Audience question: What do we do after the election? HOw do we get our elected officials to do what we sent them there for? #asalh2020
Anderson: Must hold elected officials accountable. Contact them regularly. Explain there will be consequences if they let us down. We can't forget after election day. Policy making happens after the election, so we need to be engaged. #asalh2020
Anderson: Being engaged with elected officials changes the ethos of governance. Officials must understand that the policy must come from the people not lobbying groups, etc. By doing so, we are "fighting forward". #asalh2020
Albright: We live in a world where the person being hired creates their own job description! The people should set the agenda, not the elected official. Change the process itself. Should be community-centered process to begin with. #asalh2020
Albright: Merge protest movement with election process so that we don't have to fight to hold people accountable who don't have our best interests in mind. Get the right people into the office up and down. #asalh2020
Dr. JZ: Often after the election, people disappear. Discusses "bridge leaders" who were in the community, concerned about needs of the people (HT Belinda Robnett). Some people are worried about food and housing, not just voting. Talk about what community really means. #asalh2020
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Sherri Mitchell (Penobscot) is the final speaker at the #Indigenous History Conference. She is the author of the award-winning book Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. sacredinstructions.life
Mitchell: What guidance have I been given that will lead me into the future? It's a circular route that we travel. We have to be living for all of our relations. This is how prayers are ended, relations are acknowledged.
Mitchell: so maybe that's where we should begin: how do we be good relatives? Think about grandmothers, mothers, aunties, they are the ones who have taught us how to be a good relative. This matrilineal line was directly attacked by colonialism and patriarchy.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is first up. If you haven't read her classic BRAIDING SWEETGRASS, you should get the beautiful special edition of it now (would make a great holiday gift!) from Milkweed Editions @Milkweed_Books: milkweed.org/book/braiding-…
Kimmerer: Will discuss the prophecies of the Seventh Fire which counter the myth of the First Thanksgiving and the overall lack of Native American historical literacy.
And the second session today at the #Indigenous History Conference is "From Traditional Knowledge to Colonial Oversight to Indigenous Integration: Educator’s Roundtable Indian Education in New England" with Alice Nash, Tobias Vanderhoop (Aquinnah Wampanoag),
Jennifer Weston (Hunkpapa Lakota, Standing Rock), and
Alyssa Mt. Pleasant (Tuscarora).
Vanderhoop: "The colonial system of education happened to us." Wampanoag in the colonized schools were seen as more controllable, agreeable, etc. But their intention to get rid of Native Americans via the colonize education system failed.
This morning I'm attending the second to last panels of the conference! "Writing Ourselves into Existence: Authors’ Roundtable: New England Native Authors and Literature" with Siobhan Senier @ssenier, Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Mohegan) @tantaquidgeon, Carol Dana (Penobscot),
John Christian Hopkins (Penobscot), Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki), and Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag). This has been a fantastic conference, I hate that this is the last weekend! Thanks to all for your hard work! @Plymouth_400@BridgeStateU@joyce_rain18
Dawnland Voices edited by @ssenier is the first collection of its kind from Indigenous authors from what is now referred to as New England. Tribes are very good at shepherding their own literary works.