Native American children´s right to their own history

For centuries the cultures of Native Americans have been under attack. From the first European colonizers 500 years ago until now, native peoples got their land stolen, their livelihood destroyed, their freedom taken away and their cultures and religions being suppressed. Even as late as up to 1978 Native Americans in USA were not free to fully practise their traditional religious and spiritual ceremonies.


Now their history is also under attack. During the latest decades certain groups among African Americans have started to claim Native American history, claiming that black/African people where those who created, or inspired the great Native civilisations in places like Mesoamerica or the Andes, or in Southeastern USA. Some of these wabocentric and Afrocentric groups even claim to have been in the Americas before the ancestors of the Native Americans. These claims have become a nuisance and have added to the burden of the oppression that Native Americans during so long time been subjected to. 


How does this effect Native American children to hear that their ancestors were not first in the Americas? To hear claims that the grand monuments and civilisations from precolumbian times were not created by their ancestors but by others? That their own relatives should have been too primitive too create such things? And how does it feel to hear that their great grandparents were Mongolian or Siberian invaders that invaded the country of the original blacks, or that they were Chinese or Philippine slaves placed there by the whites? That their whole race is fake? How does it affect Native American children if all these senseless claims and outright lies become more mainstream in society, due to social media, artists and others who contribute in spreading those messages?


Native American children also have a right to their own history. They have the right to be proud of their ancestors achievements. They have the right to marvel at the gaze of those amazing civilisations, cultures and great monuments their forefathers created. 


No one has the right to steal all that from Native American children just to be able to bask in the sun of others achievements, or feel good by pretending to be someone else. 


(And African American children have the right to learn about their real history, not any fancy fairytales about "black Olmecs" and similar.)




These children have the right to their own history, and to be proud of the achievements of their ancestors.




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