From the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 to the Occupation of Wounded Knee of 1973 to the election of the first Native women to Congress in 2018 to recent struggles to protect salmon, we will never stop the long walk towards sovereignty and the fulfillment of our treaties. We have persevered during many attempts to eradicate and silence us, and we will continue to fulfill our ancestors’ hopes and dreams.

Please read a brief history of Native resistance to honor Native American Heritage Month and power our continued struggle for our lands, our cultures, our values, and for racial justice.

1680: The Pueblo Revolt

A collective rebellion against Spanish colonialism which kept Spanish settlers out of the area (now known as New Mexico) for over a decade, allowing the Pueblos to continue stewarding their land and practicing their traditional culture.

1876: Battle of the Greasy Grass (Battle of the Little Bighorn)

While wrongly popularized as ‘Custer’s Last Stand,’ the Battle of the Greasy Grass, also known as the Battle of Little Bighorn, took place in June 1876. Colonel George Custer had moved to the Plains to extract gold and control Tribes. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull led an assembled group of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors who fought back against Custer, who was outnumbered and defeated.

1900: Native Hawaiians oppose U.S. illegal annexation

Since the first U.S. settlers in the 1820s, Native Hawaiians led organized resistance against U.S. attempts to annex their lands. When President McKinley signed a treaty of annexation in the 1890s, 95% of the Indigenous peoples in Hawai’i signed petitions which were delivered to Washington D.C., killing the annexation legislation.

1958: Lumbee drive off KKK in The Battle of Hayes Pond

A Ku Klux Klan meeting was set to take place near Maxton, North Carolina, but several hundred Lumbee men arrived at the cornfield near Hayes Pond during the KKK meeting. They circled around and while an altercation took place, the only damage was a single light bulb. The KKK member who had arranged the event was arrested and the Lumbee men were praised around the country. There has not been another attempt to hold a KKK meeting in that county since.

1961: Fish-ins

In the 1960s and 1970s, Native fishermen in the Pacific Northwest were inspired by the Civil Rights sit-ins, utilizing similar tactics with fishing in order to bring attention to treaty rights outlined in the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek. This led to a victory in 1974 when a court decision affirmed that, according to the treaty, Native fisherpeople must have an equal voice in the management of the fishery and have a right to take up to 50% of all potential fishing harvests.

1969: Occupation of Alcatraz Island

After the Alcatraz prison closed and the island had been deemed surplus federal lands, Natives cited a federal treaty that called to return out-of-use federal lands to Indigenous people. For nearly two years, hundreds of Native protesters lived on Alcatraz Island, running a popular radio station and working with groups like the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets on supplies and security. The land had been used by Natives since long before European settlers arrived, and its reclamation inspired people around the world.

1973: Occupation of Wounded Knee

Beginning in February 1973 and lasting 71 days, 2,000 Native activists joined AIM (American Indian Movement) protestors at the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre in opposition to collusion with paramilitary federal police. Native participants faced federal charges, including Leonard Peltier, who is now the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States.

1996: Diné traditional activists win suit against multinational energy company and owner of Peabody Coal Company

In response to previous mines that had destroyed the health, land, and groundwater of the Diné people, 500 people successfully petitioned the federal government to deny a permanent operating permit for this multinational energy company. Their victory prevented further degradation of Native land.

2016: Protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline

Thousands of people from around the United States joined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Their efforts succeeded under the Obama administration until Trump took office in 2017, and the fight continues in the courts.

2017: Indigenous Women Rise: Women's March on Washington

On January 21, Indigenous women joined the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, led by LaDonna Harris (Comanche) who was appointed as an honorary co-chair for the Women’s March. While many women wore pink, Indigenous women wore turquoise scarves or shawls in a visual show of force.

2020: Deb Haaland becomes Secretary of the Interior

U.S. Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) was nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to become the first Native member of a presidential cabinet. Haaland was later confirmed as the Secretary of the Interior, where she oversaw a record number of Tribal-federal co-stewardship agreements and an investigation into horrors perpetrated on Native children and families through boarding schools, which led to a history-making apology from President Biden.

2021: Biden restores protections for Bears Ears

After his predecessor Donald Trump reduced the size of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85%, President Biden restored protections for Bears Ears, re-establishing Tribal Nations as collaborative managers of this sacred landscape. Responding to the movement led by Tribal Nations, President Biden also rescinded the Keystone XL pipeline’s permit and designated monuments like the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tahttps Bh Kukveni National Monument.

Through time immemorial, Indigenous people have stood up for our rights, our lands, and our cultures. That struggle continues today, whether it is protecting against modern-day land grabs by the federal government or defending sacred places from corporate polluters.

Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund         https://nativeorganizing.org/

Howard was a constant champion for bi inclusion in early LGBTQ+ activism. Without her, pride as we know it wouldn't exist.

Brenda Howard wore a bright pink button that perhaps said it all: “Bi, Poly, Switch — I know what I want.”

A ferocious and radical activist, Howard, who was bisexual, vehemently supported and participated in the antiwar and feminist movements, as well as the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists’ Alliance (she was the chair for several years). And Howard never went quietly. “Though she was humble, she could be loud when needed,” wrote bi activist and author Tom Limoncelli. Friends with many inside the Stonewall Inn the night of the uprising, Howard created a one-month Stonewall anniversary rally in July 1969. Then, one year after Stonewall, she and a committee planned Gay Pride Week and the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. Often called “The Mother of Pride,” Howard’s week and parade evolved into the annual New York City Pride march and Pride celebrations we now know around the world.

To assemble the parade and the first gay pride week, Howard and the committee met at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first gay and lesbian bookstore in America, at 15 Christopher Street. With the bookstore’s mailing list, they got word out about the parade. Committee member L. Craig Schoonmaker suggested the word “Pride” for the event. “A lot of people were very repressed, they were conflicted internally, and didn’t know how to come out and be proud. That’s how the movement was most useful, because they thought, ‘Maybe I should be proud,’” Schoonmaker said in 2015.

The parade was scheduled for June 28, 1970. At first, only a relative few showed up for the parade’s 2 PM start time, set to travel 51 blocks, from Greenwich Village to Central Park. Police, there to protect the marchers, had to urge those who did show up to begin at ten after two. As if waiting to see if others would go first, people first trickled into the parade and then showed up in droves, growing louder and louder, eventually forming a thousands-strong mass of people 20 blocks long.It was, to say the least, a success.

“[If] you needed some kind of help organizing some type of protest or something in social justice?” said Larry Nelson, Howard’s partner from 2000 until her death in 2005, who also gave her that aforementioned button. “All you had to do was call her and she’ll just say when and where.”

“She was an in-your-face activist,” Nelson said in 2014. “She fought for anyone who had their rights trampled on.”

Throughout her lifetime, Howard was unapologetic about her sexuality, which included kink and polyamory, and worked for decades to increase understanding and visibility related to them. She also worked as a phone sex operator in the 1980s, praised by her boss Lisa Verruso for “how much fun Brenda had with phone fantasy. She was able to voice what people wanted,” and was “always up for something creative.” Howard co-chaired the leather contingent of the Second National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in 1987. That year she also founded the New York Area Bisexual Network (NYABN), which sought to establish community and visibility for bisexual people in the New York area, and still exists today.

“For decades she was the voice on the [NYABN] recorded message that would tell bi people in NYC where events were happening,” Limoncelli wrote. “She returned thousands of messages left on the line.” In this and so many other ways, Howard created space for people maligned both within and outside the LGBTQ+ community to connect with others.

Howard was arrested while participating in her activist work multiple times. Her friend Marla Stevens remembered one particular jail time fondly. In 1991, Howard was protesting with ACT-UP in Atlanta because a lesbian staffer in the state attorney general’s office was fired due to Georgia’s sodomy laws. Stevens and Howard were thrown in jail, later “reading steamy novels aloud to the assembled grrlz and being as much of a pain in the rear as possible so they'd not want to hold us any longer than absolutely necessary,” Stevens wrote.

As a pioneer in the movement to advance bisexual inclusion, Howard was part of the delegation that worked to get “Bi” added to the title of the 1993 March on Washington so it would become “March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights.” Beforehand, the march had only focused on gay and lesbian rights. Decrying the many myths surrounding bisexuality, pushing it into the spotlight, and rallying for its support in ongoing queer narratives was a strong part of Howard’s activism, though she also campaigned heavily for LGBTQ+ rights in general, as well as women’s rights, national healthcare, equal treatment for people of color, and rights for those affected by AIDS. “She was an in-your-face activist,” Nelson said in 2014. “She fought for anyone who had their rights trampled on.”

Howard passed away from colon cancer in 2005 — during Pride on June 28, 2005, to be exact, the 36th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Nelson survived her and made a video to honor her longstanding bisexual pride. “Beside the fact that we were together and I am straight,” Nelson’s video said, “I know if she was alive, she would be here holding a sign saying ‘I’m #stillbisexual,’ so I will hold one up for her,” which he does. She was never ‘confused’ about her sexual identity, he goes on to say, and wanted others to acknowledge that she and those like her knew themselves, and that their sexuality was and should be seen as legitimate.

The year Howard passed, the Queens, New York branch of PFLAG initiated an award in her honor. Now in its 14th year, the “Brenda Howard Award” recognizes “an individual or organization that best exemplifies the vision, principals and community service exemplified by the late LGBT rights activist Brenda Howard and who serves as a positive and visible role model for the Bisexual Community.” At the time of its creation, it became the first award given by a major U.S. LGBTQ+ organization that was named after an out bisexual person.

Bi erasure is still all too often a problem faced by the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s important to remember because of people like Howard,“The Mother of Pride” herself, that a Pride celebration even exists.

By Elyssa Goodman: "them" newsletter

Paula J. Caplan was a clinical and research psychologist, author of books and plays, playwright, actor, director, and activist. She was born  July 7, 1947,  and raised in Springfield, Missouri; attended Greenwood Laboratory School; received her A.B. with honors from Radcliffe College of Harvard University; and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Duke University. She was an Associate at the Du Bois Institute, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University at the time of her death.  She had been a Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; a Lecturer in Harvard's Program on Women, Gender, and Sexuality and in the Psychology Department. She was a former Full Professor of Applied Psychology and Head of the Centre for Women's Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education; and former Lecturer in Women's Studies and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

In regard to her expertise in psychology and in women's studies, as well as her political/social action work, she appeared on many major network talk and news shows.

 She gave hundreds of invited addresses to a wide variety of community and academic groups. She was interviewed frequently for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and Psychology Today.

Among her plays, "Shades" (secret wounds that only love can heal) won the Pen & Brush New Plays Contest; "Call Me Crazy" (about the questions "Is anybody normal? And who gets to decide?") won second place in the 1997 Arlene and William Lewis Playwriting Contest for Women and other awards; and "The Test" (based on the poignant, true story of two men on Death Row) was published by Samuel French in its collection of winners of its 2001 Off-Off-Broadway New, Short Plays Competition. Her screenplay for "The Test" was made into a video that won the Alliance for Community Media-New England Film Festival and has been screened in numerous other festivals and various other venues.  The number of books she authored or co-authored is in the double digits.

Before Paula passed away, July 21, 2021, she formed a nonprofit organization called Picture Social Justice (PSJ). The mission of PSJ is to promote social justice equity through film and television. Paula's vision was simple: raise awareness, educate, and advocate for those adversely affected by social injustice.

Not only was Paula the founder of Picture Social Justice, but she was the heart-and-soul of the latest film project, Execution by the Numbers. As you can imagine, Paula's untimely death interrupted efforts to complete the film project. But Paula's vision and body of work are too vital to the social justice community for it to be abandoned, so  plans for completion have moved forward.

For more details of Dr. Paula Caplan’s life and work go to :

Paula Joan Caplan (July 7, 1947 - July 21, 2021) - Home (paulajcaplan.net)