I couldn’t wait to see how they got out of THAT one.  I only hoped it would be more graceful than Disney’s purported “Michael-Jacksonizing” of the animated (now-white) Indians in the DVD version of their “Peter Pan.”

What the Syfy producers did was give the Neverland Indians clothing, regalia, tools, weapons, and architecture from nations all over the US and Canada, which were generally rendered  rather classily; no neon-colored feathers or plastic pony beads.  When we first meet them, they are singing what sounds very much like a Gyuto Monks’ Tibetan Buddhist chant!

So, kind of a mishmash.  Perhaps that’s who they are: the Mishmash Nation!

It’s bound to give scholars the red – uh, skin – any time costumes, props, or sets seem to be from a mix times or places.  But if I may play the wendigo’s advocate for a moment:

• Ancient peoples always seem to have “gotten around” a lot more than anyone thought; consider, for example, the Viking’s Buddha excavated at Lake Malaren, Sweden.
• Archaeological evidence confirms that First Nations had a continent-spanning trade network long before the importation of the horse.
• So in real life, Native folks had stuff from nations other than their own: traded goods, war trophies, things brought in by adopted members back before the BIA said “quit adopting people and start paying attention to blood quanta or kiss federal recognition goodbye”. . .

All right , a group still probably wouldn’t ALL have Lakota feather bonnets and ALL have Makah canoes and ALL have Tlingit hats the ways the Mishmash did.  And even if the land-bridge theory held true, did the Mishmash walk all the way from Tibet?  And if so, would the song remain the same?

But it was very pretty.  And the Indians seemed as “people-y” as any of the other characters. And the giant-mutant-octodile hunt was WAY cool.  So, on balance . . . ‘sall’ight.

1971 also saw the success of the movie Billy Jack, whose Metis martial-artist hero fights for wild horses and runaway kids. The hippie generation (which became the politically-correct generation) hailed Natives in general as free-living, highly spiritual guardians of the earth, victims of The Man just like themselves. And they’d already been through so much, so quit being mean to them. The old-school Fictional Bad Indians pretty much died out, or were at least always carefully juxtaposed with fictional good Indians, – and stayed that way even when Hollywood started making Westerns again.

Until now. In Ringer, whose stars include “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Sarah Michelle Gellar and “Horatio Hornblower” Ioan Gruffudd, Fictional Bad Indian Bodaway Macawi is an organized-crime boss with both Native and non-Native minions and apparently national connections, a sociopath who tortures and kills without remorse. He owns a Wyoming strip club and has been arrested for fatally dismembering one of the strippers, giving “employee severance” a whole new meaning.

Others have noticed Macawi; for example, there’s an ongoing discussion here. But I’m not reading a lot of outrage, just some lukewarm grousing. The producers and writers seem to have gone through some contortions not to give anyone the standing to sue (yep, finally some law in this post) and it’s resulted in a bewilderingly amorphous character. Macawi appears to have gone off the reservation in more ways than one: although he’s based in the Wind River part of Wyoming (Shoshone and Arapaho lands), there’s no hint of ties to a nation or even a family (ok, a passing mention of a brother. Whom he killed). He’s involved in a vice-related business but NOT GAMBLING (according to one of my law professors, the “regular” FBI couldn’t find organized crime in tribal casinos despite a whole lot of looking). Also unclear how his tentacles reach to NY and beyond, and yet he doesn’t even have a place to keep prisoners other than the basement of this tiny dump of a strip club. And his gang sells heroin, Really? In Wyoming? I’d have pegged that for meth country.

Oh well: He’ll get his; this isn’t real life, after all. If Buffy and Horatio don’t take him down, Walter White could stomp hm flat. Though that wouldn’t necessarily do the people of Wind River any favors.

So now this remarkable personage can rest in peace? Nope, not yet. His three surviving sons are suing the town of Jim Thorpe under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq.), to have Jim Thorpe’s remains returned to Oklahoma for burial in the family plot near his birthplace (which has a historic marker now). Different facets of the controversy have been presented in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

NAGPRA is a handy legal lever here, but is it really the right tool for the job? In the last half-century, federal statutes that bolster tribal sovereignty and Native cultural identity have seemed especially vulnerable to being crushed – or at least noticeably flattened – under the wheels of justice. One plaintiff tries to push the law just a little too far, and the court severely narrows the scope of the law or strikes it down altogether.

Under NAGPRA, “if . . . the cultural affiliation of Native American human remains. . . with a particular Indian tribe. . . is established, then the. . . museum, upon the request of a known lineal descendant of the Native American. . . shall expeditiously return such remains.” 25 U.S.C. 3005. Establishing Jim Thorpe’s cultural affiliation is not arduous. Even though he reportedly had no birth certificate, Kennewick Man he ain’t. His dad was half-Sauk, his mom half-Potawatomi. “Museum,” for NAGPRA purposes, “any institution or State or local government agency that receives Federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items.” A local government agency in Jim Thorpe, PA maintains the current Thorpe grave, and the town appears to receive federal funds for, among other things, a “Reading is Fundamental” program and a HUD Community Development Block Grant. Jack Thorpe, Jim Thorpe’s son (a lineal descendant of the least ambiguous kind) has requested the return of the remains. So, the turn-the-crank analysis shows Jim Thorpe as a pretty good candidate for repatriation at the town’s expense under NAGPRA as written.

Add the policy shading and the picture changes somewhat. NAGPRA was enacted in 1990 to curtail the historically prevalent treatment of Native remains and burial goods as curiosities, souvenirs, or debris. Although mainstream America had moved past most of the overt racism – 19th-century scientists’ proposals that Native skull dimensions signify inferior intellect, for example – there was still a sizable empathy gap due to different cultural perspectives. The excavation of European settlers’ bodies in Jamestown raised no hue and cry from their descendants; the public reaction was more akin to loitering at the edge of the hole going “Awww, cool!” The remains of famous non-Native outlaws were frequently featured in Old West traveling sideshows. In parts of the West Indies and the southern US, human remains were used in rituals derived from the Congolese Palo Mayombe tradition. However, treating one’s own ancestors’ remains nearly as badly really wasn’t an excuse.

Has there been that kind of disrespect, though, in the case of Jim Thorpe? Although the NY Times smirkingly calls the PA monument a “nifty roadside attraction,” Jim’s body is hardly on display for a nickel a peek. His granite mausoleum in an apparently well-kept, dedicated park is perfectly dignified, and even stands on soil brought in from his Oklahoma birthplace and from the stadium in Stockholm where he won his Olympic medals. His widow consented to the burial. OK, she was his third wife and none of the kids were hers, but his daughters also reportedly approved; because of this, the sons waited until all of them passed away before bringing the lawsuit.

The whole dispute, at least as reported in the press, seems much more like a family issue than a cultural issue. Disagreements about where people should be buried are extremely common when the deceased was married more than once – but only Natives can bring NAGPRA into play. From the tone of the reports, the parties are likely to settle; Jack bears the town no grudge, and the town’s increased tourist revenue is, by its own admission, virtually unrelated to the location of the actual grave. Like any law intended to redress generations of disfavored behavior in a few short years (can you say “school desegregation”?) NAGPRA is a big administrative hassle – but in the cases it was designed for, it’s there for good reasons. Let’s not stretch it till it breaks just yet, OK?

An elder of the Wisconsin Oneida nation, part of the Haudenosaunee, once told me that every traditional Haudenosaunee prayer is a prayer of gratitude. That’s impressive. Would you rather be in charge of people who say “Thank you” all the time, or people who say “Gimme”?

On this Fourth of July, I feel it’s appropriate to say thank you to the Haudenosaunee for providing a model of federalism for the Founding Fathers – an example of how separate sovereignties (like the newly independent colonies) could function as a nation without losing their separate identities and all of their autonomy.

Many American political and legal figures talk a lot today about returning to the Founding Fathers’ priorities and values. Their opponents often point out that many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, but nobody seems to say much about the treatment of the Native nations at that time.

Until shortly after the War of 1812, the Founding Fathers largely treated the Native nations as just that – separate nations with a right to be on the land they’d occupied for thousands of years. That’s why they made treaties, which are, by definition, agreements between sovereign nations.** When the American colonists were few and relatively weak, threatened by the much larger and better-equipped English army, they desperately needed Native allies for military aid, so they behaved very diplomatically indeed.

The Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, joined by the Tuscarora in 1772) are believed by some scholars to have the oldest living participatory democracy in the world. Their traditional Constitution, the “Great Binding Law,” a beautiful piece of literature in its own right (as also were the Brehon Laws of Celtic Ireland – imagine laws written so people would WANT to hear and remember them!), can be read at http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm.

While the colonial leaders were debating making a break for independence, the Continental Congress invited the leaders of the Six Nations to its meeting hall for an alliance ceremony, where the colonial delegates pledged their friendship “as long as the sun shines and water runs.” They asked that the colonies and the Six Nations act “as one people, and have but one heart.”***

Although everyone’s “Plan A” was for the Haudenosaunee and other Native nations to remain neutral during the Revolutionary War, America’s Revolutionary War eventually became the Haudenosaunee’s Civil War. Mohawk war leader Joseph Brant convinced factions from four of the Six Nations to support the British because the Crown’s Proclamation of 1763 prohibited further colonial settlements in the Native-occupied lands west of the Appalachians. The prohibition was intended to be temporary, and was motivated more by a desire to assert Crown control than by sympathy for the Natives, but it seemed like the best deal going at the time. The Oneida and Tuscarora refused to fight for the British and were eventually recruited to the American side, contributing not only warriors (some of whom fought British-backed Haudenosaunee at the Battle of Oriskany), but quartermasters as well; for example, the Oneidas who supplied Washington’s Valley Forge winter camp with grain.**** Since hitting enemy supply lines is a common war tactic, these quartermasters – many of them women – were definitely in harm’s way.

After the war, Brant and many of his followers accepted the Crown’s reward of a sizable land grant in Canada and got the heck out of Dodge. Washington had pursued a scorched-earth policy toward their settlements during the war, (despite repeated Oneida pleas to spare the villages of other Haudenosaunee nations) and things didn’t promise to get better afterward. This was the first major geographical fragmentation of the Haudenosaunee; wherever they went, they preserved their system of government and Great Binding Law.

The theory that the American Constitution and federalist structure were based on elements of the Haudenosaunee system is called the “Influence Thesis” in academic circles. It goes like this:

1. The union of states in the Articles of Confederacy and the Constitution bears a much closer resemblance to the Haudenosaunee system than to any European government that existed at that time.
2. Some of the language is too similar for mere coincidence to earlier Haudenosaunee historical documents. For instance, John Rutledge, head of the Constitutional Convention’s Committee of Detail, once opened a meeting with a quote attributed to a Haudenosaunee chief, circa 1520, which began, “We, the people, to form a union, to establish peace, equity and order . . .
3. Besides Rutledge, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, among other participants in the Constitutional convention, have been reported as contemporaneously expressing admiration for the Haudenosaunee system. Franklin’s most famous relevant comment, “It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union . . . and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies,” doesn’t sound very respectful on its face, but some historians have interpreted it as a tactic for “shaming” the delegates into cooperating.
4. Some of the European philosophers whose work inarguably influenced the Convention – Locke, Hobbes, More, and Rousseau – were aware of the Haudenosaunee system and apparently admired it.
5. Some of the symbols on U.S. flags and seals, such as the Tree of Liberty and the bundle of arrows, are traceable to Haudenosaunee symbols of peace and of strength through unity.

However, there’s no big smoking gun (or peace-pipe) left lying around. The Constitution doesn’t have a note at the bottom that says “Portions copied with permission from the Haudenosaunee archives.” This opens the door to opponents who say any notion of Haudenosaunee influence on the Founding Fathers is so much revisionist hogwash.

At least part of the problem is something that happened 100 years later: Marx and Engels also wrote favorably about Haudenosaunee government. We don’t want to approve of the same things of which Communists approve, do we? One can tell that’s part of the problem because one of the most vocal opponents of the Influence Thesis, Dinesh D’Souza, calls the thesis “neo-Marxist ideology.” If you can see anything about communal property or dialectical materialism in the support for the influence thesis, please point it out, because I can’t find any.

Whatever one’s opinions of individual opponents of the thesis, who include Pat Buchanan, Robert Bork, and Rush Limbaugh , it’s true that Jefferson and others are also recorded as frequently exhorting all Natives to put aside their traditions and embrace the stay-put, one-family-one-farm mainstream-European pattern of land use – which tends to contraindicate any suggestion that he viewed Natives as any kind of role model. And some of the same incidental facts can work either for or against the thesis. For instance, images of Indians were used as symbols of individual freedom in broadsheets and other ephemeral mainstream literature of the time; some scholars even postulate that this symbolism was what drove the Boston Tea Party participants to dress as Indians (as opposed to the hope that the English would blame the property damage on actual Indians). In support of the thesis, one may argue that this meant admiration of Native culture was widespread. In opposition, one may argue that this meant few non-Natives had any clues about the complex and often very strict social structures in which Natives generally lived, and therefore knowledge of the Haudenosaunee government was probably not common among them either.

And nobody ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of mainstream Americans about cultures not their own. . . Still, the evidence does tend to pile up in favor of the Haudenosaunee system being AN influence on the constitution, whether or not it was the ONLY influence. So here’s to the “eminence grease” that eases the squeaky wheels of political evolution. Have a happy 4th!

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*”Iroquois” is a Frenchification of either the Haudenosaunee catch-phrase “I speak the truth” or of the neighboring Huron pejorative epithet “snake,” depending on whom you ask.

**The unfair nature of some of the early land deals was largely due to misunderstanding of what was, in fact, being sold. Most Native legal systems had no equivalent of the English-style “fee simple title” (exclusive and total ownership of land in perpetuity); their land-use entitlements were more similar to easements and licenses – sometimes nonexclusive use, sometimes use for a limited time or of a limited type).

***”Proceedings . . . with the Six Nations, 1775,” Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774-89, National Archives (M247, Roll 144, Item No. 134).

****Cara Richards, The Oneida People, (Phoenix: Indian Tribal Series, 1974), pp. 53-54.

On what is plausibly “their” day, let me play the white/black/yellow/brown devil’s advocate for a moment.

The Wanabi are numerous, many of them are wealthy, and they support all kinds of Indian political causes, businesses, and cultural events.  Many of them aren’t actually stupid or rude – they’re just uninformed.  You’d be surprised at how much some of them can learn with a little patient, knowledgeable guidance.

After all, the Wanabi will never meet the mandatory criteria for federal recognition.  They have no treaty rights.  They have never banded together to act as a unit, and are unlikely to do so in the future.  They’re only allowed to operate casinos in states where everyone else can. 

Do you have knowledge or skills in traditional arts or other practices?  Would you like to pass that on to your kids, but they just want to drink Coke, play Xbox, and listen to hip-hop?  Eventually, they will have kids who will rebel against them by wanting to learn the ancestral ways.  In the meantime, unless everything you know has to be kept in the family or community, why not sift through the Wanabi for someone teachable, discreet, and trustworthy to help you hold down the fort in the meantime?

Behind every goofy-looking Wanabi facade, there might be a good heart, a willing pair of hands, a roomy and reliable vehicle, a school that pays well for “Culture Day” speakers, or 300 cubicle-neighbors poised to buy raffle tickets. 

So, next time you hear the traditional Wanabi greeting, “Jutek vee-sah?” why not smile and return the traditional response, “Yah, witek vee-sah; amextu!”

(If you don’t “get it,” try saying it out loud).

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*The Wanabi “tribe” consists of people who aren’t Indians, but act like they “wanna be.”  (I’m part Wanabi myself, but I can’t prove it because my great-grandpa’s dog ate the records : ) ).

A long time ago, in a country that I am sitting in right now, someone who wanted to be an Indian (and could make her- or himself useful to a tribe) often could be.  Tribes freely adopted non-Indians as well as Indians from other tribes.  One particularly fascinating and successful category of adoptees were the “Black Seminoles” – Africans who escaped American slavery, joined the Seminole Nation, and served in the Seminole Wars. 

Then came the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.  (See – there IS some law in this article!)  After the dismal failure of the well-meant but disastrous Dawes Allotment Act to fully (and forcibly) assimilate American Indians into European-American culture and life (and incidentally grab som hu-u-ge – tracts of land), the 1934 Act gave tribes the power to organize their own governments and to write their own constitutions.  This included the authority to determine who belonged to the tribe.  Unfortunately, the Allotment Act’s decades of starvation, vigorous discouragement of any kind of tribal-community assembly, and education confined to Euro-style agriculture, minimal-skill trades, and single-family housekeeping had left Indians in no shape to jump right up and bang out constitutions that would meet with the required approval of the Secretary of the Interior. 

Enter the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) (“We’re from the government and we’re here to help you!”) with hard-to-read but easy-to-sign boilerplate constitutions that mainly provided that all significant tribal-government actions required BIA approval.  In the area of deciding who belonged to the tribe, the BIA warned the tribal leaders that unless they limited enrollment to a certain degree of tribal blood, their treaty rights that included per-member annuities could go up in a puff of smoke.  Although there was some possibly legitimate concern about fraud at the time, we ended up with results like full-blooded Indians with fathers from matrilineal tribes and mothers from patrilineal tribes being unable to enroll in either, or to inherit from either parent’s estate.  Now tribal citizens have to carry “CDIB cards” showing they have a Certified Degree of Indian Blood and (dang!! I can’t remember who said this and apparently I’m not the only one) “ironically, only horses, dogs and Indians have to know their pedigree.”

As a result, the Wanabi are left with no place to go.  Who knows – their numbers might suddenly and drastically decrease if they did have the option of paying tribal taxes, meeting the daily Commodity Cooking Challenge, being constantly volunteered for community service, having a whole bunch of people “all up in their business” all the time, and – let’s not forget – living up to the cumulative expectations of seven generations of ancestors.

From the ’1930′s through the ’1950′s, the dominant Wanabi demographic was kids playing “cowboys-and-Indians,” inspired by Western-themed (as told from the settlers’ side) movies and TV shows.  (“Cowboys-and-developers” would better reflect the current conflict; maybe I’ll teach my friends’ kids that one).  In the ’1960′s and early ’1970′s it was hippies and other far-leftists identifying with all oppressed peoples to show solidarity (or just to have an excuse to take peyote), whether the oppressed peoples wanted them or not.  Since the late ’1970′s the New Agers have dominated.  The New Age spiritual movement was characterized by a refreshing open-mindedness to all spiritual beliefs (at least on the surface – there was still the occasional subtext of “but mine is of course the best”).  However, the unfortunate flip side was that a horde of charlatans soon found they could easily exploit all that openness to make some major, accountability-free bucks.  Many, perhaps most, American Indian cultures keep their spiritual practices to themselves, so the charlatans (not all Wanabi, either) had an open field to make up any old thing and sell it as “ancient, traditional Indian spirituality” for heap big wampum (and sometimes “in-kind” payments, on the nature of which I shall not elaborate).

The Wanabi cultural oddity goes back further, and is much wider, than this:  those who want to know more might want to read Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture by S. Elizabeth Bird.