Homogeneity, the Immigrant, and the Native: Which Right Is Right?

• In Event: 21.043 - Pushing Back Against the Post-Truth Paradigm: Indigenous Languages, Literacies, and Politics

Abstract

Native peoples increasingly find themselves supporting the rights of non-native minorities because that struggle creates powerful allies and advocates for the marginalized. Still, applying civil and human rights seems to trap US's indigenous peoples into a cycle of erasure. Embracing the legal promise of equal protection or civil and human rights often blinds the native to their existing colonial condition. These laws are “intelligently designed” to suppress native reality and reinforce assimilation for the purpose of molding a homogeneous society. There is a tension between the native and the immigrant. From the native perspective, US immigration policies (old and new) serve a crucial role in maintaining that homogeneity in accordance with what bell hooks calls the “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

Author

• Kekailoa Perry, University of Hawaii - Manoa