Native American Day

September 24 is Native American Day. In 1914 the chief of one of the Native American tribes, Red Fox James Blackfoot, traveled on horseback from Montana across the United States urging governors to adopt a day of honor for American Indians. Red Fox’s action was successful. On December 14, 1915, he met with a group of state governors in Washington, and twenty-four states agreed to observe Native American Day. The American Indian Association sanctioned the plan a year later at their meeting in Lawrence, Kansas. It was decided to celebrate this day every fourth Friday of September.

From the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus to the present day, the history of the Native Americans is a tragic saga of the people becoming extinct. Indians were ruthlessly sabred by the American cavalry. A bottle of alcohol, the “fire water,” caused at least as much devastation as a sword blade, if not more. New masters of America deliberately pressed alcohol upon the natives, undermining their will and their gene pool. The alcohol genocide is unique in human history.

Millions of Indians fell victim to sword and liquor genocide, and those who survived became pariahs in their own country, huddled into reservations which made a Negro ghetto look almost like a paradise.

According to the 2008 census, the U.S. Native American population was 4.9 million, or 1.6 percent of the total population. Just over half of Native Americans have a roof over their heads. Twenty-four percent of the total American Indian population are living below the poverty line, and that’s only the officially registered ones. More than a third of Native Americans do not have health insurance. No other ethnic or racial segment of the U.S. population has such a high level of unemployment.

That was, in general, the situation of American Indians when Barack Obama came to the White House. On 5 November last year, Obama hosted the first ever White House Tribal Nations Conference, the largest and most widely attended gathering of tribal leaders in the history of the U.S. Obama, who was named a Chief of Indians on the eve of the conference, joked that he became the first American Indian president. But his speech was sad rather than cheery. He basically repented sins and crimes committed by America on its native inhabitants. “We know the history that we share,” Obama said. “It’s a history marked by violence and disease and deprivation. Treaties were violated. Promises were broken. You were told your lands, your religion, your cultures, your languages were not yours to keep. And that’s a history that we’ve got to acknowledge if we are to move forward.”

Then the President expounded on a number of measures he intended to take to improve the Indians’ situation. But after talking about that he added, “I know that you may be skeptical that this time will be any different. You have every right to be and nobody would have blamed you…”

There was a lot of talk in the press that casinos opening on Indian reservations are supporting their economies. In reality the profit goes to just a few tribal chiefs who are in collusion with the big gambling business. On the other hand casinos, like liquor, corrupt the reservations’ populations. Crime rate in reservations is 20 percent higher than in the rest of the country. One in three Native American women are rape victims.

President Obama reassured Native Americans, “I’m on your side. I understand what it means to be an outsider. I know what it means to feel ignored and forgotten.” He swore not to forget about American Indians, and they named him “The one who cares.” *

On 19 December last year, President Obama signed the so-called “Native American Apology Resolution.” As if in mockery, that resolution passed as part of an appropriations spending bill for… the Pentagon. The idea of such a resolution originated in Congress. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas originally introduced the measure intending “to officially apologize for the past ill-conceived policies by the U.S. government toward the Native peoples of this land and re-affirm our commitment toward healing our nation’s wounds and working toward establishing better relationships rooted in reconciliation.”

The version signed by Obama was significantly watered down, apologizing not from the U.S. government, but rather from abstract “people of the United States,” and for crimes committed by “citizens of the United States” rather than by the system and the authorities. The resolution doesn’t mention the demands of the Indians. Besides, there was no press release issued by the White House after Obama signed the resolution. Moreover, some say that what the president signed was the Pentagon appropriations bill, not specifically the apology resolution.

So it’s not even the canonical “sign and forget”! Native American journalist Rob Capriccioso says, “You might think that something would be announced, that something would be said about it. But nothing happened. People haven’t heard about it.” **

People haven’t heard, and more importantly, they don’t see any changes.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: quote could not be verified

** EDITOR’S NOTE: Not an exact quote. This was actually said by Robert T. Coulter, and his exact words were: “You might think that something would be announced, that something would be said about it. After all, they’re apologizing to Native Americans, and yet, I don’t know that people have really heard about it.”