Geronimo code name sucker punch for Native peoples

Arcata, California: The mis-use of the name of the late and honored Apache chief, Geronimo, as code for Osama Bin Laden was a sucker punch to Native Peoples in the United States.

Indigenous Peoples’ continue experiencing our names, images, ceremonial items, spiritual practices and likenesses to be stereotyped and misrepresented in the media, and further exploited for external agendas. An end to this mistreatment is long overdue.

As an international Indigenous Peoples’ organization engaged in human rights work, Seventh Generation Fund is gravely concerned that Indigenous Peoples remain the final “frontier” for oppression — where discrimination and racism permeates the American consciousness, expressing itself in such ways as the code name “Geronimo.” It allows and encourages a government-sanctioned and instituted society-wide prejudice against Indigenous Peoples, providing suggestions of genocidal violence, and implies the authorization intention of harm with impunity.

We recognize that the United States can take positive steps to honor Indigenous Peoples and respect our rights. We urge President Barack Obama and this administration, to fully endorse and immediately implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This would be a stronger position of respect for Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Such positive action would resonate loudly around the world.

To describe the US military operation that produced assassination of Osama Bin Laden as Operation Geronimo is reprehensible and unacceptable.  Rectification of this grave violation of the dignity and honor of the Nations of Indigenous Peoples must be the immediate endorsement, without qualification, of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by President Obama and the US government.  We are not talking code language here.  It’s pretty simple.  Do the right thing, and finally - after 235 years, do it right, as stated by Tupac Enrique Acosta, boardmember of the Seventh Generation Fund

The Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development is an Indigenous identity-based non-profit organization whose mission is dedicated to promoting and maintaining the uniqueness of Native Peoples and the sovereignty of our distinct Nations.

Founded in 1977 by Native chiefs, clan-mothers, activists, youth, tribal philosophers and scholars, Seventh Generation Fund is the first Indigenous Peoples’ initiated and led intermediary international non-profit/social profit organization of its kind dedicated to tribal sovereignty and community empowerment in the United States. Our founders’ wisdom, experience and inspiration led them to create a culturally-relevant, responsive philanthropic and community development model which identifies and mobilizes resources to frontline initiatives striving to recover and retain traditional relationships to land, community and collective spirit.



www.7genfund.org



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