Michigan Democrats set to gather amid dissent about priorities, by Yue Stella Yu, BridgeMI.com, April 7, 2022
LANSING — Michigan Democrats this weekend could call for the removal of a monument to Gen. George Custer in Monroe and support legislation to protect Native American burial sites.
They may stay silent, however, on some issues close to urban and rural members, such as minority legislative representation and rural broadband.
The resolutions
Instead, party members will vote on whether to urge the city of Monroe to remove a statue of Custer, who spent his childhood there and later was a Union general who also fought Native Americans before his death in the Battle of Little Bighorn.
The debate over how to handle the monument has persisted for years in Monroe, with the city council agreeing in 2020 to update the monument with more information. In 2021, the city terminated a plan to hire an outside consultant to decide the future of the monument.
The Democratic resolution states Custer was “notoriously known as the ‘Indian Killer,'” and the statue is a “painful public reminder of the genocide of Indigenous peoples.”
“Decades of research show that racist policies, symbols, and behaviors are linked with lower well-being, educational barriers, physical health problems, employment problems, such as higher job turnover for people who endure racism and ethnocentrism like many American Indians and Alaska Natives,” the resolution states.
Another resolution would call upon the party to support legislation protecting burial sites outside federal or tribal lands.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act protects burial sites on federal or tribal lands, but state law governs burial sites elsewhere. There is no current Michigan law protecting those sites from intentional development, according to the convention resolution.
The Anishinaabek Caucus of the Democratic Party has pushed for both resolutions to raise awareness statewide, said caucus vice chair Nat Spurr.
“Where there are human remains or sacred artifacts, things along those lines, unfortunately, because of the lack of existence of these laws, we worry about people taking ownership … of these,” Spurr said of the reason the caucus introduced the burial site resolution.
“We basically want the support of the party as the foundation block,” he added. [More]