My first thought was, "Um, duh?"
My second thought was a little heavier. I remembered doing research a year earlier for a college paper about the Washington Redskins and the sports mascot debate. For many people, the portrayals of American Indians in movies, television, halftime shows, books and cartoons may be the only "contact" they ever have with the American Indian culture. The context of the stories told about American Indians is almost always in the past tense, in a past time, contributing to a subconscious thought that American Indians no longer exist and/or are part of fairy tales.
That's why the exhibit at the museum felt compelled to explain to its visitors that American Indians exist today--you just might not recognize them because they're in hard hats and suits.
15 comments:
Hi Rob, I came across this web site http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/005739.php which I feel is very insightful as to the mindset of these "fanatics". It looks like the American Indian still has an uphill battle on their hands.
Yep.
By the way, I wrote about the NCAA decision in Why FSU's Seminoles Aren't Okay.
Writerfella here --
First of all, it came in a blazing epiphany just why mascots and stereotypes have importance today that they should not have had at all. As I sat in the Indian Clinic, it occurred to me that American society has changed in the past thirty years and that change has not been for the better. Anything that cannot be understood on a literal level now is held to have little value by today's society. Either it means directly what it seems to mean or it is deemed worthless. Symbols, therefore, are taken verbatim to be real and truthful matters, or they are rejected. Icons and metaphors that once were models for inspiring cognitive thought, then, have taken on a reality they did not possess theretofore and any active interpretation ceases. The public no longer is aware of looking at a symbol but instead seemingly are seeing it as an afforded truth in a passive interpretation that is not an interpretation at all. The icon or symbol is accepted without question exactly as what it appears to be. Evidence of this trend can be found in the reasons why fictional television has been superceded by "reality" programming, why ecumenical dialogues have been replaced by intolerant fundamentalism, and why our once proud patriotism has been circumvented by strident nationalism.
There as yet is no name for this change but it is far past being mere cynicism, wherein one's own beliefs are held to be the only virtues and anyone else's values are suspect and possibly evil. For such a society, what they already know and have possesses the only truths and goodness that are possible.
There's a story in that, and I will put it among my to-do's so that it will burble and brew on its own, as I do all such matters that come to me.
More directly to the article, however, I point out that Natives do indeed seem to disappear if they take on jobs and positions like those of everybody else. Actors that I know constantly complain that they only can get Native parts and cannot get a role of a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman who just happens to be Native by happenstance. This personally is true because, in four of the seven movies in which I was cast, I played Native. Two were nondescript roles as a soldier and as a mercenary soldier. Only in the seventh one did I play someone who was Native only by coincidence, as I was bodyguard, butler, companion, valet, physical trainer, chef, chauffeur, jet pilot, and yacht captain for a young millionaire played by Harry Hamlin in a baseball movie.
Films more or less reflect that, if Natives are like everyone else, they no longer are seen as Natives and are acceptable for that reason.
The use of John Herrington as a representative of this principle is a bad choice, however. He is a "Chickasaw" by lineage only, and if he ever had a nosebleed in a strong Oklahoma wind, he would have to surrender his CDIB card. My Siberian Husky Madd Maxx has more Indian blood than Herrington or almost any other modern Chickasaw. They and one or two other of the "Five Civilized Tribes" adopted a defeatist strategy when Europeans moved into their Gulf Coast areas: they decided to become white men. They intermarried heavily, making it their sole intention in treating with whites, even dressing as whites and learning the languages and building houses and towns identical to white settlements. It was a strategy that failed, however, as the whites still forced them from their towns and plantations and farms to be sent away along their portion of The Trail of Tears. Once settled in Indian Territory, they continued their intermarriages until now almost no one remains who is more than 1/64th Chickasaw. Like the Pequots, who mostly are Blacks, the Chickasaw managed to maintain their Native identification and Federal recognition, if not the culture that once was theirs. They have a series of television commercials that appear to talk up their pride in their heritage but in reality are designed to let the public know they are no different from any other Oklahomans. In their revisionist history, they now call the Trail of Tears 'the relocation,' and that's all the mention it gets. Herrington may be citeable as 'the first Native American into space,' but his only real achievement is that he is just another white man who became a pilot and joined the space program. Bad choice, he...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
You think people have bought into Native stereotypes more in the last 30 years than in the previous 30 years? I don't see any evidence of that. Instead, I'd say the belief in and use of Native stereotypes is declining slowly but surely as people like us educate others.
I don't judge whether certain tribes or members of tribes are more or less "Indian" than others. Besides, "Indian" is a political designation, as the Supreme Court has ruled, not a racial designation. Since Herrington is an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe, he's an Indian by definition.
Herrington is an excellent choice to illustrate this item because "astronaut" is a classic job that many aspire to but few obtain. Other rarefied jobs of that type include the US president, Nobel-Prize winning scientist, and Academy Award-winning actor. When a Native achieves one of these positions, I'll use that to illustrate my postings.
Aren't membership requirements of tribes really an internal sovereignty matter that outsiders should not get involved in? I'm neither Chickasaw or Pequot, so I'll leave it to them.
Also, there is to be said a certain amount of "armchair quarterbacking" in condemning the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" for the very difficult choices they had to deal with as annihilation loomed. We were not there and did not have to make these choices, and for that matter, our ancestors were not there and did not face the exact same thing as these tribes.
Writerfella here --
Stuff and nonsense. All Native peoples faced the same factors and fates at the hands of Europeans; it is their reactions to such threats that determined their characters, at least in the eyes of other tribes. Chickasaws elected to become whites and whites they became. Ever meet one? Unless they told you they were Chickasaw, you never would know or even suspect.
When the Five Civilized Tribes were brought to Indian Territory, they asked to be partitioned off from other tribes being held here, at the same time that the other tribes asked that those five tribes be so partitioned. This remains so, even today, and we are as happy as they are in such a condition.
Interesting that when Native reservations were broken down into allotments and the remainders made open for settlement in the now-infamous 'land runs,' the Civilized tribes' reservations were the first to go and ours were the last to go. Their decision to become white did not spare them, once again.
You cannot find a Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, or Chickasaw in any of writerfella's stories, and you never will. There are Civilized tribal members that I admire, such as Will Sampson, Enoch Haney, and Michael Rich, for they are individuals who shied away from their tribal images and became just Native people.
The Menominees lost their Federal Court case to abrogate the government termination of their recognition as a Native tribe. That must mean that Rob, by his words above, holds them not to be Natives. The Kickapoos, who are 99% Hispanic, won their case, so Rob must hold them to be Natives. After all, the courts and the law have spoken.
And I guess if, in the future, Ernest Istook wins US President, or physicist Fred Begay wins the Nobel Prize, or Rudy Youngblood wins the Academy Award, Rob will break out the champagne. I for one will not be holding the ice bucket for such people.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Not a "Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, or Chickasaw" in your stories? Is this out of a judgment you have made concerning just about every member of these tribes?
By the way, I picked up one of the recommended books on the Sioux. The dominant idea is that they came from the St. Louis area pre-1492. This book also has them first arriving in Upper Plains right after the year 1800. I really wonder at individuals who would actually claim that the Sioux had a prehistoric presence in the Black Hills (off topic, I know).
Writerfella here --
It is not a value judgment but rather a personal decision. These were not honorable people so there is little reason for them to be honored in my writing. Consider that the Pawnee were the greatest enemy of the Kiowa (as well as the enemy of all other tribes on the Plains) and were for all intents the pirates of the Plains. Yet they fought well and valiantly and so have won their place in my writings. They sort of got a backhanded honor in "Rite Of Encounter," but they are there nonetheless.
Consider that the current chairman of the Comanche tribe stole a piece of my copyrighted works and had it published in several newspapers as though he were the author. We settled out of tribal court and he was ordered to admit his theft of intellectual property publicly, not so much to chastise him but to preserve my copyrighted material from entering the public domain. I held the newspapers as absent malice because they could not have known his conceit and all of them exempted copyrighting his article as they do for all their published items. Did I then pass judgment on all Comanches? No, only their chairman, and rightly so.
There will be Comanche characters in my works but nary a Civilized tribe character.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I see a contradiction between "These were not honorable people so there is little reason for them to be honored in my writing" and "Did I then pass judgment on all Comanches? No, only their chairman, and rightly so". In the first sentence (and your previous references) it does look like you pass judgement on all.
Writerfella here --
And so I did, exempting only those few who have proven themselves to be Native and not white wanna-bes. In the case of the Comanches, I did not condemn all Comanches because of one individual. This is 'mirror-image' logic and in keeping with my own principles.
Visit Oklahoma someday and find out the ill regard in which the 'civilized' tribes are held by the 32 other Native tribes surviving here. Then survey those five and find what they think of the other 32. They deprecate the rest of us for being "Indianer than Thou..." and do not see their own contradiction in terms.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM: in my screenplay, DREADNAUT, there is a space shuttle crew member who is half-Kaw from Kansas. The space shuttle is in orbit to work in tandem with high-arcing jet aircraft, all trying to launch missiles at a geostationary weather satellite.
DREADNAUT is a action-adventure piece about domestic nuclear terrorism (as in Herman Kahn's THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE) and involves a huge robot marching road machine thst is carrying 'dirty' atomic weapons. It has been launched on the Pacific coast highway toward the heart of Los Angeles. If the machine is stopped, it will explode; if it reaches its target, it will explode. Its control computer sits aboard one of our own satellites. The US and NEST has 36 hours to comply with the terrorists' demands or we lose most of the west coast for three thousand years and more.
NEVER would I have considered making my shuttle astronaut a member of the Five Civilized Tribes, and the fact that a real enrollee from those tribes indeed is a shuttle astronaut simply means he has succeeded in becoming white.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I don't hold that someone has to be enrolled to be an Indian. But I do hold that everyone who's enrolled is an Indian. (Excluding the occasional bookkeeping mistake, of course.)
Will Rogers, Wilma Mankiller, Wes Studi, Rita Coolidge...none of these are real Indians? Hmm, could've fooled me. I think I'll stick with the standard definition over Russ's definition.
I don't know Fred Begay, but a quick search reveals that his parents are Navajo and Ute. From what I can tell, he may be a pureblooded Indian. In any case, what does he have to do with the Five Civilized Tribes?
My stories will have Indians from these tribes, as well as every other tribe I can manage. Why? Because I want to write about the full range of Indian experiences, even if some tribes are more acculturated than others.
Yes, Rob. This recognizes diversity, and the fact that the experiences of the tribes/nations confronted with the colonial onslaught often DID vary significantly, as did the very difficult decisions these tribes had to make when confronted with questions of their very SURVIVAL. You rightly mention the "full range of Indian experiences". That is indeed multi-cultural.
I see pointing out the "the ill regard in which the 'civilized' tribes are held by the 32 other Native tribes" in Oklahoma as an instance of pointing out a PROBLEM. You (writerfella) appeared see this situation of ethnic division/prejudice not as a problem, but as a justification for condemning the "civilized" tribes.
Blanket condemnation of every member of certain ethnic group (even if you point out "exceptions") gets too close to racism, or is perhaps at least an expression of ethnic prejudice or even a form of stereotyping. I see no difference between value judgments and personal decisions. How does it sound if someone says "I'd never consider having a Jewish character in my books"? I'd certainly never be proud of the idea that I excluded members of certain ethnic groups from my fiction out of general prejudice against members of that group.
(I just picked up a book on the Pawnee Indians, and look forward to reading it to find out the "other" side. The Pawnee were vilified in "Dances with Wolves", and I've seen condemnation in this blog as well)
I've never heard of this alleged prejudice against the Five Civilized Tribes by Oklahoma's other tribes. Of course, I've never been to Oklahoma. I'll have to ask people I know if it's as bad as Russ says.
I think I mentioned that movies such as Dances with Wolves have treated the Pawnee badly. I've never said anything negative about them myself.
I don't think I've ever seen the "blogmaster" villify or condemn any ethnic group. However, in this blog, I've seen one of the commenters direct a slam at the Pawnee.
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