On Friday, January 6, 2012 5:19:36 PM UTC-5, Liesl wrote: > > This is important. I work with Native people, and appropriation of > culture by Euro-Americans without asking is just not a good thing. Note > that the University of North Dakota officially discontinued its use of the > Fighting Sioux nickname the first of the year. Sorry to get political > here, but this is such a respectful community that I feel I should pipe up. > -liesl >
Excellent point, with which I used to agree. And, not that I completely disagree with it now, but my thoughts have evolved. (I hesitate to say, but think I can respectfully do this, and it does relate, given GP's consideration of 'an Indian name'.) So, I'll give it a try... The community I grew up in near here is called Indian Springs (not the one north of Las Vegas); there were springs that the Cherokee used nearby, along the 'Great Warriors Path' (predecessor of the Stage Coach road, an extension of the Fincastle road, that became part of Boone's Wilderness road). My elementary school's mascot was, to no surprise, the 'Redskins'. When I was a kid, we'd play cowboys and Indians, and it wasn't a bad thing to be an Indian. When my father was a boy, he used to hunt for arrowheads along the stream near a known encampment site, that's a couple of miles upstream from where that creek flows past my house. We grew up with a romantic notion of what the 'noble savage' represented. Today, my son's school's mascot is 'the Indians', and the middle school he was in that feeds into it, are also the 'Redskins'. It's a big part of the early history here. It wasn't meant to be disrespectful. Over half of the placenames in the United States come from Native American names. The word 'Indian' itself is being replaced with 'Native American', for the sake of political correctness. All of my ancestors have been in East Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, or western North Carolina since 1800; all were in North America prior to 1776, but some where still on the Chesapeake, or elsewhere on the east coast, at that time. Of those that I've traced back across the Atlantic, I'm predominantly English/Scots-Irish/Welsh, with one originating from Switzerland. The one variant: my paternal grandmother's great-grandmother's mom, and her husband's mom, were Cherokee, part of the ones that remained hidden here when the Trail of Tears occurred; however, they remained away from what became the Eastern Band, and thus aren't on the Dawes rolls. Where I live, there aren't a large number of African-Americans, not as you have elsewhere in the country. There was one black student who was a senior when I was a freshman, and there was a freshman when I was a senior, but I never knew either of them. However, there are plenty of people around here who are racists. I really didn't know anyone who wasn't like me, a 'WASP', when I was growing up, and was actually afraid that, as odd as this might sound, that I might be a racist and not know it, at that point. I went to Parris Island, wide-eyed and apprehensive; and that was where I first got to really know some guys that were black... and they were great fellows. I was actually relieved, and felt foolish for having felt as I did. But later on in infantry school, I met a couple of them weren't. But the twist was, they presumed I was racist because I was a southern white boy, and thought I was out to get them; the table was turned. However, there were plenty of other people who were great, too, and a few others that weren't, and I had the realization: people are people, and you have to take each individual individually on their own merits. After that point, was when I noticed rap starting a transitioning from a 'black-only' thing to a 'whites acting as black', is how I viewed it (I'm sure I was late to this, had happened elsewhere earlier, and, long before with other genre, but, I digress). I frowned on such, not as a anti-African-American thing, but, that, other whites were being disrespectful of 'black culture', because they weren't reserving it for them. I viewed it as, it was wrong for me to be part of that, of being a white guy listening to rap, not out of hate, but because I would be taking something from them. [I can't say that I necessarily could have articulated that at that point, it wasn't a conscious philosophy, just my retrospective view of myself at that time.] But finally it dawned on me at some point along the way, that my view of that, was actually a form of segregation. Not an active, but a passive variety. And not only that, but by allowing, even a passive, segregation, to continue, it could inadvertently allow (not necessarily for myself, but for 'people in general), a fertile ground to nurture an underlying racism, by having that segregation keep an understanding of other cultures from developing. If you're a part of it, you're not going to throw stones at yourself; but if you're separate from it, it's more likely that you could. School teaches different things at different times, as society's perspectives change. Used to, the Native Americans were portrayed as simple savages. But at some point, they became the 'noble savage'. The high-school level history began to teach you about 'European domination' coming in and shoving them out of the way. But when you start to get a bit deeper in history, and look at the relationships that had developed among the tribes, the picture is so much more complicated. The Five Nations, the Iroquois were the top of the food-chain in the east. The Cherokee were actually a subset, had been displaced, and taken over the Yuchi's turf. The Shawnee had also been displaced, multiple times, and would go on hunting parties, to hunt Cherokee. We were taught that Indians didn't have a concept of land ownership, which isn't really true... they knew who's turf was who, and they would knowing sell another tribe's turf to the whites, as a way to get back at the other tribes. [I'm simplifying, but, I'm trying to get to my point.] The other night, I watched 'the Eagle'. If you've not seen it, it's about a Roman centurion hero in Britian, who takes his Brigantine slave north of Hadrian's Wall to recover a gold eagle that was lost when his father's regiment vanished. You see the interaction of the Roman invaders with the native Bretons; you see the highlanders; you see the 'seal people' who are reminiscent of Native Americans. Throughout the movie, I was wanting to root for the Roman, but kind of had a 'politically correct' notion that I should root for the Celts, or the Picts, as if we were talking about the English doing the Native Americans wrong. But, I realize: I'm a product of all of those. The Celts, the Norse, the Romans, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the Normans. But not only them, but the Gauls, and even the Cherokee. We just celebrated Christmas, but I realize decorating a tree and mistletoe are appropriated from Yule; but, I'm descended from both sides of that. Here, local rednecks like to wave a Rebel flag and claim it's not racism, and then there are historical people who explain that it was states' rights and not racism, but regardless, they're taking sides. But, my great-grandparents: his father, fought for the North, his brother, the South. His father-in-law, the South. I'm on both sides of the argument. And by being on both sides, instead of taking sides, I can see reason, and fault, with both sides. My elementary school's mascot was the Redskins. That's now a part of my culture. By taking it from me, and saying only someone 'who is more Native American than me' has a right to it, is a form of racism. Not in a, lynching, format, but in a way that is allowed to be tolerated in the name of 'being politically correct'. Our vision of history of chivalrous knights having tournaments is in large part fiction, but held to be a nostalgic time when you could ride in and save a lady; the same story told in the West, with gunslingers... sure, some people were shot, but, the 'Old West' 's reality was different from our nostalgic remembrance of it that Hollywood gave us. Maybe the nostalgia isn't for the Old West, but the mental image that we remember thinking it was when we were kids. When it was okay to be the Redskins, and schools weren't threatened with lawsuits or accused of evil for having an Indian in a Sioux headdress for a logo. I see having those bits of things pulled in, as part of an acceptance of, of them being a part of me, uniting us, instead of dividing us. I'm not condoning a lot of the practices that did occur during Westward Expansion, and I wouldn't want anyone to mistakenly think I was condoning slavery of a race; but I think that we as Americans have at least recognized a lot of that and have, even if not head-on but obliquely, addressed much of it. SO, no, I don't think that Native Americans should be offended by such imagery's usage. I'm sure that there are plenty of Native Americans who would disagree with that, but, I would ask them to consider if that would not be a form of self-segregation. I don't expect anyone to feel like they have to change their minds to agree with me if they differ on this opinion, I can agree to disagree and continue on in friendship; but, I wanted to give pause to the thought that in the name of 'political correctness', that it would be bad to have an Indian name. Nancy Ward, Dragging Canoe, Chief Benge, Chief Logan.... can't say they're good names for a bike, but, I'm sure that there are some names that are great. Geronimo might be overused.... Cochise was a strong warrior leader; Apache is a name I like, or Commanche... I'd like one of those as well or better than Rambouillet.... Solely my opinion, for what it's worth, no offense meant.... -L -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/a2Ae5zSSfzkJ. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
