American Indian Activist: ‘We Are Consciously Deconstructing Euro-Hetero-Christian Programming’

EXCERPT:

IRON EYES: “It’s — you know, every year we go through these rituals, these are rituals, these holidays, these concepts, these — they’re part of our collective cultural mythology. And in America, there is a settler, a European, foreigner, alien settler cultural mythology. From my eyes as an indigenous person, we’ve been here for a lot longer than the settler institutions are telling us, are teaching our children in our schools. So when we hijack the truth and we put in its place something that is more palatable, something that eases our guilty settler conscience, it sets us up for conflict later on, because truth precedes justice. And justice precedes peace. So when we look at these holidays, you know, we have Native American Heritage Month, that’s going on right now. And we’re just now in a state where we’re consciously deconstructing Euro-hetero-Christian programming. You could call it settler programming. But that’s the truth.”