Invisibilisation is one dimension of genocide. If Indigenous people are not "Counted" AS Indigenous, how will the U.S. and other governments even pretend to care about Indigenous people of the Americas? You first have to be regarded as existing in your own right, not under the label a government wants to give you to make you disappear even more.
I think this is a VERY serious issue for the coming white Christian Calendar year (ECD). This is a time when Indigenous people in the Americas need to be recognised, respected, and counted as human beings--Indigenous ones!
Thank you so much for caring and posting this VERY important issue.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Black Butterfly!
ReplyDeleteI am passionate about this issue. I live in a country that perpetrates genocide, on-going, without the major media and mass of dominant culture "noticing". This is absolutely horrifying to me.
Not that the on-going atrocities against women of color is anything that gets any mass media press attention either.
But the press and the dominant public ignoring two wrongs doesn't make it right.
Thank you for posting about this. I think the census offends a lot of people because many of us are mixed people and we all have tribal roots. I am going to send this to others and link it to facebook as well.
ReplyDeleteOn the census I would love to be able to write - Anishinaabe, Sami, French, etc. I don't want to just check American Indian/Native American or Caucausian/White. To me this is insulting. My Dad always joked and he said to check everything. I have thought about doing that, haha!
I fully support you crossing out the categories THEY (oppressively) make people check, and writing down exactly what your ethnic heritage is, and maybe if enough people did this, it would cause the those that have to count the results to realise their categories don't fit with actual women's lives in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there could be a Facebook group and movement to reject the racist categories on the Census form. I do not participate in Facebook. But I hope this can happen.
P.S. to Anishinaabekwe,
ReplyDeleteWelcome and I hope you find support here. And please let me know if you or others on Facebook plan to critique the virulent anti-Indigenism of the 2010 Census form--and the racist/misogynist government behind it.
I will link to any group that exists to do this and will promote those groups as well.