One of the first things I learned about Native Americans, and something I’ve always admired, is their great commitment to honesty and loyalty. A man’s word is his bond and a woman’s word is her bond: a promise is sacred. So I give you my word, to be as honest and fair and truthful as I can about Native American people, their culture and history, their lives and contributions.
I admit my own ignorance at the outset: all that I know seems but a small and pitiful amount compared to all that has been lost or all that is out there waiting to be rediscovered. I know that I am on a journey, that I consciously chose this path of pledging to remember America’s first peoples and to remain a faithful friend of Native American peoples everywhere; I made this pledge when I was just a small boy. To the best of my ability, I have never broken this promise and never shall, until death closes my eyes for the final time.
I hope that these are truthful words, good words, honest words. I am trying to stay on the path, the good red road home, but I also, like any other person, am only human, with a normal range of strengths and weaknesses. Like anyone, I hope my good qualities and virtues will prove stronger than my shortcomings in the end.
I struggle to do my best, to help others and to make a difference, but at times I am also beset by doubts and misgivings. There are moments when I am not always certain if I have made good choices in the past. Sometimes I feel the need to rethink events of my life and wonder what or how things may have turned out differently if I had made different choices?
Nevertheless, I am not looking backwards nor given over to spending time on regrets or what “might have been”. I try not to engage in self-serving revisions of the past in order to improve my reputation, which would be pointless in any case: the truth shall speak for itself, always.
I try to look forward, to what can be done to overcome social and economic injustice and to make the world a more peaceful and democratic place. For this task, I draw enormous strength and comfort from my study of Native American peoples, especially their cultural and philosophical achievements which I consider to be of the highest order. I draw great inspiration from their tremendous courage in resisting aggression and defending their freedom, their way of life, even against the most overwhelming odds. Morally speaking, I think of the Native Americans as wise and ethical; I think of the European-Americans as greedy and brutal, stupid and immoral!
In my opinion, they were the savages, not the Indians–but to think and feel this way is to turn history on its head and reverse nearly everything that we have been taught in schools for these many, many years. It is rarely done and risks social ostracism, of being pushed aside as a person not worth taking seriously or even being caricatured as slightly demented. For a teacher, for a scholar, it means to be minimized and ridiculed–just as Native Americans, the people we speak to defend, have been minimized and ridiculed for so many years–but at least that puts me, and other teachers like me, in good company!
I sometimes am reminded of something Robert Kennedy said (himself quoting a Greek poet named Aeschylus): “Some men look at things as they are and ask why; I look at things as they have never been and ask why not?”
The challenge, of course, comes from studying a people, a culture, from the past that has undergone rapid and forced change, widespread destruction, and whose surviving members have been minimized, caricatured, and traumatized to an extreme extent, making such study no easy task.
It is nearly impossible to understand Native American people and culture today without first acquiring some basic understanding of the historical context of what the development of America meant for them, and it is even more difficult to piece together a coherent picture of their way of life before the arrival of the Europeans.
Misrepresentation of Native American peoples is commonplace and goes way back in time; the malicious lies are as many as the grains of sand on the beach or the number of stars in the sky.
For the moment, compare what Native Americans have faced with what undocumented workers and their families face today.
No one will suggest that it is easy to be an undocumented worker living in America today. Their trials and tribulations are many. But imagine if they faced what Native Americans faced: imagine thousands of them wiped out by European diseases against which their bodies had no natural immunity; imagine more thousands killed in battle; imagine survivors herded on to worthless pieces of land, made wards of the government, treated like second-class citizens, like dogs, and worse than dogs. Then try to imagine, decades later, students with “inquiring minds” wishing to study what life was like for them before all these horrors occurred!
What record remains of what a normal, healthy community life once looked like? And yet this is where the study of any group of people should start, seeing them in their own society and trying to understanding their core values and customs.
The task seems nearly impossible at times but we must not give up just because this particular academic challenge appears so difficult. Other minorities are lied about: Blacks and Hispanics are no strangers to having their culture misrepresented and falsified. It often does not take much for individuals in one group to feel great sympathy for members of minority groups other than their own, because they already know what it’s like to be mistreated. This sympathy leads them to search for that deeper truth about Native Americans and other minorities which all their instincts suggest exists, though they may be uncertain as to where that truth is or how to find it.
They search for that remnant of truth which has not yet been twisted and blasted and malformed into unrecognizable shape by the trampling feet of hordes of newcomers swarming over native lands and hell-bent on stealing all that they can, with thousands of racist lies multiplying one upon the other to justify this aggression, this murderous conquest as something other than what it was: an endless campaign of deceit and treachery, of robbery and rape, of assault and murder, of demonizing and dehumanizing and debasing lies and practices, all leading to cultural and physical destruction on such a grand scale that, in sum, it appears diabolical, even psychotic-tinged madness, reaching genocidal shrieks of horror—until the cries and screams were replaced by silent despair and the blood-stains on the land were replaced by steam and gasoline and oil and other signs of “progress.”
This innate sympathy grows because Hispanics understand what it means for a people to be given less than full credit for their achievements, whether in Mexico under Spanish colonial rule or in American society today. They know what it’s like to be described in ways as somehow never quite fully equal to the dominant Anglo-Saxon White Protestant “majority” culture, as defined by the very groups that seized power through force and violence, persecution and discrimination.
The conquerors, seeking profits and wealth for themselves only, thrived by introducing on a widespread scale poverty and misery, exploitation and oppression, on a widespread scale hitherto unseen—and I have to ask: why do we let the very groups that institutionalized these barbaric acts of injustice define who we are and what we stand for?
We need to throw off these intellectual shackles others have fastened on our minds, our imaginations and our hearts to learn to live freely as proud human beings. We have the choice, we have the right, to identify with the first peoples–the indigenous people with the deepest physical and spiritual roots in this land.
We have the right as human beings retain full pride in our true cultural heritage. We are the same people! We know that when the Sioux say Mitakuye oyasin “we are all related” that this saying applies to everyone—yes, even to us. We share life.
Even after all these years, the possibility remains, the hope remains, that Native American wisdom can help lead America out of her many troubles and back on the right path toward justice and peace. Despite all that American society has done to Native Americans, they have survived and remain true to their best moral and ethical principles. To endure so much and yet survive the American Indian Holocaust indicates a culture of remarkable strength and moral integrity–if we can only open our eyes wide enough to understand this simple truth.
We are rapidly approaching the point where we may have no other choice, given the non-stop pace at which the greedy habits of the past have cast a dark shadow over the future. We have reached a point in the history of humanity where the selfish practices of the present have destroyed much of the environment upon which all living things depend.
We are fast reaching that place in time and space where we must turn toward Native Americans, not away from them, and hope and pray that their wisdom can save us.
The so-called “savages” of America’s past may yet become the saviors of America’s future–if we only have the eyes and ears, the will and sense, to let them lead us once, rather than keeping them heart-broken and spirit-broken prisoners on dismal poverty-ridden reservations.
Until we do this, until we can own up to the many crimes committed by America against Native Americans, we cannot ever truly claim to have a clean conscience nor can we ever wipe away the many tears and bloodstains from off of the land. Until we can appreciate Native Americans for their cultural achievements and admire them for who they are, we as Americans may never be able to overcome the injustice and inequality that has plagued this land for centuries. The choice is ours to make!
