Thread by @wirelesshogan

You probably don't know this, but today (Friday, Nov. 29) is the 'official' #NativeAmericanHeritageDay. The fact that our country has insists on honoring Native peoples on #BlackFriday, which in 2019 is also the anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre (1864)...

Thread: 1/12

is a testimony to the multi-generational & communal manifestation of white America's perpetration induced traumatic stress (PITS). If there is ever a day in the list of civic religious holidays where Americans are most certain to be distracted/sedated, Black Friday is it.
2/12

For this reason, I have attemptied to interject into the consumeristic feeding frenzy of our nation a small dose of #UnsettlingTruths.

I love the cover of our new book. Not only does it incorporate the design of an actual Navajo rug, but I had the honor of meeting
3/12

the weaver and hearing her story. Katherine Marianito is a boarding school survivor whose "great-great-grandmother Juanita was considered one of the finest blanket weavers in the 1870s and 1880s.
4/12

Juanita’s husband, Manuelito, was one of the most prominent leaders of the Navajo people. It was Manuelito, Kathy’s great-great-grandfather, who was instrumental in negotiating the Navajos release from Fort Sumner and Bosque Redondo in 1868"
5/12

On this Native American Heritage Day, which occurs in what President Trump has inconsiderately also proclaimed to be the inaugural "American History and Founders Month" and takes place on the day after President Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed as a National Day of Thanksgiving
6/12

as he had literally just completed the ethnic cleansing of the Dakota & Winnebago from the state of Minnesota and was enacting a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Navajo and Mescalero Apache in the Territory of New Mexico, I invite you, I implore you stop.
7/12

Stop believing the myth of American exceptionalism which is based on the lie of white supremacy. Stop living in a state of denial. Stop ignoring the history this nation was founded on.

Stop.

Ponder.

Learn.

Lament.

8/12

On days like this I deeply appreciate the quote used by George Erasmus, from the Dene people who said “Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”
9/12

Beginning today and extending into the month of December Native America will solemnly remember (and this is only a partial list) the Massacre at Sand Creek (Nov. 29), the hanging of the Dakota 38 (Dec. 26) and the Massacre at Wounded Knee (Dec. 29).
10/12

The USA does not have a Common Memory & there is no point in our history where community across racial lines can be described as healthy. If we want to live in a nation where 'We the People' truly means #AllThePeople, then we have a lot of foundational level work to do.
11/12

Walk in beauty my relatives.

Mark Charles

Thread: 12/12
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #MarkCharles2020