White Pine. Wub-e-ke-niew and Clara’s home in background
Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
|
February 16, 1996
[unpublished]
TO:
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
COMMENTARY
PAGE—
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
FAX number: (612)
673-4359
In
the Metro Section of the Thursday, February 15 Star
Tribune, there was an article headlined “Heritage of Indian
firefighters
questioned.” According to the article,
Leonard Thompson, leader of the American Indian Fire Fighters
Association,
charged that “as many as half of the 24 people claiming to be Indians
in the
Minneapolis Fire Department either are not legitimate Indians or cannot
prove
that they are [Indians].”
There
are several issues at stake in the Wanna-Be fire
fighter fracas: discriminatory hiring in the fire fighting department,
who owns
and controls the Indian identity, and exactly what is an “Indian.” The Strib quotes Thompson as saying
that undocumented and self-proclaimed Indians are “taking our jobs;”
according
to the article, firefighter Thompson wants all those who were
preferentially
hired as Indians in the past to meet current documentation standards
for being
“Indian:” either through the U.S. Department of the Interior or its
Indian
Reorganization Act tribal councils; or by showing that “either a parent
or
grandparent is an enrolled tribal member.”
This sounds good, but there are “Indians” on the White Earth
enrollments, for example, with 1/32 or less “Indian Blood,” so
city-sanctioned
discrimination in hiring can be based on as little as 1/128 “Indian
blood”—one
great-great-great-great-great grandparent, born about two hundred years
ago,
who is now “federally recognized” as having been an Indian. For all of the disputed Indians to qualify
under present standards, this well-publicized fuss adds up to less than
10% of
one “full-blooded Indian,” and eleven (and nine-tenths) Black or White
guys.
The
real irony is that “Indian blood” does not have any
genealogical correlation to having ancestors who are indigenous to this
land. During the second half of the
nineteenth century, Federal designation as an “Indian” was a purely
political
process—and it still is. Some U.S.
Department of Interior regulations explicitly directed recording the
ethnicity
of certain white men as “half breed” (or other blood quantum) Indians. For example, Bazile Hudon Beaulieu, born
1815-16 and the patrilineal ancestor of the Indian who is presently
director of
the Minnesota Human Rights Department, was changed from a White man
into “3/8
Indian” for the purposes of determining Minnesota Chippewa blood
quantum, so
that his descendants could sell land and participate in U.S.-supervised
“tribal
politics” ultimately intended to alienate the Aboriginal Indigenous
peoples’
property and resources. In the process
of researching a book, I have documented the genealogy of more than
50,000
so-called Chippewa Indians in Northern Minnesota. Less
than two hundred have an Ahnishinahbæótjibway Dodem—an Aboriginal Indigenous
patriline
and extended family; the rest have an immigrant European or African
Moorish
patriline and a culture based on nuclear families and fragmented French
feudal
social structures.
In
order to receive federal funding, preferential hiring,
grants for pow-wows, recognition as Indian Chiefs or artists, etc.,
Indians are
dependent on White institutions to “authenticate” their identity. This is but a continuation of the
Euro-Americans’ long and cozy relationship with their manufactured
Métis and
White Indians, beginning with Columbus, continuing through the treaty
era (when
European and Mediterranean people identified as “Indians” ceded lands
which
were not theirs), to the I.R.A. Tribal Councils’ Reservation and Indian
gaming
politics of today.
The
policy of the Republican party, which the Eisenhower
administration executed on a tribal level, was the termination of the
Indians. United States policy and American
culture
have been directed toward making Indians into the Vanishing American
since the
Dawes Allotment Act of 1878 (as a part of Manifest Destiny); depriving
people
identified as “Indians” of land ownership and civil rights has been
part of the
American agenda since the United States Constitution described “Indians
not
taxed,” a Jim Crow category which so-called Indian leaders cling to as
the
basis of the apartheid and illusory “Indian Sovereignty” (both Whites
and
Indians get upset at the idea of amending this racist clause out of the
Constitution and thereby creating a more level playing field and making
affirmative action superfluous for protected-class Indians).
U.S.
Congressional policy papers still carefully detail the
legal foundations for terminating the Indians at any time.
The problem with termination was not that
Indians would lose their identity, but that political-spoils jobs would
cease
to exist for the Party faithful and political hacks—terminating the
Indians
hurts the Whites worse than it hurts the Indians, most of whom have a
preponderance of White ancestry (almost all the rest could assimilate
into the
Black community and nobody would notice).
The
real issue isn’t job discrimination or job creation,
though—it’s the White man’s guilt at having committed genocide of the
Aboriginal Indigenous people on a massive scale, and having despoiled
this
entire continent. As a community, as a
culture and as a cohesive people, we the Aboriginal Indigenous people
are
extinct: intentionally destroyed by explicit U.S. Government policies
including
the Indian boarding schools. The
Indians’ main purpose is as pretenders and imitations, “reel” Hollywood
style
Indians who are a living portrayal of the Euro-Americans’ mythology,
projections, and stereotypes. Instead
of wasting time and valuable resources playing games with minimal
potential
benefits, the Minneapolis firefighters and police could be lobbying for
a
Constitutional amendment to eliminate the built-in discrimination of
“Indians
not taxed,” and start protecting their own property as well as that of
the
people they serve.
Why
not accept one’s real identity, and begin to address the
root problems that plague the immigrants’ Euro-American society:
violence, the destruction
of the ecosystem and the extended families, water pollution, and the
dehumanization of Euro-American culture, based on the nuclear family. This is reality, and sooner or later you
immigrants won’t be able to run from your past—you’ll have to face it.
Wub-e-ke-niew
Bear Dodem, Ahnishinahbæótjibway
P.O.
Box 484
Bemidji,
MN 56619
(218) 679-2382
Wub-e-ke-niew lives on his
ancestral homeland at Red Lake, writes a column for
the Native
American
Press/Ojibwe News, and is the author of We
Have the Right To
Exist, A
Translation of Aboriginal Indigenous Thought, The first book ever
published
from an Ahnishinahbæótjibway
Perspective
(Black Thistle Press, 1995). Wub-e-ke-niew
is Ahnishinahbæótjibway—an Aboriginal Indigenous
person—he is not an
“Indian.”
White Pine.
Wub-e-ke-niew and Clara’s home in background
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