Saturday, December 17, 2011
Glory of the Morning: History does repeat itself, but you have to know t...
Glory of the Morning: History does repeat itself, but you have to know t...: Yesterday I had an interesting meeting. Surprisingly I was made aware that I have offended some people who are following my blog, therefore...
History does repeat itself, but you have to know that it is happening for it to count.
Yesterday I had an interesting meeting. Surprisingly I was made aware that I have offended some people who are following my blog, therefore, I will be as general as possible.
Someone at this meeting said they didn't like being called an Indian Agent and wanted me to stop calling people names...hmm. First of all I didn't call them an Indian Agent as I wasn't referring to them. They are more akin to the evil enterprising overlord who saw to it that we Indians were kept in our place either through indebtedness (money) or fear or through other controlling measures. The Indian Agent in my previous blog and other articles is the poor token Indian who sat on a big important committee who did the evil overlord's bidding. While this may seem mean to you, this is all too real for me as it happened to my ancestors in the 1700s', 1800s', 1900s', and it is happening to me, today in 2011. This is the whole point of my observation!
My ancestors signed the treaty at Prairie du Chien which removed the last of the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin. They were duped, signed out of fear for their peoples/families lives. Some of my ancestors had homesteads and didn't have to leave Wisconsin during the forced removals because they were Decaris (half white). Some of my ancestors who stayed near Prairie du Chien (a place given to half bloods) were without a home or food or with no means of securing food; who had to wait for the White Father to honor his treaty. Some tired of waiting took to drinking, so much so that when annuity payments were made they owed the store keeps or enterprising settlers quite a sum of money that they had little money left to get needed food and clothing. Indian Agents and the early leaders of Wisconsin and the US, knew what was best for us and employed Indian Agents to help us. Some were white, though they kept a few of my ancestors on and considered them to be better than others because they were half bloods (though they had married back into the tribe and they didn't understand genetics), and offered them a little power through this title of Indian Agent. One of my ancestors got out of the Indian Agent business all together and moved to Oshkosh to start his own business and family.
I do not judge my ancestors as I was not in their shoes.
This pattern continued among the Anishnabe and the Dakota.
Explain I did my use of the term Indian Agent to my critic. I also explained the history behind it and it was to no avail. I was accused of attacking people (doesn't that sound familiar?) with no discussion of what led up to the alleged attack (doesn't that sound familiar too?). History has been whole heartedly embraced from the view from the top though there is some tiny incremental advances in native peoples recapturing their history, but I wonder if it will be enough.
How can we help others feel what we have felt from our grandmother's and grandfather's stories of injustices, genocide, forced removals, relocation, treaties, and discrimination? Their very lives were affected through these means. How can others understand what we have experienced for generations because we have the cultural advantage of oral tradition in our everyday lives.
I recognized that history was repeating itself here in Rochester. The evil overlord offered the poor starving Indians a little power (or alcohol of the old days) and now they have become addicted. They have become so addicted that they no longer see the need to help their people or other Indians and seek to misrepresent other Indians to feel the rush of power again. Sad. It is hard to stand against or with someone who has an addiction. Perhaps I have been too hard on the token Indian.
When I first heard the phrase or cliche "history repeats itself" I doubted it. I was young and filled with optimism. Surely, no one would ever go back to the treaty days! We can all become educated, self reliant and then, we can make our own destinies. We are the master's of our fate, right? Now I am older and filled with some wisdom, some pessimism and a little hope among other things. There are obstacles in the path of our people and it will take time to overcome them. There will be incremental evidences of change. There will be victories won, look at Indian Heights Park!
To my critic or rather critics as I am sure there are more than the one, I say that I am sorry, but my grandmother didn't tell me her experiences of injustices like being punished for speaking her native language at boarding school for nothing. She didn't want me sitting passively by because she made peace with the dominant society about being forced to go to boarding school. Nor did leave me the example of her telling Clyde Bellecourt and Russell Means to call her "Delicious" because they likened her to an "Apple Indian" because she believed in education, so that I could let others decide my fate for me. No, she left me quite a legacy and I still draw power from today as a wife, mother, community member, church member, tribal member and clan member.
As for GOM. She was a woman, who may or may not have been a Chieftess, but she made a conscious decision to marry outside of the tribe; Jospeh Decaris. From them came numerous chiefs and other descendants whom historians, military men, early Wisconsin businessmen wrote about in their memoirs, narrative writings and papers. My journey to discover her world has enlightened me beyond measure and I am grateful.
Someone at this meeting said they didn't like being called an Indian Agent and wanted me to stop calling people names...hmm. First of all I didn't call them an Indian Agent as I wasn't referring to them. They are more akin to the evil enterprising overlord who saw to it that we Indians were kept in our place either through indebtedness (money) or fear or through other controlling measures. The Indian Agent in my previous blog and other articles is the poor token Indian who sat on a big important committee who did the evil overlord's bidding. While this may seem mean to you, this is all too real for me as it happened to my ancestors in the 1700s', 1800s', 1900s', and it is happening to me, today in 2011. This is the whole point of my observation!
My ancestors signed the treaty at Prairie du Chien which removed the last of the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin. They were duped, signed out of fear for their peoples/families lives. Some of my ancestors had homesteads and didn't have to leave Wisconsin during the forced removals because they were Decaris (half white). Some of my ancestors who stayed near Prairie du Chien (a place given to half bloods) were without a home or food or with no means of securing food; who had to wait for the White Father to honor his treaty. Some tired of waiting took to drinking, so much so that when annuity payments were made they owed the store keeps or enterprising settlers quite a sum of money that they had little money left to get needed food and clothing. Indian Agents and the early leaders of Wisconsin and the US, knew what was best for us and employed Indian Agents to help us. Some were white, though they kept a few of my ancestors on and considered them to be better than others because they were half bloods (though they had married back into the tribe and they didn't understand genetics), and offered them a little power through this title of Indian Agent. One of my ancestors got out of the Indian Agent business all together and moved to Oshkosh to start his own business and family.
I do not judge my ancestors as I was not in their shoes.
This pattern continued among the Anishnabe and the Dakota.
Explain I did my use of the term Indian Agent to my critic. I also explained the history behind it and it was to no avail. I was accused of attacking people (doesn't that sound familiar?) with no discussion of what led up to the alleged attack (doesn't that sound familiar too?). History has been whole heartedly embraced from the view from the top though there is some tiny incremental advances in native peoples recapturing their history, but I wonder if it will be enough.
How can we help others feel what we have felt from our grandmother's and grandfather's stories of injustices, genocide, forced removals, relocation, treaties, and discrimination? Their very lives were affected through these means. How can others understand what we have experienced for generations because we have the cultural advantage of oral tradition in our everyday lives.
I recognized that history was repeating itself here in Rochester. The evil overlord offered the poor starving Indians a little power (or alcohol of the old days) and now they have become addicted. They have become so addicted that they no longer see the need to help their people or other Indians and seek to misrepresent other Indians to feel the rush of power again. Sad. It is hard to stand against or with someone who has an addiction. Perhaps I have been too hard on the token Indian.
When I first heard the phrase or cliche "history repeats itself" I doubted it. I was young and filled with optimism. Surely, no one would ever go back to the treaty days! We can all become educated, self reliant and then, we can make our own destinies. We are the master's of our fate, right? Now I am older and filled with some wisdom, some pessimism and a little hope among other things. There are obstacles in the path of our people and it will take time to overcome them. There will be incremental evidences of change. There will be victories won, look at Indian Heights Park!
To my critic or rather critics as I am sure there are more than the one, I say that I am sorry, but my grandmother didn't tell me her experiences of injustices like being punished for speaking her native language at boarding school for nothing. She didn't want me sitting passively by because she made peace with the dominant society about being forced to go to boarding school. Nor did leave me the example of her telling Clyde Bellecourt and Russell Means to call her "Delicious" because they likened her to an "Apple Indian" because she believed in education, so that I could let others decide my fate for me. No, she left me quite a legacy and I still draw power from today as a wife, mother, community member, church member, tribal member and clan member.
As for GOM. She was a woman, who may or may not have been a Chieftess, but she made a conscious decision to marry outside of the tribe; Jospeh Decaris. From them came numerous chiefs and other descendants whom historians, military men, early Wisconsin businessmen wrote about in their memoirs, narrative writings and papers. My journey to discover her world has enlightened me beyond measure and I am grateful.
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