John — Today is Indigenous Peoples Day. It’s a moment to reflect on and celebrate the rich culture and the lives of Native American people.

It’s also a time to acknowledge and grieve the genocide of millions of Native peoples, the theft of land, and the relentless and continued attacks on Indigenous cultures.

Sadly, the sanitized history taught in far too many schools neglects to mention the massacres of, and brutality against, Indigenous Americans that set the stage for hundreds of years of systematic oppression. It erases a tragic and deeply defining part of our country’s history. This includes erasing the history that many Indigenouse people were forced to be domestic workers, something many others in our multi-racial domestic worker movement know all too well.

As you go about your day today, we invite you to take a moment to honor Indigenous people by learning more about Indigenous women’s power.

Did you know that: before European conquest, Indigenous women had spiritual, political and economic power that most European women did not have?

Across most of the Americas, corn sustained powerful tribal nations, including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek (Muscogee) nations in the Southeast. Women within these matrilineal societies owned their own households and the goods produced from them. Part of this power emerged from their central roles in kin and clan relations as well as their centrality to the production of corn. Similarly, Navajo women held great economic and political power since they owned large herds of sheep and other livestock.

You can learn more on NDWA’s Interactive History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing. Take a look and then share it with everyone you know. Helping to tell their real history is a perfect way to celebrate Indigenous women, caregivers, and leaders.

Thanks for all that you do,

Care Team
National Domestic Workers Alliance