America's Foreign Policy as Experienced by an American Indian Nation

My friend Margery Coffey is a fine artist who lives on a reservation in Nebraska with the Omaha People. I have been interested in her book co-authored with Dennis Hastings about the history of the Omaha. Due to a lack of understanding by my kin, the fact that I have Native American blood in my family's background was never documented. Therefore I have no idea what tribe my people came from. This has always been felt as a loss by me. As I read this talk, I realized how much we have to learn from the first Americans who honored the land, water, sky, plants and animals as well as each other. There is much we could learn from the American Indians:

After working on the reservation for many years, Hastings - 34 years, and myself - 19, both felt that it was imperative to preserve the history of the Omaha in a written form so that the Omaha could finally understand just exactly what had happened to the Tribe instead of looking through shattered memories.

The average age of the Omaha tribal member is 19.8 years. The life expectancy is 54 years. There needed to be some way to pass the history and culture on to the next generation because in the current modality, it is not happening.

Most Euro-Americans think of Native American issues as being something that happened long ago. It is a big mistake to assume that something that started two hundred years ago has been resolved satisfactorily, even today -- globally. As Howard Zinn so aptly puts it:

"The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface."

America's foreign policy started with the Native Americans and it has not changed one bit since. It is a scenario that has been played over and over. First the white man approaches with trade goods not available in the other culture. Success at barter turns quickly into a quest for bigger profits, and the biggest profits of all are made with the control of the natural resources within a given area.

At first it is a toe-hold upon the land. To facilitate trade, is the reason given. A small port enclave comes next, for protection of the trade, but the protection is for one side of the trade deal only. The outlying fort brings others. As the news spreads of easy fortunes and plenty of women then the speculators come fast and furious.

We felt that the rest of the world needs to know exactly what the government policy has truly been toward the Native American populations as exemplified by the Omaha Tribe. The Omaha Tribe is one of the best documented tribes in American ethnological studies, thanks to the early work of Omaha Dr. Francis La Flesche, esq. and his mentor the Rev. James O. Dorsey, followed by hundreds of others.

After reviewing thousands of documents in our research, we contend that the American foreign policy was set by the actions of the Euro-American invasion and continues on relentlessly against the Native Americans. We also believe that it has been exported to the third world countries around the world ever since North America was stolen.

The record shows that the Omaha met this on-going holocaust as they dealt with everything. Dr. La Flesche called it: Progressive Peace. It was their diplomatic process for resolving problems instead of going to war. In fact, the Omaha are documented in every American war since Manual Lisa recruited them in 1812. There was even an Omaha major on the Bataan Death March. The Omaha never went to war against the United States of America.

After 300 years of Euro-Americans studying Indians, without learning from them, America now thinks it understands the Middle East.

Relationship to the Land:

One cannot understand an Indian Tribe without understanding the land from which they came. To be Indian is to be one with the land. True spirituality comes from one's relationship with the land, that is what it means to be grounded or in balance.

Most people are not familiar with the High Plains of our continent, especially the Nebraska sector. Interstate-80 follows the very flat-floodplain-valley of the wide Platte River. Seeing the prairie along this route for 400 miles, one could think, that is all there is to this region. In actuality, the state has a very diverse landscape, with many rivers and creeks, each with their own personal signatures in bluffs, buttes and gorges. In addition, there are the unique sandhills and the strange toadstool formations in the badlands. It is necessary to understand the natural Nebraska in order to realize what the European influence upon the prairie has truly been over the short time they had been living on it. Our dissertation, Grandfather Remembers, begins with the land.

Culture Clash:

Grandfather Remembers will be difficult for those of the Euro-American culture to read. It is designed for the Omaha. Indian culture is still structured in a way that is the reverse of the dominant culture's thinking. That means everything operates upside down and backwards from the way the Euro-American culture perceives reality, a mirror image. Therefore, it is necessary to lay aside traditional cultural definitions of family, religion, spirituality and relationships in order to truly experience an Indian culture.

When the positive concepts one-holds-dear are brought into sharp negative question, it deeply "jars" an individual's psychic balance with the earth. This is the reality of crossing cultures. When one experiences being brought up short by an opposing belief system clashing with their own cultural and religious teachings, then one starts to understand what the Native Americans were forced to experience in boarding schools.

Suspending one's belief system is very difficult to do. All of us are very fond of what we believe, whether the facts support it or not. In fact, our entire life is wrapped around our belief systems so to work ourselves beyond it becomes difficult, but not impossible. Belief systems are based on faith not facts. They are man-made constructs, like scientific theories. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It takes a conscious effort to rise beyond a generationally-culturally-taught belief system that is wired directly into the emotions. It is, however, necessary if you want to see clearly how others view reality.

Grandfather Remembers shows history from an Omaha cultural point of view. There will be times when the reader becomes uncomfortable over the choice of words. Sometimes the truth makes us very uncomfortable, including real pain. Culture clash is a shock. It is a psychic shock of true change. When resolved positively, it creates illumination and clarity but when it negatively blocks reason, the psychic shock produces severe pain. That is why it becomes such a problem. Violence erupts and wars are fought over it. It is a world-wide problem.

Dehumanizing the Opposition:

When a belief system is forced upon another culture, the "so-called" superior culture looks at the other culture as being sub-human. Like slaves, the Indians were not regarded as human beings. The Ponca leader Standing Bear's court case in 1881 was necessary in order to prove legally to Euro-Americans that Indians were human.

These facts seem incredible until one realizes that it took the NYC Humane Society, newly formed in 1874, to mount a court case in 1876, on the issue of children being human. They had to use the new anti-abuse animals law they had won, to cover the situation. If a society's own children are not considered human then it is more understandable that such a society could not see another culture as human -- not acceptable but at least understandable.

Since the Western Frontier period lay both within the world of slavery and the brand-new post-slavery one, it puts a whole new layer upon the thinking of that era towards anyone who was different from the European Protestant ruling class. That legacy is still active within American society today. In spite of a court decision, it took more than 50 years for the Standing Bear decision to be enforced to the degree it has been. It made Indians human, yes, but not equal. Our justice system proves that daily.

Think about it. Anthropology and Native Americans are put into Natural History Museums instead of Arts & Culture Museums. That alone says it. The bias that has been built into the foundation of the Feudally-designed-Greek-based Academia studies, still divides humans into "civilized" and "uncivilized." The truth of the matter is that there are millions of examples of "civilized" humans acting in an "uncivilized" manner and the so called "uncivilized" cultures acting far more "civilized" than their alleged superior cultures. It is a deliberate twisting of Darwin's theories to create the concept of humans being a superior species in the first place.

It is time to bury the idea that human cultures have arrived at a civilized state. Euro-Americans may have created scientific marvels and exquisite forms in the arts, but its habitual barbaric savagery against people outside its boundaries and the declared minorities within its territories bears no resemblance to the concept of civilization.

The pattern of oppression and genocide has been with humans for a long, long time. The same pattern that was used on the Africans-Asians-Gypsies-Irish-Jews-Native Americans-women-and-artists, etc., is the one that has been used in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. It did not start in America but the United States certainly has created its own version of it and exported it globally. This behavior is the one that is killing the planet. It is what happens when one no longer can form relationships with the world around oneself. It is most markedly expressed when empathy is left out of the decision making process.

Global Application:

Everything stems from this planet and the cushion on which it lives is the narrow strip of organic mixing with inorganic which supports all life in and on the earth, in the seas and in the skies. We must make peace with the planet first or we will not survive.

We are supposed to be in a symbiotic relationship with the planet. We can do good things for it and with it. It sustains us. If humans are to survive, they must ground themselves in order to work towards building a healthy relationship with the planet. That means not tearing off mountaintops, or pouring radioactive sludge and poisonous chemicals into earth or the water and no toxic fumes in the air. That includes no longer blowing things up and killing everything randomly for no good purpose which only shows a total lack of understanding of ecosystems. In other words: We have to relearn everything we know by turning it upside down and backwards.

It is not hard to make the right decisions. What becomes difficult is how to make right decisions that gives a decided advantage to one party over the other and make it balance - that's Wall Street's problem. Or stated differently, "I deserve more than you." If, instead, a society centers on what is good for the earth, it becomes grounded and balanced. Being good to the earth is a prime directive.

Invading forces are exploitive by nature. They are incapable of grounding themselves so they are always locked onto the next crisis. This they can create by invasion with no trouble at all. Thriving on creating chaos in stable nations, their artificially maintained nomadic life style is free to move anywhere globally feeding on the poor and defenseless. Therefore there is no need for chronically invading forces to build upon a stable foundation. Pirates and corporations have the same rules.

Natural nomadic life style within a optimal territory is possible within grounding parameters. It is a boundary created by nature. Such territorial boundaries are shared for equal benefit. That system has worked for centuries, far longer than patriarchal systems whose only consistent track record is one of imploding, reforming and imploding again.

The earth has the ability of both healing and maintaining balance if we let her do so. If we cut back our greed to reasonable, livable amounts for everyone, a major problem has been solved. If in the process we provide jobs for those who want to help rebuild a healthy society, a second problem is solved. If we provided healthcare for everyone, we would have a healthier population, contact disease would drop, and more people would be able to work which would take the burden away from work and lessen the hours. People would have more time to pursue pleasures and happiness.

Respect is the answer. Respect the planet and all else will follow.

Right now most of the world is trying to find ways to cope with Global Warming while America still thinks it can buy its way out. The selling of Global Green is big bucks these days. And as usual, some of it is useful, most of it is duplicative and usually runs 10% green and 90% toxic. That is Capitalism trying to masquerade as ecologically sound.

Why save the prairie? Because if it isn't, it will become a desert and cut the food production and industrial production drastically. Medicinal plants will be forever lost. The desert will impinge upon both coasts as water becomes more precious and less available. It is possible. The Sahara Desert is man-made. The Prairie is fragile but it is also profuse. Left to its own abilities it created a lush wilderness of incredible beauty and diversity. It included humans within its natural cycle. It can recover, nurture and regain a beauty if helped but not if it is mined to death and chemically forced to produce genetically-modified corn-based-ethanol and soy-based-plastics so our throw-away society can continue.

The message of the book:

There is a backbone of commonality running throughout Grandfather Remembers. It is the reality of the Tribal Holocaust that the Omaha and their lands have endured and survived for well over four centuries.

Four major themes weave through the story:

The first is legal real estate thievery that is shown in the actual documents that were signed between the Tribe and the United States Government. The land theft did not include water or air rights which are still owned by the Tribe for all of the lands that they originally owned. While the railroads, highways, gas, electric and telephone lines were covered in part by the treaties, not one of them followed the agreements and are now illegally on the reservation lands. The treaties themselves were eventually signed by the Government's hand picked "chiefs" and were never ratified by the people themselves nor agreed to by their true representatives so in effect America continued buying lands and making deals with the wrong Indians or simply stealing the land. Corporations and educational institutions continue this practice even today.

The second is the role of the Government towards their "wards" in handling the promised money, land and education. The lack of protection the Government practiced against the Omaha allowed the worst level of speculators and exploiters to prey upon the people. They were allowed to loot the Omaha, of everything of value, starting with real estate and ending with the theft of their dead. This not only included Tribal lands and trust money but also attacked the Omaha minds and the core of their belief systems. This was done by creating an educational system of physical and sexual abuse along with cultural and spiritual brainwashing. All of it led nowhere, since jobs were not available for Indians in a biased white world and the only future allowed was one of poverty. It was hard to hold onto the land even with white man's education. The Omaha were usually better educated than the pioneers around them, but the combination of religion and education did not defeat the land hungry racism that actively surrounded them.

Most traditional Native Americans fought against the mandatory boarding schools, so the government agencies literally stole orphans off the streets and the unwanted half-breed children abandoned, along with their mothers, to the care of an already overburdened Tribe by their Euro-American fathers. Since the "breeds" were often able to speak the language of the Euro-Americans better than the rest of the Tribe, this put them into an unnatural seat of power within the Tribe. This was a big source of exploitation in turning Tribal people against each other. Even today, Indian children receive a sub-standard education with little or no cultural heritage within it and are channeled into vocational dead ends by receiving outdated training.

The third is the violence of the Euro-American culture towards anyone who is different and the government's complicity with it. America was born in violence and has continued it throughout their history. Endless wars have always drawn their foot soldiers from the reservations and the ghettos created by economic policies of discrimination.

Domestically America allowed open slavery for several centuries until the Civil War and then followed that with the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization, which was tolerated as it rose again and again in America's history to violently threaten anyone who differed from their rigid beliefs. This violence has been used by the criminal elements, for example in the early 1900s it was Al Capone in Chicago and Sioux City, Iowa, and his cronies Tom Pendergast of Kansas City and Tom Dennison of Omaha enriching their illicit corporate pockets within the reservation region. Such behavior was condoned by bigoted presidents such as Woodrow Wilson in the past and George W. Bush in modern times. Slavery still exists in America in the fields where the immigrant farm-workers toil and behind closed doors where women and children from overseas can still be bought as sex slaves.

The fourth, and most important, was the struggle to survive as the Omaha encountered unbelievable horrors, repeatedly, for generations, until life settled down into abject poverty. The goals the individual Omaha achieved nationally for all of Native America were astounding: First Anthropologist, First to pass the Nebraska legal Bar, First to argue in front of the U. S. Supreme Court, First Female Doctor, First Athletic Director, and there were others as well. At the pivotal points of Indian history there was usually an Omaha there to help out. Wounded Knee, 1891 and 1973; Alcatraz and Pit River; Pan Indian Societies and National Peyote Meetings; as well as at the forefront of important legal decisions from Standing Bear to Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

Where next:

Now that the Omaha Tribal Holocaust has been documented for what it truly was, we need to understand the impact it has had on what we call Democracy. In reality our government is nothing more than a ruling class of the so-called elite that has oppressed the rest of the world and most of the population of the United States, in order to exploit it. It is the dominant culture of America that has brought us to the current state of affairs where the planet itself is rising up against the cumulative result of the centuries of abuse.

Native America should have their lands returned or be completely paid for that which was illegally taken and allowed to reclaim the land resources that were never signed away. Reservations should be declared alcohol free and this should include a ten-mile wide zone around them as well. Serious studies and programs to deal with the alcohol poisoning of an entire population, not limited to Native America, should be undertaken.

The world needs to understand the message of aboriginal peoples who are still in possession of their unique relationship to the land in a healthy way. The righting of the wrongs that were done to people of color should be a top priority. One cannot build a healthy society based upon criminal activities and hate. Poverty can be eliminated if we stop the hoarding of the rich and exploitation forced by wars whose only reason for existence is to provide more spoils for the rich. Competition must give way to cooperation. Healthy constructive jobs can be had by all to restore the earth and build a society that lives in harmony with the environment. Such a move would allow nature to restore the balance to the planet and create a future for humans in this world.

America was founded as a gamble and as it developed its economic policies - capitalism - it was to become the high stakes casino of the world and the largest arms dealer. Whether on a Missouri steamboat in the 1870s, or Wall Street in the 1920s, or in the high powered manipulation games of Warren Buffett, Nebraska's own multi-billionaire thriving across two centuries, it is the same game. Gamblers betting they can take all the money for themselves and get away with it, and they are right. Corporations and Wall Street are molded into the same pattern. Bankers have always been in the thick of it as have lobbyists. It is this ancient shell game that it is killing the planet. Capitalism has no use for anything but money. It is the personification of the elite rich class.

Capitalism entered the Indian nations like another entry on a long list of fatal diseases. The initial infestation of classism was spread before they knew it when just the males of a Tribe were consulted officially and gender bias was forced upon a people that knew only egalitarianism. It was a softening up that was laced with liquor before the real disaster struck. Capitalism as it is practiced is a cancer that eats up people's lives with promises that will become real only for a select few while it devours natural resources at an alarming rate. It is hard to determine which is more damning - the destruction of the earth so that we can choose between chartreuse and cerise baubles of the moment or the pile of un-biodegradable throwaways that capitalism accumulates in its relentless pursuit of bigger and better profits at the expense of the entire planet.

What happened on the Indian reservations became standard policy towards the non-European based world. Manifest Destiny is a political code word for the religious cult concept: to be idle, is a sin. While stealing someone else's ability to exist becomes the moral low road of: we've always done it that way. On an equal playing field there is no starvation because those that have will share with the have-nots until equality is achieved. That is the Indian way. It worked very well for countless centuries.

The American system of using people against people so that a select few may profit is a destructive way of life. It has produced a nation of poisoned, exploited and stressed out people suffering from multiple levels of abuse. One group gets all the breaks at the expense of all the other groups. Generations of this hierarchy has destroyed nation after nation. It eradicates entire peoples. It pollutes the planet. It is classism.

The ultimate truth of Grandfather Remembers is that the Omaha story is the same the world over. We are all abused. Given the opportunity, this is what people do to each other with rare exceptions. It has to stop or we will be permanently stopped by Nature. We are already to the point where the question of climate change has been firmly answered and it is indisputable.

The final message of Grandfather Remembers is: cause no harm, nurture relationships, clean up the mess and never give up the land because it is the base of all spirituality. Follow these ways and there will be an ecologically sound future for the next generation.

Wi'bthahan: Thank you

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