November is Native American History Month (and they’re not over yet–not the month and not the history)
by Rev. Dr. Doe West
Seventy years ago, Native Americans could not vote. A few weeks ago, two Native American/American Indian women created wave upon wave of celebration by achieving membership in the U.S. Congress. Are these the first Native Americans to take on this responsibility?
Not even close. Please open your minds and hearts to a little history:
- The first NA/AI member of Congress with recognized Tribal affiliation was elected in 1783.
- A page in Wikipedia provides names and dates of previous NA/AI members of the U. S. Congress with documented tribal ancestry or affiliation. [
- That list includes only members of tribes on the 48 contiguous states—not Hawaii, not Alaska. (As of now, no Alaska Natives have ever been elected or served.
- Upon the election of Sharice Davids of Kansas and Deb Halland of New Mexico, we will have four Native Americans serving in Congress in 2019; these new members join Tom Cole and Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma.
Those elections are important historical events, but there are other histories of personal importance to me and thousands of others.
Here’s an example: In the 1790s, Secretary of War Henry Knox said to President George Washington:
“How different it would be if instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population we had persevered through all difficulties and at last had imparted our Knowledge of cultivating and the arts, to the Aboriginals of the Country by which the source of future life and happiness had been preserved and extended. But it has been conceived to be impracticable to civilize the Indians of North America – This opinion is probably more convenient than just.”*
Washington and Knox were “reformers” who helped propel the concept of “civilizing the savage”; it is pretty clear to me that their intentions reflected moral reasoning. Unfortunately, stories that begin with decent intentions often, inevitably, lead to devastating outcomes because the intentions are based on ignorance and prejudice. In this case, the “Kill the Savage and Save the Person” campaign began.
Native American Boarding Schools (aka Indian Residential Schools) were created to provide institutionalized enforcement of intentions to “civilize.” Children were not just torn from their families and tribal communities. They were also stripped of their indigenous cultural signifiers: external signifiers were destroyed by cutting their hair and burning their clothing; linqual signifiers by forbidding use of their native languages; and personal signifiers by replacing their true names with European names intended to “Christianize” as well as “civilize” them.
The history of these schools yields proof of true savagery – sexual, emotional, physical, and mental abuse in these mostly in church-run schools. Doctrine and dogma were created by those in charge to meet their interpretation of what their religion would demand (just as is found today).
Genocide took many forms in the early history of the United States and came close to eradicating the original people of our Nation. There is no definitive list of Tribes that inhabited this land before colonization. There are official narratives, but there are also extinct tribes, loss of original language speakers, and destruction of dwellings and artifacts, without which it is difficult to create a true history. [lightly edited]
*lightly edited
