Emmy Scott Profile picture
Aug 23, 2019 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
My Winnebago tribe has this field of Indian corn that the youth bring up and learn to process. Found out it got mowed down by a local white farmer. The 8k from sale goes toward scholarships for the youth. Seems like somebody is not happy that we are buying our land back?
All these processes are part of ceremony for us, as this corn is sacred to our people. We hold a green corn dance to pray for a good harvest. It’s heartbreaking is what it is. This is how much some people hate us Natives.
White farmers bought up a lot of reservation land after Homestead Act & Dawes Act, so our land became fractionated. A lot of reservation is just corn fields owned primarily by white farmers. We had a buyback program, where we starting purchasing our land back.
Winnebago Tribe has been making efforts toward food sovereignty and traditional education through HCI Farms. They set people up with backyard gardens, one is mine. There’s a grand opening Saturday for our own farmer’s market.
This land plot was a piece of reservation land we purchased back from a farmer. Some say a certain white farmer in the area was implying HCI farms made him look bad. Some people want to believe it was a misunderstanding. I wish I could believe that.
Looking to history, settlers often attacked food supplies of Native people and it was passed down through stories as traumatic events. George Washington burned Haudenosaunee corn fields. Buffalo Bill killed the buffalo that Lakota/Dakota & other Plains tribes subsisted on.
When Indigenous people become a threat, settlers will attack our food and way of life, if they can’t get to us directly. This is genocide. Many rezzes are food deserts, where we are limited to processed canned/boxed food. This the reason we have been starting community gardens.
Some of my people upon hearing the news of the corn fields and seeing pictures, were brought to tears including me. Some of it is probably linked to ancestral memory of when we were intentionally starved by U.S. government or fed rotten provisions during forced removal.
Environmental destruction and resource extraction has always been directly tied to Native genocide. Look to the suspect Amazon fires that occurred after a successful lawsuit by the Waorani people to protect sacred land. Settler colonialism is ongoing.
I created a GoFundMe to go toward the Winnebago Public Foundation Fund, where the money from sale of the corn would have gone, if it was not mowed down. Please share and donate to help recover the loss. gofundme.com/f/v4dkk-a-caus…

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More from @EmmyNawjoopinga

May 3, 2022
The idea that a basic right you hold could disappear overnight is unfathomable. Many in shock now. But for Native people, especially for Native women, it has been our reality that court cases and policies take and take, as that is the way of settler colonialism. #RoeVWade
Native women held power prior to colonization within in their tribal nations, it was settler colonialism that stole that away. The women’s rights movement lifted ideas from Native women, because our bodies, minds, and spirits were always ours.
Native women’s knowledge of plants ensured they had a choice of when and if they wanted to have a baby. Divorce was easy as putting their husbands possession’s outside the door. Settler colonial heteropatriarchy is foreign to these lands.
Read 9 tweets
Aug 16, 2020
Living on a reservation, about half the time I order things that come UPS/FedEx, they drop it off at the USPS post office to our box. We got street signs pretty recently, but addresses not recognized by many online sites. Also, only place to get a money order here.
I have been thinking about the fact that you need money orders to pay for glasses at Optometry at our tribal hospital. Not everybody banks, so wouldn’t have anywhere to go for money orders without the USPS.
With the pandemic and my mom being immunocompromised, my family has been ordering online a lot more including food items and many things we would normally just shop for in person. We wanted to avoid going to malls or similar places as much as possible.
Read 8 tweets
Aug 13, 2020
Honestly, at this point the “authentication” process for being Native could be if one of a few Native Elite gatekeepers has come to try to discredit you by labeling you a Pretendian.
That’s just me being facetious, of course. It’s disheartening to see Native people doing good work for the people, only for other Natives to try to destroy them. More disheartening that they use colonizer’s own tools like blood quantum to do it.
Yes, an aspect of tribal sovereignty is determining citizenship. We can acknowledge this and that many tribes still use blood quantum and are realizing very quickly how unsustainable it is and was purposely introduced for this exact reason.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 11, 2020
When I say I hope Kamala Harris remembers, I mean I hope she remembers the valid critiques of her tribal sovereignty record and works to do right by Native people.
At the Native Forum in Sioux City, Kamala Harris did address the answer to this question, which was that she was representing her client (State of California) which meant she had to do things she didn’t necessarily believe in. Kinda sidestepped accountability.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 21, 2020
My Winnebago Reservation has a mask policy for all businesses, and I have seen white people walk into the gas station convenience store, ignoring signs AND workers telling them they need a mask. It’s more than disrespectful, it’s absolutely malicious during these times.
I realize these encounters over masks are everywhere, but I have no doubt that the Midwest anti-Native sentiment also provokes this reaction at tribal businesses.
Even in law school, this idea of tribal sovereignty offended the senses of many of my classmates (and this is from the educated “elite” that have the privilege to attend.) Underlying this, is the savage barbarian tropes of Native people that many consider reality.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 14, 2020
Thank you Black Lives Matter!

All you Native mascot activists better knock it off with the anti-Blackness now and forever. I don’t want to see any comparisons to the N-word or Blackface from Non-Black Natives. No “Native Lives Matter” either. Create your own saying.
Read 4 tweets

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