Native American Discrimination: Overshadowed by the BLM Movement

In today’s era of media, there has been a huge concentration on the discrimination against the African American population within the United States. This is specifically focused on the relationship between the law enforcement organizations and the African American communities, however, The Blacks Lives Matters organization goes more into depth. Although this is all important to bringing people together in equality and freedom, there is another group of people that have experienced discrimination that have been out of the media’s attention. These are the people that originated from the lands of America far before European explorers found it, also known as the Native Americans. The Native Americans are a group of people that have been overshadowed by not only the Black Lives Movement, but by all the media over several decades. This discrimination is serious matter that should be getting more attention by the media in order to address and solve the many issues they experience on a daily basis.

The Native American people are the people who have farmed, fought for, and inherited the Americas long before the European sailors arrived in search of colonizing and starting their own lives. In 1492, the Spanish explorer named Christopher Columbus was in search of new lands for the Spanish to colonize in, entering South America to take control of the Natives in that land to where they made their first invasion into St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. European colonization by the British group, called the Plymouth Company, did not take place until 1587 in which is now known as Roanoke, Virginia. This then led to the massive colonization of the original 12 colonies. Not only during these colonizations but in several years to follow, including events such as the Revolutionary War or the eventual movement out west by colonizers that caused events like the Wounded Knee Massacre and the Indian Removal Act. Known as the Indigenous Holocaust, an estimated 75 to 100 million Native Americans lived in the Western Hemisphere, including roughly 5 million within the United States area in 1492. This Native American population has then been said to have dropped 95% by the beginning of the 20th century, including only 250,000 Native Americans to be left within the United States. This was caused by the arrival of the European colonizers, whether this is from murder or developed illnesses that Native American nervous systems were unable to fight off.

With this massive genocide of the indigenous people by the white colonizers, the Native Americans have been forced to inhabit small portions of land that they once owned, in which are now owned by the United States and Canada. This was done through the Indian Removal Act, which took Native Americans from the lands they were sent to west of the Mississippi River and were placed back in their native lands in the Northeastern United States, such as New York. The Native Americans have never been given the opportunity to equally negotiate over their lands or their people, and have always been bullied by the United States in order to get their ways. Because of the creation of the U.S. dollar, the Native Americans have resulted to poverty and are found in some of the poorest parts of the United States. They are looked at as the poor and are discriminated against based on the color of their skin and the way they appear to the naked eye, very similar to what the African Americans have had to go through.

This persona that the Americans have created for the Natives have created an everlasting view of authority over the Americans, causing a great deal of carried out discrimination in today’s world. These issues in Native American discrimination, unlike the discrimination of African Americans, has always taken shadow to other things in the world, resulting in continued pain and suffering of the indigenous people. Regardless of any fight for Native American rights, there has been little to be done in order to ensure these people gain respect by those around them. There are sports organizations making millions of dollars a year that use the Native American image as mascots, paying their players and workers more money than many of these poor Native towns will ever see. Mascots of sports programs are used as marketing lures, and are very commonly mythical creatures or animals. To be associated with the same image of mythical creatures or animals in order for an organization to make money off of was not seen as an issue to many white Americans, or even those of other descents such as African Americans. Regardless of what many of these people say to address this issue, many of these programs will refuse to change their mascots because they make too much money to give up, continuing the trademarked persona that the American colonizers created for them hundreds of years ago.

In this video, Charlie Randall, an individual of Native American descent, is asked several questions by myself on the discrimination of his ancestors. Charlie, being one of my best friends, brought up several good points. Several people will go their entire lives without meeting or seeing a Native American person because their knowledge on these people is insignificant. Take a listen to see the views of a fellow Native American. Notice the many issues that are left within today’s society. Randall is a believer that these issues are mainly because overall lack of public knowledge and attention. Randall states, “Some people do not believe Native Americans exist”. There are a lot of issues to still be dealt with in order to bring these people justice, and the only way to do this is to get the information of today’s discrimination out to the public and those who are uninformed on Native American heritage and life. This could be very easily done through the use of media projection and getting the issue more attention, gaining more popularity among larger influencers.