Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

by Patty Krawec

Some white settlers seek belonging by looking for Native ancestry, which is another form of erasure. Race shifting refers to the act of people claiming Native identity based on an insubstantial, imagined, or invented connection to Native communities. They shift their racial understanding of themselves from white to Native.

Our ancestors’ communities are not always our communities, but we can build relationship with each other and honor our ancestors in that way.

Land theft includes extracting water, extracting lumber, extracting minerals and animals and people. Indigenous peoples globally hold 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity in about 22 percent of the land area. Indigenous land and Water Protectors are doing what they can, but we are only 5 percent of the world’s population, and the land mass we do have is being eroded and impacted by the industries in the other 78 percent.