This summer people in South Dakota will remember two important dates, July 4th the national holiday of Independence Day and June 25th Indian Victory Day when the combined forces the Lakota and Cheyenne Indians defeated General George Custer at what is known in the non-Indian community as the Battle of Little Big Horn. It’s fascinating that at first blush these two celebrations seem completely different from each other, but actually they represent the same ideas that all Americans should aspire to.
On Independence Day, Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the ending of our subservient status as a colony to the British Empire. We celebrate our deeply held beliefs in due process, justice and equality. In 1776 Americans stood against European colonization which history has shown ultimately leads to despotism, dungeons and discrimination. Unfortunately, it’s painfully ironic that the ideals of the American Revolution were cast aside for the United States own colonization efforts. The United States government went from the colonized to the colonizer almost immediately and the reverberations of this hypocrisy are felt to this day.
The effects of colonization are often times long felt even after those who have been colonized are recognized as independent nations. We only need to look at the successful litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union for the past ten years on issues such as voting rights and racial justice to see that South Dakota still suffers from the invidious tools used by colonizers to undermine and subvert those who are colonized. In our state American Indians have been denied the right to vote, equal access to political office and discriminated against in almost every area of day-to-day life. Indeed, the tools used by this state are the exact same tools that were used by the British to put the colonial Americans in their supposed rightful place, under the boot of George III.
We will, as Americans, be remiss if on July 4th we don’t stop to think about how the ideals of the American Revolution differ so greatly from our lived reality and history. America, a former colony itself, must take stock of what it has done to shift its thoughts from the champion of the oppressed to the oppressor itself. Colonization of indigenous people or “Manifest Destiny” as it would be termed in United States history is not part and parcel with what it means to be an American. Colonization, imperialism and the evils that these actions bring about are fundamentally in opposition to individual rights, due process and liberty which are at the very heart of the American Revolution. There is nothing American about imperialism and colonization, it is an unfortunate hang-over from our colonial European roots which would be best left in the dust bin of history.
As Americans we can all celebrate Indian Victory Day and Independence Day for they both stand for the same propositions. As individuals we have the right to live freely and with liberty and that as communities we have the right to national existence and self-determination. Our rights, for both Indians and non-Indians, are self-evident and the American George Custer or the British George III cannot take them from us. The colony of America is dead but now the colonization of America must die too so that those self-evident rights can take root and blossom into the America we all, in the end, believe in.
