We want to acknowledge and honor that Ohio consists of land belonging to tribes including the Wyandotte, Mingo, Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Huron, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa; our presence on this land relies on the violence that has been enacted upon the people indigenous to this area. Christopher Columbus was a leader in the systematic eradication of indigenous people and their livelihoods, and these centuries of pain still reverberate for living indigenous folks today. We refuse to continue paying homage to an agent of colonialism, genocide, and displacement with our group’s name, so effective today, October 22, 2018, we are changing our name to Black Queer & Intersectional Collective. As a group working towards the liberation of those who are oppressed, we at BQIC want to emphasize our commitment to the people. We recognize that we cannot achieve our supreme self-determination as Black queer and trans people if indigenous and native people anywhere are deprived of theirs; we aim to make this a step of many towards decolonizing ourselves and towards being in solidarity with our indigenous siblings.
As we move forward with BQIC, we move forward collectively towards a world where we are all free.
Land info: http://convention.myacpa.org/columbus2017/indigenous-ohio/
Black Queer & Intersectional Collective 