Nathan Alan Phillips, also called Nathaniel Alan Phillips,^[1][2] (born February 22, 1954)^[3] is a Native American activist, Omaha people elder, and supporter of Native American war veterans. He leads an annual ceremony in their honor at Arlington National Cemetery.

Early life

Philips was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska,^[4] where he was brought up in a traditional Omaha Nation tribal home.^[5][4] Around about the age of five, he was separated from his mother and raised by a white family, during and era before the American Indian Child Welfare Act when many Indigenous children were separated from their families.^[6] He later moved to Washington DC.^[7]

Phillips served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1972 to 1976. He has described himself as a Vietnam era veteran^[8],^[9][10] but never served in Vietnam (numerous news agencies have erroneously reported that he was a Vietnam war veteran).^[11] He described his role as "recon ranger".^[6]

Activism

The New York Times identified Phillips as a former Director of the Native Youth Alliance, a group that works to ensure that traditional culture and spiritual ways are upheld for future generations of Native Americans,^[12] and that he leads an annual ceremony honoring Native American war veterans in Arlington National Cemetery.^[12] The Guardian called him "a well-known Native American activist who was among those leading the Standing Rock protests in 2016 and 2017 against the construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota".^[13]

Phillips was in the news in Michigan in 2015 when a group of students from Eastern Michigan University allegedly harassed him.^[14]

In a January 2019 article in Indian Country Today', Phillips was described as a "keeper of a sacred pipe".^{[15][Notes 1][14]} Another January 2019 article in the Washington Post described Phillips as a "a veteran in the indigenous rights movement".^[16]

Between Earth and Sky

Phillips is the subject of the award-winning 2013 documentary film Between Earth and Sky in which he and his wife, Shoshana, travel back to his Omaha reservation after his wife was diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer. She passed away of the disease in 2014.^{[17][18][19][20]}

"Make It Bun Dem" video

In 2012, Phillips and his son appeared in the music video for "Make It Bun Dem", a song by Skrillex and Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley.^[21] In a 20 February 2017 interview that took place during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests (DAPL), Phillips explained he had answered the casting call at the time because he wanted to help his children cope with his wife's cancer.^[22]

2019 Indigenous Peoples March incident

On January 18, 2019, snippets of videos recorded at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., appeared to show Phillips being harassed by a group of fifty to sixty high school boys who had attended the coinciding annual March for Life; they were widely shared through social media, including Twitter and YouTube, with one video reaching two million viewers in two hours.^[23][24][25] Philips had walked towards and into a group of young men from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School (CovCath), who had traveled from Kentucky on a school trip to attend the anti-abortion March for Life.^{[Notes 2]} He begun to chant the AIM Song, a traditional Native American inter-tribal powwow song.^[26][15] Videos showed a student, later identified as a junior at Covington Catholic High School,^[27] standing inches away from Philips' face while Philips chanted, while some of the students in the background did "Tomahawk chops" and danced.^[26] Numerous students wore red "Make America Great Again" caps.^[27]

The videos created a backlash against the school and the students. Shortly after the video went viral, CovCath's communications director released a statement regretting that the incident took place.^[24] On January 19, 2019, multiple students that were present at the incident stated that it had been skewed. The involved student released a statement saying that the students were confronted by four members of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, that Philips tried to provoke the students and that they never chanted "build the wall" or used any racist language or gestures.^[27][28][29] Hours after the incident took place, in a brief interview on Twitter, Phillips said, "While I was there singing, I heard them saying ‘Build that wall! Build that wall!’, you know... this is indigenous land! ...We're not supposed to have walls here, we never did—for millennium. Before anybody else came here we never had walls. We never had a prison. We always took care of our elders, we took care of our children. We always provided for them, you know. We taught them right from wrong. I wish I could see that energy of the young mass, the young men, put their energy into making this into a really great country."^[30] Asked why he had approached the group of students, Philips said that he was trying to defuse a confrontation between the group of students and a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites who were shouting insults and profanities at the students.^[26][27]

Personal

Phillips' life "companion" was Shoshana Konstant, also know as Shoshana Beth Phillips,^[31][32] with whom he has two children Zakiah and Alethea.^[4]

Notes

References

External links

• Between Earth and Sky (2012) at IMDb