Native American and Indigenous immigrant groups unite to fight hunger in NYC

According to the latest census in 2010, New York hosts the largest number of Native Americans and Alaska Natives of any city in the U.S.—112,000. The figure represents a 20% increase compared to 2000. Dozens of Native American nations are represented in New York. The AICH is composed of individuals from 72 different tribes.

The newcomers—from within the U.S. and beyond the Southern border—have brought their distinctive knowledge and traditions. Networks of solidarity, cooperation and unpaid volunteer work are common to many Indigenous nations in the Americas. Reinforced as a response to institutional neglect and discrimination, these practices have been in full display during the pandemic.

“We have witnessed that the government has excluded us in many ways from receiving aid,” said Ariza. “Feeling abandoned, we had no other option but to support each other.”

Indigenous immigrants coming together

The current ties among native peoples of the U.S. and Mexico started in New York before the pandemic. In 2019, the AICH partnered with Red de Pueblos Transnacionales to conduct the census within the undocumented community. Oakes also organized fashion and jewelry design workshops. During the sessions, Ariza said, the women “had the chance to know each other, not only as a teacher or sponsor to beneficiaries but through sharing stories about their differences and their lived experiences.”

Indigenous practices of solidarity are transcending their own communities amid the pandemic. Ti Toro Miko, an organization formed in Bushwick by a migrant from Guerrero, Mexico, to preserve the Ñu Savi (or Mixtec) culture, produced face-masks and gave them to health care workers for free. La Morada, a restaurant in the Bronx founded by Natalia Méndez, a Ñu Savi migrant from Oaxaca, has prepared as “a mutual-aid kitchen” thousands of meals for their neighbors. According to its website, “a nourished community is empowered to take back their food sovereignty and Indigenous sovereignty.”

The solidarity also comes from individuals like Francisco Ramírez, a self-identified Otomi—an Indigenous people from Central Mexico—who emigrated in 1993. A construction worker who in his spare time works as a citizen journalist, political activist and good samaritan, Ramírez formed the Mexican Brown Panthers at the onset of the pandemic. Honoring the free breakfast programs for children started in 1969 by the Black Panthers, Ramírez and his cohort—Sandra Pérez and other volunteers—distributed food and medicine to homebound Covid-19 infected patients in East Harlem.

“We decided as individuals to give our own time, money and work to create a group to help the people that have been left mostly unprotected,” Ramírez told Documented. “Neither the governments of Mexico or the U.S. were helping these people, so we had to react. We had to help them as fellow human beings out of our good conscience.” His work, carried out for months, was profiled by the Associated Press.

Although Ramírez stressed that he does not consider himself a Zapatista, he said their methodology inspires his work. The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional erupted into Mexico’s political landscape in 1994 as a social justice movement for Indigenous people in Chiapas—the most impoverished state in the country. The Zapatistas functioned under the motto “mandar obedeciendo” (to lead by obeying) and established a leaderless organization.

“We have this ancestral philosophy, where everything is horizontal and democratic,” Ramírez said. “It works perfectly well.” He is also a regular guest and co-host of Rebeldía Radio, a Facebook webcast created by the Cuicatec activist Tadii Nandalii Angeles, to discuss social justice issues affecting Indigenous immigrants in Mexico and New York.

Rebeldía Radio is part of a wave among Latin American migrants in New York to promote Indigenous pride and recognition. Similarly, Kwicha Hatari, a radio station in New York that broadcasts in the Kwicha language variant from Ecuador, hopes to foster a stronger spirit of ethnic identity, according to one of its co-founders, Charlie Urichama.

In New York, “I have found the value of being Indigenous,” Ramirez said. He has also discovered a new conviction—that as a Native person of the Americas, New York is part of his ancestral land too. He often yells at White counter-protesters spewing racist or xenophobic solgans in social justice demonstrations: “Go back to your country. This is stolen land.”

Oakes agrees that a new sense of solidarity amongst Indigenous immigrants has risen in New York amid the double crisis triggered by the pandemic. “It is already happening but more on a social level, like social justice and protesting, but not really on a larger scale,” Oakes said. “I have a few things in mind that I am gonna be working on for developing the larger scope of Indigenous nations here in the Northeast.”

*Since March 19, Oakes has not worked anymore as executive director of the American Indian Community House (AICH). She now heads the North American Indigenous Center for Culture, Equity and Economic Development.