Friend,
Yesterday was marking 55 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Communities were coming together across the country and the world to remember the civil rights leader. We honor him by carrying on his legacy for freedom, civil rights, and justice for all -- including by ending systemic racism.
The civil rights movement compelled the passage of transformational policies like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded the protection of the right to vote for People of Color and included Native and tribal voting rights.
MLK fought for Native rights, calling out how “our nation was born in genocide” and supporting tribal leaders in Alabama when Native children were blocked from attending newly desegregated schools.
Yesterday we continued MLK’s struggle for the dream of justice and restoring the “Beloved Community” of a multi-racial democracy, because Native, Black, and other communities of color are still facing economic inequality and barriers to voting.
As MLK wrote in his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail :
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
This is in line with the teachings of Indigenous cultures’, which often acknowledges the inherent relationship between all beings and the natural world. As the Lakota people say, Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ (we are all related). We are kin with all life, and our struggles are intertwined. Together, we continue to build upon our ancestors’ collective action to build a truly just, multi-racial democracy for all.
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Thank you for carrying on MLK’s dream and honoring his legacy.
Hawwih (thank you),
Judith Le Blanc (Caddo)
Executive Director.
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