November 22, 2023
On behalf of all of us at RIT, we'd like to express our gratitude to our friends and communities: clients, students, partners, volunteers, and supporters. We appreciate you all. Though there are a lot of dark things happening around the world right now, we still hope your day is filled with warmth and joy.
We'd also like to use this space to honor Indigenous communities.
November is Native American Heritage Month, and the day after Thanksgiving is recognized as Native American Heritage Day. Thanksgiving itself has a complex history. According to Native Hope, "for many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression and genocide that followed."
Last year we welcomed Rev. Shirley Montoya of the Navajo Nation in RIT's Citizenship class (read more here!) Only 2 questions on the citizenship test are about Native Americans, so we felt it important to share more about the history and cultures of Indigenous peoples and the land on which we live (and newcomers join). Rev. Montoya not only shared about the history of the Navajo Nation, but also taught students some of her language, Diné. At the time of colonization, there were about 300 languages spoken in the current territory of the U.S., and now there are only 175 (many of them are endangered).
This Thanksgiving, we invite you to support Indigenous initiatives such as the Sogorea Te' Land Trust. They are an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.
One of the pillars of our work at RIT, is building solidarity and understanding among different communities and individuals.
Many people currently seeking refuge in the U.S. are Indigenous (from Guatemala and other Latin American countries). Families across the region have lost livelihoods due to climate change, agribusiness, large-scale development, and extractive industries. Violence (including state-sanctioned violence, organized crime, and gender-based violence) is another push factor. U.S. involvement in the region has played a major role in these migration causes.
In the past year, RIT was honored to work with 900+ program participants from Latin America, many of whom are Indigenous. Most program participants come from Guatemala.
We learn from the perseverance and resistance of Indigenous People through their linguistic diversity. Despite Spanish being the dominant language in Latin America due to colonization, there are 24 Indigenous languages in Guatemala (21 Mayan languages) that have been preserved, and many other Indigenous languages and cultures across the region. Several RIT staff members are speakers of Mam languages. These team members provide invaluable linguistic assistance to families in Oakland Unified School District, which has a large Mam-speaking community.