(This is an excerpt from an article originally posted in October 2021. To read the whole article, please click here. This year, Indigenous Peoples’ Day falls on the 14th.)
New Mexico is one of the States of the Union which has taken October 12th out of the European Colonial Past and has declared it Indigenous People’s Day – a day to be aware of and honor those who stood where we now stand. It articulates a fabulous question! A suggestion that is commonly made in this pursuit is to find one of the many maps or charts available on the internet to see what people, tribe or nation already occupied “this place” before plow and fence, “frontier villages” or National Roads, buffalo slaying railroads and fortified stockades, dams and carcinogenic mines, nuclear testing and cultural appropriation, pipelines and the Interstate highway system. What people, tribe and nations have disappeared by the onslaught of “progress?” I suspect most people of European or African, Latin American or Asian ancestry are not aware of who lived here before us, and often still live here, invisible among us – but, yes, before us!
I grew up in Chicago (shikaakwa, Checagou). I learned that Chicago was a Chief (Agapit Chicagou) of people who lived in the area. But I only learned recently “which people” he led: the Michigeama. (Spell check recognizes none of these!) I learned that Illinois is named for the people of the Illini (Illiniwek) Confederation of 12 tribes (the five-principal people: Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa) who lived in the region. There were also the Blackfoot and tribes of the Anishinaabe Federation (the Ojibwe [AKA Chippewa], Odawa [or Ottawa], and Potawatomi). Where have they gone?
[Read the rest here and perhaps take a little time today to research the history of your neighborhood/city.]
Navajo/Diné San Damiano Cross (Hogan Chapel in To’hatchi, New Mexico)
– friar Charles McCarthy OFM Conv.
