<[link removed]>John -



When we delve into the imperative to dismantle the American Empire <[link removed]>, there's an unquenchable thirst for atonement. A reckoning with our past that bleeds, wails, and suffers, especially when it comes to the historical trauma inflicted upon our First Nations people, the Native Americans.



This summer, the Supreme Court rendered its verdict in Haaland v. Breckeen, scrutinizing the very bones of the Indian Child Welfare Act—ICWA to you and me. A collective sigh went through our community as the court upheld key provisions. But, still on the table is this query: Does the statute's preference for Native adoptive parents constitute an unconstitutional racial bias? Several non-Indian adoptive parents made an argument against this provision. For now, the court said they had no legal standing to bring their cases to the Supreme Court. 



Now, let me be unequivocally clear: a negative verdict on the ICWA would have been a visceral leap backwards into the belly of the paternalistic beast that is our colonial history! Yet, to protect and nurture the culture, the spirit, the very essence of Native peoples, we must also affirm the constitutional preference for Native adoptive parents. 



The ICWA emerged in 1978 as a moral counterpunch to the grotesque practice of wrenching Native children from their homes—putting them in foster care, boarding schools, or adoptive families. All this was done in the demonic name of “assimilation,” even when fit and willing relatives could take care of these children. We can’t forget the harrowing annals of forced removal, of cultural erasure, starting in the late 19th century, extending late into the 20th! Hundreds of thousands of Native children were plucked from their communities, their names forcibly changed, their languages stifled, and horrific abuses perpetrated against body and soul. Native American children have been sent toway more Indigenous boarding schools <[link removed]> than previously reported!  



Although we've ended this genocidal extraction of children, the colonial trauma still festers and mutilates Native American families and communities. The government’s ongoing egregious neglect of tribal sovereignty, of basic human needs like education and healthcare, continues the cultural genocide of Native Americans.



To channel Faulkner, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The abyss of broken promises and treaties made to 8.75 million federally recognized, and countless unrecognized, Native Americans—begs to be filled with truth and justice! Under a West administration, those promises shall not only be remembered but fulfilled!



We stand arm-in-arm, soul-to-soul with the Indigenous people, those who have lost loved ones to the boarding schools, those who suffer injustice both on and off the reservations. And together, as a collective act of moral and spiritual audacity, we shall dismantle the weapons of empire that blunt and deny our shared humanity!



But first, we need help from you. Every dollar you contribute to our campaign today will be used to organize people in pursuit of making this dream of a just, caring, and generous nation a reality. 



<[link removed]>DONATE <[link removed]>My beloved brothers and sisters, let's cut to the bone: Native American tribes stand not as afterthoughts but as sovereign entities. They hold a divine right—a God-given right—to protect their families, their young, their cultural tapestry through self-governance!



Now, a seismic shift is upon us—America is poised to mend ancient and fresh wounds. We're beckoned toward a more enlightened future; it's not an option, it's a moral imperative!



Heed the words of the Friends Committee on National Legislation: the federal government ought to fund life's essentials—not as charity, but as the fulfillment of age-old commitments. This isn’t about handouts; it's a debt long overdue, a moral contract etched into the nation’s DNA. 



In solidarity,



Dr. Cornel West



<[link removed]>[link removed]



<[link removed]>DONATE <[link removed]>Cornel West for President · PO Box 796711, Dallas, TX 75379, United States

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