In a paragraph of about 100 words, summarise what the text says about the history of the American Indians and the efforts that are being made to improve their situation.
How the West was lost
In his book Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown describes
the Indian kinship with nature: the land was their mother - ‘and one does
not sell one’s mother’. Yet European notions of property gradually
took hold, first with beads, blankets, guns; then fences, enclosures, deeds of
purchase. Whole tribes were exterminated; then the buffalo on which they lived.
‘The Indians killed only enough to supply their winter needs,
‘writes Brown, ‘stripping the meat to dry in the sun, storing marrow
and fat in skins, treating sinews for bowstrings and thread, making spoons and
cups of the horns, weaving their hair into ropes and belts, curing the hides
for tepee covers, clothing and moccasins.’
The monstrous slaughter of
the buffalo that began in the 1870s had the double purpose of bringing in hides
and depriving the Indian of his livelihood. The European hunter left everything
but the skin to rot. Nearly four million buffalo were destroyed in two years so
that civilisation might advance.
Even on the reservations, the Indians were
not left alone. Corrupt politicians and army officers funnelled in bad food,
shoddy blankets and poisonous whisky. If minerals were found, the tribesmen
were moved on again. At rare intervals in the story, a protesting white voice
is heard. General Sandborn, who headed a peace commission to the Cheyenne after
an army massacre of 105 women and children (and 28 men), told Washington:
‘For a mighty nation to carry on a war with a few struggling nomads is a
spectacle most humiliating, a national crime so revolting that it must bring
down on our posterity the judgment of heaven.’ Yet Sandborn went on to
help the army wipe out the remaining Cheyenne. It took a final piece of planned
butchery, in 1890 at Wounded Knee, to end resistance.
Today, the new
militancy is bringing fresh hope and pride to America’s 650,000 Indians.
But the upsurge of ‘red nationalism’ is taking many other forms
besides simple resistance. In the one-year occupation of Alcatraz the
population rose to 800. The spirit of the rock spread over the country: army
centres, missile bases, islands and reserves in the U.S. and Canada were
occupied; claims were laid to oil-rich lands in Alaska.
More and more
Indians are moving to the cities - there are 60,000 in Los Angeles alone - yet
somehow, retaining their Indian identity and pride in their heritage. Others,
staying on the reservations, have successfully created their own businesses and
industries. The Indian people are also gaining more friends in high places. A
champion of long standing who has acted on behalf of the Sioux and other tribes
in the settlement of land claims is presidential candidate Senator George
McGovern. ‘We must never’, he observes, ‘repeat in these
settlements the exploitation, abuse, and attempted cultural genocide which
blots our national heritage.’ McGovern has introduced a bill to create an
American Indian development bank which would make loans to tribes and the new
corporations. He recognises that the Indians resent the paternalism of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, some-times known as America’s colonial service,
and feel themselves perfectly competent to run their own affairs.
Almost
every day, television perpetuates the myth of the Indian as a savage, to be
slaughtered without mercy. In fact, few stereotypes are as false as that of the
blood-thirsty Redskin. The Indian is essentially non-violent and civilised,
with a deep reverence for nature which makes him a hero and a pioneer in the
environmental cause. In a world seemingly hell-bent on self-destruction, the
white American is beginning to listen to the placid voice of the Indians.
(Abridged from an article in The Observer Magazine)
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