Congratulations on your re-election to the House of Representatives earlier this month. I am writing to you in the lead-up to your next term in office as one of your constituents to express my support for the Chinook Indian Nation in their efforts to secure permanent status as a federally recognized tribe of the United States of America.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, a day that can be very fraught for indigenous peoples because of the narratives that their non-indigenous neighbors (us) propagate on this day. I am writing to you today to try to counter-weight that narrative ever-so-slightly, and in the hopes that as your constituent, you will hear my voice and what I have to say in thoughtfulness and good faith.
I am, more specifically, writing as a constituent of Armenian descent, and thus a constituent who has their own personal experience of spending years toiling for federal recognition—in my case, of the Armenian Genocide. My personal experience of watching, and participating in, my genocide-induced diaspora campaign for recognition of the genocide is a strong part of my motivation to want other peoples who have experienced genocide, including American Indian tribes, to be recognized if they so wish. And in the case of the Chinook people, who have worked so hard for so long at federal recognition, they clearly wish to be recognized.
Even if I did not feel this empathy for another peoples’ quest for recognition, I would hope that I, and others, would still write to you in support of the Chinook people because recognizing them is simply the right thing to do, and one very, very small but important step on the road to restitution for them, and American Indian tribes more broadly. But I hope that explaining to you this aspect of my own identity offers some explanation of why it is so important to me to act in solidarity with other peoples who are actively seeking federal recognition of their historical reality.
I both live and work on what is historically Chinook land, and I do my best to be a good guest during my time here, but I also realize that I am still an uninvited guest on Chinook land—as are most of us. While my family came here as genocide refugees, I recognize that we did so to settle on land that had been taken in bad faith centuries ago from people not our own. The Chinook presence on this land far predates mine, and so I think it fundamentally unjust to have my own citizenship and residency recognized, but not for the Chinook Indian Nation’s status recognized.
I respectfully but strongly urge you to use every power possible to bring a Chinook recognition bill to passage in Congress. Thank you for your time and care regarding my concerns.
Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson