A Story of Erasure: Indigenous Experiences from the US and Nepal
| Inside the Tomaquag Museum |
Indigenous communities worldwide, be it in America or here in Nepal, have suffered great injustices at the hands of colonialist settlers. This visit to Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, during my Cultural Exchange Program sponsored by RELO— Regional English Language Office, and facilitated by the University of Rhode Island, was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had. The rosetinted view I had of the American Revolution and Democracy had to come to terms with the reality of the American Indigenous experiences.
The Declaration of Independence, which is said to enshrine the democratic values of individual rights, equality and sovereignty, and is seen as one of the most important documents in the history of modern democracy, to the people of the Narragansett and the Niantic Nations, it symbolizes oppression, injustice, dehumanisation, and seizure of indigenous land, erasure of people and their cultural identity. The Narragansett, whose influence spanned across Rhode Island and parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Long Island, are now confined to a reservation of barely 700 hectares (some 7.3 square kilometres).
To the Narragansett and the Niantic, "The Declaration of Independence" didn't bring equality, justice, and independence. It continued the oppression, bondage, and injustice. The American Revolution wasn't one for freedom but for the freedom to colonize. It was, in part, a response to King George III's refusal to allow the colonial settlers to take more of the indigenous land. It wasn't a fight for justice and independence; it was a fight for the right to expand, to take more land and more land and more land, and push the natives from their homelands. Today, their language, their culture, and even their relation with the Creator have been severed, replaced by that of their oppressors. Still, they continue to fight back, telling their story, which has been forced into long-forgotten recesses of history. The Tomaquag Museum, a beacon of this battle.
The stories of Tharus in the Surkhet Valley and the Chitwan National Park area, whose ancestral lands have been encroached and are pushed, almost into oblivion, in the name of conservation, development and national unity, are not unlike that of the Narrangesett and the Niantic people. The experience of the Kirants and the Limbus, whose histories cease to exist, and what little remains continues to be attacked, and the battle continues to be fought over the unjustly named Koshi that effectively erased the indigenous history of the land, echoes the Narragansett and the Niantic experience. As do the lived experiences of the displaced Maithil and Madheshis who became, and continue to be, treated as second-class citizens following the Shah-led unification campaign or the Treaty of Sugauli, which the Nepali nationalists and patriots celebrate as important to Nepali state formation, as the Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence.
The victors will always tell a flowery story, sanitised to fit their narrative. But one must always speak truth to power, and amplify the voices of the unvoiced and the silenced so that we can try and build a more just tomorrow, together.
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Indigenous Lands of the "New England" Coast Before the Arrival of European Colonial Settlers |
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| Tharus Perform for Visitors to Sauraha |
Once the Tomaquag Nation, Now a Museum
Tharus Perform for Visitors to Sauraha
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| Declaration of Independence: Why was the Declaration of Independence written? The European Colonists complained to the King of England about his refusal to allow them to take more land from the "Merciless Indian refusal to allow them to Savages." The European colonists' pursuit of Happiness was to destroy Native homes, take their land, remove, kill, or enslave the people. |
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