Hey Y'all,
According to my mother my Grandmother was part Blackfoot and part African American. She was born in Savanna GA to a Native American mother and African father. In honor of Native American Heritage month I had a do a little research on African Native Americans and found a great site. Created by a Eve Winddancer a student at a CUNY school in 1999. The site provided a great deal of information of which I'd like to share.
Please be sure to visit the site for me.
African Native Americans: We are still here
Many people believe racial and ethnic groups in North
America have always lived as separately as they do now. However, segregation
was neither practical nor preferable when people who were not native to this
continent began arriving here. Europeans needed Indians as guides, trade
partners and military allies. They needed Africans to tend their crops and to
build an infrastructure.
Later, as the new American
government began to thrive, laws were drafted to protect the land and property
the colonists had acquired. These laws strengthened the powers of slave owners,
limited the rights of free Africans and barred most Indian rights altogether.
Today, black, white and red Americans still feel the aftershock of those laws.
In order to enforce the new laws, Indians and Africans had
to be distinguished from Europeans. Government census takers began visiting
Indian communities east of the Mississippi River in the late 1700s and
continued their task of identifying, categorizing, and counting individuals and
"tribes" well into the 20th century. In the earlier days of this
process, Native American communities that were found to be harboring escaped
African slaves were threatened with loss of their tribal status, thereby
nullifying their treaties with the U.S. government and relinquishing all claims
to their land.
Until next time...
MUAH!
