American Indian Reflections: June 2006 Archives

I wrote about the St. Louis arch celebrating Westward expansion and the Louisiana Purchase as a "symbol of genocide."  In a comment to that same piece Fausto writes "I'm sure our own "famous UU" TJ didn't have genocide in mind when he bought Louisiana or commissioned Lewis and Clark, but the fact remains that in the way things came to pass, genocide became an integral element of the whole package."

When governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson stated: "If we are to wage a campaign against these Indians the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes of the Illinois River. The same world would scarcely do for them and us." When he became President he had a standing army to wage his campaign of extermination and during his administration many of the nations were eliminated on the Atlantic side of the Eastern Mountains.  His administration then waged war against the people indigenous to the "near West" beyond the Appalachians.  Then he "bought" the West from France (whose claim to the land was based on the theology of the Christians Crusades (non Christians have no rights a Christian is bound to recognize.)

Did Jefferson mean it?  His whole life reveals an Enlightenment gentleman, curious about the new science, opinionated about the project of a propertied persons' democratic republic, who was openly racist, genocidal,  grandiose, and patriarchal.  The Louisiana Purchase was intended as a way to provide opportunities to his people (White People) and "extermination" of the same final solution to the native people west of the Illinois River.  The word genocide didn't exist in his vocabulary, but his "extermination" policy was very real, very intentional, and very calculated.  The West he envisioned would include slavery.  His writings make this clear, and when the senators and representatives in congress representing the Northern states tried to restrict slavery in the West he was alarmed and spoke of dissolving the United States.

Did Jefferson mean genocide?  He didn't consider Africans and Native Americans to be fully human, so enslaving them and exterminating them did not bother his conscience.  At least he does not share any self criticism for his words or actions in his writings, or any agonizing that as a result of his policies and practices hundreds of thousands of people were burned to death, shoot to death and starved to death, and hundreds of thousands were held in degrading slavery with their families ripped from them and all the fruits of their labor taken for the enrichment of generations of white people.

Unitarian Universalists speak of our continuing work against our own institutionalized racism.  We insist that racism is not just bad attitudes held by bigots (who are of course are not Unitarian Universalists) but built into the way this nation was built on conquest, plunder, and slavery and has subsequently evolved its institutional arrangements of power.  We see an example of this in our own practice.  Jefferson is sanitized and served up as a "famous UU" by Unitarian Universalist religious educators and clergy rather than presented as a morally questionable and politically contradictory example of Unitarian origins in the Enlightenment elite.  By doing this and allowing this to be done in our name we are perpetuating racism and contributing to holocaust denial.

Here is an example of what we must do more often.

An adult UU shares with me his impressions of GA and asks me what I think about the GA.

I tell him that it is apparent to me that we still have much work to do about racism, that again this year there was insensitivity and arrogance on the part of white Unitarian Universalists toward people of color. I share that adult people of color tend to be more accustomed to this kind of behavior on the part of well meaning, but clueless white folk, but that the youth of color are outraged that Unitarian Universalist adults could come across as arrogant, imperious, culturally incompetent, and/or oblivious jerks.

He opines that the problem with racism at General Assembly has been overblown.

I assure him that the problem is real and experienced, and results in pain among people of color and youth of color that undermines their confidence in Unitarian Universalism. In that we are a faith that proclaims "deeds not creeds" that proclamation creates an expectation that we might try to walk our talk. (I know it did for me as a Unitarian youth, but I soon came to realize that the vast majority of pew sitters were not faithful Unitarians, they came for intellectual stimulation not transformation.)

He offers the observation that the youth of color at General Assembly dress like they were in a street gang. I am taken aback by his characterization of our youth's dress. I know many of the youth by name, I have know several of them since they were children. I know their parents. The parents include UU ministers, Trustees, Congregational leaders, and the youth appear to me to be dressed like middle class youth dress when they are being hip, which is not at all like street gangsters. I reply that I know the youth and I disagree with his judgment of their attire, but perhaps making the distinction between youthful attire and street gangs requires some discernment and recognition of distinctions. (I am trying to be persuasive and not come across as dismissive.) He concedes that I might be right, and shares that Black youth make him nervous.

I am reminded that five centuries ago when the Europeans first encountered the Africans and the Native Americans they concluded that these "strange" people were promiscuous because they didn't wear clothing ("save for their privies") in the summer time.

Youth and the culturally marginalized must learn to dress "right" or they won't get any respect!

Some youth and young adults of color from the DRUUM YAYA website. (If you see the gang colors please email me and help me out.)

Ohiyesa wrote: The First American mingled with his pride a singular humility.  Spiritual arrogance was foreign to his nature and teaching.  He never claimed that his power of articulate speech was proof of superiority over "dumb creation"; on the other hand, speech is to him a perilous gift.

He believes profoundly in silence -the sign of the perfect equilibrium.  Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit.

The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence - not a leaf, as it were,astir on the tree, not a ripple upon the surface of the shining poo - his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life . . .

Silence is the cornerstone of character.

Ohiyesa (1858-1939) was a Santee Sioux who was given the Christian name Charles Alexander Eastman.

The Gateway Arch is a St. Louis landmark. "The great Arch has been the region's international symbol since it opened in 1965 to honor President Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase" which houses the Museum of Westward expansion.

The Native people had already been pushed West by the settlers on the East Coast when Jefferson "bought" the West from France. Now the new United States felt it had a license to take the land and bring a final solution to the indigenous population. Most of the wars the United States fought were against Indians, but we don't talk about that in school.

Back then the Christian right had a notion about what God intended a family to look like. and they legislated against interracial marriages.  My family was legal in Massachusetts, but not in Texas.

"But today in history, on June 12, 1967 the Supreme Court struck down state miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriages as violations of the 14th amendment which guarantees equal protection under the law.  In June of 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter had married in Washington D.C. Upon return to their home state of Virginia, the couple was arrested, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to a year in jail. Their appeal led to the decision."

quote from Peace Buttons email.

Cultural appropriation is when the people of one culture find some activity or artifact of another culture useful and adopts that activity or artifact into their own culture. 

This may or may not be ethical.  For example, the Hopi consider their religious ceremonies to be sacred, and would prefer that others not appropriate them.  We "misappropriate"
when we take something that another people have stated is not available for appropriation,  even if we do not hear their protests.  Other Native American Nations believe that it is a good thing when European background Americans learn from Native peoples.  But they do not want to see what is borrowed misused, or distorted.

I found this quote that may guide our appropriations:

Our first task in approaching another people,
another culture is to take off our shoes,
for the place we are approaching is holy.
Else we find our ourselves treading on another's dream.
More serious still, we may forget that God was there before our arrival.