Custer's Last Stand--review

A review of a fine documentary that I watched years ago:

American Experience: Custer’s Last Stand – Television Review

By Jay WertzOverall, the story aspect of the film is strong when the viewer realizes that it is more about Custer and the myth surrounding the Last Stand than about the battle itself. Examples of the pop-culture development of the myth through movies and literature are presented. These things show the breadth of the fascination with the subject, and the on-camera speakers rev up enthusiasm for the man and the event. Some are stronger and more interesting than others. “Films like this end up having a certain synthesis built into them because we have a kind of Greek chorus of talking heads that help us bring the history back to life,” explains Ives.A video of the documentary's first chapter:

Custer's Last Stand Chapter 1

Random thoughts

Some interesting comments taken or paraphrased from the film:

"The Battle of Washita." Some called it a massacre.

Custer was seen as a great Indian fighter.

Custer was ambivalent about Indians like most Americans. He admired their courage and fighting ability, but considered them primitive savages.

The official government policy toward Indians was tolerance and signed treaties. The unofficial policy was "get rid of them."

Custer attended 40 performances of Julius Caesar.

He wanted a triumph for the nation's centennial.

Custer was sent south to surround the Indian camp. Other soldiers thought he'd attack. "Leave some for us," they said.

Sitting Bull was calling tribes to gather. It was their last chance to live free, and the largest gathering ever.

Custer believed the Indians had no command structure. He thought they were disorganized, would panic and run. His soldiers could defeat much larger force.

Sitting Bull sent two people to negotiate.

Custer was haunted by the ghost of Elliot, whom he'd left behind to die at Washita.

Because of Sitting Bull's success, some believed he wasn't Indian. That he must've gone to West Point and studied Napoleon.

Final quote

From Louis Warren:Right away, Custer becomes a kind of martyr to the cause of American progress. And this allows the cause to be more acceptable than ever. Because it isn't as if Americans have not sacrificed anything now. It's not as if they haven't given something up. They gave up Custer. The more glorious they can paint Custer, in the aftermath of his death, the more they seem to have sacrificed as they take away all the Indians' land.

My Chrononauts script

Here's my submission for Mark Miller's script competition for his Chrononauts comic-book series. Since I didn't win, I've changed the names to avoid copyright issues. Here's a four-page story starring the Time Jerks.

PAGE 1

Panel 1/ A convertible sports car bursts through a fiery circle of light. Dark-haired Grizzle frantically drives while light-haired Forst rides shotgun. Behind them, faintly visible in the glare, Zulu warriors hurl spears at them.

The car has emerged onto a broad grassy plain. In the background are small groves of trees and a low line of bluffs. A few Plains Indian tipis stand in the distance on the right. A couple of dark-haired people and their animals—horses and dogs—look at the commotion.

1. TITLE: Time Jerks

2. SUBTITLE: Two white guys romp though history in search of fame and fortune.

3. CAPTION: 1876

4. FORST: Zulus are as tough as their reputation.

5. GRIZZLE: Yeah, recruiting drive didn’t go so well.

6. CREDITS:

Story: Rob Schmidt
Art: __________
Colors: __________

Panel 2/ Still dodging a few spears, the car plows into a group of tipis. Indians in a mix of Western clothing and buckskins scatter.

7. FORST: Whoa, watch where you’re going!

8. GRIZZLE: Gotta get out of range.

Panel 3/ An overhead shot shows the car zooming past the first campsites of a huge Indian gathering. It’s an obstacle course of tipis, cooking fires, and people and animals. To the north, a river flows below the bluffs.

9. FORST: Where are we?

10. GRIZZLE: Not sure. Didn’t have time to set the coordinates.

11. FORST: Slow down! You’re gonna hit someone!

Panel 4/ The Indians regroup and attack the car as it barrels through the camp. On foot and on horseback, they shoot at the intruders with rifles and bows. Bullets and arrows fly past.

12. FORST: Speed up! Speed up!

13: SOUND F/X: zip zip zip

PAGE 2

Panel 1/ A half-naked warrior leaps onto the car’s hood. With a knife in his mouth, he creeps toward Grizzle and Forst.

1. FORST: Get him off us!

Panel 2/ Grizzle yanks the steering wheel. The car swerves and strikes a tipi, ripping it from its moorings. Surprised, the Indian goes flying in the other direction.

Ahead, just visible in the distance, is a large buffalo hide stretched on a wooden frame.

2. GRIZZLE: Satisfied?

3. FORST: These people … are we changing their history?

Panel 3/ Grizzle and Forst glance behind them. Like a scene from an old Western, angry warriors pursue them on horseback.

4. GRIZZLE: Either we’re creating a parallel timeline or we’re rewriting our own.

5. GRIZZLE: Won’t know which unless we go back to the future.

6: SOUND F/X: yi yi yi yi yi!

Panel 4/ The car slams into the buffalo hide, which envelops the front half of car, blocking the guys’ view.

7. GRIZZLE: Which I don’t plan to—

8. FORST: LOOK OUT!

Panel 5/ As the hide falls away, Grizzle and Forst find warriors surrounding them with weapons aimed to kill. The guys raise their hands in surrender.

9. WARRIORS: Spies! Thieves! Fat takers!

10. GRIZZLE: Whatever they’re speaking, our translators are handling it.

11. FORST: Hey, we’re after fame and fortune, not “fat.”

PAGE 3

Panel 1/ As women and children watch, the warriors lead Grizzle and Forst through the camp. With their hands tied in front of them, the guys try to talk to their captors.

1. FORST: Not spies or thieves. We’re, uh, messengers.

2. GRIZZLE: Never thought I’d say this, but ... take us to your leader.

Panel 2/ The warriors push them through a flap into a big, dimly lit tipi. On the far side, sitting on hides, are a middle-aged Sioux and his advisers. The Indians look unhappy to see white men.

3. FORST: Is that … Sitting Bull?

4. GRIZZLE: Looks like it.

5. FORST: Then this must be Little Big Horn.

6. GRIZZLE: And Custer’s about to attack.

Panel 3/ Grizzle and Forst stand before Sitting Bull and the other Sioux leaders.

7. SITTING BULL: Who are you and where did you come from?

8. FORST: We, uh, flew down from the sky.

9. GRIZZLE: Yeah, uh, on the back of a thunderbird.

10. SITTING BULL: You speak nonsense. Why are you here?

11. GRIZZLE: We come with, er—

Panel 4/ Face to face with Sitting Bull, Grizzle has a bright idea.

12. GRIZZLE: A warning from the spirits.

13. GRIZZLE: Beware the Long Hair. Though you will be victorious, many will die. The white man will hunt you until you have vanished like the buffalo.

Panel 5/ Warriors lead Grizzle and Forst away as Sitting Bull and his men discuss what to do with them.

14. ADVISER #1: They’re lying, of course.

15. ADVISER #2: Kill them and take their scalps.

16. SITTING BULL: No, tie them up. I may have questions for them later.

PAGE 4

Panel 1/ Just outside the tipi, Forst kicks one of the guards in the gut. Grizzle raises his arms to shield himself from another guard slashing at him with a knife. He positions his hands so the blade slices through his bonds.

1. FORST: Didja hear that?

2. GRIZZLE: Let’s get outta here!

Panel 2/ They run for their car as Indians chase them. With his hands still tied, Forst ducks as a warrior tumbles over him. With his bonds unraveling, Grizzle straight-arms another warrior.

3. FORST: Why aren’t they shooting at us?

4. GRIZZLE: Camp’s too crowded! Go!

Panel 3/ With Indians in hot pursuit, the guys leap into their car. Grizzle guns the engine and the wheels spin in a cloud of dust. A circle of light shimmers into existence before them.

5. FORST: Back to your place in Manhattan?

6. GRIZZLE: Yeah, Lucky Luciano’s girl is waiting.

7. SOUND F/X: rrrrRRWRR—

Panel 4/ In the background, the car sits in front of Grizzle’s luxurious mansion. Grizzle and Forst relate their adventures to men in pinstriped suits and women in flapper outfits. Perhaps a black butler stands by with a tray of refreshments.

8. CAPTION: 1929

9. FLAPPER: Were they all barbaric and savage-like?

10. FORST: Actually, they weren’t too bad—

11. GRIZZLE: Considering we invaded their home.

Filling the foreground is a copy of the New York Herald newspaper—on a table or in a henchman’s hands. Part of the front page is visible: the headlines, a drawing, and a chronology in one or two columns. The main headline is big.

12. HEADLINES:

Custer dead at 90
Former president dies in bed

The photo is a drawing of General Custer as seen in photographs just before Little Big Horn. The chronology reads:

His Career in Politics

1876: 7th Cavalry routs Sioux as they break camp
1877: Custer persuades Geronimo to surrender in Ariz.
1879: Custer is proclaimed “The Hero of the West”
1880: Custer runs for president against Garfield, wins
1882: “Learn and Earn” program launched for Negroes
1883: Chinese riot at So. Pacific Railroad ceremony
1884: Custer wins second presidential term
1885: Assassination attempt against Custer fails
1886: France starts to build Statue of Victory for U.S.
1888: Custer wins unprecedented third presidential term
1890: U.S. annexes Panama to begin work on canal
1891: First Hawaiian War ends in stalemate
1892: Custer wins fourth presidential term
1894: Sequoyah admitted to the Union as 45th state
1896: Col. Theodore Roosevelt killed in attack on Cuba

13. CAPTION: End.

For more on the subject, see White Male Privilege in Chrononauts.

Battle of Little Bighorn in Twilight Zone

I saw this Twilight Zone episode for the first time a couple of years ago.

The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms[T]hree United States Army National Guard soldiers (MSgt. William Connors, Pvt. Michael McCluskey, Cpl. Richard Langsford) are an M3 Stuart tank crew participating in a war game being conducted near the Battle of Little Bighorn, the site of Major General George Custer's last stand. Their orders coincide with the route of Custer and his men. As they follow the route, they hear strange things such as Indian battle cries and horses running. As nobody is there, the men examine the possibilities. Connors wonders if they've somehow gone back in time. When they return, Connors reports to his captain what occurred and is reprimanded. The following day the trio goes out and again begins to experience strange phenomena. The captain contacts them via radio and orders them to return to base when Connors tries to explain what is happening. Connors breaks contact and the captain sends his lieutenant and two men to bring them in. However, the tank crew abandon their tank and continue on foot with their side arms and rifles. They find a group of teepees and McCluskey goes to investigate; he soon returns with an arrow protruding from his back. The men climb a ridge where they see a battle taking place below. They join it and are never seen again.

Later, the captain enters the Custer Battlefield National Monument. A soldier reports that all they found was the abandoned tank. The two of them notice the names of their missing soldiers on the monument with the names of Custer's men. The captain states that it was a pity the missing soldiers couldn't have taken the tank with them to the battle.

Comment:  Alas, this episode doesn't include any Indians. Not even Latinos, Italians, or Greeks dressed as Indians.

The captain has the best line when he says to Connors:And if you meet any Indians...if you meet any Indians, will you take it very slow? Because they're all college graduates and they're probably running tests on the soil.So we know the episode has a somewhat modern sensibility. And kudos for including two black soldiers, including Greg Morris (soon to star in Mission: Impossible).

But a few odd things:

The "group" of tipis consists of six of them--no Indians, horses, campfires, or anything else. In reality, the Indian camp had some 2,000 lodges. I know that was beyond the budget of The Twilight Zone, but this is ridiculously small.

McCluskey approaches the "village," is out of sight a few seconds, and then appears and calmly ascends the slope. Only then do the others realize he has an arrow in his back.

This is silly on several fronts. Why would Indians shoot an arrow in the confines of a tipi rather than, say, use a knife? Why would they attack a lone, unarmed stranger at all? How did it happen without a single outcry or shout of pain? Why did the Indians let McCluskey go? How is he able to function with an arrow in his back? And why is there no arrow the next time he's shown?

A reviewer agrees:

The Twilight Zone: “The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms”/“A Short Drink From A Certain Fountain”It’s not much of a village; just a cluster of maybe a dozen teepees, with no living being in sight. McCluskey (the young one of the three) takes it at face value and offers to go scout the area. Now, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense: it’s broad daylight, there’s no cover, and the three men are already standing no more than a couple hundred yards from the “village.” By this point, Connors and the rest believe that they’re on the trail of General Custer on his last doomed assault against the Sioux, and they’ve decided they’re going to join up with Custer and the others and fight alongside them. So if they believe enough to consider that the Native Americans are real, and that they’re dangerous, why would McCluskey go wandering over without any real reason or protection?

He gets an arrow in the back for his troubles (although for once, this isn’t immediately fatal), and it’s ridiculous, but it’s also deeply creepy in a way that a more conventionally structured sequence would not have been. We never see a single Native American throughout the episode, just the effects of their passing, and as unfortunate as the story’s politics are (it’s weird to see something these days that treats “fighting alongside Custer” as a worthwhile and heroic goal), that lends the whole half hour a general air of creepiness that makes it compelling even when the writing fumbles.The last stand

Actually, the soldiers haven't decided anything yet. They stumble over a ridge and see the battle in progress. They check their weapons before Connors shouts:All right, fellas...let's do it!This leads to the key point:

The soldiers are excited by the battle they see off-screen and say so--but they don't say which side they're eager to join. Would they have been thrilled to die within minutes like the rest of Custer's regiment? Or would they have preferred to help the Indians kill their fellow Americans?

If the Indians stripped the soldiers of their gear, leaving only their dog tags, the soldiers would've looked like anyone else. Those who surveyed the battle site would've assumed they were part of Custer's troops. So their choice isn't clear.

I guess the names on the monument imply they joined Custer. It's just funny that no one is willing to say it.

An earlier exchange offers an alternative and shows the episode's ambivalence:LANGSFORD: All right, Connors. Okay, let's say, let's say that you're right. Let's say that this thing is happening just like you said it is. Let's say that we're gonna follow this trail, just like, uh--well, just like they did it, huh?!

LANGSFORD: Now what I wanna know is, what's gonna happen next?

CONNORS: We're gonna wind up at a massacre. That's what.

LANGSFORD: You gonna stop it?

CONNORS: Yeah. Stop it, or ... join it.In 1963, when this episode was made, people were beginning to realize that the Indians were right and Custer was wrong. Perhaps Serling or someone understood it would sound bad to cheer the killing of Indians. So they filmed the episode but left out any references to aiding or opposing Custer.

Anyway, I agree this episode is flawed. The producers spent too much time on the opening and not enough on the ending. They should've handled the Indian "village" differently--said it was an outlying camp, and shown arrows fired from afar and missing the soldiers.

Most important, they should've said which side the soldiers were joining. Either way, it would've made for a provocative message. Viewers could've learned a lesson about doing the right thing...or the wrong thing.

P.S. You can see images from the episode here:

The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms--Quotes and Sound Clips

Below:  McClusky foolisly goes to scout the Sioux "village."

Crazy Horse play lacks drama

Crazy Horse, Custer and no drama

By Marcus CrowderIt’s tempting to call Jon George’s new play, “Crazy Horse and Custer,” a dramatic reading with costumes and props. That would imply the world premiere at the Sacramento Theatre Company’s intimate Pollock Stage was in fact dramatic. It is not.

Of course, the characters Crazy Horse, who tells us that his name literally translated really should be “His Horse Is Crazy,” and Col. George Armstrong Custer, who allows he graduated last in his class at West Point, have intertwined legacies that culminated in the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876 in eastern Montana Territory.

Like a diorama come stiffly to life in the progress of the play, they give laborious accounts of their divergent backgrounds, which ultimately lead to the shared destiny.

Playwright George seems intent on humanizing these outsized figures of American history, but the two-character production is so static and the nominal story so still that you could attend a tax code lecture with more animation. The author in a playbill message writes that he has written “neither myth nor is it history,” but “an entertainment.” If only it were so. Despite the best efforts of actors Louie Leonardo as Crazy Horse and Kirk Blackinton as Custer, the production boxes the audience into two long autobiographical stories with no conflicts, revelations or resolutions.

The actors are rarely on the stage together but instead address the audience directly, speaking from beyond the grave as if to set the record straight about what we don’t know about them.

Leonardo has the tougher job as he is saddled with the stoic, humorless Crazy Horse, who painstakingly recounts his life as a young mystic and warrior in training, a man “who could explain the unexplainable to those who could not.”

The extant legend of Crazy Horse is that of a visionary whose supernatural aura was a protection in battle. George transposes this into a more studied behavior calculated to unnerve adversaries.

He also informs us there is no room for criticism because he has “consciously reconstructed to fit the needs of my fancy.” There is also a heavy message coda about the sad fates of American Indians tacked on to the end. Can we say it is a long, dull slog regardless of his best intentions?

Crazy Horse mostly wants to be left alone as an existential thinker and thoughtful observer of the superficial beings around him. The “white man” comes in for lot of condemnation, but Crazy Horse’s American Indian peers don’t really measure up in his estimation, either.Comment:  There's no reason Crazy Horse should be stoic and humorless, of course. Most Indians aren't like that.

Nor is there any reason for him to disparage his own people. This seems like a white man's conceit: that Indians are defeated and downtrodden today so a historical play should reflect that.

But as Cutcha Risling Baldy said in her review, today's Indians aren't defeated and downtrodden. After centuries of injustice and oppression, they're on the road to recovery.

Sure, Crazy Horse might be upset that they aren't hunting buffalo or fighting the white man to the death. But he might be proud that they've survived and adapted.

Since he himself surrendered to the US Army, I suspect he wouldn't judge his people harshly. He did what he had to do and so have they.

Below:  "Louie Leonardo, left, is Crazy Horse and Kirk Blackinton is Custer in Jon George’s new play Crazy Horse and Custer, running through Dec. 15 at the Sacramento Theatre Company’s Pollock Stage."

Natives protest Crazy Horse play

'Crazy Horse and Custer' Play Opens Saturday Amidst Protests

By Christina RoseThe theatrical production of “Crazy Horse and Custer” opens Saturday in Sacramento, California, and will be accompanied by drumming, protests and prayers. The Sacramento Theatre Company has received emails and calls from innumerable sources criticizing the play. The theatre says the play has been modified and many of the issues have been addressed.

The new version of the play was reviewed and while there have been changes, some of the original problems still exist.To be specific:The script changes that have been made do not change the main fact of the play: Crazy Horse is still dead and the scaffold is still on the stage. First and foremost, Crazy Horse’s family insisted that Crazy Horse cannot be a spirit, and while he no longer comes down from the scaffold, he still admits on stage that he is dead. Because of this, the family said there could have been no further dialogue.

ICTNM’s previous reporting of this story raised the ire of activists and provoked strong emotions in Terry Marie Varela, a Sacramento resident and enrolled Oglala Lakota, who is a member of the San Francisco Idle No More. She has set up a Facebook page for the protest called Raising Our Voices Against Native Exploitation.

Varela was most offended by Crazy Horse’s repeated reference to Lakota ways as superstitions.

The new version of the script no longer references Lakota ways as superstitions, but it still speaks condescendingly of the Lakota people. By saying things like, “We fought foolishly as always.” Crazy Horse and the Lakota are referred to as “savages” by Custer, which surely reflects Custer’s language. However, there is little balance in historical facts from a Lakota perspective and the misrepresentation of spirituality is rife even throughout the new script.

Tom Gillies, a Sacramento man, attended a preview of the show and said, “The author was lazy.”

At the end of the play, Crazy Horse calls Custer, “A compelling man,” giving him more respect than he has shown his own people throughout the show.

“The whole play was bookended by a bad feeling at the beginning and at the end,” Gillies said. “I went in there with a neutral view, and I wanted to be convinced it wasn’t a piece of crap, and it was.”

In Which I Go See "Crazy Horse And Custer" So You Don't Have To--a play review (-- for Crazy Horse --)

By Cutcha Risling BaldyI thought I could actually be surprised about this play because I--am an optimist. People surprise me all the time. But, as my disclaimer comes to a close I will end with this--

I went to see the play “Crazy Horse and Custer” at the Sacramento Theatre Company on November 6, 2013. The play was still in preview. I bought my own ticket. I had an open mind. The theatre people were nice enough to hold the start of the show to wait for us as we came running through the doors. I sat next to my good friends in an uncomfortable seat and the theater was intimate, the space was interesting, the mood was excited. The lights dimmed, the music started, I sat through two full hours… and in the end I must say, in all honesty, I left--offended.To be specific:Custer wasn't my problem in this play. Crazy Horse wasn't the problem in this play. The writing was a problem. Having Crazy Horse call Custer a “compelling man” (UGH) and not a “psychotic, homicidal, genocide inflicting war criminal" who, would he have survived to become President (because, yeah, yeah, Custer, you would have been President, blah, blah, blah) would have continued his reign of terror against Native people, just because--he’s an asshole, that’s a problem.

And an even more significant problem is that we go through two acts of this play and there is very little, if any (I can’t think of any) mention of the genocide of Native peoples. We hear from the beginning about the mutilation of white soldiers at Little Big Horn by Lakota people, but nothing about the murdering, raping, torturing, starving, war against Indian peoples.And:I suppose the one thing I can’t get out of my head, that thing I woke up the next day repeating was the last line of the play. At the very end of the play Crazy Horse is left on stage alone and he pulls back a curtain to reveal the Pine Ridge Reservation, supposedly, maybe, the “modern” Pine Ridge--a trash filled, barren, wasteland. Crazy Horse cries. He says “The Lakota have nothing.” He calls this place the “pitiful remnants” with pennilessness, depression, and “despair of an empty life.”

And he says “The Lakota are finally defeated.”

Before he turns his back on us and mutters. “It is better to be dead.”

It is better to be dead.

Did this play, did this author, did Crazy Horse just tell me, a living, breathing, singing, dancing, loving, laughing, joking, mothering Native woman that it is better to be dead than the Native person that I am? Did Crazy Horse just tell me, he would rather be dead, than to be a part of the living, breathing, singing, dancing, loving, laughing, joking, mothering, fathering, grandparenting, Lakota people?Comment:  Writer Christina Rose consulted with me before finishing her article. I suggested contacting Cutcha Risling Baldy.

Below:  The playwright's note.

Baseball team offers Custer bobbleheads

Monumental Error: Baseball Team Offers Custer BobbleheadsThis promotion might call for a demotion. Just days after the anniversary of the Battle of the Greasy Grass, also known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Minor League Baseball's Hagerstown, Maryland Suns will be giving away George Armstrong Custer bobbleheads to the first 1,000 fans through the gates.

The Suns game scheduled for Saturday, June 29, will feature the giveaway, which is sponsored by the Hagerstown-Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The six-inch-tall bobbling, nodding toy was unveiled yesterday, the anniversary of Custer's death at Greasy Grass, at the Hagerstown Visitor Welcome Center. June 29 marks the 150th anniversary of Custer’s Civil War promotion to the rank of brigadier general.

Custer, most famous for his "last stand" at Greasy Grass on June 25, 1876, "was very important in the [Civil War] battles of Hagerstown and the surrounding area,” Robert Bruchey II, Suns interim general manager and former Hagerstown mayor told the Associated Press.One commenter on this article offered the obvious rejoinder:I'm sure Adolf Hitler is celebrated for his contribution of heroic proportions in some German communities. It doesn't change the fact that he was a psychopathic murderer!Comment:  For more on Custer, see Republican Official Prefers Custer to Indians and They Lied in They Died.

Custer-loving Republican resigns

The outrage over Republican Pat Rogers's e-mail about Custer continued to reverberate through Indian country:

President of Oglala Sioux Responds to Pat Rogers’s Custer Remark

By John Yellow Bird SteeleWe are outraged by the remarks of National Republican Committee member Pat Rogers to Governor Susanna Martinez’s staff that the Governor disrespected George Armstrong Custer by meeting with the Pueblo Indian tribal leaders.

First, General Custer was on a genocidal mission to rob our Lakota people of our treaty-protected lands when our Chiefs and warriors killed him and his command in self-defense. Prior to their demise, Custer and his men had just attacked our peaceful Lakota and Cheyenne village within our 1868 Treaty lands, killing mostly women and children.

Under International Law, we—the Lakota people—were acting within our rights to defend our women and children. Any expression of lament over Custer’s demise at this late date by political leaders is a racist statement made in disregard of our human rights. The statement also disregard’s the historical fact of Custer’s genocidal mission. To raise his demise today as a reason not to respect Indian tribes is truly misguided, astonishingly ignorant and contrary to our human rights.Finally, Rogers the racist got what he deserved:

Pat Rogers resigns from top law firm following Col. Custer email fallout

By Adam CampPat Rogers, a Republican National Committee leader, resigned today as a partner from a prominent Albuquerque law firm due to comments he made in an email sent to Gov. Susana Martinez staffers that many Native Americans deemed offensive.

Modrall Sperling President, R.E. Thompson accepted Rogers' resignation Friday afternoon.

"Recent revelations of private e-mail communications have distracted from our mission, and Pat Rogers has tendered his resignation from the Firm," Thompson said in a statement.Comment:  I wouldn't be surprised if he loses his Republican party job. On the other hand, there's something to be said for leaving him in place. That way, we can continue to label the party racist.

For more on conservative racism, see Sikh Shootings Reflect White Supremacy and Racists Hate and Fear Minority Babies.

Republican official prefers Custer to Indians

RNC Official Says NM Governor Disrespected Custer by Meeting American Indians

By Rob CapricciosoPat Rogers, a Republican National Committee (RNC) leader, is facing calls for his dismissal after telling the staff of Gov. Susana Martinez, R-N.M., that because she agreed to meet with American Indians, she disrespected the memory of Col. George Armstrong Custer.Daily Kos has the best explanation of Rogers's offensive e-mail:

Does "Custer" e-mail portend GOP's "Last Stand?"

By Deep HarmDated June 9, the email from "Patrick J. Rogers," was addressed to "senior members of the governor’s administration" and was obtained by Independent Source PAC.Subject: FW: New Mexico Governor meets with American Indian Leaders in tribal-state summit
Category: Red Category
Quislings, French surrender monkeys, secret supporters (all along) of JAJ [Janice Arnold Jones]

The state is going to hell. Col. Weh would not have dishonored Col Custer in this manner.

I hope who ever recommended this is required to read the entire redist [redistricting law suit] transcript and sit through the entire meeting with the Gov.The email includes a link to an Associated Press article about the June 8 summit held in Mescalero, NM. The meeting was a requirement of the State Tribal Collaboration Act.The State Tribal Collaboration Act provides the framework for the state and tribes to work together to develop successful solutions to the many challenges that face New Mexico's Native American citizens. In addition it also mandates a yearly Summit. The Act requires cabinet-level agencies to develop policies that promote beneficial collaboration between the state and tribal governments; designate agency tribal liaisons; provide for culturally appropriate training to state agency employees who work with tribes; and, provide annual reporting that accounts for each agency's accomplishments pursuant to the Act.The email's reference to "quislings" (synonymous with "traitor') suggests that meeting with Native American leaders--even when required by law--is a betrayal. However, it may also have been a reference to Governor Martinez's public statements opposing party positions on immigration and cuts to Social Security disability payments. Martinez was the first Latina to be elected Governor of a state.Reactions to Rogers's e-mail

Capriccioso continues with some reactions to the e-mail:“George Armstrong Custer may be regarded as a kind of military hero by Pat Rogers, but to the Native peoples of America Custer represents the bellicose imperialism that was responsible for the systematic slaughter of American Indians throughout this continent,” according to an e-mail being circulated by ProgressNow.

“Such a blatantly racist statement against our Native people is offensive from anyone, but to come from a national GOP leader and lobbyist for some of our country’s largest corporations is indefensible,” said Pat Davis, executive director of ProgressNow New Mexico, in a statement.

“These e-mails show the contempt and disrespect New Mexico’s Republican leadership has for our Native people. Unless they drop Pat Rogers immediately, we can rightly assume that those organizations he speaks for, including the RNC, Modrall Sperling and his lobbying clients, feel the same way.”

“Well, there’s an entirely different angle to this,” added Chris Stearns, a Navajo lawyer and chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission. “I think you could argue that when Gov. Martinez met with Pat Rogers, she disrespected the memory of intelligent people everywhere.”Custer-Friendly Official Has Backing of Republican National Committee

By Rob CapricciosoRogers’ words have since made nationwide headlines, and he has drawn few defenders, although the RNC has ignored calls for his dismissal.

“We disagree with Committeeman Rogers’ comments, and he has rightfully apologized for them,” Ted Kwong, a spokesman for the RNC, told ICTMN over the weekend. “We are a big tent party that is focused on speaking to all Americans who want a different direction after nearly four years of deficit spending and failed leadership. We will continue to talk about how to create jobs for the 23 million Americans who are looking for work, despite the desperate efforts by Democrats to make this election about anything but their dismal economic record.”

Rogers’ apology came in an August 25 Albuquerque Journal article, in which he said he was attempting to be funny: “I made a poor attempt at humor in a private e-mail, and it’s being twisted by a partisan group,” he told the newspaper. “I certainly intended no offense, but I do apologize.”

Many American Indians have not taken Rogers’ words as a joke, and the RNC has not heeded calls for a reprimand. Officials there also did not acknowledge that he has not apologized directly to American Indians.

“He has apologized, no other changes to announce,” Kwong said when pressed on whether Rogers will continue to serve with the RNC. Kwong would not say if Rogers was available for an interview. Rogers has not responded to several requests from ICTMN.

The apology and the RNC’s reaction have fallen flat in many circles of Indian country.

“Only the geniuses at the Republican National Committee could figure out a way to send out an apology about Native Americans without mentioning Native Americans,” said Chris Stearns, a Navajo lawyer and chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

“It is appalling that one of the leading organizers of the RNC is spewing such garbage,” said Rhonda LeValdo-Gayton, president of the Native American Journalists Association. “I wonder if he even knows that Custer didn’t deal with the tribes in New Mexico?”Calls come for Pat Rogers' resignation after controversial comments"How you manage in three sentences to offend the Republican Party, Native American people and countless New Mexicans all at once, I don't know," said Par Davis of Progress New Mexico.

Now, the All-Indian Pueblo Council is calling for Rogers to be removed from his position saying, "The military aggression carried out in the late 1800's under the command of General Custer resulted in the slaughter and killing of scores of Native American men, women and children. I can only wonder, what was Mr. Rogers thinking?"Why Rogers hates Indians

I can't imagine where the humor is in Rogers's e-mail. I'd love to hear him explain the "joke" to everyone.

The only obvious thing is Rogers's angry tone. He isn't joshing about Indians, he's seething about them.

As we might've guessed, Rogers isn't some neutral official who has no dealings with Indians. As a columnist explains, Rogers actively opposes them. Which explains why his e-mail is scornful.

Racial Bigotry Comes Out of the Closet in New Mexico

By Harold MonteauPatrick Rogers attempted to explain away the e-mail as an attempt at humor by his use of what can be viewed, at the least, as an ethnically insensitive remark, or, at the worst, a demonstration of racially bigoted disdain for the Native American segment of New Mexico’s rather diverse populace. His excuse of poor judgment in his expression of “humor” was defended by the State Republican Committee Chairman and several other persons in the Republican hierarchy.

The Modrall Sperling Firm often represent clients that are on the opposite side of Tribal interests, in business related matters and litigation in which the firm represents companies that argue against Tribal regulatory, taxation, employment and environmental authority, especially regarding commercial activities on or near the reservations. They represent the Oklahoma Tax Commission that litigates against Tribes at the drop of a cigarette butt or drop of gas. The firm has about 80 attorneys according to their website. The partners and lawyers in the firm are primarily Anglo males, with about half a dozen attorneys with Hispanic surnames and no attorneys with biographical info indicating Native American heritage.

The one Native American in the firm left last spring to become a District Judge, having been appointed to the vacancy by the Republican Governor, Susana Martinez. The judge quickly came to the defense of Patrick Rogers in a public statement indicating that he did not believe Mr. Rogers was racially prejudiced. (Until now, I guess.)

Predictably, Tribal leaders were incensed and the All Indian Pueblo Council (AIPC) Chairman Chandler Sanchez, in a statement published in the Albuquerque Journal, condemned the use of the “racist in tone” remarks. They demanded that Rogers step down from his seat as a National Republican Committee member.Comment:  Another conservative, another racist. Sigh.

This incident pulls back the curtain on racism against Indians. In a "private" e-mail, Rogers implied that Indians didn't deserve anything. Custer, who tried to kill them, was more deserving of recognition than they were. There's a hint that the world would be better off if Custer had succeeded.

Rogers tried to pass this off as a "joke," which is what almost every racist does. That, of course, is ridiculous. For starters, there isn't a smidgen of humor in his e-mail.

More to the point, it's an unfiltered look at what this Republican thinks. In private, you're more likely to "joke" about what you really think. I'd say at least part of him wishes Custer had killed the Indians.

Window into racist mindset

In public, Rogers works for what sounds like a rabidly anti-Indian law firm. And here's the final connection. Rogers shows us how private bigotry translates to public policy.

Rogers and people like him don't oppose tribal sovereignty or gaming because of high-minded principles. They oppose these things because they're racists. They have an atavistic feeling that Indians don't belong in the modern world. That the "savages," their reservations, and their casinos should vanish like they were supposed to in the 19th century.

Most politicians are smart enough not to post their bigoted opinions on some anti-Indian or white-supremacist site. "Private" e-mails that people forward to friends are about as clear a window as you'll get into their mindsets. And Rogers's mindset is dripping with prejudice. There's no other explanation for his "joke."

For more on conservative racism, see Sikh Shootings Reflect White Supremacy and Racists Hate and Fear Minority Babies.

They lied in They Died

A few years ago I watched another old Western: They Died With Their Boots On, starring Errol Flynn as Col. George A. Custer. Amazingly, the movie makes Custer into a pro-Indian advocate. "The sanctuary of the red race is being violated," he says. "If I were an Indian, I'd fight beside Crazy Horse to the last drop of my blood."

Nevertheless, I gave this film an 8.0 of 10 for its entertainment value. As one critical reviewer said, "[E]ven if historical erroneousness intermittently undermines the film's outlandish attempts at lionization, They Died With Their Boots On endures as one of the finest Flynn-de Havilland collaborations."

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Custer flag auctioned to help Indians

Custer's Last Flag Sells for $1.9 Million at Auction to Help Native Americans

By Brenda DaverinA flag carried by Custer's Seventh Cavalry is about to help Native Americans instead of leading a charge against them. The Detroit Institute of the Arts auctioned it off to support its Native American Arts department. Irony is sweet sometimes.

Custer's last flag, known as the Culbertson Guidon, sold for a total of $2.2 million at auction, which is $1.9 million plus commission. It originally sold to the Detroit Museum for $54 in 1890. Inflation can be beneficial sometimes.And:Custer's flag being sold to support Native American arts is indeed fitting. General George Armstrong Custer was a petty, hateful human being trying to become President on the backs of a pile of dead Indians.

Many people look at Custer's flag from the Battle of the Little Big Horn and see bravery under impossible odds. Many others see it as a symbol of the embarrassing treatment of America's first peoples.

Custer's flag should remind everyone that the United States was built out of the blood of thousands, including people whose only sin was living here first. If the Culbertson Guidon can teach that, it will do more than the sale of it will.Custer's 'Last Flag' sold for $2.2 million

By Matthew BrownWhile Custer's reputation has risen and fallen over the years—once considered a hero, he's regarded by some contemporary scholars as an inept leader and savage American Indian killer—the guidon has emerged as the stuff of legend.

"It's more than just a museum object or textile. It's a piece of Americana," said John Doerner, Chief Historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana.

For most of the last century the flag was hidden from public view, kept in storage first at the museum and later, after a period on display in Montana, in a National Park Service facility in Harpers Ferry, W.V., according to Beal, the museum director.

Dating to an era when the museum took in a variety of natural history and historical items, the guidon was sold because it did not fit with the museum's focus on art, Beal said.Comment:  For more on Custer, see Obama Attacked Over Sitting Bull and Custer Just a Product of His Time?

Obama attacked over Sitting Bull

Here's an excellent example of how Fox News will twist anything to gain political advantage.

Obama's children's book hits stores

By Stephen Lowman“Of Thee I Sing,” aimed at children ages 3 and up, is light on text but rich with Loren Long’s illustrations. On the opening page Obama addresses his two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

“Have I told you lately how wonderful you are? / How the sound of your feet / running from afar / brings dancing rhythms to my day? / How you laugh / and sunshine spills into the room?”

Obama goes on to tell them about 13 “groundbreaking Americans.” In order, they are:

Georgia O’Keeffe (“helped us see big beauty in what is small”)

Albert Einstein (“changing the world with energy and light”)

Jackie Robinson (“showed us all how to turn fear to respect”)

Sitting Bull (“a Sioux medicine man”)

Billie Holiday (“sang beautiful blues”)

Helen Keller (“taught us to look and listen to each other”)

Maya Lin (“public spaces should be filled with art, she thought”)

Jane Addams (“fed the poor”)

Martin Luther King, Jr. (“taught us unyielding compassion”)

Neil Armstrong (“first to walk on the moon”)

Cesar Chavez (“showed farmworkers their own power”)

Abraham Lincoln (“promised freedom to enslaved sisters and brothers”)

George Washington (“our first president”)

Obama's Kids Book Hits Shelves, Fox News Grumbles

Network is not happy about inclusion of Sitting Bull

By Evann GastaldoPresident Obama's children's book hits shelves today—what could possibly go wrong? Well, Of Thee I Sing includes a tribute to Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull—or, as Fox News puts it, "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General." The book is framed as a letter to Obama's daughters, and talks about 13 Americans the president admires. In addition to Sitting Bull, luminaries like Billie Holiday, Helen Keller, Cesar Chavez, and Abraham Lincoln are included, the Washington Post reports. Proceeds are being donated to a scholarship fund for the children of killed or disabled soldiers.

The Fox News piece, Gawker points out, is actually just a reprint of a USA Today report on the book, except with a markedly different headline (USA Today's was "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans") and the paragraph about Sitting Bull bolded: "His most controversial choice may be Sitting Bull, who defeated Custer at Little Bighorn: ('A Sioux medicine man who healed broken hearts and broken promises.')" Writes Maureen O'Connor on Gawker, "Basically, this picture book is [Obama's] jihad. You heard it here first."

Obama Children's Book Ignites Controversy

Analysis

By Andrea StoneThat Fox would single out Sitting Bull for condemnation illustrates how the wounds inflicted during the settling of the American West remain raw long after the "closing of the frontier" more than a century ago. Yet historians say the Native American holy man earned his place in Obama's slender 31-page book.

The inclusion of Sitting Bull in "Of Thee I Sing" has caused a storm of derision in the blogosphere over historical revisionism and political correctness.

"Why should that be controversial?" asked Linenthal, author of "Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields," an examination of how the Little Bighorn and other historic sites have been redefined in the nation's memory. "Is it controversial to hold up Robert E. Lee as a significant American even though he was commander of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederacy's goal was to create a new nation apart from the United States?"

The Lakota Sioux chief belongs among the pantheon of American heroes, said Robert Utley, author of the definitive biography, "Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot."

"He was probably the most Indian Indian, the most devoted to his particular culture, and he practiced it on a daily basis and had the political and spiritual influence to lead his people as their greatest chief," Utley said. "He is as American as they come."

Utley called the Fox headline "a vast oversimplification." Sitting Bull was already too old to fight at the time of the standoff with Custer, he said, and was back with the women and children when Crazy Horse led the war party at the Little Bighorn.

"I'd brush Fox News off," he said. "They don't know what they're talking about."Fox News:  Native Americans Can’t Be HeroesThere are several things that irked me about this headline, aside from the fact that it appears to take a cheap shot at our nation’s President for writing a children’s book that features famous American heroes. It seemed to imply that Sitting Bull was not American but rather some crazed terrorist that killed a U.S. General. I’ll stand up for America any time, but I’m afraid you're on your own if you want to side with the government over their treatment of the Native Americans. He was about as American as you can get.Fox News lies...again

Many people noted that Fox's headline was a flat-out lie. Sitting Bull was too old to fight at Little Bighorn and didn't kill anyone, and Custer wasn't a general then. The criticism continued:

Fox News headline of Obama’s kids book draws criticism

By Michael CalderoneObama's decision to include Native American leader Sitting Bull didn't go over well with the headline writers at Fox Nation, a Fox News website. Their initial take: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General." (At the time of this writing, the headline has been changed to read: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Defeated U.S. General.")

Several bloggers and Fox critics quickly jumped on the site's overheated reaction to the children's book.

"Fox News Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic," wrote Gawker's Maureen O'Connor.

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait also poked fun at the network's coverage of the book: "Fox News Exposes Obama As Indian, Not Kenyan, Anti-Colonialist."

"Our Indonesian-Kenyan-socialist president is at it again!" wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (who has criticized Fox News in the past), linking to the Fox Nation article.Trail of Tears:  Obama right to include Native American in book[W]e’re ashamed major media outlets and fellow citizens are attacking a children’s book simply for its inclusion of one of the most important historical demographics of this country—Native Americans.

To call the children’s book “anti-American” because it includes Sitting Bull rather than Gen. Custer is to deny the rights and history of the people who Americans ruthlessly slaughtered and forced onto reservations, and, furthermore, it suggests America should take no blame for the atrocities committed unto these people.

Sitting Bull embodies the very essence of dissidence on which this country was founded.

The only thing that’s anti-American is not including a footnote to explain how America is the country it is today because of our ability to massacre technologically inferior native people.Comment:  For more battles over Custer and Sitting Bull, see Custer Re-enactor at Veterans Powwow and Custer's Last Stand and Ethnic Studies. For more on conservative attacks on Obama, see What "I Want My Country Back" Means and Obama Smeared as Luo Tribesman.

Custer just a product of his time?

A debate with Michael Cooke about Custer Re-Enactor Explains Himself:Custer was far from one dimensional as are most people. I personally have flirted with the idea of making a comicbook project out of him 'cause his ego and personal sense of grandeur makes him a heroic archetype and a parody of one all at the same time. And he certainly had a sense of style!

The problem with judging people of the past is that they are always people of their time. What is Custer without a culture ready to celebrate him for killing NDNs?

Will Eisner has a recurring character in the Spirit that, because of of the time he was creating in, has the look of a racist caricature of a black man. Eisner correctly explains that character is written well and is not a racist stereotype outside of how he's drawn--but the drawing is no less racist. Generally Eisner is revered and his racist drawing are excused for the time in which they were drawn.

Custer wasn't the greatest NDN killer, the most racist NDN Hater. He's just famous, which was more his motivation than killing or hating ever was.The "people of their time" excuse fails when you look at it. There was a huge abolition movement in the US, for instance, so Southerners can't say their slaveowning ancestors didn't know any better. Similarly, many people supported the Indians, demanded fair treatment for them, denounced the Army massacres, etc. To claim that America was united for the Indians' extermination and Custer simply went along with the tide shows a profound ignorance of history.

Here's a clue for you: The legislation authorizing the Trail of Tears was hotly debated for a long time. It passed by only one vote, meaning almost half of Congress opposed it. To claim now that the Trail of Tears was a product of its time and people didn't know any better is simply false. Proponents knew what they were doing was morally wrong because their opponents told them so at the time.

Same with the conquistadors, the Pilgrims, and so on down the line. Critics spoke against the decimation of Indians at the time. It didn't take a modern perspective to see that people were breaking God's commandments. Intelligent and moral people spoke up then because the conquerors were violating their beliefs, not ours.

Slaveowners didn't know better?

As for Will Eisner...good for him if he only drew the black character as a racist stereotype. Every other black character of that era acted as badly as he looked. If Eisner (sort of) knew better, why didn't everyone else emulate him? Why was he the exception rather than the rule?

We could go down the list of famous Americans: Eisner, Stan Lee, Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Frank Baum, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, et al. Who cares if people revere them? Or excuse their racism? Unlike you and other apologists, I don't make excuses for racism. I call it like it is, or was.

The slavery argument is a good one for making the point clear. At the time of the constitutional convention, roughly half of the population knew slavery was wrong and said so. The other half knew slavery was wrong but denied it because they were greedy, selfish bastards. The two sides fought bitterly over this issue before forging a compromise that satisfied no one.

There's no "people of their time" exception for Washington and Jefferson just because we revere them now. They were great in some ways and mediocre or bad in others. As far as I'm concerned, owning slaves is enough to knock them off their pedestals.

This complexity may be too much for you and most Americans to handle, but it's not for me. In many ways we're better people than Washington or Jefferson because we're not immoral slaveowners. Unlike them, we're not ignoring the moral voices that tell us racism is wrong.

Yes, but the distinction is that a point of view is entertained as rational, not that there is entirely a lack of diversity on the matter.

Today the idea of one race being superior or another inferior in an intrinsic manner is considered ridiculous and inflammatory and if you defy that convention it places your thinking in a lunatic fringe.

That was not the case in Custer's time. What the thinker thinks, the prover proves and in Custer's time all kinds of racism was considered a rational point of view. The natural way of things is that the monied interest is always right and the opposition is always wrong--to hell with God's commandments!Every group throughout history has believed its beliefs were rational. That's no different now than it was a hundred, thousand, or ten thousand years ago. You and I may think people who believe whites are superior and Obama is a Kenyan Muslim are lunatics, but they don't agree. They think they're as rational as any Greek philosopher.

That past racists thought their views were rational is irrelevant. Whatever the source of their beliefs, a large portion of the population disagreed with them. These people presented their arguments in public and explained why the racists were wrong.

The non-racists (or semi-racists) told the racists that their views were immoral. I.e., that they obviously violated their Christian beliefs. And that their views were irrational. People like Ben Franklin presented firsthand evidence that Indians weren't simple savages. That the stereotypical beliefs of most Americans were demonstrably false.

In short, things were no different then than they are now. People held racists beliefs. The evidence at the time proved them wrong. They ignored the evidence because being racist gave them economic, social, and psychological benefits.

Back to Custer

Custer was the product of a time where a large number of people told him he was a fool. He ignored them because he was a fool. It had nothing to do with your first argument: that nobody knew any better in the olden days. And nothing to do with your second argument: that Custer's approaches to Washita and Little Bighorn were justified because they were "rational." They weren't rational and many Americans said so after each incident.

I'm not sure what the experts believe, but my impression is that Custer would've been court-martialed eventually if he hadn't been killed first. If so, how does this square with your claim that most Americans thought he was acting rationally? Answer: It doesn't.

As usual, you have no evidence for your imaginative claims. You're making stuff up because you don't understand how people actually thought. Many people supported Custer, which gave him cover for his actions, but many people opposed him. There was no blanket belief that killing Indians was "rational" or acceptable.

Since you haven't challenged my assertion, I'll simply repeat it: To claim that America was united for the Indians' extermination and Custer simply went along with the tide shows a profound ignorance of history. Custer killed Indians because he wanted to, because he chose to. And not because everyone told him he was doing the right thing.

For more on Custer, see Why No Wounded Knee Monument? and Custer Country in Montana. For more on the subject in general, see Those Evil Europeans.

Custer re-enactor explains himself

Rick Williams, the Custer re-enactor at the veterans powwow, says he was invited by someone unknown, then tries to explain himself.

‘Custer’ responds to Veterans Administration powwow controversy

By Stephanie WoodardICT:  How have you processed the negative response?

RW:  I’ve thought long and hard. I’m sorry I had to learn about this in anger. Every year, before the re-enactment at Hardin, I stand before Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, a member of the Crow Nation, a historian and the grandson of one of the six Crow scouts who rode with Custer. He sings a song to me and to the figure that I represent. The words, translated from Crow, include, ‘I fought Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at Little Big Horn. Look at me. Remember me always.’ It’s neither a positive nor a negative, but it is the greatest honor of my life. ‘Remember’ is the important word. It reminds me that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. People have to relax a little and embrace history, which we can’t change.

ICT:  In the article on the Dayton powwow, Custer was described as a symbol of genocide. Is that something anyone can relax about?

RW:  Custer was also a soldier, and he took orders. President Grant set Indian policy and was ultimately responsible.

ICT:  Is that like Nazi concentration-camp guards saying, ‘I was just following orders?’

RW:  You have to look at where Custer was in the ladder of command. He was a tool of Grant’s policy, though he did have sympathies for Indians and jeopardized his career by testifying in Washington that officials, including Grant’s brother, were implicated in defrauding Indians on reservations. My research says he’s not an Indian-hater.

ICT:  Do his interactions with Native people support that notion?

RW:  I’m the first to say Custer made several blunders. Attacking Black Kettle’s peaceful band on the Washita River was a god-awful fiasco, not a victory. Custer promoted his own good, whomever he was fighting. There was a great deal of callousness in his personality.

ICT:  For some, Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn are ‘history’–long ago, far away and thrilling. The Big Horn Days Web site (custerslaststand.org) refers to ‘fabulous fun for the whole family.’ Others recall family members, including women and children, who died there. Is there a terrible mismatch in these re-enactments?

RW:  I’ve met people who are comfortable with the past and those who are not. I’ve never met anyone who lost family at Little Big Horn. After the Dayton powwow, I heard of this for the first time. I hope to meet them, and I hope the meeting ends with a handshake. I’m not indifferent to the sad history of the United States and the Indian nations.

ICT:  Are you returning to the Dayton powwow next year?

RW:  I’ve been invited, but I’m staying away from the Indian camp. It’s not worth the controversy. I did not intend nor did I anticipate [what happened] when I walked into that circle. I meant no disrespect to anyone.Comment:  Good questions by ICT. For once the media gives us a hard-hitting interview.

Williams doesn't seem to understand the difference between a re-enactment and a powwow. One is about historical accuracy and the other is about respecting Indians. Getting approval for one doesn't give you approval for the other.

Williams is also downplaying Custer's crimes. I don't think Grant ordered him to kill the Indians at Washita and Little Bighorn. Custer carried out those acts on his own.

Bottom line is that Williams must be naive if he thought the Indians would welcome him to the powwow. He claims he knows history, but he doesn't seem to know it from the Native perspective. Maybe he needs to play an Indian role in one of his re-enactments.

At least he learned from the experience and won't make the same mistake twice. That's something to be grateful for.

For more on Custer, see Why No Wounded Knee Monument? and Custer Country in Montana.

Why no Wounded Knee National Monument?

At the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, plump white tourists in RVs apparently can't handle the truth:

Why Not Wounded Knee?  A Tale of Two Monuments

By Christian ParentiAt the visitors’ center I find a ramrod-straight former military park ranger in his 60s giving a long, meandering lecture to an entirely white audience in half-opened faux teepees. He paints a picture of something like a football game in which “our Native Americans” who were “camped just south of where your cars are now parked” did well. Any culpability is lost in a swamp of passive construction: “…a conflict existed” and “…the Native American way of life was receding.” And quite crucially, Custer was the underdog that day and his defeat sub-textually inverts reality, casting America as victim.

The ranger’s tone, like that of the viewing station texts, is not overtly offensive or backward. Custer is not portrayed as Errol Flynn, brave and valiant, putting down savagery in the service of civilization. That sort of off-the-hook bigotry would almost be refreshing, or at least entertaining. Instead, the Little Big Horn monument is imbued with a creepy and polite sterility. The language and images have all been updated for a post-’60s, “multi-cultural” America, but in the most technocratic I’m-okay-you’re-okay sort of way. This is perhaps best summed up in how we are told Custer was going to attack the village but never told what he would do there. Answer: massacre sleeping and unarmed Indians as he had done against Black Kettle’s already-beaten Cheyenne on the banks of the Washita in the Fall of 1868.Which is why there's no national monument at Wounded Knee:Indian people live in poverty yet sit on some of the most valuable land in the US. According to Native American scholar Ward Churchill, Indians—whose reservations control 2.5 percent of the nation’s land mass, but whose treaties give them right to one-third of the lower 48—are per capita some of the most mineral- and land-rich people on the planet. Too much attention to Indians as victims, or to Indians as living people still here demanding rights and property, could cause problems for the uranium, oil, coal, and natural gas industries, which operate in large part on treaty land.

No wonder Wounded Knee lacks a federally funded park, with a walking path and placards illustrating the spot where Chief Big Foot bled into the snow. No wonder there have been no big archeological excavations with forensic analysis using the latest technology to match specific slugs to specific rifles and thus reconstruct during the massacre, as has been done at Little Big Horn. No doubt the VFW types and the retired cop I chatted with at Little Big Horn might find a Wounded Knee monument harder to digest. If America were portrayed as thief and thug in the past, might not school children ask awkward questions about the present?Comment:  For more on the subject, see Custer Re-Enactor at Veterans Powwow, Custer Country in Montana, and Custer's Last Stand and Ethnic Studies.

Custer re-enactor at veterans powwow

Veterans Administration powwow fiasco

Custer re-enactor participates in color guard

By Stephanie WoodardOn May 30, Guy Jones, Hunkpapa Lakota, was emceeing the Selma Walker Memorial Day Powwow in Columbus, Ohio, when he received a text message. “You’ll never guess who just entered the arena here in Dayton,” was its gist, recalled Jones.

He quickly learned that an actor costumed as George Armstrong Custer was participating in the color guard for a powwow occurring simultaneously on the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center campus. “Send photos,” replied Jones, who is a lecturer, author, and co-founder of The Miami Valley Council for Native Americans.How the Indians reacted:Jones called the incident a hate crime. “Custer and his men killed the wife and children of my grandfather, Gall. This so-called man–this baby killer, this woman killer–should never have been allowed within our circle or honored by inclusion in the color guard. Would you take a Hitler impersonator to a synagogue? Would you take a KKK member to an African-American church?”

“Blasphemy” was the term used by Dayton powwow vendor Rick Haithcock, Saponi, a genealogist and author of numerous books on Native American lineage and history. “It was a disgrace and an act of discrimination against Native Americans. Why didn’t they honor Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, or other figures of Native history?”Comment:  The article's a little vague about how this came about. Apparently the unnamed "organizer" invited the Custer re-enactor and wasn't sorry about it. He thought it was such a good idea that he was ready to fight to defend it.

Which is kind of scary. I don't know how he explained himself...but really, what explanation could there be? How in the world do you justify having a Custer figure at a powwow? Who's next...Andrew Jackson? Christopher Columbus?

I'm not sure what Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee imitators were doing at a powwow either. Grant prosecuted the war against independent Indians and Lee prosecuted the war to keep blacks enslaved. The only common theme I see is white pride over the subjugation of minorities.

For more on the subject, see Custer Country in Montana and Custer's Last Stand and Ethnic Studies.

Below:  "A Custer re-enactor participated in the color guard for a Memorial Day powwow on the campus of the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center. Accompanying the Custer figure were General Richard E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant lookalikes."

The three anti-Indian amigos

My posting about Custer's Last Stand and Ethnic Studies generated the following dialogue on Facebook:Custer got owned! Ha! Good riddance!

I've had in the back of my mind to do a Custer comic, simply because he really was quite a spectacular asshole of an anti-hero.

Him and that horrible guy who at Sand Creek...Chivington...Mr. "Nits-Make-Lice." Uff, the very name makes me squirm.

Chivington!!! Grrrrr!!! He made me stay up all night drawing very very very angry pictures when I was a little girl, accidentally watched Soldier Blue. Man I was PISSED!!!Someone probably could do a good satirical comic book, video, or skit featuring Andrew Jackson, John Chivington, and Custer as the three anti-Indian amigos.*Chuckle*...jeezus, talk about Axis of Evil...Chivington probably changed his name from Smith or Jones so it would sound like knives being sharpened.

In the novel Custer's Luck, Custer survives Little Bighorn, is elected president, and becomes a Kennedy-style leader. It's actually well-done and plausible, believe it or not.What we hear even less of than Wounded Knee and Little Big Horn is the Sand Creek Massacre. Chivington rots in hell...And HE WAS A CLERGYMAN!

It's too easy to use Custer as a symbol. He was very complicated, and unlike many generals of his day (Sherman, Sheridan) he did not hate all Indians. He also almost missed being at the Little Bighorn because he was in Washington testifying how Indian agents were cheating the Indians. Custer is too complex to just be set up as a cardboard target.It may be too easy to use Custer as a symbol, but 1) he brought it on himself, and 2) Americans have been using him as a symbol of heroism ever since Little Bighorn. It's only fair that Indians get to use him as a counter-symbol.

Besides, I'm mostly talking about the symbolism of Custer's Last Stand, not Custer himself. In mentioning Skimin's alternate history novel, I said something positive about Custer the man. I understand he's more than just a cardboard target, which is why I posted Custer's Anti-Indian Reputation.

For more on the subject, see Custer Country in Montana and Dan Simmons Tackles Black Hills.

Custer Country in Montana

What is Custer Country? Is it a place where glory hounds go to achieve fame and glory? Where murderers go to kill Indians in their sleep? Where people who don't care about life and death go to commit suicide?

Technically speaking, it's a tourist region in southeastern Montana that includes the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Here's what you'll find at its CusterCountry.com website:



Take in Custer CountryHere, in our on-line home, you can sample all the wonders of Custer Country—the history, wildlife, scenery, and action—and plan your dream vacation. Custer Country is where history lives--in the shining face of a 2-year old Cheyenne dancer at Crow Fair, the towering skeleton of a T-Rex on the Dinosaur Trail, and the pounding hooves at the Dinosaur Trail reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand. Custer Country is also nature at its prime—wildlife, river and badlands. Please spend some time here checking us out.HistoryFrom the legends of the American West to the dinosaurs that once ruled the earth, the wide-open spaces of Custer Country are like the pages of a history book. Famous for its battlefields, monuments, Indian Nations, and a rich cultural heritage, Montana’s Custer Country resonates with history like no other area in the United States.CusterPerhaps you’ve heard of one of our most famous visitors? His name was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. If you’re a history buff, you’ll find lots of interesting sites in Custer Country, including the Rosebud Battle site and Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where Custer fought his famous last battle. Follow the trail of one of the world’s most celebrated military figures right here in Custer Country.Cowboys & IndiansA cowboy spends most of his days under western skies with horses and cattle. He is a tough individual who wears leather boots and a broad brimmed hat, and is a genuine legend of the “Old West.” The way of life and the history of cowboys lives strong in Custer Country. Today the cowboy as a serious rancher has replaced the colorful gambler and gunslinger. That doesn’t mean cowboys don’t know how to have fun. All of our rodeos are proof of that. With our rodeo events scattered throughout the year, anytime is a good time to cowboy up!

Custer Country is the home of 2 Indian Nations--the Crow and the Cheyenne. A proud and colorful history lives throughout our region and is expressed through celebrations, Pow Wows, and Crow Fair. Also, every year in June, at Little Bighorn Days in Hardin, visitors come from all over the world to watch the Reenactment of Custer's Last Stand. Action, color, shooting and the best bareback riding you've ever seen await you at this event. Finally, be certain that you save some time to visit the breathtaking art centers and museums to fully absorb the rich Indian cultural heritage.Comment:  I can see the slogan now:

Visit Custer Country, Montana, where losers go to die.

The site doesn't say much more about Indians. Its other main tabs barely mention them. This is most of what you get about the region's history.

The information isn't wrong, but it's been scrubbed clean of any controversy. Everything is "colorful" or something similarly upbeat. Nothing bad happened here except "Custer's last battle," after which I guess he retired to his estate.

What does the site omit? Well, Custer led a massacre of the Southern Cheyenne on the Washita River. He violated treaties by leading a gold-hunting expedition into the Black Hills. And at Little Bighorn he tried to kill thousands of Indians who wanted to live peacefully on their ancestral land.

At least the site doesn't call him a hero. But the name "Custer Country" seems an insult to the local tribes. He didn't live there or have any right of possession. All he did was visit once and foolishly get himself killed.

The land belonged and should belong to the Indians. It's Indian Country, not Custer Country. It would be like calling the 13 original colonies "King George III Country." Or calling Atlanta "William Tecumseh Sherman Country"--you know, because he marched through and destroyed it on the way to the sea.

Whitewashing Indian country

Custer Country has been incorporated since 1984, so I'm sure the Crow and Cheyenne have made their peace with it. But it's a typical example of how the winners write the history. Of how white Americans encode their version of events into the cultural landscape.

The implication of the name is clear. The land wasn't the Indians' to keep, it was Custer's to take. That he failed is a detail the US Army soon rectified.

Now the Indians are guests or tenants in the white man's land, not the other way around. Children grow up seeing and hearing Custer's name come first. The region features Custer, cowboys, dinosaurs, and...oh, yeah, some Indians too.

For more on Custer, see Dan Simmons Tackles Black Hills and Custer's Anti-Indian Reputation. For more on the educational issues, see Ethnic History Corrects American History and Mainstream History = Pro-White Propaganda.

P.S. Someone noted the irony of this effort beginning in 1984. Yes, the date must've inspired them. War = Peace. Freedom = Slavery. Indian Country = Custer Country.

Custer's Last Stand and ethnic studies

Here's the connection between Custer Country in Montana and Mainstream History = Pro-White Propaganda:

Calling it Custer's Last Stand rather than Custer's Ignominious Defeat is part of America's propaganda process. Custer didn't try to massacre the land's rightful owners, he fought heroically to ensure America's eventual triumph. What a guy!

This point relates to Arizona's new ethnic studies law. Americans want their children to learn about Custer's Last Stand, not Sitting Bull's Just Victory or America's Well-Deserved Defeat. The facts may remain the same, but other things--the language, the emphasis, and the lessons learned--will change.

The Native view of this battle is different from the mainstream American view. If educators are still calling it the "Last Stand," they're teaching a biased, one-sided version of events. This isn't objective history, it's pro-white propaganda.

When educators, textbooks, and websites such as CusterCountry.com stop calling it "Custer's Last Stand," then I'll believe they're serious about teaching race-neutral history. Until then, no. Perhaps they don't realize they're brainwashing students, but they're doing it nonetheless.

And this is just one tiny example of how we teach American history. One probably could find thousands of similar examples. They all serve the same purpose: to subtly reinforce the notion that God intended white, Christian, Euro-Americans to dominate the earth. A shining city on a hill => Manifest Destiny => American exceptionalism.

Therefore, we need ethnic history to correct the shortcomings of American history. To show us things like the Native point of view about Custer's Greatest Failure. That's the point of ethnic studies and multiculturalism: to see things from a different cultural perspective.

For more on the subject, see Native Lit Class Threatens Arizona and Racism Behind Arizona's Ethnic Studies Law.

Below:  How many coded messages can you find in this old movie poster?

Dan Simmons tackles Black Hills

Book World:  Barbara Ehrenreich reviews 'Black Hills' by Dan Simmons

By Barbara EhrenreichBLACK HILLS
By Dan Simmons
Little, Brown. 487 pp. $25.99

The premise of Dan Simmons's new novel, "Black Hills," is not promising. A Lakota Sioux man named Paha Sapa ("Black Hills"), who is a paragon of Native American spirituality, goes to the Battle of the Little Big Horn and gets infected by the soul of Gen. Custer, thus becoming locked in uncomfortable interior intimacy with the celebrated Indian killer.And:Confused? Well, welcome to my mind, which for better or worse has been colonized by this insanely prolific, multi-genre writer. So when Paha Sapa turns out also to be channeling Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum in addition to Custer, and to be capable of visions that carry him from the Pleistocene to well into the 21st century, I barely flinched.And:After the genocidal Indian wars that Paha Sapa has been unfortunate enough to witness, it's impossible not to root for the destruction of the presidents' rock faces on the mountainside. But for anyone expecting a paean to Native American nobility and spiritual superiority, "Black Hills" holds a surprising twist. Toward the very end, Custer's ghost, who by this time has had second thoughts about his historical role, points out to Paha Sapa that the Sioux themselves were a "ruthless, relentless invasion machine," who had beaten back the Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, Crows and Pawnee and that the Sioux were, furthermore, ecological vandals: "We could smell your garbage heaps from twenty miles away," says Custer's ghost. "The only thing that made you look and seem noble was the fact that you could keep moving, leaving your buffalo-run heaps of rotting carcasses and giant mounds of stinking garbage behind you."

A stolid, hardworking survivor of so many battles and massacres, Paha Sapa is himself a kind of node in history, bringing together Crazy Horse and Custer, white expansionism and red defiance, not to mention astronomy and native mythology, as well as reverberations from the incipient European Holocaust.Comment:  This is the first I've heard of stinking garbage heaps that were detectable from 20 miles away. Of course, waste products are a little-discussed aspect of human existence. Did a Western town of 1,000 people have a better way of disposing of human waste than an Indian encampment of 1,000 people? If so, what was the method?

I don't think any pre-modern society had a great way of disposing of waste besides 1) leaving it in place or 2) flushing it downstream and making it someone else's problem. Moreover, since carcasses and other forms of organic waste get recycled into nutrients, I don't think they're ecologically harmful. Therefore, I'd say the Indians are not guilty of being "ecological vandals."

For more on that subject, see Dennis Prager and The Ecological Indian.

As for the "ruthless, relentless invasion machine," I believe the basic facts are true. But the picture is incomplete unless it includes the Euro-American pressure on tribes to move west against their will. If your choice is fighting a war of extinction or "invading" someone else's territory, you don't have much of a choice.

Unless the "Sioux" were equally ruthless and relentless before and after European contact, it's unfair to simply label them without context. It's also unfair to focus on them without noting the many tribes that didn't engage in warfare as a way of life.

For more on that subject, see Warlike Indian Cultures.

Unfortunately, Ehrenreich's review is more a description than a critique of Black Hills. We'll have to wait for more reviews to learn how good it is. But judging by Hyperion and The Terror, Black Hills is probably worth reading.

Tribal jurisdiction = "Custer legislation"?!

Obama using Indians for his dirty work

By Barry NapierI can say, without reservation, that I’m not a racist. Black or white, yellow or brown, I don’t care, so long as the fellah is decent and sociable. Obama, however, IS racist, and it shows in this proposed piece of legislation.

Idaho pro-Obama bosses are trying to muscle-through ‘Custer Legislation’, so that the (Red) Indians can at last get their own back on white men--cowboys and Indians all over again!

The idea is to give Indians total legal control over any non-Indian who even passes through their territory. They would be tried under separate tribal laws, and even if the accused comes from outside the reservation, they cannot call in outside help or legal counsel! And only Indians would be allowed to sit on the jury. Watch out for revenge from Indians who are filled with leftist revisionist history!

The bright-sparks who are trying to bring this in are Idaho Attorney General Wasden and US Attorney Thomas Moss. They have been working out the details for the past six months… and everyone in the USA should ask “Why?” What is the point of making parts of the USA free from state and national laws?Comment:  I can say without reservation that Napier is a racist. The language in his screed proves it:

"Obama using Indians": As if Indians are incapable of independent thought. Of determining what's best for them.

Napier later admits that one tribe is backing this legislation and two others aren't. He doesn't name the tribes because all Indians are the same to him, presumably. Perhaps he doesn't even know the tribes' names. He sounds like regurgitating right-wing talking points rather than thinking on his own.

In any case, attacking "Indians" for the actions of one tribe is like attacking the world's Caucasians for the actions of the Bush administration or the Manson family. It's racist.

"(Red) Indians": As if Indians are actually red.

"Get their own back on white men": This ungrammatical phrase apparently means "get revenge on white men." The implication that Indians want revenge on whites is racist because it denigrates an entire race.

"Only Indians would be allowed to sit on the jury": As if Indians are inherently biased and incapable of rendering a fair decision. Again, a racist assumption about Indians.

"Revenge from Indians who are filled with leftist revisionist history!": Again, a racist assertion about a revenge motive, coupled with a racist implication that Indians can't think straight.

It's not hard to imagine that Napier, like many conservatives, is prejudiced against Obama. With zero evidence, he attacks Idaho Attorney General Wasden and US Attorney Thomas Moss as "pro-Obama bosses." And he thinks Obama or someone "higher up" is orchestrating this legislation. It's all very reminiscent of the teabaggers' racist attacks on Obama as an un-American Kenyan and Muslim.

Clearly Napier is clueless about tribal sovereignty. He's clueless that it's a nation-to-nation relationship based on the Constitution. Clueless that tribal nations are political entities, not racial entities--that their members can belong to any race, in theory.

If Obama were behind this legislation, which he's not, it wouldn't be a "racist" move. Again, because tribes are political entities, not racial ones. Similarly, if a local district, precinct, or ward were 95% black, that wouldn't make it a racial entity either. A federal or state agency could help the district, precinct, or ward without being guilty of "racial preferences."

Idaho rectifying PL 280?

I don't know the details of the proposed "State and Indian Tribal Cooperative Law Enforcement Act" A Google search doesn't turn up anything about it. I wouldn't trust anything Napier has written about it, since he comes from the "black helicopter/blue helmet" school of conservative idiocy.

I presume this act has something to do with correcting the worst parts of the infamous PL 280. Here's some background on how this law has weakened tribal sovereignty.

Public Law 280:  Issues and Concerns for Victims of Crime in Indian Country

By Ada Pecos Melton and Jerry Gardner1. What is Public Law 280?

Public Law 83-280, the 280th Public Law enacted by the 83rd Congress in 1953, was a substantial transfer of jurisdiction from the federal government to the states in Indian country. This transfer of jurisdiction was required (or mandatory) for the states specifically mentioned in the Act and also permitted other states an option to acquire jurisdiction. Indian Nations, on the other hand, had no choice in the matter. The Indian Nations which were affected by Public Law 280 had to deal with greatly increased state authority and state control over a broad range of reservation activities without any tribal consent.

Before Public Law 280 was enacted, the federal government and Indian tribal courts shared jurisdiction over almost all civil and criminal matters involving Indians in Indian country. The states had no jurisdiction. With the enactment of Public Law 280, affected states received criminal jurisdiction over reservation Indians. Furthermore, Public Law 280 opened state courts to civil litigation that previously had been possible only in tribal or federal courts. In the affected states, the federal government gave up control over crimes in Indian country (those involving Indian perpetrators and/or victims). Indian Nations lost control over many criminal and civil matters within their territory due to the policies of the federal and state governments.

3. Why is Public Law 280 Controversial?

From the beginning, Public Law 280 was unsatisfactory to both states and Indian Nations. Public Law 280 inspired widespread criticism and concern from Indians and non-Indians alike. Disagreements arose immediately concerning the scope of powers given to the states and the methods of assuming that power.

Indian Opposition

Indian opposition to Public Law 280 has focused upon the one-sided process which imposed state jurisdiction on Indian Nations and the complete failure to recognize tribal sovereignty and tribal self-determination. Public Law 280 required neither the consent of the Indian Nations being affected nor even consultation with these Indian Nations. When he signed it into law, even President Eisenhower expressed misgivings about the lack of tribal consent and urged immediate amendment of the law to require tribal referenda--no such amendment passed Congress until 1968.The key point to note is that PL 280 is mandatory in only six states. Other states don't impose the same restrictions on tribal sovereignty. And yet...no calamaties have befallen these states. They haven't turned into Communist enclaves where non-Indians are imprisoned in Native gulags.

In fact, most people have never heard of PL 280 and don't know some states have more power over tribes than others. That's how stupid and irrelevant Napier's charge of an Obama takeover is.

In short, Napier's scare tactics are completely at odds with the legal record. And he's a racist for suggesting Big Chief Obama and his little Indians are on the warpath again.

For more on the subject, see The Facts About Tribal Sovereignty.