When someone does something they accuse another of doing it can be called projection or gaslighting (a now common term from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 film “Gaslight”) that leaves one questioning reality and their sanity. Both are psychologically manipulative behaviors Trump has mastered by manufacturing crisis after crisis to support his administration’s hard-line policies.
His March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” is replete with accusations of the prior administration advancing a ‘corrosive ideology’ that replaces ‘objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.’ Trump is not very good at the truth, so no surprise, with his lieutenant Stephen Miller, this administration is doing exactly what he accused the Biden Administration of doing.
Except rather than revising, Trump seems to be scrubbing clean what he views to be history’s negative bits with lawless actions and policies, based in xenophobia and racism, posing threats to tribes and immigrants, the latter a majority of whom work and pay taxes and are not the criminals he pledged to target.
The assault has been relentless and will only worsen with ICE’s 245% budget increase and result in more unlawful arrests, detentions and deportation of immigrants (to countries not of their origin), locked human beings in cages (with photo opps by laughing bureaucrats), and community raids terrorizing real people. It’s illegal, inhumane, and immoral. There really are not words strong enough to describe and rebuke these actions.
We learned on Saturday from writer Pam Houston, speaking at the Mesa Verde Literary Festival with Dine’ writer Byron Aspaas, that Trump’s budget cuts are also hitting Native American serving institutions. Funding for the 37 tribal colleges and universities is proposed to be cut by 83% (down $127 million from 2024), funding for the Institute for American Indian Arts, a Native American art school in Santa Fe has been eliminated entirely (from $13.4 million to $0), and the Indian Health Service is facing cuts up to 30% (a reduction of $900 million). The IHS serves approximately 2.6 million American Indians and Alaska Natives at over 600 health care facilities in 37 states.
It’s hard to type the words “scrubbing clean” because that is what this administration appears to be attempting by erasing their history and their future – the people and institutions – that reflect what Trump considers its less positive aspects.
Other Republicans, too.
Last Monday, July 7, in response to a talk by Dine’ professor Melanie Yazzie discussing tribal sovereignty, conservative political pundit Ann Coulter posted on X, “We didn’t kill enough Indians.” Immediately Indigenous leaders condemned the post as genocidal hate speech, and described the statement as especially painful because of the state-sanctioned violence that was waged against Native Americans over centuries.
From massacres and forced removals to the boarding school era – including the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School in Hesperus and two schools on reservations in Ignacio and Towaoc – when from the late 1890s to early 1920s Native American children were removed from their families and forced to abandon their native traditions, languages and dress, this is the type of history Trump would like to erase.
Hope Scheppelman of Bayfield, Republican primary challenger to Rep. Jeff Hurd, is also back in the news because of a social media post (Herald, July 11, July 14) in which she identified herself as a candidate for CD3 and stated the post was paid for by her campaign. In the video, Scheppelman indicated she’d been invited by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe to participate in a sweat lodge ceremony.
The tribe issued a statement reprimanding Scheppelman, who has since apologized, for disrespecting a sacred cultural practice and implying the tribe’s support of her campaign. In 2024, Kiri Black, wife of La Plata County commissioner candidate Paul Black, experienced similar criticism from the tribe for her Halloween Pocahontas costume.
With Native Americans history being as violent as it has, and still under threat, it’s understandable. Erasing history also includes being insensitive to it. America does have remarkable achievements. This time will not be among them.
