The Return of Native Americans as Immigrants

By: Louis E.V. Nevaer

As the immigration debate rages throughout the nation, the lingering, but unspoken, fear is that illegal immigration from Mexico heralds the return of the Native American.

“The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages,” Samuel Huntington famously argued in Foreign Affairs magazine in March 2004, unleashing a firestorm of protests among U.S. Hispanics and Latinos. “Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves — from Los Angeles to Miami — and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream.”

In fact, almost all Mexican immigrants are descendents of North America’s indigenous peoples. As Native Americans, they are terrifying precisely because they have a moral claim to migrate throughout the nation-states imposed on their lands.

This vilification of immigrants differs from the same sentiment of earlier generations. Previously, Americans debated and settled immigration issues through legislation: the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to keep French and Irish Catholics out, the anti-Papist sentiment that fueled Nativism in the 19th century aimed at Italian, Irish and German immigrants, the xenophobia that culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” of 1907 aimed at the Japanese.

In “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” Huntington argued that the Mexican state was complementary to the American one, both heirs of Europe and the Enlightenment. This suggests that the cultural conflict he fears is between Western versus Native American.

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Indian Country Could Back Obama on Super Tuesday

By: Ketaki Gokhale

Barack Obama is big in Indian Country, even though he’s done everything wrong.

He hasn’t attended the annual National Congress of American Indians meet, or rolled out a comprehensive Native American agenda, or even addressed the rumors of his own Native heritage—but he has still, somehow, managed to capture the imagination of Indian Country, say Native American commentators and community activists.

Whether that wave of goodwill is enough to carry him to “Super Tuesday” primary victories in the states of Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Arizona, remains to be seen.

“Obama represents a break from the old—something fresh and new,” says Paul DeMain, managing editor of the Northern Wisconsin-based newspaper News from Indian Country. “Native people are looking at him as someone who can empathize with other people of color.”

DeMain has a hunch that those coming out in support of Obama are the young and the highly educated. The younger generation is trying to define itself in new political terms, he explains. “When I looked at who’s on his list, I saw lots of family names I recognized,” he says. For example, the daughter of LaDonna Harris, an outspoken Comanche leader who donated to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign last year, is now involved with the Obama campaign, says DeMain.

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Federal study backs up land claim by Tigua tribe

The Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A new federal study supports long-held claims by an American Indian tribe that the state of Texas stole 36 square miles of tribal territory in El Paso.

The 172-page report, completed last year, was obtained by the San Antonio Express-News under a Freedom of Information Act request. Now, members of the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur, known as the Tiguas, are trying to determine what to do with the information in the study.

The territory, which the tribe lost in 1871 when the Texas Legislature used it to incorporate the town of Ysleta, is now home to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

''The real huge problem here is, what do you do about it?'' Tom Diamond, the attorney for the 1,600-member tribe, told the newspaper.

There's more here: http://www.woai.com/news/state/story.aspx?content_id=06e1f9a8-2104-43e5-a936-9011e681f890&rss=69

Northern Cheyenne Indian Nation seeks donations for Sand Creek Massacre project

By: Bobbie Whitehead

LA JUNTA, Colo. - The Northern Cheyenne Indian Nation continues to work on its Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site project, this time creating an educational program for the tribe as well as trying to acquire a portion of the site.

To support the tribe's plans, the Northern Cheyenne needs additional funding and is accepting donations to help with its Sand Creek programs.

''We are contemplating acquiring some land there that could come up for sale,'' said Steve Brady, Northern Cheyenne and co-chair of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site Committee for the Northern Cheyenne Indian Nation. ''We're working toward that end.''

Currently, the majority of the 12,300-acre Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site is privately owned.

But the National Park Service as well as the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma has acquired about 3,000 acres of the site, with the 1,465 acres acquired by the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma placed in a federal trust in 2005 for management as part of the national historic site, according to Brady.

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