Hi Kieth,
You misrepresent my stand on tradition. It is certainly more complex
than you all are making it. I am sending this post from a list on the Daily
Oklahoman forum on the movie The Tin Drum. A movie that the local Christians
and constabulary have removed from the shelves of video stores as being
child pornography. I'm sure that some on the list have heard these stories
before, but the point about the adaptability of Native peoples in good ways
when left to our own devices is a good one to make again. Remember it
is a long way from the lead and zinc mines on the reservation to singing in
Carnegie Hall and teaching students who sing in every major hall in America
and Covent Garden and La Scala in Europe as well as Lincoln Center here.
I would challenge the non-natives to make such change from their traditions.
REH
Daily Oklahoman Forum on the Tin Drum movie July 25, 1999
to the list:
I have been thinking about two things from this list.
1. has to do with the idea that Americans spring from a
superior historical morality. And should protect that "morality"
from such films as "The Tin Drum".
2. that we have accurate history in our libraries about
the morality of the past. Does this Tin Drum issue spring
from a desire for a return to a "superior morality" from
our forefathers in the past? Could the absence of such
works as the Tin Drum have stopped the recent violence
in the Public Schools? Are our histories about the past
including the morality, truly factual?
In both cases the answer in my experience is no. I have
put together some vignettes that you probably would not
find in most libraries controlled by the current political
climate in Oklahoma, although I'm sure Carl Albert would
have been well aware of them.
Consider the following seven moral blunders that cause
violence.
- Wealth without Work,
- Pleasure without Conscience,
- Knowledge without Character,
- Commerce without Morality,
- Science without Humanity,
- Worship without Sacrifice,
- Politics without Principle.
- Gandi
I would like to say that I enjoyed your discussions today as I read through this
list.
What seems missing in all of this is Oklahoma's moral relationship to past
history with the Indian people. I am amazed how over the last two hundred years,
people
have been making these same arguments except instead of about "a movie they
haven't
seen" it is about a people that they didn't know.
About Indians before 1838 in Oklahoma and Blacks not a hundred years later in
North Tulsa. So many false statements come from ignorance. It seems that we
would learn. Consider the current beliefs that Indians are "tribes" or
"Hunter/Gatherers"
and not nations or not the people who gave 70% of the staple foods of the world to
the
world from their agricultural technology. Some of the following can be found in
old
books in the library but much of this is as exotic as China to the people in the
Oklahoma educational system today.
In the 1820s the Cherokee nation mirrored the federal government and the men had a
"coup" over the
women. Up until that time we had two governments. One red and one white. The red
was the war
government and was in power during times of national conflict. The White was the
peace government
and was in power during all of the other times. Only a woman could declare war and
call out the Red
government. Only the Clan Mother's could pick the Chiefs who were members of the
council in both
governments. Lineage was from the Mother and the women owned all of the property
with the
exception of the man's work implements and clothing. The children were a part of
her clan and they
were responsible for their upbringing. The wife's elder brother was the teacher
for the children. The
incest taboo was total and so the Aunts and Uncles were much more connected to the
children in the
instruction capacity than the actual parents. At a certain age they left the
parents home and went for
instruction to the home of the elder brother where they were given advanced
instruction.
In the 1820s this all changed. In 1827 we held a constitutional convention and
drafted a Constitution.
The following was written by my Father's graduate history advisor at Okla.
University in the 1930s. At
that time my father was hiding his heritage because if it had been known that we
were Indian, my father
would have been legally a minor under the law and he would have had no freedom to
his property, his
children or his religion. But that is another story. This is what Dr. Dale had to
say about the Cherokee
Nation in the 1820s:
>"By this time (1817) the Cherokee had made great
>progress in civilization. Contact with missionaries,
>white traders, and others had taught them much of
>the white man's civilization. Many of them had
>beautiful homes, plantations with broad, well tilled fields,
>much live stock and numerous slaves. Not a
>few were well educated, while intermarriage with the
>whites had produced a considerable group of
>mixed bloods of rare ability in the fields of both politics
>and business."
We also were breeders of Arabian horses. The Cherokee scholar Sequoia, the world's
first
psycho-linguist developed the Cherokee Syllabury and within two years we had our
own newspaper,
books and 98% of the population was literate in Cherokee.
We held elections in the European manner and had three government bodies.
Executive, Legislative
and a Supreme Court. Land was owned by individuals but no individual could divest
themselves
of their land outside of the nation without the government's approval. The women
were
disenfranchised, just as the European women were. Lineage became patrilineal.
Only the keepers of the Traditional Spiritual Ways maintained the old family ties
and the
"Law of Blood" which said that the family was responsible for paying the debt for
any family member's
crimes to the family of the aggrieved. We treated our women as equals and still
do. I've been divorced
twice and both women took our property with them. That was a little tough.
So in 1838 these people were simply driven from their homes (just as the Jews,
Gypsies and Gays
were in Germany starting in 1938). They were held in stockades out of doors with
poor sanitation where thousands died and during the reign of Martin Van Buren they
were driven to Oklahoma by the U.S. Army under General Winfield Scott. As the poet
and artist Ralph Waldo Emerson made clear:
>"Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, such a
>denial of justice, and such deafness to screams for
>mercy were never heard of in times of peace and
>in the dealings of a nation with its own allies and
>wards, since the earth was made.
>Sir, does this government think that the people
>of the United States are become savage and mad?
>from their minds are the sentiments of love and a
>good nature wiped clean out? The soul of man, the
>justice, the mercy that is that heart's heart in all
>men, from Maine to Georgia, does abhor this
>business." (Letter to President Martin Van Buren, 1887)
It was too bad that Emerson never made it to Georgia. He couldn't have said the
above seriously. The
Georgians so hungered for the mansions and farms of the Cherokee that General
Scott so distrusted
them that he elected to stay with them in order to control any outbreak of
violence. As John Ehle
states:
>As a general rule, North Carolinians and Tennesseans
>were evenly disposed toward the Cherokee...He
>was aware that some of the White Georgians on
>arrival at New Echota were vowing never to return
>home without killing at least one Indian. Their
>ferocious language surprised him coming from
>supposed Christians, and he decided to remain
>personally with the Georgian division of the operation in
>order to control it. Georgians seemed to deny,
>Scott noticed, that Indians were human beings...."
>(The Trail of Tears, The Rise and Fall of the
>Cherokee Nation" by John Ehle, Anchor books.
And then after we arrived in Oklahoma, solved our problems with treaties both with
all of the rest of
the "government stirred up" Indian peoples as well as our own problems having to
do with the death
march and then the Civil War. After all of that those Eastern "liberals" that Paul
Wesselhoft called
"elitists" came and visited us. Later at a conference in the Mohonk Mountain House
in upstate
New York these "Moss Back Liberals" the grandfathers, of today's neo-conservatives
and
Libertarian Party members, wrote about the visit to the Cherokee Nation in
Oklahoma:
>"The head chief told us that there was not a
>family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own.
>There was not a pauper in that nation, and the
>nation did not owe a dollar. It built its own capitol, in
>which we had this examination, and it built its
>schools and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system
>was apparent. They have got as far as they can go,
>because they own their land in common. It is
>Henry George's system, and under that there is
>not enterprise to make your home any better than that
>of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is
>at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will
>consent to give up their lands, and divide them
>among their citizens so that each can own the land he
>cultivates, they will not make much more progress."
>(Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report,
>1902, pp.3-7/ "Honorable" Senator from Massachusetts
>Henry L. Dawes)
Not unlike Bob Barr from Georgia insisting that only Judeo-Christians could be
killers and should be
in the Army. Then again has anyone ever seen the Cherokee homes in Park Hill
outside Tahlequah?
Or the magnificent schools for young boys and girls. One of which still stands at
Northeastern Univ.
in Tahlequah. The Mohonk Mountain house has a fine setting but it is certainly
no more beautiful than the home of James Vann or Park Hill. There was obviously
something that was totally self-serving and untrue in the Dawes report. As
devious as Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, himself when he compared the literate
Cherokees to untutored savages on the floor of the U.S. Congress. (They owned
more mansions and businesses than any of his relatives and were far more properous
than their "white" neighbors.)
The Mohonk Conference accepted Dawes viewpoint, and continued to advocate "reform"
with all the
earnestness of the moral crusade. Like Senator Dawes, the members based their
opposition purely
upon theoretical belief in the sanctity of private ownership rather than upon any
understanding of
the Indian nature or any investigation of actual conditions.
As this Tin Drum episode attests, this attitude is alive and well in the present
under the guise
of "liberty and goodwill". Who could be against that? But they are no more
willing to deal
with data today than they were in 1883 and liberty is not what they give nor is
goodwill.
Their belief in the sanctity of private property at that time is a lot like their
belief that the internet is free
from government support today. Basically this meant giving an allotment to each
individual Indian, with
the stipulation that it could be sold to the nearest white neighbor, something
that was forbidden
under Cherokee law before and is still forbidden to American's today. Although
they can sell to a
foreigner, that property does not then become the property of that foreign
citizen's nation. That
property is still American property. It is not annex able but if a Cherokee sold
his property, the
Cherokee Nation was just out of luck. The other trick was that the land was not
divided up equally
but each member was given an allotment. That left a lot of Cherokee Nation land
not allotted. That
was then opened up to Settlers for homesteading. Boomer Sooner! How many glorious
stories are told about that land theft? How is it that the football team of J.C.
Watts, (Oklahoma Congressman and only black Republican in Congress) can glorify
even stealing land before it was officially stealable?
Finally let me quote one of those settlers, not in Oklahoma but in South Dakota.
He was an editor for
the "Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer" and this is a particularly bloody second of two
articles to appear over
the Christmas Holiday in 1890. You've mentioned Oz on this list but do you know
it's history? This
second article (by this gentlemanly editor who would go on to write this most
beloved Children's book in
American history, "The Wizard of Oz,") mirrors the first almost exactly. He ended
the first article with
the words:
>It is on Christmas day that the Nativity of Christ is observed.....
Shades of the Georgians and General Scott. Following the massacre of women and
children at
"Wounded Knee" Church 13 days later, where the blood of the children mingled with
the red
decorations that editor L. Frank Baum revered, he lamented:
>The peculiar policy of the government in employing so
>so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to
>look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible
>loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which at its
>best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has
>been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measure,
>the employment of which would have prevented this
>disaster.
>
>The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety
>depends upon the total extermination [sic] of the Indians.
>Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in
>order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more
>wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures
>from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for
>our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent
>commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to
>be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been
>in the past.
Might I paraphrase these local words of Baum by saying that is sort of:
"If you've seen one Lakota die under the kiss of the gun, you've seen 'em all."
"If you've seen one Gypsy child pushed into the gas chamber, you've seen them
all."
"If you've seen one Cherokee women wearing a thin cotton blouse in 18 degree
weather on the way to Oklahoma and dying the next morning, you've seen them all."
"If you've seen one Cherokee bomber making his 32nd flight over Germany to stop
the genocide, you've seen them all."
"If you've seen one Pima 18 year old raise the flag at Iwo Jima you've seen them
all."
"If you've seen one line of naked women waiting to take a bath in a gas chamber,
you've seen them all.'
"If you've seen one Cherokee Sergeant capture a whole company of German soldiers
alone, you've seen them all."
"If you've seen one group of traditional men, women and children willing to fast
for
four days and nights with no food or water (while dancing, several times a year)
that
the culture may survive, then you've seen them all."
Or maybe you haven't seen them all, at all. Maybe there are many
more and all have something unique and wonderful to give and share.
Maybe, just maybe it is to be found in truthful works of art like the Tin Drum,
Amarcord, the Victors or the photographs of Eddie Adams in Vietnam. Where
are the now for the Gypsies of Kosovo? Art is first of all truth and then
excellence.
It begins with "pay attention" to every little detail. "Add to but do not take
away from."
And if we don't pay attention, that wonderful strength of all of the above
will be lost on us and we will be poor of spirit because of it. Good night.
This is the last that I will speak of this. I have to turn my head another
way now.
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble of New York, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Picher High School 1959
Tulsa University 1959-1965
