Indian Critic Should Check His Facts

It has always been my contention that the people most ignorant about American Indians are the people who live right next door to them.

I’m not sure why this is so. Perhaps it is because their parents and grandparents were so filled with myths and misconceptions that their lack of true knowledge filtered through to their offspring.

I have also found that many of the old-timers born and raised near Indian reservations have had one experience with an Indian, usually one they would refer to as a “drunken Indian” and this brush with an extreme incident colored all of their perceptions.

This does not prevent these bordertown philosophers from pontificating about what should or should not be done to, or for, the American Indians. “Or should we call you Native Americans?” they usually say with a chortle.

The latest wizard to emerge is a columnist for a small weekly newspaper, The Journal, based in Crosby, N.D.

John Andrist decided to compare birds being pushed from their nests to make it on their own to American Indians and what he perceived as their resistance to becoming a part of the Great American Melting Pot.

Mr. Andrist writes, “There is a point where everyone has to set aside the past and move forward. American Indians are tragically short of good leaders with the courage to exhort them to do so. Many of their leaders seem more interested in making a buck off the system for themselves.” Sounds an awful lot like some state governors, congressmen and senators, doesn’t it?

I spoke with Mr. Andrist by phone. He wondered why Indians didn’t just forget the past and be like everybody else in America. He wondered why Indians live in poverty on reservations when they could just up and move to the cities. He wondered why the Indians of North Dakota, although few in number, commit more crimes than anyone else.

I assured him that he had better check out the facts. First of all, the Indian people of North Dakota appear to commit more crimes because they are tried in federal courts off the reservations where the crimes may have been committed. Second, it should come as no surprise to Mr. Andrist that many mainstream newspapers in his state - that translates to being white-owned - get their news about the Indians living within their borders by going to the nearest courthouse.

In essence, many more crimes in North Dakota are committed by non-Indians, and to suggest otherwise is misleading and, indeed, ludicrous.

I asked Mr. Andrist when he last visited an Indian reservation in his state. He hemmed and hawed and finally admitted it had been many, many moons.

Did he know that the Turtle Mountain Reservation near his hometown now had a modern community college, a new high school and many new business enterprises operated by tribal members, I asked. Well, no! He really didn’t know about those things.

How could he sit in his newspaper office and write about all of the things Indians should or should not be doing without actually visiting a reservation and checking out where they are now and where they are going? I asked.

In his column Mr. Andrist wrote about the tragedy of the Jewish holocaust using it as an example of a people who did not live in the past or “seek privilege and reparation.”

Bad analogy, Mr. Andrist.

The American Indian suffered a holocaust at the hands of the new settlers as bad or worse than that suffered by the Jewish people. Not only were the lives of men, women, and children taken for bounty, most of the possessions of the Indian people were also taken.

Here are a few facts Mr. Andrist should know about:

Indian people are not seeking privilege and reparation. They are abiding by the guarantees set down in legal treaties signed between their nations and the United States of America. These guarantees called for an education for their children, health care, and the right to run their own governments, among many guarantees.

In exchange for signing these legal documents, the Indian nations of America gave up millions of acres of land, including the plot of land upon which the Journal of Crosby, N.D., sits.

Believe me, Mr. Andrist; I don’t want to sound like a Johnny-one-note, but white America believes everyone should be and wants to be just like them. Would white Americans move from their homes, communities, counties or states just because they wanted to be like everyone else? That is what you are expecting of the American Indians.

The reservations are their homelands. It is where the bones of their dead lie buried. Theirs is a land that holds spiritual and cultural significance to their very lives. It is not a nest they have to be pushed from in order to survive.

The American Indian is as free - or more free - than any other inhabitant of this nation. Don’t you, Mr. Andrist, believe for one minute that because we choose to live on our reservation lands that we are like birds in a cage.

You should be as free as we are, because it is you and your fellow Americans who have placed yourselves in little boxes.

xxxx