How Those Indians Doing Anyway?

Somewhere between the stuffing making and the gravy sipping, I'd like to propose we pause and consider our continuing relationship with the Native Americans.

Because centuries after we broke bread on that first day of thanks, and despite all our continual promises to do the right thing, we still, of course, abuse Native American rights whenever it's convenient to do so.

Right now in Nevada, the Barrick Mining Company is planning to build one of the largest open pit cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States on Mt Tenabo, a sacred Shoshone site. The Bush administration, predictably, has done nothing to protect the Shoshone.

All you have to do is read the phrase "open pit cyanide" to understand the destruction this project will bring to the site and the region. The Shoshone have sued, "We want them off this mountain, this is a spiritual genocide what's going on," says Carrie Dann, a grandmother and longtime Shoshone activist. "This mine will drain the water from Mount Tenabo" and will suck "the water out of the mountain forever."

She's not exaggerating, through an extensive groundwater pumping system, the mine will de-water the entire mountain and "permanently destroy approximately 6,800 acres of land on and around Mt. Tenabo."

The history of gold and the destruction of Native American's way of life are, of course, intricately intertwined. George Custer's opening of the Badlands to prospectors in 1874 began the chain of events that ultimately led to the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Rereading Evan Connell's masterpiece, Son of the Morning Star last night, I came across this passage. You don't have to read it aloud at the dinner table or anything, but it might be worth considering now:

Sitting Bull clung to his dream beyond all reasonable hope. Even after they crossed the boundary on that final march he tried to persuade his people to break away. 'We will cross the Missouri River at Wolf Point, cross the Yellowstone, and go up the Tongue River into the mountains,' he told them. 'There we can find plenty of game and hide from our enemies.' He did not know that while he was in Canada this region had been settled.

Clifford said many of the people following him had just one garment. Some were naked. What little clothing they did have was dropping off their bodies.

In this condition Sitting Bull with 186 Unkpapas was escorted to Fort Buford. There, on July 20, at eleven in the morning, the obstinate fugitive behaved as usual. Instead of handing his rifle to the American major who conducted the bittersweet ceremony, he gave it to his six year old son, telling him to give it to the major; and he made a speech during which he said that he wished to be remembered as the last of his tribe to surrender his weapon.

With this the Indian trouble ended. Not literally, not until the last shot had been fired at Wounded Knee. But when Sitting Bull admitted defeat the intermittent warfare ended.

Count Hermann Keyserling, speaking of America, remarked that no gods had been born of this nation's marriage with man. There was Manitou, whose ghost continues to hover on the plains, but Manitou was not strong enough to become the soul of a continent, as did Osiris, Allah, and Jahve. When Sitting Bull gave up his rifle he gave up the only god known to America.

To take action for the Shoshone, please go here.

Read more Thanksgiving posts from HuffPost bloggers

Comments

[SColbert]

Please call them Native Americans or Americans, and not Indians! People from India are Indians. Damn Columbus.

[LITU]

THIS Anashinabeg doesn't much give a rat's about politican correctness. I don't care what you call me as long as you show me respect.

I have always gotten the impression that non-natives are more caught up in titles than the population being labelled.

[SColbert]

I don't think its "political correctness". They should be called Americans, or first Americans. I have friends who are Native Americans who think they shouldn't be called Indians, so I just thought I put that out there.

[Vickster]

SColbert,

When Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, the subcontinent we now call India was known as Hindustan and the people who lived there were Hindustanis. The term "Indian" is actually an English bastardization of the Italian "in dios" which means "in with God".

It's a myth that Columbus was looking for India. He suspected there was a large landmass in the west based on Dutch and Viking legends. After his first encounter with native people in the western hemisphere, Columbus wrote in the ship's log that they were a people in with God. He went on to write that the people in with God were peace-loving and generous to a fault and would therefore make excellent slaves.

Of course, some might say it's too bad that Columbus didn't land on the neighboring island, where cannabalism was practiced.

[NDNlady]

Well well, a thoughtful commentary on an actual Indian issue on the front page of Huffpo. It must be Thanksgiving. Seriously, thank you for bringing attention to the Western Shoshones' fight to protect their inherent rights as indigenous nations. Their struggle is played out all over Indian Country among many different tribes. Cancer deaths are skyrocketing among the Lakota from unwanted uranium mining, ditto for the Navaho and coal. Sacred sites are desecrated in the name of development. And always, such grinding poverty for so many native people. Gaming profits directly benefit a mere six percent of the total native population.

So many people fail to understand that Indian issues today are not merely a sense of "victimhood" for the past, but rather an ongoing fight to retain our rights as indigenous nations, with rights to self-determination and the ability to protect our land, our people, our resources and our identity as "distinct peoples".

Two UN human rights monitoring bodies have routinely criticized the US for failing to live up to their obligations to Indian peoples and the US routinely ignores them. If you want to make a difference, tell PE Obama that the US must adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and then make sure your government lives up to it.

[omop]

Mr. Barlow aught to be commended for reminding of not only the atrocities committed against the native population that inhabited the original 48.

Our duly elected reps in DC have been doling out taxpayers monies for years to people in Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and others around the world. A Washington, DC organization that researches government hand outs has determined that Israel receives $12 million dollars a day, thats A DAY every day of the year and one guess that other nations do get their yearly quota.

And the native american youngsters in the Dakotas and other states need clothing, food and medical care as well as schooling and adequate housing at the same level as those folks in other countries.

If as citizens we have the capability to finance the welfare of foreigners we should be shamed as to how we ignore the needs of the original inhabitants of the USA.

[guajiro]

It's something I've always wondered about; why hasn't there been an in depth study via national television media detailing why our own government, both Democrats and Republicans, continue to permit the continuing marginalization of our very own peoples, in the case of the native Indians. I occasionally support an Indian group that hopefully other groups can emulate. That's INDN:
http://www.indnslist.org/

[Infostream]

Yes horrible atrocities were committed against Native Americans, no question.
And yes this treaty should absolutely be honored, but what do we gain by putting it in the context of white vs. Native American, when the real struggle is between the hardworking average citizen and the money-junkie richest 1% and their bootlicking minions (GWBush).

Another thing makes me wonder about the continued stress on race as identity for certain groups. I am of Irish descent and I am aware of the oppression, the starvation of millions who were forced to pay taxes to the British with the only food they had, all the other atrocities (Barbados) and discrimination in 19th and 20th Century America. But I happily don't feel my life has to revolve around that history of victimhood, but rather see it as part of the struggle between reason and instinct for ALL HUMAN BEINGS. I am dead certain that if the positions were reversed, and the Native Americans had guns and technology and the Europeans were living a subsistence lifestyle, that exactly the same thing would have happened in reverse. We need to start looking at this as a problem for all humanity to resolve instead of an endless cycle of squabbles over race-defined bad-guys, while the corrupt people in power get away with murder.

Fun fact: Did you know that Native Americans didn't have horses until they were brought by the Europeans? Who knew!?

[Vickster]

Infostream,

This isn't a white vs. Native American issue or even race identity politics. This is about the rights of sovereign nations who made treaties with the U.S. government, treaties that were subsequently broken when the U.S. government decided it needed those lands for mining, farming etc.

[NDNlady]

Thank you for your comment. American Indian tribes are indigenous nations and a distinct set of human rights flow from that status. It is NOT about race but about our continued existence as distinct peoples with inherent rights to self-determination, including the right to strong self-governance enabling us to protect our people, our land and resources and our distinct cultures, languages and sacred sites.

US federal Indian law and policy is based on a series of racist Supreme Court decisions beginning in the 19th century and continueing to the present day. These decisions created what is known as the "plenary powers doctrine" which says Indian nations retain ONLY those inherent rights not yet destroyed by Congress. The monitoring body for the International Convention to End All Forms of Racism has called on the US to repudiate this doctrine calling it racist at its core and in direct conflict with the US's legal obligation under the ICERD.

[ArchAngel]

Why is it that we are not hearing about this directly from a native?

Shouldn't we be hearing directly from American minorities in direct proportion to their numbers at least?

* Total population: 299 million
* White alone: 74% or 221.3 million
o Not including the 23.2 million White Hispanic and Latino Americans: 66% or 198.1 million
* Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, of any race: 14.8% or about 44.3 million
* Black or African American alone: 13.4% or 40.9 million
* Some other race alone: 6.5% or 19 million
* Asian alone: 4.4% or 13.1 million
* Two or more races: 2.0% or 6.1 million
* American Indian or Alaska Native alone: 0.68% or 2.0 million
* Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander alone: 0.14% or 0.43 million

[guajiro]

What difference does it make where you hear the truth from? Facts are facts. I'm a minority. Does it make you feel better or give the article more credibility if I repeat Mr. Barlows article? Are you questioning Mr. Barlow's integrity because he is not a minority?
Happy Thanksgiving.

[PapaWolg54]

Thank you for reminding all of us the need to recognize and respect Native Americans and their rights. It often sickens me that we live in such a hypocritical nation that claims "liberty and justice for all" yet continues to urinate all over Native Americans and their rights.

[rovezaleeker]

Put the sleezebags in jail who have stolen and/or misappropriated Indian reparation monies. Pay the people. Free Leonard Peltier. Grant the people the treaty rights they were promised in the 1800's. Repair the damage that we have caused to the peoples' land. Change the nickname of the professional football team in the nation's capitol and those of teams around the rest of the country that have been deemed to be racist and offensive.

Just basically...do the right thing.

[MagisterLudi]

I agree absolutely. NOW, for a real test of the wind baggage: which part of YOUR home town are we giving back? Please post some GPS coordinates.

[ricchase]

There are so many things I have to say about us, "The Euro-Americans", however, in the fleeting spirit of Thanksgiving, I will pass. Happy Thanksgiving to our American Natives people everywhere.

[hippynanainblingland]

Don't know if this can be considered to be off topic, but I keep thinking that our President Elect can win a lot of good will from the Native Americans if he were to consider freeing Loenard Peltier early on in his presidency.... just sayin'...

[MagisterLudi]

Forget Peltier... How about paying out all the billions the Indian Administration owes the tribes. Especially to the ones without casinos.

[hippynanainblingland]

Oh, that too! Definitely that too. But don't forget Peltier...

[guajiro]

We got new managment at our job and when one of the management types accused a fellow worker of using drugs they were all taken to be drug screened, including management. With all the "cold case" shows on TV, we could definitely use a show where falsely accused persons in jail have their case aired nationally. That way Mr. Obama doesn't have to take all the heat from law enforcement in the FBI, CIA, and others who have their reputations at risk were Peltier to be found innocent in a new trial or were he to be pardoned.

[BSERIUS]

Actually , The native American way of life before the Europeans arrived wasn't all that great ..All the tribers were in constant war with each other , constantlay slaughterin each other.. The Wheel had not even been introduced to the continent.... They were nomads .... While the attrocities should not be made light of,today you cannot rationalize progress, you know progress the mantra of the left....I will wager you would sing a different toon , when wind farms are challenged .. Then again you let Kennedy and Kerry get away with it.

[GrainOSand]

Constant war you say? Hmmm, would that be anything like the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq (again). I understand what you are saying but the critique of constant war does not discredit any claim that the natives did have some aspects of living correct in practice and approach. As for assessment of superiority by technology, it was the speed and precision of technology that is partially to blame for the economic crisis -- can you say electronic run on a bank, and blunder magnified and intensified by world economies connected via satellite and transatlantic cable? What of technology and the previous horror of the use of the atom bomb, and the current national fear, treasure, and time given to keeping others from developing such vaunted "wheels" of progress?

We bury our dead and we hope we bury their mistakes. We should never bury that which is the wheel and therefore requires not reinvention but adherence. The natives had advances of earth recognition that seem advanced in light of global warming as threatening storm. Let us not bury that wheel and other positives they contributed to the saga that is human life.

[MajorKong]

Because the Europeans certainly had no history of "constant war".

The Europeans had been killing each other with clubs, swords, axes, longbows, pikes, muskets, bayonets, machine-guns, artillery, mustard gas, panzers, incendiary bombs and everything else they could think up until just a few short years ago when they finally got tired of it.

Sure glad they weren't like those bloodthirsty Indians.

[Abbily]

What's wrong with being a nomad?
The world doesn't have to be England to be right.

[Vickster]

Nomadic implies that one isn't tied to a particular territory. Migrations follow a seasonal circuit within a territory. Not that there's anything wrong with being a nomad, but it doesn't describe how most hunter-gatherer societies lived.

[Vickster]

Re: "The wheel had not even been introduced to the continent..." before the Europeans arrived.

Toys that had wheels were found in Mayan and Aztec ruins. The reason why Native Americans didn't develop transportation that used wheels was because dogs were their only "beasts of burden" before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived with horses and burros.

Also, while some Native cultures lived in villages, most were migratory, not nomadic. And while there were wars between tribes, these wars weren't waged for the sole purpose of wiping out the other side, unlike the wars waged against these peoples by the United States government.

[guajiro]

Happy Thanksgiving!
"you cannot rationalize progress, you know, progress, the mantra of the left...."

I'm not sure I follow you. If you claim progress is "the mantra of the left", then why would we try to "rationalize" it away? Hmmmm?
As to your claim of Indian's "constantlay slaughterin each other", consider this North American Indian item:

"Villages consisted of families grouped into two or more clans, which provided hospitality for visiting relatives and, in the absence of any statist legal system, functioned as a police, avenging injuries to kin. Wood lands peoples neither accumulated much material wealth nor developed stratified classes. Bands were headed by civil chiefs who took advice from elders, councils, or sometimes all adults. Lacking fiat power and thus unable to compel individual behavior, chiefs ruled instead by force of personality and example. Military chiefs, chosen for their feats of bravery, captained parties for hunting and combat. Wars, fought for honor or revenge rather than riches or territory, were endemic but not particularly lethal. Villages were joined in structures of various size and complexity, from tribes incorporating a few towns with headmen holding essentially equal authority to paramount chiefdoms integrating numerous band and kin groups governed by a ranked hierarchy of chiefs. Extensive polities were rare. Sometime in the sixteenth century, the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks formed the League of the Iroquois to stop blood feuds among them and to coordinate policies toward the British colonies."

http://www.anb.org/main-indian.html

[MagisterLudi]

American paradigm, plainly visible on this website is to issue moral imperatives to other countries while sweeping the white elephant of Native American rights and abuses under the carpet.

Palestinain rights ---Yeah, abuses, U.N.... the horrah... give back every inch... morality...indigenous... always been there..

Gay rights --rah rah rah... civil rights.... abuses... boycott....Supreme Court...

Native American rights-------crickets-------crickets------Who?! ........ "Hey Jack keep your hands of my stack,"

[HalBrown]

Anti-Indian sentiment and reactions don't often get much publicity. Your article is one element. It also come out when tribes try to open casinos. That's what is happening in rural Middleboro, Massachusetts where I live. It is especially telling because we're right next to Plymouth.

Casino opponents originally spoke against it with arguments about the dangers and increased crime and traffic. But now that it appears the casino will be built, arguments on the anti-casino blogs are suggesting that the federally recognized tribe that bought the land, the Mashpee Wampanoag, weren't really legitimate members of the Wampanoag tribe that lived here and greeted the Pilgrims.

There are also those here who say that no tribes in the original 13 colonies can be legally recognized.

For those interest in what's happening here, Google Middleboro Mashpee. You find my own website, ant-casino websites, and many newspaper articles.

[MagisterLudi]

So it is now enough for you that Native Americans were disposed of their own land, every treaty broken and billions of dollars owed in arrears. Now you want to control whatever little land they have left. On some pathetic "crime and traffic excuse." Now begin spouting about human right abuses by Russians, Israelis, British etc.

[Yermammy]

Thank you. At least some remember.

[Pressmatters]

You know how you can repair the damage done to Native American Brothers and Sisters? Restore their land, which you stole from them, and end the conversation. This is classic neo-liberalism. White liberals feel that by simply feigning concern over something, they've done their job. Same with the plight of Black folks. While liberals believe that by consenting to the notion that Black folks are still an oppressed minority, they've bridged the gaps their father/mothers were unable to bridge. WRONG! Give us reparations, restore Native American lands, and get over your silly, pedomorphic guilt! You don't stab a man in the back, and after years of apathy, tell him to get over his pain -- which never received medical attention -- because you feel bad. The saddest part of this ordeal is that White kids, growing up today, are being exploited by media and educational institutions, who lie to them about the conditions that afflict people of color in the world today. And to those idiots who blame Native Americans for not assimilating into this culture, Malcolm x once warned us about sheep integrating with wolves. I guess our Native American brethren just learned that lesson better than Black folks.

[Peter007]

I don't understand your point. Are you being sarcastic? Whats the difference between neo-liberal and liberal. How is your symbolism relative."Stabbing a man in the back ". We know what that means but how does it relate to your topic?

[3rdCitizen]

At its best, each culture contains its own unique wisdom that every other culture could learn from (though different cultures are usually too pig-headed to do so). Among all the Native American nations I'm familiar with (having grown up in Arizona), that wisdom has always been linked to a profound spiritual awareness with centuries-old traditions, ceremonies & rituals. I've always been impressed by that perception of the sacred. But I'm sure Christopher Hitchens & Bill Maher must hold such things in contempt. After all, if you're intolerant of faith-based belief systems within your own culture, how can you be tolerant toward those of others? Clearly, the only human perspective worthy of respect is one founded on scientific reductionism & existential skepticism. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got ennui.
The arrogant dismissal of Native American beliefs by Christianity is now seen as a kind of cultural imperialism. But the dismissal of those beliefs by Atheism is just a form of enlightenment. It's OK to be arrogant & dismissive if you're sure you really do own the truth.

[mulegino]

Very good point, but much of the hypocrisy is simply ignored. Scientific reductionism (as opposed to true science, or scientific knowledge per se) is, in its own way, a religion that has its own dogmas, devils, and sweeping generalizations about others. Yes, the native Americans did get a raw deal from the waves of European settlers, most of whose ancestors probably got raw deals themselves from the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Huns, the Mongols, the Normans, etc.
Genocide and its concomitants are not limited to one or two continents, but are a tragic offspring of the deeply rooted human desire to dominate, whether in the name of one's clan, tribe, nation or persuasion.

[MajorKong]

Yes but one would have hoped that by the mid-1800s we might have advanced a little beyond the Huns and Mongols.