Remembering

by Anthony J. Marsella

I send this reminder of our commercialized Turkey Day celebration, based on myths regarding the Pilgrims and the Native American Indians, and the subsequent exploitation and destruction of American Indian nations.

Legends say colonists were warmly welcomed, and American Indians appreciated their presence. Over time, actual events of those fateful days have been rewritten many times, each time suggesting the virtues of colonization, commercialization, and corruption, from the point of view of the colonizers.  Missing, of course, are the related truths: “exploitation, destruction, and genocide.”

Some have even proposed “Turkey” replace the Bald Eagle as our national bird, in honor of the myths of Pilgrim and American Indian celebration. White-farmed turkey, of course. How easily we fall into the propaganda!

Change is in the air! Amidst the agonizing recognition and struggles against “genocide,” Native American Indian voices have come together with a profound and an undeniable power at “Standing Rock” and other emerging abusive locations. If there is to be another “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” it will not be without a gathering of Native American Indian resistance.

Native American Indian voices are now joined by the voices of people of all ethnic, racial, and cultural groups, conscious of the suffering Native American Indians have had to endure.

I do not wish to romanticize the ensuing struggles between colonists, pioneers, homesteaders, cowboys, and Native American Indians. The violence was appalling for all sides. But in the end, Native American Indians have been the lasting victims!

Victims they will be no longer! No more myths, no more cowboy and Indian shootings, no more blue-clad horse-soldiers, to the rescue, bugles blowing, sabers drawn, rifles against arrows; no more forts, no more sinister half-breeds, no more drunken Indians hooked on firewater, no more passive squaws, no more White-man schools shaming and traumatizing students, invalidating their heritage and being!  No more! Never again! Not in my house!      

Colonization cannot be undone! Colonization decimated Native American Indian populations across the land. It was, in every sense of the word, genocide! Through the uses of infectious disease, relocation, tragic marches, blatant murder, massacres, and treacherous compacts ands promises, Native American Indians now find themselves victims once again to a government willing to continue the assault upon their lives, their life-affirming culture, traditions, and identity.

“Wounded Knee” will be replaced by “Standing Rock!” Not as a tragic location, but as an assertion and recovery of identity. The United States government must apologize and withdraw the 3.7 billion-dollar Dakota Access Oil Pipeline routes. Canada must also agree human rights “trump” oil! Oil pipelines must be re-routed because of their disastrous risks to polluting the Missouri River: “Native American Indian Lives Matter!” Already more than 200 oil spills have already occurred. Genocides stop here today!

I visited the Pine Tree Sioux (Lakotah) Reservation years ago! I was stunned by what I saw! I was stunned by the words of government officials when I questioned the obvious poverty and destruction. I recognized I had contributed to the entire tragedy as I played cowboys and Indians in my childhood. I bought into the John Wayne mentality!  I always took the part of the Indians, and I always lost.  Toy rifles against bows and arrows! I recall the words legitimizing our play: “Whiteman speaks with forked tongue. “Soon Iron Horse come! Kill many buffalo!  My people will pass.”  

Childhood play, modeling TV and movies, affirming and endorsing a harsh and enduring reality for a time. No longer! This destructive affront to American Indians across the land must end. 

The Society of American Indian Psychologists (SIP), under leadership of Art Blume and colleagues have challenged the American Psychological Association administration to speak out against the APA Code of Ethics and its implication for abuse. The choice is clear and unambiguous! Standing-Rock Water Protectors are just in protest!

How blind can anyone be to their request? Water is sacred in so many ways, and yet we despoil it and toxic it with impunity and abandon. But more than “water” is at stake.  For a people and a government that have abused Native American Indian rights and survival for more hundreds of years, there are the issues of dignity, integrity, and morality. There are issues of priorities: consumerism, materialism, commodification, greed, profit, pollution, crime, corruption, violence.

I say: Help the Native American Indians win when cowboys and Indians is played. Read the plaque. Ring the bells! It’s a new day! And we are moving on!

Doing the right thing

Mohave Indians; Indians of North America; Military personnel. Around 1868. Author: Gardner, Alexander, 1821-1882 (photographer). In the public domain.

by Anthony J. Marsella

Let’s change October 11 to Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

In our Global Era, we need to move away from Euro-American domination–including domination of history and the historical record.

It’s time to look at that record honestly. Reminders of genocides, enslavement, exploitation, repression of identity, and destruction of cultures can lead to opportunities for understanding, respect, and justice.

Columbus’ voyage had monumental consequences for indigenous people.. Even now, in the Amazon, as well as in Alaska, Hawaii, and other parts of the USA indigenous people struggle for human rights denied them by colonial and imperialistic powers. Time for change! There must be place and privilege for all.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., ProfessorEmeritus, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Republished, with light editing, from the Psychologists for Social Responsibility discussion group, 10-11-19.


Kerala: The graveyard of all war propaganda, Part III

WWII A Nazi propaganda poster. In English: “Marxism is the guardian angel of capitalism.” his file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Dontworryifixedit.

by Ian Hansen, PhD

Pointless War #3: The War on “Bourgeois” Liberty and Democracy

Finally, consider liberty-protecting electoral democracy.  Over in these “Western” parts we adore liberty-protecting electoral democracy, of course.  But other world players have considered it so evil that Der Fuhrers, Dear Leaders, Big Brothers, Generalissimos, Chairmans and Commandantes have all felt obliged to smash and destroy it with totalitarian enslavement, sometimes garnished with genocide.  Though their methods may have seemed harsh, these figures imagined they were merely breaking the eggs necessary to make beautiful, radiant omelets, like, say a thousand-year Reich of Righteousness from the fascist/Nazi side, or True Democracy from the totalitarian communist side (“democracy” embodied in obsequious groveling obedience to The Party).  In the totalitarian view, legally-protected liberty and the electoral-parliamentary forms of democracy were the eggs that had to be smashed in order to prevent them from poisoning people’s minds away from these utopian projects.  Totalitarians feared that “Western”-style individual liberty and electoral parliamentary democracy would turn the precious volk into capitalists, selfish individualists, bourgeois liberals and rejectors of civilization and sublimity.

But Kerala defies both forms of totalitarian genocidal expectations by being a liberty-protecting, parliamentary democratic kind of place where communism flourishes politically and religion flourishes culturally.  Kerala has hammer and sickle flags flying all over.  It also bills itself as “God’s own country,” with ordinary people praying, God-believing and religious service-attending as far as the eye can see.  So liberty-protecting electoral democracy in Kerala did not destroy either communism or religion there, as totalitarian genocidals might have imagined it would.

And, for that matter, declining to destroy communism and religion did not lead to the implosion of liberty and democracy in Kerala, as anti-communists and anti-religionists might have imagined it would. If anything, bourgeois “Western” electoral parliamentary democracy and individual liberty have grown stronger in Kerala over the years.  And they’ve been growing in a fertile soil that combines regularly-elected communism with indigenous or indigenized Indian religions.

In another article, “Reconsidering Communism, Religion and Liberty-Protecting Democracy Through the Lens of Kerala” I present detailed empirical evidence that Kerala is a delightfully free and peaceful communism-inclined state, a delightfully free and peaceful religion-inclined culture, and a delightfully free and peaceful liberty-protecting democratic political entity.  I nevertheless argue that in none of these particulars is Kerala an “exception that proves the rule,” at least not in the usual sense of the phrase.  Kerala is not, in other words, a bright spot for X (X being communism, or religion, or liberty-protecting democracy) that just throws into sharper relief how repulsively evil X usually is by nature.

When avoiding post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacies and other failures to account for confounds, the relevant empirical data points in a surprising direction.  The data suggests that communism, religion and liberty-protecting electoral democracy are all somewhat salutary to peace and freedom and thus are compatible with each other in their most basic, stripped down, core value-grounded forms.  Want to spend another half hour wading through my prose so you can see that data?  Read the article here, and don’t forget to click the links.