Last Updated on April 10, 2025
In 1996, when Washington State Senate candidate Skip Richards was exposed in the Anacortes American as an Anti-Indian militia organizer, I met Ken Toole of the Montana Human Rights Network. At a conference earlier that year, I met Rudolph Ryser of the Center for World Indigenous Studies. Between the two of them, my education on Anti-Indian racism took off.
In 2000, while I was preparing for graduate school in San Francisco, the Montana Human Rights Network published its groundbreaking report, Drumming Up Resentment. This report, along with Rudolph C. Ryser’s Anti-Indian Movement on the Tribal Frontier, provides scholars and activists with essential knowledge on the topic.
As the Anti-Indian Movement now launches a national offensive to terminate Indian tribes in the United States, these two reports are valuable resources for those just encountering this longstanding form of racism.
As Ken Toole observed, the Anti-Indian Movement is racist at its core because of its clearly articulated goals. The movement in America, he says, is as old as the arrival of the first Europeans.
While the modern Anti-Indian Movement advocates the continued elimination of Indian people, he says, “in this last iteration, the elimination is not by the murder of individuals, but by the termination of their structures of self-governance, the taking of their resources, and by defining them as part of ‘the rest of the country’ through forced assimilation.”
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is how little attention it receives.
Stories like this are disappearing in real time. Mainstream media
barely covers it and the coverage is fragmented. The public is left without the context
needed to understand what is truly at stake.
That is exactly why IC Magazine exists..
For more than 20 years, IC has reported on Indigenous struggles worldwide — consistently, independently, and without compromise.
We don’t follow news cycles; we trace patterns. We don’t sensationalize; we provide context.
And when the world looks away, we stay focused.
But this work is increasingly difficult to sustain.
We refuse to lock our reporting behind a paywall. We don’t sell access through subscriptions.
And we don’t answer to advertisers. IC Magazine survives solely because readers like you choose to
support independent Indigenous journalism.
Please donate today if you can. Every contribution helps us to continue this crucial work.
Thank you,
John Ahni Schertow
Founder and Editor in Chief
