This is my first newsletter and it has been quite a learning experience. I have a lot to improve on next month!

Hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends! Nizhónígo Tązhii Day! 🦃 #NoThankstaking Wopida!

An unusual amount of national media coverage of Native Americans surrounded the 2018 Midterms—which means it was not zero as is what we are accustomed to expect. From the North Dakota ID law to the election of the first two Native congresswomen, Native people were in the news.

Today you can read my analysis on the election in Truthout (see below). Just so you know, my working title was "In Partisan America, the Native American Vote Rules: How A Little Known Demographic Maintains the Balance of Power in Congress." I know, long. You can also hear the KBOO Wednesday Talk Radio show I co-hosted on Native American political and ethical leadership online. The show includes an interview I did with Congresswoman-elect Deb Haaland when she was in Portland. On Thanksgiving Eve, I was on a panel Art & Power: Centering the Voices of Native Artists here at Portland State University. I closed out the evening reading aloud my take on Thanksgiving (see below).

But really, for me, the theme of this month was "Make America Native Again" or MANA for short (and you can buy the hats here). And that began in October as more cities across the country gave up the ghost on Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples' Day. I examined this in a piece I wrote for Yes! Magazine: Beyond Columbus Day: Changing the Name Is Just the First Step and spoke to Klee Benally on KBOO. He helped organize protests in Flagstaff on Indigenous Peoples' Day. 13 are now facing misdemeanor charges.

In October, I also addressed Senator Elizabeth Warren's announcement of her DNA results (see below) and shared a byline for the first time with Kelly Hayes, (Menominee) for NBC News' THINK (link below). Then I did it again with Terri Hansen, (Ho-Chunk) for a post-election piece for Yes! Magazine “We Are Still Here”: Native Americans Win a Voice in Government. It was wonderful collaborating with both of these talented Native women. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In November, Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears, a book I edited in 2017 is also having a moment. The book is featured by Powell's City of Books for Native American Heritage Month in their store here in Portland, Oregon (see photo below) with a number of other amazing Native-authored books. The bookstore's blog published an essay I wrote "Trump vs. Bears Ears: Five Tribes Take a Stand for Their Collective Histories on the Land, and the U.S. President Dismantles It." In it, I quoted from my famous (or infamous?) Thanksgiving essay "Thanksgiving and the Hidden Heart of Evil." This bit of writing has been published all over the world in many different languages over the years and was republished in The New York Times last year. Words, it seems, have a life of their own.

I have one more piece to finish writing that is a special request from my uncle, Sam Deloria. He takes issue with the way the word 'tribal' is being used by talking heads on tv when they are discussing the political divide in this country. The working title of my response is "It’s Not Tribalism, Let’s Call It What It is: Terror." And the even longer subtitle is "The American Dream Has Always Been About White Affirmative Action and Terror for Everyone Else."

We'll see if any editor is brave enough to carry it! In any case, happy MANA!

You can read the rest of the Make America Native Again newsletter here. And sign up here.

This is a piece I wrote. When a writer begins writing they don't necessarily know what is going to come out. On that day, in a kitchen in Berkeley, this is what came out of me. I'd like to say "I wrote that" or "these are my thoughts", but in some way writing to me is like alchemy. It is a mix of stuff you don't always know consciously. The magic that is family stories, heritage, experience are what come out. What does it mean to be a "Native American"? Well, I feel this piece went some way in finding that answer for me.


I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving.

This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people.

Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing "Land of the Pilgrim's pride" in "America the Beautiful." Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing "Land of the Indian's pride" instead.

I was proud to sing the new lyrics in school, but I sang softly. It was enough for me to know the difference. At six, I felt I had learned something very important. As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors, and I learned that my family possessed some "inside" knowledge of what really happened when those poor, tired masses came to our homes.

When the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they were poor and hungry -- half of them died within a few months from disease and hunger. When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, they were in a pitiful state. He spoke English, having traveled to Europe, and took pity on them. Their English crops had failed. The native people fed them through the winter and taught them how to grow their food.

These were not merely "friendly Indians." They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary -- but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing. Among many of our peoples, showing that you can give without holding back is the way to earn respect. Among the Dakota, my father's people, they say, when asked to give, "Are we not Dakota and alive?" It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all -- the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving.

To the Pilgrims, and most English and European peoples, the Wampanoags were heathens, and of the Devil. They saw Squanto not as an equal but as an instrument of their God to help his chosen people, themselves.

Since that initial sharing, Native American food has spread around the world. Nearly 70 percent of all crops grown today were originally cultivated by Native American peoples. I sometimes wonder what they ate in Europe before they met us. Spaghetti without tomatoes? Meat and potatoes without potatoes? And at the "first Thanksgiving" the Wampanoags provided most of the food -- and signed a treaty granting Pilgrims the right to the land at Plymouth, the real reason for the first Thanksgiving.

What did the Europeans give in return? Within 20 years European disease and treachery had decimated the Wampanoags. Most diseases then came from animals that Europeans had domesticated. Cowpox from cows led to smallpox, one of the great killers of our people, spread through gifts of blankets used by infected Europeans. Some estimate that diseases accounted for a death toll reaching 90 percent in some Native American communities. By 1623, Mather the elder, a Pilgrim leader, was giving thanks to his God for destroying the heathen savages to make way "for a better growth," meaning his people.

In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.

I see, in the "First Thanksgiving" story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.

Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.

Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.

And the healing can begin.

So, here it is, my ode to the holiday. Enjoy.



I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving.

This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people.

Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing "Land of the Pilgrim's pride" in "America the Beautiful." Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing "Land of the Indian's pride" instead.

I was proud to sing the new lyrics in school, but I sang softly. It was enough for me to know the difference. At six, I felt I had learned something very important. As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors, and I learned that my family possessed some "inside" knowledge of what really happened when those poor, tired masses came to our homes.

When the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they were poor and hungry -- half of them died within a few months from disease and hunger. When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, they were in a pitiful state. He spoke English, having traveled to Europe, and took pity on them. Their English crops had failed. The native people fed them through the winter and taught them how to grow their food.

These were not merely "friendly Indians." They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary -- but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing. Among many of our peoples, showing that you can give without holding back is the way to earn respect. Among the Dakota, my father's people, they say, when asked to give, "Are we not Dakota and alive?" It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all -- the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving.

To the Pilgrims, and most English and European peoples, the Wampanoags were heathens, and of the Devil. They saw Squanto not as an equal but as an instrument of their God to help his chosen people, themselves.

Since that initial sharing, Native American food has spread around the world. Nearly 70 percent of all crops grown today were originally cultivated by Native American peoples. I sometimes wonder what they ate in Europe before they met us. Spaghetti without tomatoes? Meat and potatoes without potatoes? And at the "first Thanksgiving" the Wampanoags provided most of the food -- and signed a treaty granting Pilgrims the right to the land at Plymouth, the real reason for the first Thanksgiving.

What did the Europeans give in return? Within 20 years European disease and treachery had decimated the Wampanoags. Most diseases then came from animals that Europeans had domesticated. Cowpox from cows led to smallpox, one of the great killers of our people, spread through gifts of blankets used by infected Europeans. Some estimate that diseases accounted for a death toll reaching 90 percent in some Native American communities. By 1623, Mather the elder, a Puritan leader, was giving thanks to his God for destroying the heathen savages to make way "for a better growth," meaning his people.

In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.

I see, in the "First Thanksgiving" story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.

Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.

Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.

And the healing can begin.