The first steps to decolonization
(TVLSE, Okla.) For hundreds of years, colonizers have fought to erase or at the very least oppress Native people, culture and ways of life. While some tribes were destroyed, more than 500 tribes remain.
Over 8 million people in the United States identify as Native American or Alaska Native. Experts estimate nearly twice that many Natives were living on the land that would later become the United States, and seven times that many were living on what many Indigenous groups call “Turtle Island”, or North America, before colonizers came over from Spain in the late 1400s. Those colonizers were soon followed by expeditions and conquests from the Dutch, French, and finally the British.
Fast forward to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, when tribes like the Muscogee (Creek) were forced from their ancestral homelands to west of the Mississippi River. Many tribes, like the Apache, Arapaho, Caddo, Comanche, Kiowa, Osage, and Wichita were already living in what is now Oklahoma. Today, the state is home to 39 tribes.
In Oklahoma, theft of Indigenous land was swift and relentless following statehood
(TVLSE, Okla.) As Oklahoma closes the book on another year of ‘89er Day” celebrations, the real history of the land continues to be overlooked by most, including the state’s governor.
“The first land run in our state was in 1889— it opened the unassigned lands to pioneers and settlers who built the foundation of Oklahoma,” Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said in a post on social media. “During ‘89ers Week, we celebrate that awesome history.”
But for many Native Americans living in Oklahoma, that history was not so awesome.
