“Nobody’s ever talked about the holocaust here [in America]. There were, conservatively speaking, nineteen million Indian people living in North America. Nineteen million. By 1970, there were 260, 000. Where did they go? What most people in this country fail to realize is the model for [the Jewish Holocaust] was the treatment of Native American people. [Hitler] said so, he wrote it down: the model for the [Nazi] concentration camps were the [Indian] prison camps here. Also, the whole notion of turning a people against themselves, keeping them busy within the prison camps, was also born here. Hitler thought it was a very good plan, and he admired [U.S. President] Andrew Jackson. Nineteen million. That’s not a holocaust?”
Phil Lucas (1942 – February 4, 2007) was an American filmmaker of mostly Native American themes. He acted, wrote, produced, directed or edited more than 100 films/documentaries or television programs starting as early as 1979 when he wrote/co-produced and co-directed Images of Indians for PBS - a five-part series exploring the problem of Indian stereotypes as portrayed and perpetuated by Hollywood Westerns.
Robots
As we work and plan and struggle and rush to prepare or travel
or clean up or cook in anticipation of our annual family ritual,
it is worthwhile to take a moment to ask ourselves why we’re
doing it. For most of us, Thanksgiving is about family. It is
our annual family reunion, for which we plan with stars in our
eyes and which usually if not always transpires with mixed
results. This is Thanksgiving, a family gathering many of us
would rather skip but emotional blackmail forces us to attend.
Thanksgiving carries no biblical mandate, though many Church
Folk assume it does. It is not a religious holiday but an
American custom invented by New York advertising firms, the
so-called “Mad Men” of New York’s Madison Avenue. Thanksgiving,
like Christmas (yes Christmas) was
wholly
invented by a phalanx of expert liars: hypnotic storytellers
who can weave together shards of history into an invented
“tradition” most of us assume dates back centuries. We have our
own tradition for Thanksgiving that has absolutely nothing to do
with Native Americans, the so-called “Indians” the
child-friendly Pilgrim story teaches us. Most of us think
nothing of Native Americans nor consider their plight through
all the chaos and storm of our annual convocations, even though
this holiday’s origins are based upon the exploitation and
eventual genocide of these indigenous peoples. In my lifetime, I
have not attended a Thanksgiving meal where Native Americans
were even mentioned outside of a child’s storybook and our
collective memory of the Thanksgiving story. But, given this
nation’s shameful history of oppression, thievery, brutality and
wholesale slaughter of these rightful owners of this land,
omitting any reference to them as we gorge ourselves with meat
and pass out in front of the flatscreen makes us just as guilty
of their blood as the ignorant white Americans who sought to
wipe them out.
Many Native Americans, today, live in the most shocking, abject
poverty the world has ever seen. The unemployment rate among
Native Americans routinely soars above an astonishing 70%. Alcoholism and
drug abuse is rampant, as is gang-related crime, prostitution
and human trafficking of Native American girls. America’s
ability to separate that reality from its annual turkeyfest
underscores an alarming and sad depravity on all our part. To be
aware of suffering on so great a scale and not have empathy for
these people makes us all idiots. Church Folk I’ve discussed
this with just kind of roll their eyes and wave me off, “What’s
that got to do with me?” Well, nothing. And everything. Because,
if we really were Christians, instead of ignorant Church Folk,
our Christian conviction would encourage us to stop being
robots. I am routinely looked upon as odd because I rail against
these phony holidays—most of them invented by chain-smoking
white guys on Madison Avenue to sell you stuff. Most people I
know, white or black, never question, never ask themselves, “Why
am I doing this?” It’s October, time to buy a bunch of pumpkins
and make Jack O'Lanterns. It’s December, time to put up the
tree. Why? What does any of that have to do with God or, for
that matter, with us as a people?
Pocahontas Was A Slave: Early settlers routinely brutalized and murdered Native Americans,
including rape of women and girls. Click to view an amazing documentary
Sacrifice
It’s possible to be an ignorant Christian. It is possible, I
suppose, to be a stupid Christian. But, real Christianity
demands sacrifice. Being an actual Christian *inspires*
sacrifice. For us, sacrifice should not be a miserable chore.
We’re excited to do make that sacrifice, excited to see God
move, as a result, in the lives of others.
As I understand it, there is a federal budget set aside for the
Indian Nations residing on what is allegedly their own sovereign
lands. Of course, these lands are the most worthless, useless,
dead tracts of property the white man (not being racist, but
let’s face it: we had nothing to do with this) could find.
Native Americans are entitled, by U.S. treaty, to own and reside
on these lands and a budget is allocated to help sustain them,
paying for health care and other services. The budget is a
ridiculous snowflake of the blizzard of trillions of dollars
lands seized from Native Americans are actually worth. And, with
unemployment routinely hovering around a shocking 70%, even
routine maintenance of aging, ramshackle houses and bare-minimum
health care is often beyond the capacity of those funds
budgeted.
Suicide, depression, drug abuse and alcoholism are rampant on
many Native American reservations. There is likely not a weekend
that passes where someone does not get drunk and get into a
fight or have an accident, requiring an ambulance to rush him to
the nearest health center. If the injury is serious enough, the
health center will authorize transport to the nearest
hospital—off of Indian lands. The costs for even one of these
events can spiral upward of $4000. That’s one drunk Indian, one
weekend. Drug and alcohol-related emergency care is common, and
those costs—millions of dollars—are drained from the already
miniscule budget allocation for the tribal nations. There wasn’t
enough money in the first place to fix a roof or provide a
balanced, healthy diet; depression and substance abuse
disproportionately drain what little resources the nations have.
These people are freezing. These people are hungry.
This has never been discussed at any Thanksgiving table I’ve
ever sat at. I can’t help but wonder what good might be done if,
instead of running out and buying all that food, “American”
families collected the money they might have spent—the billions
we spend, every year on travel and feasting and house prep, or
even the enormous sums we spend giving Thanksgiving dinners to
our own poor—and put all of those dollars into a fund for
impoverished Native American families. What if Thanksgiving
meant a day of consecration, turning our own plates down as we
extend ourselves to this land's rightful owners? If we fixed a
roof or extended power lines to the many homes without power or
running water? Since we’re obviously not willing to do that, what
if we at least acknowledged the Native American role in the
evolution of our society? What if we, at least, prayed for them,
lobbied for them through our elected representatives?
Or, if nothing else, what if we at least thought about
them every once in a while?
Happy
Thanksgiving: While we wolf down dinner and rush out to Walmart for that bargain flatscreen:
Pine Ridge Reservation home, Dakota Sioux
The Real Thanksgiving
The best thing about Thanksgiving used to be that we were stuck
with each other. Everything was closed, even the movies. You had
no other choice but to spend the day with your annoy8ing cousins
and that aunt who nags you about everything. There were board
games and football and reruns of I Love Lucy. We hated it. When
nothing else worked, we’d just break out and walk, the young
people, just wandering the hood connecting to other bored young
people who had nothing else to do on Thanksgiving.
Today, we wolf down supper fast as we can and rush down to
Walmart to get in line for that bargain flatscreen. We didn’t
care about the Indians then, we sure don’t care about them now.
Whether we believe we owe Native Americans or not, I believe the
least we could do is be Christian enough to stop exploiting
them, even by proxy. Thanksgiving, as we practice it, has us
giving thanks to God while ignoring the exploitation and
genocide of millions. It is inconceivable how we bow our heads
in solemnity while ignoring what this day actually represents.
I’m not saying don’t have your annual family gathering. Nobody’s
telling you not to cook all night and watch football all day in
between the bickering and squabbling. What I’m saying is, stop
being a robot. Stop doing things because you’ve always done
things. Ask questions. Educate yourself. Make a sacrifice.
Have your Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. It’s not a sin. People may roll their eyes at you, but Friday is an easy, simple gesture in recognition of the brutality and disenfranchisement of the Native American people. Make a stand. CONTINUED
Christopher J. Priest
17 November 2012
editor@praisenet.org
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