Jan 15, 2019 - Oglala Sioux President Responds to Trump’s Racism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 14, 2019

Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner Issues Statement on Trump’s latest Racism

President Donald Trump has reached a new low in a series of progressive lows. Trump returned to a familiar dynamic when the U.S. President debased Native women using Pocahontas, a victim of child-rape, as a racial slur to attack U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Trump degrades our entire species, as well as Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women #MMIW, when engaging in such vitriol as suggesting Senator Warren’s husband should “dress up indian” and that both of them should have filmed Senator Warren’s beer swilling live-feed supporting her run for presidency from “Big Horn or Wounded Knee” and that Warren’s husband should have donned “full indian garb” “then it would have been a smash.”

As Original Civilizers of what is now called the “Western hemisphere”, as survivors of genocide fully cognizant of our place in this universe, it is important to always remind the world that our holocaust is denied by this country while at the same time a majority of this country is hungry for the truth, a majority of this country does not want to continue the lies we tell ourselves about our history, a majority knows that truth necessarily precedes conciliation yet this is a conciliation we have always been willing to seek as Indigenous nations. Now is time for truth. We welcomed you as neighbors and signed treaties with you knowing that you have consciences you must answer just as we do. Because we are willfully ignorant of our histories, my people are now dying a slow genocide which is the intended result of U.S. policy toward Tribal Nations.

Racism is wrong. Racism, a creation of bigotry, shall find no shelter in the world of today; we join all of diverse humanity in condemning racists who, by their actions, degrade our collective spiritual dignity. 

Holding American workers’ hostage is wrong, extorting compliance from them in the same way the U.S. extorted compliance from us during the sign or starve era of our recent past is wrong. Shutting down the American government for the longest period in history to build a racist monument, putting thousands of federal employees serving Indian Country at the Department of Interior, Indian Health Services and other vital areas of everyday life for us, is wrong. This is already unconscionable yet here I am responding to ignorance while I am preparing for life threatening emergencies set to befall our people if the shutdown does not end. 

We must all awaken, together. We must seek our truths and stand in the power of our peace. We must uphold our sacred covenants with Mother Earth & universal reality. All institutions of law, economics and politics must reflect a more evolved understanding of human interdependence with all that surrounds us, all that we are. We will send this message in Washington DC, Jan. 18, 2019 at the Indigenous Peoples March.  

Wopila Tanka Icicapelo

President Julian Bear Runner, Oglala Sioux Tribe