Empty land in True Grit

Beyond its dismissive attitude toward Indians, True Grit has an even bigger problem.

The story starts in the town of Fort Smith, Arkansas. It proceeds into Indian Territory or Choctaw Territory--namely, the southeast portion of Oklahoma.

A couple of problems with that. For starters, the movie's version of Indian Territory is almost totally devoid of humans or human habitation. The lone Indian on horseback...a crazy old coot in a wolf skin...the outlaws...and that's about it.

The Choctaw were considered a nation for a century before this story. When they were forced to move to Oklahoma, they established themselves like the neighboring Cherokee. They had a government, towns, homes, schools, churches, newspapers, and so forth and so on. Some lived in mansions and owned slaves.

Here are some tidbits from Wikipedia on the Choctaw during and after the Civil War:At the beginning of the American Civil War, Albert Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, including the Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws in July 1861. The treaty covered sixty-four terms, covering many subjects, such as Choctaw and Chickasaw nation sovereignty, Confederate States of America citizenship possibilities, and an entitled delegate in the House of Representatives of the Confederate States of America.

Former slaves of the Choctaw Nation were called the Choctaw Freedmen. After considerable debate, the Choctaw Nation granted Choctaw Freedmen citizenship in 1885. In post-war treaties, the US government also acquired land in the western part of the territory and access rights for railroads to be built across Indian Territory.

The improved transportation afforded by the railroads increased the pressure on the Choctaw Nation. It drew large-scale mining and timber operations, which added to tribal receipts. But, the railroads and industries also attracted European-American settlers, including new immigrants to the United States.

Beginning in 1894, the Dawes Commission was established to register Choctaw and other families of the Indian Territory, so that the former tribal lands could be properly distributed among them. The final list included 18,981 citizens of the Choctaw Nation, 1,639 Mississippi Choctaw, and 5,994 former slaves, most held by Choctaws in the Indian/Oklahoma Territory.

The Indian Appropriations Bill of 1889 included an amendment by Illinois Representative William McKendree Springer, that authorized President Benjamin Harrison to open the two million acres (8,000 km²) of Oklahoma Territory for settlement, resulting in the Land Run of 1889. The Choctaw Nation was overwhelmed with new settlers and could not regulate their activities. In the late 19th century, Choctaws suffered almost daily from violent crimes, murders, thefts and assaults from whites and from other Choctaws.Get the picture? This wasn't some untamed wilderness. There were almost 20,000 people dealing with government-to-government relations, debates over freed slaves, railroads, timber and mining industries, an influx of white settlers, etc. The land was full of activity, not empty.

New Mexico isn't Arkansas

To make matters worse, Indian territory wasn't even filmed in Indian territory. I noticed this right away. The landscape didn't look like the rolling hills and forests of Oklahoma and Arkansas. It looked like the mountainous high desert of New Mexico, which is where it was filmed.

Why 'True Grit' wasn't filmed in Arkansas

By Max BrantleyWhy didn't the Coen brothers film "True Grit" in Arkansas, where the Charles Portis novel on which it was based is set? Blogger Cole Haddon has the answer in an interview with filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen:

Cole Haddon: Following that up, did shooting some pretty damn iconic Western landscapes pose additional challenges?

Ethan Coen: You know what? That’s one thing that’s not faithful to the novel. The landscape is a total cheat, but we kind of thought people will think it’s a Western, and some things you just can’t mess with. People want that.

Joel Coen: The whole pictorial idea of the movie would have been much different in a place like Arkansas. The honest answer is it kind of becomes this mishmash of different considerations that go into where you’re shooting and how you want to treat the landscape. They’re a little hard to sort out after the fact, but it’s everywhere from the practical to just what does the movie actually want to be about.In short, they wanted to make an iconic Western. That means a Western of vast open spaces and stunning vistas. A Western of white people taming a land that is magically devoid of Indians. It means erasing the Indian ownership and occupation of the land because it doesn't tally with our Western mythology.

Now we see the whole picture. The Coen brothers included a few Indian characters only to dismiss them as laughable and inconsequential. They're 2010's equivalent of the drunk Indian wobbling down the street or the mysterious Indian sitting alone on a bluff.

The empty landscape and New Mexico film location reinforce this message. The land was wild and waiting to be tamed. Men like Rooster Cogburn rode in with guns blazing, killed the bad guys, and made the West safe for democracy. America was there to be developed and civilized and great white men like Cogburn did it.

So True Grit is pro-America propaganda just like so many old Westerns were. The above is what most Americans were taught in school, and what most of them believe. They don't question this quasi-religious dogma because it's everywhere: from holiday celebrations to public monuments to award-winning movies. You have to spend years of reading and thinking to overcome this brainwashing, yet most people don't even realize it's happening.

Other than these flaws, True Grit was entertaining and well-done. I'm not sure I would've nominated it for the Best Picture Oscar, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have either. Rob's rating: 8.5 of 10.

For more on True Grit, see Melvin Martin on True Grit and Hanged Indian in True Grit.

For more on America's mythical history, see:

"6 Ridiculous Lies About Indians"
What conservatives consider "objective history"
How America became cowboy country
Movies convey "America's master narrative"

Below:  Rooster Cogburn faces four outlaws in an oddly empty "Indian territory."

War of 1812 reenactment omits Natives

First Nations Omitted From War Of 1812 Re-EnactmentActors dressed in period costumes helped bring the War of 1812 theme alive at the Tall Ships Festival in Halifax, but the re-enactment left out Canada's aboriginal allies.

Professional re-enactors hired by Parks Canada marched on the Halifax waterfront as if braced for an American attack, but no one represented the First Nations soldiers who fought for the British colony.

Thousands of First Nations soldiers helped turn the tide of the war in British and Canadian favour.

"(We) certainly would not have been able to save our territory if not for the native contribution," said site manager Rob Roe.

Parks Canada has not officially replied to CBC's query about the missing aboriginal re-enactors, but Roe said he didn't know why aboriginals were not represented in the Halifax re-enactment.Comment:  One detail missing from the article: Was this a reenactment of a particular event in Halifax? In which Natives might not have participated?

Or was it a general reenactment of the War of 1812, in which Natives were key players? In that case, the reenactment should've included them.

For more on the War of 1812, see Aboriginals Mark Canada Day 2012 and War of 1812 Documentary.

Natives can't be professors?!

A good article makes a bunch of points about Native stereotypes:

Speaker talks about media’s skewed image of Indians

By Sanjay TalwaniJohn Sanchez describes a conversation he once had with a couple of flight attendants.

His “Native Pride” cap revealed he was Native American, and at some point, one of them asked him his profession. Instead of handing her his card, Sanchez invited her to guess.

Truck driver, said one. Construction worker, said the other.

When he mentioned he was a professor of ethics at Pennsylvania State University, the response from one of the women stunned him.

“She goes, ‘I thought you said you were Native American,’” Sanchez, an Apache tribal member, said Monday. “I felt like I just got slapped about as hard as I could in the face.”

The attendant later apologized and confessed that she hadn’t thought of Indian people being college professors.

That leads to the question at the heart of Sanchez’s research, and the subject of his lecture, “American Indians: How the News Media Shapes American Indian Identity and Policy in the United States,” Monday night (Columbus Day) at Carroll College.

“You have to get back to the beginnings,” he said. “What makes her think like this?”

Sanchez’s research has included a thorough analysis of network television news reports from 1990 to 2000. He found that Indians were almost invisible: Among more than 175,000 news reports he tallied, Indians figured in just 98.

Many stories treated Indians in an accurate, 20th-century context, particularly in reports about policy issues such as disputes over water rights.

But many other stories depicted Indians in the twin stereotypes that still permeate news coverage: Indians in 18th-century garb, doing stereotypically Indian things like riding horses or dancing in powwows; or Indians in poverty, plagued by alcohol and other social ills.

Yes, he notes, the poorest county in America is Shannon County, S.D., home to the Pine Ridge Reservation (although students he quizzes about it generally guess somewhere in Appalachia.) And yes, 25 percent of Indians nationwide have earnings that fall below the federal poverty line. But that means 75 percent earn more.

“There is extreme poverty in Indian Country,” he said. “But Indian Country is also middle class, and in some places, it’s upper middle class.”

He sometimes asks people to name the richest Indian in America and finds people don’t even think there would be one. (It’s David Anderson, Ojibwa and Choctaw, who is founder of the Famous Dave’s barbecue chain, Sanchez said.)Comment:  Wow, what a great anecdote to begin this article with. "You can't be a professor, you're an Indian."

That kind of stereotypical thinking must hold Indians back in a million ways, large and small. Imagine how it influences educational policy in Indian schools, for instance. "These people are just going to become truck drivers or construction workers, so why give them a world-class education? Why waste the money on uncivilized savages who have barely become human?"

For more on the thousand-plus stories I've tagged with "stereotypes," see British Couple Married as "Indians" and Courts Okay Jury Bias Against Indians.

Below:  "John Sanchez spoke Monday at Carroll College about the media’s portrayal of Native Americans." (Sanjay Talwani/Independent Record)

Forever 21's Columbus Day sale

Forever 21 Sells Faux Native American Items in Their Columbus Day Sale

By Rachel KaneI've not so secretly disliked this whole "tribal" and native trend where hipsters slap on replicas of sacred prayer beads, medicine bags and all manner of clothing depicting Native Americans (or American Indians, if you prefer) in the most stereotypical form possible, and Forever 21 has been at the very forefront of promoting this trend.Take this top for example, marked down from $14.90 as part of the Columbus Day sale.

Maybe you didn't catch that ... AS PART OF THE COLUMBUS DAY SALE.Comment:  Selling Native ripoffs on Columbus Day, a day of mourning, is an obvious faux pas. It's reminiscent of the "Party Like It's 1492" sale and outcry.

The clothing itself--at least the example shown--is stereotypical. But the real stereotyping comes from what was assumed rather than said. Namely, that nothing worth worrying about happened on Columbus Day. That it's a bland, inoffensive holiday for all Americans.

For most Americans that may be true, but not for Native Americans. For them, Columbus Day is like Slavery Day or Hitler's birthday. You wouldn't have a sale for those occasions, so you shouldn't have one for Columbus Day.

But Forever 21 didn't think or care about this. Their sale implies Indians are irrelevant, if not dead and gone. And that's a problem.

For more on the subject, see Open Letter to Urban Outfitters and Neo-Navajo Fashion Trend.

Indians left out at national parks

No Longer Circling the Wagons:  Many National Parks Get Indian Stories Wrong

By Robert PahreBecause American Indians lived everywhere in this country, the NPS could tell Native stories at almost every site. After all, it has chosen to tell the stories of settlers at most park units. Unfortunately, the NPS usually leaves out the Native stories in the parks, letting Indians vanish from most park landscapes.

Too much of the NPS’s interpretation of our history is incomplete, and it usually leaves out the Native stories. And when it does tell a Native story, all too often, it is through the eyes of other people, the way it has been done it in too many movies. In Dances With Wolves, for example, Kevin Costner portrays the Lakota sympathetically, but through the eyes of a white military man who falls in love with a white woman who had been adopted by the tribe. A less benign example of that can be found at Indiana Dunes National Seashore, which tells of the Potawatomi tribe through the experiences of a white man, Joseph Bailly. A sign at the Bailly homestead explains that he bought beaver furs and other items from the Potawatomi in exchange for various trade goods. Another sign says the United States gave Bailly $6,000 for counseling the Potawatomi when they sold their land in the Chicago Treaty of 1833. That was a huge sum of money back then, but the sign doesn’t say what he did in those negotiations that made the U.S. government so grateful. Nor does the sign finish the story—the Potawatomi ended up on a “Trail of Death” westward, across the Mississippi.

That’s just one of many Native stories the NPS leaves out of its narrative. Drive across the Great Plains and visit the park units there. Except for Minnesota’s Pipestone National Monument and Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota, the national park units on the Plains focus on a short period of settlers’ history instead of the much longer Native histories. They also tend to talk about the deeds of settlers instead of the impact those actions had on American Indians.

Visitors to Nebraska’s Scotts Bluff National Monument see a replica covered wagon along with part of the original Oregon Trail as it heads through Mitchell Pass. Across the parking lot, the Oregon Trail Museum and Visitor Center tells the story of the emigrants who passed this way. The American Indians who lived here appear in an exhibit entitled, “The White Emigrants Met the Mounted Hunters of the Plains.” Again, the Native stories are told in relation to the experiences of the intruders.

That park has 62 documented archaeological sites, but you won’t learn that when you’re there. You also won’t be told how Indians used the site before the white man arrived. An oral tradition dating to Frank Kicking Bear says Crazy Horse chose Scotts Bluff for one of his earliest vision quests. He reportedly saw horses and thunder beings in his vision who told him how to prepare for war. But you won’t hear that story at Scotts Bluff. The people who wanted Scotts Bluff to be a national monument had a one-sided view of what made the site important. Telling the story of Crazy Horse preparing for war against the United States would contradict their story, that of peaceful emigrants on their way to Oregon.National Parks that Best Tell American Indian Culture and HistoryThere are almost 400 sites in the U.S. National Park system, including parks, monuments, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores and recreation areas. Not all of them have a direct connection to American Indian culture and history, but most do, and most aren’t doing a good job of telling those stories. But some are. Here’s a sampling of sites, roughly from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, that are doing a good—or at least better—job of telling the complete history of their site.

Best

Badlands National Park, South Unit (South Dakota)

Cook Collection, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (Nebraska)

Effigy Mounds National Monument (Iowa)

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site (Montana-North Dakota)

Grand Portage National Monument (Minnesota)

Knife River Indian Villages (North Dakota)

Nez Perce National Historic Park (Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington)

Pipestone National Monument (Minnesota)

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (Colorado)

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail (many states)

Comment:  This sounds like a case of stereotyping by omission. Omitting Native stories in favor of pioneer stories reinforces our founding myth: that America was uninhabited except for "wild animals and Indians." That God gave the land to "civilized" Euro-Americans to colonize, settle, and develop. That the "savage" Indians had no right of ownership and were soon to vanish like scared little critters that went into hiding.

For more on national parks, see AIM vs. Fort Laramie and Uranium Mining at Grand Canyon.

Below:  Nebraska’s Scotts Bluff National Monument.

Wolf Moon in Teen Wolf

Exclusive:  Producer Jeff Davis and Director Russell Mulcahy Talk TEEN WOLF

By Christina RadishAs the creator and executive producer of the MTV series Teen Wolf, Jeff Davis has developed a re-imagining of the iconic ‘80s film that is darker, sexier and edgier than the original.

At the show’s press day, Jeff Davis and Russell Mulcahy talked to Collider in this exclusive interview about bringing this show to life for MTV, how important it was to establish the look of the werewolves, developing their werewolf mythology, the fact that Season 1 will have many twists and turns, all the behind the scenes features they already have planned for the DVD release, and their excitement to take the series to Comic-Con in San Diego.The key point for us:Were there things that you specifically wanted to make sure that you kept with werewolf mythology, and were there things that you wanted to add that were new?

DAVIS:  Absolutely! Shape shifter myths are pretty much found in every culture and every society. It’s pretty extraordinary. The pilot we actually named “Wolf Moon” because the cycles of the moon are actually all named from Native American history. In January, wolves would howl outside of the villages because they were hungry. So, January was named Wolf Moon.More information on the so-called Wolf Moon from FarmersAlmanac.com:

Full Moon Names and Their MeaningsFull Moon names date back to Native Americans, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. The tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full Moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred. There was some variation in the Moon names, but in general, the same ones were current throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England to Lake Superior. European settlers followed that custom and created some of their own names. Since the lunar month is only 29 days long on the average, the full Moon dates shift from year to year. Here is the Farmers Almanac’s list of the full Moon names.

• Full Wolf Moon--January Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.Comment:  At least the Farmers Almanac attributed the moon names to a particular region rather than all of Native America. That's more than Davis and Mulcahy did.

But I doubt the Farmers Almanac has the slightest credibility when it comes to Native lore. I'm guessing it's been repeating these "moon" stories for decades or centuries since someone made them up.

Here's a list of American Indian Moons from 29 tribal cultures. The cultures include half a dozen in the Almanac's New England to Lake Superior range, and specifically the Algonquin. So how many used the term "Wolf Moon"?

Answer: Zero. The Algonquin name for January is squochee kesos, meaning "sun has not strength to thaw." The only January name that even mentions wolves is the Sioux "wolves run together." The Cheyenne use this as one of their names for December.

What "Wolf Moon" tells us

"Wolf Moon" seems to be a myth, perhaps concocted by the Farmers Almanac. It continues because most people think Indians have one continent-wide culture. And it apparently involves a lot of wolf worship. When Indians aren't running or dancing with wolves, they're soaring like eagles or hawks. Or running like buffalo.

This bit of stereotyping sends a lot of messages. Native religion is nothing more than animal worship. Indians have a mystical connection with nature. Indians are more animal-like than "real people." Indians lead romantic lives of following their hearts and their "spirit guides." No mentions of smallpox, broken treaties, or genocide here!

The image below kind of says it all. The Wolf Moon concept, supposed used in the East, is represented by a Plains chief. It doesn't matter whether the term is accurate or where it's used. It's all about homogenizing and romanticizing Indians, which is part of denying their modern-day existence and diversity.

No doubt Davis and Mulcahy didn't intend these messages. But I bet they didn't do anything to contradict them, either. I bet there's no Indian in Teen Wolf to explain "Wolf Moon," say it's limited to a certain region or made up by the Farmers Almanac, and give an authentic Native term instead. Because it's easier to keep Indians invisible and contribute to the problem.

For more on the subject, see Twilight Ruining Indians' Reputation? and Differeing Views of Wolves.

P.S. This posting is not to be confused with Moon Wolf in UNCANNY X-MEN.

"Mapping America" excludes Indians

Educator Debbie Reese reports on a New York Times mapping feature:

"Others:  31%"The New York Times has an interactive mapping feature called Mapping America available where you can "Browse local data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey..." to see the distribution of racial and ethnic groups in an area of the US by searching on a zip code.

Data is presented as dots that represent specific groups of people. There are green dots for Whites, blue dots for Blacks, yellow dots for Hispanics, red dots for Asians, and gray dots for Others.

There is no dot for American Indians.She tells what happens if you point at a Native location:When I hover the mouse over the area south of Santa Fe where Kewa Pueblo (formerly known as Santo Domingo) is, here's what the box says:

Census tract 9402
Population estimate: 3,574
Whites: 1%
Blacks: 0%
Hispanics: 3%
Asians: 0%
Others: 96%

In that box, "Others: 96%" is tribal members of another federally recognized tribal nation.As a commenter adds:When 31-96% of a population comes up as "other," that should be a clue to those who created this handy feature for the Times that something is wrong with their categories.(Excerpted from Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature, 6/8/11.)

Comment:  Ya think?

For the umpteenth time, we see our society's attempts to wipe Indians from our collective memory. Either we omit them altogether (No Indians in On Stranger Tides, Wikipedia:  Native Journalists Aren't Notable). Or we include them but only as primitive people of the past--as savage terrorists, warriors, or mascots. Is it any wonder that 70% of Americans think Indians are extinct?

For more on the subject, see Unidentified Reservations in Google Maps.

No Indians in On Stranger Tides

The latest Pirates of the Caribbean movies features a search for the Fountain of Youth. Here's the legend of the Fountain:The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus, the Alexander romance, and the stories of Prester John. Stories of a similar waters were also evidently prominent among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean during the Age of Exploration, who spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical land of Bimini.

The legend became particularly prominent in the 16th century, when it became attached to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, first Governor of Puerto Rico. According to an apocryphal story that features a combination of New World and Eurasian elements, Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to what is now Florida in 1513. Since then, the fountain has been frequently associated with Florida.And here's what the movie gives us:

Movie review:  New 'Pirates' has fewer minutes, more Johnny Depp charm

By Chris HewittIn that same vein, where are we? Part of the movie is set in London and part of it is in Spain, but the Fountain of Youth stuff takes everyone to a leafy-green place that looks a lot like "Lost," which looks a lot like "Jurassic Park," which is to say, it's Hawaii. That's fine, I guess, but even within Hawaiiland, we can't tell how one place is connected to another place, so something as simple as a missionary moving from the fountain to a grove of trees where a mermaid is tied up (see, I told you there are too many characters) is a confusing muddle of where-was-he and where-is-he-now.Comment:  So On Stranger Tides takes place in a fantasy land even though the main elements--Blackbeard and the Fountain--are associated with the Caribbean. The movie scrubs the Caribbean out of existence.

Someone who's seen On Stranger Tides assures me it doesn't include Indians. In a sense this is good, since the Pirates movies have only stereotyped Indians. We don't need more cannibals trying to kill and eat the Europeans.

But in another sense it's bad. It removes the Indians and their cultures and histories from our sight. It furthers the notion that the Americas were uninhabited, ready for the Europeans to colonize.

Even worse, the only inhabitants of this pseudo-Caribbean are mermaids. So the fantasy land isn't inhabited by real people, but by fictional creatures. That makes it doubly problematical.

Fairy-tale lands don't have real issues. It doesn't matter if you invade them and destroy their inhabitants. Who's gonna shed a tear for dragons, elves, trolls, mermaids...or Indians?

For more on Pirates of the Caribbean, see Johnny Depp's Track Record and Pelegostos in Pirates.

Wikipedia: Native journalists aren't notable

What Constitutes Notability in Wikipedia? Twice Deleted Native American Journalists Association Wants to Know

By Terri HansenWikipedia celebrated its 10th anniversary in January of this year.

That was the same month Wikipedia administrators deleted the entry for the Native American Journalists Association—for the second time.

Wikipedia is the popular online encyclopedia that uses the unique wiki platform—wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning fast—that any user with a basic knowledge of its language can edit.

Wikipedia lists 76 organizations under the category, “American journalism organizations.” It includes boxing, soccer and baseball writers associations. It includes the associations of Asian American journalists, black journalists, Hispanic journalists, Korean American journalists, lesbian and gay journalists, and UNITY: Journalists of Color, of which NAJA is a member. But unlike their journalism cohorts, they’re non-existent to Wikipedia.

It’s not for a lack of effort on the part of journalists who also act as Wikipedia authors.

According to Wikipedia’s documented history on the matter, a Wikipedia administrator who goes by NawlinWiki deleted the NAJA entry in January 2010 due to what Wikipedia terms its lack of notability.Comment:  This sounds like a variation on the commonplace idea that modern Indians basically don't exist. That their presence is so insignificant that they're not worth mentioning. In other words, out of sight, out of mind.

Or perhaps it's the idea that Indians are so "savage" and "uncivilized" that they can't be professional journalists. A bunch of dropouts, drunks, and criminals, Wikipedia's editors might think. Have any of them even gone to college or held a white-collar job? How could they do anything these days worth a Wikipedia entry?

In other words, it sounds like racism to me. Once again, Indians "win" the Oppression Olympics. They're the only minority journalists deemed unworthy of a Wikipedia entry.

For more on Native journalism, see Amnesty International Honors Native Reports and Native Journalists = Foreigners?

Below:  Rhonda LeValdo, NAJA president.

Whites "play Indian" in Swamplandia!

Educator Debbie Reese writes about another Native-themed book with problems. Here's the book's description:

Swamplandia!From Booklist

*Starred Review*

Russell’s lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006). Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings, and Swamplandia! itself is endangered as audiences dwindle. The Chief leaves. Brother Kiwi, 17, sneaks off to work at the World of Darkness, a new mainland amusement park featuring the “rings of hell.” Otherworldly sister Osceola, 16, vanishes after falling in love with the ghost of a young man who died while working for the ill-fated Dredge and Fill Campaign in the 1930s. It’s up to Ava, 13, to find her sister, and her odyssey to the Underworld is mythic, spellbinding, and terrifying. Russell’s powers reside in her profound knowledge of the great imperiled swamp, from its alligators and insects, floating orchids and invasive “strangler” melaleuca trees to the tragic history of its massacred indigenous people and wildlife. Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell’s archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air. --Donna SeamanAnd Reese's take on it:

Unexpected intersections:  Thanksgiving and Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA!Earlier this week a reader wrote to ask me about Karen Russell's Swamplandia! Not familiar with it, I read reviews and learned that it is the story of a not-Native family who uses Native names to pass as Native people who run an alligator-wrestling theme park.Reese notes a key passage in the text:We are wearing Indian costumes on loan from our Bigtree Gift Shop: buckskin vests, cloth headbands, great blue heron feathers, great white heron feathers, chubby beads hanging off our foreheads and our hair in braids, gator "fang" necklaces.

Although there was not a drop of Seminole or Miccosukee blood in us, the Chief always costumed us in tribal apparel for the photographs he took. He said we were "our own Indians." Our mother had a toast-brown complexion that a tourist could maybe squint and call Indian--and Kiwi, Grandpa Sawtooth, and I could hold our sun.She continues:I wonder if there are any Seminole characters in the book? I'll let you know when I get the book. It got rave reviews. RAVE reviews. At the Amazon page, there are blurbs from everyone from Stephen King to the reviewer for Oprah's magazine. I don't see any comments at all about the fact that the family is playing Indian. If they were playing Black, would that be noted?(Excerpted from Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature, 4/6/11.)

Comment:  I searched the text the same way Reese did. As far as I can tell, there were no references to live Seminole or Miccosukee Indians. Just one mention of the Miccosukee Indian Reservation and one of a Seminole "gambling hall."

Indeed, the word "Indian" appears only 15 times, "Seminole" 11 times, and "Miccosukee" four times. This in a book whose central premise is white people pretending to be Indians.

I also didn't find any instances of the words "cheat," "fraud," or "deception." So a white family with conveniently dark skin dresses up as Indians. They defraud countless tourists with a con game. They present a distorted, stereotypical version of Seminole and Miccosukee culture. And apparently get away with it for most or all of the book.

If the problem isn't glaringly obvious yet, let's use my favorite teaching technique: a black/Indian comparison. Imagine a white family donning black shoe polish; pretending to be slaves, sharecroppers, or residents of a segregated town; and charging admission for it. See the quaint, colorful folks of Ghettopia, a "genuine" black community--only $10 a head.

Unthinkable? Yes. But this book's scenario is the same freakin' thing.

Indians MIA in Swamplandia!

Swamplandia! does tell the "tragic history of its massacred indigenous people." But it has little or nothing to say about today's Indians. Despite a couple of references, Swamplandia! treats them as invisible or nonexistent. It's as if they vanished long ago and the Bigtree family took over their lives. The Bigtrees maintain the Seminole and Miccosukee traditions because the Indians aren't around to do it.

Worse, not a single living Indian appears to chastise them or correct their mistakes. Not a single character in the book comments on this fraudulent "redface" scheme. And not a single reader or reviewer has commented on it either.

The Bigtrees are "our own Indians," says one character. So they can adopt Indian identities, "become" Indians, because it's their white right. They don't care what the local Indians, or 5 million other American Indians, might think about this pretense. The Indians' beliefs and desires are immaterial compared to theirs.

Thanks for another clearcut example of why Indians win the Oppression Olympics. Would a book about whites in blackface deceiving people go over well with fans and critics? Has anyone written such a book in the last half century?

I don't think so. But "playing Indian" is perfectly acceptable in our culture. So is portraying Indians as relics of the past. It's so normal and unremarkable that no one thinks twice about it.

For some of the modern Indian life that should be in Swamplandia! but isn't, see:

Seminoles compared to al Qaeda
13th Annual Big Cypress celebration
Andrew Jackson Institute fights Seminoles
Swamp Men on National Geographic Wild
Seminoles want pro alligator wrestling

Taboo in Saturday Night Live

Last week's Saturday Night Live (airdate: 3/5/11) had a skit about two background members of the band Black Eyed Peas. Titled Our Time with Taboo and apl.de ap., it gave us a TV show supposedly highlighting their special qualities.



As you may recall from Black Eyed Pea is Shoshone, Taboo identifies himself thus:I'm a Mexican-American from east LA, and I'm Shoshone Native American, and I represent my Latino culture to the fullest. Everybody always mistakes me for Filipino or Japanese.The skit made fun of his uncertain ethnicity twice. When asked where he was from, Taboo (Andy Samberg) said he was from the Matrix. Later it showed him on the cover of Vaguely Asian magazine.

Alas, it didn't say anything about his being an Indian. I didn't expect it to, but it would've been nice. Instead, it was another case of omitting Indians from their place on the American scene.

For more on the subject, see Ute Drummer on Saturday Night Live and "Chippewa Word" in Saturday Night Live.

Anthro in RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #1

A forum discussion raises a good point about Bruce Wayne's recent time-travel trip to prehistoric America:Maybe this has been answered already but why were cavemen in the first issue Caucasian? It was supposed to be set at the site of future Gotham [City]. So why were they not depicted as Native American?Response #1:Anthro was the key caveman involved, and he's always been depicted as white. They'd have to change Anthro's (and Vandal Savage's) race to make it actually fit, or have him be the one white person in the tribe.

There's also the issue of Anthro, "the First Boy" living only 18,000 years ago, but [writer Grant] Morrison's acknowledged that it doesn't make sense; it just had to be that way for the story.Response #2:Because they were exceptionally earlier than any Native culture you or any of us are familiar with? Because some of them later crossed a land bridge and traveled into Europe? Because we know--at least in the DCU--people moved all over the Earth back in our prehistory quit a bit? And, possibly, because despite insistence otherwise, North America is awfully big and had a variety of physiological types, in terms of skin tone, hair color, bone structure and so? Maybe all the above. Or, because.Comment:  This also applies to the Master of the World, an Alpha Flight villain. He began as a "caveman" in northern Canada (or Asia, according to one source), but is depicted as a white man.

Indeed, this is true of all fictional "cavemen"--i.e., all Early Modern Humans who lived from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago. It doesn't matter if they lived in Africa, Asia, or the Americas--which would've made them black, Asian, or Indian, respectively. Creators invariably depict them as white.

As respondent #2 tried to do, you can explain why any particular tribe of cavemen is white, even in the Americas. For instance, a lost tribe of Israel Europe wandered over to America. But the question isn't why one tribe of cavemen is white, it's why they all are.

And this is merely a subset of a greater problem. Most humanoid aliens (Star Trek, Star Wars, the Legion of Super-Heroes) are white. If they have blue or green skin, they still have Caucasian features. Most lost civilizations (the Inhumans, Wonder Woman's Themiscyra, Aquaman's Atlantis) are white too. Even fictional creatures like fairies, trolls, and mermaids are white.

Can you imagine a race of aliens who look Chinese? Or a lost civilization of the Inuit? Or a black mermaid? You probably can now that I've mentioned them, but did you ever think of them before? Or were the fictional beings you envisioned inevitably white?

Apparently writers can't imagine that the Americas were inhabited for 10,000-plus years by dark-skinned Paleo-Indians. It doesn't fit their mental map of human history. To them, the continent was more or less empty until the Europeans arrived. Indians appeared out of thin air to oppose the colonizers the way supervillains pop up to fight superheroes.

This is an example of several things: How people unconsciously express their white privilege (white skin as the default for every unknown race). How people are in denial about the racial reality. How people view Indians as inconsequential or invisible--good only as enemies in 19th-century Westerns.

For more on Paleo-Indians, see Were Indians "Colonists" Too? and Did Indians "Colonize" America? For more on the Bruce Wayne series, see Indian in RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #4.

Below:  A real (reconstruction of a) Paleo-Indian...



...and Anthro, the white boy who should be a Paleo-Indian.

Unidentified reservations in Google Maps

In his Drawing on Indians blog, Stephen Bridenstine notes a curious thing. Unlike other online mapping systems, Google Maps doesn't identify America's Indian reservations. It shows them as slightly darker areas, but it doesn't say what they are, no matter how much you magnify them.

Strange Tan Blotches in South Dakota: Indian Reservations in Online Maps

Consider the worst case: The Navajo Nation is bigger than West Virginia and nine other states. And it's full of empty places where a "Navajo Nation" label would fit on a map. But there's no such label in Google Maps.



Much smaller national forests and parks get labeled, so the problem isn't a lack of space or attention to detail. As I said, other mapping systems note the reservations, so it's not a technical impediment. No, someone at Google "inadvertently" or intentionally left the reservation labels off. I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone's conscious decision: "Don't label the reservations or the right-wing hate machine will vilify us for recognizing so-called Indian nations."

This is yet another example of how invisible Indians are today. Google is reinforcing the message that Indians are dead and gone. That reservations are nothing more than "colorful" places on a map. That semi-sovereign political entities, a fourth level of government, don't exist in our midst.

For more on the subject, see Stereotyping Indians by Omission and The Facts About Tribal Sovereignty.

70% think Indians are extinct

Indigenous dancing

By Alana ListoeStudents in area schools enjoyed workshops Wednesday and Thursday with Dancing Earth, an indigenous contemporary dance group based in Santa Fe, N.M., that is currently on tour.

The energy of Dancing Earth evokes a primal force that is said to illuminate cultural and spiritual relevance through their articulate movements choreographed by creator Rulan Tangen.

“For some, this may be the first time they’ve ever met a Native American,” Tangen said. “That might seem like a stretch, but 70 percent of our museum-goers believe that Native Americans are extinct.”

Tangen said the group is a vibrant mix of professional dancers who have a positive outlook for native people.Comment:  Seventy percent of museum-goers think Indians are extinct? And this is among museum-goers, whom I imagine are more educated than average. What's the percentage in the general public?

In any case, this is a revealing statistic. Even though Indian casinos and events like the tribal summit and the Cobell settlement make the news occasionally, people are still clueless about Indians. They must think modern Indians are fakes. Perhaps casinos hire actors to call themselves Indians. The "real" Indians--you know, the ones with feathers and leathers--are extinct.

We can imagine the consequences of such ignorance. When 70% think Indians are extinct, who's going to push for economic development, health care, or law enforcement for Indians? Who's going to teach about Indians in school, make movies about Indians, or oppose Indian stereotypes? Only 30% of the population at most, and probably only a fraction of that.

It seems clear to me how this lack of knowledge cascades through our culture, affecting every aspect of Indian life. That's why alleviating this ignorance is a fundamental part of the problem. As I said in Educational Value of Blogging and Rob Should Fight Poverty?!, that's why I focus on educating people.

Dancing Earth is educating people too. So are all the Native artists, writers, teachers, and activists. Every museum exhibit, parade float, or TV show reminds people that Indians still exist.

For more on Native dance, see Yup'ik Swan Lake and Cheyenne River Glitter Girls.

No Indians in Off the Map

I watched Saved by the Great White Hope, the pilot episode of Off the Map (airdate: 1/12/10). It was about as bad as I thought it would be. Here's what the LA Times had to say about it:

Young doctors try to heal patients, themselves in 'Off the Map'

Sappy situations abound in the South American jungle where the expatriate doctors ply their trade in the message-laden ABC series.

By Mary McNamaraCreated by "Grey's Anatomy" writer Jenna Bans, "Off the Map" is so inspirational and message-laden it would not be out of place on Oprah Winfrey's new network. By the very nature of the work, everyone involved in "Off the Map" is instantly credited with a certain amount of heroism. Clinic veterans, Drs. Zee Alvarez (Valerie Cruz), Otis Cole (Jason George) and Ben Keeton (Martin Henderson) may look momentarily askance at their newest recruits, but the three young doctors have not come to the jungle to pad their privileged resumes (as the jaded and exhausted Alvarez suggests). They are here to find Rebirth, Resolution and Redemption.

Alas, it all plays just as sappy as it sounds, even with the gorgeous and ridiculous distractions of make-do medicine—after Lily treats a patient mid-zip line, Ben transfuses him with coconut milk when the blood stores run low (kids, don't try this at home); Tommy saves a medicine-wary tubercular family using only the power of his voice and the soulfulness of his eyes (he speaks no Spanish); and Mina deals with the ho-hum-until-it's-not nature of clinic work.Comment:  Off the Map is the opposite of shows set in New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles, where the settings give the shows context and color. It apparently has nothing to say about race, religion, culture, or politics. It's a modern medical ensemble show crossed with a Tarzan movie or Gilligan's Island, and it's about as realistic.

Location

Off the Map is intentionally vague about where it takes place: "somewhere in South America." It's about like having white settlers meet anonymous Indians somewhere in the Wild West. It's an excellent example of how the lack of details makes a show bland and generic.

Let's look at where the show should be situated, but isn't:

Commercials for Off the Map have called the location the "Wild West" and said it's "halfway around the world." The "Off the Map" name suggests it's supposed to be incredibly remote. But halfway around the world from the United States is the middle of the Indian Ocean. South America isn't that remote.

Fuller says he traveled 5,000 miles to get there. That suggests the location is somewhere on the northern edge of the continent: Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, or northern Brazil.

Keeton says the nearest medical clinic is 200 miles away. I'd be somewhat surprised if a single spot in South America is that far from medical help. Maybe in the center of the Amazon jungle--but these people are on the coast. I'm willing to bet that only Antarctica has 400 miles of coastline (200 miles in either direction) without a medical clinic.

New doctor Fuller says there are three topless beaches nearby. The first big medical case involves an elderly man caught on a zip line through the treetops. These things imply tourist resorts...but nobody has a better medical facility than this struggling clinic?

So people hike 200 miles through the jungle to reach topless beaches where the slightest accident could kill them? And no tourist resort, seaside port, oil company, or village on an Amazon tributary is close enough to offer help? That's flatly ridiculous.

At the end Keeton points out the constellation of the Southern Cross high in the sky. Wrong. The clinic is probably located near the equator, and possibly in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Cross wouldn't be visible from there.

The doctors jump off rocky cliffs that I think we've seen in Lost and Hawaii Five-0. It's a clue that we're in a magical jungle land where nothing is specific to the location and everything is possible. As the article says, you wouldn't be surprised to find a Hawaiian leper colony, an Indonesian rubber plantation, or the Dharma Initiative around the corner.

Culture and language

The setting's culture is about as vague as its location:

Dr. Alvarez, the lone Latina, makes a couple comments about imperialist white doctors. Charlie the boy guide/translator calls Fuller a gringo. Some patients speak Spanish and some signs are in Spanish. Other than that, there are literally no cultural or political markers. The story could take place in any Spanish-speaking jungle in eastern Asia, equatorial Africa, Latin America or the Caribbean.

Alvarez and Charlie appear to be secondary characters, so Americans dominate the clinic. Cole the black doctor also appears to be a secondary character. So no brown-skinned foreigners tell the white good guys what to do.

Moreover, the Americans seem to be the only employees. One nameless Latina nurse does get a few of seconds of screen time, but that's it. This ensures that the heroic whites will solve every problem themselves.

Basically the story is about the great white doctor Keeton and his three white acolytes. Despite all the brown background characters, it's one of the whitest shows I've seen.

As the LA Times notes, it's absurd that people would sign up for a foreign program without taking language classes to prepare. And the show milks the language problems to an absurd degree. For instance, Fuller gives an impassioned speech about how his pride ruined his career to a patient who can't understand him. Charlie translates this as, "He's a good doctor," and that's enough to persuade the man.

Worse, when an old woman keeps showing up at the clinic, new doctor Minard tells her to go home. Minard emphasizes this by speaking slowly and clearly in English. Despite having three doctors and an unknown number of others who are bilingual, she doesn't ask for help. Not until the woman keels over does Minard think, "Hmm, maybe she was actually here for a reason. She wasn't just sitting here to annoy me like some ignorant welfare recipient who wants a handout."

When Keeton gives a pep talk, he lists three remedies found in the jungle and says, "Medicine began here." What he means is that Indians discovered or invented many of the medicines and techniques still used there. But Keeton doesn't credit Indians with being the first to practice jungle medicine. Maybe his great white ancestors, the Europeans who conquered the continent, made the discoveries.

Conclusion

It's ridiculous for a show set in a South American jungle, the home of many Indian tribes, not to mention Indians. It's also ridiculous not to mention any of the possible political or cultural conflicts. Are ranching, mining, or oil-drilling operations intruding on the local residents? How do the residents even earn a living: by subsistence farming or working for a mega-corporation? Are any drug lords or anti-government militias operating nearby? What's the unnamed government's position on economic development, environmental protection, and indigenous rights? Does the government lean to the left or right? Is it pro- or anti-American? Etc.

Off the Map doesn't answer or even ask these questions because they'd intrude on the show's theme. Which is that Keeton the great white "humanitarian" is going to save the primitive brown-skinned people from their own folly. The locals have no healers, no leaders, no authority in their own homeland. They're merely suffering subjects for the white doctors to cure.

Alvarez the lone Latina seems to be more of an administrator and a scold than a doctor. She disappears for long stretches while the white doctors handle the most pressing cases. Her big moment comes when the black doctor Cole tells her to chill out because the Americans know best everything will work itself out.

Cole doesn't have much more to do than provide bits of POC wisdom. When Fuller reports that his patients are dying, Cole's big moment is telling Fuller to go back and cure them. In other words, giving the white doctor his big chance is more important than saving lives at risk. If the brown-skins died, Cole presumably would tell Fuller: "Try harder next time, white boy."

The whole setup is incredibly paternalistic. Even though Off the Map is about "ugly Americans" learning to be better human beings, it handles the subject in an ugly fashion. The great white doctor has all the answers; the people of color serve him as flunkies or patients.

The show's worldview is rooted in the early 20th century, when white missionaries and doctors were the only ones who could save the "dark" regions of the world. It's an insult to all the Latino and Indian people in South America who are taking charge of their lives. Who don't need Americans to help them.

Forty-five years ago, the TV series Daktari had a similar premise. But the black characters in Daktari were more fleshed out than the nameless South Americans who serve as patients in Off the Map. Off the Map is a big step backward in the portrayal of indigenous peoples and cultures.

For more on what Off the Map missed, see Amazon Indians Weren't Savages, Cameron's and Weaver's Anti-Dam Films, and Amazon Indian Students on the Net.

Changing park name = guilt trip?

A proposal to rename Stanley Park on Vancouver Island has white people up in arms. Here's the argument for it:

Xwayxway Park?  Its appeal would be global, Tourism Vancouver head says

By Jeff LeeRenaming Stanley Park to Xwayxway Park--or even creating a new double-barrelled name--would expand Vancouver's appeal around the world, the head of Tourism Vancouver said Friday.

While public reaction to changing the name of the city's iconic park has been mostly negative, Tourism Vancouver president Rick Antonson said he's in favour of the idea.

"I think it is a wonderful name, and the opportunity to be a part of taking that name internationally to help introduce it would be just a wonderful, though challenging, opportunity," he said. "There is nothing to lose by doing this and much to be gained.

"I can see ourselves as Tourism Vancouver as being advocates for this additional name. This will be something quite comfortable to take on to the world stage as part of the Vancouver story."And against it:

What's in a name? An X, but why?

By Pete McMartinI am beginning to wonder if there is any anglicized name safe from native lexicological revision, including "Vancouver," "British Columbia" or my own. Probably, there will emanate from the native elders a demand that "Pete" be replaced by its original Coast Salish equivalent which had been in use 10,000 years ago, when history stopped and the natives decided everything belonged to them in perpetuity. Probably, it will translate to "a--hole."

Which I could live with, being accustomed to it.

That the natives want Stanley Park to be renamed Xwayxway, however, is entirely new ground, and seems to abandon the territory of reasonable historical redress in favour of cultural hubris. That is, it is guaranteed to frost the maximum number of non-native people in the minimum amount of time, which the natives must surely have been aware of going in, and which may have been the point. I'm not sure what "Xwayxway" translates to, but it might just as well be "Up Yours, Whitey."

Actually, I don't care what the park is named. Until now, I had no idea it was named after a long-dead governor general. I always felt it was an oddly fusty name for so luxuriant a piece of real estate, anyway. If the natives want to have their xwayxway with it, I, for one, am not going to get too exercised over it.Martin proceeds to get exercised over it. If it wasn't clear already, he lets us know what he really thinks of those damn Natives and their name changes:Rail against it or rally for it, it doesn't matter. This is a conversation that cannot be had, or won. In cases such as these, the natives have learned to stake the low ground, from which they peer up at us and cry, "You did this to us! You stole our land! You stole our past!"

And what can the answer be but, Oh, yes, yes and yes! Guilty as charged. Happy to oblige. Things happen, as they do in history. Awful things, depending on your point of view.

And because of that, the nation--that is, my nation, not the natives' nations, for they have their own--has stumbled clumsily through several decades worth of remorse and reparation hoping to make things right.

It hasn't worked out that way.

Billions upon billions of dollars later, water quality and housing conditions on reserves, according to recent government reports, remain so bad as to be human rights violations; natives are 31 times more likely to contract tuberculosis than non-natives; male aboriginals now make up 18 per cent of the national male prison population, while female aboriginals make up 24 per cent of the female prison population, increases for both genders; half of B.C.'s aboriginal students drop out before completing high school; and while Canada ranked 10th in the United Nations Human Development Index, our first nations communities, using the same criteria, would rank 76th.

It is a long road ahead toward parity. And yet what is the native community expending its energies on this week? The renaming of a park. Where is its gaze affixed? On the irretrievable past, 10,000 years gone. What is its idea of outreach and public relations? Demand that the city's most beloved landmark be renamed, if only to assuage what they feel should be the non-natives' collective guilt. Expunge your history as you expunged ours.

Sigh. Whatever. What's in a name, anyway, other than everything? So I predict a lame compromise: A tiresome native blessing ceremony, politicians saying the right things, an unveiled bilingual park sign where the two names will fight it out for cultural predominance.Comment:  Most non-Native Vancouverites are calling the proposed name change "ridiculous" or the like. They're comparing it to changing the name of New York's Central Park. Oh, the horror!

It wouldn't bother me if we gave Central Park an official Native name. People still could and would call it Central Park. It would be like renaming the Kentucky Derby "The Kentucky Derby presented by Yum! Brands," which actually happened. Some newspapers have used the full name dutifully, but most people continue to call it the Kentucky Derby.

Similarly, it wouldn't bother me if they changed the name of my childhood home from Palos Verdes Peninsula to Tongva Peninsula. We'd still call it Palos Verdes in casual conversations. No memories would be lost; no identities threatened.

I'm amazed at how many people invest their hearts and souls in the identity of their "beloved" sports mascot or park. As I've said before, my high school change its team name from the Titans to the Panthers. Were my high school years wiped out of existence? No. In fact, no one died or suffered. Nothing happened. My old yearbooks still refer to us as Titans, and I still think of myself as a Titan. The name change is irrelevant to me.

Martin obviously opposes the name change. His claim that he doesn't care about it is a transparent lie. His prejudice against Natives is palpable.

I particularly like his line about "when history stopped and the natives decided everything belonged to them in perpetuity." You mean the people who occupied a place for 10,000 years don't have a right to claim it? If Al Qaeda launches an attack on Ottawa and claims it as their new sovereign territory, will you accept the claim? Why or why not?

Here we see the imperialist mentality at work. Obviously Martin believes white people "earned" Vancouver Island by conquering it. He has a vague sense that this conquest was illegal or immoral, but he doesn't care. "We're white," he's thinking to himself. "What happened in the past doesn't matter. We're the master race and we're in charge now. If you don't like it, too bad. Love it or leave it."

Martin's arguments

As for his defense of Canada's "helping hand" toward Natives, let's see:

"The nation--that is, my nation, not the natives' nations, for they have their own--has stumbled clumsily through several decades worth of remorse and reparation hoping to make things right."

People like Martin don't feel remorse. They don't care about making things right. Their efforts have been halfhearted at best.

The biggest problem is that "his" nation, Canada, has taken most of the Natives' land. I believe British Columbia's Natives have outstanding land claims that Canada refuses to address. Without a land base to secure the tribes' future, "reparations" are unlikely to solve every problem.

"Billions upon billions of dollars later, water quality and housing conditions on reserves, according to recent government reports, remain so bad as to be human rights violations."

The stolen land probably is worth trillions of dollars, so the billions of dollars spent aren't necessarily meaningful. I don't know the situation well, but consider how the Lakota lost the Black Hills despite a treaty guaranteeing their ownership. The gold and other minerals extracted from the hills has produced immense wealth...for white people. If that had gone to the lawful Native owners instead, things would be radically different. Not only would the Lakota be wealthy, but they'd have the strength and pride that come from owning and managing a resource.

Instead, they're living on poor reservations such as Pine Ridge. Any minerals under the ground there? No. Lots of ways to make a living there? No. Will throwing money at the problems solve them? Maybe, but not necessarily.

"It is a long road ahead toward parity. And yet what is the native community expending its energies on this week? The renaming of a park. Where is its gaze affixed? On the irretrievable past, 10,000 years gone."

Who says the past is irretrievably gone? Settle the land claims, give back the land, and you'll see some of the irretrievable past retrieved.

It doesn't take much energy to suggest changing a park's name. You cross out one name, write in another, and add a paragraph explaining why in 10 minutes. No doubt the tribe that proposed this still has people working on the "important" issues.

But changes like this are worth a small effort. They serve to correct the fundamental lack of awareness of Natives. Most people don't know or care that Natives are still here. That they have sovereign nations and treaty rights. That they have legitimate grievances that have gone unaddressed. Changing the park name is a reminder of that.

No valid reason to change?

The stereotype here is that Natives have no legitimate reason for seeking the name change. They couldn't possibly want to revive their history so they won't be ignored and invisible any longer. The must be playing politics to simply make white people feel guilty. I.e., to make crybabies like Martin start crying.

Naturally Martin can't or won't address the arguments for changing the park's name. Worldwide publicity for the park resulting in an increase of tourists spending money in the vicinity...who cares? Not if it means changing my sacred relationship with Stanley what's-his-name!

For Indian-haters like Martin and his newfound love of parks, there's no reason not to accept the dual-name solution. Stanley Park (Xwayxway Park)...or Xwayxway Park (Stanley Park). Both sides can call it what they want...Vancouver can reap the publicity benefits...and Martin can wallow in his self-righteous sense of superiority. "We taught those uppity savages a thing or two. If they think they're going to scalp us and throw us to the wolves, they'd better think again."

For more on the subject, see Renaming Mt. Ranier, Restoring Traditional Indian Names, and Renaming British Columbia.

Below:  The Great White Father blesses his Native children. "The best solution to renaming Stanley Park may be a bilingual park sign where the two names fight it out for cultural predominance." (Jon Murray, Vancouver Sun)

Minorities aren't quite American

Michael Le, cofounder of Racebending, makes a good point about why casting matters--because whites consider non-whites to be second-class citizens:

An Open Letter to Racebending.com Detractors

By Michael LeAbout once a month, someone asks me some variant of this question: “Where are you from?”

“San Diego,” I’ll say.

“No,” comes the response. “Where are you REALLY from?”

There are more folks of Asian descent living in the United States than there are people in the entire country of Holland. My English is flawless (insofar as I’m a Californian with zealous overuse of the word “like”). Many of the folks who ask me this question I consider friends. And I’m not saying “Oh, look how racist everyone is.”

What I am saying is that Asian Americans aren’t really thought of as American. One of my close friends has a straight-up Brooklyn accent. He was telling a coworker that he used to serve in the army.

The response?

“Oh, cool. The Chinese army?”

It’s easy to draw comparisons between the Airbender casting and an English actor playing an Irish one, or a Spanish actor playing an Italian actor. But it’s not really the same, and the reason is that Hollywood and media don’t consider whether an actor is Irish or Spanish or English. They think of that actor as “white.” The same is not true of actors who are Asian or Latino, who have to fight over the few roles specifically written for those ethnicities. And a lot of times, even when a role is steeped in Asian culture, even when a role is based on real-life individuals of Asian descent, those roles still go to white actors.Plus some helpful statistics:Over the last ten years, 86% of Paramount’s lead actors have been white. In fact, of the 54 films released or announced for 2010 and on, 83% of Paramount’s leads are white males. From 2000 to 2009, Paramount didn’t produce a single movie starring a Latino, Asian American, or Native American actor. There’s a phrase for numbers like these: glass ceiling.Comment:  I imagine Latinos get the same kind of comments: "How long have you been here? You speak English so well!" I imagine Indians get a different but related set of questions: "I didn't know you people were still alive. Where's your teepee and horse?"

In all these cases, the presumption is that white is the norm and non-whites are somehow less American. Even if they've been here a long, the presumption is that they're not part of the system. They don't live in regular America; they live on a reservation somewhere. They don't pay taxes; they get government handouts. And so forth and so on.

If you ask people, sure, they'll say minorities are the same as everyone else. I.e., the same as "real Americans." But I bet their real feelings would emerge if you took a confidential poll. "Who's more patriotic?" "Who's more religious?" "Who's more likely to defend America?" I'm betting most people would say whites, even though the actual answers probably would be minorities.

Casting reflects pro-white bias

And the relationship to casting? When 86% of films star whites and most of the rest star blacks, other minorities are getting left out. These minorities are essentially invisible in the media, which is why they don't register in people's minds. "Oh, you're Asian? I can't remember the last time I saw an Asian. Where are you from?"

The solution to not seeing minorities is to see them. On the screen and in other media outlets. Given their percentage of the population, minorities should appear 30% of the time. Given how entrenched the "white = American" meme is, it wouldn't hurt to feature minorities 50% of the time or more.

Whether M. Night Shyamalan realizes it or not, I suspect this kind of "white = American" thinking permeates his mind. Why did he decide to make the Inuit-based Water Tribe white? Why did he choose Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz even though the Last Airbender reviews have said they're mediocre at best? Because he was making an American film, not a foreign film, and American films have whites in them. If you want to see a film that isn't "diverse" (i.e., white with minorities added), he might've thought, move to China.

For more on The Last Airbender, see Asians Protest Last Airbender and Dismissing the Pro-Airbender Arguments. For more on minorities as second-class citizens, see Mainstream History = Pro-White Propaganda, Buchanan:  US "Built by White Folks," and How People See Blacks (and Indians).

Below:  Don't worry, it's an American film. It stars a white guy.

Dismissing the pro-Airbender arguments

M. Night Shyamalan has said his casting in The Last Airbender was "color-blind." By that he means transforming the series' Asian and Inuit cultures into mixed-raced cultures where three of the four leaders are white.

Since the whole basis for the series, the reason fans loved it, was its Eastern orientation, this is a stupid reason to change things. Would you take Superman's Krypton or the Lord of the Rings' Middle Earth and make it black or Asian? Why not, if you sincerely believe in color-blind casting?

A couple postings demolish the arguments for Shyamalan's whitewashing of Airbender. These apply to other works of fiction too. For instance, eliminating Indians in the TV show Crusoe or casting Johnny Depp as Tonto.

Is 'The Last Airbender' Racist ... or Just Drawn That Way?

By Gary Susman[A]re Shyamalan's critics being fair? After all, the 'Airbender' characters are just fictional creations in a fantasy world; why can't they be whatever color he chooses? Did anyone complain when African-American Will Smith played James West, a character who was originally white, in his adaptation of the TV series 'Wild Wild West'? Did anyone complain when Michael Clarke Duncan played Kingpin in 'Daredevil,' or when Samuel L. Jackson plays 'Iron Man' character Nick Fury--both characters who originally appeared as white in the pages of Marvel Comics?

Well, context matters. All of those characters are relative ciphers, people who don't have much backstory, and what little backstory they do have isn't especially tied to their race or culture, the way it is for the main characters in 'Airbender.' Also, white people don't have a long history of being underrepresented in Hollywood films, or of being reduced to racial caricatures, or of only getting to play villains.And:The standard Hollywood argument used to be that Asian lead actors (like other actors of color) weren't dependable draws at the box office. This argument hardly seems viable anymore at a time when overseas receipts make up a larger-than-ever portion of a Hollywood movie's revenue stream, or when Will Smith and Jackie Chan are two of the most popular stars both inside and outside of America. Certainly, the relatively unknown stars of 'Airbender' weren't chosen for their proven box office strength; the biggest name in the cast is Patel. Rather, the movie's selling point is its recreation of the fantasy world of the cartoon, a world that had already proved its ability to generate fan excitement.Actually, Nick Fury is black in Marvel's Ultimates universe. I, for one, did object to making the Kingpin black.

As for the The Wild Wild West, it was a decades-old property that no one cared about. Besides, it was so devoid of racial context that casting Smith didn't matter.

Marketing isn't the issue

FacePainting

By Q. Le[W]hile “Prince of Persia” offends with its casting of a A-list white actor for marketing reasons, “The Last Airbender” offends even more with its casting of newcomer/lesser known White actors over equivalent Asian actors to portray its starring Asian characters. The marketing reasons attached to famous actors do not apply here; instead, the marketing assumption is that White actors are more “capable” than Asian actors for pulling in viewers, with a possible secondary assumption in their “superiority” in acting abilities. This overarching assumption is the basis for an institutionalized racism innate to Hollywood’s long, long history of ethnic narratives.And:By openly preferring Caucasian actors over Asian actors in an open casting call, Paramount demonstrated their innate racist assumptions–that a no name White actor was more capable of increasing box office numbers and (perhaps) “acting” than an equivalent Asian actor regardless of the Eastern-based characters in the series. Additionally, by casting Asian actors as secondary or supporting characters, Paramount clearly wished to create an “authentically diverse” universe, one that is distinctly Eastern and non-Western in its roots.I hope that last point is clear. Why cast most of the secondary roles as Asian if The Last Airbender is supposedly "diverse" and "color-blind"? Answer: Shyamalan wanted to have it both ways. He wanted the ease and comfort of casting any white actor who walked in the door as his leads. No painstaking search for Asian or Inuit actors required. But he also wanted Asian actors in the background so he could claim he was true to the source.

Le continues:This assumption is wrong, unfounded and offensive on so many levels. Who is to say a Asian American boy is less articulate in English and capable in acting prowess than a Caucasian boy? Pixar casted Japanese-American Jordan Nagai to voice act Korean-American inspired Russell in their 2009 film “UP,” and it was arguably one of the most commercially and critically acclaimed successes of the year.

And who is to say Asian actors in distinctly Asian narratives are any less capable of drawing in American audiences? Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in 2000 opened the gateways to a Hollywood flood of Hong Kong and Asian cinema that had been established by star Asian actor predecessors such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.More bogus argumentsDefenders claim that this just a fantasy universe, some stating that they saw main protagonist Aang as a “White guy” and that the casting is simply “interpretational.” This again misses the point completely–this is a narrative based explicitly on Asian roots, and for a movie that lavishes in the history and beauty of Eastern culture its casting of White actors in the lead “hero” roles is racist and ethnocentric. “Avatar: The Last Airbender” creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have stated multiple time that the story is Asian inspired–characters, costumes, scenery, everything. They envisioned a fantasy universe that dealt with Asian folklore, with cultural and image aesthetics derived from their respective Eastern roots.The "fantasy" argument misses another key point. In every controversy of this type, the "fantasy" character or world is changed from brown to white. No one ever says, "Hey, let's make our movies more diverse. Let's close our eyes and cast the characters' race at random. The next time we get a Star Wars or Harry Potter or Spider-Man franchise, let's make the main characters minorities."

No, most worlds start out white, and the brown ones often become white. This pattern is evidence of Hollywood's racism.

Would fans of Superman or Lord of the Rings accept their beloved characters becoming black or Asian? No, of course not. Then why should fans of The Last Airbender accept this whitewashing?“Isn’t it time we stopped looking at race?”

NO.

This argument flies from the ends of Shyalaman and Paramount defenders, who believe that in this day and age we should all be colorblind to race and its associated implications.

However, as presented in the PBS award-winning documentary “Unnatural Causes,” it’s been proven that ethnic minorities, compared to White Americans in the same socioeconomic statuses, have higher rates of chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases and heart attacks than their white counterparts.

These higher rates are the result of allostatic load and weathering–the resultant and combined stresses that can result from differing levels of racism that are either explicit or implicit.In other words, minorities suffer tangible, measurable harm as the result of being stereotyped or omitted from the media. The Last Airbender and other productions starring minorities are one way to correct this. When audiences see that minorities can be heroes, leaders, lovers and so forth, they'll stop treating them as separate and unequal races.

For more on casting The Last Airbender, see M. Night vs. The Internet: The Airbender Mash-up and Last Airbender Is "Completely Atrocious." For more on casting issues in general, see Denzel Washington as JFK? and Indians Hold Steady at 0.3%.

Indians missing from newscasts

American Indians no longer in the 18th century

Scholar John Sanchez takes his message on the road

By Rick KearnsIt was at this juncture, as he stated to the audience at the University of Pennsylvania, that he was asked to speak at an elementary school. The talk went well, Sanchez recalled, and the students and teachers applauded. Before he left, a division leader asked him for his address so they could send him a thank you letter. He then asked the school official to conduct a little experiment.

“I would like the teachers to walk into their classrooms tomorrow, give the kids some paper and something to draw with, and ask the students to draw a picture of an American Indian family,” Sanchez continued. “I said to not mention the words ‘modern’ or ‘ancient’ just draw a family.”

The result from the second through fifth graders, he explained, was 120 drawings of people in beads and feathers, “with bare-chested men, some with tomahawks, and some had decapitated heads that had been cut with the tomahawks.

“These are 18th century images, and children in second grade have two major ways of knowing things at that age, one is media, and the second is public schools.”Yes, the media and the schools, in roughly that order. Another expert confirms what some people know and some people deny.

Gee, I wonder where kids got the idea of beheaded Indians. I can't imagine.



I wonder if that was 120 out of 120 drawings. That would be an impressively scary window into what children think.

Note that the drawings didn't just show primitive Indians. They showed primitive Indians decapitating each other. Even though the request was to draw an Indian family. Even though beheadings, if they happened at all, are more than a century out of date.

This would be equivalent to drawing a black family as slaves in chains. Or a Japanese family as samurais and geishas. Or an English family in Victorian-era top hats and corsets.

It would signal a massive amount of stereotypical thinking untouched by our educational system. Imagine the headlines: "Students Perceive Blacks as Slaves." There would be a national outcry.

Yet when the same thing occurs to Indians, we barely notice. Several classes of children think Indians are primitive savages who decapitate each other? Golly, what's wrong with that? Who cares?




Stereotypes and omissions

The article continues:“I also decided to study how the big three networks [ABC, NBC, CBS] frame American Indian stories.” Through detailed research, Sanchez discovered that this group of networks–which he chose as most people would be able to see them without paying for cable–broadcasted a total of 175,889 newscasts between 1990 and 1999. Of those newscasts, 98, or .05 percent were about American Indians.

The majority of that .05 percent used “.… representations of American Indians with 18th century images,” he said.I'd like to know more about that study. What were the stories about? Indian mascots? Dances with Wolves and the Oscars it received? I'd guess casinos, but stories about Indian gaming shouldn't feature stereotypical images.

In any case, consider what Sanchez tells us. During the period in question, Indians were massively underrepresented. Instead of appearing 1% of the time, as their numbers would suggest, they appeared 1/20th as often. They were essentially invisible in the media.

And when they did appear, the appearances were stereotypical a majority of the time. So for every 40 times Indians should've appeared, they appeared only two times. At least one of the two appearances was stereotypical. Real, unstereotypical Indians appeared less than one of 40 times.

Is it any wonder stereotypes dominate our thinking about Indians? And is there any doubt the media is the primary source of these stereotypes? No and no.

For more on the subject, see Students Draw What They Know and Stereotyping by Omission.

Below:  Where are Waldo and the Indians?