We’ve seen #BlackLivesMatter and now #MuslimLivesMatter, but there’s yet another hashtag bringing awareness to marginalized people who are constantly subjected to unwarranted violence, Native Americans. The hashtag #NativeLivesMatter brings to light the sheer volume of Native deaths at the hands of police that occurred last year and years prior.
There are several cases that could be mentioned in this post, such as Allen Locke, a young Lakota man who was killed by police the day after he went to a rally against police killings of Native Americans. There’s also Corey Kanosh, a member of Utah’s Paiute Tribe, who was killed after being suspected of car theft. Kanosh was innocent.
According to numbers from Mic, Native Americans are right below African Americans when it comes to being targeted and shot by police officers at a startling rate. #NativeLivesMatter aims to shine a light on this epidemic as well as other issues, such as a recent incident involving white men pouring beer on Native students and hurling racial slurs at them, and the many missing and murdered Native women. Here are some tweets from the hashtag:
I hope that more people participate in #NativeLivesMatter. The internet, especially Twitter, has been the starting point for actual change in society, and since the medium gives everyone a chance to have their voices heard, I hope that the Twitter campaign will gain steam and lead to some actual progress in the real world.
Screengrab from Mic article “The Police Are Killing One Group at a Staggering Rate, and Nobody is Talking About It” by Zak Cheney-Rice.
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