"FOR AMERICAN TO LIVE, EUROPE MUST DIE"

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In our high Southeastern Idaho country earlier today, the winds were very
strong.  The continual light rain that blew over the  high ranges and ridges
was
cold, even a bit of snow.  Grass was extremely green, the flowers of all
colors
glistened and glittered, the sage and cedars generated their extraordinarily
pungent sweet aromas.  It was 'way too cold for rattlers -- but a huge
mule deer looked at us wonderingly.

If I left our home displeased with the world, I returned feeling  a great
deal better about the Cosmos and Humanity  and the Great Meaning and all the
rest of the manzanita Jungle-of-Life into which I and billions of others
have been
dumped.  A good Anglo friend and neighbor of ours, a young mining engineer
who works with Bureau of Land Management, sometimes skips his LDS church
services and junkets up with his dog, occasionally meeting us -- and draws
the
same healing qualities from the Earth and the Mountains.

And then, after I'd eaten, coffeed-up and oiled my water-soaked Size 15
Vasque boots, I made a signal mistake and looked at my computer.  And there
I saw on the Net, the 1980 speech by Russell Means:  "For American To Live,
Europe Must Die."  It has been given at the Black Hills that summer and some
extremely traditional students of mine -- Dine' from Navajo Community
College --  who'd gone there for a conference had heard it  but had not been
impressed at all.  I could only tell them then that I was not a great
admirer of Russell Means -- fellow
Indian that he certainly is -- and had not been since the  late '70s, a few
years after the prime point of his  AIM leadership.

Exactly why this speech is traveling around at this present moment, I really
do not
know. Many Anglos, let me say clearly, have a rational and healthy view of
Native Americans.

But  this speech of Means is the sort of thing some other Anglos love -- for
some odd masochistic reason -- and there are still other Anglos that relish
this stuff because it gives
them the opportunity to trash Natives.  Russell Means has traveled widely
in the political waters -- many directions indeed -- and may now be
presently
associated with the Libertarians.

Here are a couple of salient paragraphs from the Means polemic:

"American Indians are still in touch with these realities--the prophecies,
the traditions of our ancestors. We learn from the elders, from nature,
from the powers. And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian
peoples will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. I don't care if it's
only a handful living high in the Andes. American Indian people will
survive; harmony will be reestablished. That's revolution.

*****

It is possible for an American Indian to share European values, a European
worldview. We have a term for these people; we call them "apples"--red on
the outside (genetics) and white on the inside (their values). Other groups
have similar terms: Blacks have their "oreos"; Hispanos have "Coconuts" and
so on. And, as I said before, there are exceptions to the white norm:
people who are white on the outside, but not white inside. I'm not sure
what term should be applied to them other than "human beings."

[ -- Russell Means ]

==================================================================

The matter of Indians who are, say, Establishment Pets quite aside, the
fallacies in this parochial attack on bi-culturalism -- given the
complexities of the World of Today -- are far too obvious to enumerate. This
is, to state it politely, the sort of thing that builds up in a corral used
continually for cattle.

I do agree with him on the one point:  We are not talking about biology.
Almost all Native people in the Western Hemisphere today are of some mixed
ancestry -- Russell Means and virtually all of the rest of us.  That's as
far as he and I can go together.

About thirty years ago, an interesting -- and essentially accurate --
concept was coined by several anthropologists [a couple of them Native] for
we Indians:  "culturally 150% people."  It's an accurate characterization of
the fact that we're necessarily bi-cultural:  our base is in our tribal
cultures -- but with
much mixed in from the non-Indian setting.

It's not an easy thing to do at all.  My father, a full-blooded Indian, who
never had a
day of high school, did have, as time went on, three ascending university
degrees -- and was an excellent artist and a wonderful professor.  Among his
students were a great many young Native people from the Southwestern tribes
[and
from others as well ]. And many of these went on to play major trail-blazing
roles in
education and related approaches within their respective tribal nations.

My father occasionally remarked that there was frequently one question that
his Indian students asked -- and it was  always the toughest single
question of all.

"How can I," the student would ask, "learn and take on Anglo ways -- and
still be a Navajo [or any one of a number of other specific tribal nations]?
How can I
work that out?"

And my father would say: "They can never really blend and merge. Not that
way.  They are far too different.  But we still have to mix them
 together -- and use each.
The challenge is to remain true to our Native tribes and Native cultures. We
can only do the best we can."

There are several kinds of Anglo reactions to Indians that we Indians would
rather not encounter.  One is the Anglo who swims in a dreamy
Romanticize-Our-Red-Brother fantasy -- and that, to us, is simply
unsettling in its significant distance from reality.

Another is the Anglo who either can't or won't recognize the extraordinary
stability and national distinctiveness of our tribal nations  and the
continuing vitality of
our aboriginal cultures.  This species of Anglo wants to see only -- for
everyone -- European or Euro-American identity of some sort and/or thinks
that the only Real Indians were mostly of long ago.  And if there are any
Real Natives left, they have to be in Buckskin, Beads and Feathers. And,
since most of us aren't in those [for most of the time at least], we really
don't have a Native identity. [Nothing against traditional tribal garb --
quite the contrary! -- but I am fond of my Levis.]

A major role model of mine as a kid -- beyond the critically important one
of my father -- was the internationally acclaimed Iroquois ethnologist and
Native activist,  Arthur Caswell Parker [1881-1955], Seneca, and great
nephew
of Brigadier General Ely Parker [Donehogawa], first Indian/Indian
Commissioner,
long-time colleague of Lewis Henry Morgan.  Arthur Parker's contributions
to ethnology were massive over his entire life, he served as the chief
archaeologist for the State of New York, was a prolific and excellent
writer, a person of many broad interests [including parapsychology.]  Arthur
Parker was also an extremely
effective activist with the traditional Iroquois bent toward organizing and
organization:  a key founder and leader [and its editor] of the first
contemporary pan-Indian Native rights organization: Society of American
Indians [1911 into the mid-20s], other activist organizations, and  was one
of the several founders of the National
Congress of American Indians [1944 to the present.]

Arthur Parker tended to wear very conservative suits -- black suits, in
fact. And ties.
Asked once by a well-meaning Anglo about the "feathers and buckskin," he was
not wearing, the august [and very traditional] Iroquois, who certainly
respected feathers and buckskin, responded icily. "I don't have to play
Indian to be Indian."

For myself, I certainly have a variety of strains in my makeup. I've had no
problem blending Native tribalism and radical Rocky Mountain industrial
unionism with socialist concepts -- to arrive at my own visionary approach
to Humanity's problems.  I've worked congenially and all my life with people
from many different tribal backgrounds -- and all sorts of ethnicities. I've
labored at many different jobs -- and I read all kinds of books.  I get
along pretty well with most folks.

 And, although I never forgive treachery, I have had no problems at all in
arriving, say, at a principled reconciliation with old mortal foes of mine:
e.g., former -- now greatly changed for the better -- White Deep South
racists who would have once cheerfully jailed me for life or given me a
"ticket into the Eternal" [and who certainly tried valiantly and almost
successfully to accomplish those goals.]

But, scratch down:  My soul  is certainly Wabanaki and Iroquois -- and also
something shaped much by the Navajo among who I grew up and with whom our
family relations are extremely close, and the Lagunas, too, with whom our
family has always had close ties.  Add it all up, and I'm  a guy who is at
least 150%.

Many years ago, I  [then a prof at University of Iowa's Graduate Program in
Urban and Regional Planning] was part of an all-Indian panel discussion at
Rock Island, Illinois -- with the focus being contemporary challenges.  It
was a Sunday afternoon and about three hundred people came  -- almost all of
them Anglo.  Our chair was Cecil Kickapoo, a pleasant and very capable
Indian leader.  Others in our group were equally well suited for the
affair -- save one:  a strange man of Northern Rockies background who, via a
completely tangled and mangling adoption-by-whites, had emerged as a circus
and carnival Indian in  midwestern settings.  He used the name, Chief Lone
Eagle.  He had pushed to join the panel and the friendly Cecil obliged --
but  on the firm condition that Lone Eagle only talk about the problems
encountered by Natives in an urban setting.

We panelists began to speak.  In my case, I discussed at length the Navajo
struggle against the uranium companies,  against radioactivity, and against
death.  As I talked, I became conscious of a man sitting in the far back
row: an Indian, dressed very formally in a dark  suit. He was paying the
most  acute attention to my words.  I looked again -- and then I placed him.
Across the many rows of Anglo heads, we gave each other a nod.

It was Chief Lone Eagle's turn.  He did not adhere to his agreement with
Cecil -- but, instead, launched into his favorite fantasy which we all
dreaded: that he was "Chief of the Navajo."  This, of course, was utterly
ridiculous.  The far-flung Navajo have never had "a chief" -- but,
traditionally and to the very moment, have an extensive network of local
headmen and other  local leaders.  Since the  1920s and 1930s onward, the
fast growing and very large Navajo Nation [250,000 people today] has also
had an increasingly complex tribal council system -- legislative, executive,
judicial.  Recently, the title of "Chairman" became "President."

With we other panelists super-cold and stony-faced, Lone Eagle continued, on
and on -- frequently uttering the words "ugh" and "me-um" and other
stereotypical gibberish. And many of the Anglos obviously loved this.

The dark-suited man in the back and I exchanged looks at a number of points.
Somehow, I was sure I could detect his sympathy for me.

Cecil Kickapoo, at an opportune point, cut off Lone Eagle's soliloquy.
Questions and answers from the audience now came into play -- with the local
"Chief" getting at least half of them.

And, when the whole event had mercifully ended, Lone Eagle drew most of the
Anglos who came up front to visit.  The  man in the back -- he of the very
formal suit -- made his way politely through the throng to me.

I knew.  I greeted him in Navajo.  He responded by also greeting -- and then
by introducing himself by name and by clan.   And while the awed Anglos
swirled around Chief Lone Eagle, this Navajo man and I visited at great
length -- about many things but not about the nearby and obviously tragic
figure responding to questions with "ugh" and "me-um."

My new friend was an electronics engineer with two university degrees -- in
Rock Island for a scientific conference.  He had read about our meeting in
the local paper and decided to sit in.  I was very glad he had -- and he was
equally glad to see me.  As always, we knew some of the same people in
Navajo Nation.

We talked about the Southwest -- Flagstaff, Gallup, Farmington -- and
Navajoland.  And the hideously mounting, lethal uranium tragedies: The bones
under the turquoise sky.

 "I'm going home very soon," he said. "We have the regular clan ceremonies
and some other family things.  Going to be very good to get back. "

And I certainly agreed.  It's always good to get back.

We Natives try to, as my father put it, "do the best that we can."  And,
while I really don't know about Russell Means, I think almost all of us do
pretty damn well under the circumstances.

Fraternally - Hunterbear

Hunter Gray  [ Hunterbear ]
www.hunterbear.org  ( strawberry socialism )
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´






~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.