Thread by @GabriellaCKelly

Reminder regarding “Rain Dance”questions/comments: unless ur talking about a kui’pad, bahidag, ha:sañ, si:tol, nawait, ñei or kehina, I don’t want to hear ur ignorant quip minimizing my culture which has survived colonization & genocide because u want to joke about the weather.

Every monsoon season I have to explain to ppl that them dancing in their driveways is not the spiritual ceremony that our communities prepare months in advance & which we think about year round. Our ceremonies requires community, harvesting, cooking, praying, singing, dancing.

Our ceremonies were once illegal. Our language beat out of the mouths of our children in residential schools. Maybe you’ve read recent headlines about the graves of some of those same Indigenous children who never made it back.

Our women were unknowingly sterilized, raped, stolen, murdered. We have to fight for even the concept of clean water or the idea that our lands shouldn’t be militarized. We are openly mocked, disrespected and treated as greedy Indians.

We’re watching as global warming is changing our traditional harvests which impacts our culture and who we are as a community.

We’re coming up on the 4th of July, a day of celebration over a document that literally calls us, “Merciless Indian Savages.”

We’ve lived through US policy that didn’t just “not include us”, but was instead designed to terminate, exterminate & assimilate us.

Every year, after the saguaro fruit harvests, our people sing down the rain. We Pray. We sing. We dance. The rain comes and we celebrate a New Year. The rain marks the beginning of a new year. It’s a blessing.

And. We’re. Still. Here.

S-ke:g Noji Wuino.
Happy New Year.