Chronology of American Indian History

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

P


which they also vow to defend Indian religious tra-
ditions and to help Indians recover sacred objects
and protect sacred sites.


1988

Studies show Canadian Inuit suffer high
levels of PCB contamination.
Canadian researchers discover that the milk of
Inuit mothers in the Hudson Bay region contains
more than twice the amount of the toxic chemical
PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) considered safe
by the Canadian government. The Inuit have been
exposed to the carcinogen by eating fish contam-
inated by PCBs emitted into the atmosphere in
warmer regions to the south. PCBs were also
dumped into the Arctic by military installations.


January 9


The offices of Akwesasne Notes are bombed.
Amidst disputes among various Mohawk fac-
tions on the Akwesasne reservation in New York
State, a firebomb destroys the Nation House, the
building that houses the offices of Akwesasne Notes
(see entry for 1968). The most widely read
Indian-operated newspaper, Akwesasne Notes has
reported on indigenous resistance movements
throughout North and South America for 20 years. In
its first issue after resuming publication, the paper con-
demns the rebel faction suspected of the bombing.


“With the gambling, the cigarette
smuggling, the violence[,]... it
is understandable why those
criminal elements amongst
us are opposed to a free
press disseminating infor-
mation about the illegal and
immoral activities around us.

... They almost succeeded in put-
ting us out of business[,]... but
we will survive.”
—from an Akwesasne Notes
editorial following the firebombing
of the newspaper’s office


February

The Lubicon protest Glenbow Museum
exhibit.
The Indians of the Lubicon Lake band pro-
test against The Spirit Sings, an exhibition at the
Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, created to
coincide with the Calgary Winter Olympics. One
of the show’s corporate sponsors is involved in com-
mercial enterprises on lands claimed by the Lubicon.
In the 1930s, the Canadian government promised
the band’s traditional homeland would be set aside
for them as a reserve, but it allowed non-Indians to
overrun the area after oil and mineral deposits were
discovered there.

February 1

Two Tuscarora take over a newspaper
office.
Two Tuscarora Indians, Eddie Hatcher and Timothy
Jacobs, hold 17 people hostage for 10 hours in
the office of the Robesonian, a newspaper serving
Lumberton, North Carolina, in the center of
Lumbee Indian territory. The men claim to have
uncovered a drug ring involving several prominent
people in the town and demand that the paper
investigate injustices committed by local police to
Indians and African Americans in the area. Several
hostages later express their sympathy for their cap-
tors and their cause. In another show of support,
an editorial in the Robesonian refers to Hatcher and
Jacobs as “our conscience.”
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