Eryn Wise of the International Indigenous Youth Council addresses the #NoDAPL Day of Action rally outside of the White House in Washington, D.C., on November 15, 2016. Photo by Indianz.Com / Available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
An accidental run-in with supporters of Republican President Donald Trump doesn't turn out so well for Eryn Wise (Jicarilla Apache / Laguna Pueblo) of the International Indigenous Youth Council:
From the front lines in Standing Rock to the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and now even the capital of our country (host city of the Deplora-Ball); nowhere is safe for a person of color. Throughout my week here on the east coast I have stared into the face of the ugliness that is now pervasive in a city I once deeply loved. The swagger of men in suits adorned in red baseball caps breathes the same hate of their forefathers; men that wrote the Indian Removal Act and condemned 38 Dakota men to death. Men that posed with bodies hanging from trees. They stroll through the streets spitting the same bigoted bile that their mentors did in places like Selma, Wounded Knee and inside of Japanese internment camps. The man sanctioning their actions? Our new president. The state of our already sick psyche regarding communities of color is growing with the same reckless abandon as that of a malignant tumor and yet we stare, watching it happen. There is no easy answer to racism. It takes seed and proliferates with little encouragement from men like our new president and his idiotic entourage. It nips at the heels of the working class, paws at the breasts of the women it oppresses, and tries desperately to set fire to the tireless efforts of the millions of us that will not condone it.Read More on the Story:
Eryn Wise: Attacked by Racists at the Deplora-Ball (Indian Country Today 1/24)
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