DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED

INDIAN COUNTRY AFTER TRUMP | 01.15.20

When President Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, the shockwaves felt nationwide by a bewildered liberal electorate hardly batted an eye across Indian Country. After all, bad presidents pushing bad policy is nothing new to the Indigenous timeline. 

But Trump wasted little time sending a message to America’s most vulnerable — its Indigenous Peoples. During his first week in office, he resumed construction of the stalled Dakota Access Pipeline, allowing it to force its way beneath the treaty-protected Missouri River of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, the seven bands of the Great Sioux Nation. From then on, an uneasy fear intensified daily, in tribal communities nationwide. 

“We were sitting high with the Obama Administration,” said Dave Archambault II, then-tribal chairman of the Standing Rock Tribe. Archambault played a key role in protecting Standing Rock’s water supply from a potential oil spill from the DAPL. But that fight seemingly and swiftly dissolved under Trump. “Now we’re going to have to fight for everything we got,” the tribal leader lamented to members of the tribal council in January 2017.

How those words would ring true time and again over the course of four years under Trump. While Native American issues have never fallen cleanly along partisan lines, the Trump administration was perhaps the most hostile presidency to Indian Country in the past half-century, a timeline that can be found here and that chronicles policy and an agenda that too often encroached further on tribal lands, destroyed sacred sites, and dangerously threatened tribal sovereignty while dishonoring Indigenous Peoples. 

Sunday’s Are for Reading and I’ll be taking in one critic’s argument about whether newsletters are taking over media (ahem), and why one newsletter artist left the wildly popular newsletter platform, Substack. I’m also anticipating this essay about the most hated man in the Rockies who’s trolling the outdoors. That’s good enough for now.

It’s great to be back to work, although my rejuvenation was somewhat abbreviated by the raid on the U.S. Capitol, last week. If I were a phone, I’d be somewhere around 89% charged. But I am grateful for the time to rest and even heal in ways I didn’t realize I needed. Hope such downtime was good for you, too.

See you next week, fine readers. Dawaa’e,

Jenni

THE INDIGENOUS INTERNET

INDIGENOUSLY INDEX

Total days Trump was in office before resuming Dakota Access pipeline construction: 4

Total days in office before Trump publicly derided Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas”: 98

Number of Navajo Code Talkers at the White House for Trump’s “Pocahontas” slur: 3

Estimated hours Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke met with tribal leaders at Bears Ears: 1

Total percentage the Trump Administration shrunk protections of the sacred site: 85%

Total pair of moccasins Secretary Zinke was gifted by the Crow Nation: 1

Average amount of “coal payment” Crow citizens receive every four months: $225

Estimated percentage of coal revenue contributed to Crow Nation’s total budget: 50%

Number of Alaska Native women confirmed as Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs: 1

Total months Asst. Secty Tara Sweeney held office before terminating tribal trust lands: 1

Estimated earnings Sweeney reported as an oil lobbyist in Alaska: $1M

Amount a Catholic Covington student sued the WaPo, endorsed by Trump: $250M

Estimated number of Covid-19 test-positive cases according to IHS, 1/14/21: 165.4

Total months apart Nola Taken Alive lost her mother then her father to the virus: 1

Number of Indigenous members of Congress who opposed Trump’s impeachment: 3

THE CRISIS

Covering Indian Country, both before and after it has become fashionable and trendy in recent years, has been a challenge for journalists, even for those that proclaim Indigeneity or masquerade as journalists. The best of these groups understand one thing: the mathematical equation for Indigenous Peoples is complicated. Data is disparate and Indigenous invisibility shrouds ways of representing Native communities that are honest and true. The biggest blunder behind the numbers is, perhaps, the U.S. Census. The decennial poll doesn’t verify one’s tribal citizenry. It means anyone can claim Indigenous ancestry without question, not unlike Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

As more newsrooms grow hungry for the Indigenous narrative, those diving into the data for the first time are passing along statistics as fact - and without realizing their error or the complexity for why their reporting is fraught.

One recent exploration is an Indian Country by-the-numbers piece that has been reproduced and shared by other journalists more time than I can count. As a way to spotlight a common mistake made by those who may be learning and writing about us for the first time, I tweeted about it, and then other knowing journalists and scholarly types shared their contributions. The best of the commentary is in a detailed thread from Darryl Leroux, academic and author of Race Shifting, and whose recent work looks at “fake Abenaki tribes” of Vermont - a good case study.

ENDORSEMENT

FEEDBACK

“You do good stuff on Instagram, too.”

Jason, Boston, MA

This is great to hear. As Indigenously matures, so too does our social media. Currently, Instagram has become a rewarding space for our visual journalism that you’re just not seeing anywhere else. Pop over and check it out.

QUOTE

The Indigenously newsletter is produced by Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo)

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