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’t 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, Native American Heritage Month itself – a month to honor all the peoples here since time immemorial (no, we didn’t come across a land bridge), in a month with a holiday that celebrates our own genocide. Everything about this season is deeply native – 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’m 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’s kinda rough to be Indigenous in Native American Heritage Month.
This year is even harder than most. I’ll pumpkin spice everything I can get my hands on, even as the Earth grows ever hotter. I’ll 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’s 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 tribal terminations of the 1950s and 1960s.) There are some similarities, such as the Ponca and Omaha languages, but they are distinct.
Noting everyone’s story is their own, I understand why many Indigenous people do or don’t vote. It’s once again complicated. Voting is participating in colonization, and both major political parties have failed us repeatedly. There’s 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’s happening with the sacred saguaro cactus 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’ 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’m an Indigenous person living in the swing state of Georgia, in a swing county. I’m the parent of Two Spirit children, threatened by reactionary laws. I’m 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’m 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)
