Tag Archives: Native American

The Spirit Always Grows Deeper On the Other Side of the Fence

23 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Native American Themes, Religion

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Canyon de Chelly national Monument (Chinle)

It had been a very long drive into work that week, not the least of reasons being a heavy snow storm that descended upon the central Navajo Nation just as I got into the area. I didn’t expect to see my landlady in the office, but there she was. She and I normally passed each other going both ways of our weekly commutes, and upon seeing her I assumed she had been trapped in town by the snowstorm. Would I be on the floor that night? …or asleep in the office? Not to worry, my landlady and her 4-wheel drive were on the way out of town, but she wanted me to know that I would have company that night after all.

I cocked an eyebrow and waited to learn more.

It turns out she had picked up a guy on the side of the road near Chinle. She didn’t know much about him, except that he was a bilagáana (a white guy) and he had come out to the reservation looking for native wisdom. She had blessed him with his first taste of that wisdom by getting him in out of the cold. She added that she thought he was sick. So, I taught my class that evening and headed over to the house wondering what (or rather whom) I would find.

I’ve long since forgotten the man’s name, but he was indeed sick. A doctor had apparently told my guest that his Prostate Cancer could not be treated. So, he had come to Navajo country in the hopes that a Medicine Man could accomplish something that modern science could not. My guest didn’t elaborate much on his condition, though his frequent trips to the bathroom might have testified in some sense to the diagnosis. He was French, as I recall. I don’t think he ate at all that night, nor did he accept an invitation to breakfast.

The house contained two quite decent beds, but no central heating. So, my guest slept on the floor that night and I slept on the couch, thus putting us both near the coal-burning stove. In the morning, he pulled out his tarot cards and tried to get a sense of what the day had in store for him. The man offered to do a reading for me, but I declined. It had been a long time since I had left that sort of thing behind, and I didn’t want it back in my life, not even as a sort of social experiment. Instead, the man explained what each card meant as he drew it during his own reading. There was some good and some bad, and as one might expect, a lot of wiggle room on the particulars.

Although I asked, the man never really told me whether or not he was looking for someone in particular. I suspect he thought the practical problem of finding a Medicine Man willing to help him would resolve itself, perhaps with the aid of his cards or some comparable means of divination.

I don’t think my guest ever asked me for anything, nor did he accept anything I offered. The storm had broken late that evening, and his reading had been promising. So, the man opened the door to find a truly beautiful morning. Soon, he was on his way.

***

It is hard to explain just how out-of-place my guest for the evening had been. The man would have had far more luck turning south and heading into Sedona. Perhaps one of the more shady medicine-men would have sold him a quick Blessing-Way, but the real thing, so to speak, is a family affair. It would take friends and relatives to put together the resources, to aid in the ceremonies, and to help in the long rites. The proper healing from a local perspective might have taken several nights on end with several participants needed to make all this work. The logic of the system is as much social as it is metaphysical. Repayment for all of this effort would take the form of similar service when those same people needed help in various forms over the course of their lives.

This man didn’t really fit into the scenario he was trying to bring about. It wasn’t just the clumsy eclecticism of tarot cards and native healers that seemed off to me. On a much more profound level, my guest had come seeking a personal experience; its social implications were simply beyond him. With enough goodwill, folks could of course devise a work-around, but how likely was it that anyone would give him the chance? To say nothing of the odds that any of it would work!

Who knows?

I could easily hope that my guest for that evening found what he was looking for and flourishes today, living evidence that my sense of both metaphysics and indigenous culture are dead wrong on all counts.

It was desperation, not malice, that brought this man to Navajo country, and yet his failure to appreciate the social setting was part of a much larger problem. I often wonder just what is it about other people’s rituals and beliefs that makes them so attractive to those on a spiritual quest, even with personal health hanging in the balance? Among other things, this question always comes to mind when I think of that particular night in Chinle. Once that question takes hold of my thoughts, I cannot help but to want to follow it down a few similar paths.

***

I’m not altogether unfamiliar with the sort of thinking my guest brought with him that night. I remember reading about the ascended spiritual masters (Kuthumi, Maitreya, St. Germaine, etc.) in my grandmother’s old Theosophy books. The masters dwelt on this earth, at least when they wanted to, or so I read. The home of the masters, so the story goes, rested in the remotest parts of Tibet. I suppose that when the books had been written, this seemed an adequate explanation for the seeming impossibility of finding the masters by normal means. It took meditation to bridge the distance.

I remember sitting in on a séance as a child in the early 70s, one in which I and several family members received the names of our spirit guides. I remember the name of my “Indian guide.” It was “White Thumb.” With the name of “Wee One,” my “Joy Guide” also seemed to bring to mind an Indian, albeit a little one, perhaps an invisible playmate, …very useful to a kid living on a ranch inconveniently far from my classmates. I wasn’t half as interested in any of my other guides as I was in these two.

I also remember that the name of my father’s Indian guide had been of the South Asian variety. I cringe at the explanation, …this was a higher form of Indian guide, so he was told. I cringed again many years later when a family friend dismissed questions about the authenticity of sweat baths run by non-Indian practitioners. She assured me that she and her spiritual mentors were engaged in practices far more advanced than anything Native Americans had actually done. And of course I thought about all of this when I learned about the tragedy of a sweat bath lead by James Arther Ray. I wonder if he too was engaged in practices far more advanced than those of the Indian peoples from whom he borrowed piecemeal?

I remember a woman at a Native American Studies conference who once asked me if I was following the “Red Road,” a question so loaded with cultural baggage I couldn’t begin to unpack it in time to give an adequate response. I expect the woman must have found me quite a disappointment.

But Spiritual appropriation isn’t just limited to Native American traditions. I recall with great pleasure reading Karma Cola long before I headed out to the rez. Gita Mehta’s brutal observations on the antics of spiritual tourists in India touch upon issues quite familiar to those observing how Native traditions fare in New Age circles. Many of the characters she describes in Karma Cola appear quite as hapless as my guest sitting there reading tarot cards on his way to find a Medicine Man. Few seem quite so innocent or nearly as sympathetic.

Mehta has been rightly criticized for focusing on the negatives. So many claim to have found something of value in Eastern traditions. What personal pettiness it must take to deny or to minimize this! And yet the specter of people on a personal quest, proceeding oblivious to the social context in which they operate rings true for me. Whatever folks may have found in these strange, foreign, traditions, it seems a safe bet to suggest that they commonly miss much more.

What bothers me most is that the part spiritual tourists miss may well be the most important piece of the story, the part which anchors all that spiritual talk to an established community. I cannot help but wonder if the quest to learn someone else’s spirituality isn’t rather commonly an effort to escape that very thing!

Those traveling (literally or metaphorically) through another people universe are freed from much of the social context in which the symbols and ideas they seek to learn acquire meaning. They can learn how to perform a ritual, or even what it’s iconography means in some idealized sense, but they are freed from the tedium by which that ritual is connected to countless aspects of daily existence. Most importantly, spiritual tourists are free to fill in the gaps of their understanding as they see fit, unencumbered by multiple sources of information, some of which will surely disagree. What spiritual tourists acquire is a radically simplified version of some other world view, all the easier to tweak it to their own tastes. Perhaps some people need this; perhaps some even do great things with the opportunity. Either way, the point stands. Something highly important is lost in translation.

For some at least, the chance to strip a practice of its social context and rebuild it as they see fit is precisely the pay-off for embarking on a trip into unknown spiritual territory. There may be good reasons for doing that, but how often do people even realize that is what they are doing?

Native American Ceremonies and the Meaning of ‘Religion’: Unpacking the Semantic Baggage, …Well at Least the Carry-On

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in atheism, Native American Themes, Religion

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Hogan

Not everyone has a religion!

More to the point at hand, the term seems to be an awfully bad fit for a lot of the things it is commonly used to describe.

When I was teaching on the Navajo Nation, I used to illustrate this by asking my students; when you hold a healing ceremony, who comes? The answer was always something to the effect of the community itself, friends, relatives, etc. What happens if you don’t believe in the effectiveness of the ceremony? Frankly, I don’t think the question came up very often, at least not in the context of deciding who belonged at the ceremony, but I did once meet a woman who had effectively answered it. A born again Christian, she stayed at the main house during the chants and entered the Hogan to help serve food during the breaks. She thus met her family obligations without implicating herself in a ceremony that was anathema to her own beliefs.

When I asked my students who goes to a church, the answer was invariably something along the lines of its members, believers, etc. Catholics go to a Catholic Church, Baptists to a Baptist Church, and so on. Of course this doesn’t mean that others aren’t welcome at a given church, but there is a distinct sense that the church exists for those that adhere to its doctrines. Those testing the waters will be expected to make a choice at some time.

Which brings me to another point, a religion can be modeled as a debate stance. Who belongs to a church? In many cases, we can literally trot out a range of statements and ask people whether or not they will vouch for the truth of those claims. “God Exists.” “Jesus rose from the dead.” You get the idea. Say ‘yes’ to the right statements, affirm one’s beliefs that they are true, and you are in the club. Say no, and you are out. Whatever else is happening here, it is a process of segregating folks according to an imagined argument within a larger community.

Sandpainting

When I used to post on christianforums.com (CF), this was explicit policy for many years. Those who affirmed the Nicene Creed (or perhaps the Apostle’s Creed) could count themselves as Christian and post in the Christians-only sections. Those of us who could not were asked to restrict our posts to the open-debate areas. The policy varied in its details from time to time, and as I recall it changed rather dramatically a few years back, but when I was there at least CF policy fits the model I am proposing, membership in the faith, as it was defined on CF could be determined by one’s willingness to back a series of truth-claims.

So, what is the difference?

I’m about to paint it in pretty broad strokes, but I’ll warrant the paint gets more or less within the proper lines.

A religion is defined in terms of beliefs which consist of the willingness to vouch for the truth of a claim. A native ceremonial system is defined in terms of community membership and participation. Of course there is considerable overlap between the two. People expressed a number of beliefs connected with Navajo ceremonies, and churches can be remarkable community institutions. But as with any other questions of value, it is the priorities that count. Failure to vouch for essential doctrine gets you out of a church. It doesn’t get you out of a Navajo ceremony, at least it didn’t when I was there.

So, what is going on here? I would suggest, the point of the ceremony is at least partly to unite the community, to get them all involved in something of great importance to the community at large (the health of its members in the Navajo case). What is the point of the religion? Well it is at least partly to distinguish a select membership from some larger community. A religion isn’t simply about what group you belong to; it is about what separates you from those others. What a native ceremonial system unites, a religion divides.

Some might find that shocking, or at least counter-intuitive. Often when religious debates get rather heated, someone will lament the divisiveness of the issue and give a variant of the “can’t we all just get along” speech. The sentiments are noble enough, but I often wonder how many times people can see the process of division before it sinks in; that is what is SUPPOSED to happen.

Rainbow Bridge (Sacred Site)

Of course both ceremonial systems and religions unite as well as divide, but they do so on different parameters. The ceremonial system unites people along the lines of an established community, it gives people who share in a range of political and economic interactions a means of emphasizing their connections. A religion carves off a notch of those people and sets them in ideological opposition to others in their community.

So, this is my particular take on a running theme in Native American studies, the unfitness of “religion” to the understanding of Native American practices commonly described using precisely that term. The problem was particularly critical to the workings of a Federal law passed in 1978, The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which I happened to study for a bit. The law had a rocky history from the start, and at least in the early 90s (when I studied the matter) an awful lot of people were disappointed in its application to real life.

It was easy enough to say that various indigenous practices raised a lot of First Amendment issues. (Well at least it was in 1978; the prior history of willful abuse is dismal, and a topic for another post.) But actually extending Free Exercise protections to Native American “religious” practices proved very difficult. How do you protect the right to prayer when that might mean a lot more than a moment of silence or even a few words spoken in a certain posture? What do you do about ritual paraphernalia at border crossings? How about odd dress in schools or prisons? How do you deal with strange substances? Nevermind peyote; a simple smudge-pot can really screw up a paradigm! …and (this was the real sticking point) what do you do about access to sacred sites on public lands, especially sites that might not be so sacred anymore if someone builds a road or a fast food restaurant in the vicinity?

See, the problem was that native “religious” practices simply didn’t fit into the niche already carved out for religions within the American political economy. So, time and again, when Native Americans sought to enjoy their religious freedom, they found some official or judge who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) grant that protection. The necessary relief always seemed to be too much to ask, and the resulting case-law was dismal to say the least.

So, what was the problem? At least some folks figured it lay with the key term “religion.” It just didn’t fit. The practices in question may have included enough of what people call ‘religion’ to get the issue on the table, but they weren’t restricted to quite the semantic domain one normally expects of things described using that term. The contents Native American “religions” thus tended to spill over into other social terrain. Where western religions had learned to reside in the spaces between other public matters, their Native American analogs didn’t even come close.

So, if the term “religion” doesn’t fit, what does?

It really is difficult to answer that question. We can of course use the term “religion” anyway, but the warrant for its use is analogical, and my point is the analogy breaks down, often in really inconvenient ways. A common practice is to talk about native “spirituality,” but the chief benefits of “spirituality” seem to be that the term means just about anything you want it to mean, which is not an argument in its favor.

My own solution is to focus on the ceremonial practices. As the community-building functions of those ceremonies take priority over the argument-framing functions, those practices naturally stretch into social interactions well beyond those of religions. Of course this way of talking about the issue involves a judgement about priorities; it is a claim about what matters most. So, I won’t be too offended if someone opts to go another route.

Yes, I will. Let’s fight about it!

Anyway, what interests me about this is that it is the other half of a coin to my own situation when it comes to the subject. Religion obviously doesn’t do much for me, and as my last post ought to have established, I obviously think there is something about religion that is NOT part of my life and thinking. What that is, is another question, and admittedly a satirical post isn’t really going to nail it down. So, I am trying think my way through that issue (for the umpteenth time) by looking at people who may have a similar problem.

…and by “similar” I probably mean “opposite.”

If I as an atheist lack something falling under the heading of ‘religion’, the people I am talking about seem to have a surplus of it. Where the term denotes something I don’t want in my life, it denotes something that falls well short of what they want in their own lives. Where use of the word “religion” commits me to too much, it commits them to too little.

Either way, we have a problem.

***

The Hogan picture comes from the website, Virtual Tourist. It is part of the Navajo Museum and Visitor’s center in Window Rock, AZ. The sandpainting is from navajopeople.org which includes a nice description of its symbolism and ritual significance. The picture of Rainbow Bridge comes from Destination360. It was the subject of sacred site litigation in Badoni v. Higginson, one of many sacred sites litigated in the 70s and 80s.

Ten Little White Indians, Volume III (Despite the Spoilers, These Heroes All Get the Girl)

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

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Pathfinder

Pathfinder

We need a guide to help us through this next installment of Ten Little White Indians. for that purpose, we will turn to PATHFINDER: THE LEGEND OF THE GHOST WARRIOR (2007). Our main character is the sole survivor of a Viking expedition to Vinland sometime before the Columbian exchange. He is discovered as a young boy of about 12 following a battle with the hated dragon warriors (as the vikings are known in the movie). The Wampanoag who take out hero in call him ‘Ghost’, in an obvious reference to his pale skin.

Some years later, we find Ghost (played by Karl Urban) struggling for acceptance and pining for the daughter (‘Starfire’ played by Moon Bloodgood) of a nearby chief called ‘Pathfinder’ (played by Russell Means, yes THAT Russell Means). It is worth noting that Ghost retains possession of a sword from his old father, and he practices with it regularly.

A Budding Romance

Yes, that is a possible Pocahontas theme brewing here again. (You noticed it, didn’t you, my dear reader)

Enter a new band of Vikings, and the plot begins to thicken. They soon slaughter Ghost’s adopted people and upon capturing him, subject Ghost to a duel. See now that is why you needed to know about the whole sword thing, because Ghost acquits himself surprisingly well in the fight. After taking an eye from his opponent, Ghost manages to escape by sledding down the mountain on a shield. He then hides for a while before heading to Pathfinder’s village to warn the of the coming danger.

Let us fast-forward a bit.  In time the Vikings kill Pathfinder (who later appears as a vision of sorts at a key moment in the story). They capture Starfire and force Ghost to help them find the other village, but our hero tricks them and ultimately defeats their leader, Gunnar, leaving him mortally wounded and dangling from the edge of a cliff. Gunnar begs Ghost to grant him an honorable death. Knowing that Ghost is himself of Viking descent, he explains that death by the sword is the only honorable end for their kind.

Big mistake!

Ghost promptly disavows his viking kindred and sends Gunnar down the cliff instead. Do I need to mention that he gets the girl in the end?

Full on Pocahontas-meme for the win!

***

Black Robe

So, let’s stay in the whole Northeastern part of America for a while and fast forward some more, all the way to the 1630s. Made in 1991, this next movie follows the story of a Jesuit Priest, Father LaForge, or ‘BLACK ROBE‘ as his native companions refer to him. LaForge (played by Lothaire Bluteau) sets out on a mission to the Hurons, but of course this story isn’t really about his interaction with the Hurons. No, it is about his travels with the Algonquans who have agreed to take him up the St. Lawrence River to the Huron mission. He is further accompanied by one other Frenchmen, Daniel (played by Aden Young).

Daniel is the white Indian in this story.

Daniel and LaForge will be escorted to the Huron missions by Chomina (played by August Shellenberg).  his wife (played by Tantoo Cardinal), and their daughter Annuka (played by Sandrine Holt) as well as a small band of relations. They have agreed to take LaForge to the Huron Mission in exchange for a number of trade goods (knives, axes, and such). The journey will take them through dangerous territory well away from their normal hunting grounds, a fact which displeases a number of traveling companions, and eats away at the morale of the party.

Did you notice that Chomina has a daughter?

Annuka (Holt)

Father laForge is definitely not a white Indian. He is here to change people, not to be changed by them. LaForge makes little effort to learn the customs of his companions. He knows their language of course, but he is never quite comfortable with it, and that is his strong suit. In all other respects, he finds nearly every aspect of life among the Algonquans awkward at best, but more often painful and terrifying. This makes the presence of Daniel all the more comforting, because the young Daniel takes to life among their new companions like a fish to water. He masters their language, and learns their customs readily. He is a blessing to LaForge on this long and strenuous journey.

Oh wait a minute, no he isn’t!

I’m sorry, what I mean to say is that Daniel WOULD have been a comfort to LaForge were it not for all those facts I just mentioned, …and the fact that Daniel scores up a relationship with Annuka early in the trip. Daniel’s ability to immerse himself in Algonquin culture serves only to intensify LaForge’s loneliness. Because of course if there is anything worse than being alone it is being abandoned, which is exactly how Father LaForge feels watching Daniel carry on with Annuka and move easily among the people with whom they are traveling.

LaForge feels even more alienated when Daniel actually does abandon him. faced with increasing doubts about LaForge’s character, the dangers ahead, and the wisdom of bypassing better hunting grounds, the entire band convinces Chomina to leave Black Robe behind. So, they present Daniel and LaForge with a duck as a farewell gift. There is a brief tense moment where it is unclear what the two of them will do to survive. Daniel quickly resolves this dilemma by taking off after Chomina’s band (and more importantly Annuka), leaving Black Robe alone in the forest with a dead duck. To say that his chances are slim is putting it mildly.

Don’t worry though, Chomina has a change of heart and returns along with a portion of his traveling party, and of course, Daniel. He announces his decision with the words; “I may be stupid, but I promised Champlain I would take the Black Robe to the mission.” Those who evidently thought him stupid exist stage left and make no further appearances in the story.

But Chomina and company, at least do return for black Robe.

Happy ending?

Not a chance.

An Iroquois war party quickly pairs the whole party down to the central characters (LaForge, Chomina, Annuka, Daniel, and one other child). Subjected to torture, the survivors escape (minus the child), though Chomina soon dies of his wounds. In the end, LaForge travels on to the mission while Annuka and Daniel head off into the wilderness.

So, this time the white Indian gets the girl, but the girl loses her whole family in the process. Good fun eh?

***

By the Way, I am skipping a really interesting theme about a prophetic dream and the symbolism of death. Want to know more about it? You know what to do.

***

Chingachgook (Means)

Speaking of Russell Means, he plays a key part in this next story too. Better yet, he carries a really cool weapon, a club-shaped a bit like a rifle-stock, throughout the movie. As I recall, Means maintains that these clubs are actually nutcrackers played up for purposes of Hollywood movies and white fantasies. …but I’m off on a tangent, the point of departure for which is well on down the road. …I just like cool clubs.

Anyway, let’s talk about the LAST OF MOHICANS (1992), a big screen adaptation of the famous novel by James Fennimore Cooper. This film depicts the struggles of Hawkeye (played by Daniel Day Lewis) during the early days of the French and Indian War. Hawkeye is our white Indian. Adopted by a Mohican leader, Chingachgook (Russell Means), Hawkeye’s mastery of Indian customs and hunting techniques is established early in the movie as he hunts with his adopted father and brother, Uncus (played by Eric Schweig).

Last of Mohicans

But let’s skip for a moment to the villain of this story, Magua (played by Wes Studi), or as I like to call him, “the true hero of this terrible tragedy.” You see Magua enters the story as a native scout for British forces on the colonial frontier. He agrees to escort Major Duncan Heyward and two women, Cora and Alice Munro (played by Madaleine Stow and Jodhi May). They are the daughters of Colonel Edmund Monro (played by …oh, who cares?) on a trip to Fort William Henry.

Magua betrays the expedition, leading a Huron attack (which results in the slaughter of countless British soldiers). And with that, the principle villain of the movie is just getting started. He later cuts the heart out of Colonel Monro, but not before promising to kill both of his daughters, thus erasing Monro’s seed from the earth itself. How’s that for a villainous plan?

You see it turns out that Magua’s own village had once been attacked by Moro’s troops, resulting in the deaths of his own children and the capture of his wife.

Did I mention that Magua kicks ass?

Magua (Studi)

Okay, well I suppose we are meant to be rooting for Hawkeye and his adopted family as they rescue Duncan Heyward and the girls during the battle that results from Magua’s most excellent betrayal. When the British and the French make peace, at least for the interim, Magua presses his personal war against the Monro clan by leading an attack on retreating British forces. He and his Huron warriors eventually captures Duncan and the two girls, but his Monrocidal goals are frustrated when Hawkeye arrives to negotiate a deal with the village leader. Cora is to be burned alive, Alice is to be made Magua’s wife (a decision he appears to accept). Hawkeye asks to take Cora’s place, but Duncan tricks the Huron into taking him instead, thus letting Hawkeye and Cora (who are by now a budding love interest) escape to live happily ever after.

…well, except they just can’t let Duncan die like that.

Hawkeye proves his name fitting by shooting Duncan from the edge of the village just before the flames overtake him and then flees with Cora. Magua follows with a number of warriors. Inexplicably they bring Alice along for the chase. In an effort to get Alice, Uncas then proceeds to fight his way through a number of Huron warriors walking single file along a majestic cliff-side. Unfortunately, Uncas proves no match for Magua, and his body soon goes over the cliff-side. Facing Magua’s outstretched hand, Alice instead jumps to her own death.

That’s when Chingachgook steps in and goes head-to-head with Magua making very short work of the villain. This time, it is Magua’s lifeless body that hits the ground.

The movie ends with a final prayer by Chingachgook, who now proclaims himself the last of the Mohicans.

Cora (Stowe)

And Once Again, the white Indian gets the girl, …who has lost her entire family in the process.

Only this time, it isn’t the chief’s daughter.

She isn’t even native!

Wild, isn’t it?

Ten Little White Indians, Volume II (Spoilers Abound!)

21 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by in Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

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It is time for another trip through the world of the white Indian. In today’s installment we will meet three very different white Indians with three very different stories and three very different fates.

A Man Called Horse

Let us begin this installment with the quintessential white Indian of the 1970s. In A MAN CALLED HORSE (1970), Richard Harris plays an Englishman named John Morgan. Captured by a Sioux-speaking tribe known as the Yellow Hand, he is humiliated and used as a horse (hence the name). But Morgan proves himself an able warrior, and quickly gains the respect of his captors. More than that, he becomes a war chief, leading them to victory against the Shoshone.

The movie seems to take its portrayal of Native American culture quite seriously, perhaps a little too seriously. The film wants desperately to show us how things really were, but its portrayal is far too filled with sensationalism to provide any real insight into anything Native American customs. In fact, of all the white Indians of movie history, this one seems to irk people the most.

Initiation

In the most striking scene of the movie, Morgan is initiated into the Yellow Hand by means of a sun-vow. His chest is pierced, talons are fastened to the wounds, and he is suspended from the top of a Medicine Lodge. Upon waking, Morgan will soon make-love to the daughter of the chief (thus playing out yet another cliché – Pocahontas anybody?).

Loosely based on a Mandan variant of the Sun Dance ceremony, this scene was sufficiently close to home that many found its portrayal on the big screen quite offensive. In A man Called Horse, the logic of the ritual does less to tell us about the lives of the people with whom Morgan is living than it does to signal his great triumph, his transition from a mere beast of burden to a full member of the community (…one who is eligible to make love to the beautiful Indian princess. …yes, I said ‘princess,’ …and yes, I know how ridiculous that is.)

But wait!

Seriously, wait!

Return of a Man Called Horse

We must also account for THE RETURN OF A MAN CALLED HORSE (1976). Yes, that’s right. This movie has a sequel (two of them in fact, but I will spare you an account of the third; it isn’t even interesting in a disgusting way). In The Return of a Man Called Horse we find Morgan back at home in England, …and hating it. Surrounded by artifacts of his time among the Sioux, Morgan longs to rejoin the Yellow Hand.

When Morgan does return to his adopted people, he quickly discovers that they have fallen on hard times. Under attack from white trappers with Indian allies of their own, the Yellow hand are in sore need of great leadership. Luckily, Morgan is there to aid them. With their very own great white Indian now back among them, Morgan’s friends now find their courage. Naturally, the revival begins with a sun dance.

I have to confess that when I first saw these movies I enjoyed them a great deal. Mind you, I was a teenager. It took a few years before the arrogance of the message sunk in. Unable to fend for themselves, the Yellow Hand must have a white man come and rally them to perform one of the most sacred of their own ceremonies. That’s right; in this movie Lakota need a white guy to perform their own sacred rituals. I would say that it gets worse from there, but ‘pathetic’ is probably a better word for it.

***

Grey Owl

Back when I was teaching in Navajo country, one of my classes swore up and down that GREY OWL (1998) was a good movie. I went to a video store (yes kids, that’s how we used to do it) and looked at this, and looked at it some more, and …just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I mean Pierce Brosnan as an Indian? I just could not wrap my mind around it. But my dear reader, I realized as soon as I started this blog series that I would have to venture onto that dangerous terrain. And last night, I finally watched this movie.

Just for you.

Okay, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I really should have trusted my students. It was at least entertaining. I must give it that much.

This movie is about a real historical personage, Archie Grey Owl (1888-1938). When we first meet him, Grey Owl is entertaining tourists with Indian dances and serving as a hunting guide in the Canadian wilderness. His skills in trapping and hunting are unmatched, and his presentation of Indian customs comes across as both authentic and entertaining.

The Real Grey Owl

When Archie falls for a young Mohawk woman named Pony, his life begins to change dramatically. He gives up trapping after she adopts two beaver orphaned by his own traps and the tough old trapper finds himself unable to resist their charms. Facing ruin, Archie opts to write a book about the forests and the need for conservation. This becomes the first of many publications and speaking engagements. All seems to be going well.

…except that Grey Owl seems a little testy at times. He is nervous when told that newspaper reporters are looking  to write stories about him, and inconsistencies begin to creep into his story. Why does he dye his hair? And was it his father that was Scottish and his mother Apache, or was it the reverse? Pressed on details, he becomes angry. No-one questions his adoption by a local Ojibwa community, but it becomes increasingly clear that something is wrong when Grey Owl reluctantly sets out for a 3 month tour of England. It is the chance of a lifetime. Why the hesitation?

We soon learn the answer.

While in England, amidst all the hoopla of a speaking tour which includes a performance for the King, Archie Grey Owl takes a small side-trip to a residential neighborhood he seems to know well. It turns out that he is actually Archibald Belaney, an Englishman himself. …a full-blooded Englishman, as it were, with no Apache relatives at all. Archie has a tense but pleasant meeting with the two aunts that raised him and takes a quick look in his old room where it immediately becomes apparent that his love of all things Indian had been well established as a young child.

When Archie returns home, he is invited to a great powwow where he is asked to meet with a gathering of chiefs. Only then does he confess his origins to Pony. Naturally, she forgives him.

Which leaves the gathering of chiefs…

Unable to back out of meeting them, Grey Owl enters the gathering of chiefs to a rather awkward and tense moment. Can he fool them? Well it turns out the answer is ‘no’. Everybody in the whole lodge laughs at Grey Owl’s deception. But all is not lost, and a Sioux chief finally explains; “Men become what they dream. You have dreamed well.”

And so the white Indian of this story receives the ultimate stamp of native approval. Even his fraudulence is blessed by the old Sioux chief.

***

White dawn

And then of course there are white Eskimos, even black ones. WHITE DAWN (1974) begins with a maritime disaster leaving a whaling crew stranded on the ice flows off Eastern Canada. Three survivors (Louis Gosset Jr. as ‘Portagee’, Timothy Bottoms as ‘Daggett’, and Warren Oates as ‘Billy’) will eventually be rescued by Inuit who take them in, nurture them, feed them, and accept them as part of the community.

One might expect people in such a position to show gratitude. Well they don’t, at least not all of them. Billy (Warrent Oates) is particularly contemptuous of his benefactors, insulting and exploiting them at every opportunity. Daggett (Timothy Bottoms) appears to accept his new community. In time, he has essentially gone native, or at least he tries to. If there is a definite white Indian in his story, it is Daggett. Portagee (Louis Gossett Jr.) seems content to follow the path of least resistance, and given Billy’s aggressiveness, that means Portagee will often serve as an accomplice in destructive activities. Daggett may mean well, but he simply does not put up enough of a fight to reign in his companions.

The generosity of the Inuit people plays a key role in this movie. Not only do the Inuit share their food and lodging with these desperate strangers, the men also share their wives. This allusion to yet another cliché (“Eskimo hospitality”) receives a lot of screen time in the movie. I would hardly suggest that the movie portrays the actual customs of spousal exchange accurately (it doesn’t), but for purposes of plot development it is perhaps more important to note that the three castaways misinterpret the custom as it is understood by the Inuit characters of the movie.

A Little Wrestling Match

The Inuit men of this movie share their wives as a gesture of hospitality; they do not mean to give their wives up. In time, Billy and Portagee come to see the women as theirs for the taking. For his own part, Daggett falls in love with a beautiful young wife of community elder (yes, there is that Pocahontas theme again). As the story unfolds, each of the three men becomes more presumptuous in their approach to the women of the community.

And I suppose I should say here that the movie does very little to shed any light on the motives of the women themselves for having sex with any of thee men. Daggett’s love interest appears responsive. The women are otherwise little more than pawns in a game that takes little notice of their own preferences.

Billy is the driving force for much of the movie’s action, initiating one after another disruptive scheme. He is greedy, malicious, and completely unprincipled. Most importantly, Billy convinces both Daggett and Portagee to steal the community stores of fish and set sail in a small native boat. When this attempt to get home ends in yet another crash, the Inuit will once again come to the rescue. And all three must now live with the community made hungry by their theft of food supplies.

When Billy’s shenanigans finally result in the accidental death of a young woman, the community takes action. Tricked into accepting mittens with no thumbs from the remaining young women of the village, Billy and Portagee are unable to defend themselves when attacked by the men of the village. There is a moment when it seems that Daggett will be spared, but that ends abruptly with an arrow to the belly.

And of course it is the death of Daggett which is most interesting here. He is the white Indian of the bunch. …or the white Eskimo as the case may be. It would be easy to think the Inuit had killed him unnecessarily. After all, he was a decent guy. Absent Billy and Portagee, one cannot help but to hope that Daggett would immerse himself in the community and live as they do. Who knows? perhaps he would even get the girl!

White Dawn

But of course that girl is why Daggett must die. Where Billy and Portagee use the Inuit women in the cheapest sense of the word, Daggett has claimed the love of another man’s wife. For all its sincerity, Daggett’s presumption reaches a scale well beyond that of his companions. He wants to keep the girl, but of course she is not his for the taking.

And thus ends the white Indian of White Dawn!

Ten Little White Indians: Reflections on a Hollywood Cliché

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in History, Movies, Native American Themes, White Indians

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Let’s talk about American Indians!

Better yet, let’s talk about Indians in the movies!

You ever notice how many movies about Indians are really movies about white people? More specifically, many stories about Indians are actually about white people who live among them. Such characters are often called “white Indians” in the literature. They are certainly a worthy subject in their own right, but Hollywood seems quite dependent on these characters in its treatment of Native American subjects. The white character provides a lens through which non-natives can observe native culture. It is a role that we can identify with, even as we are shown a world perhaps foreign to us (assuming the film actually does attempt to show us something about the lives of Native Americans, which is not always the case).

It’s an old cliché, often tiresome, and in some respects outright pernicious, but I must admit that a couple of these characters actually resonate for me. At other times, it tempts my lunch to return to the free air about me. At the very least, I think one ought to be clear about the subject matter. All too often these films about non-natives are pitched to the public as films about the lives and customs of Native Americans. Even if this is just a difference in emphasis, the emphasis is often highly significant.

So, let’s see a few examples, shall we?

***

Little Big Man

We shall begin with an old favorite of mine, LITTLE BIG MAN. This is the story of Jack Crabb, supposedly the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn. We meet jack in an old folks home as a man well over a hundred years old. Visited by an anthropologist, Jack is angered at the suggestion that was an old Indian fighter and proceeds to tell his life story with a tape recorder rolling.

It turns out that Jack had been adopted by Cheyenne (whom he refers to as “Human Beings” throughout the narrative) after his family was slaughtered by Pawnee. During the course of his life, Jack returns to white society for a time and experiences life as a religious youth, a con artist, a “gun fighter,” a drunkard, and even a mule skinner. But Jack returns to the Human Beings several times during the course of the movie, even taking a wife (eventually four) and living among them. Jack explains that he reckoned he would stay there and live among Human Beings for the rest of his life, right there on the Washita River.

And for those that know a little about the history of Indian-white relations, the appearance of Custer will be no surprise. For me at least, the scenes that follow are quite difficult to watch. It is in revenge for this attack, that Jack Crabb ultimately plots to lead Custer into a trap, tricking him as it were into attacking the Indian village at Little Bighorn.

Little Big man was the first major motion picture in decades to take an explicitly pro-Indian stance on the history of the west. It is almost too late to capture the full shock value of its portrayal. The movie and television audiences of the 1970s had seen many depictions of Indian savagery. To see the U.S. cavalry shooting women and children in cold blood was a straight-forward reversal of the prevailing expectations of the time.

More than that, Little Big Man is filled with vibrant Cheyenne characters, not least of them being Old Medicine Lodge (played by chief Dan George). The characters are even allowed to occupy social roles defined at least partly by Cheyenne cultural patterns. (We are for example introduced to a contrary and a hee-man-eh.) Crabb himself manages to occupy the role of the White Indian without crowding the Native American characters into the background. He is accepted among the Human Beings, not because he is a great warrior (not really, at any rate), but because he has a knack for survival. Crabb bumbles his way through life, understanding a lot about what goes on around him, but without ever really taking control of his own fate.

Chief Dan George

But what has always struck me as the true genius of this movie is that having done far more than normal for the times, it makes no real claims to historical accuracy. Jack Crabb is essentially telling us a tall tale, and his own biases provide the filter through which each event is portrayed. One gets the impression that Crabb’s story must approximate the actual truth (he simply knows too much to have made everything up), but if we believe him a number of the particulars, we have certainly gone well beyond the boundaries of fact when he takes credit for the slaughter of Custer.

But who could fault Crabb for stretching the truth. We can only love him for somehow surviving the real events of his life whatever they may have been, and for sharing a perspective on events which was at that time completely novel to the motion picture industry of that day.

***

Hombre

Did you know that Paul Newman once played an Apache? …well, sort of. In HOMBRE, Newman plays John Russell, a white man raised among the Apache. Old pictures of Apaches fill the screen during the opening credits, and soon we are treated to an image of Newman dressed as an Apache.

Hombre

Russel and two Apache companions have been earning a living by capturing wild horses to be sold to the stage-coach line. They learn that a railroad will soon replace the stage-coach line, and horses will no longer be needed.

Russell learns that he has inherited a boarding house from his original family. He returns to civilization and sells the house before heading back west aboard a stage-coach.

Newman in Hombre

When the stage-coach is robbed, it is Russell (with his superior survival instincts) who keeps the other passengers alive, their prejudice against him notwithstanding. In time, Russell learns that the robbers are after money meant for the San Carlos Apache reservation. It had been stolen by a fellow passenger. Russell’s treatment of his companions is harsh, bordering on cruel, which seems fitting enough given their own attitudes towards him. In the end, Russell will sacrifice himself to save a woman who would not share the stage-coach with him. He asks only that the money should be taken to the people for whom it was intended.

The movie ends with a vintage photograph. It contains the image of a white boy surrounded by Apache children of his own age.

***

Dance Me Outside

DANCE ME OUTSIDE: This movie is not on the whole about a white Indian. I include it in this list, because it has an absolutely wonderful scene which serves to comment on the whole phenomenon. For reasons which we need not get into here, the main characters, Silas crow and Frank Fencepost (both Anishinabe), are asked to keep Robert McVey, a white in-law, busy while his wife is off doing something important. Unable to think of anything else to do, and really unhappy about spending the night in his rather lame company, Silas and Frank decide to initiate him into the tribe. What follows is a hilariously improvised ceremony. The scene could easily have been painful to watch, but there is something about the way the white character embraces the ceremony which comes across as endearing. It is as though he has simply chosen to accept the ritual for whatever it is. The man commits so completely to the absurd little made-up ritual that his own sincerity (absurd as it is) seems to redeem the whole event. In the end, he earns a grudging respect from Silas and Frank, not for being a properly initiated member of the tribe, but for simply being human, foibles and all.

Silas and Frank

What I particularly like about this scene is the sense of compassion behind the treatment of this subject. This movie takes the piss out the old white Indian cliché as well as anyone has, but it does it without rancor. The white character is mocked, yes, but he is mocked with a gentle touch. Dance me outside is an obscure movie, and I must say that it has a kind of after-school special quality to it. Still it’s a wonderful tale well told.

***

That’s it for now. There will be two more volumes in this one.

***

Okay, no I can’t let my readers off that easy. These movies are actually pretty good, so I’m afraid you haven’t got the full cringe-worthyness of this subject. So, let’s have a listen shall we?

…okay, I know. That was unnecessary. I’m a bad man, and I’m sorry.

…sort of.

Quanah Parker, Progress, and the Lack Thereof, …Christmas and Torture!

18 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by in Books, History, Native American Themes

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There is always one! One book in the airport bookstore that looks like something I might actually want to read. This time it was “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History,” by S.C. Gwynne (Scribner, 2011).

Mind you, the title alone carries at least one red flag. Were the Comanche really the “most powerful Indian tribe in American history?” Reading the book, I began to wonder if there was ever a raid, or a battle, or a tribe that didn’t strike the author as “the most’ or “the greatest” something?  Seriously, this book, has the most superlatives contained in any volume published in this century. (Okay, not really, but it has enough of them that it looked kind of fun. So, I thought I’d try it.) But faced with 16 hours in the hands of the airlines (the most air-time ever… Okay I’ll stop, really, I will), it just looked like the kind of fun-read that might do the trick for all those hours imitating a sardine. So, I bought it and put my larger, more theoretical, volume on the back burner, at least until Quanah could be “tamed,’ as I thought surely the book would put it.

I was not disappointed.

It is certainly an enjoyable yarn, and I learned a few things while reading it, but excessive superlatives aside, there are also a number of factual problems in the book. Gwynne, for example credits Spanish failure to protect the Pueblos with the cause of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This is simple confirmation bias. It ties their story more closely to the one Gwynne is telling. But it’s outright fiction. The Pueblo’s rebelled against the Spanish because what the Spanish were doing to them, not because of what the Spanish were not doing for them. Other critics have raised similar objections to other parts of the book, but I’m not really interested in picking apart the details.

What does strike me about this work is its use of a familiar spin. Gwynne is a firm believer in the march of progress, and he does not hesitate to frame the Comanche squarely in this larger story. Channeling Frederick Jackson Turner, Gwynne is telling the tale of the clash between savagery and civilization at the edge of the frontier. And Comanche play a damned familiar role in that story.

It is not really that Gwynne describes the horrors of Comanche raiding in vivid detail, or that he recounts the torture and execution of white captives in numerous chapters. I don’t need sugar-coating in my history books, nor do I need constant reassurance that an author is not a racist. But “progress” is a faith I can do without, and this book would have been much better without it.

Simply put, Gwynne sees Comanche’s as exemplars of a more primitive life-way than Europeans, or even a number of other Indian peoples. His reasons are familiar; they are hunter-gatherers, which sets them apart from and well behind the progress of agricultural societies, from the Pueblos to the Spaniards, …maybe even the Texans. To Gwynn, the cruelties that Comanche’s inflicted on their enemies stem from their lack of progress in comparison to Agricultural tribes such as those found in Mexico.

If the irony of that comparison doesn’t scream in your ears, then perhaps we could take a little time to discuss the history of Central American civilization. …Well some other time, anyway.

On some level, I cannot help but think Gwynne must know better. He certainly does not hesitate to tell us about the atrocities committed by other peoples, including Texans. At times, he seems quite prepared to concede all the facts which should suggest a degree of moral parity. Yet Gwynne sees a difference between the cruelties of commanches and those of other people.

Gwynne has at least the beginnings of an explanation for the difference. He maintains that other peoples consistently show some level of condemnation for the act of torture. Such brutal violence may be carried out by civilizations as modern as our own, but Gwynne seems to suggest, we at least know it is wrong. The Comanche however, revel in it. And that makes all the difference in the world to Gwynne. It is the difference between a “savage,” a “low barbarian,” and someone from a civilization.

So, apparently, cognitive dissonance is a virtue. If you have to torture someone, then you should at least have the decency to feel bad about it.

But I cannot help thinking we can do better than that! We can relegate the job to soldiers serving on some far-flung corner of the world, and if those soldiers should fail to be just as violant as we wish them to be (no more and no less), or should they fail to cover up any actual cruelties they might commit, then perhaps we can just disown them. If nothing else fails, we can at least wring our hands about it, schedule a few talking heads to debate it on the news channels, and sweat a lot over the whole thing. Because knowing at least that torture is wrong sets us apart from those that do not, or so it would seem

In torture, as in Christmas gifts, it is apparently the thought that counts.

It is an interesting question, just how it is that societies allocate boundaries within which cruelty becomes objectionable, and how do they square those boundaries with the interests of military defense, …or outright conquest? Both of these are damned tough problem to sort out, and woe be unto those who end up on the wrong side of the sorting, at least when someone with a camera-phone is around to record it!

The story of Quanah Parker would not be a bad spring board for addressing questions about the cultural construction of violence. It certainly provides enough fodder to get the issue squarely on the table, but of course all this falls by the wayside when the author has recourse to a convenient explanation with a lot of cultural force behind it. The Comanche’s are cruel because they are savage. Others are cruel because their civilization has yet to be perfected.

Problem solved!

This probably is not the best place to try to refute the notion of progress. Suffice to say, that I consider it largely a dead issue, at least as applied to the history of Indian-white relations, and certainly in reference to the comparison between hunter-gathering economies and those of settled agriculturists. Hell, the critique of this notion has been done and redone for a couple of generations of scholarship now. Were I to come across a learned article purporting to refute the notion of progress, I would no doubt feel sympathy for the dead horse that was about to be kicked. And yet, in this book, I find that dead horse alive and grazing in the pastures of every airport in the country.

When the average American reads about Comanche history for the next few months anyway, there is a damned good chance they will read it in this book. They will learn a lot to be sure, much of it reasonably accurate, informative, and interesting. And they will also read in that book yet another chapter in the myth of the progress of civilization.

It is just a little depressing.

California Admitted as a Free State, …Oh Wait!

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Education, History, Native American Themes, Politics

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Okay, so we just started a section on slavery and the civil war in my American history class. One thing that always irritates me here, or maybe it just amuses me, I don’t know… Anyway, I think about it whenever I cover this subject. Every textbook I have ever used on American history explains that California was admitted as a free state under the terms of the Compromise of 1850.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem is a little known law passed in California that very year, ostensibly for the protection of Indians. The law imposes a $50.00 fine on anyone forcing an Indian to work against his will. So, that should be good, right?

Actually, no.

The law also contains the following provisions:

When an Indian is convicted of an offence before a Justice of the Peace punishable by a fine, any white person may, by consent of the Justice, give bond for said Indian, conditioned for the payment of said fine and costs, and in such case the Indian shall be compelled to work for the person so bailing, until he has discharged or cancelled the fine assessed against him…

and

Any Indian able to work and support himself in some honest calling, not having wherewithal to maintain himself, who shall be found loitering and strolling about, or frequenting public places where liquors are sold, begging, or leading an immoral and profligate course of life, shall be liable to be arrested on the complaint of any resident citizen of the county, and brought before any Justice of the Peace of the proper county, Mayor or Recorder of any incorporated town or city, who shall examine said accused Indian, and hear the testimony in relation thereto, and if said Justice, Mayor or Recorder shall be satisfied that he is a vagrant, as above set forth, he shall make out a warrant under his hand and seal, authorizing and requiring the officer having him in charge or custody, to hire out such vagrant within twenty four hours to the best bidder, by public notice given as he shall direct, for the highest price that can be had, for any term not exceeding four months; and such vagrant shall be subject to and governed by the provisions of this Act, regulating guardians and minors, during the time for which he has been so hired.

Oh there is a lot more to the act, and plenty of reassuring clauses that appear to keep people from exploiting natives, but it should not take a lot of imagination to read between the lines here and see how this story actually went down. To say that this law opened up the native labor-market to exploitation would be putting it mildly. …too mildly.

In essence, the law made it illegal to enslave an Indian, at least on one’s own initiative, but if someone was caught being an Indian on a city street, the city could bond him over to you for a price. Oh yes, folks would have to go through the trouble of slighting the moral integrity of the Indian first, but how difficult do you think it would be to find a white guy willing to do that?

Not very.

It’s not the most efficient form of slavery one could devise, but it is slavery non-the-less, and that is why it always bugs me to see textbook after textbook announce that California was admitted to the Union as a free state under the terms of the compromise of 1850.

…in the very year they created a legal procedure for enslaving Indians.

Oh I get it; this kind of issue simply falls outside the scope of the narrative in question. It was not even on the horizons of those debating the major issues of the day in Congress. So, if one is recounting the events leading up to the Civil War, then this piece of information does not really change that story much. Neither does the existence of a viable slave-trade in the interior Southwest. If one is focused on the question of slavery as it was framed in the national politics of the day, then yes, California was certainly admitted as a free state.

Or is that the problem, the terms of that debate?

The bottom line is that ‘slavery’ is just a word, and you can choose to use it or not as easily as you can any other term regardless of the realities of the labor conditions in question. So, historians can skate right past these instances of captive labor (much as the great figures of the era did in their own approach to the issue) while focusing on the institutional forms of slavery that were the main issues of the day. But of course that same sleight of hand is necessary to cap off the story of the Civil War in the standard way, describing it as bringing about the end of slavery in America.

To give closure to the issue of slavery in our national storyline, one has to ignore the use of debt-peonage in conjunction with Jim Crow Laws, or at least classify them as a whole new kind of problem. Using the word “slavery” in the chapters leading up the Civil War and dropping it afterwards creates the illusion that the new social problems are significantly different than the old ones. This approach suggests that the problems associated with slavery were somehow resolved with the closing chapters of Reconstruction, perhaps not to the satisfaction of all concerned, but resolved nonetheless. And Jim Crow then becomes a whole different kind of problem, as do a host of similar practices.

Just like the California Law for the protection of the Indian.

***

Note: The law can be found in the California Statutes from 1850. It is also included in the primary documents for the following textbook:

Albert L. Hurtado, Peter Iverson. Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays. Second Edition. (Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

Old Gripes, New Tundra, and a Thin Ray of Hope.

10 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in Alaska, Education, Native American Themes

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How do you adapt course material to the cultural context of a tribal college? I have had enough conversations about that topic in the last couple days to last me a little while. Whether any of them will help or not is of course an open question, but for the moment, I have a little time to reflect on the matter.

It feels like I am never on the same page with others when the topic comes up. Most of the cultural materials I have seen have been saturated with over-extended metaphors, clunky diagrams with over-simplified cultural motifs all over them, and deep philosophical discussions on the English gloss of some native term. When such materials show up, I always feel some trepidation. When such materials show up, I can’t help but want to step outside and get a breath of fresh air.

It’s no big deal, really. I get that feeling in most meetings sooner or later. Why should those aimed at indigenizing education be any different!

But seriously, before moving on I suppose I should say that my ‘exhibit A’ for how not to to an indigenous educational policy would be Diné Educational Philosophy, at least as it was taught when I was at Diné College. At the heart of this policy was a grand metaphor in which call lessons could be divided into four stages of learning, each of which corresponded to four stages of life development, which in turn corresponded to the four cardinal directions, and from there the metaphors multiplied as various aspects of Navajo cosmology could be mapped onto this four-part division. I should say that the whole thing always fascinated me, and there are a lot of interesting details about it that just are not going to make it into this blog piece. In practice, it was an awful clunky system.

Mind you, it was college policy that all classes had to incorporate a methodology based on this metaphor into each of our classes. New full-time instructors took classes in the subject (unless it conflicted with our schedules) and part-time instructors had a training day on it (or at least they were supposed to). So what most of us did was to draw a circle on the board, divide it into a four-piece pie, attach the requisite metaphors, and get on with what we would have been doing anyway. To say that this paint-by-numbers approach to an indigenous education was less than helpful would be putting it mildly. As often as not, it was the more “traditional” students who were displeased to see one  of those circles go up on the board at the beginning of a lesson.

So, leaving my past frustrations aside, how would I prefer to approach this? I’m still relatively new to the North slope, so my learning curve is still pretty steep. And tonight, I think I may have just had a mini epiphany, the kind that advances the process for me. It came while reading the blog, “Stop and Smell the Lichen,” written by Rainey Hopson, a woman living in Anaktuvuk pass.

A wonderful piece entitled, “A Good Person,” had the following observations about how one judges character in a small village:

In the village you know everyone, and everyone knows you. You know their secrets and their deeds of kindness. You know wether they are kind to the elder that needed help walking on slippery ice. You know every mean word that they ever said. You know the bad as well as the good. You always act as politely as you can, because you know you will have to deal with this person for the rest of your life, wether you like them or not. You know, after years of interaction and observing a persons actions wether they are good or not, wether you can trust them for certain things, wether or not this person speaks with authority and knowledge. We see each other as permanent beings in our life, and the job and the money and the physical objects as fleeting insubstantial things. A very different view. A different set of scales.”

There is a lot to think about in this piece, but what turned my head back to the subject of adapting lessons to the cultural context of teaching native students was the realization that this is a critical difference between the great city of Barrow (with its enormous population of around 4,000 people) and the smaller villages with populations in the low hundreds.

To someone living in a modern city, much less a metropolitan center, the difference must seem negligible. Living in a town of four thousand and isolated from any major cities by hundreds of miles of tundra must seem to pose many of the same challenges as living in one with a few hundred people. But there are critical differences.

Barrow does have a small town feel. But here it is still possible, even for long-time residents, to see people one does not yet know, or to choose whether one wishes to deal with at least some people. If the population is small, it is not so small as to render relationships entirely inevitable as the village relationships Mrs. Hopson describes in the passage above. Small wonder that our “village students” often seem to have trouble adapting to life in the big city of Barrow, or (more to the point, perhaps) to life away from home.

Thinking about this, I made a small connection to just one lesson in one of the classes that I teach, an introductory course on cultural anthropology. What part of my anthropology class did I connect to this piece? Well life in the Amazonian rainforest of course.My textbook for that class contains an extensive discussion of the limits of leadership by personal credibility. When leaders lack coercive authority, the ability to influence others depends on the ability to form direct personal relationships with them. Some anthropologists have attempted to put a number on the possibilities, an objective limit to the number of people whose actions you can guide without the ability to issue an order, point to a rule, or hand out a set punishment.

What is the magic number? Pssh! Don’t believe everything I tell you!

…Okay, if you insist. To say this is an oversimplification is an an understatement dipped in some damned weak sauce, but anyway, the limit is somewhere in the low hundreds.

It occurred to me that the difference between the smaller villages and Barrow falls somewhere in the vicinity of that same set of limitations. Whatever the number in question, the point is that there is some point at which a population becomes too big to ensure significant personal interactions with someone in any given household, and THAT means real differences in the social organization of the community. What Rainey Hopson described in her blog is a quality of social life that is present in the smaller of the North Slope. If the Amazonian specialists covered in my anthropology texts are to be believed, it also exists (or existed) in a number of Amazonian societies.

So, in reading Mrs. Hopson’s blog I had a little ‘aha!’ moment about a connection between something my students have not experienced at all (life in an Amazonian village) and something they with which they will most likely have some familiarity. Even those students who have not lived in the villages will likely be familiar with the difference. They will know there is a difference, and those that have lived here all their lives will have formed ideas about that difference. This means that I can use the comparison as a jumping off point for exploring a range of related issues. I can now use the bridge between these topics as a means of helping students understand he foreign topics of Amazonian villagers and in turn use the study of those Amazonian villages as a jumping off point for discussions of local living conditions.

So, now I have a link between something I will teach at least once a year (and the truth is it will come up in other classes). The question is what to do with it? Some might view this as an opportunity to create a lesson plan, some set exercise in which students will be invited to meditate on the linkage. And such a lesson may or may not be a good thing. To me, however, that is not really the point.

For myself, I will address this point in as many different ways as I can in my different classes, asking students a variety of questions, and working to see just how far I can push the connection, just how much it can explain, and where else might the topic lea.

The point is that I need more moments like that, more links between the familiar pieces of life here on the North Slope, and various strange topics that I cover in my classes (many of which are as foreign to my life experiences as to those of my students).

And that is where my revulsion at so much prefabricated cultural literacy comes in. It is a simple question of where you want to put your effort. If I’m a new teacher, just in from off-slope, I don’t need an exercise or a diagram that will draw this connection for me. …one that I can use in my classroom with or without understanding the point at hand myself. I don’t need a master mataphore in which to plug all my regular lessons. What I need to help me do my job is a venue wherein I can learn as much as possible about life here in this area, where I can talk to people from the local communities about things relevant to my teaching responsibilities. What I need is something that helps me form personal relationships with the right folks, learn the right information from them, and put that information into practice in my courses.

And here is where so many educators in this area miss the boat, because it is simply easier (and perhaps more effective when dealing with accreditation agencies) to produce formulaic educational materials than it is to build learning environments. It is easier to dictate cultural content to instructors than it is to facilitate learning that will enable an educator to draw connections between their subject and the cultural environment in which they work.

This is how I actually approached my classes at Diné College, and it is how I hope to approach them here; learning as much as I can about the cultural setting and engaging my native students in dialogue about the issues that affect their lives here.

If circles go on the board, hopefully, it won’t be because they have become a procedural requirement.

Note: The photo is a picture of the village of Wainwright, AK. The Anthropology text mentioned above is John H. Bodley. Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System. Fourth Edition. (Boston: McGraw Hill) 2005. Rainey Hopson’s blog is called; “Stop and Smell the Lichen.”

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Alaska Federation of Natives, 2011

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in Alaska, Native American Themes, Politics

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The Alaska Federation of Natives held its annual meeting in Anchorage this last week (October 20-22). This is a big event and it’s filled with enough stories to fill many a blog. What grabbed my attention this year was the participation of Senator Lisa Murkowski.  Watching the first of two presentations she was to give at this year’s convention, brought to mind two other moments.

First, there was last year’s meeting of the AFN, held in Fairbanks. Senator Murkowski spoke then as well. At that time, she was a write-in candidate for her own office. Her principal opposition, Joe Miller, had secured the Republican nomination for Murkowski’s position. A Tea Party favorite, Miller had been openly critical of Alaska’s tribal corporations. Faced with a near certain Republican victory, Alaska’s Native leadership threw its weight behind Murkowski. Lost in the shuffle, the Democratic nominee, Scott McAdams, struggled to keep in the race.

The Alaska Federation of Natives endorsed Murkowski and she spoke at their convention. Denied the chance to debate Murkowski in a public forum, or to speak on their own, McAdams and Joe Miller made appearances on the floor of the convention. If McAdams received little in the way of attention, Miller must have received a very chilly reception.

A year later, Senator Murkowski took to the podium again, this time at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention center appropriately enough, the very location at which she announced her write-in candidacy. This year, Murkowski took to the floor once during the convention itself, and once again at the closing banquet, both times the substance of her speech was an expression of thanks. If Murkowski’s gratitude was apparent, so was the pride of AFN leadership. They had played a substantial role in getting her back into office, and this year’s AFN proved to be an opportune moment to trumpet that victory.

The second thing on my mind proved to be a very different kind of moment in the politics of indigenous affairs. In early February, 1998, then President of the Navajo Nation, Albert Hale, threatened to shut down the roads passing through Navajo lands. Doing so, he suggested would help to teach non-natives to respect the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation

The immediate response to Hale’s threat was fascinating. Non-Indians wrote all manner of letters to various local newspapers, most of them angry. On the one hand, much of the criticism seemed understandable. Hale hadn’t really put any specific issue on the table, so no-one knew really what he wanted out of the move. (Some of the more cynical among us might have believed it was to draw attention away from an ethics investigation which soon led to Hale’s ouster.) But something more interested proved to be happening in those letters; an awful lot of non-natives were learning the hard way that Indian people’s still held a measure of power in the United States. For all the poverty and corruption one can find in Indian country, for all the problems that tribal leadership seemed unable to resolve, there were at least a few things that they could still do. And one of those things was to make it a lot more difficult to drive through parts of the Southwest.

This is where the other letters from that time come in, the ones from the Navajo people. Many were less than pleased with Hale’s gambit themselves. I was living in Fort Defiance at the time and I recall quite well the shaking heads and office gossip. This was not the way to do things, at least according to the folks I knew.  What use is sovereignty if it only means shutting down roads, some seemed to say? It would be far better, so the argument went, to build a road, or at least to repair the roads already there.  A gesture intended to show the power and force of the Navajo Nation, Hale’s threats seemed only to underscore the relative weakness of Navajo leadership.

I couldn’t help but think about Albert Hale’s road-gambit as I saw Lisa Murkowski speak at AFN.  The basis for the comparison sis simple enough. To me, Hale’s move had always been something of a low-moment in Native American politics, but now I was watching a high one, at least as measured by raw political power. This was Native Alaskans doing what Hale had failed to do back in 1998, they were actually building something.  Now as it happens, it wasn’t a road that Alaskan natives built here, it was a political base capable of affecting a major election, but that election itself is precisely what it will take to get the roads built in Alaska’s Native communities.  Faced with a threat from an outside source, The Alaska Federation of Natives did what it took to ensure that their own interests were protected.

Such victories are hardly new for the Alaska Federation of Natives, but perhaps that is my point. In a world where native politics is so often relegated to symbolic victories, this organization stands out as one of the major players in Alaskan politics. The theme for this meeting of the AFN was “Strength in Unity,” and what better proof could its leaders offer than the re-election of Murkowski to the U.S. Senate. Here at least, Native Leaders had demonstrated with perfect clarity that they were a force to be reckoned with.