Progressive Five-0

A followup note to my previous posting on Hawaii Five-0. In one episode, a woman journalist interrogates McGarrett about not having any women on his staff. In another, a girl helping an IRA terrorist notes that she was at Wounded Knee, where she smuggled supplies to the Indians.

Hmm. Is that the only mention of the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee to appear on non-news network TV? Could be.

The point is that Hawaii Five-0 was consciously progressive, not just unconsciously progressive. Not bad for a 1970s cop show. Sure, it was still a white male fantasy, but at least it questioned itself sometimes.

When it comes to Indians, today's TV shows could stand to be so progressive. Instead, we get a mix of the good (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Wonderfalls, King of the Hill) and the not-so-good (Numb3rs, LAX, Smallville). I doubt the rate of stereotyping has decreased much since I began keeping track in the 1990s.

Five years later....

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, it's good to remember the Native perspective on terrorism:

Native Intelligence:  The Long View

The suicide stereotype

Work just begins to stem Indian suicidesAs I listened to both Dorgan and Eagle Shield, I kept thinking of my yearly stay on the reservation. I keep thinking about the Lakota people who participate in the Sundance ceremony. They are strong, spiritual people who provide guidance to their children and work to help others.

Yet, Standing Rock won't be known for their spiritual leaders and the tenacious people who survived the uprooting and devastation of late 1800s and early 1900s. They risk being stereotyped with terms such as suicide, self-destructive and mentally ill because of the public exposure of the issue.

So, I understand why some of the tribal leaders hesitated to expose the suicides and suicide attempts to the public eye. It is another stereotype that we will have to counter, Eagle Shield said; Indian people have suicide as an option to life, the public will say.

Go, Redskins (the name, not the team)

Go RedskinsWe take team owner Daniel M. Snyder at his word that he sees the nickname as an honor, and we appreciate how hard it is to abandon well-loved traditions. By the same token, it really is not up to the offender to characterize the nature of the offense. We can't imagine Mr. Snyder, or anyone else for that matter, sitting in a room of Native Americans and referring to them as Redskins. Think about the recent uproar caused by the use of "macaca," a word whose meaning was never really defined.

While the Redskins--and the rest of professional sports--have dug in their heels, a nationwide movement has seen hundreds of schools and minor league professional clubs get rid of Indian team names--with no adverse consequences. A local formula for success can be seen in the example set by Abe Pollin when, bothered by the high D.C. murder rate, he changed the name of his basketball team from Bullets to Wizards in 1997.

Revisionist Westerns

The Decline of Westerns in the 80sDirector Sam Fuller's revisionist, low-budget B-film Run of the Arrow (1957), often noted as similar to Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990) many years later, starred Rod Steiger as a disheartened ex-Confederate soldier who journeyed west, endured a torturous 'run of the arrow' challenge, joined a Sioux Indian tribe, and fell in love with an Indian maiden named Yellow Moccasin (Sarita Montiel, with her voice dubbed by Angie Dickinson). John Ford's redemptive last western, Cheyenne Autumn (1964) with Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker, dealt with the destruction of the Native-Americans, by portraying the forced, late 1880s westward exodus of Cheyenne Indians from Oklahoma to their tribal lands in Wyoming.

Dustin Hoffman portrayed Jack Crabb--the sole, white, 121 year-old survivor of Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of Little Big Horn in Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970), a fable about the expansion of the Old West from an adaptation of Thomas Berger's novel. [According to Guinness World Records, the greatest age span portrayed by a movie actor, from 17 to 121, was by 33-year old Hoffman for this role.] Paralleling the Vietnam tragedy, the film demythologized the past and revealed the genocidal atrocities visited upon ethnic Indians by US forces.

Big money for Native book

Newsweek Interview:  Charles Frazier AuthorIn "Thirteen Moons," Frazier returns with a mesmerizing tale about a white man fighting to save a Cherokee tribe's home and who for days, spoke nothing but Cherokee. By April 2002, Frazier had already done some legwork on the book, but knew what he'd written was too woolly to show prospective publishers. Instead, he wrote a one-page proposal for "Thirteen Moons" before coffee one morning. Random House paid $8.25 million for it, and producer Scott Rudin ponied up $3 million for the movie rights.

Frazier tells Newsweek about a trip to Cherokee, North Carolina, "I came over a couple of weeks ago to meet with Chief Hicks and to say, 'I grew up here. I grew up on land that had been your land. I remember finding arrowheads in cornfields as a kid.' What I was interested in was not telling their story, but the story of this piece of country, that transition from their people to my people. I just said, 'I hope this book will be seen as the work of a good neighbor'." Frazier later had a meeting about a translation project he's funding to render portions of the novel into Cherokee, Part of an initiative to keep the language alive.

Indians and poor self-esteem

It's unfortunately easy to find evidence that Indians had or have a worse self-image than other people (on average). For instance:

Fighting Alcohol and Substance Abuse Among American Indian and Alaskan Native YouthIndian program specialists nationwide can cite various examples, including test results, that show tribal youth demonstrate lower self-confidence than the population at large.The Spatial Dispersion of Native Americans in Urban AreasHistorically, Native Americans, in particular mixed-bloods, denied their heritage and refused to identify themselves as such. This was largely due to the negative self-image imposed on Indian children during the boarding school period and the discrimination that they suffered from through most of the twentieth century.Responsible Use of the Native American ThemeUsing Indians as mascots, dressing up and playing Indian, and portraying an Indian inaccurately shapes images and reinforces stereotypes. Native Americans are insulted and for some, this negatively affects their self-image or self-esteem. "It’s hard to have self-respect if you believe others don’t respect you."Southern California Indian Center, Inc.Indian mascots are harmful to all children because they promote negative self-image in Native youth and inaccurate information and stereotypes to non-Native youth.Native American Culture and LanguageUpon leaving high school. I had a poor self-image as a Native American; I felt strongly that my own people were ashamed of and embarrassed by me; and the Bilaganas (Anglos) were the only ones who understood my limitation and were accepting of me. I didn't feel comfortable at home.This is one reason I've taken up the fight against racism and stereotyping. See The Harm of Native Stereotyping:  Facts and Evidence for more on the subject--much more.

Nonfiction Dances with Wolves

From the LA Times, 9/9/06:

Looking at Indian Wars with the present in mindA coffee-table book on the Indian Wars of 1854 to 1890?

Surely Michael Blake couldn't have had that in mind when he wrote his first nonfiction work, "Indian Yell," which is clearly intended to bring to a new generation the message of "Dances With Wolves." (Blake wrote the novel, then the screenplay for the Kevin Costner movie.) Loaded terms such as "insurgency" in the subtitle and "shock and awe" in a chapter heading link the current war in Iraq with America's earlier campaigns to impose its will by force and deceit on native peoples it didn't bother to understand.

"The 'greatest nation on Earth' … adopted the actions it took toward American Indians in the 19th century as a model of behavior toward people of different beliefs in the 20th century and beyond," Blake declares. After the fighting was over—and Blake doesn't hesitate to use the word "genocide," even when discussing the slaughter of the buffalo—the United States treated Native Americans with "aggressive and premeditated neglect," on the assumption that they would eventually "become extinct."

Indians at the opera

History in the MakingBeginning with X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, in 1986, and continuing with Under the Double Moon (1989), Tania (1992) and Amistad (1997), Anthony Davis has created dynamic operas that reflect American life and culture.

In March 2007, as the centerpiece of its forty-ninth season, Opera Omaha will present the world premiere of Davis’s fifth opera, Wakonda’s Dream. The opera is a meditation on the 1879 trial of Ponca Indian Chief Standing Bear. It was a landmark case: the Poncas had been ordered off their land near Omaha and removed to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). When the land that the government had given them proved useless—among other things, they were not able to support themselves by hunting—Chief Standing Bear and his followers returned to Nebraska to reclaim their land. They were arrested, jailed and abused but eventually went to court to try to win their right to return to their home. The trial was a significant event in U.S. history, because the verdict stated for the first time in American jurisprudence that Indians were “persons within the meaning of the law” and therefore had the rights of citizenship. It allowed Chief Standing Bear to reside in the original Ponca territory and to bury his son there.

Different eras, same results

Help black women find self-esteemIn the 1940s, Dr. Kenneth Clark performed an experiment to quantify the degree of black self-esteem using black and white dolls. He conclusively showed that most black kids felt white dolls were better than black, preferring to play with the white dolls. Since, like the "inferior black dolls," they too were black, they felt they were "bad." Clark concluded that "prejudice, discrimination and segregation" caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred.

More recently, 17-year-old Kiri Davis of Harlem wanted to prove that we have liberated ourselves from racism's demons of self-hate and low self-esteem.

So Davis--a student at Manhattan's Urban Academy who participates in the Reel Works Teen Filmmaking program, a free after-school program supported by HBO--directed and produced an 8-minute documentary, "A Girl Like Me." In it, Davis showed 21 girls identical dolls, distinguished only by their color: black and white. Fifteen girls, all 5 years old, thought black dolls were "bad" while white dolls were "nice." The little girls identified with the "bad" black dolls.Comment:  These experiments show how racism and stereotyping affect women and minorities, including Indians.

Mandans = Welshmen?

The Straight Dope®I would love to believe the legends about the Mandan Indians, reputed to have descended from an ill-fated colony of Welshmen who arrived in ships in the 1100s. Their leader was a prince named Madoc. Are you going to burst my bubble? Or is there something to this? --Bill Morse, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

Welsh Indians? Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, and Cochise? Sorry, ain't seeing it, and I have a hard time imagining anybody ever could. But some did. The Madoc-Mandan yarn is one of many far-fetched stories about European or even extraterrestrial origins for indigenous American culture, the idea evidently being that actual Native Americans were too backward to have come up with this stuff on their own. The Welsh angle is distinguished mainly by its persistence, having bubbled up like swamp gas for more than 400 years. I have no illusions about being able to stamp it out now. But it lacks any basis in fact.

"Squaw" making a comeback?

County commissioners seek to restore 'squaw' nameCounty commissioners want to restore the name "squaw" to 14 places in Piscataquis County more than six years after a state law was passed requiring that mountains, waterways and other public places called "squaw" or "squa" be renamed.

The Piscataquis County commissioners sent a letter last month to Gov. John Baldacci asking to change the places in the county that were renamed "moose" back to their original name of "squaw."

More reviews of Journals of Knud Rasmussen

Hollywood ReporterIt's unlikely to connect with as wide an art-film audience as "Atanarjuat," but does have crossover appeal for hardcore fans of ethnographic documentary.Screen Daily[W]hile it avoids the bane of the “terrible twos,” their second work nevertheless lacks the novelty and cohesion of the production that brought them to prominence.

Hitler loved Aryan super-cowboy

Most people aren't aware that Germans love cowboys and Indians. Salon (11/27/02) explains how this love affair came about:German obsession with the American frontier exploded in 1896 when huge crowds were drawn to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which toured Europe. At about the same time, an eccentric German schoolteacher wrote a series of pulp novels about the exploits of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. The Apache warrior and his German frontiersman blood-brother roamed the Great Plains fighting bears, rattlesnakes and the injustices of land-hungry pioneers. The author, Karl May, penned some of his work while in prison for fraud and never visited the West. Although the details are often comical (Apaches living in pueblos?), more than 100 million copies of his books have been sold, according to the Karl May Museum. His fans included Adolf Hitler, Herman Hesse and Albert Einstein. The characters are still so popular that some Germans name their children Winnetou.

"Historically, many Germans have been captivated by American culture, from the lore of the West to jazz to modern methods of production," said Remy. "But there's also a more ominous explanation. I think it represents the long-standing German fascination with and fear of frontiers. There may be a parallel between the conquest of the West and its sometimes violent clash of cultures and Germany's drive for expansion and a 'new order' in the first half of the 20th century."When I wrote an essay titled Adolf Hitler:  A True American, I noted that Hitler was familiar with US history. I also quoted someone who noted Hitler's love of Karl May's books. To me the implication was obvious: the American holocaust at least partially inspired the Holocaust.

Unfortunately for me, a Dutch defender of Karl May and Winnetou wrote to say I was wrong. Unfortunately for him, I was right. I read the first book in the series to confirm that yes, May's message was one of Aryan supremacy.

We've been debating this subject off and on since July 2001. The latest installments are now online. This argument is long and perhaps tedious, but if you want to check it out, it's here.

PEACE PARTY vs. Toxic Waste

Since someone asked, here's a short story we did for the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management in 2004. You can see both the art and the script online.

Native hairstyle spreads

From the Chicago Tribune, 9/7/06:

Cutting edge for urban chic The mohawk, a solitary strip of upright hair down the middle of the scalp, has long been associated with punk rockers and other counterculture types.

But recently the hairstyle has popped up on young and old men and women in the African-American community. New incarnations vary as widely as their fans: The mohawk can be shaped with gel, shaved into a tidy patch or braided and pinned in place.

Wicked Witch = wicked Indian?

Thomas St. John:  Indian-Hating in 'The Wizard of Oz'The Wicked Witch of the West is illustrated in the 1900 first edition as a pickaninny, with beribboned, braided pigtails extended comically. Baum repeats the word "brown" in describing her. But this symbol's real historic depth lies in the earlier Puritans' confounding of European witches with the equally heathen American Indians.

The orphan Dorothy's violent removal from Kansas civilization, her search for secret and magical cures for her friends, her capture, enslavement to an evil figure—and the killing of this figure that is forced on her—all these themes Baum takes from the already two hundred year old tradition of the Indian captivity narrative which stoked the fires of Indian-hating and its hope of "redemption through violence."For more on the story, see The Indian-Oz Connection.

Journals of Knud Rasmussen debuts

Latest by Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk opens 2006 Toronto film festivalOn Thursday, the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival opens with that promised feature, "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen," a $6.3 million co-production with Denmark based on real accounts by 1920s Danish explorer Rasmussen. His expedition to the Canadian north brought an anthropologist who wanted to record details of a pure native culture that would soon disappear in the face of white civilization and Christianity.

But while based on the chronicles of that expedition, the film plays out from the Inuit perspective, with many of the same aboriginal actors who appeared in "Atanarjuat", again speaking in their native Inuktitut, with subtitles.For a review of the movie, see A Brave Opening Choice.

Zombies, shoe fetishes, and Columbus

From NativeVue.org:

AIFI Tribal Touring Program Gives a Voice (and Camera) to Native YouthZombies. Shoe Fetishes. Suicide. Love. Christopher Columbus. Cultural identity. The Fairy Lunch Lady.

These are the stories being told from Native youth across the country this summer.

For ten days, The American Indian Film Institute's (AIFI), Tribal Touring Program provided Native teens and young adults across the United States with the latest media technology to write, direct and produce their untold stories.

Tom-toms over Hard Rock Casino

Cartoon shows Seminole as drum-beating, half-naked savage