The Inconvenient Indian (9 page)

Indeed,
The Book of Mormon
specifically teaches that dark-skinned Lamanites (Indians), as they accept Mormon gospel, will turn “white and delightsome.” At the 1960 LDS Church conference, the head of the church, Spencer Kimball, rejoiced that Indians were “fast becoming a white and delightsome people,” and that Indian children in the church’s Home Placement Program were “often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.”

When I lived in Salt Lake City, I was privileged to see some of the Church’s Polaroids. Frankly, I couldn’t see much of a difference between the “before” and “after” shots, but then I wasn’t looking at the photographs through the lens of scripture.

In the late 1970s, I went to Acoma Pueblo and took the tour of the old village up on the mesa. One of the adobe houses had a television antenna fixed to the roof, and, as we walked through the narrow streets, we could hear the sounds of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny arguing over whether it was rabbit hunting season or duck hunting season. One of the women in the group, a woman in her late thirties from Ohio, was annoyed by the presence of the television set. This was supposed to be an authentic Indian village, she complained to the rest of the group. Real Indians, she told us, didn’t have televisions.

In 1997, I was invited to go to France for the St. Malo book fair. I’m not much for travel, but Helen wanted to go, and my friend the late Louis Owens and a number of other Native authors were going to be there, so I went. Now, at that time, I was sporting a moustache. My brother Christopher and I are polar opposites
when it comes to body hair. He got it all. I got none. He was able to grow a full beard when he was in his early twenties. I didn’t bother shaving more than once a week until I was in my thirties. But I discovered that if I was willing to persevere for a year or so, I could grow a moustache. So I did. I was delighted with the damn thing.

But when I arrived in France, I was promptly told by a photographer, who was taking shots of all the Native authors, that I wasn’t Indian. That’s not exactly what she said. What she said was, “I know you’re Indian, but you’re not really Indian, are you?” This wasn’t a problem with language. Her English was excellent. What she meant was that I might be Indian by blood and perhaps even by culture, but, with my splendid moustache, I was no longer an authentic Indian. Real Indians, she told me, with no hint of humour or irony, didn’t have facial hair.

For us Live Indians, being invisible is annoying enough, but being inauthentic is crushing. If it will help, I’m willing to apologize for the antenna on that house at Acoma. I’ve already shaved off my moustache, so that should no longer be an issue. If I didn’t live in the middle of a city, I’d have a horse. Maybe two. I sing with a drum group. I’ve been to sweats. I have friends on a number of reservations and reserves around North America. I’m diabetic. If you can think of something else I can do to help myself, let me know.

But I know that nothing will help. In order to maintain the cult and sanctity of the Dead Indian, North America has decided that Live Indians living today cannot be genuine Indians. This sentiment is a curious reworking of one of the cornerstones of Christianity, the idea of innocence and original sin. Dead Indians
are Garden of Eden—variety Indians. Pure, Noble, Innocent. Perfectly authentic. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Indians. Not a feather out of place. Live Indians are fallen Indians, modern, contemporary copies, not authentic Indians at all, Indians by biological association only.

Many Native people have tried to counter this authenticity twaddle by insisting on tribal names—Blackfoot, Navajo, Mohawk, Seminole, Hoopa, Chickasaw, Mandan, Tuscarora, Pima, Omaha, Cree, Haida, Salish, Lakota, Mi’kmaq, Ho-Chunk—and while this is an excellent idea, it has been too much for North America to manage. As with the Dead Indian, North America has, for a very long time now, insisted on a collective noun for Live Indians—Indians, Aboriginals, First Nations, Natives, First Peoples—even though there are over 600 recognized nations in Canada and over 550 recognized nations in the United States.

“Recognized.” I like that term. Makes me feel almost real.

Dead Indians. Live Indians. You would think that these two Indians would be akin to matter and anti-matter, that it would be impossible for both of them to occupy the same space, but each year Live Indians and Dead Indians come together at powwows and ceremonies and art markets from Alberta to Arizona, Oklahoma to Ontario, the Northwest Territories to New Mexico. At the same time, with remarkable frequency, Live Indians cum Dead Indians show up at major North American social, artistic, and governmental events and galas to pose for the cameras and to gather up any political advantage that might be available.

I never wore a full feather headdress to protests or marches, but I did sport a four-strand bone choker, a beaded belt buckle, a leather headband, and a fringed leather pouch, and when I look
at the photographs from those years, the image of myself as a Dead Indian still sends a tremor up my spine.

For Native people, the distinction between Dead Indians and Live Indians is almost impossible to maintain. But North America doesn’t have this problem. All it has to do is hold the two Indians up to the light. Dead Indians are dignified, noble, silent, suitably garbed. And dead. Live Indians are invisible, unruly, disappointing. And breathing. One is a romantic reminder of a heroic but fictional past. The other is simply an unpleasant, contemporary surprise.

Tony Hillerman, in his mystery novel
Sacred Clowns
, captures such a moment. In the book, he describes a Tano ceremony in which Jim Chee, a Navajo cop, watches real people, “farmers, truck drivers, loggers, policemen, accountants, fathers, sons, and grandfathers,” dancing beneath the masks. Chee can see “the very real sweat glistening on their shoulders, a very ordinary Marine Corps anchor tattoo on the arm of the seventh kachina, the very natural dust stirred by the rhythmic shuffling of their moccasins.” And all around, the tourists stand at the edges of the ceremony, looking right at the Live Indians, watching the Dead Indians appear in the plaza. Their cameras at the ready.

Let’s be clear, Live Indians dance at powwows. And when we dance, when we sing at the drum, when we perform ceremonies, we are not doing it for North America’s entertainment. Where North America sees Dead Indians come to life, we see our families and our relations. We do these things to remind ourselves who we are, to remind ourselves where we come from, and to remind ourselves of our relationship with the earth. Mostly, though, we do these things because we enjoy them. And because they are important.

I know that this sort of rhetoric—“our relationship with the earth”—sounds worn out and corny, but that’s not the fault of Native people. Phrases such as “Mother Earth,” “in harmony with nature,” and “seven generations” have been kidnapped by White North America and stripped of their power. Today, Mother Earth is a Canadian alternative rock band, a Memphis Slim song, an alternative-living magazine, and a short story by Isaac Asimov. “In Harmony with Nature” is an Internet company that sells “nourishing products for home and body.” It’s also the website for a group of New Age lifestyle educators who offer products and instructions that will “support your transition towards a more holistic lifestyle.” “Harmony with Nature” is a hypnosis session that you can download for only $12.95 and which will “gently guide you into a rapturous sense of connection to the whole of natural creation.”

“Seven Generations” is a Native institute designed to meet the educational and cultural needs of the ten bands in the Rainy Lake Tribal area. But it is also an Alberta-based company in the business of “unconventional oil and gas resource development,” though I’m not sure how you can use “unconventional” and “oil and gas” in the same sentence without creating an oxymoron. There’s a “Seven Generations” company out of Burlington, Vermont, that sells “naturally safe and effective household products,” while an outfit called “Hellfish Family” will sell you a T-shirt that has a crucifixion scene on the back with “Seven Generations” at the top and “You Are Not My Christ” at the bottom for $12.95.

And then there are the great Indian phrases. I don’t know if Crazy Horse ever said, “Today is a good day to die,” but I’m
told that “
Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam
” means the same thing in Klingon. You can download Manowar’s “Today is a Good Day to Die” as a ringtone for your phone, and it is the opening line in the movie
Flatliners
.

Dead Indians. Live Indians. In the end, it is an impossible tangle. Thank goodness there are Legal Indians.

Legal Indians are considerably more straightforward. Legal Indians are Live Indians, because only Live Indians can be Legal Indians, but not all Live Indians are Legal Indians.

Is that clear?

Legal Indians are those Indians who are recognized as being Indians by the Canadian and U.S. governments. Government Indians, if you like. In Canada, Legal Indians are officially known as “Status Indians,” Indians who are registered with the federal government as Indians under the terms of the Indian Act.

According to the 2006 census, Canada had a population of about 565,000 Status Indians. The census put the total number of Native people in Canada at that time—Indians, Métis, and Inuit—at 1.2 million, but, in that year, at least 22 Indian reserves were not counted, and Statistics Canada admitted that it might have missed even more. Add to that the fact that many First Nations people refuse to participate in a census, seeing it as an affront to sovereignty. Besides, enumeration is not an exact science. So much depends on how it’s done and who is doing it. The number 1.2 million is probably too low. But even if there are 1.2 million Indians, Métis, and Inuit, it means that slightly less than 50 percent of all Native people in Canada are Status Indians.

In the United States, federal “recognition,” the American version of “Status,” is granted to tribes rather than individuals, and
in 2009, the government’s Federal Register recognized some 564 tribes whose enrolled members were eligible for federal assistance. The total number of individuals who are members of those tribes probably tops out at about 950,000, while the total number of Indians in the United States comes in at around the 2.4 million mark, though again, census figures being what they are, this figure could be lower. Or higher.

As I said, these numbers will never be accurate. But if they are close, it means that only about 40 percent of Live Indians in North America are Legal Indians. A few more than one in three. This is important because the only Indians that the governments of Canada and the United States have any interest in are the Legal ones.

“Interest,” though, is probably is too positive a term, for while North America loves the Dead Indian and ignores the Live Indian, North America
hates
the Legal Indian. Savagely. The Legal Indian was one of those errors in judgment that North America made and has been trying to correct for the last 150 years.

The Legal Indian is a by-product of the treaties that both countries signed with Native nations. These treaties were, for the most part, peace treaties. Wars were costly, and after a couple of hundred years of beating up on each other, Whites and Indians decided that peace was more profitable. All in all, it was a smart move. For both sides. And because of the treaties, Legal Indians are entitled to certain rights and privileges. They’re called treaty rights, and—with the exception of certain First Nations bands in British Columbia and some executive order reservations in the States—Legal Indians are the only Indians who are eligible to receive them.

A great many people in North America believe that Canada and the United States, in a moment of inexplicable generosity, gave treaty rights to Native people as a gift. Of course, anyone familiar with the history of Indians in North America knows that Native people paid for every treaty right, and in some cases, paid more than once. The idea that either country gave First Nations something for free is horseshit.

Sorry. I should have been polite and said “anyone familiar with Native history knows that this is in error” or “knows that this is untrue,” but, frankly, I’m tired of correcting people. I could have said “bullshit,” which is a more standard North American expletive, but, as Sherman Alexie (Spokane—Coeur d’Alene) reminds us in his poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel,” “real” Indians come from a horse culture.

In Canada, Legal Indians are defined by the Indian Act, a series of pronouncements and regulations, rights and prohibitions, originally struck in 1876, which has wound its snaky way along to the present day. The act itself does more than just define Legal Indians. It has been the main mechanism for controlling the lives and destinies of Legal Indians in Canada, and throughout the life of the act, amendments have been made to the original document to fine-tune this control.

An 1881 amendment prohibited the sale of agricultural produce by Legal Indians in the prairie provinces, to keep them from competing with White farmers. An 1885 amendment prohibited religious ceremonies and dances. A 1905 amendment allowed the removal of Aboriginal people from reserves that were too close to White towns of more than 8,000 residents. A 1911 amendment allowed municipalities and companies to expropriate
portions of reserves, without the permission of the band, for roads, railways, and other public works. A 1914 amendment required Legal Indians to get official permission before appearing in Aboriginal costume in any dance, show, exhibition, stampede, or pageant. A 1927 amendment made it a crime to solicit funds for Indian claims without a special licence from the government. A 1930 amendment banned Legal Indians from playing pool if they did it too often and wasted their time to the detriment of themselves and their families. And, in 1985, an amendment known in Parliament as Bill C-31 was passed that allowed Native women who had lost their Legal Indian standing through marriage to regain that status.

Until at least 1968, Legal Indians could be “enfranchised,” which simply meant that the government could take Status away from a Legal Indian, with or without consent, and replace it with Canadian citizenship. Technically, enfranchisement was proffered as a positive, entailing, among other benefits, the right to vote and drink. All you had to do was give up being a Legal Indian and become … well, that was the question, wasn’t it. Legal Indian women could be “enfranchised” if they married non-Native or non-Status men. If Legal Indians voted in a federal election, they would be “enfranchised.” Get a university degree and you were automatically “enfranchised.” If you served in the military, you were “enfranchised.” If you were a clergyman or a lawyer, you were “enfranchised.”