Flags, fireworks and freedom may come to mind on July Fourth. But others in the U.S. don’t view America’s 250th anniversary as a celebration.
For some Native American families, the country’s complicated past shapes how they see the holiday.
At a recent rally hosted by the Next250 coalition, hundreds of people gathered in McPherson Square in D.C. to mark the upcoming anniversary. Johnson Taylor, from the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma and the Southern Ute Tribe of Colorado, performed on stage with his family.
He told the crowd that Native American people “haven’t been here for 250 years” and said “we were here 200 million years before,” which drew an uproar of cheers from the crowd.
“We didn’t cook out, we didn’t celebrate what was going on,” Taylor said after leaving the stage. “When I was little, I didn’t even know what Fourth of July was. I thought it was all about fireworks.”
He said his understanding of the holiday changed as he got older and learned more about what his people endured, including hearing from his parents about their history and realizing that what he was taught in school was “what the government wanted us to learn.”
Taylor’s wife, Katy Isennock, who is from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, said July Fourth “has nothing to do with our culture.”
Isennock said she believes efforts to remove parts of America’s history from museums and textbooks have left out important facts.
“They don’t want to let people know the true history of America, and how it was actually built, and it was built on the backs of our people, African American people, and they want to erase that.”
Isennock said she homeschools their children, teaching them the history not taught in schools. And by showing up at events like this, they’re sharing those stories — and their culture — with anyone who’s willing to listen.
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