A Heritage Denied

Almost 500 years ago Europeans came to our land, came to stay. Others had come before them to fish or for some other reason, incidentally bringing diseases to coastal peoples, wiping out whole communities along the Atlantic shore. But they had not stayed.

With the arrival of Columbus, history took another course. His appearance in our land set in motion a chain of events which led to destruction of native nations, usurpation of native land and its gifts, and slavery.

We helped those early explorers; we led them. We aided early conquerors, hoping they would rid us of our enemies. Always willing to learn, we listened to early missionaries ... after they finally decided that we had souls.

We thought those early Europeans were like us. But we learned that similarities were shallow and often merely physical. We only dimly understood their purpose -- and that understanding came too late. We thought they were like us. The newcomers' greed -- their need to plunder the earth and steal its riches; to grasp all the gifts of the Western Hemisphere and take them back to sustain their own world; and to take native land for their own purposes -- made them very different from those who greeted and welcomed them to their homeland.

As we little understood Europeans 500 years ago, today we still little understand European descendants who rationalize and justify actions of their ancestors by denying our very existence. Almost every year more scholars of European heritage write learned books postulating a smaller and smaller population of the Western Hemisphere prior to European arrival. Those who live their lives outside of academe cherish their secular saint -- Christopher Columbus -- because he "discovered America." It seems both groups yearn for an America existing from time immemorial, pristine and unpeopled, awaiting European "discovery."

Many of our closest "friends" ask us what harm such a yearning could cause. What hurt could come from innocent celebrations of Columbus Day? Indeed, what can such innocent thinking, feeling, and yearning mean to descendants of those hospitable people who shared their gifts from the Creator with newcomers? What does negation of our lives mean to us? Can this possibly be a form of racism? What is racism? Some years ago, the National Council of Churches defined prejudice and racism this way:

Prejudice is a personal attitude towards other people based on a categorical judgment about their physical characteristics, such as race or ethnic origin ... Racism is racial prejudice plus power. Racism is the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate, and exploit others. This use of power is based on a belief in superior racial origin, identity, or supposed racial characteristics. Racism confers certain privileges on and defends the dominant group, which in turn sustains and perpetuates racism ... Institutional racism is one of the ways organizations and structures serve to preserve injustice.

"I am not a racist! There are no blacks in my community -- and only a few in the whole state!" This is a common comment heard in places such as South Dakota that have a large American Indian population. Such comments reflect a part of the difficulty in achieving racial justice for American Indians: Is racism only directed against African Americans? Is racism only a white-over-black issue?

Those very people who would disavow their racism would obstruct American Indian access to sacred sites, trivialize tribal traditions and cultures, interfere with tribal and intertribal religious practices, denounce tribal governments, assault American Indians in their homes and walking down urban streets, and, at the same time, repudiate American Indian existence. Such actions "isolate, separate, and exploit" American Indians.

This is racism, although the form it takes against American Indians may often appear different from that against African Americans. What forms, then, does racism against American Indians take?

I CANNOT SPEAK for all Indians. That would be presumptuous. As D'Arcy McKnickle wrote, "No Indian individual, even within his own family, speaks for another individual. No tribe presumes to speak for another tribe. To act otherwise is to act discourteously if not indecently."

I am a Caddo -- and I am a woman. Together they make me who I am, and I can only speak out of that identity and a matriarchal heritage. That heritage allows me to offer you glimpses of racism against Indians.

In addition, my job is one of "listening" to other American Indians and Alaska Natives. My work takes me to all the Episcopal Church's missions and ministries with American Indians and Alaska Natives to learn from them what concerns them. It allows me to draw on experiences of others.

First, a personal experience: When I was in the 7th grade at a public school in Oklahoma City, I took a class in Oklahoma history -- a class mandated by the state legislature for every public school student to complete. I was a good student and enjoyed school, and I looked forward to learning more about Oklahoma history.

Now you must understand that I came to the study of Oklahoma history with some knowledge. Both of my grandmothers had told me many stories about the past. Sometimes I was privileged to sit with them and listen to them exchange stories -- each from her own side of the frontier, for one of my grandmothers was Caddo and the other was Irish and German. So, I knew something of the history of that place now called Oklahoma.

The first day or so my Oklahoma history teacher told us that Indians were a part of the history of Oklahoma, and I really got interested then. Of course, I knew that Indians were a part of the history of Oklahoma. My Caddo grandmother had told me many stories, and she and all the other elders were living proof.

The teacher then told the class that there were five tribes in Oklahoma's history. That puzzled me because, besides Caddos, I knew Wichitas, Delawares, Kiowas, Cheyennes, Comanches, Apaches, and Arapahoes. But I was a good child and eager to learn so I listened to her identify the five tribes. They were the "Five Civilized Tribes" -- Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole. Four "C"s and an "S" but not Caddo, not Comanche, not Cheyenne, nor any of the other tribes I knew. I learned something about educational institutions and the world that afternoon, but I did not learn historical truth.

Later I learned that my grandmother was more nearly right than my state-certified 7th grade teacher. There were indeed Indians in the history of what became the state of Oklahoma -- but not just the so-called Five Civilized Tribes.

Sixty-seven tribes became a part of the history of Oklahoma when the government forced most of them to Indian Territory during the 19th-century period of history known as "Indian Removal." Caddos, Wichitas, Osages, and occasionally Kiowas and Comanches had lived or hunted in the area which became the state of Oklahoma long before the arrival of those walking the "trails of tears."

That long-ago afternoon a 12-year-old Caddo girl learned that not only was she not civilized, but her tribe did not even exist. She began to learn the lesson that people in power view history only from their own perspective.

History is written by the conquerors, and they tell the story as they perceive it. I remember recognizing the truth spoken by a young woman serving with me on a committee for social justice in higher education -- truth not for those of us sitting in the room, but for the world: "I know you. I know all about you because you have taught me all about you. I attended your schools from the time I was 6 years old. Your teachers taught me well."

I would carry her words further. I know your history, your values, your thoughts, and your beliefs. You taught me that my history mattered not at all unless it impinged on yours and then you taught my history only from your perspective. You taught me that only your values were valid and that mine stood in the way of progress. You taught me that your beliefs were the only true way of believing and that mine were superstition. You taught me that only you think and I cannot.

You have sent your anthropologists to view my life and determine from my actions what my beliefs are. You taught me that your thoughts about the world and relationships between people and all of creation are classified as philosophy, but that I do not have a philosophy. You taught me that when you theorize about God that is theology, but that I do not have a theology. You taught me that I and my ancestors before me were savages, pagans, barriers to be removed from your path.

You continue to teach my children and grandchildren that they have inferior and inadequate minds. But you don't know me. You have never really wanted to know me. You never asked me what I thought, perhaps because you were too busy denying my existence as a human being. And that is another face of racism.

ONE OF THE FACES RACISM HAS presented to American Indians is a refusal to recognize our reality, and particularly our existence in the 20th century. Many people seem to think that American Indians disappeared at the end of the 19th century. Historians and government officials have told us that the frontier closed in 1890 and its symbol, the American Indian, vanished for all time. Certainly that was the stated goal both of the "pacification of the Plains," a euphemistic name for wars of extermination that followed the Civil War, and the "peace policy" that resulted from the failure of extermination policies.

Well-meaning people, many of them representing their churches, presented federal government agents with a policy of assimilation of American Indians. If they failed at annihilating us, they would obliterate us through making us in their image, albeit darker. As one of those good-hearted men said, "Kill the Indian and save the man."

If we were to survive, our tribal identities would cease to exist. These "friends" of ours looked at our reservations and saw what they referred to as poverty, filth, and pagan rituals. They failed to see the beauty, spirituality, generosity, and love of the land that marked our lives. Believing that they would "save" us, they took the land that sustained us.

That policy lasted for about 50 years before the federal governmet and our so-called "friends" abandoned it. In the meantime government policy had banned our political structures, forced our ceremonies to be held in hidden places, renamed us Christian names, and taken many of our reserved lands from us through a process of allotment. The stated purpose of the government was eradication of the Indian race.

A hundred years later in the 1980s, American Indians, surviving still, continue in their quest to protect their racial identity. Now that Indians have little land remaining to them, the focus of the battle has shifted to rights reserved through treaties which had ceded tribal land.

U.S. congressional representatives regularly introduce bills to abrogate treaties with American Indian tribes so that they can seize the remaining few acres and confiscate health and educational services and water, hunting, and fishing rights that Indians have retained in exchange for ceded land (see "A Legacy of Broken Promises "June 1990).

Tribes constantly battle against federal, state, and county governments and private associations to retain their tribal sovereignty, identity, and integrity. Historically, U.S. policy has vacillated between assimilation of American Indian people -- with its consequent repudiation of tribal identity and authority -- and extermination.

In the late 20th century, separation and recognition of tribal sovereignty has become the current government rhetoric, recognizing tribal identity and self-determination. Observers note, however, similarities between current policy and the policy of "termination," so-called because it terminated treaty rights and special government-to-government relationships between tribes and the federal government during the 1950s.

"Self-determination," "termination," or "assimilation" all would abrogate treaty rights by denying the existence of American Indian tribes or people. Whatever language federal policy makers use, all three policies result in cultural genocide. That, too, describes one of the faces of racism.

WHILE INDIANS FIGHT TO RETAIN tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, they also must confront attacks against their religions. Recently Indians have lost almost every religious freedom court case. Courts have denied Indians rights of access to sacred sites while protecting rights of hikers and skiers to trails, platforms, and lifts in areas of spiritual renewal rituals. The Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association lost the fight to prevent the construction of a logging road through Indian burial grounds, land obviously sacred to them.

Indians, and perhaps all religious people, lost a significant case in a 1990 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. Oregon state law had prohibited peyote use even in the religious ceremonies of members of the Native American Church, arguing that it had to protect its citizens from harmful drug use.

Ceremonial use of peyote by Indians predates the arrival of Columbus. A cactus growing primarily in the southwest and Mexico, it contains at least 15 interactive alkaloids, some of which may create visions when ingested. Native American Church members affirm that peyote enables believers to communicate with God through these visions and thus is essential to the practice of their religion.

Church members had hoped the courts would exempt them from Oregon state law as other states had done. The Supreme Court, however, held that Oregon state law in no way infringed upon constitutional rights of freedom of religion. Rather the interference with religious practices was considered simply an incidental effect of the law. Now, as for the past 500 years, American Indians await non-Indian respect for their customs, traditions, and religions.

In September 1990, Latin American commissioners of the Program to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches called together 125 indigenous and African-American people from throughout the Americas and the Caribbean to meet in Rio de Janeiro to discuss challenges presented by physical and cultural genocide in relation to the upcoming quincentennial of Columbus' arrival. Hoping to find a common vision, participants tried to set aside long-held animosities and unite to liberate themselves from the prospect of another 500 years of racial injustice, oppression, and exploitation.

In a statement prepared during the conference, participants declared:

These 500 years of oppression and exploitation must never be celebrated! ... We denounce European claims of "discovery" in our lands and seas. We equally reject their description of the invasion as an "encounter of cultures and nations." We call the 1492 activities for what they were: invasion; aggression; labor exploitation; disruption of our traditions; violation of our religious beliefs and practices; blatant land-grabbing. We denounce the legacy of exploitation for its disruption and destruction of lands, seas, and peoples and for its devastating consequences on animal and plant species and all of creation.

The document also spoke of hope and commitment by indigenous and black peoples: "All injustices should and can be reversed and we, the suffering people, are key to the reversal. Together, African Americans and indigenous peoples must work to rescue our spirituality, religions, traditions, cultures, and practices." The document affirmed "that 1992 should be a time of repentance and reparation by churches for their past sins against indigenous and African-American peoples."

1992! WE OFTEN DOUBT THAT people in American and European churches and societies will reflect on realities of 500 years of colonization and exploitation, and will confess and repent their actions and those of their ancestors, as asked in a recent National Council of Churches resolution. We despair that 1992 or any year will bring racial justice to American Indians. We wonder if racial justice is even possible.

Can reconciliation happen without racial justice or while one group still maintains that past sins and transgressions happened long ago and have no place in the world of today? The state of South Dakota has announced a year of reconciliation, and yet, during that year an elected official made the following statement during a city council meeting: "The Native American culture as we know it now, not as it formerly existed, is a culture of hopelessness, Godlessness, of joblessness and lawlessness."

Indians protested! Too often the "only good Indian is a dead Indian." Perhaps for this official, Native American culture is fine as long as we remember it from a past century, once again ignoring our 20th-century existence and the major problems of joblessness and poverty. Even with these problems rarely has that culture given up all hope or our belief in God.

There is hope. A young man of American Indian heritage said to me: "Imagine growing up an American Indian half breed with the blood of Caddo, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes in you ..." Imagine growing up knowing that you belong to a culture long native to this land before the white man 'discovered' it. Imagine trying to assert your identity when the majority of society affirms that 'Indians are a dead race.' Imagine constantly dealing with people who try their hardest to convince you that you are not an Indian. Imagine.

"America. 'Land of the free and the brave.' Land where all should be free. Land where American Indians have been and will be consistently assaulted by others, if not with guns, then with alcohol, money, technology, or simply words. With words of dismissal, the politicians wipe out the tribes' meaning and deface them of their honor. With words, they strip American Indians of race, culture, philosophy, reason. With words they cover the Indians with a gloss of alienation and meaninglessness, leaving them hollowed-out entities, repeating over and over the rules of a society that was never their own.

"This fight for identity is an enormous undertaking. To strive to keep one's heritage in the face of imminent annihilation nears impossibility, but it is not impossible."

Every time people in powerful positions tell us we no longer exist as a people, a race, we are reminded that we have far to go down the good road toward racial justice. When our "friends" regard us as curiosities; comment on our clothes instead of our words and thoughts; interpret our ceremonials instead of accepting our religious knowledge; realize something lacking in their own spirituality and take and trivialize ours; and when they try to assimilate us into their culture by destroying our identity, thereby depriving us of opportunities to offer our gifts to church and society, then we wonder if we will ever realize our dream of racial justice.

But as the young man indicated, we are survivors -- 500 years of attempted physical and cultural genocide has proven that.

Carol Hampton was national field officer of the Native American Ministry of the Episcopal Church when this article appeared. She is a member of the Caddo Nation.