Run to the Hills?

I’m a big fan of history, archeology and anthropology. A study of all three subjects and their sister interests has the effect of providing perspective and relative calm on a number of subjects. When I see a situation in the news of day I tend to try and examine the history of the event that just exploded on my screen. It’s partially the student and partially the social worker in me that is so interested in the long term “why” of each event I bare witness to.

In the ongoing saga that is the Ward Churchill controversy one of the main themes that keeps coming is the history of injustices suffered by the Native South and North Americans by the European imperialist over 600 years ago. More specifically, Churchill and those like him tend to concentrate on the historical impact of European colonization and eventual American transcendentalism on the North American natives (no I will not call them Indians, those people live in India). In addition to academics, musicians like those in Iron Maiden or Anthrax (whom I love mind you) have written songs sympathetic to the plight of the Natives while casting shame on their own people.

Whenever the discussion of Native Americans comes up it us usually framed by this fantasy world where the natives never made war, were perfectly in tune with their environment and were innocent victims of the “White Mans” unaccountable aggression. It’s a case being presented to students from kindergarten to college and beyond with absolutely no evidence to the contrary. The “White Man” committed genocide against the poor, helpless, environmentally friendly and peaceful Native Americans. On behalf of us imperialist crackers, allow me to provide a bit of cross-examination of the short, short history of Native Americans.

First, I think any fair examination of the Native American people should begin with just who exactly these people were? “Based on anthropological and genetic evidence, scientists generally agree that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, at least 12,000 years ago…In recent years, molecular genetics studies have suggested as many as four distinct migrations from Asia. These studies also provide surprising evidence of smaller-scale, contemporaneous migrations from Europe, possibly by peoples who had adopted a lifestyle resembling that of Inuits and Yupiks during the last ice age.” (Wikipedia.org) For all intents and purposes, prior to European colonization, the ancient ancestors of our modern day Native Americans were mostly Asian. There are some who argue that migrants from the Pacific Islands share part of the Native bloodline but that theory hasn’t been completely proven accurate. For the sake of time, space and money let’s assume that the folks who inhabited this place before Mr. Whitefolks showed up were of Asian descent.

Any cultural anthropological study will show that humans developed two kinds of societies based on a number of variant factors such as soil rich for farming, availability of animals for hunting and domestication, etc. If adequate land for farming of resources was in limited supply or there were not animals fit for domestication, the society, band, tribe or what have you tended to be nomadic, hunter-gatherer types. However, those lucky enough to settle land that met the society’s needs became sedentary agricultural civilizations that eventually developed into trading empires such as the Maya or the Aztecs. When the European’s arrived in the “New World,” it was littered with both kinds of societies. Those societies were not innocent of the crimes often placed upon colonial European society.

For example, the words “war and imperialism” are often bandied about as the sole province of Europeans. However, the Native Americans apparently had their fair share of wars amongst each other. “(A)ccording to the native tradition, the ancestors of the Huron-Iroquois family had dwelt in this locality (Montreal-Quebec), or still further east and nearer to the river's mouth.

As their numbers increased, dissensions arose. The hive swarmed, and band after band moved off to the west and south.

As they spread, they encountered people of other stocks, with whom they had frequent wars. Their most constant and most dreaded enemies were the tribes of the Algonkin family, a fierce and restless people, of northern origin, who everywhere surrounded them. At one period, however, if the concurrent traditions of both Iroquois and Algonkins can be believed, these contending races for a time stayed their strife, and united their forces in an alliance against a common and formidable foe.

This foe was the nation, or perhaps the confederacy, of the Alligewi or Talligewi, the semi-civilized "Mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley, who have left their name to the Allegheny River and mountains, and whose vast earthworks are still, after half-a-century of study, the perplexity of archeologists.

A desperate warfare ensued, which lasted about a hundred years, and ended in the complete overthrow and destruction, or expulsion, of the Alligewi. The survivors of the conquered people fled southward, and are supposed to have mingled with the tribes which occupied the region extending from the Gulf of Mexico northward to the Tennessee river and the southern spurs of the Alleghenies.” (Earthbow.com)

Slavery is also a contentious topic among the elite. Europeans are seemingly burdened with endless blame over the institution of slavery. However, even here we are not alone in the world. The Native Americans kept slaves too but as this next bit will indicate, because of how their societies were structured, Native slaves did not have quite the same premium as slaves kept by Europeans. “(I)n most precontact Native American societies war captives served social rather than economic purposes. Torture awaited some, while others became adopted members of their captor's family and tribe. Torture enabled Indians to fulfill a sacred obligation by avenging the deaths of kin. Adoption, on the other hand, enabled a family to replace members who had died, and adopted war captives enjoyed all the privileges extended to relatives by birth. A few captives underwent neither torture nor adoption but remained on the fringe of society. This status most closely resembled the institution that Europeans called "slavery," because these people often performed menial tasks and strenuous work. Nevertheless, because most native peoples lived at the subsistence level and placed no premium on the accumulation of material wealth, these captives did not contribute economically in the way "slaves" commonly do. Certainly they contributed to the overall productivity of the group, and their sale or ransom might bring desirable goods into the community, but they did not represent a capital investment. Native economies did not depend on slave labor, nor did they value it.” (College.hmco.com)

Things evidently changed radically after the Europeans entered Native life. Now one might argue that despite some of the above evidence, the Native’s were just better people…and you’d be wrong. The Natives as a whole have shown themselves to be just as positive or just as corrupt as Europeans. “Some Indians, particularly in the South, began to adopt European attitudes toward Africans in the early eighteenth century. Treaties that required the capture of runaway slaves and paid bounties for their return drew Indians into the slave system of the southern colonies. Never isolated from colonists or their ideas, Indians became aware of the racial antipathy European colonists felt toward Africans. Unwilling to risk identification with these despised people, many native southerners began to distance themselves from Africans. Furthermore, some Indians began to find Africans useful as translators or laborers, and a few purchased slaves.” (College.hmco.com)

Finally there’s the Native American relationship to the environment. White people, especially today are blamed for any number of environmental disasters as if such instances were a relatively recent phenomenon. The ancient Mayans know quite differently. “While many Mayanists agree that wars contributed to the collapse, no one thinks they were the whole story. Another factor was overexploitation of the rain-forest ecosystem, on which the Maya depended for food. University of Arizona archaeologist T. Patrick Culbert says pollen recovered from underground debris shows clearly that ‘there was almost no tropical forest left.’ ” (Indians.org)

So where does this leave us? My point in all of this is that human beings, whether they be Asian, European, African or Native American are all susceptible to the same awful societal traps. No one race has moral superiority over the other. At one time in history or another we’ve all been the prosecutors or victims of perpetual war, genocide, slavery, and environmental irresponsibility. The Natives may have lost the war to the Europeans and suffered greatly for it but they weren’t these mythical creatures without sin whom were corrupted against their will either. In many cases they were complicit in their own disempowerment just as some of the Africans were.

People like Ward Churchill play to these ridiculous notions of moral superiority regarding Native Americans that is completely divorced from reality. The sooner we stop pointing fingers at different races for the sins of the past (or for that matter the present) and start dealing how we are going to improve upon the future, the better we’ll all be. Enough with the “Run to the Hills” mentality of treating non-White people as the Fabrage Eggs of history and lets move on to a more expansive understanding of history in both its many contexts and changes. Furthermore, it would be a step in the right direction if folks actually knew the history of the world and stopped empowering racial demagogues like Ward Churchill.