When I was at Eastern Michigan University back in the early 1990's I had a professor, Eastern Band Cherokee man named Ron Lewis, or Professor as I called him, He arrived in my second year at EMU and during this time I was the president of the Native American Student Association and I asked him to be our staff guide. We had a little old White woman as our guide but why the hell would we keep her when we could have an actual NDN be our representative? I really liked Professor Lewis, he was a real intellectual and he was traditional in his people's ways. He had a appreciation for Anishinaabe culture and as such he respected the fact that he was an outsider within Anishinaabe country. I wanted to introduce him to the other student groups at the Multi-Cultural center and so I set it up for him to give a little talk. A sort of Town Hall for the people of color on campus.
Professor Lewis delivered and then some. He said something during his talk that has stuck with me ever since then. He said, 'The more that we act like White people, the more that we embrace their way of thinking, the faster we will bring about our own demise." Strong and powerful words that I needed him to elaborate on further and that's what he did with the time constraints he had at the time.
What he was talking about was the mindset of the majority of Europeans. I'm talking about both the historical and the contemporary European. Thousands of books, papers, blogs, documentaries and all manner of information has been sent out into the ether about what happened when Europeans arrived here and invaded. The majority of the information focuses on the tangible, the physical hell that was wrought on us, the Original People, by the invaders. The theft of land, the diseases, the rape, the kidnapping, the genocidal policies, the assimilation and destruction of our language our culture and even our God. The thing I do not read very much about is the mindset of the European. Yeah there are volumes written about White Supremacy but I am talking about something deeper than that. I am talking about the insidious nature that makes up the thought process that has created audacity, greed, selfishness, arrogance, willful ignorance and even cognitive dissonance.
It would be stupid to write that none of that existed here on Turtle Island before Europeans got here but like the slavery that was unique to this nation, it was never on the level and the ferocity that was and is seen now. The brutality that accompanies White people wherever they go is unique to White people. Genghis Khan and any of the other Khans did not wreak quite the havoc that has been inflicted upon the First Nations people of Turtle Island and the Africans who were stolen from their homelands and brought here to build this stolen nation. Makes me think of Proverbs chapter 23, verse 7: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" Yeah I quoted the bible,name an NDN that you know that has not had that book beaten into their head.....
I describe wannabes as White people who have a slight conscious about what has happened to First Nations people and they can empathise with our condition. Mind you it is the condition that their ancestors put us in and it is the same condition that they benefit from because we are in it. They hate our condition so much that they begin to claim our ancestory as their own. This is where it gets so frustrating for me. The claims are usually just family rumor and have no basis in reality. There are the claims of the records for the proof of relations to a certain tribe, the top three being Cherokee, Chippewa and Sioux, being lost to history or burned in a court house fire or, my personal favorite, it was dangerous to be a ndn back then and to claim it would bring trouble and so those who could pass for White would say they were. No doubt that has happened. It happens today in my own family however it was really not the pervasive as they would have you think. It's always the grandmother who didn't speak about it or the great-grandmother who hid it from the rest of the family because she wished for a better life for her kids. All bullshit.
Ever pause and ask why it is always the grandmother? Why is it always the female? Most prominent reason is that the very thought of a big brown savage putting his big brown pecker into a tiny, virtious, virginal, pure White woman is sickening. Secondly there is the assumption that the female is the fairer sex and therefore is the "good" part of the ndn bloodline. This is part of that White thinking that is nothing like our way of thinking.
There is a story, not told very often, among some Anisnabe people, about a certain group of people within the tribe that had begun to be selfish and greedy. They did not follow the ways of the people and were mean and without honor. They were thieves, they murdered, they were contrary with no reason or logic behind their actions. These people were then sent away, North, and they were banished from associating with the people because it was recognized that their ways, their thoughts were a danger to a society that depended on the ability to work with one another in order to survive. Being polite as most elders are it is not mentioned that these banished people became the White people that we know today. I can so see this as true.
So wannabes claim an First Nations ancestry and will begin to research and read about their supposed tribe and then want to help. They become activists and begin attending protests or even hold their own protests and they begin attending gatherings and soon they are making their own regalia and dancing at pow wow's. Some even go so far as to begin teaching about ndn people and go to schools in full blown regalia and talk about, "My people's ways". The damage done by this is immense because it comes from books that are written by other wannabes or it comes wholesale from their ass. If they don't know the answer they make it up. I cringe every time I see a newspaper article about a ndn coming to teach at a school and I see a White person playing dress up.
Besides bringing a sense of selfishness to our community these wannabes also bring their screwed up conservative politics.
Think on this: Before we were invaded by Whites, there were no locks on our doors, no private property, no beggars, no sense of private possessions, no jails, no police, no "elite" class, no homophobia, no racism, no class ism, no sexism, no self hate, no pollution and yet, they, the invaders, called us savages.
They come among us with their sexism, talking about women as if they really respect them but their actions are different. They speak of unity among the races but their actions are different. They are quick to speak ill of Backs and they also make a differentiation between North American First Nations people and South American First Nations people. They talk about the sinking of this nation and will mention immigration. Actually have the damn nerve to speak about "immigrants" without a shred of irony when they know full well they are the descendants of immigrants to this nation
Wannabes cannot fathom that within our ways there is no left right paradigm. There is no conservatives and there are no liberals. We look at the "Founding Fathers" as slave owning Indian killers BECAUSE THEY ARE, we look at the flag as a symbol of genocide and evil not just to us but to every Brown and Black people the world over.
The mindset has invaded us to such an extent that many of us do not even know we have been colonized. We know some of these people in a close manner and therefore think of them as harmless or as maybe misguided and unaware of what they are doing but that does not make the damage they are doing less just because they might be nice.
It's time we re-group among ourselves and heal what has been broken then we can get together and teach others OUR ways so that the planet can be saved. There must be a reckoning within our own people about what is really our way and what is a bastardized version of our ways.
