Our beloved relative and friend, Bizzy Feekes, died last week. You can read more about her on the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery’s Facebook page (scroll down to about July 12). Bizzy was the Coalition’s Artist-in-Residence last year and was one of our shining lights. She is on the left in the above photo,with Sarah Augustine and Sara Gurulé. The photo was taken at the Coalition’s annual meeting in Minneapolis on June 29.
I lost my little sister this week. I saw her just a dozen days ago, on the last weekend of June. Just 26 years old, she was vital, beautiful, amazing. We made plans for the future, plans I was invested in. We celebrated together.
Just a little over ten days later, she was dead. I don’t know the details of what happened in her final hours. Perhaps no one does. But from my point of view, she succumbed to the systems of Empire that are designed to destroy our people. Like tens of thousands of Indigenous people, she succumbed; she found she could not go on.
There are so few of us left – it is estimated that there were 100 million Indigenous People in North and South America combined in 1490. By 1900, there were just 6 million left alive. To the project of settler colonialism, we are a speed bump: an unnecessary, obstructionist, barrier to progress. In this view, our only function is to die, get out of the way, disappear. All of the institutions in our society are designed to forward a narrative where we do not exist. The education system, the healthcare system, the criminal justice system, the commerce and transportation systems – every system reinforces a narrative of triumphalism, where those who have power deserve it because they are righteous. The elect rule because they are ordained to rule; if they were not, God would not give them the privilege and weight of power.
It is difficult for me to express how dehumanizing it is to be an Indigenous child in this country. I will try. As a child, I was told that I was ugly, that I was backward, that I didn’t fit. That my ideas are backward. That I have nothing to contribute. I was told the only way to participate in society is to assimilate, and simultaneously, that assimilation is not for me.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to So That We and Our Children May Live to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.