No One Should Be Nonchalant About Native Lives
Roughly 5 million Native people live in the United States, and yet even during November’s Native American Heritage Month, people do not acknowledge Native lives.
While many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, many American Indians mark another Day of Mourning.
The eager shoppers who storm the halls of malls for Black Friday deals may not know, or care, that the Friday after Thanksgiving is Native American Heritage Day.
Taken together, the jeering juxtaposition displays the coldest extremes — of a cruel and careless climate — in a country that has advanced but hasn’t changed.
America has a pervasive and persistent nonchalance about Native lives.
This nonchalance is one of America’s oldest ones, and it has made indigenous people either — near last or almost first in the worst.
The needed concern for the most unnatural challenges that beset Native people is spotty.
Too often, Native people are off the intersecting grids of concern, and the spotlights that could quickly focus America’s flighty eyes are grimly dim.
