10 minute read
Demetrius Johnson on the Importance of Solidarity
from Volume 4 Issue 4
by paccusa
Reem Farhat
Demetrius Johnnson is a Diné member of the Red Nation, a coalition of Native and non-Native activists and community organizers advocating Native liberation. Diné is a traditional word Navajo people use to refer to themselves. According to Navajo Traditional Teachings, an organization dedicated to teaching about Navajo culture, it is a compound word coming from the two words di meaning up, and né meaning down. It refers to coming up where there is no surface and down where one is on the surface of the earth. Demetrius’s involvement and activism with the Red Nation began in 2015, when he joined the coalition as a student at the University of New Mexico and worked to abolish the college’s racist seal.
I spoke to Demetrius on a Thursday July morning. He answered my call from a food distribution center in New Mexico where he is working with K'É Infoshop, a mutual aid collective, to send food packages across the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation is the largest Indigenous reservation in the United States, spanning 27,000 square miles and located across Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Navajo Nation currently has the highest rate of COVID-19 infection in the world at 3.4% of the population. Various infrastructure issues caused by years of the United States government neglecting treaties made with Navajo Nation leaders have exacerbated the effects of the pandemic. The situation in the Navajo Nation, as well as our current political climate, loomed over our conversation as we discussed everything from the Black Lives Matter movement to the importance of solidarity.
Can you tell me about the Red Nation and your work?
The Red Nation was created in 2014 when the founders, including Dr. Melanie K. Yazzie and Dr. Nick Estes, saw how Native people in Albuquerque were being treated, not only by the police but by
regular people. After the murders of Cowboy and Rabbit, two Diné people who were sleeping on the street and beaten to death by teenagers with rocks, the Red Nation started in solidarity with our unsheltered native relatives on Indigenous land. I didn’t join the Red Nation until 2015. It is the journey of a lot of Native people, and a lot of Navajo people specifically, to be told to climb a ladder of education so we can help our communities back home. That’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to study electrical engineering so I could figure out how to get power to my people. There are over 16,000 Navajo homes without electricity. I thought to myself, how can I help that cause?
I met Red Nation members at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and that was how I got started in activism. I realized that we all want to help our community, but also that everything is connected on a broader scale. Our struggles are not only in the vacuum of the Navajo Nation. As a Diné person, the Navajo Nation is all we know, and we think our is
sues are isolated and that we have to figure out our own problems. I was able to realize that wasn’t the case and connect with Indigenous people all over the world. I could see that these issues stemmed from imperialism, capitalism, racism and white supremacy. It is a beautiful feeling to know there are people all over the world struggling from the same enemy but knowing our solidarity together is what is going to help us win. We are seeing victories. Just this morning, the Muscogee Creek Nation won their Supreme Court case saying that half of Oklahoma is Native land. That is huge.
You touched a bit on solidarity? What is the importance of solidarity between various movements for liberation?
My activism started with the abolishment of the racist UNM presidential seal which is the seal that the university uses on their diplomas, podiums, and letterheads. When we were starting that campaign, we met a lot of older alumni from back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s who fought the same battle. They started the fight to change the presidential seal. When I found this out, I had thought it was a new campaign, but I realized the fight had been going on for decades. Our campaign started during the time when Amanda Blackhorse, a Diné person, was filing a lawsuit against the Washington Redskins for their racist team name. People were also trying to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The campaign wasn’t just tied to the UNM seal.
The seal represents genocide, it glorifies colonizers, and it erases Indigenous people. The seal has an image of a roadrunner, which is supposed to represent Indigenous people. And even larger, surrounding both sides of the seal, there is a frontiersman and conquistador and they are both holding weapons. When we started writing about it, we got support from everywhere. The year I left UNM the seal was changed and was no longer on the diplomas. It was not on my graduation gown. It was a beautiful thing to see that I was one of the first classes to have that not be a part of our tradition anymore. But it wasn’t just us, it was support from all over pressuring UNM to change the seal. That was the first time I had seen solidarity make something happen so fast.
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With everything going on with Black Lives Matter there has been a wave of people taking down statues of Columbus and collective action along the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. What has been your reaction to everything?
It’s such a beautiful time to see all this. It is such a beautiful thing to see people stand up and not be intimidated anymore. I remember back in 2015, here in Winslow, Arizona, there was a shooting of a young Diné mother. She was killed by a Winslow police officer in broad daylight. They said she was carrying a pair of scissors and that she was threatening the officer’s life, but she was only about 110 pounds and she posed no threat. They accused her of shoplifting a nearby gas station, and she was just killed on the spot. There was no evidence that she was threatening the officer’s life or posing a threat. The officer was allowed to walk free. And that is just the legacy of what Native and Black people go through. And when that happened, the Red Nation supported the family, and we held a vigil and protest. But when people now are making the connections, I think that is a beautiful thing. All the victims of police violence, even in the history of our own nations, to see people rise up and take down these statues and burn down monuments and say, enough is enough. We love our people, that is why we are doing this, not because we hate them but because we love our own. During a pandemic it is hard, but seeing these little moments are so beautiful. We don’t want more victims or unnecessary killings. Not only in the United States, but also in Palestine. When I saw Ahmed Erakat, that video reminded me of what happens here too –on their own land.
I know you’ve visited Palestine before. What was that like and did you see any parallels?
There were two specific events. When we first landed in Tel Aviv it was late at night and we drove
to the Palestinian village we were staying in, and our driver got lost. He stopped in the middle of an intersection and just honked, and it was midnight, so no one was out, but it was just a res-like moment. Then we saw some dogs walking around in a gang like they owned the place and it really felt like I was back in the reservation.
The second one is not as lighthearted. It was my third or fourth day in Palestine and we were visiting a Bedouin village. When we got there, we saw that they had no access to electricity or water, and they were living in shacks made of plywood. I thought to myself, these are the exact same conditions that so many Diné people live in. And it was so ironic because they were living next to a power station, there were transmission lines crossing above them, and they had no access to that. It looked exactly like my grandmother’s house to me. And that was the second time I realized that there are these connections, there are people living like us. Your land is being used for water and resources yet you have no access to those things. That’s the story of Indigenous people, that is what these colonial powers do to us.
I’ve been seeing on the news how COVID-19 has affected the Navajo Nation and hearing about everything has been heartbreaking. How has it been on the ground?
It’s very surreal. I’m doing this interview out of a food distribution center. It’s hard. It wasn't until maybe a couple of weeks ago that people here were taking it seriously. We have had the highest rate of infection for a while now. The lockdown has made it harder. Our government has issued curfews, we can’t be out past 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.. During the weekend there is a 57 hour curfew from Friday night to Monday morning. You can’t leave your house, you can’t go to stores, or go to nearby towns. It is hard for people, and it was hard for the mutual aid COVID relief volunteers. Within a week's time, we get all these orders, and we are making boxes and assembling them, using our own vehicles to deliver them to their doorsteps. It’s also a race against time because a lot of these items are perishable. Knowing the Navajo Nation government hasn’t been helpful in allowing COVID relief volunteers to get these supplies out has been difficult. We still have to follow curfews despite being essential workers. The nation doesn’t honor us because we aren’t hospital workers, firefighters or police. But that changed a couple of weeks ago, so we were able to finally make those deliveries on weekends or nights. It’s been hard in those ways to not have the support of the government and to see your own people not understanding or believing the severity of what is happening with COVID. Right now, Arizona is the largest COVID hotspot in the world, and that is where a majority of our reservation lies.
Yesterday, I found out something that really scared me. When COVID broke out in the reservation, the Navajo Nation president called in the National Guard. They have been giving us humanitarian aid, delivering water and setting up testing sites. But with weekend curfews we now have our own checkpoints. The Navajo Nation president has allowed the US National Guard to man these checkpoints. I was shocked that we were allowing the US to govern what happens on our land.
How can Palestinians best support your work and the Red Nation?
We need to continue to strengthen solidarity and make these connections. Keep talking, writing and educating people about them is a huge part of the work. Gallop is a nearby bordertown surrounding our reservation and it is incredibly racist. In Gallop there is a large Palestinan population, and they often profit off Native art and culture. Brandon Denali, who runs the Diné info shop said there was a recent Black Lives Matter protest in Gallop, and there were Palestinians there who were not supportive of that movement or what was happening, and Brandon addressed them and spoke to them. These were younger Palestinian men, but their father was in solidarity with our movement and understood what Brandon was saying, and was lecturing the younger Palestinians. It’s important to just get that conversation started by holding our own people accountable. It’s just important to speak about these connections and bridge gaps.
