View of Ortiz Mountains from Cerrillos Hills, Santa Fe County
Amend
Make better, improve; make changes to in order to make it fair, more accurate, or more up-to-date
Anti-Racism
(as described by Ibram X. Kendi)
Anti-racism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism — and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. Antiracism is defined as the work of actively opposing discrimination based on race by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach, which is set up to counter an individual’s racist behaviors and impact.
Atone
Make amends or reparation; to provide or serve as reparation or compensation for something bad or unwelcome.
Blood Quantum
Blood quantum is a concept from a 1705 law first imlemented in Virginia. This law stated that if you had less than 1/2 Native ancestry, then you were not Native; You were “mulatto” and your land could be taken and you could be enslaved. If you had 1/8 or more African ancestry, then you were considered Black and you could be enslaved. These blood quantum laws were designed to limit the civil and land rights of both Native Americans and African Americans while giving White colonizers increased wealth.
Blood quantum appears as a fraction and is “calculated” based on the amount of written documentation you can provide to prove your heritage, such as marriage, bith, and death certificates. Most Native Nations utilize Blood Quantum in some manner during their enrollment process, each with different requirements. The Federal government maintains a 1/4 blood requirement for most of its benefits.
Native Governance Center’s Guide to Blood Quantum
Colonization
Colonization occurs when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people. The concept of colonialism is closely linked to that of imperialism, which is the policy or ethos of using power and influence to control another nation or people
Culturally Relevant
Culturally relevant means incorporating awareness, understanding, and responsiveness to the beliefs, values, customs, and institutions (family, religious, etc.) and ethnic heritage of individuals.
Decolonize
To decolonize is to free (an institution, sphere of activity, etc.) from the cultural or social effects of colonization; eliminate colonial influences or attitudes
Displacement
Displacement is when a group of people are forced to leave the place where they usually live.
Doctrine of Discovery
The Doctrine of Discovery refers to a principle in public international law under which, when a nation “discovers” land, it directly acquires rights on that land. This doctrine arose when the European nations discovered non-European lands, and therefore acquired special rights, such as property and sovereignty rights, on those lands. This principle disregards the fact that the land oftentimes is already inhabited by another nation. In fact, this doctrine was used in order to legitimize the colonization of lands outside of Europe.
Encomienda
Encomiendas were grants by the Spanish Crown to a colonizers in the Americas which conferred the right to demand tribute and force labor from the indigenous people in the area.
Endonym
An endonym (from Greek: éndon, 'inner'; also known as autonym) is a common, internal name for a geographical place, group of people, or a language/dialect, that is used only inside the place, group, or linguistic community in question; it is their self-designated name for themselves, their homeland, or their language.
Equity
The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality: Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances. The process is ongoing, requiring us to identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers arising from bias or systemic structures.
Genocide
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
Health Disparities
Health disparities are the differences in health that are closely linked with social or economic disadvantages. Health disparities negatively affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater social or economic obstacles to health. These obstacles stem from characteristics historically linked to discrimination or exclusion such as race or ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, mental health status, sexual orientation, or geographic location. Other characteristics include cognitive, sensory, or physical disability differences in health along social, economic, and racial or ethnic lines.
Health Inequalities
Health inequalities are the differences in health status or in the distribution of health determinants between different population groups.
Historical Trauma
Historical trauma results from the long-term effects of the oppressive traumatizing policies, attitudes, and beliefs of the colonizer towards American Indians; the lack of resources and opportunities for American Indians; and current treatment of American Indians in this country. Brave Heart Yellow Horse defines historical trauma as “…cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma” and Dr. Eduardo Duran refers to this as a “soul wounding.” These “soul wounding” symptoms of historical loss are interconnected; each one affecting the other to varying degrees. Historical trauma “can often produce complex and profound individual and collective bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual responses” related to significant health disparities (Beltrán & Begun, 2014, pg. 160).
There is a direct connection between colonization to the effects of historical trauma - depression, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation and other health risk factors. The negative impact of broad social factors that have been influenced by colonization, such as racism, acculturation, poverty, are translated into everyday physical and emotional distress experienced by American Indian’s. There is evidence that trauma can be epigenetically transferred from generation to generation and is expressed in many ways that are connected to the disproportionate rates of poverty, chronic physical and mental health issues, mortality rates, and substance abuse/dependency rates.
Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational trauma is the theory that trauma can be inherited because there are genetic changes in a person's DNA. The changes from trauma do not damage the gene (genetic change). Instead, they alter how the gene functions (epigenetic change).
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is how a person's various social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.
Land Acknowledgement
A Land Acknowledgment is a formal statement that recognizes the unique and enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories.
Land Disposession
Land dispossession involves legal and nonlegal means for removal of a person(s) from the possession of land.
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the doctrine that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.
Racism
Racism is the process by which systems and policies, actions and attitudes create inequitable opportunities and outcomes for people based on race.
Regalia
Regalia is the traditional and often sacred clothing, accessories, and artifacts worn or carried during various ceremonies and dances. It should never be called a costume. These are often heirloom pieces or created by the one wearing it. Native regalia reflects tribal cultures and reinforces identities.
Reparation
The making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.; the action of repairing something; payment for harm, loss, or damage that has been caused to a person or an organization.
Sovereignty
Tribal sovereignty refers to the right of American Indians and Alaska Natives to govern themselves. The U.S. Constitution recognizes Tribes as distinct governments and they have, with a few exceptions, the same powers as federal and state governments to regulate their internal affairs
Structural Violence
Structural violence refers to a form of violence wherein social structures or social institutions harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Although less visible, it is by far the most lethal form of violence, through causing excess deaths—deaths that would not occur in more equal societies.
Syncretistic
The combination of different forms of belief or practice
Systemic Racism
Systemic racism is the complex interaction of culture, policy, and institutions that contribute to false hierarchies of human value.
Trust Responsibility
Trust responsibility is the unique but well-established responsibility of the United States to Tribal Nations, the purpose of which is to ensure the survival and welfare of Indian tribes and people. The United States has the highest moral obligation and a legally enforceable fiduciary responsibility to protect treaty rights, to ensure the protection of Tribal lands, assets, and resources, and to honor Tribal sovereignty.
Unceded Land
Unceded means that these territories have never been handed over, sold, or given up by these nations, and we are currently situated on occupied territories. One of the biggest disputes centered on the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant and the more than half a million acres it controlled. In a heated region with a heated history, Indigenous and Hispanic people in New Mexico argued that they were simply trying to save their land, nothing else. They had been arguing this for generations against a government that did not respect their lands, traditions, cultures, and ways.
Unconcious Biases or Implicit Biases
Unconcious biases or implicit biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one's tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.
White Supremacy
The idea that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people and the Western world are superior to people of color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. While most people associate white supremacy with extremist groups, white supremacy is present in our institutional and cultural assumptions that assign value, morality, goodness, and humanity to the white group - while casting people and communities of color as worthless, immoral, bad, inhuman, and undeserving.
