August 9 marks International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples.
On its website, the United Nations notes that the focuses this year will include "the challenges and ways forward to revitalise indigenous peoples' identities and encourage the protection of their rights in or outside their traditional territories".
To be sure, the protection of indigenous rights is particularly challenging in this day and age. In various contexts around the world, the presence of indigenous communities is seen as an obstacle to profit-driven corporate exploitation and environmental despoliation.
In the United States - vanguard of the capitalist system and usurper extraordinaire of Native American land - the goal of "revitalis[ing]" indigenous identity will presumably prove formidable indeed seeing as the entire US enterprise is, in fact, predicated on the suppression of Native agency, culture, territorial bonds, and general dignity.
Also suppressed, of course, is the whole business of genocide upon which the US is built, which naturally complicates the country's self-advertisement as the epitome of liberty, justice, freedom, democracy, etc. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.