Thread by @gindaanis

The experience of the Five Civilized Tribes is instructive. They did everything right. Fought in Jackson's wars. Structured a western style government, agriculture, trade.

They adapted.

They still got removed.

~ The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee p35

Archeology and linguistics tells us that the Diné came south before settling in what is now known as the four corners area in the US. They and other Athabascan groups the Apache, Kiowa, and others are related to peoples in the northwest of the continent.

The Diné creation story talks about traveling through three worlds before arriving at this fourth world.

Which layered with what is known about the migration of their distant relatives is fascinating.

(pp 55-57)

But their emergence as a people is deeply rooted in the deserts and canyons of the southwest. That their ancestors may have lived elsewhere, or differently, is irrelevant to who they were culturally, socially, and politically at the time of European contact.

It was their land as surely as it was anyone's. They understood the language of the beings in that place. They had relationships, understood the rhythms.

Migration narratives are generally used to justify conquest. As if what colonialism did was just one of endless waves going backwards in time.

But the creation narratives are equally important. What they tell us about how we emerged as people. How they coalesced, what ideas they coalesced around.