Custer Died For Your Sins Page 10

  Thus go the anthropological wars, testing whether this school or that school can endure longest. And the battlefields, unfortunately, are the lives of Indian people.

  You may be curious as to why the anthropologist never carries a writing instrument. He never makes a mark because he ALREADY KNOWS what he is going to find. He need not record anything except his daily expenses for the audit, for the anthro found his answer in the books he read the winter before. No, the anthropologist is only out on the reservations to VERIFY what he has suspected all along—Indians are a very quaint people who bear watching.

  The anthro is usually devoted to PURE RESEARCH. Pure research is a body of knowledge absolutely devoid of useful application and incapable of meaningful digestion. Pure research is an abstraction of scholarly suspicions concerning some obscure theory originally expounded in pre-Revolutionary days and systematically checked each summer since then. A 1969 thesis restating a proposition of 1773 complete with footnotes to all material published between 1773 and 1969 is pure research.

  There are, however, anthropologists who are not as clever at collecting footnotes. They depend upon their field observations and write long adventurous narratives in which their personal observations are used to verify their suspicions. Their reports, books, and articles are called APPLIED RESEARCH. The difference, then, between Pure and Applied research is primarily one of footnotes. Pure has many footnotes, Applied has few footnotes. Relevancy to subject matter is not discussed in polite company.

  Anthropologists came to Indian country only after the tribes had agreed to live on reservations and had given up their warlike ways. Had the tribes been given a choice of fighting the cavalry or the anthropologists, there is little doubt as to who they would have chosen. In a crisis situation men always attack the biggest threat to their existence. A warrior killed in battle could always go to the Happy Hunting Grounds. But where does an Indian laid low by an anthro go? To the library?

  Behind each successful man stands a woman and behind each policy and program with which Indians are plagued, if traced completely back to its origin, stands the anthropologist.

  The fundamental thesis of the anthropologist is that people are objects for observation, people are then considered objects for experimentation, for manipulation, and for eventual extinction. The anthropologist thus furnishes the justification for treating Indian people like so many chessmen available for anyone to play with.

  The massive volume of useless knowledge produced by anthropologists attempting to capture real Indians in a network of theories has contributed substantially to the invisibility of Indian people today. After all, who can conceive of a food-gathering, berry-picking, semi-nomadic, fire-worshiping, high-plains-and-mountain-dwelling, horse-riding, canoe-toting, bead-using, pottery-making, ribbon-coveting, wickiup-sheltered people who began flourishing when Alfred Frump mentioned them in 1803 in his great work on Indians entitled Our Feathered Friends as real?

  Not even Indians can relate themselves to this type of creature who, to anthropologists, is the “real” Indian. Indian people begin to feel that they are merely shadows of a mythical super-Indian. Many anthros spare no expense to reinforce this sense of inadequacy in order to further support their influence over Indian people.

  In Washington, bureaucrats and Congressmen are outraged to discover that this “berry-picking food gatherer” has not entered the mainstream of American society. Programs begin to shift their ideological orientation to cover the missing aspect which allowed the berry picker to “flourish.” Programs and the people they serve thus often have a hidden area of misunderstanding which neither administrators nor recipients realize.

  Over the years anthropologists have succeeded in burying Indian communities so completely beneath the mass of irrelevant information that the total impact of the scholarly community on Indian people has become one of simple authority. Many Indians have come to parrot the ideas of anthropologists because it appears that the anthropologists know everything about Indian communities. Thus many ideas that pass for Indian thinking are in reality theories originally advanced by anthropologists and echoed by Indian people in an attempt to communicate the real situation.

  Since 1955 there have been a number of workshops conducted in Indian country as a device for training “young Indian leaders.” Churches, white Indian-interest groups, colleges, and finally, poverty programs have each gone the workshop route as the most feasible means for introducing new ideas into younger Indians so as to create “leaders.”

  The tragic nature of the workshops is apparent when one examines their history. One core group of anthropologists, helpful in 1955 and succeeding years, has institutionalized the workshop and the courses taught in it. Trudging valiantly from workshop to workshop, from state to state, college to college, tribe to tribe, area to area, these noble spirits have served as the catalyst for the creation of workshops which are identical in purpose and content and often in the student body itself.

  The anthropological message to young Indians has not varied a jot or tittle in ten years. It is the same message these anthros learned as fuzzy-cheeked graduate students in the post-war years—Indians are a folk people, whites are an urban people, and never the twain shall meet.

  Derived from this basic premise have been such sterling insights as Indians are between two cultures, Indians are bicultural, Indians have lost their identity, and Indians are warriors. These insights, propounded every year with deadening regularity and an overtone of Sinaitic authority, have come to occupy a key block in the development of young Indian people. For these slogans have come to be excuses for Indian failures. They are crutches by which young Indians have avoided the arduous task of thinking out the implications of the status of Indian people in the modern world.

  Indian Affairs today suffers from an intellectual stagnation that is astounding. Creative thought is sparse. Where the younger black students were the trigger to the Civil Rights movements with sit-ins in the South, young Indians have become unwitting missionaries spreading ancient anthropological doctrines which hardly relate to either anthropology or to Indians. The young blacks invented Black Power and pushed the whole society to consider the implications of discrimination which in turn created racial nationalism. Young Indians have barely been able to parody some black slogans and have created none of their own.

  If there is one single cause which has importance today for Indian people, it is tribalism. But creation of modern tribalism has been stifled by the ready acceptance of the “Indians-are-a-folk-people” premise of the anthropologists. Creative thought in Indian Affairs has not, therefore, come from younger Indians. Rather it has come from the generation of Indians supposedly brainwashed by government schools and derided as “puppets” of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

  Because other groups have been spurred on by their younger generation, Indians have come to believe that through education a new generation of leaders will arise to solve the pressing contemporary problems. Tribal leaders have been taught to accept this thesis by the scholarly community in its annual invasion of the reservations. Bureau of Indian Affairs educators harp continually on this theme. Wherever authority raises its head in Indian country, this thesis is its message.

  The facts prove the opposite, however. Relatively untouched by anthropologists, educators, and scholars are the Apache tribes of the Southwest. The Mescalero, San Carlos, White Mountain, and Jicarilla Apaches have very few young people in college compared with other tribes. They have even fewer people in the annual workshop orgy during the summers. If ever there was a distinction between folk and urban, this group of Indians characterizes the revered anthropological gulf.

  Concern among the Apaches is, however, tribal. There is little sense of a “lost identity.” Apaches could not care less about the anthropological dilemmas that worry other tribes. Instead they continue to work on the massive plans for development which they themselves have created. Tribal identity is assumed, not defined, by the reservation people. Fre
edom to choose from a wide variety of paths of progress is a characteristic of the Apaches; they don’t worry about what type of Indianism is “real.” Above all, they cannot be ego-fed by abstract theories and hence unwittingly manipulated.

  With many young people from other tribes the situation is quite different. Some young Indians attend workshops over and over again. Folk theories pronounced by authoritative anthropologists become opportunities to escape responsibility. If, by definition, the Indian is hopelessly caught between two cultures, why struggle? Why not blame all one’s lack of success on this tremendous gulf between two opposing cultures? Workshops have become, therefore, summer retreats for non-thought rather than strategy sessions for leadership enhancement.

  Herein lies the Indian sin against the anthropologist. Only those anthropologists who appear to boost Indian ego and expound theories dear to the hearts of workshop Indians are invited to teach at workshops. They become human recordings of social confusion which are played and replayed each summer to the delight of people who refuse to move on into the real world.

  The workshop anthro is thus a unique creature, partially self-created and partially supported by the refusal of Indian young people to consider their problems in their own context. The normal process of maturing has been confused with cultural difference. So maturation is cast aside in favor of cult recitation of great truths which appear to explain the immaturity of young people.

  While the anthro is, in a very real sense, the victim of the Indians, he should nevertheless recognize the role he has been asked to play and refuse to play it. Instead, the temptation to appear relevant to a generation of young Indians has clouded his sense of proportion. Workshop anthros often ask Indians of tender age to give their authoritative answers to problems which an entire generation of Indians is just now beginning to solve. Thus, where the answer to reservation health problems may be adequate housing in areas where there has never been adequate housing, young Indians are shaped in their thinking processes to consider vague doctrines on the nature of man and his society.

  It is very unsettling for a teen-age Indian to become an instant authority equal in status with the Ph.D. interrogating him. Yet the very human desire is to play that game every summer, for the status acquired in the game is heady. And as according to current rules of the game, answers can only be given in vocabulary created by the Ph.D., the entire leadership-training process internalizes itself and has no outlet beyond the immediate group. Real problems, superimposed upon the ordinary problems of maturing, thus become insoluble burdens that crush people of great leadership potential.

  Let us take some specific examples. One workshop discussed the thesis that Indians were in a terrible crisis. They were, in the words of friendly anthro guides, BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. People between two worlds, the students were told, DRANK. For the anthropologists, it was a valid explanation of drinking on the reservation. For the young Indians, it was an authoritative definition of their role as Indians. Real Indians, they began to think, drank and their task was to become real Indians for only in that way could they re-create the glories of the past.

  So they DRANK.

  I lost some good friends who DRANK too much.

  Abstract theories create abstract action. Lumping together the variety of tribal problems and seeking the demonic principle at work which is destroying Indian people may be intellectually satisfying. But it does not change the real situation. By concentrating on great abstractions, anthropologists have unintentionally removed many young Indians from the world in which problems are solved to the lands of makebelieve.

  Regardless of theory, the Pyramid Lake Paiutes and the Gila River Pima Maricopas are poor because they have been systematically cheated out of their water rights, and on desert reservations water is the most important single factor in life. No matter how many worlds Indians straddle, the Plains Indians have an inadequate land base that continues to shrink because of land sales. Straddling worlds is irrelevant to straddling small pieces of land and trying to earn a living.

  Along the Missouri River the Sioux used to live in comparative peace and harmony. Although the allotments were small, families were able to achieve a fair standard of living through a combination of gardening and livestock raising and supplemental work. Little cash income was required because the basic necessities of food, shelter, and community life were provided.

  After World War II anthropologists came to call. They were horrified that the Indians didn’t carry on their old customs such as dancing, feasts, and giveaways. In fact, the people did keep up a substantial number of customs. But these customs had been transposed into church gatherings, participation in the county fair, and tribal celebrations, particularly fairs and rodeos.

  The people did Indian dances. BUT THEY DIDN’T DO THEM ALL THE TIME.

  Suddenly the Sioux were presented with an authority figure who bemoaned the fact that whenever he visited the reservations the Sioux were not out dancing in the manner of their ancestors. In a real sense, they were not real.

  Today the summers are taken up with one great orgy of dancing and celebrating as each small community of Indians sponsors a weekend pow-wow for the people in the surrounding communities. Gone are the little gardens which used to provide fresh vegetables in the summer and canned goods in the winter. Gone are the chickens which provided eggs and Sunday dinner. In the winter the situation becomes critical for families who spent the summer dancing. While the poverty programs have done much to counteract the situation, few Indians recognize that the condition was artificial from start to finish. The people were innocently led astray and even the anthropologists did not realize what had happened.

  Another beautiful example of nonsensical scholarly dribble that has had a great effect on Indians’ lives was an event that happened in the summer of 1968. A proposal was written to solve the desperate credit needs of reservation communities. Without a sufficient amount of capital to begin small businesses, no area can achieve economic stability. Tribes had sought a credit bill in Congress for ten years without any noticeable movement in the two Interior committees.

  So a scheme was devised in a place far from Indian country to make use of existing funds in the community to generate credit within the reservation for use by the people. The basic document stated that like all undeveloped areas, Indian reservations have a great deal of HOARDED wealth. The trick, according to this group of experts, was to gain the Indians’ confidence, get them to bring their hoarded wealth from hiding, and make them invest that wealth in reservation banks, mutual funds, and small businesses.

  I could not believe the proposition myself. I had visited a great many reservations and seen the abject poverty, most of its cause directly attributed to the refusal by Congress to provide credit or to bureaucratic ineptness. I had served on the Board of Inquiry into Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States and had been shaken at what we had found, not only in Indian reservations, but in rural America generally. If there was hoarded wealth on those reservations, it was very well hidden!

  Yet people I talked with concerning the idea were pretty much convinced that the authors of the document had hit the nail on the head. Some yearned to get the program going to see what could be done on specific reservations. One reservation suggested had had employment only once before in this century. That was during the Depression, when CCC camps were put up on the reservation and conservation was used to provide employment for the people. That era lasted about three or four years and then World War II forced cancellation of the camps.

  I could not be convinced that wages earned in the CCC camps had been carefully preserved through the great blizzard of 1949, through the Korean War, through the prosperous days of the 1950’s, through the Vietnam struggle, and were now gathering mildew in their hiding places beneath the dirt floors of the log cabins on the reservation. The proposal was designed for the days of Silas Marner in merry old England, when the industrial revolution was just beginning to reach into the countryside.

&
nbsp; Hopefully the project has been dropped. To be kindly, it was unrealistic from the very inception. But in my mind’s eye I can still visualize what the scene would be as one of its proponents described it to me.

  From every nook and cranny, from every butte and mesa, Indians came swarming into Pine Ridge, South Dakota. In wagons and old cars they came, afoot and astride their ponies. Into the agency they moved, a relentless stream of investors. At a table sat two accountants and a distinguished economist, recording each family’s investment in a massive bank deposit book. Gradually the little leather pouches were piled higher and higher as thousands of dollars of coin of the realm once again greeted the sun.

  Rare coin collectors stood off to the side, looking for large greenbacks, Spanish doubloons, and Greek drachmas, hidden since pre-Colonial times. Occasionally a Viking coin, evidence of Leif Ericson’s tourist activities, came to the table, greeted by opposing scholars as authentic and counterfeit as ideology dictated. With pleased looks the economists, anthropologists, and other scholars stood observing the scene. At last, they chortled, Indians were in the mainstream of American life.

  I do not place much faith in well-footnoted proposals.

  One of the wildest theories, to my way of thinking, has been advocated by some very dear friends of mine. Since we cuss and discuss the theory with monotonous regularity, I feel free to outline my side of the controversy. Their side has had the benefit of publication in scholarly journals for years.

  The Oglala Sioux are perhaps the most famous of the Sioux bands. Among their past leaders were Red Cloud, the only Indian who ever defeated the United States in a war, and Crazy Horse, most revered of the Sioux war chiefs. The Oglala were, and perhaps still are, the meanest group of Indians ever assembled. They would take after a cavalry troop just to see if their bow strings were taut enough.

  After they had settled on the reservation, the Oglalas made a fairly smooth transition to the new life. They had good herds of cattle, they settled along the numerous creeks that cross the reservation, and they created a very strong community spirit. The Episcopalians and the Roman Catholics had the missionary franchise on the reservation and the tribe was pretty evenly split between the two. In the Episcopal church, at least, the congregations were fairly self-governing and stable.