A part of the Variety, Fairness, and Inclusion weblog publish sequence.
The Crow Mom Kachina
“Native American Heritage Month happens within the U.S. yearly each November since President George H.W. Bush designated this month in honor of Native American Heritage on August 3, 1990. Throughout Nationwide Native American Heritage Month, we rejoice the numerous contributions of Native peoples previous and current, honor the affect they’ve had on the development of our Nation, and recommit ourselves to upholding belief and treaty obligations, strengthening Tribal sovereignty, and advancing Tribal self-determination.”
Regardless that as immigration attorneys we concentrate on so many numerous teams, to many people, myself included, the group that has been current in America the longest tends to be the largest thriller and sadly, many instances forgotten. It’s a demographic that appears to be seldom addressed and I can’t recall seeing this addressed in any Variety, Fairness and Inclusion (DEI) packages I so typically attend and help. For some motive, it appears that evidently the details about Native American tribes is both not offered or just missed. Is that this as a result of this space is unknown to so many? Or simply not as mainstream as different matters within the DEI house? Whether or not unknown or not, it’s not acceptable.
This leads me to ask, as a gaggle, what can AILA members do to assist appropriate this?
I name on all AILA members to meet the request of the President in his October 29 proclamation the place he urges all People to look at this month, and to rejoice November 26, 2021, as Native American Heritage Day. We must always every make an effort to attend a least one associated program, ceremony or exercise. We must always take the time to be taught extra, not solely to help Native American Heritage, however to counterpoint our personal cultural consciousness of Native People whose historical past is extra established in America than every other.
There’s a lot we are able to do to find out about Native American Heritage. For instance, go to a Native American museum, find out about an area tribe, analysis programming and actions in your native space, learn books, look on-line. Any of those actions will assist protect the historical past and tradition of Native People after which it is best to share your experiences and data with others. By doing this, we are able to do our half to assist elevate up Native American tradition and produce it to the forefront and mainstream.
We just lately put aside time on our trip to Sedona, Arizona to be taught extra in regards to the native Native American teams in Arizona. We selected to go to Montezuma Citadel Nationwide Monument, constructed by the Sinagua’s in 1050 AD which is the nation’s third Nationwide Monument devoted to preserving Native American tradition. Positioned within the Verde Valley in Arizona and constructed excessive up right into a cliff, we got here away impressed and in awe. The planning, innovation and the dedication it should have taken, in addition to dedication to construct such a construction that started 90 ft up within the aspect of a limestone cliff, consisting of 5 tales on prime of that, with twenty rooms for the inhabitants, left me speechless. I mirrored and questioned in regards to the resilience in addition to the sheer braveness it should have taken to construct such a construction over a 200 yr span.
From there, it led me to ask extra questions, have interaction with the guides onsite and query what occurred to this tribe? The place are they now and why don’t we all know precisely what the aim of this construction was that was constructed so excessive up on a cliff? These questions opened different doorways that led us to learn about other tribes while on our trip. We realized it’s believed by some Hopi, one other native tribe in Arizona, that the Sinagua are their ancestors. Additionally, the Yavapai and Apache tribes imagine the Sinagua built-in with their current day tribes and exist in the present day. All 4 tribes, Zuni, Yavapai, Apache and Hopi are related to the current day web site.
Our curiosity continued days later into our journey as our expertise at this lovely monument stayed with us. We made some extent of in search of out and visiting native space shops specializing in handcrafted Native American arts and crafts. We realized about and bought crafts from the Hopi, Zuni and Santo Domingo tribes. By doing so, we not solely got here again with lovely souvenirs we are going to cherish for the remainder of our lives, however we additionally helped help Native People. We are going to show their paintings in our on a regular basis lives and attempt to stay as much as the aim of the Native American Heritage month in honoring the Native American folks, preserving their wealthy tradition and traditions, and spreading the data we gained.
What’s going to you do that month to assist shield and protect this vital tradition? No matter it’s, I hope it sparks your curiosity like ours was sparked – to ask questions, to go additional and to be taught extra about Native American Heritage.