An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

knowing, she made sure to explain the virtues of Indigenous education in
comparison to white education: “The general tendency in the average
Indian schools is to take away the child’s set of Indian notions altogether,
and to supplant them with the paleface’s.” She quickly noted that
Indigenous education was not better; however, she asks, “why should [the
Indian child] not justly know his race’s own heroes rather than through false
teaching think them wrong? . . . I do say that there are noble qualities and
traits and a set of literary traditions he had which are just as fine and finer,
and when he has these, or the sake of keeping a fine spirit of self-respect,
and pride in himself, let us preserve them.” 13 Kellogg was well educated in
the white world. She also knew very much about her own Oneida heritage.
She knew the virtues of being Indigenous, and the importance of preserving
pride in one’s idea of culture and history.
THE UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
It is important to recognize that Marcus Garvey and Amy Garvey both
founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, or UNIA.
Although the UNIA was patriarchal, and women didn’t hold too many
leadership positions, women remained integral to the function of the
organization. 14 The UNIA’s ideology was not without problems, however.
For instance, much of its written literature used the language of the time of
“civilizing” Africans on the continent, and referred to Africans as
“backward.” Still, the UNIA was important for people of African descent
throughout the Americas, with chapters forming in New York, Detroit, and
as far south as Colombia and Costa Rica. I read the UNIA’s work as an
attempt to reconnect members with their African Indigenous roots, even if
the rhetoric was not always in line with what was necessary for all Africans,
on the continent and throughout the diaspora. Indeed, the efforts of groups
like the UNIA were meant to reconnect people of African descent with their
Indigenous past, into something that might reconstruct their present and,
more importantly, their future.
Founded in 1914 in Kingston, Jamaica, the UNIA recognized a
historically rooted problem: that Black folks in the US and Caribbean did
not have a homeland. And without a homeland, they could not have racial
pride and dignity. Garvey also formed the UNIA in response to the limited