As we, the American public, hack through thickets of politically enhanced blogoshere-distributed demonstrations and debates about who we are -- A people who embrace or reject others? A people weaned on vengeance or compassion? A people divided against others? Among ourselves? -- most of us overlook one factor: the buffalo in the room.
About 2 percent of the population of this country is Native American. (No, nothing to do in the aggregate with that financially larded 1 percent.) The other 98 percent of us, whether ancestor-initiated us or newly arrived us, are from elsewhere. We came by hook or by crook, of free will or not, landing traumatized or relieved, hopeless or hopeful.
But we did not start out as "a nation of immigrants."
We started out as trespassers.
By extension, we -- certainly not the only such "we" in the world -- are living on foreign occupied territory, are we not?
This is no white guilt screed, no p.c. apologia, but let us face facts, and what better time to do so than November aka Native American Heritage Month? Or, as a Lakota/Navajo wag of my acquaintance calls it, Rent-an-Indian Month.
Another fact, one that helps us live where and how we do: ignorance helps exoneration.
It is no wonder we modern Americans don't sense moccasin trails under the macadam -- most traces of indigenous peoples are literally paved over. As for the hyphenated multitudes, the Greek-, Ukrainian-, Italian-, Cambodian- and so on Americans, whether in the past or still incoming, their ignorance is understandable, too. If the goal is to forge a new life, why pay heed to those people on whose land a new life is being forged?
Throughout the centuries, all this population adding to has meant taking from, of course. Today's Native people, the 2-percenters, sometimes consider themselves invisible and forgotten. Land of opportunity meet land of amnesia.
Another fact: most of us 98-percenters know little about the contributions, however inadequate a word, of this country's original inhabitants and their descendants. We have little idea that Native-based foods enrich our diets, Native-based medicines enrich our health and Native soldiers, in disproportionate numbers, enrich our armed services.
Rather than take a most enlightening journey to inform ourselves about such facts, many of us non-Natives behave like sophisticated squatters, waving valid mortgages from invalid takeovers, and celebrating ourselves within the whole shebang. "We're the best!" "Number 1!" "USA!" "Manifest Destiny!"
After years of reading about Native history and years of interviewing Native people about life today, I maintain that in general Native people behave differently from us non-Natives, especially if they have strong ties to their cultures. Instead of celebrating individualism, including "rugged" individualism, Native Americans traditionally prized consensus, compromise and collective good. Traits such as tolerance, generosity, taking care of one another and not taking too much for oneself, remain important. Getting along had and has far more status than getting ahead.
Recently, at a tribal women's conference on the Squaxin Reservation in Washington, I heard repeated mention that assertiveness, as well as public speaking, are difficult "when you're from the rez." The youngest women all but whispered their hopes into the microphone. People from Native communities far from reservations tend to speak softly, too -- an oral equivalent of soft Native handshakes.
It is certainly a fact, too, that not all tribal nations harmonized across the fruited plains. Hardly. Yet Native premium on compromise extended even toward the endless insatiable trespassers, including, from east to west, the dreaded settlers. Today, inter-tribal rivalries persist, especially in teasing ("Oh geez, what do you expect from a Kiowa!" or Navajo or...), but from my observations, there is more often a sense of pan-Indian connection. Connection, not disconnection.
We of the 98 percent, though, often seem disconnected, do we not? Many of us from one hyphen don't get along with the other. Our fabled melting pot has boiled over more than once. It's awfully hot now.
Is it possible that a reason for personal disconnection is geological disconnection? That we do not know much about this spot we call home, including who lived on it before we did? It's 2011. Do you know where you are?
I am not suggesting, although some do, that the United States vibrates with unhappy ghosts. I do suggest that most of us non-Natives, living with virtually no trace of Native life, past or present, nor acquaintanceship with a Native person, have lost connection not only with values that grew here before we did, but with the very soil.
Native Americans famously had visceral ties to it. One horror of the Trail of Tears, among other Indian "removals," was being forced from a homeland of intimately understood and utilized ecosystems. How do you find the medicinal bark of a South Carolina tree in Oklahoma?
Perhaps the best November day to face facts in this land we profess to love, but do not always treat lovingly, is Thanksgiving ("Thankstaking" to some).
Candidates for questions at our laden tables: Who used to live here? Where are their descendants? And for extra credit: How would we measure up in their eyes?
Alison Owings is the author of 'Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans' (Rutgers 2011).
Follow Alison Owings on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AlisonOwings
Tim Giago: Disguising Themselves as Indians Was an Act of Cowardice
Native American Indian Heritage Month
Presidential Proclamation--National Native American Heritage Month
Sad world, isn't it?
Speaking of religion, a return to ancient tribal myths is a deterrent to progress and only attracts tourists and nostalgics. Tribal myths have often succeeded in bringing the little remaining evidence of the existence of NA on this continent to complete extinction. Thanks to legislation passed by a Cowboy President, Reagan, NA can now legally destroy their own archeology buy reburying the remains of their ancestors in unmarked graves and without prior scientific study. Talk about complete inhalation; one caused by the 'whites' and one wanted by the NA themselves.
And' as well, like Curtis, the great photographer of NA, would have said, "may the NA be spared the missionaries".
I admire the environmental philosophy of most NA 'spirituality' but it has evolved into a dogmatic, rigid' anthropomorphic religion based on myth and legend, just as blind as some of the religions that try to convert them.
When 'medicine men" tell women they cannot participate in a ceremony because they are menstrual, that a stone can protect from bullets (during the Nam war), that eagles speak to 'god' instead of worms or moles, and other such hog-wash, it is a return to primitive obscurantism. How can you expect such a people to pull themselves into the modern world?
On the one hand, the 'government', on the other “NA, Native America” (no pun intended).
NA-ains were not considered citizens and could not vote before about 1921. Many nations (tribes) were considered enemies of America t'il early 20th century; technically, certain Seminole and Miccosukee people have never surrendered. Many were not only forcibly removed from their legitimate homelands, they were force-marched thousands of miles on foot in winter. And the list goes on.
This is just to say that a country that prides itself in being the so-called 'best, greatest, in the world (according to whom and on what criteria), should be ashamed of what it has done to its indigenous people over 200 years. It has had its share of shameful Bosnias. Genocide is not an over-rated word here.
To be admitted on a Rez as a 'registered' full fledged NA, one has to legally be either 100% or 50% 'Red-Blooded' American (so I've been told): You get a registration number.
But, the NA fight among themselves about who is more “pure red” than the other.
Perhaps, in light of the article’s apparent recognition of Native American Heritage Month, an appropriate tribute might suggest the apparent solution to the problem. Secular history appears to suggest that which an apparent founder of New America appears to have been reported as noticing: human well-being appears to fundamentally result from (a) human understanding of the standard for treating other humans well and (b) human desire to treat other humans well. Thousands of years of human social and technological advance appear to not have altered this apparently fundamental truth.
The Bible appears to suggest that (a) the standard for treating other humans well, (b) human understanding of that standard, and (c) human desire to treat other humans well are the result of the human individual’s intimate relationship with and leadership by God. Secular history appears to suggest that humanity has tried nearly everything, if not everything, else and has yet to find a better solution.
I welcome your thoughts.
However balanced or imbalanced the imperialistic urge was between (a) pre-settler Native Americans among themselves and (b) with Native and New Americans, the fundamental issue appears to be that humanity appears to tend to act somewhat inhumanely toward humanity. Such imperialism and otherwise apparently inhumane treatment of humanity by humanity appears to precede that of both Native and New America. Secular history appears to report that need-, wealth- and boredom-based imperialism stretches thousands of years into humanity’s past. In addition, the Bible appears to suggest that:
(a) such inhumanity dates back to Abel, apparently the first Biblically-reported homicide victim, murdered to satisfy a sibling’s jealous, envious rage,
(b) human jealousy and envy are just two of a host of human perception distortions introduced by Adam and Eve’s apparently Biblically-reported rejection of intimate relationship with and leadership by God.
There appears to be a certain sadness somewhat easily associated with certain aspects of apparent historical reports regarding conflicts between Native and New Americans in New America’s development. However, as the article appears to suggest, pre-settler North America appears to be reported to not have been conflict-free.
Perhaps certain aspects of the conflicts among the area’s natives might be considered to be less severe than their conflicts with the area’s most recent settlers. Native weaponry appears to be reported to have been somewhat less industrially lethal than settler technology. On the other hand, some reported Native conflict-related practices such as scalping appear to be reported to have even given the settlers the shivers.
And I suppose the Native Americans sprouted wholesale from the earth they lived upon from the beginnings of time and until the arrival of Europeans?
No of course not. In fact, archaeology demonstrates that these native tribes displaced other, older tribes. And history demonstrates that such displacement was occurring at the time of the arrival of Europeans.
Let's be realistic here. You don't have to like how it was done or why it was done, but let's not deny that it was nothing new. If we are going to attempt to paint the descendants of Europeans, or anyone else, as people unlawfully occupying foreign lands then that is a statement that applies to every single human on this planet. Such claims quickly become meaningless because they bear no weight and have no value for true distinction, except as rhetoric.
We can teach people how to live WITH the land, instead of ON the land. We can teach people how to respect nature and all of it's gifts. We can't teach people how to respect each other. When you live in a society that is based on everyone being equal, it's hard to understand a society where one group thinks it deserves more and is worth more than any other.
Obviously equality and justice is not something that happens all at once. It also means we certainly have to do more than cry when there are atrocities in progress.
Including, I think, what's done to the land, and even our connections to it as they've been.
It's been clear to plenty of us 'white folks' for quite some time that these are the very things that have been out of balance about our own civilization, ...in fact the same people who've been increasingly-boldly-bigoted toward Native American cultures in politics and all have been acting pretty 'threatened' by those of us reviving what's left to us of our *own* old ways. And of course the much bigger numbers of those who are realizing that this whole system-out-of-control is serving only a very few moneyed 'elites' and economic engines out of control.
There's a lot that can't be put back, but I for one think it's *way* past time Native Americans had more of a say in all this.
I think it's a pretty scarred spiritual landscape in general, by no means least because of the racial type issues, but also because a lot of the people whose recent ancestors made *this* continent our home were likewise cut off from our traditional ways, ...and that despite the obvious difficulties surrounding certain consumerism about Native American cultures, we're all in this boat together.. A lot of the 'white people' that did wrong to Native Americans did so in a context where it'd been done to their own ancestors not too long before.
But it's a real land with real people, real spirits, and what's left of real cultures. I hope one day we can be about putting this all together, in our many ways.
Actually the point kind of was that a lot of these atrocities followed on some of what had been going on in *Europe* and elsewhere in varying forms of colonization. Not the same, but the displacement and, I think, legacies of brutalization have a *lot* to do with how Native Americans were treated here.
A lot of what was done to Native Americans was in fact practiced on the Irish and others in the history of Europe, right down to the reeducation, banning traditional language and customs and of course religion....
Ask the Saami people of Finland or the Britons or anywhere on back into history. It's not pretty. The enslavement of Africans and Native Americans, etc,
I'm not sure what you're saying I'm wrong about here. I'm actually saying this is a historical problem for all peoples here, not some kind of competition, certainly.
Certainly, we can hear how the same Christian Right treats the Native Americans and even what's left to the reservations. Which is of course a total disgrace. I don't think people have recognized what this kind of legacy does to *any* cultures.
For those that are interested in purchasing the book, of particular interest are Chapters 3 and 4, entitled:"The Truth about the First Thanksgiving" and "Red Eyes" respectively.
No, I'm not collecting a commission for pushing this book. Just think that it's an important one to read to dispel some of the untruths that have been learned by people about the role of Native-Americans in U.S. History.