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Show THE ZEPHYR/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER wae 2006 But the racism here can be astonishing. A few years ago, as | was holding the door for a group of sixteen Japanese girls while they entered a Dairy Queen in the Southern Black Hills, a group of four older (but not elderly) locals exited between waves of our visitors. “My, look at all the little Indian girls,” one of the two women in the smaller party remarked. uel Yes, ten (and more) little Indians. (Continued) The racism of course isn’t always so subtle. | also frequently hear the Lakota denigrated to sub-human levels through vile names like “Prairie Nigger” or “Chief Six-Pack” with terms like that and others most often and most viciously spoken of in public by “fellow Whites” who themselves hardly provide shining examples of humankind in numerous were most productive as they showed Custer at Little Big Horn. Unfortunately for them it ways. Ina region and nation running on empty except for the fossil fuel of fear, rhetoric was rare and in reality, the Europeans were simp ly another tribe to deal with but a tribe too like theirs is yet another manifestation of how we let that fear consume us, keep us from big to resist. living. The Europeans did not violate tribal laws when they occupied the lands of the We can look all around and see that brownophobia masking all sorts of other fears. In aborigines, the law was: the strongest took possession. This is why the Commanches in the the West, Mexicans today aren’t far behind--and recently seem to have forged ahead of-plains ran out the other former users of the Great Plains. The Europeans did not force the Indians in being the people who receive the most fear and loathing. But pronounce Indians into inter-tribal warfare as Ms. Hastings seems to would have us believe; it was a “Minute-Men” another proper way and they're “Mynoot-Men,” “minute” here meaning fact of life and some of the Indians seem to have enjoyed it, treating it more as a game as small, little. This fact and the rush to judgment that a mere sixty seconds denotes thus they acquired the other tribes’ wealth. And young Plains Indian males would much rather makes the self-ascribed name speak truer than its coiners know. have had the excitement of raiding than sitting in the rock circle, high atop a mountain, Moreover, these days, encouraged by our government and media, we direct our hatred trying to get a vision, teeth chattering from the c old. of the brown even more thoroughly at Arabs and Muslims and anyone we suspect might In the past 50 years or more, our Indians, aided by people like Ms. Hastings, have be one, the other, both (again, including Mexicans, those brownskins all look so much alike). received from our government a great deal of com ypensation for believed wrongs committed on them. The thousands of farmers, ranchers, sc Idiers, pony express riders, miners, men, ~ Yet perhaps the kindest, gentlest man I have ever known is a current Muslim colleague and friend. And recently he attended perhaps the most inexcusable racist event of all that I’ve women and children and others killed by the In dians have yet to have their descendants witnessed in recent times, and it happened up here in my own back yard of South Dakota. A few faculty from a university in our area, PhDs all, put on a play focused on Golda Meier, the late Israeli Zionist and leader. One of the faculty had both written and directed it. Of -course there’s nothing wrong with a play, even a bad one like this one unfortunately was, Indians provided no great contributions to the advancement of civilization, no great inventions, no great ideas, no great religions or political parties, or architecture. focusing on Meier, an interesting woman of many great accomplishments. Lloyd Pierson, Moab, UT compensated by the richer tribes. Hastings and Stiles can now attend the Indian gambling casino of their choice. One final note: I find it a tiny bit hypocritical for Hastings and Stiles to complain about the treatment the Indians got, yet offer no alternative for how it should have been handles and to place the blame on people now defenseless. Stiles and Hastings are enjoying the results of that inter-cultural war as they both, as do I, live on lands once occupied by Indians. Stiles, in particular, could have a pro blem-as that part of Moab he lives in is sometimes underlain by prehistoric pithouses and Indian burials. The pendulum has swung to the Indians’ side and some happy Hopi could make trouble for Stiles. But I have no guilt over what ha ened, only academic interest and a desire to complete the entire story, not just telling the Indian apologists’ side Lloyd Pierson Moab, UT MORE FEEDBACK RE: LLOYD exaggerations, Lloyd Pierson manages to accomplish once again what so many Westerners have done so often so disgustingly well for so long: made a feeble and inaccuracy-cluttered attempt at defending or at least explaining away, Anglo mistreatment of Native Americans. David Cremean, Spearfish, 8D PIERSON In his “Feedback” letter in the April/May Zephyr, Lloyd M. Pierson of Moab manages to accomplish once again what so many Westerners have done so often so disgustingly well for so long: made a feeble and inaccuracy-cluttered attempt at defending, or at least explaining away, Anglo mistreatment of Native Americans. Pierson’s “history” lesson is an example of the one-sided White-washing that for so long was the actual Politically Correct version of the Indian story and the West itself. Unfortunately, it and similar merde del toro continue to suffice as gawd’s own truth for far too many people. 2 Pierson’s frequently mispunctuated and syntactically-mangled highly selective halftruths, But there is something wrong with it when, as in this case, it was a hagiographic version of her life, raising her to some level of sainthood, with nothing in the writing or directing or acting to indicate any irony or that she was a flawed person like us all, that she was indeed also often a spiteful, racist person. One line she spoke, quoted in the play, haunted me, haunts me still with its dehumanizing and false elements: “There will only be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children as much as they hate us Jews.” Because they are so much more subtle, these words are worse than the deplorable “raghead” or even “camel-fucker.” As Chris Hedges notes in his fine book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, “in mythic war we imbue events with meanings they do not have.... We demonize the enemy so that our opponent is no longer human.” Nevertheless, I overheard “none other than a well-respected minister, a man I also like, speak glowingly of the play as “incredibly powerful.” overgeneralizations, an d J 5 TTOIM-UNe- Ww th itcl ective- Later Hedges notes that “Most national myths, at their core, are racist. They are fed by ignorance.” But at least racism due to mere ignorance is more venial than racism that isn’t. In part this distinction is true because there’s hope that this brand can be made right, corrected. But racism due to willful ignorance is another matter altogether. One of our moral duties as Westerners, as Americans, as humans, is to challenge all types of ignorance, in others--and ourselves. solely discredit themselves to any knowledgeable reader, and in the June/July Zephyr Karen Hastings already dismantled many of P ierson’s specific claims. So 1 won’t waste David Cremean Spearfish, SD more words and time on point-by-point refutations. However, his “arguments” frankly aren’t far removed from that unfortunate genre, nineteenth-century Indian Hater Writing, but a re merely clothed up a bit and thus all the more dangerous. And their cousins have been and are being used against all sorts of other AND ANOTHER, RE: LLOYD PIERSON brown-skinned people, not only by too many c tizens of the United States, but also by too Dear Jim Stiles, many Westerners. It’s not a new-fashioned for m of PC to talk about the overall racism of the White West: both remain historical and hysterical realities in the present. Often, though, — To further support Karen Hasting's rebuttal of Mr. Lloyd Pierson's claims regarding this racism is subtler than Pierson’s and argual oly all the more dangerous for that fact. Native Americans in the June/July 2006 issue of the Zephyr, may I add a few more points? Here in another canyon country, my wife and I live and work, our ten year old son plays, I suggest that Mr. Pierson, and anyone else who might be interested, read "Lewis and with a number of Lakota Sioux, by Western « distances not all that far from the Oglalla Clark Among the Indians" by James P. Ronda. To quote from the preface: "what this book reservations once known as Red Cloud, now Pin 1e Ridge. Yes, Shannon County, dominated does offer is a full-scale contact study of the official and personal relationships between the by the Rez, has often stacked up as the poorest ¢ ounty in the entire nation. Yes, the Lakota, explorers and the Indians. In 1952, Bernard De Voto wrote that 'a dismaying amount of our history has been written without regard to the Indians'. While much has changed since then, like most Indian tribes, have more than their sha are of problems, internal as well as external: rampant diabetes, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome. They have their share of bad-ass: the history of exploration remains largely the story of the explorers themselves... but The Corps of Discovery was a human community living in the midst of other! ities..." people, too, like any other race does. Wella8 When you're at our MONTICELLO Peace Tree.. stop by and meet CHELSEA! wthe best thing to happen to our town since # GENE SCHAFER! PLUMBING & ea Uae Servng Moab & Monticello since 1980. FRESH SMOOTHIES/JUICES WRAP SANDWICHES ORGANIC ESPRESSO (ey \seeeo loom Viaceys MONTICELLO: 516 N MAIN PLUMBING HEATING YARD IRRIGATION SYSTEMS MOAB: 259.6997 MONTICELLO: 587.2864 ny |
