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Native Americans
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Slimdaddy101 (U2553470) on Friday, 12th May 2006
In the preface to Bury my heart at Wounded Knee, 1970, Dee Brown comments...
ever (you) ever chance to see the poverty, the hopelessnes and the squalor of a modern Indian reservation, (you) may find it possible to truly uinderstand the reasons why.
Dee then goes on to tell the heartbreaking distruction, dispersal and relocation of the Native Americans in 1880's/1890's. The topic of Native Americans rarely gets the time of day, I am curious to know of their plight nowadays and would be grateful for any comments.
I remember recently a contributer said he found some old arrowheads on his lands. I would love to knwo how modern Americans think of the Native Americans too abd the way they were treated. -
Message 2
Posted by generallobus (U1869191) on Friday, 12th May 2006
I was under the usual misconception that Indians were bad and cowboys good until I saw the Arthur Penn film 'Little Big Man' with Dustin Hoffman. Made me sad and angry with its portrayal of the genocide and hypocrisy of the white Americans and the brave General Custer. I don't know how accurate the film is but it really changed my perceptions of native Americans.
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Message 3
Posted by Plancenoit (U1237957) on Friday, 12th May 2006
The 'Native Americans' of today, after a very short historical period of a paltry 200 years, are the same 'Native Americans' of 1000 years ago.
Unfortunately(?), the westward route was rediscovered, and from c.1490 the rest is history.
Yes it would be nice to blame the the Yanks, but who are the Yanks anyway??
Maybe we should be grateful we exported our Tories in 1620(??), and Tony Cromwell fought for the homeless peasant, abolished Christmas, Dancing, Singing in Public because it gave those with the ability to do it properly an 'unfair' advantage over those who didn't know s*;t from pudding.
Those who don't understand history are condemned to repeat it. HA!!
Ok. I've done my bit. Now sit back and watch.
All the best,
Dan. -
Message 4
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
generallobus:
Why would you allow a work of fiction, the factual basis of which you do not know, change your perception?
Kurt -
Message 5
Posted by Slimdaddy101 (U2553470) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Plancenoit,
I take note of what you say but I am not "trying to blame the yanks" for anything. I was more interested to ascertain how the native American nations have survived in their reservations in the modern world. They seem a trappled, forgotton, long suffering nation that is never in the media spotlight, unlike other such groups, who make thmselves noted isometimes rather unsavoury ways. Native Americans seem to have faded out of history.
Futhermore I was interested in modern American feelings toward what had happened. Was the native Amercans fate inevitable? Does the spirit of the Indians still resonate in some remote outpost? Does the land seem a more desolate place in their absence? Guilt?
But not blame. I'm not in the blame game! -
Message 6
Posted by Plancenoit (U1237957) on Friday, 12th May 2006
I think you need someone like Buckskinz to answer your question, but prepare yourself for some 'straight from the hip' and 'take no sh^t' responses!!!
I was merely trying to point out that Yanks are watered down (bevvied up?) Brits, with some other nationalities, mostly European/Scandinavian thrown in.
Good question. I will definitely be waiting to see if this develops.
All the best,
Dan. -
Message 7
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
To answer your question as best I can, understanding that to speak is always to do at least partial violence to the truth as the complete truth is always more complicated:
1. The reservations that I see are still mostly squalid overtly displaying on even superficial examination massive poverty, indolence and drunkenness.
2. There is a lot more to North American Indians than reservations. We can never know how many, but a great number of Indians avoided the reservation system altogether. The majority of Southern whites and nearly all American blacks have at least some Indian ancestry. The final demise of large numbers of small forgotten tribes was not through extinction but assimilation into the white majority. I am considered white, but have proven Indian ancestry by all four grandparents. Until the post ww2 era, it was not "cool" to be Indian so people just denied Indian identity. I can give historical and family anectodes to explain and support this. In the south especially, the Indian and poor white lifestyles were not so far apart 200 years ago and they learned from each other and converged to a degree. This intermixing/assimilation was far more the case with French colonists than English, but was extensive. The intermixing with French so extensive, this combined with improved disease resistance of the miscegenated "Indians" mean that many official recognized tribes probably have no pure Indian members.
3. Among the western tribes, with large, and extensive reservations, the best, brightest, and ambitious leave the squalor, get educations, and live "normal" lives as professionals in the cities and elsewhere, with their superficial acquantances having no idea they are Indian, but keeping the reservation membership so they can get great scholarships and special minority admission slots for their kids. Some even reject the tribal memberships and special priveleges and walk away from it entirely.
4. The generalizations are all just generalizations, the Navaho reservation for example is not just another giant welfare buerocracy, with some prosperity. In fact it has actually grown, using their wealth and political influence to annex lands from neighboring weaker tribes (the same ones they were in the process of pushing into extinction when the whites showed up.)
5. I don't know anyone who defends the crimes described by Dee Brown, and a great many opposed them aggressively at the time. The general consensus is pro-Indian now, so much so that a lot of distortion of the history often results. The pendulum only passes a balanced truth in transit to the other side. Now the tendency is to fail to imagine the mind-set of a man who found his fathers body, fingernails burned off, eyes gouged out, most of his skin peeled off, his penis blasted to shreds black powder blasts, a stake up his rectum, and his small intestine wound around a sappling where it was tied while he was forced to march around it. It is not for me the judge him.
Kurt -
Message 8
Posted by Slimdaddy101 (U2553470) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Kurt,
Thnak you for taking the time to write such a poignant response. I enjoyed reading it very much. Though have to admit to a feeling of despair hearing you mention the poverty of a modern day reservation.
Informative as your contribution is, I canβt help but ask βWhy was it not βcoolβ to be of Indian descent? Was their no Martin Luther King or Malcolm X type to speak up for Indian identity? How could it not be βcoolβ to be descended from Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Black Kettler et al. Was the spirit of the Indian nation so thoughly crushed?
It is this fate that intrigues me too. The 1866 Civil Rights Bill, April 1st equal rights to all persons born in America EXCEPT INDIANS! -
Message 9
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
I wouldn't feel too bad about the reservations. The worse aspects of it, as I described them seem a shameful waste of a human soul, but no one is confined to one of course, and Indians have full citizenship and are free to participate fully in society. A member of a reservation tribe (and I believe most live off reservation) has rights and special priveleges connected to that, including special scholarships and sharing in tribal income, but is free to leave and live where and as he wishes. He can lay around drunk on the reservation on the dole, or walk wall street in a pin stripe suit.
In the Western US, I still sense pΓ₯lpable social descrimination against Indians that could blunt the achievements of the less determined, but do not see that in the East. That is likely due to the closer temporal proximity of the "wild indian" days, but even more due to the musch more extensive presence of Indians and of reservations themselves.
Indians were given citizenship early in the 20th century. Prior to that, they were treated, legally speaking, as nations. Today the status is technically dual. Some of the tribes are wealthy because of gambling (state are limited in regulating Indian gambling) and mineral wealth, but often little or none of that benefits the average reservation member. In internal affairs, the tribes are still treated as soveriegn nations, and if the tribal government distributes the wealth to a well-connected few rather than the community, there is little the government can do about it. Corruption in tribal government is another reason why the ambitious and capable often leave rather than staying and making things better at home.
Yes, by the late 1800's the spirit was pretty much crushed. It has been 35 years since I read Dee Brown, but I think he described the Ghost Dance movement which illustrates that.
Part of the problem is that there is not and never was an Indian nation, there are many Indian nations, who tend to see themselves as adversaries of each other as of the whites. The Indians were, and generally are, tribal, not racist. There have been several pan-tribal leaders over the centuries, but where confrontation became violent, there were always Indian allies fighting on the side of the whites (check out Pontiac, Tecumseh, Crazy Horse). I saw that touring the Southwest today in social, political and business competetion between the tribes--the Hopi told me the Navaho were greedy and shady and not to buy from them, a Navaho merchant told me the Hopi were low class, etc.)
When my great-grandmother got a letter from the Bureau of Indian affairs in the 1930's asking her to present to the federal court house she discarded it declaring that she was not an Indian. We do not know what it was about, perhaps just notifying her that she is officially a citizen now, perhaps clarifying tribal affiliation. She was half Indian, but did not see herself that way. Of course, to her Indian's were poor and homeless, and subject to the whims of the state, she might even had been fearful that they were going to "remove" her. This wasn't being done in the 1930's but she was a young woman the plains wars were still ongoing.
The same government that freed the slaves, arguably tried to exterminate the remaining free Indians, or at least was nearly genocidal prejudicial against them. I think it was Gen Phil Sheridan who told Congress that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.
The Confederacy, while unwilling to accept the equality of blacks, was considered much friendlier to Indians. My great great great uncle served with the Mississippi Choctows. All the major southern tribes allied with the confederacy and Oklahoma sided with the south, providing many fine soldiers from the various tribes. That probably contributed to the nonchalance with which the US government broke it's "eternal" promises and opened Oklahoma up to white settlement after the war. -
Message 10
Posted by Scarboro (U2806863) on Friday, 12th May 2006
<>
I felt the same way when I first saw Little Big Man in the 1970's in university. I also questioned its accuracy, wondering whether it was excessive cinematic revisionism or not. So rather than study my mathematics, I spent a day in the basement of the university library, and found some books published by the US Army around the year 1900.
The Americam army treatment of the Indians was at least as bad as portrayed in the film. The "battle" (or massacre) of Sand Creek happened when a US Army volunteers unit's term of duty was up, and thay had not seen any fighting. So the unit attacked the nearby friendly Cheyenne village and killed everyone,(and mutilated the bodies). This according to the US Army report.
The main inaccuracy is that in Little Big Man, all the atrocities were attributed to Custer. In fact there were several different leaders who committed the massacres.
Regards
Brian -
Message 11
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
I think there were one or two atrocities on the other side also, I don't remember if any of them were depicted in Little Big Man.
Regarding the "main inaccuracy" in Little Big Man, it is fiction with a vague historical background that might happen to be true in a few particulars and in spirit. Anything more will never be gotten out of Hollywood and I can't imagine anyone expecting more. They are only good for inspiring interest in research in an area or to provide fictive examples to illustrate points.
Many Army commanders and units were respected and trusted by even "renegade" tribes. Just as most Indian tribes just tried to live out their difficult lives without unnecessary trouble while other were cruel warrior cults delighting in prolonged torture, most frontier whites treated Indians with at least a modicum of decency and, if a fight occured, were not gratuitously cruel. Others, due to inherent personal cruelty or horrible personal experiences with Indians conducted themselves as savages. Some of them had spent much of their lives with Indians that they really were culturally about as Indian as they were white, taking on the cultural charateristic of whatever tribe they bonded to, whether for good or ill. In other cases, the enemy defeated by the Americans was treated cruely, but by their Indian allies rather than the white fighters.
There was plenty of guilt to go around on the frontier. Even so, many a white, black, and Indian orphan owed their life to being taken in by people of another race.
Kurt -
Message 12
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 12th May 2006
I went to Seattle last year to see some friends and they were slightly scathing about poverty on the reservations, as in Washington state apparently they can build cassinos as they are not subject to state law - an infact do so - and are under the impression that they are wealthy beyond belief !!
this is not my opinion - just what i was told
ST -
Message 13
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Do you mean that they are saying it isn't true and resent the common perception or that it appears true, because the money doesn't filter down?
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Message 14
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 12th May 2006
KB
sorry dont quite get that ??
what i am saying is i was told that the common perception of the reservations being poverty stricken was not believed by the average seattlen (??) as there were cassinos operating t generating considerable wealth for the NAs
nearly every crossroad in seattle had a "encampment " of NAs begging from the cars as they stopped - which provoked the comment "they dont need to do that " etc
ST -
Message 15
Posted by Scarboro (U2806863) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Kurt,
No disagreement with your points. My comments about Little Big Man are to the effect that there is some underlying historical accuracy, but not any form of generalization about "good guys and bad guys."
As you correctly point out, there are many different and complicated stories. No one statement is applicable across the board.
Here are some comments about what happened in Canada. Generally the history books pride ourselves on our civilized treatment of the aboriginals. However we have some reserves that are totally disgusting cesspits, where alcoholosm & suicide are rampant. Other reserves are profitable and well-run businesses.
A century ago Canada appointed the major churches to set up "residential schools" to "civilize" the natives. Children were forcibly removed from their parents, and forced to abandon their language & heritage. Physical and sexual abuses happened from time to time. The results were bad. Canada and the churches are paying billions of dollars now as compensation.
The British system was generally well organized in "purchasing" lands from the natives in advance of white settlement. However there are hundreds of unresolved land claims today. In British Columbia the governor arranged a purchase price, but ran out of money and just neglected to make payments.
In Ontario most of the native tribes were British allies and were given generous land grants. However subsequent colonial administrators were corrupt (see Mackenzie's 1837 rebellion for confirmation), and the tribes claim that some of their land was stolen by the government. We are dealing with a confrontation in Caledonia as we speak.
Some of these cases have been "before the courts" for decades. Some tribes assert that prior attempts to get to the courts were blocked by governments abusing their powers.
Some reserves are well-run, others are not. Some band councils are corrupt, and have no interest in helping their bands improve their life style. They shamelessly abuse the plight of their people to shame governments into bigger handouts, which they keep. In some bands there are political struggles for control between elected band councils under government mandate(including giving women the rights to vote) and traditional councils, often with hereditary leaders.
One reservation straddles the borders of Ontario, Quebec, and New York state, and by treaty can pass from the US to Canada without American or Canadian border controls. Guess how much smuggling goes on there.
It would seem that in most provinces in Canada there were genuine attempts to (a) abide by treaties and (b) treat the natives decently, although (a) and (b) sometimes contradicted each other. It is also true that many of the natives have had bad experiences, and feel truly disadvantaged. It is probably a case where the "road to hell was paved with good intentions".
The good news is that the problems are going to the courts, and are being settled in a civilized way today. -
Message 16
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
No they don't need to do that. No one needs to do that. There are millions of illegals slipping into the country to work, and the disabled can get a montly check.
The presence of casino business doesn't guarantee that the individual reservation resident is cash rich. The money may be spent on reservation improvements, skimmed off by the big wheels, or taken by the outside investors. Also not all reservations have casino or mineral resources. I don't even actually KNOW that the reservation Indians I see are poor. They could have a million dollars in the bank for all I know. I just know that the ones I have driven through mostly look squalid with a lot of low-grade housing with piles of trash in front yard, and I have see mobs of clearly drunken youths not more than 13 or 14 staggering around on Saturday afternoon. Of course it takes money to get drunk. That isn't universally true. It appeared that at least a part of the Navaho reservation residents were prospering judging by the quality of the homes, vehicles, and horses. I haven't been to much of the Northwest.
Kurt -
Message 17
Posted by Slimdaddy101 (U2553470) on Friday, 12th May 2006
it is funny you mention some of the above points Scarboro, this very aftrnoon I read that the High Court in London rules in favour of the natives of the Diego Garcia group if islands, which found that the Gov't were wrong when they forcibly ejected the natives to make way for a US air and naval refuelling and support station. Nevertheless, Britian and the US retain a veto on residency. It seems that history does indeed repeat itself.
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Message 18
Posted by Scarboro (U2806863) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Kurt,
I am talking about smuggled goods, not people. Tobacco smuggling is a huge business. Cigarette taxes are high. The reserves produce cigarettes with no sales or excise taxes, and sell for a fraction of the current retail price. Annual profits are in the tens of millions.
Brian -
Message 19
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Scarboro,
Thanks for the details. Personally, I am glad that my Indian ancestors were assimilated. As I see it, the advantages of the priveleges to be gained by enforcement of old treaty rights and the minority priveleges to be gained from White Guilt, are more than canceled by the psychological handicaps of victimhood and entitlement. But I have seen a few people make something good of it and I don't begrudge them that.
Kurt -
Message 20
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Kurt
I have no idea whether the reservations are wealthy or not - just passing on what i was told
what i definitely do know - and it was very sad - was nearly every cross roads in seattle has a resident NA camp site and when the lights go red there is a tapping of the window and a begging - very sad for a once noble people
ST -
Message 21
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Yes it is.
It is like giving bottle to an alcoholic to give money to these beggers. Obviously, there are enough suckers in Seattle to make it pay, or maybe they are cowards and are afraid of them--either way the givers are as much part of the problelm as the takers.
Meanwhile I am sure that you can find some street corner or parking lot in Seattle where you will find some peon who has walked 1000 miles to offer himself for work.
Kurt -
Message 22
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 12th May 2006
It reminds me of an anecdote from Victor Belenko's book when he described traveling across the US after he got out of the English and culture school that the CIA sent him too after defecting. He had seen enough to realize that people who weren't working in America were on disability or didn't want to work. Then a man accosted him and asked if he had a quarter, he poked his finger in the man's chest and said "Yes, I have a pocket full of quarters, and not one of them says "DEADBEAT" on it"
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Message 23
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 12th May 2006
Kurt
apparently there is a local byelaw that you are banned from giving money to beggars !!
superb
ST
fantastic city by the way - fish like i have never tasted -
Message 24
Posted by generallobus (U1869191) on Monday, 15th May 2006
re: message 4.
Hi Kurt.
I saw the film as a child, and having been brought up digesting the usual Hoyyywood perception of reality I was surprised to see such an opposing viewpoint. As a child my powers of discernment werent very well developed but when I saw the film again as an adult I remembered the ffelings of indignation I had felt. This prompted me to have a look at incidents such as Wounded Knee and the archaeological evidence of The Little Big Horn. I think the point I was trying to make is that the film made me think and empathise. -
Message 25
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Monday, 15th May 2006
I see.
I grew up with almost no exposure to TV or movies until near adulthood and had little time for it then. My perceptions were shaped by what I experienced, was told by family, and read and I have never incorporated film or screen into my information stream more than peripherally. Originally it was an accident of birth, latter it has been deliberate as that medium is usually impression rich, and information and thought poor, and therefore has the greatest potential for falsehood that is hard to refute directly.
I was brought up to empathize with the injustice perpetuated on the Indians, collectively and individually, and still do. The tale was oft told of the great-grandmother above who gave one of her two kettles to a band of "poor Indians" who camped in her front yard in 1888, because they had no pot to cook out of--and of a "poor Indian", who traveling through in the early 1900's was shot for no reason that anyone could discern other than that he was an Indian. We live on a major settlement site, and while others engaged in the relic trade, we were discouraged lest we disturb graves. I usually heard the words "indian" and "poor" together.
It was latter after reading memoirs and biographies of of early American settlers, and reading of the remarkable atrocities commited by the Indians in warfare, that I was able to empathize with at least some of the feelings that drove both sides in the past.
It is my direct personal experience with Indians on and off reservation that creates my dim view of the real effect of the reservation system (which is preserved today only at the request and for the benefit of the tribes, some of which have chosen to dissolve their reservations) on human lives.
Kurt -
Message 26
Posted by generallobus (U1869191) on Monday, 15th May 2006
Thanks Kurt
I understand what you say and I think you're quite lucky not to have been exposed to too much TV (drug of nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation). Unfortunately most people have been indoctrinated and it's only by personal experience can we see through the murk. From reports over the years on British TV I thought that the whole of Northern Ireland was one big grey bomb site where it rained all the time and everything was made from breezeblocks. I now realise it was Manchester I was looking at - only joking mancs. It wasonly when I actually visited N.Ireland that I discovered what a beautful country it is and not a patch on what the biase UK news reports would have me believe.
Wether the purpose of Art is to tell the truth is a question for another message board but I think that Art's ability to make one question things is valid. For example the recent ballyhoo over the Da Vinci code. Whilst it's a work of fiction, it has got people looking again at Leonardo's work. That can't be a bad thing.
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