Indigenous People

2001-2022 | 21 years

This episode, like all Thanksgiving episodes of The West Wing, is a great one! It has a good plot while also having hilarious moments, particularly that of the President calling the Butterball Hotline. In this episode, 2 Stockbridge-Munsee Native Americans, who simply need an answer on their CFR 151 application, which they have been waiting 15 years to get, explain their plight to C.J..

This Monday was Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In celebration of this, the White House released A Proclamation on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 2022. In this episode, C.J., while talking with Maggie Morningstar-Charles and Tribal Council Jack Lonefeather, often stumbles upon the subject of how the U.S. has renigged its agreements with Native Americans. This, of course, is not only a reality in the show but also a reality in the real world. The White House’s proclamation addresses the past of Native Americans and the United States of America along with all Native Americans have added to our country, with one paragraph saying “ For centuries, Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from ancestral lands, displaced, assimilated, and banned from worshiping or performing many sacred ceremonies. Yet today, they remain some of our greatest environmental stewards. They maintain strong religious beliefs that still feed the soul of our Nation. And they have chosen to serve in the United States Armed Forces at a higher rate than any other group. Native peoples challenge us to confront our past and do better, and their contributions to scholarship, law, the arts, public service, and more continue to guide us forward.”

It is important that we take time to remember America’s past and try to continue to reconcile that past by doing better. Many when thinking about Thanksgiving spend more time thinking about the food rather than how we are going to work to preserve Native American culture. Native Americans have especially suffered from the Covid-19 Pandemic, with the New York Times saying “Native Americans have died from Covid at one of the highest rates of any race or ethnicity since the start of the pandemic”.

I recommend that people, especially those who are younger, watch the West Wing to be exposed to relevant issues we otherwise wouldn’t think about. It is important that we continue to remember our past and look up from our phones into the present to see how we can make things better. We should continue to read and learn and take interest in the changes that are, or aren’t, happening in our world.