Our history, warts and all, is getting clearer all the time. Just this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that much of eastern Oklahoma is an Indian reservation. The government had promised the territory as a permanent home for Native American tribes but settlers stole the land that led to the state of Oklahoma. An effort in 1905 to have a Native American-majority state called Sequoyah in present-day eastern Oklahoma was thwarted in Washington, D.C. despite widespread popular support. (Pictured above at left, artist Bobby D. Wilson, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota member; at right, Osage elder Herman Mongrain Lookout.)



The idea of Columbus Day has been in direct conflict with the Native truth we understand. Its celebration played