TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' DAY

"Dances of indigenous people" by smoczatko is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In 2018, the New Mexico legislature session passed a bill to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This year, New Mexico will be celebrating its second Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

What Can I Do?

• Download the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Toolkit from IllumiNative to learn more about how you can support the holiday and educate yourself, friends, and family by being an effective ally to Native people.:

• Support coronavirus relief for Native communities (which have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic) by contributing to the First Nations Development Institute’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund.

• Attend a virtual event like this panel featuring young Native activists from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian or the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Convergence from the Greater Cincinnati Native American Coalition.

In alliance with the occasion of Indigenous Peoples' Day, we share this excerpt of poet, musician, and playwright Joy Harjo discussing how her work tries to bring Native people back to a culture that has disappeared them, along with a poem.

Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit by Joy Harjo

Don’t bother the earth spirit who lives here. She is working on a story. It is the oldest story in the world and it is delicate, changing. If she sees you watching she will invite you in for coffee, give you warm bread, and you will be obligated to stay and listen. But this is no ordinary story. You will have to endure earthquakes, lightning, the deaths of all those you love, the most blinding beauty. It’s a story so compelling you may never want to leave; this is how she traps you. See that stone finger over there? That is the only one who ever escaped.

For more about Joy Harjo and her poetry, visit https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joy-harjo