotians from Lakotia just as we have Mexicans from Mexico. Just as Spanish speaking Mexicans are not seen as Native American but as Hispanic, French speaking Lakotians would have special misleading ethnic titles, such as Frankish that keep people from remembering that they are Natives.
Just as with the fake Hispanic label, the sole purpose of the fake Frankish label would be to mislead people regarding their Indian identity. This way they can be effectively tagged with the false illegal immigrant status and our Native population artificially kept low? And even if the Latokians had long black hair, or Mohawk haircuts, high cheek bones and dark skin, white people would still see these Lakota Indians as some “alien” race such Frankish. We know this because this is what they do today with the Mexica Indians from below the Rio Grande River with the false Hispanic label. They are just “Hispanic”or “Frankish” and thus “immigrants” regardless of the overwhelming evidence that they are Native.
Just as Mexica Indians from Mexico are considered Spanish because they speak Spanish, Lakota Indians from Lokotia would not be considered Native but they would be considered French because they speak French. Just as today hardly anyone knows that Mexico and Mexican are names derived from the Mexica Indians of the area, hardly anyone then would know that the term Lakotia was derived from the Lakota Indians. Because the last thing one would think of when thinking of Lakotia would be Indians, just as the last thing one thinks of when thinking of Mexico is Indian. And this is in the face of overwhelming evidence staring us directly in the face.
The vast majority of Lakotians would have been shamed into forgetting that they are Indian and would be proud to be Frankish or Lakotians and thus immigrants in their own home land. They would proudly wave the Lakotian flag, and sing Lakotian music (from Europe) with no connection to their Indian ancestry. We know this because this is exactly what we see with the Spanish speaking Natives from Mexico.
There would be a wall being built on the Mississippi River. There would be ferocious attacks against these “illegal Lakotians immigrant aliens” by those like Glen Beck, Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reily regarding “those illegal aliens” coming into “our” land. The Lakotians would never be referred to as Indians because the attackers would then have no reasonable or defensible argument. The attackers would not be able to claim the moral high ground for trying to keep Indians out of their own homeland. It would be a silly argument.
If a Mississippi Choctaw Indian were to cross from the Mississippi River headed east from Lakotia, back into his homelands in Mississippi he would be considered an “alien” or “immigrant”, by the people from Europe who stole his land and forced him out and are now living in his home. A Mississippi Choctaw Indian would be an illegal immigrant in Mississippi and would be arrested and jailed if caught there.
We, the indigenous people of the North American continent never agreed to any borders on our land nor did we agree to laws preventing us from crossing any borders. We were here before the borders and thus we did not cross any borders, the borders crossed us, on our land—dividing families, tribes and nations. Therefore these borders and immoral laws are not binding on any indigenous person in America. Since we did not agree to any borders, no brown indigenous Native American on the North American continent is illegal.
What we have with theMexican border is an apartheid system with indigenous people separated, quarantined and controlled on a portion of our own homeland. Just as with South African apartheid we are brought in on temporary work passes and then sent back to our reservation when the work is done. Mexico is the world’s largest Native American reservation intended to control and disempower brown indigenous NativeAmericans, in our own homeland, on the American continent. And now a Berlin style wallis being built to keep the Indians on the reservation.
For 500 years there have been those who have been paid to spread lies, misinformation and propaganda to confuse people. What a con game when the aliens and immigrants have become the natives and the natives have becomethe illegal aliens and immigrants. .
Brown Continent, February 28,2008
This article is part of a course titled Curriculum of Indigenous Studies--A Path to Decolonization. https://www.facebook.com/notes/brown-continent/curriculum-of-indigenous-studies-a-path-to-decolonization/459950674086336. If you are truly interested in justice in the world, leaving a healthy Mother Earth, solving racism, ending poverty, Indigenous rights and more, then please take a look at this course.
Other related articles of the Curriculum of Indigenous Studies--A Path to Decolonization
If We Look Native Then We are Native
Embracing our Southern Brothers and Sisters
Mexicans are Indians - Will the Real Illegal Aliens Please Stand Up
One Native Defeats 30 White Racists on their Home Turf
The above article was written based upon a .. to the Va General Assembly in 2008. This was a period when 125 anti Indigenous bills were introduced into the VA general assembly in an effort to run Indigenous people out of the state of Virginia. This was before Arizona became the center of attention. In this article there is an over emphasis on American, America and Native American to get the white politicians attention and so there is no confusion as to who we are speaking of. I am speaking as an Indian Native to what is now Virginia for thousands of years.
