By Colin Bossen
March 15, 2012
March 15, 2012
Over the two years that I have been in dialogue with the
folks who work out of the NAHUACALLI, Embassy of Indigenous Peoples they have
repeatedly provoked me in my thinking about the construct of "white"
identity, colonialism and the relationship between the indigenous peoples of
North America, our Mother Earth and the values of human and civil rights. Nahuacalli's March 12, 2012 communiqué to the Arizona Superintendent John Huppenthal is no exception. In it Nahuacalli
responds to the ongoing assault on ethnic studies in Arizona by challenging
state officials to look at the roots of racial and racist constructs they are
using to attack ethnic studies.
In particular, the Nahuacalli communiqué draws attention to
the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny and the belief that "the
Anglo-Saxon 'race' [has] historical right in the territory [of what is now
called Arizona] that supersede all others." By doing so Nahuacalli offers
a reminder of at least three important truths.
Ancestral Indigenous Corridors of Culture and Trade |
First, the United States as a nation state, and the state of
Arizona, is a social construct imposed by force upon the indigenous peoples of
North America. In fact the
geographic terminology of “America” itself is a colonial imposition over the
ancestral name for the continent, Abya Yala. This imposition is a continuation of more than five hundred
years of colonialism, a practice which has been declared illegal by the United
Nations.
Daughter of Zeus |
Third, it is only by questioning colonialism, and its
accompanying construct of whiteness, that we can begin to live as one human
race. Humanity is one. Constructs
like "whiteness" divide us from ourselves and, in doing, allow us to
harm our brothers and sisters, and ultimately, the planet.
We are children of the same mother, Mother Earth, but when
we forget this and separate ourselves by creating racial castes we also forget
that we are interdependent and connected to each other and the natural world.
Rev. Colin Bossen
Minister, Unitarian Universalist Society of Cleveland
Links:
Universal Unitarian Resolution on the Doctrine of Discovery
World Council of Churches
Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery
World Council of Churches
Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery
Arizona State Capitol - House of Representatives
Friday March 23, 2012
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