My Legacy: Balancing Native American Heritage Month, voting and Thanksgiving
Writing anything for Native American Heritage Month is complicated.
My identity is at the heart of this blog post, and that is complicated. I am a settler and Indigenous. Should I choose, I could enroll in the Daughters of the American Revolution for an ancestor many generations removed. Yet, I can鈥檛 enroll in the Ponca Nation, to which my very own mother belongs, due to archaic rules enforced by the federal government on a supposedly sovereign nation.
Contradictions define the existence of so many native peoples in our modern state. Take, for example, itself 鈥� a month to honor all the peoples here since time immemorial (no, we didn鈥檛 come across a land bridge), in a month with a holiday that celebrates our own genocide. Everything about this season is deeply native 鈥� the food, feasting with your community, the decor is even native.
Yet, Election Day and Thanksgiving Day are stark reminders that this is no longer our own native nation. Fall is my favorite season, but I鈥檓 perpetually reminded that my very existence is in defiance of a state that would jail me for traditional practices, such as collecting eagle feathers on the ground for ceremonies, litigate me and my nation out of existence, and plunder our sacred lands for resources, all the while asking for my vote.
It鈥檚 kinda rough to be Indigenous in Native American Heritage Month.
This year is even harder than most. I鈥檒l pumpkin spice everything I can get my hands on, even as the Earth grows ever hotter. I鈥檒l share a decadent Thanksgiving meal with my family, full of traditional foods, with the starvation in Gaza on my mind.
I want to emphasize that pan-Indigenous generalities risk erasure of both individual nations and individual people. It鈥檚 important to understand that there are 574 federally recognized Indigenous nations and even more state-recognized nations, and each has a distinct culture. (I encourage you to look up the of the 1950s and 1960s.) There are some similarities, such as the Ponca and Omaha languages, but they are distinct.
Noting everyone鈥檚 story is their own, I understand why many Indigenous people do or don鈥檛 vote. It鈥檚 once again complicated. Voting is participating in colonization, and both major political parties have failed us repeatedly. There鈥檚 a litany of failures historically and currently. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln were both exceedingly hostile to native nations.
In recent memory, you can see how COVID-19 was handled under former President Donald Trump, or what鈥檚 happening with the sacred on the border under President Joe Biden. That said, democracy is very much an Indigenous value. The Haudenosaunee are often called the Iroquois Confederacy, and their Great Law of Peace was the framework for our U.S. Constitution. Ponca Chief Standing Bear earned Indigenous people equal personhood through the courts in Standing Bear v. Crook. Reflecting on our ancestors鈥� struggles actually brings me clarity, despite the complications.
I can only write on behalf of myself and my own beliefs, but I carry my community with me, even if we passionately disagree. I鈥檓 an Indigenous person living in the swing state of Georgia, in a swing county. I鈥檓 the parent of children, threatened by reactionary laws. I鈥檓 part of the first generation of Ponca to have our legal right to the Sun Dance restored. I want a better world that recognizes the Rights of Nature. I鈥檓 not sure electoralism gets me any of that, but I believe my continued participation in the struggle, far beyond just voting but also including voting, is the best path forward.
Jenn Hadley, a resident of Georgia, is a descendant of the federally recognized Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and a Southern Poverty Law Center ally in the struggle for trans rights.
Picture at top: (Courtesy of Jenn Hadley)
