"Who's more Indian, you or me?"
That question was put to me in 1993 by Gilbert L. Vigil, then Governor of the Tesuque Pueblo. We were Kellogg Fellows in an Indian leadership-training program in Santa Fe, a program that brought together thirty Indians from thirty tribes. I represented the Comanches.
I'd heard the question plenty of times before. Every Indian has. Who is more Indian than whom is a favorite topic in Indian Country.
Part of it concerns "blood quantum" -- the degree of Indian blood in one's veins.
Part of it involves "connectedness" with your people. Did you grow up on the reservation? Do you live with your people, dance with them, speak their language?
Do you believe in the spirits? Do you see things? Feel things? Hear eagles talk? Do you hear what's inside other people? And so on.
Most of the time, I can hold my own in these who-is-more-Indian-than-whom campfire talks.
Granted, I'm not full-blooded. Lots of Indians aren't. But my mother is unimpeachably Comanche. Her great grandfather was Quin-ne kash-su-it" (Bad Eagle), a kwahadi (Antelope) Comanche leader. He was cousin to Mumsehkai, another important Antelope leader. This was told to me by Clifford (Treetop) Seymour, Mumsehkai's grandson. He also told me that Bad Eagle was cousin to Ishatai, the last Comanche medicine man.
My mother made sure I grew up "connected" to my tribal roots.
Still, when Gil asked me, "Who's more Indian?", the answer was obvious. Everything about him said "connected," from his thick Pueblo accent to his fine leather cowboy boots.
"You are," I answered. "And so is he," I nodded toward the Cheyenne River Sioux sitting next to him. "There are several Indians here more Indian than me."
Gil nodded, satisfied. He had tested my heart. I may not have been as Indian as he, but I was Indian enough to know that. For Gil, that was Indian enough.
Regrettably, it may not be enough for a woman named Doreen Yellow Bird. On February 17, she wrote an article about me in the Grand Forks Herald. She wrote about my Indianness.
Yellow Bird was responding to a column I wrote in FrontPageMagazine.com called "Don't Walk the Black Man's Path." In it, I chided Indian students at the University of North Dakota for kicking up a fuss over the school's "Fighting Sioux" mascot.
The protesters say it's insulting and want it changed. I say the mascot is an honor to a great warrior people.
Yellow Bird sides with the protesters. She questions my authority to speak.
"Some [Indians] might have little contact with tribal nations," she says coyly. "And some might not be physically recognized as Native American, therefore, might not have the same experience as a person with Native features.
"Yeagley, who says he is Comanche, needs to stand in the shoes of some of the young people... before he makes such generalities about the students."
Translated from Indian talk, this means: Yeagley is not sufficiently "connected"; does not have sufficiently "Native" features; and, golly, might not even be Comanche, for all we know. It's all sooo Indian. And so beside the point.
What's going on at UND has nothing to do with me or my "connectedness" with my tribe. In fact, it has nothing to do with Yellow Bird and her tribe either. She is Arikara. Not Sioux.
In the 1930s, Sioux elders formally offered to UND the honor of using the "Fighting Sioux" name. They wanted their tribe to be remembered.
Yellow Bird now wants the Sioux to break the promise of their elders. But she is not Sioux. So why is she involved?
My sources tell me that the Indian students and faculty who oppose the mascot are almost all Ojibwa and Arikara. Not Sioux.
Sioux leaders have told me that they are proud of the mascot. More importantly, it is their sacred honor to keep the promise of their grandfathers to the university.
Indian activist Russell Means disagrees. He has called pro-mascot Indians "idiots."
He also says he is Sioux.
On Friday, Means showed up at a demonstration at UND to announce, "I am here to protest Nazism and hate speech."
Means accused Denver's Italian-American community of "hate speech" last October for doing nothing more than celebrating Columbus Day.
Things will be heating up quickly now.
The Sioux elders -- who alone should have a say in this matter -- need to make their voices heard above the Arikara, the Ojibwa, the media and the professional rabble-rousers of the left.
Originally published at FrontPageMagazine.com | February 26, 2001
It's enough to get my Comanche blood boiling.
The Makah Indians are under attack. And it's not from the U.S. cavalry. Enraged environmentalists have descended on the little tribe in Neah Bay, Washington. They are attacking not with guns but with court orders, physical bullying and racial insults shouted through megaphones.
What have the Makah done to deserve such treatment? They have failed to play their designated role in liberal mythology. Rather than intoning prayers to Mother Earth at Green Party rallies - as good little Indians are supposed to do - they have had the temerity to go out and commit the most un-liberal act imaginable: to hunt and kill whales, just as their ancestors have done for centuries.
In the process, the Makah have run afoul of the great unspoken rule that guides every leftwing, New Age environmentalist I ever met: The only good Indian is a liberal Indian.
In 1855, the governor of Washington signed a treaty with the Makah tribe, guaranteeing, for all time, that they would enjoy "the right of taking fish, and of whaling, and of sealing." The Makah stopped whaling in 1930, by their own choice. But in May 1999, after seventy years of voluntary abstinence, they decided to get in touch with their ancient customs once again.
Using traditional methods, a canoe-born Makah hunting party killed a single grey whale.
It was perfectly legal. Moreover, it was ecological. With 22,000 grey whales counted in 1994, the animal is off the endangered species list. The law says the Makah can take up to 20 whales per year, though they only plan to harvest 1-4.
But that's not good enough for the environmentalists. For them, the killing of that single whale in 1999 was an act of war.
A coalition of green organizations immediately formed ranks for battle, including The Peninsula Citizens for the Protection of Whales (PCPW); the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS); The Park Foundation of New York and The Foundation for Deep Ecology of California.
The Hoffman Family Foundation called the Makah Indians "murderers," saying they were "no better than terrorists and serial killers of innocent victims."
The well-funded PCPW filed a federal lawsuit. In December, 2000, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the tribe from hunting the grey whale, in violation of the 144-year-old treaty.
For the Indians, it was just one more broken treaty in a long and sorrowful list. For the environmentalists, it was party time.
Since their campaign against the Makah began, the eco-warriors have not shrunk from physical interference with the whale hunts.
Eco-terrorists in boats have harassed the Makah in their own waters. At times, they have even blocked them from entering their own Washington state reservation.
Paul Watson, of SSCS, attempted to disrupt a whale hunt by scaring the animals away with underwater noise.
Above water, he shouted at the Indians through a megaphone: "Just because you were born stupid doesn't give you any right to be stupid."
For an Indian, those words have a special resonance. Watson himself would probably deny that he meant them in a racial sense. After all, liberals cannot be racists. I guess he'd probably say that he just meant to accuse those particular Indians of being stupid due to their ignorance of ecological dogma.
But why did he say they were born stupid? For me, that's the giveaway. The stereotype of the "dumb Indian" is back, brought to you by the Green Movement.
There is heavy irony in the war between greens and Makah Indians.
The professional liberal has long regarded the American Indian as his most valuable mascot. After all, the Indian loves Mother Earth. He embraces world peace. He is not judgmental. He is the ultimate liberal, the original New Ager!
The '60s generation imagined that they were acting like Indians, with their long hair, love beads, foreign religions, sexual license and disregard of civic duties. They managed to convince themselves that their socialist agenda was the Indian Way, more truly American than the teachings of the Founding Fathers.
But the Indian has his own agenda. And it has nothing to do with love beads and socialism. Above all, the Indian cherishes his independence.
One of these days, I have a feeling I'm going to go out on the prairie and shoot me a buffalo, just like my Comanche ancestors.
Will I be encircled by Cherokee jeeps, filled with eco-activists with megaphones? Stay tuned for further developments from Indian Country.
Originally published at FrontPageMagazine.com | February 7, 2001
Indian elders used to warn against "walking the white man's road." But, since the late 1960s, I'm afraid it is the "black man's path" that has posed a greater peril for us.
By the black man's path, I mean the familiar strategy of black civil rights leaders, who bait, belittle, provoke and bully white people, then run for cover, screaming "racist" when their white victims react.
Sadly, more and more young Indians are following this path, thanks to the influence of leftwing college professors and media personalities such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Take the current disturbances at the University of North Dakota. The university has a mascot called, "The Fighting Sioux." Some Indian students have called it offensive and demanded that it be changed.
Not surprisingly, white students and alumni have fought back.
One alumnus currently building an $85-million hockey arena for the university has threatened to kill the project if the name is changed.
As a member of the Comanche tribe, my name is on all the Indian mailing lists. I recently got an e-mail calling for solidarity with the UND protesters.
It says that Indian students have suffered physical attacks, name-calling, slashed tires, and broken windshields.
Indian students at UND now face a "hostile environment," says the e-mail. Many are seeking to transfer to other schools, to escape their abusive classmates.
Physical attacks of this sort are deplorable. The culprits should be caught and punished.
At the same time, the Indian students have to accept their own responsibility for helping to create the "hostile environment" they now face.
I'm all for fighting when there's something to fight about. But, in my view, this is not the case at UND.
Why should any Indian object if a university has an Indian warrior as its emblem?
The purpose of a mascot is to inspire the school's athletes to fight hard and win. That the school chose an Indian to represent its fighting spirit is a sign of respect. It shows an admiration for the courage and manliness of the Sioux warrior, who laid so many whites in their graves just a few generations ago.
All of this seems perfectly obvious to me. But those who have chosen to walk the "black man's path" are experts at finding things to get offended about. Virtually everything that white people do, no matter how innocuous, can be cited as an excuse to cry "racist."
Take the name game.
Every few years, leftwing black academics announce to their people that they must now call themselves something different. At one time, it was colored, then Negro, then Afro-American, then black, then African-American and so on.
None of these names are better or worse than any of the others. Not long ago I was interviewed by black conservative talk show host Ken Hamblin. He told me that he's perfectly happy being "colored."
Yet many black Americans have been conditioned to treat the nuances between these words as matters of life and death. Try calling a black man a "Negro" nowadays and see what sort of reaction you get.
The name game creates new sources of friction out of thin air, for no good reason. As fast as white people get used to one name, black people change it. That way, no one ever quite knows what to call them, and everyone has to tippy-toe around on eggshells trying to figure out how to avoid giving offense.
I don't pretend to know why so many African-Americans go in for this sort of nonsense. But I do know that many blacks, such as Ken Hamblin, refuse to indulge in it, and for that I respect them.
What concerns me is that so many Indians nowadays - and especially the younger generation - seem to be following the worst examples.
Back in the late '60s, some Indians even started playing their own version of the name game, by calling themselves Native Americans. I don't know who started it. Maybe it was a white liberal.
To this day, most Indians still prefer to be called Indians. I know I do. But white people now have to tippy-toe around calling us Native Americans, for fear that we will take offense.
It's all about playing the victim. Frankly, I find it weak and undignified. It's not the way of our warrior ancestors.
Those young Indians at UND should end their needless fight with the university. The pursuit of academic excellence would be a far better testing ground for their warrior spirit.
Originally published at FrontPageMagazine.com | February 13, 2001