(MintPress) – Today is the National Day of Thanksgiving, and throughout the land, families are reuniting, celebrating with each other and gorging themselves on holiday treats just shy of bursting. This ritual many among us consider to be the purest and most welcomed of holidays is steep with tradition, legend and patriotic passion.
The modern Thanksgiving is traditionally linked to the somewhat mythicized 1621 Plymouth feast, in which Pilgrims and Puritans that emigrated from England in 1620 and 1621 offered a feast of thanksgiving in gratitude to the assistance the Wampanoag tribe offered in teaching cultivating techniques for surviving on the rocky and lean terrain of Massachusetts and for offering food stores to survive that winter. The feast was a harvest celebration held by the Pilgrims, which was repeated in 1623 and infrequently thereafter.
But, this wasn’t the first day of thanksgiving in the New World. Thanksgiving services were held in the Jamestown Colony as early as 1609, and in several communities — including Berkeley Hundred — an annual day of thanksgiving to commemorate the arrival day of the settlers were held. However, unlike their Massachusetts cousins, these settlers didn’t share the same Christian compulsion toward sharing. Starting in 1609, the English governor of the colony, John Smith, authorized raiding parties to demand and seize food. The settlers burned down houses, stole food stores and isolated the Native Americans from outside help. Suspicions of the English settlers’ true intentions were precipitated, as the Powhatan Chief reportedly said,
“Your coming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my country … Having seene the death of all my people thrice … I knowe the difference of peace and ware better than any other Countrie. [If he fought the English, Powhatan predicted], he would be so haunted by Smith that he can neither rest eat nor sleepe, but his tired men must watch, and if a twig but breake, everie one crie, there comes Captain John Smith; then he must flie he knowe not whether, and thus with miserable fear end his miserable life.”
Orders to Christianize the Native Americans resulted in open slaughter of the Indians, which led to the Anglo-Powhatan Wars, which then led to the kidnapping of Pocahontas, the destruction of the Jamesville Colony and the retaliatory annihilation of the Powhatan people.
For many modern Native Americans, this — and not the Plymouth story — reflect their existence after the arrival of “the White man.” The colonization and development of America destroyed the livelihood of the various Native Americans who cultivated, hunted and lived on the land. Treaties that allocated fair land for the Indians to live on were entered into and later broken in the name of Manifest Destiny, and the once Great Tribes were forced to make do with less and less until eventually, they had nearly nothing. Native Americans did not receive the right to vote until 1924, and derecognition of Indian sovereignty in the 40s, 50s and 60s drove many Native Americans into poverty, under-education and poor health.
In celebrating Thanksgiving, a glance at this overlooked people and what their existence is today is needed. For a people who, by our own stories, we are so indebted to, their story tells the nature of America’s soul better than any other.
A story of tears and death
“… Over the years the federal government has devised programs and “wheeled them” into Indian communities in the name of economic rehabilitation or the like. These programs have, by and large, resulted in bitter divisions and strife in our communities, further impoverishment and the placing of our parents in a more and more powerless position.
“I am a young man, but I’m old enough to have seen this process accelerate in my lifetime. This has been the experience of Indian youth-to see our leaders become impotent and less experienced in handling the modern world. Those among our generation who have an understanding of modern life have had to come to that understanding by experiences outside our home communities. The indignity of Indian life, and I would presume the indignity of life among the poor generally in these United States, is the powerlessness of those who are “out of it,” but who yet are coerced and manipulated by the very system which excludes them.” —Clyde Warrior, 1965, Native Americans Speaks Out About Poverty
For about the 40 percent of the 4.9 million individuals living on Native American reservations, their living conditions are “comparable to Third World,” according to the Gallup Independent. Since tribal relocation started in the early 19th century, American-Indian communities have been removed from fertile, desired lands and forced to deal with the outcroppings — harsh, sometime barren lands that are undesirable to settlers and poor for farming or foraging. As such, the tribes have been forced to rely on the federal government for employment, schooling and health care. This situation has led to a heightened state of poverty among Native Americans, with a poverty rate of 28.4 percent on reservations as of 2010 and 22 percent among all American-Indians. This is compared to the 15.3 percent for all Americans at the time. Thirty-six percent of families with children on reservations are below the poverty line, as of 2010, compared with 9.2 percent nationally.
The Navajo Reservation has a poverty rate for families with children of 46.5 percent and an extreme poverty rate (extreme poverty is the state in which one does not earn enough to reach half of the poverty threshold) of 14.9 percent (the national average for extreme poverty in 2010 is 4.0 percent). For the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, the rates are 54.4 percent and 4.2 percent, Tohono O’odham 44.3 percent and 20.7 percent, Cherokee River 42.3 percent and 14.6 percent.
Nearly 53.4 percent of all reservation homes have no telephone service, compared to the 5 percent nationwide. Additionally, 18 percent don’t have a kitchen or adequate sewage disposal. Twenty percent have no indoor plumbing, Fourteen percent have no electricity. Nearly 10 percent of all families living on the reservation are homeless.
Nearly 40 percent of the Navajo Reservation is without electricity. Half of the Hopi and Navajo Reservations have no indoor plumbing. Less than 10 percent have Internet access.
The very hard truth about the nation’s relationship with American-Indians is that it is one of neglect and miscommunication. Indian lands are typically the last areas to receive infrastructure, the last to receive service when something breaks and the last to receive public funding for improvements. Because of the demographic’s relative size, it has been easy to overlook American-Indians on the political stage; there have only been a handful that have entered public life.
The reason for all of this misery is complex, but tells the story of America.
From the offset, the Indian problem was considered a situation best dealt with militaristically. The chief strategy of the United States in the early years of the Union was to avoid if possible, eliminate if needed. In order to clear lands for settlement, the reservation system was created, in which, large territories in the frontier region would be given to the tribes if they left their current homes. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed and championed by Andrew Jackson, first offset Thomas Jefferson’s policy of respecting the homelands of the Indians as autonomous by authorizing the removal of the indigenous tribes to approved reservations. A resulting treaty of this act is the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which removed the Choctaws from Mississippi in exchange of western lands (mostly in Oklahoma) and cash. A Choctaw chief at the time was quoted as saying the removal was a “trail of tears and death.” Military action, such as the Massacre at Wounded Knee of 1890, decimated the Indian population.
Around the middle of the 19th century, the nation’s attitude toward American-Indians moved away from annihilation to assimilation. It was felt that if Native Americans were made more “American,” resistance would fade and accommodations — such as the reservation system and the various outstanding treaties — could be abolished. In order to achieve this, the Dawes Act was passed, which broke up the reservations into individual parcels owned by individuals. This allowed non-Indians to seize reservation land. It also started assimilation, as it was thought that private land ownership would force individual Native Americans into the country. It was the ultimate goal of the government to kill Native American culture, language and tradition — to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Food, housing and clothing was supplied by the federal government; children were forced into boarding schools, in which they were denied communication home and use of their native languages were banned by physical force. In these schools, the children became Anglicized, stripping future generations of the native knowledge needed to live on the land.
Tribal members were forbidden to hunt, fish or make art. Traditional healers, religious figures, teachers and food preparers were replaced with Christian missionaries. Those who lost their traditional role were not given a new job. Furthermore, the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 restructured many tribal governments, forcing constitutional governance for many tribes (ironically, one of the American-Indian nations that restructured under this act was the Iroquois Confederation, which is recognized as having the oldest and longest running participatory democracy in history and was a direct example used in the formation of the United States government).
Because American-Indians were forced to settle on dead earth, because the skills they would need to live in such intolerable conditions were stripped away in the name of Americanization, and because the lands given to them tended to be removed from white settlements, the Indian population dwindled and decayed in shameful conditions that continues to the modern day.
Hope and a new beginning
In the last 50 years, the policy toward the Native American community has changed. Gone are the failed attempts toward assimilation.The new word is “self-determination,” as in the American-Indian community should be given the tools to determine their own destinies. The boarding schools were closed and replaced with locally managed, federally-backed day schools. Cultural-denying programs were replaced with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and other generally-available federal assistance programs. National sovereignty for the reservations were restored, making Indian lands sovereign to all but the federal government.
However, by the time these changes were made, the damage was already done. Most of Native American heritage was lost, almost all of the indigenous languages were forgotten. Entire tribes folded and disappeared. Families were shattered. Persistent poverty had set in and opportunities to correct this was too expensive or simply not available.
Local negative policies toward Indian land continued, such as nearby cities setting up landfills adjacent to reservations. The federal government had used Indian lands for nuclear testing and spent fuel disposal. Uranium mining and enriching has happened on the reservations, and from 1951 to 1991, the Nevada Test Site sat on Western Shoshone lands.
All of this has resulted in a state of concentrated poverty. A region is said to be under concentrated poverty when more than 40 percent of the population in the tract lives under the federal poverty threshold. A lack of jobs, few opportunities and little resources have created an impossibly desperate situation for American-Indians. Among reservation-living Indians, drug use and alcoholism rates are higher than the national averages, as is cigarette use. Suicides are double the national average and the leading cause of death for reservation residents age 15 to 24.
The Choctaws, the Ojibwes, the Pueblos, the Oneidas and the Mohegans have all moved to gambling to help support their tribes. Under the national sovereignty these tribes claim, they have opened casinos on reservation lands as a way to increase revenue toward infrastructure expansion. In doing this, the Ojibwe built two schools, the Choctaw a hospital, the Pueblo a new water system — all using casino profits. Other tribes have expanded police and fire protection, added child and elder care programs, and built housing developments. More importantly, the casinos added much needed job opportunities for the reservations. Other tribes have moved into fiduciary products, food manufacturing and other industries and corporate opportunities.
However, these efforts only suffice to meet the most basic needs for some tribes — mostly in the Northeast and the Southwest. The Obama administration has risen to the challenge, investing $3 billion to the tribes in the 2009 stimulus package, divesting more law enforcement powers to the tribes and vastly improving Indian health care services. He has also ordered the settlement of billions of dollars in land and trust claims.
In appreciation, the Crow Nation adopted the president and dubbed him Barack Black Eagle. He is the first president to receive such an honor. Mr. Obama is also the first president to formally receive leaders from all 566 of the federally recognized tribes in an annual summit.
But, this is not enough. A firm and decisive course of action is needed. After the end of World War II, Western Europe was devastated and prone to Soviet advancement. In response to this, President Truman authorized the Marshall Plan — the largest international aid package ever paid by the United States. What is needed is a Marshall Plan for the American-Indians — a definitive, inclusive allocation to build the infrastructure and industry needed on the reservations to give the people a decent quality of life.
The United States created this mess. It’s time it cleans it up.