"A Child's Self Esteem;
Racism, and Education's Legacy of Religious and Cultural Supremacy"
A article on the occasion of students wearing construction paper headdresses for Thanksgiving in Perry L. Drew school in East Windstorm, New Jersey.
To the New Jersey State Board of Education, January 18, 1998
"It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God"
-Gov. William Bradford, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts.
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Kenneth B. Murdock (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977)These are the words of a Pilgrim leader glad to see the Native American people being tortured and on their way to extermination. This death by fire was suffered over and again in Native American homes and villages, primarily by children and women. It was by killing the childbearing women and their children that the campaign of genocide was so effective in the United States. By killing the fruit of the next generation, a people are bound to wither. The truth of the Pilgrim's meeting with those who lived here was that no Englishman could stand to live with or even near any Native American. The European's world did not include sharing or understanding for others who were different, they did not listen. They brought to America hatreds fashioned by centuries of invasion and warring against Muslims, by centuries of dehumanizing and enslaving Africans. They preferred to make up their own version of who their soon to be new Native Americans neighbors were. These versions of the truth were firmly fixed in the minds of the invading, expatriate English Pilgrim before ever departing their land of birth for the new freedom of religion they sought in America. A freedom they had no intention of giving to the Native Americans.
These versions of the truth fit their desires and their desire was not to learn and grow with the Native People, but to destroy, extirpate and consume. This band of Pilgrims brought the commonly held beliefs of racial superiority and religious bigotry over Native American People which set the stage for what happens in schools today. Not only have these core beliefs remained as America's standard procedure but they have been refined, added to and hyper-charged for over 400 years creating layer upon layer of complex moral, legal, spiritual and ethical entanglements. A labyrinth of paradoxes has been fabricated around the Native American that can only be explained in full by one simple fact, Americans do not consider Native Americans as equals nor do they treat the Native People as human beings.
20 US Medals of Honor were given for killing over 200 Women & Children. They were slaughtered at Wounded Knee under a flag of truce when there was no war. They died for their religious beliefs and the color of their skin. Killing Native Americans had become a trophy sport in which photographers and bystanders watched for entertainment.
Postcards were sold of this scene and other bodies of men. The women and children's corpses were covered or moved by photographers so as not to overly shock their audiences.
Has this imported Euro-Christian attitude of remaking the truth of Native Americans actually changed today in America? Do public schools know who the Native American is, what his religion means, what his religious symbols such as the eagle feather mean? Or do public schools prefer a version that fits their desire of how the Native American should appear? What is being taught by this public school desire vs. truth methodology and what effect does this have on the self esteem of all children who fall under it?
Governor Bradford's Puritan people followed his well known plan to exterminate their Native American neighbors and pay for the endeavor by selling their women and children into slavery. This was the way the Christian repaid the Native American kindness shown them after they came here seeking religious freedom. A religious freedom that was denied the Native American from that day forward.
PILGRIMS WERE NOT INNOCENT CHILDREN
It is the religious bigot who has woven a fabric of lies about Native American religions in order to commit genocide against the physical and spiritual core of the hearts of a living people. We have seen our children taken away and our religions crushed. We ask you as educators to stop this process. Stop teaching children a false image of Native Americans. We ask you to live up to the American laws of civil rights, embrace human dignity as a standard and take action on your commitments to provide education and care for all children in equal measure.
MODERN DAY AMERICA
In order for the Native Americans to take the first steps into modern day America and be recognized as Human Beings, in order for the Native Americans and for mankind to receive the benefits of their contributions to the world, the stereotyping of Native Americans must be eliminated.
We ask you of the educational community, to stop stereotyping and denigrating the Native American and respect their right to freedom of religion. To respect any people you must first learn who they are and what their religious symbols, such as the Native American eagle feather, really mean. Until then you are only making it up as you go along drawing on the examples of the past, a past that openly calls for the extinction of a race of people.
"... every redskin must be killed from off the face of the plains before we can be free from their molestations. They are of no earthly good and the sooner they are swept from the land the better for civilization" 1866, Major John Vance Lauderdale, US Army surgeon, (attending physician Wounded Knee Massacre)
After Wounded Knee, ed. Jerry Green, Michigan State University Press, 1996We, the Native Americans, have been crying out that we do not want be portrayed as violent savages, noble mystics or any of the stereotypes that have been fabricated about Native Americans to entertain the racial supremacist and the religious bigot while they plot the extermination of our people. We continually tell schools to stop perpetuating the lies, false history and supremacist doctrines against Native Americans and our religions. All children of the Great Spirit have the right to know the true history of their people away from the persecutions brought on by the misrepresentation of their religious symbols.
These rewritings of history and stereotypes are the first fabric of hatred, which is the cloak of genocide, as Adolph Hitler has proven in his campaign of terror. While Hitler fell far short of his goal to exterminate all European Jews, the US has done much better against Native Americans leaving only five in one hundred as survivors. We speak against terrorism and hatred saying, all people have the right to basic human dignity.
We ask you to stop the mockery of our religious beliefs which turn our children against you and also against their families. We ask you to stop hurting non Native children by teaching them to look down on another's race, culture and religion. We ask you as educators to stop claiming a defense of ignorance for why you continue to perpetuate the hatred of the past, and to take action to replace this abuse by learning and respecting your neighbors who you do not know about. We ask you to join with Native American people and help us to defend all the children against the propaganda of false histories against Native Americans told in public schools.
Help us remove the portrayals of stereotyped Native Americans by professional sports teams, public school athletics, the Boy Scouts, television programs and the influential Hollywood movie industry. All of these groups have taught elaborate self serving stereotypes that falsely show the Native American as mystic warrior and a violent savage and refuse to recognize the true religious beliefs of our living peoples. Help us to defend against massive anti-American media owners like Ted Turner who laugh at human rights to purchase the endorsement of a selected few Native Americans, a man who believes he can purchase the United Nation's favor then reserve the right to buy and sell the dignity of minorities in his Atlanta sports franchise and in media programs.
Help us protect the children of Native, Black, Hispanic and Asian families. Children who, in ever increasing numbers, are learning from the example of the professional athletes who support "Indian" mascot sports how to sell out their race, their dignity and their spiritual beliefs to the power of racism. A racism that takes its victims among any creed. All our children must realize that the Native Americans are attorneys, doctors, teachers, veterans, technicians and all manner of people functioning just as any other people in modern day society. We no longer will accept ridicule as fictional characters. We ask your help in defending our children as the United States has waged a gigantic campaign to discredit us with false identities, false history and false religious beliefs.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES
Public schools, entrusted with the precious gift of giving our children an education, have joined with sports teams who use Native Americans as entertainment and mascot animals. Vulnerable young children, easily influenced adolescents and adults mired in the despair of a racist system have their cultural identity trampled on by those who have no understanding or respect for the spiritual connection of a people to the creative source of life. A cruel nation is taking Native American religious beliefs and playing with them at games, reducing them to a mockery with no more significance than a supremacist's hideous laugh at a people who have been hunted down in America. A people who have been starved and imprisoned on barren ground with cries of, "EXTERMINATE THEM". A nation of cruel supremacists who still say, "Get them out of here" when we ask, "Why do you hate us"?
Native Americans, seeing this day after day know the people who are doing this belittle their parents and loved ones, they know it destroys the self esteem of children and adults. It eats at their hearts and builds despair as they realize they do not have the resources to stop this hatred.
This onslaught against the Native People affects the growth of a child, the child comes to believe they are the only ones who must live in a long lost time. This educational system pulls children away from schools, away from society, away from their own families. This ridicule takes them away from the modern day educational system because it excludes them when they try to hang on to their religion. Schools run a campaign to push Native children out, statistics show this just as they show Black and Hispanic children are pushed out of schools. Schools say that Native American students must give up their religious beliefs in order to be mocked in the schools.
This breaks down the child who sees he is unwanted for who he and his family really is. His despair builds and hate takes a grip on him. He is smothered with a defense of anger for self, anger for society, anger for school, for adults, for everybody and everything. Among the Native American community the stereotyping by the dominant, racist society, serves to divide the Native American from his culture, just as America has divided the Black American from his culture. The despair of being an outsider builds the cycle of abuse that we see at work today in America. Poor physical health, under achievement, little economic opportunity, broken families, battering, child abuse, crime, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and no meaningful connection to the people among whom this child spends his life, no understanding or caring for the connection of this physical world to the very source of life.
Civil rights have fallen short, focusing on only two races and the black and white issues of segregation in the public schools, and on the break up of mid twentieth century doctrine of separate but equal. Schools have failed to address the next layer of segregation inherent in the popular doctrine of "no color" and forced assimilation of persons whose race, color, creed and religion do not fit the conventional ideas of what is the mainstream. Schools are there to service the students, all the students, not the other way around.
Native American's have been reduced in the mind of the mainstream American to something less than spiritually human, considered only to be entertainment dancers and mascots. They are told that their time is gone, a thing of the past. This is not a valid criticism and should you consider it so, tell the Christians, since we are considered a forgone piece of the last century, there is no point in their obsessing about the death of a man from 2,000 years ago, it is a thing of the past and not important in today's world.
It is time for schools to learn what is sacred and religious to the Native American and respect it. It is time for schools to learn how and why racism and religious oppression have functioned to exterminate Native Americans. It is time for schools to abandon the supremacist history written when Native Americans were considered savages and not allowed to have a voice in the writing of curriculum and text books. It is time to replace the legacy of hatred with the open hands of equality and respect.
