Things used to be simpler in the old-timey days, or maybe they were just
more high contrast. We were the Peoples. They were the Whiteman.
They came; they misnamed; they killed. And that was the first Whiteman
Indian policy (a.k.a., the Invasion).
The second was: They stayed; they stole; they killed.
That one lasted a really long time, from genocide to slow genocide.
We move into the modern era through international treaty pledges of peace
and friendship to the courtrooms where we have to duke it out for inches of
land, buckets of water, scraps of dignity and even chards of people.
Now, we can begin to see our own time, which is luxuriant, in contrast to
our generations all the way back to 1491.
Despite our current socioeconomic problems and continuing injustices, we
have time to understand what happened to us, who did it and how to stop it.
And, more and more of us are able to live in peace with our neighbors,
especially those who are not benefiting from heinous acts committed against
our ancestors and who are not opposing our right to seek redress for them.
As we think about the present, we need to keep a few things in mind.
First, the Whiteman is no longer solely white or a man or a descendant of
someone who killed our grandpas or stole our grandmas’ lands.
Second, the craziness and greed of the Whiteman that made him hate us
because he did bad things to us is now a disease that blankets much of the
legal system and popular culture, and infects many who never met us,
historically or today.
Third, a manifestation of this pathology is that the new whiteman (a.k.a.,
the Disease) must keep us in our place. Socially and economically, this
means anywhere below everyone else’s rung of the ladder. Physically, it
means any place or thing the Disease does not want for itself. No matter
how many times a Native nation or person may move to accommodate it,
eventually the new whiteman will covet the new place.
The Disease will want not only the new place, but will desire what we do
there – pray or paint or dance or sing – and will try to control our
behavior. Once it controls our behavior, it will assume the reigns of our
lives and assume our very identity.
Why does it do this? On the theory that, once in positions of power, we
will be as bad to the new whiteman as the Whiteman has been to us. Of
course, that is not our history or experience, but the new whiteman still
takes it as fact that he must control us or become us, or both.
Fourth, there is a direct line between land-grabs and identity theft.
Evidence of this can be found in the large percentage of non-Native
decision makers in tribal institutions and businesses and Native
organizations, as well as the high numbers of non-Natives posing as Native
people in the arts and education and business.
This historic progression from appropriation of property to acquisition of
identity can be seen plainly in American athletic programs.
After the federal government banned the Sun Dance and claimed Native sacred
places for their own purposes, Whitemen donned “Indian” costumes, adopted
“Indian” personae and performed “Indian” dances during the time-outs and
half-times of sports contests. The only Native people who could dance were
those tamed Indians who acted like “wild Indians” in motion pictures or who
performed for the amusement of tourists and visiting officials.
This is not entirely a thing of the past.
Sometimes, Native people are assigned to play the Indian mascot, or are
given tokenized positions in other fields. If the Indian mascot or token
balks, the owner/manager/administrator finds another Indian willing to play
ball or gives the job of Indian mascot/token to a non-Indian.
A few of the most prominent pseudo-Indians in the early 1900s actually got
their starts in athletics, where they were sportsmen and mascots at the
same time. The most notable among these were “Lone Star” Dietz and “Buffalo
Child Long Lance.”
Long Lance killed himself when he was finally exposed as an imposter. Dietz
toughed his way through a trial about a missing person he was impersonating
and went down in football mythology as the excuse for the Washington team
carrying the name so many Native people despise.
Other pseudo-Indian super stars were virtual mascots/tokens in their
fields: Jamake Highwater and Yeffe Kimball Slatin in the arts; Frank
Hopkins in horse-riding; Red Thundercloud in language.
In their time, these pseudo-Indians were enormously popular among
non-Indians. Why? Because they were not Indians. They were giving the
audience the recreation and comfort it wanted – an Indian mascot/token that
provided entertainment, but would not ruin the neighborhood with actual
Indian family or tribal members.
Another manifestation of the Disease is that its pathogens peddle the
discredited idea of the American melting pot. Anyone who disagrees – by
attempting to change the image from a melting pot to a garden in full
distinctive flower, for example – is accused of practicing the politics of
exclusion and separation, and denying the shared humanity of all peoples.
Code for this is “identity politics.”
After the catastrophic events of Sept. 11, 2001, many assimilationists
reverted to type and declared publicly that the U.S. was once again a
melting pot. Shortly after airplanes were allowed in the skies again, an
arts conference was convened in Chicago, where one funder pronounced all
talk of racial and cultural distinctiveness as “over, passe – 9/11 changed
all that, you know.”
While the Disease continues in its obsession to make us over in its image
and co-opt our imagery, it finds newer and cruder ways to maladapt and to
silence our objections to its course, even going so far as to keep us from
burying our ancestors and to tell our children lies about who we are.
The prognosis is not as bleak as it once was. Many of us are not hosts to
this pathology and are not in contact with its carriers. As we heal
ourselves, we meet more non-Native people avoiding and repairing damage,
too. The pathological takers have a big corner of the garden, but it’s not
the whole world and we won’t catch the Disease if we don’t go there.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian
Country Today.
