The Inconvenient Indian (19 page)

When we crossed the border into Wyoming, we were stopped by the police. A warrior might have leaped into the van in Salt Lake City, but what jumped out was just a frightened twenty-nine-year-old university administrator. I had had some experience with police, but up to that moment, I had never had a gun pointed directly at me. Somehow the cops had known that we were coming. They asked questions about the rally in Salt Lake and about Wounded Knee. We said we were just sightseeing, and the police told us to “shut the fuck up.” This comedy routine went on for most of an hour until a tow truck came along and took the van away.

After that, the police left. I must have seen them go, but I can’t remember them leaving. Suddenly, they were just gone. We waited for a while by the side of that cold road, not sure what we were supposed to do. Then, we all squeezed into the remaining cars and drove home.

For seventy-one days, government forces on the perimeter of Wounded Knee and the Native people inside the village yelled at each other, threatened each other, tried their hand at negotiations, and shot at each other. When the occupation ended, one U.S. Marshal, Lloyd Grimm, had been wounded, paralyzed from the waist down, and two Indians, Frank Clearwater and Lawrence Lamont, had been shot and killed by government snipers.

A great many people fixate on AIM as the first truly militant Native organization in North America. And they believe that AIM was concerned primarily with initiating confrontations and occupations at a national level, activities that would garner media coverage, activities that would give AIM an international profile and Aboriginal concerns a public face.

Both notions are true, and both are false. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Opechancanough, Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, Pontiac, Osceola, and others led resistance actions long before AIM came along, actions that were far more intense and deadly. Nor was AIM the first pan-Indian organization in North America. The Society of American Indians was founded, ironically enough, on Columbus Day in 1911 by many of the Native intellectuals of the time: Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai-Apache), Charles Eastman (Dakota), Thomas L. Sloan (Omaha), Charles E. Dagenett (Peoria), Laura Cornelius (Oneida), and Henry Standing Bear (Oglala Lakota). For the next twenty years it was the main Indian lobby in the United States. In the 1930s the Society faded from public engagement, and the slack wasn’t picked up until 1944, when the National Congress of American Indians was formed. While NCAI has been effective in many of its lobbying efforts—in 1954, it was successful in defeating legislation that would have allowed states to assume criminal and civil jurisdiction over Native people—like the Society of American Indians, it has tended to be conservative and conciliatory. At one point in the ’60s, one part of its working slogan was, “Indians Don’t Demonstrate.”

The “Indians Don’t Demonstrate” sentiment did not endear the National Congress of American Indians to organizations such as
the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) and the Women of All Red Nations (WARN). NIYC was formed in 1961 at a conference in Chicago under the leadership of people such as Clyde Warrior (Ponca) and Mel Tom (Walker River Paiute). WARN was organized in 1974 under the leadership of Lorelei DeCora Means (Minneconjou Lakota), Madonna Thunderhawk (Hunkpapa Lakota), and Phyllis Young (Hunkpapa Lakota).

In many ways, both NIYC and WARN were as proactive on Native issues as AIM. During the 1960s, NIYC was involved with civil rights activities and was on the front lines of the Indian fishing-rights dispute in the Northwest. In the ’70s, the Council assisted tribes who were trying to resist coal and uranium exploration and mining. At the same time, NIYC worked hard to improve access to education and job training and to encourage Native people to participate in the political process on their own terms. WARN was initially formed to support AIM, but they quickly expanded their activities, focusing their energies on Native civil rights and especially the rights of Native women and their families.

Still, for better and for worse, AIM was the organization that got most of the media attention. And it was this organization, and in particular its leaders, who took the brunt of law enforcement.

In Canada, Native political organizations began with the League of Indians of Canada in 1919. The League was founded by F.O. Loft (Mohawk) and was an extension of the American-based Council of Tribes. Its mandate was to encourage Ottawa to recognize Aboriginal land rights and to deal with the various grievances that Native people had with the federal government. While the League may have been a good idea, it wasn’t widely supported by many tribes and was actively discouraged by the government.
In fact, Ottawa’s dislike for such ideas was codified in 1927 when a provision was added to the Indian Act that forbade Native people from forming political organizations. Along with a provision that prohibited Indians from speaking their Aboriginal languages.

Blacks in the United States got the vote in 1870, though the Jim Crow laws in the South made participation in the political process virtually impossible. American women got the vote in 1909. Non-Native Canadian women got the federal vote in 1918. If Blacks and women could vote, Loft reasoned, then it might be time for Natives to have a political organization of their own.

It was an error in logic, of course, but you can see how Loft might have got the notion that equality was in the air.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the League of Indians of Canada didn’t last very long. And given the generous attitudes and encouragements of the government, another Native political organization wouldn’t be attempted until after World War II. Of course, Indian political organizations didn’t disappear just because the government didn’t like them. They went underground. One story I’ve heard is that at the beginning of some of these political meetings, to avoid the possibility of prosecution, the participants would sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” If anyone asked, they could say that they belonged to a Bible study group. I don’t know if this is a true story, but I believe it. More than that, I like it. It makes us sound downright … subversive.

In 1945, Canada saw another short-lived attempt at a national organization, the North American Indian Brotherhood, which failed quickly, partly because it was seen as a parochial (Catholic) organization. Sixteen years later in 1961, the National Indian Council was formed. It was to include Status Indians, non-Status
Indians, and the Métis, but when these three groups failed to work together, the organization was split into two forums, the Native Council of Canada, which was to look after the needs of non-Status Indians and the Métis, and the National Indian Brotherhood, which was to look after the needs of Status Indians in Canada.

The Native Council of Canada didn’t fare much better than the National Indian Council, and in 1983, the Métis separated from the Native Council of Canada and formed their own national organization, the Métis National Council. Even before that, the Inuit, in 1971, organized under the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada. The Inuit had not joined up with either the Native Council of Canada or the National Indian Brotherhood but had bided their time, forming their own organization to look after their specific needs. Then, in 1982, the National Indian Brotherhood broadened its mandate to try to include all Native people, changed its name to the Assembly of First Nations, and made itself over as a more representative national organization, even though, in the end, it really only represented Status Indians.

Not every band in Canada belongs to the Assembly of First Nations, just as not all tribes are members of the National Congress of American Indians. Still, these two organizations, for better and sometimes for worse, are the main players in North American Native politics.

And after all the dust had cleared from this shuffling and restructuring, Native people found themselves in the new millennium with the National Congress of American Indians on the American side of the line and the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the Métis National Council, and the Assembly of First Nations on the Canadian side.

As for AIM, while its influence was potent, its tenure was short-lived. By 1990, most of the leadership of AIM was either in jail or had had their lives destroyed by government sanctions, legal and illegal.

There are many people, Indians as well as Whites, who have little good to say about AIM, who continue to describe the leadership as thugs and criminals. Detractors point to the looting of the BIA building in Washington, D.C., the riot in Gordon, Nebraska, and the seventy-one-day occupation of Wounded Knee in the winter of 1973 as proof that AIM believed in violence and the destruction of property as legitimate responses to injustice.

Over the years, I’ve sat on panel discussions with such well-meaning people. Their default position is always that organizations such as AIM need to have more faith in the laws of the land and the judicial system. It’s a great theory. Simple and elegant. I can see the attraction. It’s the kind of theory that someone unfamiliar with Native history and the integrity of the justice system might consider proposing.

The idea that justice is blind and that everyone is equal before the law reminds me of a traditional story that I’ve heard over the years, in which Coyote tries to convince a band of ducks that he has their best interests at heart. Even if you don’t know the story, the premise alone should make you chuckle.

Besieged by coyotes in Ottawa and Washington, Native people stopped asking for justice and began demanding it. Asking had gotten Indians little more than a paternalistic pat on the head. AIM and other activist groups were tired of begging, tired of being ignored. Were there ways to frame Native concerns other than with demonstrations, confrontations, and, on occasion, violence?

No.

I’m not trying to be provocative here. The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favours the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice system, tribes and bands can be forced through a long, convoluted, and expensive process designed to wear us down and bankrupt our economies.

Be good. Play by our rules. Don’t cause a disturbance.

It’s a fool’s game. AIM and the other Native activist organizations knew this. Hell, any activist organization should know this. It’s not a secret. But governments here and around the world also know that fear and poverty can hold an injustice in place in perpetuity, no matter how flagrant, no matter how obscene.

During the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “If the world’s richest and most powerful nations do not deal with the world’s hardest and most intractable problems, they simply will not be dealt with.”

Turns out he wasn’t being satiric. Which explains, I guess, why global warming, global poverty, and global conflict are all doing so well.

But enough. While pessimism and cynicism have been the salt and pepper in the stew that is Native-White history, there is no reason we can’t change the recipe. We could, if we wanted, put the past behind us. We could say that today is a new day. We could, if we were so inclined, decide to start all over again.

Why don’t we do that? What don’t we give that a try?

TODAY IS A NEW DAY. LET’S ENJOY IT TOGETHER
.

This is a great sentiment. I like it. Maybe it is time for Native people—such as me—to stop complaining about the past. Better yet, maybe it’s time to get rid of the past altogether.

How about 1985?

That was the year my second child was born. Let’s draw a line with that year. I’ll gather up all of North American Indian history prior to 1985, pile it in a field, and set it on fire. Get rid of everything. Massacres, deprivations, depredations, broken treaties, government lies. Wounded Knee, 1890, where 487 well-armed
soldiers of the 7
^th
Cavalry sat on a bluff with Hotchkiss guns and rifles and opened fire on an encampment of 350 Lakota. Depending on whom you choose to believe, somewhere between 200 and 300 Lakota were massacred, most of them women and children.

Forget about it.

Afterwards, Congress awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to twenty of the soldiers who had been involved in the massacre.

Forget about that, too.

Wounded Knee, 1890, can go on the pile. So can Wounded Knee, 1973, along with Louis Riel and the Trail of Tears. The mercury poisonings at Grassy Narrows. Residential schools. Removal. Termination. The slaughter of the buffalo. Kit Carson. John Chivington. Alcatraz. Wild West Shows. B-Westerns. The G-O road in northern California. The Tomahawk Chop. The Wisconsin fishing wars. The 1969 White Paper. Leonard Peltier.

I
would
like to pause for a moment and consider a pamphlet the Interstate Congress for Equal Rights and Responsibilities published.
Are We Giving America Back to the Indians?
consists of a series of questions and answers, a Socratic tour of Indian affairs, that leaves little doubt in the mind of the reader that Indians are a bunch of welfare bums living off generous government handouts, and that tribes are above the law and free to do whatever they want. “How do you define an Indian tribe?” the brochure asks. The answer: “It is a corporate entity run by a few individuals.”

Silly me. I thought that was the general definition of government.

To the question, “Why hasn’t the Federal dole system brought about improvements within our Indian population?” the answer is,
“Because it is plain to close observers that these frequent doles have only increased the Indian people’s ability to exist and sit on the sidelines of activity with plenty of time to ask for more.”

To a question about the possibility of the federal expansion of the Uintah and Ouray reservation in Utah, the folks at the Interstate Congress for Equal Rights and Responsibilities respond that “we certainly don’t want them [Utes] expanding their reservation boundaries unless they buy the land at fair market value from willing sellers. We want the Indians to own and supervise what is theirs, but we do not want them to assume authority over personal property that is not theirs.”