Inequitable Feather Access for Indigenous Peoples in Yanaguana (led by Eres Gomez of the Urban Bird Project)
Feathers are important and sacred to many Indigenous Peoples. We use them for prayer, to decorate regalia, and they are gifted at major life events such as ceremonies, births, deaths, graduation, or to honor veterans. To many Native People of Turtle Island, birds and their feathers hold deep spiritual, medicinal, and therapeutic value and they serve as a connection to our culture and identity.
However, today possession of feathers in the U.S. is prohibited by federal law. Legal access to feathers is limited to the 574 federally recognized tribes and possession of Eagle feathers can carry fines up to $100,000 and 1-year imprisonment for the first offense. Today in Texas, only three tribes have federal recognition and there are no state officially recognized tribes despite Texas having the highest population of Indigenous people than any other state (Colton 2019).
This denial of recognition is a form of continued coloniality that:
- Invalidates our personhood as Indigenous Peoples
- Enforces oppression of our religious freedom
- Continues cultural deprivation
- Encourages Ancestral discrimination
This injustice is also a wildlife conservation concern as the high demand for feathers and other Eagle parts helps to fuel the Black Market (i.e., wildlife trafficking). In the U.S., it’s reported that several thousand Eagles are killed annually for their feathers and the price of Eagle feathers and parts has more than doubled since the 1980s (Efrati 2006).
The following StoryMap was created to highlight the existing tribal aviaries and feather repositories in the U.S. where only members of federally recognized tribes may acquire feathers. The Urban Bird Project is currently investigating this issue to better understand this modern form of settler colonialism and to explore possibilities for granting non-federally recognized Relatives of Yanaguana and the Texas-Mexico borderlands the right to their inheritance to acquire Feathers.
Tribal Aviaries and Feather Repositories
in the U.S.