Despite the difficulties,
racial justice organizers in the Northwest are fighting and winning important
victories. I spoke with organizers from several states and communities about
how the racial realities of the region have shaped their approaches to making
change in the Northwest.
Against White Supremacy—Up
South
If the rest of the country and the world thinks about racial justice struggles
in the Northwest, chances are they think of white supremacists: Aryan Nations,
Militia of Montana, Posse Comitatus, the Order, neo-Nazi skinheads, and
various anti-Indian groups. Loretta Ross, who for many years organized against
the Klan and other bigots down South with the Center for Democratic Renewal,
only half-jokingly refers to the Northwest as up South. But unlike the South, whites in the Northwest
have never been made to answer for white supremacy, which has reigned here
since the end of the Indian Wars.
As director of the Seattle-based
Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, Eric Ward fights organized bigots
in a six-state region that stretches from Washington to Wyoming. Ward was
trained by human rights organizers who cut their teeth in the South, but
the racial realities of the Northwest have given rise to a different organizing
approach.
"In the South there's
a large black community that would be sympathetic to taking on the Klan.
That doesn't exist here in the Northwest," says Ward. "And so
you have to engage a constituency that, because of white privilege and societal
bigotry, doesn't often see its interest in taking on the white nationalist
movement." (White nationalism is a social movement whose members believe
the U.S. is a white nation but that whites have lost control of the state.
While some are members of white supremacist groups, the majority are not.)
The Coalition has built
a network of local human rights groups that: provide support to hate crime
victims; pressure local school boards to adopt culturally relevant curricula;
maneuver to block white nationalist efforts at mainstreaming themselves;
and work on issues ranging from attacks on abortion clinics to anti-immigrant
organizing. "While people of color are ultimately affected most by
the growth of the white nationalist movement, it's middle class whites who
are being recruited. We're out here competing for this same constituency,"
said Ward.
Since its founding in
1987, the Coalition has evolved into something uncommon: a people-of-color-run
group that organizes rural whites. Ward and other racial justice organizers
note the importance of whites learning to take leadership from people of
color, particularly on issues of race. Challenging anywhere, this work takes
on a particular character in rural towns in states like Wyoming and Idaho.
"We're often interacting with people who have never dealt with a person
of color in a leadership position," Ward says. "Some have never
met a person of color. We deal with what I'd call common, normalized racism
and stereotypes all the time." But, says Ward, the real challenge comes
from, "larger, well-resourced organizations that are simply not as
supportive of people of color leading a large white constituency as they
are of white people leading large people-of-color constituencies."
Ward concedes that people
of color in this country are more likely to die as a result of institutionalized
racism than at the hands of violent bigots. "So, as people of color
organizers, we tend to believe that it's not a priority to fight white nationalism
and we tend to let white people off the hook for this work, as well."
But in dismissing the
movement as marginal "extremists" we overlook its influence on
mainstreamed, institutionalized racism. After all, it's a short walk from
David Duke's 1980s attacks on affirmative action as "reverse discrimination"
to the current mainstream attacks. He asks, "If we believe that our progressive social movements can fundamentally restructure
society, why would we think that reactionary social movements cannot?"
Enlarging Indian Country
This whole region was
once Indian Country. Five hundred years after colonization began, Native
Americans struggle to shed an invisibility that aids and abets continuing
genocide. "It's a little bit better in Montana," says Indian People's
Action director Janet Robideau, "because the Indian vote is significant."
Montana's population is about 8% Native American and there are seven reservations
spread across the state. Tribal
governments have won a certain level of political clout, but the half of
Montana's Indians who live off-reservation have had no organized voice for
their communities.
"Everyone assumed
that our issues were on sovereignty and fishing and water," explains
Robideau, who organizes urban Indians in Montana. "It's not that we
don't care about those things—we care deeply about whether our people
remain as sovereign nations. But we're also trying to deal with the fact
that our kids are getting kicked out of the school system and harassed by
law enforcement, and we can't get jobs."
Northern Cheyenne and
Sioux, Robideau grew up on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation amidst vicious
racism. She recalls signs in local stores that read "No Dogs and No
Indians Allowed," and an incident where white parents pelted her school
bus with eggs and tomatoes after a basketball game, "because our team
was good." "These days most people aren't quite as blatant,"
she says. "But people who don't dare say anything to an African-American,
Asian or Latina feel quite comfortable saying those types of things to Native
Americans."
In 1992, Robideau was
organizing nursing homes for the Montana Coalition for Nursing Home Reform.
When they stalled in negotiations, the coalition brought the Reverend Jesse
Jackson to town for a rally that attracted a big Montana crowd (2000) including
hundreds of Indian People from Missoula. "I was amazed," Robideau
said. "I thought there were maybe thirty of us who lived here! I found
out that there were actually closer to 1800 at the time. When I saw all
those Indian people at the rally, I thought 'We have to unite our voice.'"
Robideau set out to do just that, but had trouble raising
money for the project. Having seen a number of Indian groups start up only
to flounder and disappear a year later, she was cautious. She took a job
with Montana People's Action, a predominantly white statewide community
group organizing low-and moderate-income residents on such issues as health
access and living wages. There, Robideau proposed organizing an urban Indian
chapter, got the green light in 1996 and spent a full year lining up funding.
Indian People's Action (IPA) started up the following year.
IPA was established as
a direct-action organization committed to leadership development in the
context of issue campaigns. Its mission is to "address the issues of
institutionalized racism and change those by setting policies that are going
to ensure fair and equitable treatment of Indian people." Says Robideau,
"We need to change those systems that set our people up to fail."
The group draws members from all across the vast state, keeping her on the
road a good deal of the time.
Urban
Indians weren't sure what to make of Robideau's organizing at first. Accustomed
to being courted for their votes, many assumed that was her motive and would
ask, "Is it election time again?" Culturally, the most difficult
part of direct action organizing in Indian Country has been the issue of
dues. "I would go to a house and visit and talk about IPA and how we
together can change things, and that the organization needed to be supported,
and people often took offense," remembers Robideau. "In our culture,
it was the equivalent of offering to help someone, and then asking them
for payment."
Ultimately,
what got new members over that hurdle was IPA's campaign on racism in public
schools. "I'd tell people, 'Look, our grandparents went through this;
our parents went through this; we went through this; our children are going
through this in the public school system and if we don't change it our grandchildren
will experience it. That," she says, "is what really resonated
with members, so they were willing to pay the dues."
Of
the many problems Indians face in schools is denial of their very existence.
"We had kids graduating from school who didn't know that there are
seven reservations and thirteen tribes in the state," says Robideau.
IPA joined with other groups to craft the Indian Education for All Act.
"Our portion of that says that public education curriculum will be
culturally relevant, include Montana's Indian history and be taught by culturally
competent instructors." With lots of hard work, the Act passed in 1999.
The
organization has branched out into other problem areas such as job discrimination
and police harassment. In 2000, IPA ran a campaign against racial profiling
by the Missoula police department. Robideau recounts that youth were targeted
by police as gang members because of their clothes and for daring to congregate
in public and that driving while Indian was treated like a moving violation.
IPA turned out 100 Indians for an accountability session with the Missoula
chief of police and pressed a series of demands. "From that,"
says Robideau, "they now have a mandatory dismantling racism training
program for all law enforcement and emergency personnel that we designed
and is Native American-specific."
Despite the group's name,
there are white members of IPA. "Our very first members realized that
if we were an Indians-only group, sooner or later that would work against
us," says Robideau. "Besides, we also wanted to build bridges
of understanding. A white person could say the exact same thing as me to
a white audience and somehow it would take hold where I wouldn't be heard.
We understood that and said the goal is to have more people understand what
we endure and help us change it. But a lot of times where there are white
people involved in organizations like ours, they do the speaking and the
Indian people are in the background.
So IPA has a hard-and-fast rule that only Indian people will speak
publicly for the organization."
Robideau says this arrangement
has been successful, and that the rare threat of division within the base
has been between tribes. "One of the greatest tragedies for us as people
of color is that we allow outsiders to come in and agitate us and turn us
against each other," she says. Asked whether IPA has built relationships
with other communities of color in the state, Robideau points out that Indians
and whites account for 98.7% of Montana's population. There are small communities
scattered around—Latin@s in Billings, African-Americans
in Great Falls and Hmong in Missoula. Amazingly, Robideau says, "We
have people who say, 'Why is all the attention going to the Hmong community?
You pay more attention to the Hmong than you do to me!' That's divide-and-conquer
and we add to it when we allow people to turn us against each other."
Looking back on IPA's
accomplishments in its first five years, Robideau notes that before IPA,
"there was no urban Indian voice. Everybody knew where the tribes stood
on issues but nobody even recognized us as being part of the community as
Indian people, or that we had issues." She adds, "What's really
changed in terms of the climate in Montana is that we're organizing. Indian
people are saying 'we have lived with this for generations and it's time
that it changed.'"
Robideau recounts the
conversations she had as a child with her grandfather, Alec Blackhorse,
about racism. "I would say, 'Why do these people do that? We need to
fight back.' And he said, 'No. You have to feel sorry for them. They don't
know any better. You have to say a prayer for them.' So I took what he said
for years and then I said, 'OK, I'm going to pray for them. And then I'm
going to kick the crap out of them! I'm tired of this!'"
