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Show Do we have to live cold White way?' . . . r--" ) u 1 " ' f : ' j I v V i i : V"' ! was taught more English -UDnw middle-class formal EngiiVu which, he was to learn, is useless to converse in machi shop and factory. He tried jobs again: Aircraft ; dustry in Los Angeles, machj"e shop in Salt Lake City. His J zons continued to roll back b returned to Intermountain SciiJ with new ideas, new ambitions' But he learned soon, and not with' out bitterness, that genuine m lectual curiosity in "an hi was undesirable. "Perhaps" j, comments, looking back, "they didn't consider it worthwhile to nurture scientific interest It was beyond the curriculum, and my questions would have meant extra ex-tra effort." After that enrollment, Mr. Bowman, still intrigued by all things mechanical, decided to enuist in the army, having been led to believe he could learn aircraft air-craft mechanics. In fact he points out, the army had ken advertised as a sort of higher education in skilled vocations, "Instead, it was run, run, run; push, push, push; sweat, sweat, sweat." He trained in airborne, until an ear injury pushed hini into the infantry. But he didn't have to walk all the way. After an eye-opening tour in Korea, he flew off to Europe saw Germany, Franee, Austria, Italy, Switzerland. He began to perceive the inter-relationships of cultures and nations; the similarities and differences among peoples. In Germany, bis intellect stirred again. After deciding to study, lie took a test and was astonished was able to cover more than one grade in a year. But he learned more than h i s studies at Fort Wingate (Shush-be-toh, "Place Where Bears Drink"). There were harsh lessons les-sons in life for the Indian children there. They had been told by 'the recruiters that if they would go to school they could "live in fine houses with white doors". But there had been no warning about the loneliness, the homesickness. As a child in a new experience, Tonny had no concept of being without the security of a loving family life; no concept of the sterile, ster-ile, severe, demanding, punitive life at an Indian boarding school. Soon after he arrived, other students told him by way of warning that if he did "wrong tilings" he would be punished in any of many ways. They told him of a student who had been struck on his ears so violently he was not able to hear for the rest of the day. These experiences experi-ences were especially fearful, for Navajos are loving to their children and do not beat them. Life at boarding school is one of total separation. "Few students and parents are able to visit. The average distance from home 'is probably about 150 miles a long trip in the desert," Mr. Bowman explains. Letters, picked up and mailed at trading posts, usually written and read by strangers, were nearly as rare as visits. There were lonely hours at night when the child Tonny would try to re-live happy memories of being be-ing with his family. He frequently called to mind a time when he had gone with his mother to work in carrots, near Blue Water. There Navajos how to live how to survive, how to enrich life, how to be at peace With the Earth and the Universe. When he was told the stories of Christianity, he perceived per-ceived the conflict, and listening brought a gnawing resentment. However much his religion was ridiculed, he continued to cling to it fiercely. "Even Navajos," he says, " those who had become Christians Chris-tians ridiculed new students who continued to observe the Navajo Way. Some students, when they left home, would be given buckskin pouches of reverenced rev-erenced corn pollen, so they could continue to observe the ceremonies of the Navajo Way. But older students would make fun of the practices." Some youngsters also had brought polished pol-ished stones, dedicated by Singers, Sing-ers, or as a gift from their parents. par-ents. The polished stone is not exactly an amulet. "They are more respected than good luck charms," Mr. Bowman explains, "and not for protection like religious re-ligious medals. We might call them a symbol of our feeling for Mother Earth." When students were seen witli a polished stone, they were derided and called "superstitious". "It was as if the whole school experience had been designed to degrade everything every-thing Navajo." At last those bitter days were past: Jack Bowman rested his soul by returning to the reservation, reserva-tion, herding sheep, relaxing into the comfort of his motherlife. But he soon realized there were now other bonds; his years in school, also, had claimed part of him. He tried working in Los Angeles, but Qnnn hp was Dulled awav from that soon he was puuea away nom uiai urban culture back to his motherland. moth-erland. He ended up picking pinion nuts in Colorado, thinning beets in Idaho, at least with his people if not on his own land. "I was forced to realize that the reservation reser-vation could no longer sustain my people, that we couldn't live off the land the way we used to do. I decided to go back to school." He enrolled in Brigham City Intermountain In-termountain School, trained as a machinist, learned welding, learned to type. "Typing is taught as a vocation," he says, "not as an aid to higher education or personal per-sonal improvement. All Indiain education is aimed at preparing us for service jobs to do the labor of society." Along with these he BY E. C. VILLAGE s t Special to the Chronicle j When Jack Tonny Bowman en- ; rolled in the University of Utah, ' he had no thought of becoming ' part of the Institution, but his life experiences have suited him well for his new role here as Counselor to Indian Students. He was born during T'a'a'chil, the Time of New Grass, in the month White Man calls April. During his early childhood child-hood near Twin Lakes, New Mexico, Mexi-co, his nearest neighbors w e r e three miles away beyond a small mountain, and in the other direc-; direc-; tion, 10 miles across the desert. i His world was bordered by the tall sky, and by the near hills where he went to gather pinion and cedar for the fire. Water, too, had to be carried to his ho-ghan; five miles from the spring by horseback or walking. He was a typical Navajo child, distant in time and experience from the Uni- ! versity of Utah. Mr. Bowman received a degree in engineering from the University this spring, and hopes eventually to enter his own field. "But for a while," he says, "I want to use my experiences as a student to help other American Indian stu-: stu-: dents to get the greatest possible j benefits from their educational op- I portunities." His years as a stu- j dent at the U, his wide intercul- tural experiences, his roots in the ! continent, and his bonds to t h e indigenous American people have j prepared him for the varied and perplexing problems of counseling. counsel-ing. He will recruit Indian students, stu-dents, guide them through problems prob-lems of financing, of registration, of social life, of scholarship. "I don't want the students to think of me as just another teacher; I hope they feel I am a friend. Any student needs friendship, but to :he Indian student, possibly facing 'or the first time both urban life tnd the problems of being from a stereotyped group, encouragement ,s essential." Mr. Bowman rushed into his new duties on the first of July; twenty students were converging on the University from all directions. direc-tions. They were greeted, given the grand tour, and then, after all the excitement, began the demanding processes of higher education. Through July and August they will receive special pre-registration orientation and preparation, on funds provided by the Ford Foundation. Mr. Bowman would like to encourage en-courage the students to value themselves as members of their own cultural groups as well as of the larger society; to feel free from pressure to conform to majority ma-jority standards. "I hope to help them to understand that higher education is universal among industrial in-dustrial societies. One need not be a white man, nor typical of the U.S. middle-class, to be a usefully educated person in the modern world. I hope they can feel free to make their own choice, whether to identify with their own culture, or with many cultures." The new Counselor will be able to understand the problems of students stu-dents from many environments, as his own life has swept h i rr through a wide range of experi ences. The child, Tonny, left the Navajo resercation at age 10, whei he went to the Fort Wingate (New Mexico) Indian School, where h became Jack Bowman. He knev no English or other allien lan guage, but he managed to ge through the first grade in on year. As he learned English, h he had heard a train whistle wailing wail-ing in the night, and he felt i t s melancholy, but he was "home" from school with his mother and he snuggled into a quiet joy in her nearness. "I will never forget the sound of that whistle in the night, and the warm feeling of being with my mother, and no loneliness and no fear." Worst of all, to Tonny, was the foreign religion. When he came to the school he was told that he must "choose a religion". Actually, he was forced to choose between denominations de-nominations o f Christianity. "Sometimes," he says, "I ran away to avoid the Christian service, serv-ice, even if I had to take the punishment. pun-ishment. I had great respect for my Navajo religion." During his first 10 years at home he had already learned his own llfeways; he had absorbed, in the warm circle of family living, the story of his People, and the Hallowed Hal-lowed People who had taught the L Jack Tonny Bowman i f .: 4 i i v v ' , ivhen he made a higher score than his buddy a man of his age, of European-American extraction, jrom an eastern urban, poor environment. en-vironment. Mr. Bowman reflected on that. Everyone took it for granted, he mused, that a European-American could achieve any-ttiing any-ttiing desired through "dediea-tion "dediea-tion and hard work". Then, perhaps per-haps he, too? i But that image did not remain unchallenged. He reminded himself him-self of past experiences, when other oth-er expectations had brought only disappointment. He, like many others of the poor people of the nation, had thought he might receive re-ceive greater respect in society if he served his country. Perhaps military service would make it easier for him to help improve ;he life-conditions of his people. But when he had visited home, in uniform, after training at Fort 3ragg, North Carolina, he h a d found the same old hostility. There was no one at the Gallup bus sta-ion sta-ion to pick him up, so he wandered wan-dered around until he found someone some-one with whom he could "catch i ride". He then went back to je bus station and asked the sgerit for his duffel bag. "He ignored ig-nored me as if I weren't there. I asked him again, and again. I began to think I would lose my ride. I started to go back to get my bag for myself. He yelled, Get the hell out of here!' It was Ae same old story in uniform or not, they are always trying to find an excuse to call the police." That was not a happy homecoming. home-coming. He also learned that a package he had sent by bus (the only means) to his mother had not been delivered to t h e trading post. He had bought a lot of clothes, and a gift for his mother a transistor radio, still expensive at that time. "But most of all, it was sometliing very special I wanted to give my mother." He finally traced the package. The driver had not put it off at Twin Lakes Trading Post, so he just left it at the next stop' Gallup. Gal-lup. No effort had been made to send it back to its proper destination, destina-tion, nor to notify sender or addressee. ad-dressee. "Instead," says Mr. Bowman, Bow-man, "they let it sit for nine months, and then sent it to a central cen-tral disposal place in the midwest. Sometimes it seems it isn't just that they don't care. They are rude and hostile. They hate us." These were only small examples of a persistent pattern of abuses. He began to perceive the nature of entrenched injustice, and felt anger growing in him. But still he was drawn to knowledge, and when he returned to the United States following his European tour he enrolled in the Technical Engineering En-gineering Institute in Salt Lake City. There he met engineers, and once again, lifted his goals a lit tle higher. He struggled through night classes in algebra, chemistry, and "Mickey Mouse English". By this time, he was well on his way to learning "the American language" slang English. Soon he was ready to enter the University of Utah. "But even here,". Mr. Bowman observes, "I found the same attitudes atti-tudes of white superiority the stereotyping of the Indian as a "savage", the total distortion of the American Indians' struggle to protect and keep their homeland, the arrogant idea that the Indian's religion is superstition while the white man's superstitions are divine di-vine truth." But by this time he had gained a level of understanding understand-ing of human cultures which permitted per-mitted him an overview. "I came to SEE myself as a Navajo, instead in-stead of simply FEELING it. I began to understand myself as a Navajo, as an American Indian, and as an indigenous American with rights of citizenship. "I also now see the special relationship of Indian to Indian, of all tribal affiliations and cultures." cul-tures." Whatever their differences, differ-ences, there was more in common: com-mon: They were the peoples of the continents of the Western Hemisphere; they were rooted by thousands of years of history, his-tory, thousands of cultures based on the natural history of this hemisphere. "Some historians and anthropologists say that the American Indians came quite recently across the Bering Straits. I don't think they have enough evidence to come to that conclusion. We have our own beliefs and I think it is our right to have our own history." "I think I now understand Hie reasons we are persecuted," Mi'. Bowman comments. "When I was a child I could only sense what my father meant when he said, 'These white people are ready to eat us. There are so many, there are more of them so fast, they are crowding in on us on all sides . . .' Now I can understand the threat of the 'big push'." Comprehension of the reasons did not remove the bitterness, nor lessen the depth of his rage. "Not only," he says, "did they kill us as human beings, but tried to kill our truth, our history, our culture. (Continued on Page 8) BOWMAN (Continued from Page 5) "But then," Mr. Bowman says, ' smiling, "other things are distorted, distort-ed, too. I have learned that all white people do wot live the serene ser-ene lives of abundance and well-being well-being that is everywhere portrayed. por-trayed. I have seen them living in poverty and degradation, and some of them have no more idea what is happening to them than the most isolated Indians. And I also learned the history taught about white people is not all truth, and that the battles between white workers and white bosses have been 'as bitter and brutal as the wars against the Indians." Mr. Bowman still sees the symbol sym-bol "Whiteman", but he knows that, while he must deal with the symbol, he must live and work with white people as individuals. "All the people," he' says, "need -to think, to take a new look, to clean up their brains. We need to start all over again, learning a new history written without prejudice, preju-dice, showing all sides. "Why," he asks, "should writers and historians histor-ians give more respect to simple drama than many-sided truth? Aren't the people, all the people, educated enough to learn more complex things? Then they should be. "Not too long ago," Mr. Bowman comments, "I thought the main thing to teach Indian students should be how to live in the dog-eat-dog Whiteman society. Now I wonder, isn't there a better way? Do we have to live in the cold, impersonal, uncaring White way? Does anyone?" |
