I opened my local paper today, the Ottawa Herald and lo and behold, this is on the second page. The cultures that I hold dear, that have embraced me, showed me a pathway to a life worth living and brought my soul to life are slowly and methodically going away. This is why I fight for progressive ideals, ideas and reforms. If it can happen to my culture, please don’t be too surprised when it begins to happen to yours, because of the incessant and rampant racism and sexism that permeates our society and our world. I cried and prayed to Great Spirit that the injustices I see in life will stop, that those in power will open their hearts and minds to the Ideal, that we all must live on this planet, we must cherish and honor our Mother Earth, for without her, there will be no life worth living.
Tom Beaver
Community viewpointNinety-two year old Robert H. Whitebird died Friday May 6, 2005 at a nursing home in Oklahoma. He was born on January 17, 1913, in Lincolnville Community in Oklahoma.
When I read the news, it came as a blow. It was like something or someone had taken my breath away.. I didn’t even know the man who died and yet I cried. I cried not only for his death but also for what his death means to Indians everywhere in the world.
Robert H. Whitebird was the last full blood Quapaw man in the universe.
The passing of Robert Whitebird means there will never be a full blood Quapaw man. I hope and I pray that I am wrong in what I say next. I believe the Quapaw people are on the road to extinction.
At one time, the Quapaw had an estimated population of several thousands. In the !600s small pox reduced that number down to about 700 people. The `down stream people,’ as they were known, were living in Arkansas at that time. Bit in the intervening centuries the Quapaw repopulated themselves.
The Census Bureau tells me the 2000 census showed only 914 Quapaw people. The median age is 31.6 years. Of the 914, 106 are under the age of 5 years; 184 Quapaw are in the largest age group, 25 to 34 years. The number of Quapaw older than 55 is 121. The hope and dreams of the Europeans are seemingly and finally coming true. The near extinction of a people has come during my lifetime and yours. It just doesn’t fell right. We are losing an entire culture, language, and arts of the Quapaw people. I never wanted to see this happen. The destruction of a group of people only happens in books and on television. Not in real life and certainly not in the 21st century. But I am sadly wrong.
We al remember the German attempt to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. The Germans failed. But here in the United States we just don’t seem to care if an entire tribe of Indian people are on the road to extinction. We are not the only country where entire populations of being killed. It happens all over the world. Americans are oblivious to the extinction of whole races and tribes of people.
An entire group of people can be wiped out quickly. It only takes government action or inaction along with a lack of concern about anyone except yourself. The questions we have to answer as a civilized society are: How do we prevent this from happening to another group of Indian people? Is it already to late for the Quapaw to be saved? Who is responsible for the extinction of the Quapaw?
In the distant future, this may mean there will be no more Quapaw people. However, the remaining Quapaw people will remain strong and vibrant. The Quapaw government will remain strong and will continue for years.
Ther may well be Quapaw tribal members, but not like Robert Whitebird, a full blood. Indian people, like the recently re-discovered ivory-billed woodpecker, are resilient. The ivory-billed woodpecker was thought to be extinct, but it was only hiding. It was recently rediscovered in eastern Arkansas. Arkansas was once home for the Quapaw people. I am sure ther are full-blood Quapaw members out and about possibly in Arkansas, but just refusing to let anyone know of their existence. It is far safer that way.Tom Beaver is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He writes about issues facing Kansas.
Robert H. Whitebird was the last full blood Quapaw man in the universe.
My heart stopped for an instant when I read that. The tragedies hidden in that simple sentence are too enormous to measure. I’m so sorry. Words fail. This is so important to read.
Thing is, we are not… and as far as I can tell, have never been… a ‘civilized society’. Which is why this and other terrible things can occur with barely a blip on the screen of our daily lives.
People are slowly making their way to the center of their lives, some of them attempting to connect with old cultures which have been systematically stamped out (or at least the attempt made), like you have done, but I think it is too few, too little, too late.
I hope for the best for the Quapaw people, thanks for bringing the story.
As long as their are story tellers around the campfires
As long as their are drawings on the walls of stone,
As long as the sun lights the day,
As long as the moon lights the night,
The Human Beings will remember, and the Great Spirit never forgets ; )
There you are, I have been asking about you, where have you been lately. We have missed you here.
I want to add something to my comment below and that is it the blood or the spirit that’s important here. That was for Ghostdancer….I think you implied that in you comment Infidel, did you not.
without the spirit, there is no blood ; )
been really busy here on the property, and with my work, just does’nt seem to be enough hours in the day, but it’s coming along beautifully, and took some time this evening with the pup, the smoker, and now some online time ; )
thanks for asking, I was homesick, and had to stop by for some “soul food” ; )
Is there any reason that a native american culture should stay full blooded as referenced above. I am bringing this up because I am a full blooded German as it were, having German strain from both sides of my family, my mother and father’s were in fact related 7 generations back and my children are not full blooded as I am and their childen more so.
So the thing is to stay full blooded would mean to not ever marry outside of the tribe would it not. Is that the desire here to retain full blooded status in any culture.
I think in the passing of years and with the intermingling of the different peoples of the world, there will some day be only one culture on this earth and that will be the culture of mankind.
I am just putting this out to you Ghostdancer to see your thoughts.
I do fully understand the sadness of this for your culture, but do we not want to promote the culture of the Great Spirit itself; does not Great Spirit love man in general?
Cannot the spirit of the native culture be kept alive by those who are half blooded or even non blooded at all. I for one would like to be part of the culture of The Great Spirit.
I am a seeker on this one Ghostdancer and look forward to your reply.
it is all about the spirit, within each of us
My Quawpaw friend and her family enjoy — and are enriched by — keeping their culture alive. Many, many work at this, not only Quapaws.
We try to keep types of birds from being extinct. What about types of people? They have been maltreated to death. Our country has done this.
I am very sorry to hear of this loss.
I am just as saddened by the mistreatment as you are, my point was really on the question of blood. Is it possible to keep a blood line going ad infinitum, and I am not talking culture I am talking blood as you seem to be. It would seem to preclude by its very definition any intermarrying between the races/culture for lack of better words. Is that really possible to keep any race pure in blood.
I don’t think it is an external issue, like how would you fix this. How would you keep blood lines pure, prevent them from amrrying outside their race.
Time was when that was true, white could not marry black, white could not marry natives, whites could not marry asian. That was in my lifetime that these prohibitions were overcome. Many people were happy to see those days end who fell in love and wanted to marry inter racially..
Are any blacks in this country pure blood, for example unless they have arrived recently from Africa. Oh there may be a few I would say, but overall there is a great intermarrying going on in all cultures it seems to me and then there was slavery which greatly reduced the pure bloods as it were.
And then my question remains, is it necessary to have the full blood to keep the culture.
As I said I am a seeker on this issue.
Diane, I’m not ghostdancer (obviously) but I think you are talking about a number of different things here.
The spritual aspect is one thing, and one I don’t know much about, but I believe the cultural aspects of that as well as the lives and so on can be passed from person to person.
As for the pure blood thing… looking at it from the point of view of intermarrying and the mixture of various cultures and so on is one thing, especially if the original line is a healthy one. But when you’ve had centuries of systematic destruction of a group of people, the one thing many will attempt to hang on to is the bloodline itself, if only to replicate.
A good many black people in the US are of “mixed” blood, as you said, but that wasn’t through intermarrying and love, for the most part… it was through rape and oppression and so on. Plus a complete loss of history, and identity.
With the Native Americans, this has occurred as well, although many were able to hold on to or at least return to their culture, history and identity, even though the attempt was made to brutally destroy all that. But when you lose a people to genocide, there is a vastly different feeling than when you intermarry willingly with a different culture/group of people.
I think this is why the emphasis is put on the pure blood, not because of the purity of the blood itself, because it symbolizes, in a way, that with the loss of the last person known to be of the blood, the achievement of the original goal of disappearing a people.
(of course, others may have a completely different view)
Thank you for your response. In the case of black I fully understand that the interbreeding with white was due to slavery and all ramification thereof as I said above, but there has been significant intermarrying in recent years.
I also realize it is very personal to the native culture, but would it have been different if America had evolved in another way. What if whites and indians had lived in peace, side by side, for these many centuries and there was the intermarrying always permitted, how many centuries would it then take for there to be no full blooded natives?
Interesting discussion, I wish Ghost was here to weigh in on this.
Symbolism then would seem to be at the heart of this, from what you are saying.
To me it’s kind of like putting native Americans in another catogory other that human beings. Should we as well save the pure blooded white race from its sure extinction. Which is predicted for the future.
I am pondering this as it is a new train of thought brought on by this diary.
Well, so far no one is trying to kill them all. If someone was, then no doubt the same things would apply.
Not that some people of all colors wouldn’t prefer to keep the lines “pure” and all that, but for the most part the white cultures have not been on the receiving end of people attempting to wipe them out completely (except for Jewish people, of course).
There is just a different dynamic when the possible extinction comes from genocidal type events than when it’s an intermarrying thing. I wouldn’t say it’s putting Native Americans in a separate category or anything, though. Symbolism, identity and so on would be part of what is at the heart of this, I would think.
But hopefully ghostdancer will weigh in tomorrow and he can add further (and probably much better) thoughts.
to really weigh in on this topic because I have a totally or at least very different viewpoint. I am an absolute mongrel in my blood line, got some of all of it.
Purity of the Races can be discussed in some very disturbing ways and for some very unsettling reasons. We remember Mr Hitler and his group.
I am not a member of the Quawpaw tribe neither by blood nor by association. There is no possible way I can understand and feel what this means to this people. I have enormous compassion for even the thought of this or any tribe disappearing. What we have wrought upon the native peoples of this land is no better than what Hitler did. No one ever talks much about the American Holocost. I think we need to and I don’t know if there is enough time in all the universe to say enough mia culpa’s to begin to heal it.
From there we can if we choose go to an “intellectual” discussion of culture/spirit vs bloodline. But unless we are members of those tribes, I am not sure those of us who are German-American or those of us who are Mongrel-American, or whatever we are have any idea what we are talking about.
From there we can take a spiritual view, and that is the only one I feel comfortable with. Any one who believes in a creator or creator source (or however you individually describe it)from my lifetime of studies and experience, all seem to be in majority agreement that We came from the creator (the means and manner we vastly disagree upon). If the creator is the source of humankind, then the color of skin, the purity of blood, the culture, the country, all of those externalities are without any importance and without any difference. If we are all the children of One God, if we are all the Children of Mother Earth or the Great Spirit, or any other way we choose to define that creator, then how is it we could possibly be anything but purely the creation of that which created us?
To put it in the simplest of terms, we are each of us little pieces of the creator, just as your children are little pieces of you.
To lose a culture is really a very sad things for we humans, and I would like very much for it not to happen. We choose what we do about that. But we have also to think that we have lost thousands and thousand of them during the evolution of this planet.
In 10,000 years will people want to claim that they came from the original white man tribes in a strange land called Idaho? Very probably not.
In my view, in my very humble view. It is for each of us to enrich our lives with the commonality and the differences that all peoples exhibit. To honor every being and to allow that what is important in any individual or culture should be nourished, cultivated and cherished. Not pludered, destoyed, cast aside and spit upon. R>E>S>P>E>C>T> and yes, that does represent more than respect. Love is what it is all about and until we get it and if we don’t get it pretty soon, we are going to continue on being far less than the “Piece of God” that we were created to be.
(Sorry, very long winded tonight)
I honor you all and I greet you as my family, for surely we are all one in the creator.
Namaste`
Well you sure wrapped it all up in one package and tied with your usual ribbon shirl. Just a great comment and well said as always.
I have nothing to add to your comment.
I know the Great Spirit shines on you that is for sure.
Very well put, as usual. I’m a mongrel too and quite happy being so, lol.
I don’t know enough about the spiritual side of things to address that but you’ve done a wonderful job of it.
There are conversations to be had, not only about the various American Holocausts, but the present day continued fallout, and hopefully over time we can have them. I’ll look forward to it, for sure.
I’m full blood German too. Grew up there as well. In the words of Semu Huaute, a Chumash elder I know: “our skeletons are all white, and our blood is all red.”
Ghostdancer, I’m glad you posted because I want to ask you if we should take some action about this? Anyone else have ideas?
Snips from today’s
Washington Post, a story about demeaning act in a public shool. (The whole thing is well worth reading.)
Cultural Tie Gets in the Way Of Graduation
Md. Boy Wearing Bolo Is Denied a Diploma
Thomas Benya wore a braided bolo tie under his purple graduation gown this week as a subtle tribute to his Native American heritage.
Administrators at his Charles County school decided the string tie was too skinny. They denied him his diploma, at least temporarily, as punishment.
…
In March, Benya’s high school sent a letter to parents and seniors explaining that “adherence to the dress code is mandatory,” with the word mandatory in bold and underlined. For girls: white dresses or skirts with white blouses. For boys: dark dress pants with white dress shirts and ties.
That left Benya’s classmates free to wear bright orange, red and striped ties under their gowns at the ceremony Wednesday at the Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro. One senior girl wore a headscarf and long pants for religious reasons.
,,,,,
AAARGH! I don’t want my country killing off more cultures!!
common sense here and see if it flys….
In March, Benya’s high school sent a letter to parents and seniors explaining that “adherence to the dress code is mandatory,” with the word mandatory in bold and underlined. For girls: white dresses or skirts with white blouses. For boys: dark dress pants with white dress shirts and ties.
Just ties- no restriction on fat ties, skinny ties, string ties, bow ties, dark ties, solid color ties, striped ties, short ties, long ties…just ties.
What moronic idiot decided that a bolo tie, worn UNDER a graduation gown didn’t meet the damn tie test?
Hmmm, I may have just written my LTE
In France that girl with the headscarf would have been banned from school. That is because of a history of militant secularism in which religious devotion was opposed to the very existence of the French state plus a sotto voce hostility to the new Islamic immigrants. In Turkey you also get such bans. What do you do when cultures clash? I personally don’t like the French headscarf ban but I do think that it does need to be understood in its historical context
as you called bans not only headscarves but other religious symbols (such as openly displayed crucifixes) as well. I’m neither defending nor opposing the ban of wearing religious symbols, just want to clarify.
When I read the wapo article my thought wwas just this. How can these people (if they do) oppose the french ban and simultaneosly ban cultural symbols at home?
By the way the defence of the ban of that bolo tie seems to me nothing but very narrow legalese. As the article states, religious symbols have to be respected according to law but cultural symbols does not (at least there’s no explicit law about that). But what are religion if not part of culture?
Yes it does ban other symbols as well but if you followed the debate it was clearly aimed at headscarves.
The road to extinction is paved with many examples of the government’s treachery towards native peoples. This is still happening today!
Please read the latest Vote Hemp press release Lakota, Once Encouraged by U.S. Government Treaty to Grow Hemp, Fight to Do So Again. A number of documents related to the Alex White Plume case are here. The Amicus Brief is especially interesting as it tells part of the story about David Myerle and his attempts to get the Lakota to grow hemp for the U.S. Navy in the mid-1800s.
More of the Alex White Plume story can be read in The Hemp Report here and here. There are a couple of Mother Jones stories on this as well: The Drug War Comes to the Rez and Sioux vs. DEA, Round Two. There are also a number of good stories at Indian Country Today, but it looks like their search engine is not working properly right now.
Here are three stories by Hazel Bonner at the Natives Unite web site: White Plume Hemp Crop Destroyed Again, White Plume Suffers From Loss Of Hemp Crop, and White Plumes are not criminals. There is also this long piece by Paul Wess The Treaty of 1868, A Field of Industrial Hemp, And The Controlled Substances Act: A Test Case for Indian Treaty Abrogation.
It really pains me that our tax dollars are being used to persecute the people that we stole this country from.
Thank you all for your comments and analysis of this diary. I hope to make some clarifications for the many questions that were posed. I don’t get much time to write here on the weekends as I spend all the time I can with my wife and children on the weekends. My wife is shopping and my two children are napping, so here I am for now anyway.
The phase full blood has raised some questions and I would like to address this if I can in a meaningful way. As with these cultures, Vietnamese, Native American, Burmese, Indian, Thai, Chinese, African, and others to numerous to identify. The colonial powers sought to annihilate and erase the very identity of the culture. The systematic and organized manner in which the governing power pushed to remove the power of being a full blooded member of the conquered people, demonstrates that being full blood anything was diametrically opposed to the colonial’s efforts to control the population.
The genocide that was perpetuated by these colonial powers is notorious and has erased whole races of people for the earth’s population. It has diluted and minimized whole cultures to the point of extinction. The point the writer I posted, was trying to make, is that there will quite possibly never be the Quapaw nation as it once ways and that nation and its pride in the culture of life it once stood for is forever gone. Will there be Quapaws who are not full blood who will stand and know the wonder of thier history and what that means, Yes. But a once proud and glorious nation is no more.
As a mixed race native, I wondered what culture do I belong to, will I be accepted as a white or an indian or will I never really belong to any culture. I found that I belong to the human race. That important revelation has done wonders for my soul. I have been fortunate that many full bloods are now moving away from the notion of non full bloods being what is commonly referred to as Apples. Red on the outside, white on the inside. Many PowWows I have attended have as many people who are white, black and brown, as there are so called red people.
The point for me is this, if we as a society don’t do something to get the BIA and government out of the Native American’s lives, allow them to enjoy the same freedoms as other Americans in how they choose to utilize their assests and help them keep their cultures alive and vibrant, there will be no Native American Cultures to help in a very near future.
The right to have a homegenous society, in keeping culture, spirituality and societal norms as the cornerstone of that culture is fundamentally being wiped out in many areas of the world. It has been and in my estimation is currently the practice of the government of the United States and I find that deplorable and a criminal act against humanity. I look at the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as one more effort on the part of Christian Fundamentalist to destroy a culture that does not adhere to their narrow and bigoted interpretation of thier spiritual beliefs.
I choose to be a progressive because I feel their beliefs coincide with many of own and that human rights is the basis of that belief system. I have to go now, my daughter is crying for my attention and my son has been awakened by her crying. Time to spend my time showing them that love, respect, honor and dignity are the essence of being a human being. Again thank you all for you thoughtful comments on this diary.
Both my paternal grandparents were mixed race. My grandmother was white (it think French) and Chippewa (Anishnabe) and my grandfather was French, Irish, Huron, Lenape, Seneca and Abenaki. I never knew my grandfather because he died before I was born. He had a disease that could have been controlled by medication, but he couldn’t afford it so he died. I often tell people he died of poverty. My grandmother was beloved by her grandchildren because she treated each of us as if we were her favorite. She died when I was in my early twenties. I have a bench in my bedroom that sat on her front porch. It is my daily reminder of her, my wonderful grandmother who, if she had two pennies in her pocket would give you one and possibly both and who let me comb her long waist length hair after she unbraided it before bed.
My grandfather, like I said, was part Abenaki. Actually, that’s not accurate. His ancestry was of a tribe now extinct. Because of disease and violence, they merged with the Abenaki because their numbers were so decimated that maintaining a separate tribal identity wasn’t possible. Many tribal cultures have already become extinct, and not just through attrition. As elders die, language and traditions often die with them leaving survivors without the totality of their individual rich culture. It’s as if all Roman Catholics died and were not able, before death, to pass on to other generations their creation stories, ceremonies, history, and teachings particular to their faith. Sure, there are other Catholic traditions like Eastern Orthodox, just as there are other Native American tribes and their traditions, but their faith or culture is not exactly the same and thus their passing would be the loss of a unique way of life. Diversity enriches all of us and the loss of a people and their traditions impoverishes all of us. Perhaps that’s a poor analogy, but you probably know what I’m getting at.
Sure, like someone said above, the Great Spirit is still with us but native people need their cultures intact in order to be healthy and whole. Many groups are working very diligently to make sure their tribal traditions are maintained but many native elders are dying without disseminating their knowledge to their youth thus leaving a hole their culture. Also, great pressures from the dominant culture and Washington DC to assimilate and relinquish tribal land and resources is still a problem. This will probably continue.
As I said above, my grandparents were mixed race. They were basically assimilated into the dominant European American culture. But in a way, they never quite fit in. They were ashamed to embrace their native roots and didn’t function adequately in white society. They were not happy people.
I recently came across something called “generational trauma” in which descendents of people who suffered trauma like the genocide of American Indians, also suffer from the effects of the original trauma even though they themselves didn’t experience it first hand. Even generations after the initial trauma, descendents may still suffer. Some of the affects include high incidents of alcoholism, suicide, unemployment, and depression. These are quite evident in my own family.
Sorry, this is way too long. Thankyou ghostdancer for bringing this issue to our attention.
Interesting; this also is seen in the difference in attitudes toward alcohol between the Irish and Irish Americans, I think.
I’m more than half Irish (the rest, as someone said above, is just “mutt” — so many different intermarried groups and possibly including a Native foremother, since I’m a fourth “French Canadian” as it was called here — now called metis . . . a fascinating culture now seeking tribal status in Canada).
Anyway, back to the Irish Americans: I’m descended on both sides from “famine Irish,” the people made homeless and starving by deliberate British policies, then put on the “coffin ships” because of another policy that made it cheaper for landlords to pay the fare than to pay an unfair tax (it’s so complicated).
And generations later, the stories are still told, the clannish ties still strong — and the damage still seen, if nothing like what is still seen among Native Americans, despite the successes of my family.
And almost all of us have gone back to Ireland . . . and when I did, and saw the lovely land my people had to leave, I truly understood. And I cried.
Of course, being Irish, I can’t begin to comprehend how it would feel to read that the last full-blooded Gael was gone. We almost lost Gaelic by British law, and had to teach it in the “hedge schools” (i.e., teachers and students hiding in bushes!). But today, it is not only spoken in Eire but also taught there and in the U.S. — and we have forty million of Irish heritage (if many intermarried) here!
But from my experience in Ireland, I hope it helped me gain a glimmer of understanding of the traumas of African Americans — and of Native Americans surrounded daily by reminders of the lovely land so many were willing to share with my forebears but that, instead, was taken from the first ones here, too often by treachery.
In sum — I am, simply, so sorry. The more we learn about the incredible cultures and peoples that lived here first — and I am so lucky to be in a state with reviving, some even thriving tribes — the more we learn what we as well as they lost. . . .
I really enjoyed reading this thread, thank you to everyone who has contributed and ghostdancers way for starting it. We seem here in “civilized society” to be trying our hardest to extinguish so many things that make our species unique and wonder-full and beautiful….
I was reminded when I read this first, of all of the languages that are becoming extinct as well, something very closely tied to culture and identity and ways of manifesting reality.
And second, of the time that I have spent living in other countries and wishing that I didn’t have to see all of the “Western” cultural “artifacts” where I wanted none encroaching…
Did you know that the Japanese word for ketchup is “ketchapu”?
too many things running round in my head today I guess, again I thanks you all for taking time to write…