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Harjo: Native people, like 'extinct' bird, survive
Friday, May 13, 2005
"The honorable ivory-billed woodpecker has returned from the dead and is living in a wildlife refuge in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. It seemed to disappear in 1944 and was long presumed extinct.
This spirit bird's reappearance 60 years later reinforces a wise instruction by Native elders: 'Never give up on anyone.'
Then and now, I think how Native peoples have been pushed out of our natural homelands and how long we have lived at the edge of extinction. The Native population hemisphere-wide was over 100 million in 1491. By 1900, it was under 1 million.
In the U.S. at the turn of last century, there were fewer than 240,000 Native people. The good news is that there were 2 million American Indians by 2000 and that Native populations are increasing in every country.
It is a miracle of survivance that there are Native people alive in sufficient numbers to assure a future as Native people."
Get the Story:
Suzan Shown Harjo: Never give up on anyone
(Indian Country Today 5/12)
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