Danish journalist wants to enhance European understanding of Native American culture

by Clara NiiSka

Danish journalist Michael von Bülow, age 40, has been a journalist for sixteen years.  For the past nine years, he’s worked for one of the world’s oldest newspaper houses, Berlingske Tidende, which was founded in 1749 and is now on the internet at http://www.berlingske.dk/

Bülow has just completed a two-week study tour of “Indian country” in South Dakota and Minnesota, including visits to Pine Ridge, Rosebud, White Earth, Red Lake, Leech Lake, and Mille Lacs reservations.  He also visited with Indians in the Twin Cities metro area including Ed McGaa, Dave Larson, and members of the Native American Journalists Association.  He visited with indigenous people on the White Earth reservation and had arranged for visits with tribal leaders at Red Lake and Leech Lake but found that “geographical distances are a factor larger than I anticipated,” and ran out of time on this trip.  He says that he hopes to come back to Minnesota for another visit.

Bülow told Press/ON, “I had a headline for this project before I left home: ‘Contemporary life and self-perceptions of Native Americans living in the U.S.’”  He said, “I’ve been studying Indian history for a couple of years, and I’ve been reading the books available in my country.  But, I wanted to reach a deeper understanding of Indian identity, how Indians look at themselves and how important their history, culture, traditions, and spirituality is to them today.  I suppose that the reason that I chose to take a closer look at the Indians living on the Great Plains is the drama and magnificence of their history: the well-known chiefs, the Indian wars, and the worldwide images of Indians drawn from the Great Plains cultures.”

“My interests might seem a little bit academic to some people,” Bülow added, “who cares about spirituality when you don’t have a house or enough to eat?  My study has shown me, however, that the old traditions actually play an important role for an increasing number of Indians, and help them build up confidence and self-esteem.  As one Native American editor put it, ‘they are not afraid to face the white man in their suits any more’.”

“I wanted to cover two states, and I decided that a suitable place to start would be Minneapolis – also in terms of flying in from Europe.  From there, I planned to drive across the Great Plains, and also to get a visual impression of the lands that are inhabited by Indians today.  I’ve driven about 3,400 miles in two weeks, so I’ve seen a bit of the land where the history of the Plains Indians has unfolded.”

While he was in Minnesota, Bülow thought that he would broaden his understanding by talking with Ojibwe people as well as Lakota and Dakota people.  “I was also getting an impression of the appearance of the northern Minnesota reservations,” he said of his tour across four Ojibwe reservations, “in comparison to what I saw in South Dakota.”

He says that, “if I was to make some sort of premature conclusion, I was not surprised to find that reality of Indian people’s lives is much more multi-faceted than the picture that we get in Europe.”

Bülow has also been studying Greenlanders living in Denmark, and, he says, “I have found that there are quite a number of similarities in the way that colonialism has impacted indigenous people in the United States and in Denmark: housing problems, unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, suicides, despair and people’s being torn between two cultures with two sets of history, traditions, religions, and ways of communication.  I think that there is a definite gap in ways of communication which has to do with using different vocabularies and seeing the world with different world-views.”  (Greenland was a colony of Denmark until the Danish government gave Greenlanders self-determination in the 1970s.)

“When I get back home, I will spend some time reading up on my notes and all of the material that has been given to me,” Bülow said.  “I need to digest my impressions for some days,” he explained, “actually it’s been quite overwhelming, both in a positive and a negative sense.  The mere sight of many of the reservations is a pretty depressing sight.  On the other hand, the people I have met and talked to have given me a definite impression of the will to preserve the traditions and the culture of the Native Americans.  I find it very encouraging to see that there is a certain revival or renaissance of the ‘old ways,’ even though it is also clear that there are some phonies.”

Bülow’s trip was sponsored by his employer, Berlingske Tidende, together with the Danish Journalist Association [Dansk Journalistforbund].  He will be writing a report summarizing his trip, what he’s seen, and what he’s learned.

“I realize that two weeks only give me a quite superficial impression of Indian life in Minnesota and on the Great Plains. However, compared to what the average European journalist knows about Native American culture and contemporary life, in the future I will have a much better background, context, and understanding from which to report on these issues.”

“Denmark being a small country with only 5.3 million people and having a native language which is spoken by less than six million people, gives the people of Denmark an understanding, I think, of the problems that you are facing as a minority, anywhere in the world,” Bülow said.  “In some contexts, my country is sometimes described as a ‘tribe’ rather than a ‘nation state,’ being a very homogenous population whose roots date back to the Vikings more than a thousand years ago.  And so, you see quite a few newspaper articles focusing on indigenous peoples in other parts of the world.”

“I did some reporting on the Bush people of Botswana,” Bülow said, “I went there and I drove through the Kalahari Desert.  That was really sad.  What was once a great culture covering the whole of southern Africa is reduced to a ghetto of about one million people literally sitting in the Kalahari Desert without jobs, without a future, without anything to do.  They just sit there and drink to dissolve their pain and to forget the fact that their once-proud culture is disappearing before their eyes – and before our eyes as well.”

When he returns to Denmark from the U.S., “I would like to do something more than just the report” for Berlingske Tidende and the Danish Journalist Association, Bülow added.  “If I could find some media that would be interested in an extended article on the contemporary life and the identity of the Native Americans based on my findings, I would like to do so.  Just writing a fairly condensed report would not satisfy my own desire to put into words all that I have learned during the past two weeks.  And, besides, I would like to convey this information to a broader audience than just my fellow journalists in Denmark.”

Bülow told Press/ON that when he finishes the report, he will send a copy to this newspaper. He also says that he would be interested in expanding the dialogue between Native Americans and Danish journalists.  His email address is: von@bt.dk and his mailing address is: Michael von Bülow, B.T., Kristen Bernikowsgade 6, P.O. Box 200, DK-1006, Copenhagen, Denmark.