CJ Trowbridge

2020-07-20

Power and Politics in American Indian History

Stephanie Woodward, “The Police Killings No One is Talking About”

In 2014, police murdered a pregnant woman who was at a hospital for mental health issues by shooting her many times. (Woodward) These kinds of events are commonplace and there is no complete record of how many such people the police murder because they police can not currently be held accountable for these murders. There are examples of organizations like the Washington Post and the Guardian which try to keep track of the murders that hit the news, but at best we only know about a small number of these illegal extrajudicial murders by police. (Woodward)

At some point, the white imperial ethnostate decided that it’s fine for police to just murder anyone they see as posing any potential threat, with no consequences to police. At the same time, the police have grown more and more militarized and political, coming to see essentially everyone as a threat, and disproportionately these extra-judicial police murders target black people and native people. In fact, according to the article, Native Americans are more than three times as likely to be murdered by police than white people. (Woodward)

It’s not just the case that the police are not required to disclose these extra-judicial murders. It’s also the case that the corporate news media reinforces the white imperial ethnostate’s message of white supremacy by deliberately ignoring the murders. In fact, only about one in thirty police murders of indigenous people is even covered by the corporate news media. (Woodward)

These and many other structural issues affecting native people cry out for expanded activism, Red Power, and efforts to demand racial justice for native people, especially in light of the current political climate where so many are empowered to speak out and demand justice for the first time.