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Today's
Stories
October
14, 2003
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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October
14, 2003
The Past & Human
Dignity
What
the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About Whites
By
ROBERT JENSEN
(A talk by Robert Jensen at the University
of North Dakota on October 10, 2003, sponsored by BRIDGES,
a student group that works to remove the university's "Fighting
Sioux" nickname and logo.)
Appeals to the dominant white society to abolish
the "Fighting Sioux" nickname and logo typically are
framed in terms of respect for the dignity and humanity of indigenous
people. That is the appropriate way to address the question,
but it has failed -- at least in North Dakota -- to persuade
most white folks. So, today I want to pursue another argument.
I want to suggest to my fellow non-Indian
North Dakotans -- those of us whose ancestors came from some
other continent, primarily those of us who are white and of European
descent -- that we should support the campaign to change the
University of North Dakota name and logo not just because it
is offensive, exploitative, and racist (it is all of those things)
but also for our own sake. Let us do it for our own dignity.
Let us join this struggle so that we can lay honest claim to
our own humanity.
I say this because I believe that we
give up our dignity when we evade the truth, and we surrender
our humanity when we hold onto illegitimate power over others.
And I want to argue that is what the nickname controversy is
really about -- white America refusing to come to terms with
the truth about the invasion and conquest of North America, and
refusing to acknowledge the fundamental illegitimacy of its power
over indigenous people as a result of that conquest. It is about
denial of the realities of the past and the present. It is, to
follow the analysis of Ward Churchill, about holocaust denial
and the consequences of that denial. [See Ward Churchill, A Little
Matter of Genocide (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997).]
The past matters
Let's start with the past, which people
often want to avoid. It's history, they say. Get over it -- don't
get stuck in the past. But this advice to forget history is selective;
many of the same folks who tell indigenous people not to get
stuck in the past are also demanding that schoolchildren get
more instruction in the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers.
It is commonly asserted, and undoubtedly true, that Americans
don't know enough about their own history (or that of the world).
The question isn't whether we should pay more attention to history.
The relevant questions are: Who gets to write history? From whose
point of view is history written? Which historical realities
are emphasized and which are ignored? So, let us not take the
seemingly easy -- but intellectually and morally lazy -- path
of selectively contending that "history doesn't matter."
Everyone knows it matters.
We can begin this historical journey
in 1492, with the beginning on the European conquest of the New
World. Estimates of the pre-contact indigenous population vary,
but at the time there were approximately 15 million people living
north of the Rio Grande, the majority in what is now the United
States and perhaps 2 million in Canada. By the 1900 census, there
were 237,000 Indians in the United States. That works out to
an extermination rate of 97 to 99 percent. That means the Europeans
who came to the continent killed almost all the Indians. It is
the only recorded genocide in history that was almost successful.
The Europeans who invaded North America, followed by their descendants
who colonized the entire continent, eliminated almost the entire
indigenous population, and in the process claimed almost the
entire land base of those peoples.
But were those indigenous peoples really
people in the eyes of the invaders? Were they full human beings?
Some Europeans were not so sure. In the Declaration of Independence,
one of our founding documents of freedom, Indians are referred
to as the "merciless Indian Savages." Theodore Roosevelt,
whose name can be found on a national park in this state, defended
the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable
process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized
races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by
their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes
where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway." [Theodore
Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (New York: Macmillan, 1901).]
Among Jefferson's "savages"
and Roosevelt's "barbarians" were the fighting Sioux
-- the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota, the people who lived in what
we now call North Dakota. They fought the Europeans, and they
eventually lost. They lost, for example, in the Wounded Knee
massacre at the end of the 19th century, when U.S. soldiers opened
fire on several hundred unarmed Lakota, killing most of them,
mostly women, children and elderly. That massacre came at the
end of what are commonly called the Indian Wars, an ambiguous
term for the conflicts between Europeans and indigenous people
in North America that helps obfuscate historical reality. Were
these wars waged by Indians, or against Indians? Instead of the
Indian Wars, we could be more precise and call them the "European/American
wars to exterminate Indians." We could call them part of
the holocaust.
But wait, people will say, this ignores
the fact that most of the indigenous people died as a result
of disease. Today it is no longer considered polite to glorify
the murder of Indians and the taking of their land; the preferred
route to avoid confronting the holocaust is the disease dodge.
But Churchill argues persuasively that the fact that a large
number of indigenous people died of disease doesn't absolve white
America. Sometimes those diseases were spread intentionally,
and even when that wasn't the case the white invaders did nothing
to curtail contact with Indians to limit the destruction. Some
saw the large-scale death of indigenous people as evidence of
the righteousness of their mission; God was clearing the land
so that civilized whites could take their rightful place upon
it. Whether the Indians died in war or from disease, starvation,
and exposure, white society remained culpable.
That's history. It's not the history
I was taught growing up in Fargo, North Dakota. But it is a real
part of real history. It is every bit as real as the stories
of courageous Norwegian farmers who homesteaded through brutal
winters. For too long we have tried to keep those two histories
separate. It is time to join them, to see that the homesteads
were made possible by the holocaust.
Let me be clear: I am not asking anyone
who is white to feel guilty about this. I do not feel guilty
about this. I feel incredibly pained and saddened by it, just
as I feel pained and saddened by other acts of brutality that
litter human history. But I cannot take on guilt for events that
happened before I was born. Feeling guilt for things outside
my control would be illogical.
However I can -- and should -- feel guilty
about things I have done wrong in my life, over which I do have
control. I should feel guilty not simply so that I feel bad,
but so that change is possible. Guilt is healthy when it leads
to self-critique, to moral reflection, to a commitment to not
repeating mistakes. We can feel that guilt both individually
and collectively. We can see what we have done wrong or failed
to do right, both by ourselves and with others. That brings us
to the present.
The American holocaust perpetrated by
Europeans and their descendants against indigenous people cannot
be undone. But we can in the present work to change the consequences
of that holocaust. One easy place to start could be eliminating
a nickname and logo to which a significant number of Indians
object. All that white people would have to do is accept that
simple fact, and change the name and logo. It would cost no one
anything, beyond the trivial expense of changing the design on
some stationary, uniforms, and university trinkets.
But wait, many white people say, isn't
systemic poverty on reservations more important than a logo?
Of course it is. Are there more pressing problems for Indians
than the Fighting Sioux design? Sure. But there is nothing to
stop anyone from going forward to address other problems and,
at the same time, taking the simple step of changing the nickname
and logo. It's not an either/or choice.
So, why do so many people resist that
simple change so fiercely? Individuals will have different reasons,
of course; I cannot pretend to know what motivates everyone.
Many people say it is out of a respect for tradition. But I don't
think that's really what is going on. I would like to offer an
alternative explanation for why white people will not take such
a simple and easy step.
Power relations in
the present
Let me digress a moment for a story about
another question of language that might be helpful. In the 1980s
I worked at St. John's University, just down the highway in Minnesota.
St. John's is a men's college run by a monastery that had a cooperative
relationship with the College of St. Benedict, a nearby women's
college run by a convent. As time went on, the level of cooperation
between the schools increased, including more joint publications.
At one point in the process, staff members at St. Benedict's
suggested that in those joint publications we use the term "first-year
student" instead of "freshman," for the obvious
reason that none of the students at St. Ben's was a "man,"
fresh or otherwise. It struck me as a reasonable request, a simple
thing to do. They weren't asking that we go back and reprint
every brochure we had in stock, just that in the future we use
the more accurate and less sexist term. I assumed this would
not be a problem. But it was a problem for a number of men at
St. John's. What a bizarre suggestion, they said. Everyone knows
freshman is an inclusive term that means first-year students,
male and female. How could anyone bring up such a silly point?
I pointed out that to change the term was cost-free; all we had
to do with switch one term for another. No, they said -- there's
a tradition at stake, and besides, "first-year student"
is clumsy. "But do we really care?" I asked. Yes, many
of them did care, quite passionately.
Looking back, I don't think it was a
question of tradition or the aesthetics of the terms. It was
about power. In the Catholic Church, girls don't tell boys what
to do. In the long history of those two colleges, the girls didn't
tell the boys what to do. The real issue was simply power. Could
the women tell the men what to do? Would the men accept that?
Of course one small request about one term in a brochure was
hardly a revolutionary change in the gender practices of Catholicism,
the religious orders that operated the colleges, or those institutions.
But that wasn't the point. The members of the dominant group
were used to being in charge by virtue of who they were, and
they were not interested in changing the underlying power dynamics.
Eventually the boys gave up fighting
that one, and first-year students at the campuses are referred
to today as first-year students. And the women's college over
time has continued to challenge the male-dominance of the partnership.
And everyone is better off as a result, including the boys at
St. John's.
Likewise, I think a similar power dynamic
is at the core of white resistance to the simple act of dropping
nicknames such as Fighting Sioux: Indians don't get to tell white
people what to do. Why not? Polite white people won't say it
in public, but this is what I think many white folks think: "Whites
won and Indians lost. It's our country now. Maybe the way we
took it was wrong, but we took it. We are stronger than you.
That's why we won. That's why you lost. So, get used to it. You
don't get to tell us what to do." I think for white people
to acknowledge that we don't have the right to use the name and
logo would be to open a door that seems dangerous.
Why should Indians have the right to
make the decision over how their name and image are used? Because
in the absence of a compelling reason to override that right,
a person or group of people should have control over their name
and image. That's part of what it means to be a person with full
humanity. And in this case, the argument for white people giving
Indians that power is intensified by the magnitude of the evil
perpetrated by whites on Indians.
To acknowledge all that is to acknowledge
that the American nation is based on genocide, on a crime against
humanity. The land of the free and the home of the brave, the
nation that was born as the vehicle for a new freedom, rests
on the denial not only of freedom, but of life itself, to a whole
group of people -- for the crime of getting in the way of what
the European invaders wanted for themselves, the land and its
resources.
To acknowledge all that is to acknowledge
not only that the Fighting Sioux nickname is an obscenity but
an artifact of our own barbarism. If Germany had won World War
II, it would be equivalent of contemporary Germans naming a university
team the Jews and using a hook-nosed caricature. I do not mean
that hyperbolically. In heated debates, people often compare
opponents to Nazis as an insult. This isn't an insult. It's an
accurate comparison. The ideology of racial supremacy underneath
the genocide of indigenous people here was not so different from
Nazi ideology. Inferior people had to give way so that superior
people could make use of land, just as Teddy Roosevelt said.
The dominant group wanted something. The subordinated group was
in the way. The easiest way to justify that is to define away
the humanity of the subordinated group, so a barbaric policy
can be seen as natural and inevitable.
To take that simple step -- to accord
to Indians the basic dignity to control how they are named and
represented -- is to step onto a road that leads to a confrontation
with the mythology of the United States. That can be painful,
but not just because of what it forces us to face in the past.
The larger problem with stepping onto that path is that it doesn't
stop in the past. It leads to something more difficult -- the
confrontation with the enduring consequences of the genocide.
To go down this path forces us to confront the fact that the
poverty rate for American Indians (25.9 percent) is more than
double the overall rate (11.3 percent) and nearly four times
as high as the rate for white Americans (7.5 percent).
Why is that the case? Why, a century
after the official end of the Indian wars, are Indians the poorest
racial/ethnic group in the United States? Why is Shannon Country,
South Dakota, home to the Pine Ridge Reservation, consistently
among the poorest counties in the United States, with a 52.3
percent poverty rate? What does the massacre at Wounded Knee
have to do with the living conditions today of the people on
the reservation that includes Wounded Knee?
The past is past, but maybe some of that
past also is present. Is white America afraid of looking too
much at the past, lest we have to look at the present? Are we
afraid of what we might see? What me might learn -- about ourselves?
Tradition or justice?
Let me turn to the possible challenges
to this position.
Can tradition, the common argument for
keeping the Fighting Sioux, trump other considerations? Indeed,
tradition makes some people (mostly white) feel good. Does that
value to some outweigh the injury to others? Many traditions
have fallen by the wayside over time when it became clear that
the tradition imposed a cost on some other person or group. It
used to be a tradition in some regions for white people to call
adult African-American males "boy." No big deal. Just
a name. But a name which carried a message about power and dominance.
Supporters of the Fighting Sioux might
offer a counterargument: In that example all (or almost all)
adult African-American males objected to the use of the term,
because it was so obviously a way to denigrate them. But not
all Indians object to Fighting Sioux, and there is an argument
that such nicknames are meant to honor Indians. So, it is argued,
we shouldn't get rid of the nickname.
I do not know of reliable polling data
that would tell us how the "average" Indian feels about
the name. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the
vocal opponents of such nicknames and logos are a substantial
percentage, but not a majority, of Indians. Let's also assume
that the most Indians do not have strong feelings, and that a
minority genuinely support such nicknames. Can white people simply
say, "Well, see, Indians can't decide. So, we'll leave things
as they are."
I think that is an attempt to avoid a
simple choice. Indians are no more monolithic than any other
group; there's no reason to think there would be absolute uniformity
of opinion. However, over time many Indians from a number of
different backgrounds have developed a clear critique of the
use of Indian nicknames and logos, and they have put forward
that critique with clarity, honesty, and passion. I find the
argument compelling, but even if one doesn't agree, one has to
at least acknowledge it is a rational argument and that it is
easy to understand why people hold the position. In the absence
of a universal demand from indigenous people, but in the presence
of a strong argument that many indigenous people support, white
people cannot dismiss the issue. It seems to me there are only
two possibilities.
The first would be for the State Board
of Higher Education and the university to acknowledge the longstanding
opposition to the team name and change it. The second would be
to let the people affected by this -- the Indian population of
the state and/or the university -- decide the question. In other
words, the only dignified and humane positions for white people
are to either accept the judgment already rendered by Indians,
or, if one believes that judgment is not clear, allow Indians
to go forward and make that judgment (without external pressure,
such as threats to withdraw funding for Indian programs or students
if the decision is to eliminate the name and logo).
I am calling for white people to acknowledge
that we have no right to choose how Indians are named and represented.
We have no standing to speak on the question. Our place is to
shut up and do what we are told. Let me say that again, for emphasis:
We white folks should shut up and do what Indians tell us. Let's
try it, first, on this simple issue. We might find it is something
we should do on a number of other issues.
And if we do that, individually and collectively
we will take a step toward claiming our own dignity and humanity.
The way in which white America refuses to come to terms with
its history and the contemporary consequences of that history
has material and psychological consequences for Indians (as well
as many other groups). But in a very real sense, we cannot steal
the dignity and humanity of indigenous people. We can steal their
resources, disrespect them, insult them, ignore them, and continue
to repress their legitimate aspirations. We can try to distort
their own sense of themselves, but in the end we can't take their
humanity from them.
The only dignity and humanity that is
truly diminished by the Fighting Sioux is that of white America.
Robert Jensen,
a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
was born and raised in North Dakota. He is the author of "Citizens
of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights,
2004) and "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the
Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2001). He can be reached
at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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