Halito! Chim Achukma? (Hello, how are you?)
It’s
Native American Heritage Month again. I would like to discuss something
that’s been endeared to me for some time. I seek transparency, and I do
not desire to be offensive in any way, but I’m on deck, and it’s my
turn to bat.
This concerns school curriculums and at least offering ‘Native American’ studies as an elective.
We
seldom hear anything about Native American history, and after all, we
are Oklahoma and home to 69 tribes who were displaced here in the 1800s.
The Oklahoma History course in school only skims the surface of Native
studies, and, after all, with its indigenous history, no other state
compares to Oklahoma.
There’s been a sudden urgency to actualize
how Native American history should be taught in our schools. For a
start, why not tell the truth instead of withholding, editing, and
sanitizing it? In layman‘s terms, “tell it like it is.”.
We’re
talking transparency here. It’s necessary to open ‘Pandora’s box’ and
discuss land theft (I call it ‘land grab’), government corruption,
hundreds of broken treaties, rape, human trafficking, taking children
from parents and sending them far away, and even scalping men, women,
and children and collecting ‘bounties’ for scalps.
The prestigious
yet dishonest Texas Rangers even murdered Mexican people scalped them,
and sold scalps as being Indians. Rangers called it glory, and they
answered to nobody.
For many years, our history books have failed
miserably regarding Indigenous history. Three years ago, Kim and I were
in West Point, New York, and I finally found an 8’ x 8’ section in the
museum basement devoted to ‘Indian Wars,’ which referenced it as ‘Indian
Uprising.’ I might also add that Native people should never be referred
to as ‘renegades’ when referencing people who were fighting for their
land, families, and the honor of being the true and quintessential
Americans. Unfortunately, they have been... on the wrong side of
history.
Such was the case when Indigenous people fought on what I call the ‘wrong side of history.’
Indigenous
people have, to a large extent, wandered anonymously in the education
of America’s youth. Take Native Chiefs, for example.
Where are
they now? The same place they’ve always been—lost in the annals of
American history. Their names are without content. Their voices are
silent. A rightful place in American history has not been reserved for
them. A desecration of sorts, to me anyway. Or, just…‘On the wrong side
of history.’
American history has been ‘all in’ when focused on such
leaders as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (both slave owners),
Douglass ‘Doug-Out’ MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. Grant, and
Andrew Jackson. Grant and Jackson committed their share of genocide.
Jackson championed the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
The U.S.
Supreme Court said he couldn’t do that, but he said, “Just watch.” And,
thus, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles had all
their lands dispossessed and were driven like animals to Oklahoma, and
nobody spoke up for them. I ask, Where was the ‘Rule of Law’ in our
Constitution, which says, ”No one is above the law?“ They were more or
less an afterthought as the U.S. government continued the seizure of
more and more ‘Indian land’ while being…‘On the wrong side of history.’
Meanwhile,
little credit has been given to Chief Seattle, Chief Joseph, Sitting
Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Quanah Parker, Black Kettle, Geronimo,
Osceola, Tishomingo and Pushmataha, to name a few. These Indigenous
leaders have been ‘all out’, not ‘all in.’
How brilliant and
courageous these leaders were to have withstood genocide and kept their
people together against insurmountable odds while being, in the truest
sense, Americans. They were incredible military leaders who often made a
mockery out of the U.S. Army (always under-reported). Truth: when the
U.S. Cavalry won a battle, it was called a victory, but when the Indians
won, it was called a massacre. Once again...‘On the wrong side of
history’.
They didn’t hold PhDs, graduate from Harvard, nor were
they in America’s Who’s Who, or come from affluent families back east.
They shared a relationship with the land and were willing to die for it.
This was something that Euro-Americans could never understand. Nobody
could place a price on the land, nor could you fence it. The land was a
part of the Native, and the Native was a part of the land, inseparable.
One and the same, and settlers and the U.S. government both wanted it.
We’re
talking blatant, unadulterated land theft, and treaties were like New
Year’s diets, not worth the paper they were written on. This was a
one-sided, non-negotiable act and was never a ‘Robin Hood’ type. In
every instance, he was doomed for defeat, and nobody in our illustrious
history has anyone been the consummate underdog such as He. He was
outmanned, outgunned, but never outfought. For almost three centuries,
he held that distinction while also being…‘On the wrong side of
history.’
Most often, the cry of settlers was, “What do they want with all that land? They don’t need all that land.”
Even
John Wayne was quoted, “I don’t feel wrong about taking this great
country from them. There were great numbers of settlers who needed that
land, and Indians were selfishly keeping it for themselves.” Okay, let’s
say that John Wayne was eating at the Cattlemen’s Steakhouse in OKC.
He’s served a huge 16-ounce ribeye, and I casually walk over, cut over
half of it, put it on my plate, and say, ‘Sorry Duke, but you don’t need
all that steak.’”
I have very few fears. One of those is that the
history of Native America and its many incomparable leaders will be a
thing of the past if we don’t salvage and recover the remnants of what’s
already been lost. You get beyond two hundred years, and the
authenticity of history can be a matter of conjecture and a ‘crap
shoot’. This can be especially so if you happen to be...‘On the wrong
side of history.’
I could elaborate more, but I feel we have a
moral and ethical obligation to tell the other side of a people who were
and are the ‘First Americans’. It’s an evolving door now, and many
native people prefer to be called by their tribal name, and the word
‘Indian’ has definitely fallen out of favor because the name is
inaccurate since it was given by Europeans who thought they had landed
in ‘India’. Just consider what we would have been called had Europeans
been searching for China.
‘Chi pisa la chike,’ — Alan Simpson
ADA NEWS: https://www.theadanews.com/opinion/wrong-side-of-history/article_9e2c6546-9df0-11ef-8507-438a9819f94c.html
