* If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering jerkily over the quivering ground, until one shed one’s spurs, for there needed no spurs, threw away the reins, for there needed no reins, and hardly saw that the land before one was smoothly shorn heath when horse’s neck and head would be already gone. --Franz Kafka
.
.
In recent years, the public are being led to believe they are being deceived and misled by some high profile American Indigenous advocates who are accused of not being ‘genuine American Indians.’ They have been accused of either obscuring their true origins or inventing a phantom past for lucrative gain.
However, this cheap sideshow of scandal to boost newspaper sales is a convenient distraction from the repeated and relentless attacks on Indigenous tribes in America and Canada by an aggressive police state and corporations bent on violating and plundering their land which had been stolen from them.
I myself have heard about this topic, and have considered accounts over the years of various persons purporting to be American Indians. For example, here is a story that Daniel Ogan, a Blackfoot storyteller, told me about the famous American Indian conservationist Archibald Belaney {1888-1930}. Ogan reported: "There was this Englishman who for years lived just like an Indian and pretended to everyone that he was originally half an Indian {half Apache and half Scottish}. He had convinced everyone that he was an American Indian because he spoke, behaved, and acted just like an Indian.
But do you know how his cover was finally blown? One day his wife came across him in the forest playing on the piano a piece from Chopin!
After this, he decided to confess to the rest of the tribe who had adopted him that he had no American Indian roots whatsoever. He asked all the council of the tribe to gather in front of him to hear his confession. He then made his confession. He told them that he had made it all up. He had deceived them. There followed a long tense silence. And suddenly they all started to explode with laughter. They thought this was one of the best jokes someone had played on them. The Indians chiefs did not condemn or reproach him. They accepted him as one of their own!"
That was the story told by Daniel Ogan. I have wondered if this was just another amusing anecdote which storytellers like to tell each other. Was it really true? Whether it is true or not it suggests there are different ways we can respond to how some people feel the need to obscure or reinvent themselves!
Scottish storytellers defend themselves against willingly inventing stories by quoting the old Scots Gaelic proverb which goes 'Ma's breug bhuam e, is breug chugam e.' Translated into English it is 'If it be a lie as told by me, it was a lie as told to me.'
The truth that “Grey Owl” had invented his origins was only revealed after his death. It shocked many people. It emerged that far from being half Apache and Scottish, Grey Owl had been born in England and emigrated to Canada where he lived, and learnt how to hunt, trap , farm, canoe and live like an American Indian. The Indians taught him all those skills. Archie once told a fellow schoolboy that of his ambition to move to America to see the American Indians. The schoolmate answered, "Are you going to fight them?" He replied, "No I'm going to become one of them!" The response? "That is impossible. You have to be born among them." Archie disagreed and argued it was not so. And he went out to pursue his dream.
Right after his death, publishers stopped publishing his books but now, thankfully, they are back in publication. Does it matter whether he was originally an English man or not? The main point was that he was adopted and trained by local Indians, learnt their language and customs, and was in spirit a genuine Indian!
Grey Owl left a powerful legacy as a conservationist who protected the beaver from near extinction. He was a rare voice of dissent against the overhunting and overlogging. Compared to the huge crimes of mass destroying the buffalo, the beaver and the American Indian tribes themselves the 'sin' of lying about your origins seems so remote and irrelevant. It seems a mere trifle.
In Canada, the Scottish Fur traders of the Hudson Bay Company were attempting to monopolize the fur trade in beavers…
They encouraged local Indian to drink… and they intentionally helped make those Indians addicted to alcohol. {In China the Scottish traders used opium to enforce their trade.} The systematic robbing, plunder and drug pushing to take over the fur trade in Canada represents a real crime historians and journalists should be concerned about. Yet you don't hear much about this at all.
A historian might raise the point on an occasion such as T.M. Devine who wrote that one settler called Alexander Mackenzie 'described the criminal behavior of some fur traders which had poisoned relations with the tribes; already much of the land of the Great Lakes was already hunted out; greed had also driven out the white men to seduce the Indians into alcohol addiction to secure their custom and the promise of beaver skins. Mackenzie also believed that even Christian missionaries had had a disastrous effect on native culture' {page 203 of T.M. Devine, “Scotland's Empire”}
You might think that after two centuries people have become more enlightened. But now, instead of fur companies violating the land of the First Nation you have oil and energy companies along with the state attempting to enforce pipe lines over their territory. The police who have been sent to enforce this have even ordered a 'shoot to kill ' policy against protesters who venture on 'forbidden territory'.
As many as 4,000 American Indigenous Indian women have been murdered over the past few decades. Low life expectancy, deep poverty and all kinds of injustice continue to pervade the reservations in both Canada and America.
Instead of seriously addressing this unpleasant reality you hear the latest stories of impostors. For instance, just a year ago there was the story of how one American Indian advocate Little Feather Sacheen who had been sent by the late actor Marlon Brando in 1973 to the Academy Awards ceremony to refuse to accept his Oscar and make a protest speech against Hollywood's misrepresentation, treatment and distortion of the American Indians was declared to be a person who had faked her origins following her death.
Unfortunately, she was viewed by many as a pathetic fantasist rather than a person passionate and genuine about defending rights.
And just about one week ago absurd allegations have been made against another famous advocate the Singer Buffy Sainte Marie. {She sang the song Soldier Blue for an American film 1970, about the unjust treatment of Native Indians.} Journalists from the Fifth Nation Corporation stated they could not find any concrete proof to establish the Cree origins of the famous singer.
But does it really matter if there are no documents confirming this person is Cree or not? Does it matter? She was adopted by the Cree and that is what surely matters!
The singer herself stated, "What I have been honest about is I don't know where I am from or who my birth parents were and I will never know. As adopted children we don't even know when our birthday is. You spend your life asking questions you can't answer."
In fact, her tribe defended her declaring: "We have an inherit right to determine who is a member of our family and community. We chose her and she chose us. To us that holds more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record keeping ever could."
If some people are so concerned about 'lies' then why not actively confront how the colonists have dishonestly violated countless treaties and agreements with the American native tribes, in Canada, and America, for centuries...
Not only were the Indians thrown off their land but had their way of life devastated and destroyed. They were forced onto reservations.
Is it small wonder that if you are humiliated and taught to despise your own culture that you can easily succumb to addiction or suicide? Canadian indigenous women are four times more likely to be the victims of murder than non-indigenous women. Those hard facts are far worse than a person not having the “right roots” or inventing their past!
Why bully a few alleged impostors ? Indeed, who is really denying the truth? Who are the real impostors? Those who deny the unpleasant truth of history or those who affirm it?
These are difficult questions indeed.
.
.
Further reading:
1. Maclean Fitzroy, “West Highland Tales, 2000. Edinburgh: Birlinn. This work has an excellent introduction on the importance of traditional Scottish Gaelic storytelling.
2. T.M. Devine, “Scotland's Empire: 1600 -1815.” London: Penguin, 2004. This work dispels much of the hype and hagiographies of how wonderful the Scottish settlers were in Canada. Devine understands that the native Indians are more often absent from history. People tend to forget that without the assistance of native Indians in teaching the first settlers how to survive in Canada most of them would have perished. The first settlers were anything but 'self made men'.
3. Gen. Mark A Latham, “The Old West Frontier Blood on the Plains,” 2005. Nottingham: Warhammer Historical. This is the story of how a peaceful Indian chief Little Crow felt forced to go into conflict after being cruelly treated by the white man {the Dakota conflict of 1862}. This account indicates the stark predicament of the Dakota people. Little Crow was murdered by two farmers in their field-- simply for picking raspberries. The farmers then sold his scalp for 100 dollars. Although this book is a guide for those who play table top games, the historical sections are pretty good.
4. Franz Kafka, “Collected Stories: The Wish to be a Red Indian, “ 1993 edition. London/New York: Everyman's Library. It is hard to forget the childlike aspirations in Kafka’s charming sentence above*. The story is translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.