I am writing this because I am part of Cherokee roots and understood the bullying against Native Americans as a common occurrence that are often hidden in the shadows of bullying. Deaf Native Americans are easily forgotten.

Native Americans are still marginalized today in 2017. The roots of white supremacy in school grounds may be the most invisible force even in Deaf schools. I. Young wrote in 1990, “means to experience how the dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective of one’s own group invisible at the same time as they stereotype one’s group and mark it as the Other”

It has happened at a Deaf school in California recently—a Deaf Native American was targeted and it shows that the language hegemony has continued to oppress First Nation people as embedded in the common practices. The school is predominately white and continues to stigmatize Native Americans and make sure they experience myriad and interrelated forms of social oppression.

The stages of exploitation, marginalization, and greatest disempowerment are ignored with great favors. Not only that Native Americans had been survivors of American colonialism and the meaning of cultural appreciation is difficult to fathom. The school is about living both worlds, and there are always two realities of Native Americans and Americans in the name of power. Of course, Native Americans are easily targeted, anytime, no matter what.

It may be past summer solstice, soon to be fall solstice, the line from the oppression lines; we all will always see the rising sun and the form of sun to end the oppression. Why did this Deaf school in particular walk over the wonders of solstice? The term, solstice, feels the pain—today, Native American remains oppressed academically, economically, politically, and socially.

Enough. This is not acceptable.

-JT

Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier

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