Centering the Indigenous Experience BY APRIL DEOCARIZA . PHOTOS BY OKCPS NATIVE AMERICAN STUDENT SERVICES & METROPOLITAN LIBRARY SYSTEM. OKCPS STUDENTS Teaching Beyond the Land Run
for Sovereign Community School, an Oklahoma City charter school with a focus on teaching Native culture and identity. “However, the narrative has often overlooked that many Native people lost their land and were essentially pushed to the outskirts of Oklahoma.” The first of five land runs in Oklahoma took place on April 22, 1889, and allowed settlers to claim a quarter section of land, 160 acres, within a total of almost 2 million acres being opened in central Oklahoma. Before the land runs even began, Indigenous tribes had already endured a long, painful history of removal from their lands, losing countless lives along the journey. Dating back to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the president was given power to remove Indigenous people east of the Mississippi River. This removal led to the deaths of roughly 13,000 people from five tribes alone, Cherokee, Muskogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole, many of whom were elders and children. Indigenous territory once covered the majority of modern day Oklahoma but quickly downsized to the eastern half of the state in large part due to the land runs, lotteries and auctions. In 1887, the Dawes Act divided Indigenous land settlements and more than 90 million acres of tribal land were stripped from Native people to be sold to non-natives. After the Civil War, the tribes were forced to sell their land to the federal government.
In elementary schools across Oklahoma, learning about the Land Run of 1889 has often included a reenactment of the event for students. While some students dress up as settlers and pretend to stake their claim to land, others stay home due to the triggering effect this day has for their family. Such was the experience of Rochell “Ro” Werito as a child, now the Native American Student Services cultural programs coordinator for Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS NASS). “My mom kept me home on that day,” recalled Werito, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, as well as the Navajo and Yuchi tribes. “As a little kid, you don’t really understand why you are stuck at home or are sitting at the library. My mom talked to me in a way that I could understand and explained how the Land Run wasn’t a fun day for our Native people.” The Land Run has long been a defining moment in Oklahoma’s history and statehood, but Native families are often disheartened at best, traumatized at worst when the Indigenous experience throughout the land runs and Oklahoma’s history is not taught. “We are not saying to not teach about the Land Run at all,” explained Kyla Molina, a child therapist and interim board chair
16 METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / MAR-APR 2021
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