THE LONGEST WALK, 43 YEARS LATER

An Indigenous Washingtonian Welcomes the 1978 Longest Walk

by the Powhatan Museum of Washington, DC, the first and only site dedicated to
the city's oririginal inhabitants and their descendants. -powhatanmuseum.com

Figure 1: A pensive Georgia Mills Jessup (Pamunkey) a DC teacher/artist/administrator in hot July, 1978 on 16th Street, NW the city of her birth. Number 13 of a centuries old DC family of 21 Native American siblings indigenous to DC, MD and Virginia, a part of her ancestral Powhatan Paramountcy, she came out of her DC home to support the hundreds of the Longest Walk participants.– Photo by her niece, Dr. Phoebe Farris (Powhatan Renape/Pamunkey).

 

In 1978, the "'LongestWalk' (below) drew attention to American Indian concerns. Several hundred American Indian activists and supporters marched for five months from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to protest threats to tribal lands and water rights. The Longest Walk is the last major event of the Red Power Movement."

 

Figure 2: The Longest Walk which ended here on DC’s Mall as the largest gathering of Native American tribal members in the city. If you were not in Washington, DC in !978, you missed it.

 

So, what has changed in the Nation’s Capital since then? With the Republican Senators blocking Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) from becoming the Secretary of the Interior and its  first Native American Cabinet member? Not much. Anti-Indian senators doing the bidding of the crude oil industry and other backers are questioning this indigenous woman of color’s “qualifications.” Not many disparaging genocidal views on Indigenous people have changed today. 

 

Figure 3: Representative Deb Haaland, Esq who at this writing is being rejected by immigrant descended anti-Native racists for a no-brainer post as steward of the land which is her people’s Indigenous tradition. Her New Mexican lineage goes back to over 40 generations, and thousands of years of Amerindian presence in America before her Capitol Hill colleagues who are fighting against her confirmation.

 

The irony is that Republicans on the Hill have a chance to redress the wrongs which were protested forty-three years ago by honoring a Native American (a woman of color) and begin to correct the continued atrocities against them and their sacred sites. But, they go in the opposite direction. Regardless of the historical acts of violence on Native Americans the issue continues to be that only money talks. 

Native Americans have long since buried the tomahawk in spite of broken one-sided treaties; given America its Constitution and a deliberative body via their caucus; and had American wealth wrested from their Turtle Island territories. America boasts to the world about its material richness gained from the bodies of its Amarindians, and speak glowingly about an unatained democracy. Yet, Native American reservations resemble internment camps ravaged by the Corona virus, alcoholism, diabetes, suicides, disappeared women and many poor country ills. Their plights when considered, makes the United States a country composed of a patchwork of third world sovereign nations within one of the richest "First World" countries on the planet. All because of endemic neglect, greed and racism.

 

True to the traditions of the dominant society's European origins, America is economically and politically run like a medieval society with a veneer of democracy which does not need a titled king and queen, royals or nobles over vassals. The Longest Walk highlighted the only added feature to America’s struggle with equality, a fight against the creation of an indigenous untouchable underclass. These truths we can see now playing out in the Senate’s hesitancy to confirm Representative Deb Haaland to a trusted position on President Joe Biden’s multiethnic cabinet. 

In spite of our president's efforts, the fight continues for equal rights and representation to higher offices by people of color. 

Confirm a Native American for the selected Cabinet post.