Black enslaved people and their descendants were not and are not migrants, immigrants, settlers, or colonizers to the United States. Our ancestors were brought here against their will. They did not move here looking for a better life or to displace Indigenous people.

I say this because many Native Americans feel as though Black Americans are settlers or migrants, and we aren’t. I’ve had a Native person say to a group of Black Americans in a meeting in college that we should “go back to Africa.” But we really have nowhere to go there.

And for those of us whose ancestors were owned by Native Americans, such statements are even more hurtful. Native Americans bought and abused our displaced ancestors and used their free labor for profit. Telling us to “go back to Africa” in some anti-Black attempt at #LandBack

is offensive and hurtful.

That doesn’t mean that some Black people have not also worked with the US government to undermine or hurt Indigenous people/communities (for example, the Buffalo Soldiers), but it does mean that we aren’t colonizers or migrants if our ancestors were brought here in shackles.

Sign our petition please for the Freedmen of the Five Tribes in regards to Deb Haaland, who is being considered for Sec of the Interior https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1330941790262861828