The Armenians are indigenous to the entirety if what is considered the #middleeast, yes entirety. For thousand of years we have been cleansed from our native homeland, invaded by Persians, Assyrians, Greeks, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Russians... #IndigenousPeoplesDay

The distinction #Armenian or #Hay is far older than any other nation in the region. Armenians in their long oral and written history have record of the invasions of all contemporary nations and peoples residing in their native homeland. #IndigenousPeoplesDay

The core of the #ArmenianHomeland is the #ArmenianHighland which was historically referred to by all ancient peoples as the mountains of #Ararat which spanned from the Taurus mountains to the end of the Zagros. At the center of this range is #MountArarat, our holy mountain.

The plains of the mountainous region called #Ararat is today called the #FertileCrescent, the abundant land of hills, rivers and flat plain, where Armenians would plant food, graze livestock and primarily spend their winters away from the cold of the mountains. #IndigenousPeople

The #ArmenianNation was born in these mountains, the people of this place developed agriculture, language, carpentry, masonry, metallurgy, cuisine, art, science, faith, love, community, solidarity, goals, vision. That is who we are. That is our home. #IndigenousPeoplesDay

Over time, we were forced from our homes, cleansed from our land, pushed farther and farther into our mountains. As a result our culture has been appropriated over and over by each invader. Our lands given new names, our creation recorded in the name of another. #oldArmenia

See a trend? Why is historic Armenia prone to invasion? Many reasons. The main motivation and why Armenia has been the ambition of many colonizers is it's location at the crossroads of East/West, what many considered the center of the world. Control Armenia, control the world.

And yet, Armenians invited all who wished to live with them, all those who sought freedom and liberation knew they could find refuge in Armenia. This is how we have managed to even make friends with our invaders, find common ground, establish peace and work toward common good.

The empires who wished to rule our land once, today stand with us in solidarity, again toward a common good. Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Arabs, Russians, Iranians and Kurds all work today for the just cause of stopping Turkish terrorism that has destabilized the region forever.

Our friends in these communities and all over the world can attest to our kind, peaceful, faithful, just attitude that they have grown to respect and love. All of this should make clear to the world that Armenians are not aggressors, we do not want war. We've had enough.

After surviving thousands of years of conquest, Armenians faced some of their darkest days 1000 years ago during the simultaneous conquests by Seljuk, Mongol, Arab and Persian forces competing for control of our land. This era has mainly led us to the predicament of today.

The settlement of various Persian, Kurdish and Turkic tribes made us victim to a fierce demographic campaign via ethnic cleansing and resettlement, which aimed to make us a minority in our own homeland. Invading tribes settled in the valleys, Armenians fled to the mountains.

This was the case in Artsakh. The much discussed "seven surrounding territories" claimed by Azerbaijan, were settled by Turkified Persian Azeris to essentially encircle, bombard and cut off the local Armenian populations from the rest of their homeland. #NKR

Despite being surrounded, forced to speak a foreign language, create music and art for their occupiers, pay a heavy tax for their beliefs, and living in constant fear for their lives, Armenians were able to keep their culture and traditions alive, as well autonomy in some cases.

Countless campaigns to destroy or reappropriate our creation on that land did not stop us from making our presence known. All of the highlands in modern day eastern Turkey continued to maintain an Armenian flavor, pockets of autonomous Armenians thrived, such as in #Cilicia.

Although living under Turkish rule, Armenians were generally governed internally, and in places exerted their autonomy to the point of armed rebellion, as was the case many times in #Zeitun. #Artsakh is also known for enjoying general independence from foreign rule. #freedom

In the 18th and 19th centuries the Armenians of #Zeitun resisted Turkish rule over 40 times raising their swords to foreign rule and defending what was theirs by birthright. The peoples of #Van #Sasun and #Mush are also noted for their continued struggle for freedom.

Armenians maintained a majority population in most of what was their historic homeland until 1915, when the genocide completely displaced the Ottoman empire's 3 million Armenians, killing 1.5 million, converting thousands, and making orphans or refugees of the rest. #NeverAgain