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MTU group works to fight DAPL

Photo provided by the Michigan Tech University Center for Diversity and Inclusion Native American speaker Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of the book, "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States," drew a capacity crowd when she spoke at Michigan Tech in October.

HOUGHTON — A Michigan Tech group, keenly aware of the concerns of indigenous people, met Monday to support Native American efforts to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline and protect drinking water.

One member of the group is Miguel Levy, a busy professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at Michigan Tech University who took part in a protest last week at the Houghton branch of Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo is one of several financial institutions backing the pipeline’s construction.

“As to the meeting … it dealt with our ongoing Indigenous Peoples’ Day campaign and on supporting Standing Rock NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline),” Levy said. “A key purpose of the campaign is to make people at the university and in the local community aware about Indigenous peoples’ rights and about the injustices perpetrated. We, of course, see the resistance of the water protectors at Standing Rock as part and parcel of what is needed to redress these injustices.”

The group explains its position in a statement.

“The Indigenous Peoples’ Day Campaign at Michigan Tech is an ongoing effort to officially recognize the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” the statement says. “Our campaign is aligned with a rising nationwide effort-several cities, states, and universities across our country have replaced the federal Columbus Day holiday. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a counter-celebration, a criticism of the memorialization of European colonization and settlement through acts of injustice, dispossession, uprooting, and decimation of entire populations of Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

“The Indigenous Peoples’ Day Campaign was launched locally by Michigan Tech’s Indigenous Issues Discussion Group with the support of Michigan Tech’s Center for Diversity & Inclusion,” the statement says. “The campaign rapidly spread to include the larger Tech community, Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College, and many community members from Houghton and Baraga counties.

“It is not widely known that Michigan Tech’s campus is located on territory ceded to the United States by the Ojibwe people during the Treaty of 1842″ to preserve hunting, fishing and gathering. This campaign recognizes the contributions of the Ojibwe people to Michigan Tech’s community and honors this relationship in the present day,” according to the statement.

The group helped sponsor several speakers, including a well known author and activist.

“Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz … wrote the book ‘An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.'” Levy said of the Native American historian and public speaker, who described the genocidal history of the United States from the perspective of Native Americans at Tech in October,

According a story in the Michigan Tech Lode, Ortiz detailed numerous violations of Article II of the United Nation’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, such as the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 where more than 300 starving Lakota were killed or wounded.

“Of the U.S. soldiers, roughly 30 died and 20 were awarded the Medal of Honor,” according to the Lode. “The massacre is still a victory in the U.S. military’s annals.”

Ortiz also discussed Native American boarding schools, like the one operated in Assinins, established by the U.S. government in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

“The children were typically taken away from their families by force in order to educate them by western standards, in an attempt to alienate them from their cultures … and they were punished for speaking their native tongues,” according to the Lode story. “Public acceptance, or ignorance of these acts is exemplified in the celebration of Columbus Day, a holiday that celebrates the genocidal western explorer who came upon a land already teeming with Native American civilizations before leaving them destroyed beyond all repair.”

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