Don't ask me to celebrate the Oklahoma Land Run and Centennial Celebration.

By G. D. Tieyah (Comanche)

Would you ask a Jew to celebrate Kristallnacht? In one horrible night
Jewish life, culture and identity came under attack in a series of raids
upon Jews by the Nazis. Jewish businesses, houses of worship, homes and
lives were shattered in a night of Broken Glass. So again, would you ask a
Jew to celebrate Kristallnacht?

You wouldn't?

Then why would you ask an American Indian to celebrate the Oklahoma Land
Run and Centennial of Statehood?

In one moment, with one shot of a cannon the Oklahoma Land Run began in
which once again our lands and our sovereignty came under attack by
American settlers. Attacks which we continue to endure against our lands.
In that one moment, our livelihoods, our places of worship, our homes, and
our lives were trampled beneath the mad rush for land in Oklahoma.

For many of us, these Land Run celebrations and this Centennial celebration
commemorate a day in which our ways of life were assaulted and our lands
were forcibly invaded, despite having been reserved to us by treaties.
These treaties were signed in order to safeguard our lands and people and
were meant to allow us peace from continued assaults on our communities.
But bowing to greed for our lands, the U.S. broke its word and opened up
those very lands to a new type of assault: Land Speculation and Settlement.
Now, to see these celebrations is to be reminded of the lies, to be
reminded of the deaths of our ancestors and our families who fought to keep
these invaders from our lands. These celebrations are reminders of what we
had and how it was stolen from us.

But each year we are asked to participate in these celebrations.

Why?

Is it in order to be historically "accurate" and to offer the Indian side
of the story?

Possibly from the view of the celebration organizers that is the intention,
at least that is what they tell themselves. But we American Indians are
only important to the Oklahoma Land Run and Statehood stories as obstacles
that the American settlers can triumph over. We are important to the Land
Run and Centennial celebrations only in as much as we can provide unique
"color" and "decorations" for these celebrations. Our part of the story,
the part where our lands are invaded and stripped away from us, the part
where our cultures are attacked, the part where our peoples' lives are
trampled and forever altered by this encroachment of land hungry invaders
is always conveniently neglected or overshadowed. The Oklahoma Land Run and
the push for Statehood rarely takes into account our side of the story and
that is shameful because the story is hiding away the inconvenient reality
of how the land was obtained and in place of the truth is promoting a lie.

In the end, these Land Run and Centennial celebrations become nothing more
than another showcase in which our histories and our cultures are relegated
to being backdrops against which the United States can unfold its own
"history lesson" of Manifest Destiny and within that showcase, we are
merely decorations for the party held in honor of that policy.

G. D. Tieyah, 2002