AMERIND-US-SE-L Archives

From:
Subject: Re Chicago Sun Times
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 11:16:28 EDT

Subj: Re: More Chicago Sun-Time Atoning for America's Sins-Neil Steinberg
Date: 5/4/01 4:59:36 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From:    (E.  Kelsey)
To:   




Please Read and Distribute and Widely as Possible:

Atoning for America's sins shouldn't be chief concern
April 22, 2001

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST


One problem with being a zealot is that it blinds you to how you are
perceived by people who are not zealots.

The guy prowling up and down South Wacker, for instance, wearing a homemade
cardboard sandwich sign denouncing Hart, Schaffner & Marx clothiers. That
guy must believe, as he slips into his sign each morning, that he is Truth's
Own Proud Warrior, donning his armor.

But he doesn't seem that way to me. It's all I can do not to shout at him,
"The company isn't even called that anymore, you pinhead!"

But why cause trouble?

I get enough trouble as it is. My column about the tiresome battle against
Chief Illiniwek drew the inevitable outrage and demands for my "immediate
dismissal." (Oh, sylvan dream! And just as the warm weather hits. "Honey,
would you grab me a cold beer and see if the unemployment check is here
yet?")

Anyway, among the letters and calls and e-mails was a message from Aaron
Bird Bear of Madison, Wis. It begins:

"The United States is founded on the depopulation, the dispossession, and
the deconstruction of American Indian societies who are now forced to live
in and through the institutions erected by the oppressing regimes."

I agree completely with that statement. It is utterly true. Though I would
quibble over the last two words. What Mr. Bird Bear calls "oppressing
regimes" I would refer to as "our beloved country."

That's the heart of the problem. Their ceiling is my floor. I certainly
don't deny them their perspective. Native Americans are within their right
to view this country as forever tainted by the crimes against Indians. It
doesn't change things, but if it helps them cope, why not?

One doesn't have to be very imaginative to understand the Indian view: This
is their house, stolen, now occupied by their smirking oppressors who, to
add insult to literal injury, trot out these sports mascots, oafish parodies
of the proud people who once roamed these lands before being murdered and
traduced.

Mr. Bird Bear finds a direct connection between the two.

"The constant objectification and dehumanization American Indians suffer in
the hands of the white majority is symptomatic of the white majority's
desire to remain in denial about its involvement in genocidal practices," he
writes.

Here is where he begins to lose me. Just as Jesse Jackson's desire to load
the guilt of slavery onto 2001 America's shoulders, the idea of white people
in America today having "an involvement in genocidal practices" is
problematic.

My family, for instance, was busy scratching out a living in dirt villages
in Poland while the Indians were getting the boot. Does the fact that my
forebears just managed to flee to Poland ahead of their own grinding
steamroller of history mean that suddenly we killed the Indians and
therefore can't like Chief Wahoo? I don't get it.

History is a hard place. People win and people lose. The next fact that
should be taught in school after the horrendous cruelties against the
Indians is that our nation would have hardly been able to form had they been
treated otherwise. Had this big Indian nation been allowed to exist in the
heartland of America, that would have been swell for them, but our nation
wouldn't have grown into the power it became.

We'd be more like Australia, a few big cities along the coasts and a big
empty space in the middle. Good for Indians there, bad for the country
around it and worse for the world. I don't like to play "what if" with
history--it's a meaningless exercise--but you can bet if the Spanish/English
nightmare hadn't descended on the Indians 500 years ago, then the
Nazi/Japanese nightmare would have 50 years ago or the Chinese/Chinese
nightmare next year. History is not often kind to spiritual native peoples
whose technology is based on buckskin.

I wish I could explore other aspects of Mr. Bear Bird's letter, such as his
faulting me for a variety of "incredibly disrespectful remarks," such as my
suggestion that Indian activists would have the Buffalo nickel be renamed
"the Native American Elder Weeping That White People Ever Set Foot Here"
nickel.

Flippant, perhaps. But I'm not really sure what I'm being accused of not
respecting. The idea that America should always be viewed as a charnel house
because of its crimes against Indians? Guilty. The idea that those crimes
give Native Americans now the moral authority to tell everybody else what to
do? Again guilty. I don't respect that. I don't respect a lot of grim-faced
crybabies who view this country as a series of "oppressive regimes" they are
forced to endure.

And I don't agree that the sports mascots are offensive. Oh, I know the
activists are offended, but then that's their bread and butter.

Put it this way. A few months ago I passed through the airport in
Copenhagen, Denmark. The shops were filled with those comical, squat Viking
figures, with bushy beards, huge noses and horned helmets.

Those Viking dolls are as crude a parody as anything dancing at a football
game. The Danes love 'em, because they don't have any Viking Activist Groups
talking about respect. Lucky Danes.

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