Posted on 02/18/2015 5:38:36 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
TUBA CITY, Ariz. (RNS) As I pass through the Navajo Nation on my 4,000-mile drive across America, I catch a disturbing glimpse of a white-power insurgency happening in all regions.
White settlement of the Southwest meant dislodging the native population at gunpoint. U.S. Army troops slaughtered the Navajo at will. Whites broke one treaty after another, then forced the Navajo in 1864 onto a “Long Walk” of 300 miles away from their tribal lands. When a pregnant Navajo woman came to childbirth, an impatient Army soldier simply shot her.
The Navajo were allowed to return four years later to a much-diminished territory set aside for them. Today the Navajo Nation is the largest tribal reservation in the U.S. It has significant autonomy, including its own judicial, law enforcement and social service systems. But the Navajo remain under Washington’s thumb. Poverty is everywhere.
I read the history and feel shame and compassion. The “cowboys and Indians” games we played as children in Indiana, informed by TV shows like “The Lone Ranger,” now seem utterly ignorant. The real story was gruesome and unjust.
I had a similar reaction when I moved to the South and discovered how whites there had savaged Native Americans, enslaved millions of Africans, then terrorized former slaves and their descendants for over a century.
Hearing those stories and seeing daily evidence that, as Faulkner said of the South, “the past isn’t even past,” forced me to see my life up North differently. I grew up benefiting from segregation in Indiana. I never questioned why my city had an all-black high school, or why the clubs and honors at my integrated high school were reserved for whites.
Not long ago I drove through Topeka, Kan., which gave us Brown v. Board of Education, and heard on public radio a supposedly learned conversation about the possible overturning of Brown v. Board and a resumption of legal segregation.
No wonder the politics of Kansas are so ugly and the Christian fundamentalism so virulent. So are the politics and religion of the South, of Arizona and across the country. In some places, whites seem to be on a mission to preserve the benefits of white privilege, even if that means gun violence, police brutality, unfair sentencing, and the languishing of urban schools.
They treat immigrants of color as if they were indolent invaders intent on destroying the “American way of life,” rather than the latest to believe the promise of liberty and opportunity.
Like a white government breaking promises to Native Americans, politicians serving angry whites chip away at the job gains of blacks and Hispanics, shred a social safety net that benefits people of color, cripple immigration and systematically deny voting rights to nonwhites.
They call it “shrinking” a bloated government and combating “welfare fraud” and “voter fraud,” but the targets are nonwhites, not cheaters.
There is no comparable zeal for taking white-led corporations off the federal dole or curbing their cheating. Cutting taxes on the rich and raising them on the poor are all about race. So is Christian right-wing alarm over Islam in the U.S.
Right-wing politicians and clerics dismiss concern about this white-power insurgency as soft-minded “liberal guilt” and anti-American. In fact, it’s basic justice; it’s the soul of America at stake here.
A nation that allows war on people of color risks descending into the same evil that shot a pregnant Navajo woman when a white government wanted her tribe’s land.
*****
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the president of Morning Walk Media and publisher of Fresh Day online magazine. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)
I now mostly go to Catholic church, as I was very much a catholic (lower-case 'c') Episcopalian. I have not yet converted.
That happened in my Methodist church, too. I didn’t go back to that one.
perhaps as the Syrians related to YO YO as late as 1933....they were superstitious and afraid that a wheel would cause the Earth to stand still...???
Life’s tough.
Who did the Navajo displace, The Ashkenazi?
Father Tom is obviously running for the title of national guilt-eater.
Wallow in it, Fadduh, wallow in it. Eat your heart out. It'll make you feel good...but it's not going to do a damn thing for all those "oppressed" folks.
Have another heaping helping of guilt...
It is really sickening in what is going on in so many Churches. My elder daughter was going to a PCUSA church while she was in high school. It took me going to church with her a few times and pointing out things on the church website to show her the error of their ways. It takes vigilance to go to church these days. It didn’t seem that way growing up. It was normal for me to go to friends’ churches (of different faiths) and my parents didn’t worry, although my father would provide theological lessons on certain faiths so that I would not be tempted to stray. But he was never concerned about what was being preached.
For those who have lived in the 4 Corners area the story is quite different.
The Navajos were late comers who proceeded to attack all tribes around them. The massacred the Hopi villages around 1835. They made war on all the Spanish and Utes, but one time they made peace with the Spanish. This lasted for several years till the Navajo broke their own treaty and began raiding and killing again till defeated by the Anglos.
Then they had peace till the treaty was again broken by the murder of a Negro cook at a fort near Gallup, and the war was on again.
They were sent to Fort Sumner where they were forced to try and become civilized. after several years they up and walked away back to the 4 Corners area.
Compare the Navajo LONG WALK (300 miles)with the Cherokee Trail of Tears (800 miles in winter) and the Navajos come off as whiners.
Not all Navajos went. Many were still hidden back in the hills. Today they have the largest reservation in Arizona-New Mexico. It has only been in the last 40 years that the Navajo have decided to start using their water rights set aside by the early settlers and now have large irrigated farms around Farmington.
I lived there during the American Indian Movement and takeover of the Fairchild plant at Shiprock.
Even the Navajos I worked with disliked the AIM people.
I abandoned a Presbyterian Church after the minister stood behind the pulpit and cheered when he said Bill Clinton had been found NOT guilty when we all knew he had been found guilty but had not been removed from office.
Not surprisingly, there is a very fine museum for pre-Colubian Indian artifacts at the University of New Mexico.
I recall, in particular, a display of toys that had been carved and painstakingly assembled for children to play with.
One of them was composed of a carved donkey pulling a wheeled cart...with a functional axle. It was the only set of wheels in the building...
Absurd. Take your religion and....
I know it is off -topic. But do you know any skin walker tales?
Thank-you for the history lesson, I collect postcards of the natives of AZ. When I see them in groups around town, I am curious about them, but I have never gone up to ask what tribe they are from.
Indians can easily become citizens of the United States.
Correct me if I’m wrong - but don’t a lot of Indians have dual citizenship with the US and their tribe?
On the other hand, if you want to join the most Indian tribes, you have to prove that your grandparents were members of the tribe. In fact, you can be kicked out of a tribe in a lot of places for not being Indian enough.
Half breeds need not apply!
But I’m lectured that only white people are racist and bigoted?
**But do you know any skin walker tales?**
No real tales, but I worked with a young Navajo Christian who had some tales.
we worked an evening shift and he would go home at night to his home on the rez. When he parked, he would look around at all the bushes to see if there were any skinwalkers hiding there, then make a dash for the house!
Another time, he told me when he and a friend decided to go hunting skinwalkers with a .22 rifle on their motorcycle. They were out at night, saw some tracks in the sand and began to follow them. As they closed in he said the tracks began to take on the shape of wolf prints when he hit a rock and threw both of them off the motorcycle.
He tried and tried to get the motorcycle started but it would not. After about 15 minutes he got it started. He just knew some skinwalker had thrown a spell on the motor cycle to keep it from running and allow the skinwalker to escape.
One night his brother was killed in a truck wreck. The family buried him and mourned for their loss. One night heard the footsteps inside the house of his brother’s boots coming down the hall. It so unnerved the family, as Navajos are terrified of the dead, the father went to a shaman who gave him some sage to burn in a ceremony in the house. The boots were never heard again.
When he was younger, he found an old wreck of a wagon and decided to dig into it. he made the mistake of telling his grandparents who smoked him off due to the possibilities of skinwalkers and Chindis in the area.
With all the tears this “priest” shed over the past, I wonder how many dead indians and slaves he brought back to life.
***you can be kicked out of a tribe in a lot of places for not being Indian enough.****
The Cherokees recently kicked out lots of Negro Indians who were descendents of slaves brought to Oklahoma by the Cherokee.
I’ve got Cherokees going to our church who, if you put a horned helmet on them, would look like blond viking raiders. They all have Cherokee Nation license plates.
Yeah, it’s hilarious. His comments are so out of date you wonder what rock he’s been living under.
There have been endless programs for Indians but like you said, easier to wait on the rez for the check. You could always tell when it was payday in Flagstaff: the San Francisco bar was full. And Jim Babbitt Ford sold outta pickups.
It’s an attitude. They gotta get past it and try to get ahead. Everyone will help them. But you gotta try.
You get my point.
I’m not going to be lectured about prejudice by one of the most openly racist groups of people in the US today.
Cool!
***For all the bleating about the poor Indians...***
Bleating is right! I remember reading the old books THE INDIAN WHO IS NOT POOR and others by Charles F. Lummis. They portray a very different image of the Pueblo Indians.
Now they all line up and Wah-Wah-Wah! Gimme!
Do you realize there are lots of Indian tribes the US Government NEVER had a war with? They often sided with the Anglo against the hostiles.
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