Guest columnist Cristóbal Cavazos: Let's do more to nurture, sustain our Indigenous roots

Let the tree of America reflect all of the world, but the trunk must be Indigenous, to paraphrase the great Cuban author, philosopher and independence fighter José Martí in his epic essay Nuestra America, (Our America).

And indeed as we celebrated Indigenous People's Day Monday and no longer Columbus Day, let´s reflect on America´s Indigenous roots, it's brown mother, its red essence as a sister nation of all of the rest of America - generative themes that have been processed in much of America for generations, but are now only being more widely accepted north of the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Spanish) in the United States of America. And I applaud that.

Martí also called for, in this essay widely quoted in Latin America that stoked the revolutionary fires of Cubans to take up arms against imperial Spain in 1898: The European university yielding to the American university. The history of America from the Incas to the present must be taught in its smallest detail, even if the Greek Archons go untaught. Our own Greece is preferable to the Greece that is not ours: we need it more.

These sentiments were expressed not only in the Independence struggles in Cuba, but in Mexico, both in the war of Independence and its Revolution of 1910 and subsequently it's cultural reforms to reframe it not as a Criollo but as mestizo nation. It is this very spirit that informs Day of the Raza or Day of the Race celebrations across Latin American at least for 100 years. These celebrations honor the "happy accident," to quote St. Augustine of the Spanish, Indigenous and Africans coming together across much of the Americas and in the United States of America today, to form a new race of people, even the face of adversity, what is called in Mexico "The Cosmic Race" but whose very essential nature is indigenous.

On Indigenous Day, let Illinois re-emerge in our mind's eye as: the land of the mighty Illini; the landscape of the great mysterious pyramid city of Cahokia, a city larger than London from 1050-1200; with precious Potawatomi life again navigating the wigwam-lined DuPage River through Wheaton and Naperville; with the smoke signals emerging from the populated river valley at "Churchill Woods"; and with Chief Blackhawk leading bravely and soulfully a war party through the Fox River in defense of the dignity and decency of his people. To paraphrase Black Elk, great men (and women) were here.

More than in a spirit of "wokeness" or white man's guilt, President Biden's declaration of Oct. 10 as Indigenous People's Day was a declaration a long time in coming as the U.S. is, like Mexico, Cuba, Peru or another other American Republic is at its core, its most unique, most heartfelt and most essential, an Indigenous nation.

And this indigenousness we feel in the land and in our love for it, that is especially felt in the youth, informing the budding Great Lake's conscience: that we live among beautiful bodies of 20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water and that everything from the power of the Mississippi River, Yellowstone Park's peaks and geysers, the majesty of the Grand Canyon's imposing wall of rock (hotter and drier than ever), and even here locally navigating the canyons and waterfalls of Starved Rock is as much sacred and powerful as it is fragile.

In spite of the concrete and the steel, there is an unmistakable Nativeness everywhere in Illinois, and we remember the words of Chief Seattle: "There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor." And you can't but feel the indigenous soul, beautiful, brave and charged with spirits, emerging like Chief Blackhawk's statue, bravely shooting out of the Rock River in Oregon.

But it is more than statues, sentimentalism and romanticism I for one am prone to, as a Mexican American "Mestizo," with Native Mexican blood - and likely Native Texan, though generations removed from tribal life and watered down with Spanish blood.

We must also take heed of Indigenous author Vine DeLoria's call to "Kill off the white man's Indian," that is the U.S. tendency of turning a blind eye to the still living Indigenous brothers and sisters in favor of an idyllic past. I would like to see what Native people have to say today at the national level, in the Congress and in places of power in the face of widening inequality, environmental destruction and increasing spiritual alienation as reflected in growing schisms - depression, substance abuse and loneliness. In our efforts of resurrection of the environment, we must just as boldly affirm and champion the resurrection of Native Americans today - over 25% of whom are living in poverty and homelessness, wracked by COVID and still suffering a lack of historic, restorative justice and a lack of representation.

It is through these efforts that the real Indian spirit of today emerges and the real Indigenousness of America. The root of restorative justice is reconciliation with the victims and the community at large.

Our ancestors all danced their own dance, but they all danced together and on the good Red Road, which for the Lakota is a path of deep ecology - love, stewardship of the land, community, humility in the face of the Great Mystery, appreciation - and action. We want to see Native people, ideas and institutions raised up all around us.

And from here, let Indigenous People's Day be a refocusing of the roots and stem of the American tree reach out to all the universe, indigenously. This might be just what we need, that indigenous oneness with our planet, our environment and oneness with a new tribal identity as warriors of our communities as expressed in loving actions for the greater good, especially for those less fortunate.

To close with Martí: Our America must save itself from its gravest failings - the excessive importation of foreign ideas and formulas, the wicked and impolitic disdain for the Native race. Common cause has to be made with the oppressed, in order to consolidate a system opposed to the interests and governmental habits of the oppressor - and with a soul shining from a Native sun.

• Cristobal Cavazos, of Wheaton, is co-founder of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, and an activist for the Latino community in Chicago's Western suburbs. He is a member of the Daily Herald's Editorial Board Sounding Board advisory panel.