"Pedaling to DC" & Support for Native Causes

Recently, I took a long bike ride around New Mexico and one day while in the desert, with temperatures exceeding one hundred degrees, I was left with only one liter of water. The landscape was extraordinary beautiful, yet unforgiving. I knew if I didn’t source water in a few miles, my situation would become threatening. Unbeknown to me that day, that I would be beginning my atonement. When I plotted my route, there was no indication that I would be entering Navajo land, during the middle of a pandemic.

 As I read the signs that read, “Stay Home” I felt that I could have been placing the population at risk. But I knew my survival was contingent on water. I covered up, went into the trading post, bought water, a few provisions and got back on my bicycle. It was a long day in the hot sun and crosswind. I rode over one hundred miles, so it gave me a lot of time to take in the beautiful landscape. Yet all wasn’t blissful. I had visions of history, I had visions of blankets, I had visions of genocide.

In a word, I was feeling the pain of the conditions that  Natives are still subjected to. I was also sensing the theft of land and the deliberate censorship of Native voices in this country. And while I was feeling emotionally raw, I screamed, ”what can I do?”
It wasn’t until I returned to Santa Fe and coming out of a news blackout, I discovered that people of conscience are rising. So I am riding my bike to Washington D.C. to be a part of a mass movement.  But I also want to give this trip additional purpose. That’s why I am posting a Go Fund Me page and sharing at least half to New Mexico indigenous organizations that are working in their communities and causes for liberation. I will be leaving in a couple of weeks, because I don’t know how long the trip will take and there is a projected March on Washington at the end of August I would like to attend.

I have been inspired by the powerful Native voices and since they have been hit so hard with COVID-19, I want to do my little part to help. 

 

Kind regards,

 
Dennis Dodson