Posted on 11/14/2011 5:39:10 PM PST by SJackson
Liberals want everyone to think that Indians hate America. They’ve well-trained a number of professional Indian protesters, and together with America’s subversive media and universities, there is definitely a distinct impression that American Indians have a hostile disposition toward the United States, or at the least, Indians have a permanent resentment toward the country. The Indian drum supposedly beats out an everlasting drone of discontent.
It is a hard image to break. Even though it is not true that Indians hate America, it is true that liberals have succeeded in influencing many Indians through offering them positions on NGOs and other charitable 501c3 groups, and endless exposure in the media if they will protest America. There are in fact many uninformed Indians who feel it authenticates their Indianness to protest and hate America. Especially breeds (like Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Leonard Peltiere and the Bellecourt brothers) and no bloods (like Ward Churchill) all have made extensive careers out of condemning the United States. They want to keep the Indian wars going. They want Indian young people to grow up warped, stilted, and poisoned by hating of their host country. The damage these professional, “liberal” Indians have done is immeasurable, and far more than any inch of good resulting from their highly publicized efforts in animosity.
But ask U.S. Army Major Rhonda Williams (1-79th FA battalion executive officer). She has a different story. She told that story last night (Novemember 12, 2011) at the Comanche Indian Veterans Association’s 35th Annual Veterans Day Celebration. She had many vitally interesting things to say as she spoke to the full house of veterans and families. In the Comanche Community Center, Apache, Oklahoma, Major Williams related how the cooperating officers in Iraq, when facing the fact they had to relate to a woman in uniform, a woman officer of the United States Army, they diverted their anxiety with inquiries into her personal ethnic identity. She continually told them she was “American,” “from the United States,” and that she was “Native American.” They didn’t seem to understand, for they all kept pressing. Dark-eyed and dark-haired, and with less than pearly white skin, Major Williams’ appearance made them compulsively curious. Finally, she named the Indian blood in her–by tribe. For this, the Iraqi officers were profoundly impressed, and elated. She mentioned being Comanche, and part Apache. “Geronimo!” they all shouted.
But they had the basic reaction most Third World people have, and all liberals as well: What is an American Indian doing fighting for the nation that destroyed Indians? They reacted very much like my dear Jewish friend Joanna, who rebuked my patriotic position with the analogy that an Indian patriot is like a Jew willing to forget the Holocaust.
No, I’m not willing to forget history. I’m simply not willing to be its slave. I don’t mean to say that Jews are, or that Indians are comparable to Jews in the matter of persecution. I’m saying that an American Indian patriot, who loves America, has been brave enough to re-assumed the original role Indians played in American history–host of the poor lost white people. Indeed those people grew to be mighty, but, the history that cannot change, and which should be remembered, is that the American Indian shaped that young white race here on this continent. America bears our image, forever. It is not an irony that the white man’s money still bears our image. In fighting for America, we fight for ourselves.
Major Williams has seen a great deal of war in the Middle East since she enlisted in 1993. She comes from a family of veterans, and she has two sons in the service today as well. I don’t see how it could be argued that she doesn’t love America, or that her family is not typical.
Again I have to address the profound offense of a work like Al Carroll’s Medicine Bags and Dog Tags (2008), which is devoted to creating the idea that American Indians do not love America, despite the predominant participation in the American armed forces. Writing specifically of the war in Iraq, he says, “Reports of Native support for the war itself for the reasons of the first President Bush stated were rare, or at least hard to find. Support for the troops is an entirely separate matter” (p.176). Carroll incorporates every possible liberal, anti-war, anti-American position possibly associated with American Indian thought. What he isn’t able to do is demonstrate solid statistics about Indian opinion. Quotes supporting his thesis come only from the professional protester Indians and executive beneficiaries of Indian NGOs. Very much of the time, Carroll cites references without sufficient identification of the sources, or without references at all.
He quotes (without reference) one John Brown, a former member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service (but apparently uninfluential and inconspicuous member), who was vehemently against the second Iraq war, as one who saw the war as similar to to the American Indians wars in their immoral and unjust nature. Carroll quotes other white liberals like Robert Kaplan and Max Boot (Wall Street Journal) without dates or references or titles of works. The text is like an unresearched opinion display. Carroll creates a subtitle in this same section, regarding the American military, with quotes: “The Same Forces That Went against Us as a People.” This “quotation” is not identified in any way that I can ascertain.
Carroll then cites eight points (a page and a half, pp. 198, 199) which he says are Brown’s points, yet Carroll does not give any source. Carroll’s text is simply untrustworthy. It may have great potential as a liberal, left-wing resource for those interested in using the Indian to support left wing, anti-American causes, but, in its present form, Carroll’s text is simply not a scholarly work, and scarcely has the appearance of such. Little else can be said in the way of assessment. Not that accuracy or reliability is a requirement for leftist sources, but, we might expect a little more from a notable university press.
As I stated elsewhere, many of his quotes are personal notes from private conversations with individual people he identifies as Indian. This may represent a fine opinion gathering effort, but it does not comprise scholarship, or fact. I find the work completely disappointing in this respect.
My personal experience with American Indian veterans, including the many in my own family, simply and utterly contradicts the notion that Indians are not patriotic. Where as the liberal, Democrat advocate would have Indians to be some animalistic killers, getting high on the terrors of war, with no other purpose than the thrill of the kill, with no ability to comprehend any higher purpose for war, the conservative Republican Indian sees America as something worth fighting for. He appreciates world history, the reality of our present circumstances, and he understands that present state as Indians in America today is the best opportunity we have. That is the realistic, positive approach to life. I believe most Indians have this, and whatever instincts or intuitions that drive an Indian to enlist, the blood he finally spills is for America, and the 235-year-old government that created the United States of America.
That Indians employ our warrior traditions in behalf of America, and the land of America, is not to be degraded into a mindless impulse. That our warrior ways are employed in the service of the country does not require that we otherwise hate America! This is truly a cruel understanding of Indians. I believe it is the liberal teaching, and, as usual, it is denigrating, racist, and in this Indian case, virtually Satanic. It basically denies any semblance national honor to America Indians, and denies any mind or spirit that would comprehend reality objectively. It assigns Indians to the role of the dumb beast of burden.
Fortunately Al Carroll’s book is not known. (Amazon.com took it off their American book list when I filed suit.) The attention I have called to it hear on BadEagle.com is probably the most it has ever and will ever receive. (See Comment No.5, below.) That a university press would advocate such a position, attempting to divorce Indian warrior traditions from any thought that Indians might actually love America, and be willing to fight for it, simply reaffirms the fact that the university is a bastion of liberalism, and promotes it at every opportunity.
In fairness, Carroll does cite a “political left” source now and then, like Jim Lobe, a less than well-known writer, and takes him to task for using “pejorative images” in describing Americas enemies in the Middle East wars as Indians. But, this hardly qualifies for balance, and in this case, only an obscure internet article, and Carroll clearly espouses the left position toward America, and simply tries to use the Indian to support that position. The University of Nebraska published Carroll’s text, apparently without peer review, and the reasons are obvious. What is also obvious is the unreliability of the University of Nebraska Press.
Native Americans are as diverse politically as the rest of society. I’m Potawatomi yet it has nothing do to with my political thought. Only liberals think of race or heritage as a definition of belief.
Thanks for posting. I hadn’t seen anything by Bad Eagle for awhile.
Note that link should be titled “BadEagle” not “BaldEagle”
Have not heard from David Yeagley in several years and this is good. A viewpoint from an American Indian (I’m part Ocmulgee myself) that is not hidebound AIM bury-my-heart-at-Wounded-Knee is also good.
IIRC it was Mr. Yeagley who observed that the average Indian is more redneck than redskin as he places high value on his guns, his pickup truck, and his freedoms.
Doesn’t everybody?
I meant to say that to hear from David Yeagley after a long absence is good and I wish he had been publishing all along during that absence. I’m glad that he’s back.
Sorry for any misunderstanding. I’m a Yeagley fan.
You mead feather indians or red dot indians?
I have no basis to believe that Indians hate America. I have always thought they love the land, though they may have some issues over ownership.
Not likely—but too bad—Western Civilization was just too much for the less advanced cultures.
World History is conquest and the Indians we conquered were there because they also conquered someone else there before them.You lose you get stronger and you come back ON YOUR OWN.
Only fairly recently have the self-hating guilt-gulible bleeding heart liberals started empowering the losers of the world. You lose,you whine,you get some stupid Hippy white man to give you stuff you don't deserve taken from people who worked for it and then you terrorize those better than you with political correctness.
I had the honor to serve with several of them and they were among the finest, fiercest, and most loyal Americans I’ve ever met. They don’t hate America, they are America.
I have no basis to believe that Indians hate America. I have always thought they love the land, though they may have some issues over ownership.
Oops, there’s a reason I usually copy and paste.
I live about 30 miles from the Ocmulgee River. My great, great, great, great (and so on) grandmother was a Cherokee (or so they say). Down here, most tribes were Creek.
I have fished on your tribe's river (never caught anything...but the beer was good).
BTW, there are some beautiful fresh water springs running into the Ocmulgee down South. Many tribes lived near the springs about 15,000 years ago.
Research "The Rocks" (north of Broxton, GA).
Opechancanough, Chief of the Powhatan, hated America sure enough. He killed a full one quarter of the entire population. Don’t know what his descendants think.
Just what I was thinking. They warred among themselves for thousands of years, winning and losing. When the white man moved into their territory we overwhelmed them. Of course they didn't like it but what goes round comes round.
I haven’t either. Checked his site from an old bookmark, he’s there and writing.
If you go to a real pow-wow in Indian Country, you will see the procession led in by Indian Veterans proudly carrying the American Flag.
I see ya got it changed. I like Bad Eagle
I just heard over the weekend from a friend of mine that Indians who have a casino in their neighborhood and are receiving $35,000 to $40,000 a month! I would hope to shout that they hate America and Americans.
400 years ago, pre America, but sure, as did many over the years. The author is speaking of contemporary Indians, I’d gladly extend it to the last century or so. Nearly 20,000 served in the “Great” War, pre citizenship, and only a few decades after the Indian Wars ended.
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