Thread by @AzieDee

Native American history is largely unknown in this country. Like deeply deeply misunderstood.

White people don’t know Native history.

Black people also don’t know Native history because they learned it from white people.

Please understand that.

My sist & i have been helping an elder Wampanoag woman build her website. She is a master Chef trying to secure funds to open a living history site that would teach traditional, sustainable agriculture and foodways.

I have to start by explaining what the hell a Wampanoag is.

Like literally, the Wompanoag were the first to meet the Pilgrims. They are the reason they survived.

Every Thanksgiving Americans eat Wompanoag foods - roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin, acorn squash, Indian pudding.

You know nothing about them. Nothing.

Writing content for her site and potential donors and I have to explain what a Wampanoag is. FROM SCRATCH. I have to write an essay to explain Wampanoag people & history & what the hell traditional Native food is, BEFORE I can even get to the woman, her restaurant and her vision.

If it was a soul food restaurant and cultural center I wouldn’t have to do that. A place where you could learn Italian American culture and cuisine? French? No problem.

But Native? Fucking forget it. Foreigners in our own fucking land.

It’s perpetual erasure.

ERASURE.

People are suffering. They are left behind. They lack resources and opportunity because they are invisible.

I am black and I am Native.

It’s hard as hell but I will fight both battles and I refuse to pull punches.

What Bishop Talbot Swan said was absolutely irresponsible. And he refuses to listen and be educated.

When I see a black person, w all our visibility and our collective power, who doesn’t want to get educated about another color’s struggle I’m like, damn. What are we left with?

And Natives have a limited understanding of black history. To say nothing of Africa. And a racist view of current black people and culture as filtered through white education and the media.

Lord.

It’s just a mess.

I want to add something that I’ve recently learned from my own family history. So the historically black college Hampton University in VA was founded in 1868, chiefly by a benevolent racist named General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. In 1878 they began admitting Native students.

Armstrong’s mission for Hampton: “uplift” the Negro (but not too far up - literally he said that), and “civilize” the savage.

My great grandfather’s uncle John Riley Dungey was a graduate of Hampton and he taught at “the Indian School” (yes it was separated)

My ancestor John Riley was from a nearby “Indiantown” (VA reservation), but this program at Hampton was for the unassimilated Natives. Perhaps his status as a relatively acculturated Native made him a good fit as a teacher. I don’t know.

Anyway, the Indian School at Hampton took students from the prisoners of war held in St. Augustine FL. Stolen children, most of whom did not speak English. They were Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho.
Photos like this one of a 15yo Lakota girl were taken to show “progress”

But check this out. This right here was the “method” by which the social experiment at Hampton worked:

The hope at Hampton was that Natives' hostilities toward whites would be redirected toward blacks.

Redirected toward blacks.

Did you hear me? That shit was purposeful. On purpose.

Look at what General Armstrong, Hampton’s founder said. This is a direct quote:

In the end do y’all know why they stopped the Indian program at Hampton?

Because black and Native students were forming relationships - friendships and even romantic partnerships.

The white department heads were afraid of the “‘mingling of blood”.

This is one of my favorite photos. It shows the potential that was there if not for institutionalized racism. This is a Dakota man named Louis Firetail (Crow Creek) in an American History class full of black students.

Look at the potential - what could have been!

*and that blacks would finally have a group to feel superior to and indignant toward.

Y’all can see my point. This animosity between blacks and Natives has a history. It has a purpose. This is simply one example that spells it out plainly.

We have to be diligent about correcting this. And strategic. It’s important work.

* Correction - She was Dakota.