“When I hear the narrative that Trump is the absolute worst president the United States has ever seen, or the world has ever seen, I have to laugh because my People survived Andrew Jackson,” told Blindspot Indigenous Impact producer Amber Morning Star Byars, member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the third-largest Indigenous Tribe in the United States.
“The founding fathers of the United States, that we are taught in school as children to revere, to hold in very high regard, were presented to us as heroes, but we as Indigenous People, we know what they really were: slave owners, genocide perpetrators, murderers, rapists, and thieves,” she pointed out.
“They tried very, very hard to erase us as People and to take our culture. They were not successful. They were, in some areas. They took a lot of our land, the majority of our land. They took our children,” she added. “They brainwashed them into thinking they were savage, their culture was bad. We were dirty Indians. We were no good, not smart, unworthy, unlovable.”
Yet, all that was precisely something that goes against all of Indigenous teachings. “We know as Native People that we are sacred and that we are born of creation. We have that sacred value from the moment we are born. We have that umbilical connection to the land. That is what makes us strong. They tried so hard to take all that from us. They succeeded on some fronts, but not all. I am still here. We are still here. We are still fighting. We are fighting for our land. We are fighting for our culture. We are fighting for our futures.”
“This is why storytelling is so important,” Amber emphasised. “At the end of a war, the People may not have survived, but the art has. It's the story, it's the film, it's the dance, the song, the regalia. It's the culture that will survive.”
Amber Morning Star is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, lawyer, impact producer, and Indigenous rights advocate. In 2023, she founded Good Trade Productions, a boutique media firm dedicated to supporting the art of Indigenous storytelling. Amber has contributed to the impact campaigns of acclaimed films including the two-time Emmy winning documentary Lakota Nation vs United States and the Academy Award nominated, Sugarcane.
Photo: Amber Morning Star Byars © Nelson Pereira
