Re: Amerindian resistance mode (was: amerindian an offensive
Gerold Firl (geroldf@sdd.hp.com)
6 Aug 1996 20:17:08 GMT
In article <4u7fpp$h04@orphan.emich.edu>, Paula.Sanch@emich.edu (Paula Sanch) writes:
|> geroldf@sdd.hp.com (Gerold Firl) wrote:
|> > People like eric brunner who
|> >are consumed with hatred, shame, and spite, will always be in
|> >"resistance mode", but what good does it do for anybody?
|> Gerold, Eric is certainly not consumed by shame or spite, AFAIK. I
|> *doubt* he's "consumed" with hatred, either; he seems to be far too
|> functional as a person in society for that to be true.
You seem to know him better than I do. I'll take your word for it.
|> The fact that he is adversarial on
|> occasion is, IMO, unfortunate, but he's got plenty of company; it's
|> *hard* to be adversarial if nobody's willing to fight with you.
Yes - obnoxious noisemakers are best ignored.
|> >What is your longterm vision for the american indians? Where would you
|> >like indian resistance to lead? Personally, I find the idea of vast
|> >tracts of american land being set-aside for a
|> >hunter-gatherer/horticultural lifestyle to be very romantic and
|> >attractive, but unless our total population drops considerably, it just
|> >doesn't appear practical. What would you like to see?
|> In case you hadn't noticed, the US population is dropping, if one
|> excludes immigration.
The kind of population decrease needed to allow a return to traditional
lifestyles would be a drastic one. It would take a major demographic
disaster for such a thing to occur. The fact that industrial population
growth rates are essentially flat will not produce such losses, and as
you point out, there are plenty of people from less developed countries
who are more than willing to make up the difference. There are just too
many people in the US (and every other country, for that matter) for
the traditional, low density lifestyle to be a viable option.
|> >Lets step back a couple of paces at look at amerindian reservation
|> >culture. The lifestyle has some major problems. Could it be that the
|> >kind of hysterical pathology evinced by brunner is a form of cultural
|> >innoculation created by the reservation culture to prevent dissolution?
|> >Surely many young people on the reservations would seriously consider
|> >the possibility of leaving.
|> Believe it or not, most NAs value their culture enough to wish to
|> preserve as much as possible of it.
Of course they do. But until very recently, many indians were actually
*ashamed* to be indian. They felt like they weren't as good as their
conquerors. They still self-identified as indian, but those feelings
were a difficult mixture of positive and negative feelings about what
it meant to be an indian. The resurgance of indian pride over the last
few decades has had to shed the legacy of shame and self-hatred; that
cognitive dissonance can lead to irrationality.
|> The reason why I'm of mixed blood and was raised in white society is
|> that both sets of my mother's grandparents made the conscious decision
|> to live white (or as white as they were allowed; depends on the
|> community and era). It is my understanding that they made their
|> decisions based on a love of freedom; the realization that they
|> couldn't live on the ancestral lands; the whites had violated a
|> Supreme Court decision in order to kick them off; and the knowledge
|> that the land in (now) Oklahoma was nothing like their beloved green
|> mountains. The areas where they did settle were hilly and green (one
|> set in western KY; the other in eastern MO). My mother and all her
|> surviving sibs married white. This doesn't mean that I don't
|> self-identify as Cherokee. You betcha I do. I'm not ashamed of my
|> white relations, but they all know where I stand (and mostly love me
|> anyway <g>).
Where do you stand?
|> >This phenomenon is seen throughout the
|> >world today, where formerly isolated tribal cultures are melting into
|> >more mainstream/globally integrated cultures. But if young people can
|> >be indoctrinated with a sufficient dose of hatred for outsiders, and
|> >shame for themselves, then they will tend to stay home. This is a
|> >poison far more dangerous than mainstream oppression.
|> I know that it's unthinkable to you, but it's not hatred, but *love*
|> that motivates them (us); a love and appreciation for who we are; the
|> same kind of chauvinism which motivates you.
Not quite. I can appreciate the great achievements of western culture
at the same time that I deplore the massive damage and disruption to
other cultures which the west has caused. I can love my family, my
tribe, my nation, without hating anybody else. I can appreciate the
great achievements of other cultures, and at the same time deplore the
suffering which they have wrought. If you want to call that chauvinism,
feel free, but I draw a distinction between that kind of chauvinism and
the narrow, fanatical ethnocentrism of a bigot like eric brunner, for
whom love of kind is the flip-side of hatred for everyone else.
It's good to love and appreciate who you are, but it's healthier to
also love and appreciate others for who they are.
--
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Disclaimer claims dat de claims claimed in dis are de claims of meself,
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=---- Gerold Firl @ ..hplabs!hp-sdd!geroldf
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