¡Colores!; Interview with Melanie Yazzie

I'm thinking for their cameras, yeah, and so when, yeah, when I go to other places where there aren't like a bunch of like brown students at other universities, I'm always just like, whoa, not every place. Oh, we're about to go. Melanie, thank you for joining us. How did this movement to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day, King Traction? Sure. So, this might be a history not a lot of people know here in New Mexico, but around 2013-2014, it was a student movement actually, it was established at UNM. And so UNM, Kiva Club, which is the native student organization on campus, really spearheaded trying to get the seal of the university changed. Of course, there were conversations around Indigenous Peoples Day happening nationally. And so it seemed like the right time for students, particularly native students at UNM, to try to start to change sort of the symbolic racism that native people experience, whether

it's through a seal or whether it's through the name of holidays like Columbus Day. And so it was the efforts that really originated in 2014 to change the race of seal at UNM that was the seed that grew into trying to get Indigenous Peoples Day established in Albuquerque. There were a lot of other things going on locally in Albuquerque, the Red Nation, which is the grassroots native organization that I organized with was established in late 2014. And so there were a lot of different things brewing at that time. And so Kiva Club and the Red Nation started to work together on the seal issue within the university that was a very successful campaign. They changed the seal a couple of years ago, but it was kind of out of that that we were like, hey, we could actually do this at the city level too. And then we started organizing on that in late 2014, early 2015. And now it's a state holiday. It is. Yeah, I think it's important. So I'm a historian of social movements, particularly Native social movements, as well as somebody who participates in these movements. And I think it's important for folks to understand that history comes from the bottom up in these ways.

And so I think that the New Mexico's decision to make IPD at the state level is something that should be applauded. But I think it's important for folks to remember that it actually started with students. And it started with grassroots native people doing the work. How has this changed possible because these issues have been around for a long time? I mean, what has been going on in North America over the last five to seven years? I think starting with Idle No More in Canada and the occupation of Apache Stronghold out of San Carlos in 2015. And then, of course, with Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017, the occupation of Mauna Kea in 2015, that there was something brewing with Native movements. There was a new, I think, iteration, a new kind of movement that was coming into existence in the last five to seven years. And so issues about indigenous liberation, about decolonization, regaining new traction at a national and international level. And so I think indigenous peoples, they was part of that really beautiful kind of upswing of indigenous resistance. How do you get people to change their minds to listen and understand? That's a really, I mean, that's a good question.

The way, I'll just talk about how we organized indigenous peoples day. The way we did that is we organized with the Albuquerque City Council in 2015. We held several press conferences where we invited media, had multi-generational speakers, Ray Garduño, who was at that time a city council member, a really championed the resolution through the Albuquerque City Council. And what we did was we just tried to utilize media in the best way possible. And for us, what's really important is that indigenous peoples day, it's not the be-all and end-all, right? And the struggle continues. But we treated it as a vehicle for elevating a lot of other struggles that we're going to take a much longer time to change. For example, MMIW, missing and murdered indigenous women, which has also gained national recognition now on the national platform. And resource extraction, which is a huge issue for native people in this state. And so really treating IPD as a vehicle for elevating people who are doing work on these much more difficult. I think politically difficult sometimes issues. And so yeah, and also celebrating the victory of indigenous peoples day, because that was

a really big victory, getting 1,000 native people out on the streets to march for the first indigenous peoples day in Albuquerque in 2015, had not happened in 40 years in Albuquerque. And we had old aimsters, like people from the Red Power era, emailing us. American Indian movement. The American Indian movement, sorry, emailing us and being like, wow, we haven't seen this kind of groundswell of resistance in this region for a really long time, and they were crying. I mean, it was a, it's so reminding ourselves that victories are really important. They help to boost the morale. And like, I think that the feeling that people have from that is what helps carry that message forward. What does it mean to continue along the path of achieving justice and respect? What does it mean, justice and respect? Well, the way that we frame it in the Red Nation is more about kind of traditions of native resistance and decolonization and liberation. And so the place of indigenous peoples day, I think in these long struggles, we are obviously right, because I was just talking about how the American Indian movement, folks from the

Red Power era, were really applauding our victory in 2015, that that history, that they were a part of, that we're simply building upon that, which is just a new generation, trying to bring some of those same demands about sovereignty, about decolonization, about treaty rights into sort of our contemporary moment. And so that tradition of resistance is something we're very much building upon. And so when we think about justice and respect, we're really just asking for the same things that indigenous people have been asking for, for generations, and that these asks or these demands are what are traditions, right, thinking about the history of resistance is really about, it's what it's formulated around. And so as we look into the future, we're going to continue to make the same demands, just for basic human rights, for dignity, and just for respect as indigenous people, because we often don't get it. And indigenous peoples day is a moment to celebrate our dignity and our life. And I think it gives people a hope that there is a future that doesn't have so much violence on a future that is decolonized that is actually possible.

What does it feel like for you to be part of this new generation and seeing these victories? I'm 37, I was born in the early 1980s. I have not lived a life where I saw Native people rising up in mass, I think the way people maybe who had lived through the 60s and the 70s got to see. And so there's nothing for people of my generation or younger, well actually younger now because of Trump's presidency, there's actually been a huge amount of grassroots mobilization in the last three years in the United States. But there was no example, like a concrete example for me to kind of embody as I was moving forward. And so for my generation to see Standing Rock, to see this cluster of movements with Mauna Kea and Oak Flat, that felt like it was our moment, the moment for my generation, I guess I would be a millennial, I guess I count as a millennial, that that was something real that we could grasp on to. And it means everything. I mean, we have been told by elders who have been doing this work for 40, 50 years that they're actually really proud to see our generation of people rising up.

And they trust that the future will be brighter because there is a generation of younger native people who've taken up this long tradition of resistance. What's next? What needs to be done? So I'll just talk about what the Red Nation is doing. On November 5th, which is one year away from the 2020 presidential election, we're going to do a national rollout of the Red Deal. It's something that we've written in response to the Green New Deal in conversation with it's not really a challenge, but the Red Deal is something that's actually prioritizing Indigenous decolonization and liberation, that's very critical of capitalism, militarization. So we believe that, of course, the symbolic change that's represented by Indigenous People's Day is one step towards sort of larger goals, like I said, it's a vehicle for larger goals. And the Red Deal is basically a national platform for having a very large political conversation that centers Indigenous people and doesn't marginalize us, because I think we're often marginalized in the national political sphere. So that's something that we're doing.

So there's a direct lineage, I think, between IPD four years ago and where we're at now with what we're organizing around. We continue to do work on gender and sexual violence against Native women, continuing to do a lot of work on trying to get moratorium on fracking in northwestern New Mexico. So there are a lot of different things that the Red Nation is doing. So there's a real change that's attached to the symbolic change, like IPD. What continues to motivate you personally to keep doing this work? It's my love for my people. It's my love for the land and the water. Right, we have a very short clock, climate scientists have told us in the earlier part of 2019 that we have a very short clock to address the harm that we've caused through fossil fuel industry and carbon emissions to the world. And so as Indigenous people, we understand the earth, the water, the plants, and humans as our relatives. And so I was taught that to be a good relative means you caretake. It means you engage in reciprocity, you live in harmony with your relatives.

And so for me, it's really simple, I just am living who I am, as a DNA woman, as an Indigenous woman, and just trying to be a steward of the future. And in the Red Nation, that's really how we see ourselves. We don't really belong to the present, we belong to the future. This is the discourse of future generations that I think maybe you hear sometimes from Native activists. So it's deeply personal, but it's also just an obligation, I feel. Not just to my own people, but the world, because pretty much all life depends on our ability to address these things effectively, really quickly. So yeah. Melanie, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you for inviting me, I really appreciate it.