Starting off by playing a traditional Native American “wake up” song, author and scholar, Dr. Luana Ross, spoke to CSUN students about treatment of American Indians in the past and present on Monday.
Ross started by giving the history of the criminalization of indigenous people- incorporating her own ties to the subject, being Native American herself.
After researching the criminalization of her people in Montana, Ross came across a police document detailing the incarceration of her uncle.
Ross explained that she always saw her uncle as a sweet man, someone who would have never committed a crime. After talking to one of her relatives about the incident, Ross found that her uncle, who was convicted of stealing a truck, never committed the crime. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time but Ross believes he was convicted at least partly because he was Native American.
The incarceration of her uncle was just one example of the colonization of indigenous people, according to Ross.
Native Americans have been confined by the government and those of power in forts, boarding schools, prisons and reservations as a way to control them and “colonization has everything to do with control,” said Ross.
Another example of control Ross showed people was the use of passes to leave the reservation. In certain reservations in order to leave Native Americans had to ask a local native agent for a pass in order to leave the reservation for a certain amount of time. Ross said not only were the indigenous controlled by having to be confined in certain places, their movement was controlled as well.
These acts did not just happen in the past, they are happening today.
Junior Sociology major, Jennifer Benitez, and CSUN alum, Blake Suddith, were amazed at how Native Americans are treated today.
“It was interesting to learn about the discrimination of Indian’s in the past,” said Benitez. “And all the racist things still happening and how people are so unaware,” said Suddith.
Ross explained that even today their are still anti-Native American organizations and individuals who openly discriminate against Indians.
She showed a sign that an army veteran put up in a reservation addressed to Native Americans that said “I will kill you if you step in my land.” There was another example where “rocky boys go to hell!”, rocky boys referred to the people on the reservation, was scratched onto an object.
Ross went on to say that Native Americans are criminalized in high rates and that this act of removal has been experienced by Native Americans for a long time now.
“[Native Americans] have been removed from their land and from their culture so imprisoning them is just another form of removal,” said Ross. “It’s about time we start acting with love and compassion for one another to stop this discrimination.”
