[IPSM] FIND THE FAKE INDIAN

[Devin Butler]

From: "Kahntineta Horn" <kahntineta at paulcomm.ca>
To: "ActionCanadaNetwork" <actcan at web.net>
Subject: MNN FIND THE FAKE INDIAN
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:29:25 -0500

You mat send this around or reprint if you give credit to Akwesasne Phoenix
info at akwesasnephoenix.com vol. 4, Dec. 24 issue.



WIN $200!  FIND THE FAKE INDIAN!

Why do White People Want to Play "Indian"?



MNN.  Dec. 26, 2004.  Indian imposters are part of our scene.  From the fake
Mohawks who hosted the Boston Tea Party, to Grey Owl, to Oscar de Corti, to
Charlie Smoke, to all those grey-haired academics prowling around the
"Indigenous" scene who have suddenly discovered an "Indian" ancestor - we
just never know when another one is going to pop out of the wood pile.



Ya gotta wonder.



Why would anyone want to pass themselves off as an "Indian"?  Do they aspire
to our standard of living sat the bottom of their barrel?  Do they pine for
the experience of being denied a political voice, or losing their land to
theft and pollution? Is it the police harassment, the racial profiling or
the endemic sleaziness of the sexual innuendos we endure that they envy?  Or
do they feel some kind of existential angst because their family missed out
on the horrific residential school genocide?



We've all met someone who isn't what they say they are, or who claims to
have a grandmother or grandfather who's "part Indian".



Philip J. Deloria thinks they are seeking a connection with the primal
purity they imagine we know. "Indians are associated with the land, and
nature, and reality and authenticity. Indians are the people who possess the
ultimate meanings and the ultimate truths on what America is about."   This
is often the white perception.



One Indigenous man said, "They love our skin colour, but they hate our
guts!"  We evoke both love and hate from these people.  "Everywhere we turn,
there is something named after us - as if we are all dead and gone, relics
of the past".



When it comes right down to it, all you have to do to become an "Indian" is
to check a box on the census form.  Of course, that won't get you the right
to live on a reservation or open a casino. The colonizers keep tight control
over what they call legal "Indians". It's been up to the BIA in the U.S. and
the DIA in Canada to define who is, or is not, an "Indian".



If you play ball according to their rules, you too can become an Indian.
In Canada, for example, any woman who married an "Indian" man could became a
full fledged "Indian" with all the rights and benefits.  But an Indigenous
woman who married a white man instantly lost her claim to status.  According
to their rules, she had to move out of her community and couldn't come back
even if she got divorced.



When the United Nations found this violated equality rights under the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the colonizers changed
their laws.  But they still don't let us decide who we are.



It is now possible for kids raised on a reserve to lose their "Indian"
status and their right to live in their community even if their ancestors
have been there in every generation since Europeans invented "Prisons of
Grass". Meanwhile, band registries have been inflated with the names of all
sorts of strangers who claim benefits on the grounds of some sort of
genealogical link.



Then there are those who pretend to be Indians for a cause.  The "crying
Indian" was a fake.  The guy in all those "Keep America Beautiful" ads
during the 1970's was an Italian American named Oscar de Corti.  Why did
they have to pick him to represent us?  Did they think he looked more real
than the "real thing"?



That was the deal with Gray Owl. Europeans lapped up everything he had to
say.  He knew what they wanted, 'cause he was one of them.  He told them
everything they wanted to hear.  But they didn't care about what we had to
say.  The Ojibway of Temagami use to ask , "How could anyone mistake him for
an Indian?"  But no one was listening.



Grey Owl's second wife, Anahareo, turned out to be another wannabee Indian.
She had some Mohawk blood and she was seeking her roots - but she was doing
it through a fake Indian!  At least she had some genuine ancestry that she
wanted to find out about.



But you have to wonder why films about people like Grey Owl are big at the
box office. Real indigenous people like Tecumseh and Deskaheh are ignored.



And you don't have to go to Hollywood to rake it in for being a fake Indian.



Brooke Edwards called herself "Medicine Eagle" and ran Indian culture camps
in Montana.  She charged $1500 per person for a two-week session.  The Crow
Indians said she totally misrepresented and abused their spiritual
traditions.  But who was listening?

Cultists, con artists, hucksters, charlatans, "plastic medicine people" -
They grow rich while real Indians starve to death.



Real Indians stay out of sight and out of mind.  There doesn't seem to be
any limit to what people will try. Get a load of that "Rent an Indian" ad on
the net:



  "Are you embarrassed by the lack of racial diversity at your social 
events?
Just rent an Indian and you too can appeal to be multi-cultural in the eyes
of your friends"



All without having to give up your white privilege!!



The American Indian Movement tried to end the activities of the plastic
medicine men. But they got nowhere. So maybe we should just laugh at these
people...unless they are competing for Indian scholarships at Harvard.



What's a little hucksterism anyways?  Marketing is made in the U.S.A.  So
what if all the plastic gewgaws they sell misrepresent our cultures?  We
could always try selling little priest dolls with vials of holy water and
fake communion wafers.  But would they sell?



Not on your life.



As Vine Deloria, says "White people in this country are so alienated from
their own lives and so hungry for some sort of real life that they grasp at
any straw to save themselves".



The problem is that real Indigenous people rarely make the grade for
non-Indian experts.  How many times has someone said to me, "How can you be
an Indian when you have green eyes?'..as if they had a monopoly on any kind
of albinism.I answer in one word: "Colonialism".



That shuts them up for a moment, but it doesn't solve the problem.



Janet McCloud points out that even Indians sell our ceremonies for a fee.
"This is just another theft from us." She said.  "Some of these people spend
about 15 minutes with an elder.  Then they become official representatives
of various Indian people. It's absolutely disgusting".



As McCloud says, Indians like Sun Bear, who markets our heritage are a
serious threat.



They may even be as dangerous as the fake chiefs who signed away our land in
fake treaties.  Some even create new tribes composed mostly of
Euroamericans.  Anyone who is undermining our culture is complicit in the
genocide we are trying to overcome.



And what would white folk say if we started dressing up as priests, setting
up our own churches and circulating collection plates? Look what happened to
AIMer, Russell Means when he went to a school halloween party with his son.
He painted his face white and  dressed up as a "white man".  Indians chortle
at the thought, but the people at the party were embarrassed and confused.
They did not know how to react.



People are scared if they can't use familiar categories to label things the
way they see them. So the fake Indian business thrives.  It is based on the
search for roots by a rootless people.  It feeds on a 500 year old guilt
complex.



The colonizers sense that Indigenous philosophy makes more sense than
theirs.  We have earthbound problems that require earthbound answers.  They
want to pray to some unseen holy entity for direction and they aren't
getting any.  "Poor little lambs who have lost their way".   Maybe we can't
make them see that the answer is in themselves.  But we can all do our bit
to stop encouraging these plastic medicine people.



Kahentinetha Horn

MNN Mohawk Nation News

orakwa at paulcomm.ca