As part of my thesis, which deals with Native American tribes' involvement in wolf reintroduction, my thesis committee chair recommended that I read some books by a prominent Native American author named Vine Deloria. I've started with the one that my committee chair most highly recommended: God Is Red.
I'm only two chapters in and I can already see why it came so highly recommended. This book goes into an explanation of Native American religion, which translates into an explanation of their outlook on the world. I haven't gotten quite far enough to express a whole lot about that, I'll probably post again when I have, but the first couple chapters have basically been dealing with history, so it's serendipitious that Fanaile Essence's Topic of the Week happened to be Forgotten History.
This history that is dealt with in this book is not what is taught in school about Native Americans fighting colonists on the Plains, or about the Trail of Tears or about Pocahontas or Sacagewea. This history is much more recent and outlines the Native American struggle for certain rights. It's amazing how much we simply don't hear about, like the controversy when a road building project unearthed some human bones from an old graveyard. Apparently, there were a few white settlers and one Indian girl identified. The white settlers' bodies were reburied in a designated cemetary while the Indian girl was given to a museum to be put on display.
There was an outcry from the Native American community, saying that they didn't believe that their ancestors buried that body just to have it dug up and displayed. The man who handled the decision, stated in a press conference that he needed to stand firm so that the protesters didn't get the idea that they were push-overs. He also stated that he didn't understand what the big deal was since they were trying to preserve Native American culture, not violate it.
When I read this statement, I was struck by a feeling of incredulity that he would have the nerve to say that. Native Americans are not a dead culture like the Clovis people or the Anasazi. There are Native Americans who are living who are preserving their own culture, and part of that preservation means they get angry when one of their dead children is dug up and put on display. But this isn't exactly an uncommon occurence. We're still treating Native Americans as an oddity, and throughout history we have treated their culture as if it was dead.
Native American religion, for instance, still doesn't have the same protection as all other religions, mainly because if it did, it would seriously hinder "progress" in some cases, like in the case of the Black Hills or the mountain in Arizona that they wanted to use reclaimed (read, waste) water to make snow for a ski resort. In these cases, Native Americans have fought for the rights to protect their own sacred places from desecration.
We have improved our relations with modern Native Americans vastly from where we began, certainly, but the more I delve into the subject, the more I'm amazed at how little is actually taught or known about our history with them, our broken treaties and promises, our callous, superior, attitude toward their beliefs, and the extent to which it's still going on. I'll continue reading God is Red and the rest of Vine Deloria's books in the hopes that I'll learn more about this lost history.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
