Tucson and Ethnic Cleansing

Original Author
mari
Original Body

Earlier this week the “decision to ban Chicano and Native American books follows the 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the Tucson Unified School District” and “then school administrators told Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any class units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes.”

  

What was the ethnic diversity of the 5 people that made this huge monumental decision and mess? Do they represent the community of Tucson?  Arizona has a large population of 1st Nations people and also a large Indigenous population.  It appears that the Tucson Unified School District wants to“white wash” us away, erase the past, and leave books that perpetuate stereotypes, and are saturated in lies.  

Interestingly enough, dominant society forgets that we are not “a minority,” we are First Nations people.  We have rights under the #United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People.  Such as under Article 8:

2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and

redress for:

(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them

of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values

or ethnic identities;

(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;

(e) Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite

racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.

Under this section, The Tucson Unified School District does  not have a right to ban books that might be “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” because that would be in violation of depriving First Nations people “of their integrity as distinct peoples and or ethnic identities.”

First Nations people have dual citizenship, our Nations have Sovereign rights and we have First Amendments rights like everyone else.  Public Schools have challenged First Amendment rights before with students that did not want to salute the flag for religious reasons.  The result of that case was #Justice Robert Jackson ruling that the Supreme Court must ensure

"scrupulous protection of constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes."

Justice Robert goes on to state-

#“If there is any fixed star in our Constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”


It appears that Tucson Unified School District is not being “scrupulous in protection of constitutional freedoms” and are attempting to “strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles” such as freedom of the press.  Arizona is allowing the Tucson unified school district to “prescribe what shall be done in …nationalism…or other matters of opinion”  

There has always been a sort of “intellectual blackout” regarding Native Americans.  

Dominant culture, “White America” does not want to see us as intellectual, critical thinkers.  In order to be “Experts” in anything in this country, we have to be taught (more often than not) by non-Natives, read what THEY want us to, go to THEIR schools and get “THEIR degrees.   The American government holds no respect for our Tribal ways or tribal governmental structures.  We learn about America’s finest heroes, and compassionate leaders, but we don’t often hear about how almost of them authorized deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing against Indigenous people.  The ban of books by Native American and Mexican American authors will not change history, but it is still a chilling metaphor of another type of “ethnic cleansing”.  

The United States has spent billions of dollars to vilify and criminalize Indigenous people and most recently under the disguise of “political correctness”.  Arizona gets the prize for not giving a rat’s ass about being “politically correct.” Nope! they are straight up and honest about their dislike of anyone that is brown skinned.  In one swoop, Tucson has potentially challenged the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and First Amendment Rights of the United States Constitution.  As the rest of the nation watches, Tucson is now Arizona ’s shining allstar of racist bigotry, because the censorship of literature and critical thought is only the beginning of further inherit rights being violated.

LaDuke had this to say about Arizona: “I heard someone say that if the states are the laboratory for democracy in the U.S., then Arizona is a meth lab, “I think they may be right.”

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