In The Spotlight: The only Native American running for U.S. presidency

Published on 31-Aug-2019

Khushboo Razdan

Yá'át'ééh. Mark Charles yinishyé!

Mark Charles, the only second Native American in the history of the United States to jump into the race to the White House, began the interview with CGTN Digital by introducing himself with a hello in his tribal language "Dine Bizaad."

Wearing a tribal turquoise necklace with his hair tied in a traditional Navajo bun called "tsiiyee," Charles, a tribal citizen of the Navajo Nation, the biggest Native American reservation in the U.S., announced his bid for the top job on May 28 through a YouTube video. He called on fellow Americans to reject both "explicit" and "implicit" racism embedded in the country's founding documents.

Charles, who is running as an independent, is campaigning on the slogan of turning "We the People" into "All the People." He believes that to make America better and stronger, the people in power need to focus on two basic documents: The Doctrine of Discovery and the U.S. Constitution.

"The Doctrine of Discovery is essentially a series of Papal Bulls written in the 1400s... The first one was in 1452... This was the church of Europe telling the people that wherever you go and whatever land you find not ruled by white European Christian rulers, those people are non-human and their land is for you to take."

Charles noted that American history tends to gloss over a dark part of the past. "And that was the same doctrine that let Columbus, who was lost at sea, land in this new world – an island as our people call it – and claim to have discovered it. If you think about it, you cannot discover a land which is already inhabited, it's called stealing. And the fact that to this day the U.S. calls Columbus the discoverer of America reveals the implicit racial bias, which is that the native peoples and people of color are not fully human. So this doctrine is a very colonial and white supremacist document which is woven into the fabrics our society."

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