The Sacred Responsibility to Right the Wrongs of History by Tausha Butler

April 19, 2025

To Whom It May Concern-

and to those with the power to act,

There comes a time in every nation’s story when it must decide whether it will continue to uphold injustice through silence – or rise to meet truth with courage, humility, and action. That time is now.

My name is Tausha Butler. I am a daughter of Turtle Island, a granddaughter of resistance, and a living prayer from the bloodlines that were never meant to survive. I am a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, raised on the East Coast of Turtle Island, within the unceded homelands of the Wabanaki. I come from both the warriors who protected our people and the survivors who carried our stories forward when the world tried to silence them.

I do not speak from theory – I speak from lived truth. From the ache of watching my people’s sacred lands, languages, and laws stripped away in the name of progress. From the hollow echo of erased ancestors and forgotten treaties. From the daily reality that the colonial harm never ended – it simply changed form.

To right the wrongs of history is not a symbolic gesture. It is a sacred obligation. It is about restoring what was taken – our autonomy, our relationship with the land, and the right to govern ourselves as we have done for generations beyond memory.

This work is not optional. It is essential.

The movement of rematriation, led by Women of First Light, is not about building something new – it is about returning to something ancient. It is about remembering who we are, and replanting the seeds of our governance, healing, and ceremony in the lands that still remember us.

We are not asking for reconciliation without truth. We are not asking to be included in systems built to erase us. We are reclaiming our space – because this has always been our home.

Those who hold power must understand: to ignore this call is to participate in ongoing harm. To delay justice is to deny it. And to remain neutral in the face of Indigenous erasure is to stand with the systems that caused it.

We are still here. We have always been here. And we are rising – with spirit, with purpose, and with generations of ancestors behind us.

The truth is not going away. Neither are we.

In strength and sacred responsibility,

Tausha Butler

-Member of Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians

-Raised within Wabanaki Homelands

Women of First Light | Daughters of Women of First Light