The U.S. Constitution in Article 1 section 2 paragraph 3 initially defined enslaved persons as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of taxation and congressional representation. In the same section of that document, Native Americans, referred to in the Constitution as Indians, were given a much different and far more ominous designation. It is captured in these four words, "Excluding Indians not taxed."
In essence, Native Americans were written out of the future of this country with those four words, "Excluding Indians not taxed."
African Americans have a legitimate narrative to share and preserve focused on enslavement, segregation, and second-class citizenship. At the same time, Native Americans have an equally gruesome narrative of displacement, forced removal to reservations, intentional genocide, and the total destruction of their cultures, their communities, and their traditions. Can African Americans focus on their grievances and not care about the grievances of our Native American brothers and sisters? While African Americans remember Emmett Till's brutal murder in Money, Mississippi and four young girls bombed to death in a church in Birmingham, Alabama, we should not forget other horrors perpetrated against Native Americans by the same people and policies of white supremacy.
Everyone should remember the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the so-called "Trail of Tears" when tens of thousands of native people were forcibly marched from Alabama, Georgia, and other southeastern states all the way to Oklahoma. Thousands of Native Americans died along the way. Their forced removal was done so slave owners could expand cotton production in those states and get richer through unpaid, forced and enslaved African labor. In service to white America's narrative about Manifest Destiny and the belief that God intended the United States to extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were brutally swept away by the U.S. Calvary and by white settlers looking to improve their lives by stealing the land of others.
Remember the massacre of Cheyenne women and children at the Washita River in Oklahoma in 1868 also called the Sand Creek massacre, and the ruthless attack on Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1890. The fact that these groups existed is captured in words that are decidedly not English or European such as Cuyahoga, Geauga, Miami, Delaware, my hometown of Chicago, and many more. Those names and places are the remnants of great cultures that have either been exterminated or isolated on distant reservations.
College and professional sports teams still use these tribal groups as mascots and team logos. We once were home to the Cleveland Indians. The Chicago Blackhawks, the Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Florida State Seminoles, and the one-time Washington Redskins are reminders of people that have been reduced to images that sell products.
Given the nominees Donald Trump is putting forward for Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Energy, and Secretary of Homeland Security, it is a safe bet that the already dismal conditions that surround Native Americans every day will only get worse. Sacred lands will not be honored. Natural resources on their lands will be exploited. Federal funding needed to provide education, health care, and housing on reservations will likely be substantially reduced by billionaires looking to provide tax breaks for themselves by cutting programs that serve the neediest communities in our country.
As a Christian who is informed by the call from Jesus to care for "the least of these" in society, I challenge myself and others to pay attention not only to our own suffering, but also the centuries-old and ongoing suffering of the Native Americans who once lived by the millions from the northernmost regions of Canada to the southernmost reaches of Chile. Their suffering needs to be highlighted; their cause needs advocates. As my doctoral student, Jamie Eaddy Chism wrote in her dissertation, "If a person only cares about their oppression, but does not care about the oppression of others, such a person does not want liberation. They only want privilege."
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The Rev. Dr. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, is interim senior minister, First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland. He served as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York, from 2011 to 2019.
