Native News
Monday Morning (July 6, 2026): Articles You May Have Missed This Past Weekend
Happy Monday!
Native News Online hopes you had a relaxing holiday weekend.
As the nation celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States, Native News Online published several articles and essays to provide the Native American perspective through its America 250: A Republic Built on Native Land iniaitive.
Here are some of the articles or essays you may have missed this past weekend:
I’ve Read the Founding Documents of the USA. They Are Not Aspirational – But They Could Be
It’s the Fourth of July, our Nation’s semi-quincentennial, and I think I just need to come right out and say it.
The founding documents of the United States of America are not aspirational. And the people this nation refers to as its “Founding Fathers” were not the greatest people.
They were racist, they were sexist and they were white supremacists. Many of them owned slaves, and several of them were land speculators (over Indian lands). They were all colonizers. And the documents they wrote reflected those values.
A Reflection of America’s 250th, From a ‘Merciless Indian Savage’
Long before the Declaration of Independence was signed, hundreds of Indigenous nations flourished across the continent. We governed ourselves, maintained vast trade networks, developed systems of law and diplomacy, and cared for these lands and waters through generations of accumulated knowledge and responsibility. Our ancestors understood these places not as resources to be conquered, but as relationships to be honored.
When the United States celebrates its founding, as Indigenous people, we remember the history that is seldom recognized: the beginning of a nation whose growth depended on the acquisition of Indigenous land and the exploitation of African people.
It is hard to embrace the flag when I see this nation drifting backward, willing to weaken protections once guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act. It is hard to embrace the flag when so many Americans accept a leader, President Donald J. Trump, who traffics in daily falsehoods and asks the public to accept repetition as truth.
Years ago, a silent reading of the Declaration of Independence changed me forever. It forced me to confront the contradictions embedded in the nation’s founding and to see my place within them. Since then, I have come to understand that, as a Native person, I live with the constant tension of dual citizenship—citizenship in a tribal nation that predates the United States and citizenship in a country built, in part, on the dispossession of Native peoples from their homelands.