IN CLIO'S CAUSE:
Let Us Sail Together in 1992 by Richard Monette
"In Clio's Cause" is a section of Sea History devoted to the cause of history as such-its hard-won learning, its values and disciplines. When Richard Monette,ayoungChippewaon the staff of the Senate Select Committee on lndianAffairs,gave this talkatthe NMHS Annual Meeting at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, Connecticut, last May 19, all of us presentfelt that his words belong in this section, this issue. The Chippewa and other Indian tribes of North America referred to this continent as 'Turtle Island ." At the geographical center of the continent, Turtle Island , lies the turtle's heart, known as Turtle Mountain. I am a member of and grew up on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation . I have been asked to g ive the Native American perspective on Columbus and the Quincentenary, some of which may dovetai l nicely with what you are most familiar with, and some of which, as you might well imagine, may not dovetail quite so nicely. Each day that I, and other Indians, ex it Union Station in Washington , DC, I can't help but maneuver around a magnificent statue of a man with an Indian kneeling at hi s side. The caption reads: "To the memory of Christopher Co lumbus, whose high fai th and indomitable courage gave to mankind a new world ." Leaving alone for the moment the question into what category Indians might belong, ifnot "mankind," let me say that a significant portion of the Native population might re-word that caption just a bit, to something like this: " To the memory of Christopher Col um bu s, whose insatiable greed and incompetent seamanship gave to certain of mankind di sease, slavery , scalping and the loss of their homelands. " Somewhere between those two gross exaggerations lies a very simple concept called the truth . If there is anything, I believe, that I can tell you unequivocally, it is that all Native Americans want at least one thing to emerge from 1992the truth . Many Indian tribes practiced two ceremonial dances, one called the Ghost Dance and the other called the Sun Dance. The Ghost Dance is a ceremony in which one dons a ghost shirt, which makes one invi sible or which is impenetrable to the white man 's bullets, so that the Indian will withstand the onslaught of the E uropean , the buffalo will return, the Indian SEA HISTORY 55, AUTUMN 1990
wi ll li ve forever, and the white man will go away. The dance is one of external forces, of reaction to oppression, of revolution, of violence, of conflicting truths. The Sun Dance is a ceremony in which one isolates the self, goes on a fast, has visions, and searches for inner knowledge. The dance is one of internal strength over external forces and of universal truths. On many reservations these ceremonies are sti ll performed in many differen t forms.
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On my home reservation, I started high school with about 220 classmates. Fou r years later 60 of those classmates graduated with me. Seven of us went on to receive four year college degrees. One has received an advanced degree. When truth becomes a negotiable item in our educational institutions , these statistics reveal the tragedies. I firmly believe that many of those who drop out of reservation schoo ls are every bit as intelligent as I am, and probably more so. But they are the first to recognize the di shonesty and hypocri sy of the ed ucational system, and they rebel in a Ghost Dance of sorts. The year 1992 wi 11 be a showcase of our new Age of Information, the age of high technology and micro-second communications. We now have the capacity, for the first time in hi story, to disseminate an entire history to an entire generation in one fell swoop, to remedy past indiscretions and to make the future more learned and more hopeful. Let us begin with 1492. To the American Indian, Chri stopher Columbus and the di scovery of America has become the guidepost of American honesty, or the lack thereof, in a long line of historical events. Thi s nation 's capital is his namesake, as is one of our great rivers, the mighty Columbia, the lifeblood of many Pacific Northwest Indian tribes. Many great cities share the name. They all deserve a history steeped in truth . We shou ld not stop at 1492, if we attempt to redress past indiscretions. Let alone the fact that in 1492 Columbus himself never set foot on North America, nor Central or South America, for that matter. Take, for instance, the Boston Tea Party , wh ich I guess was the first step in the long demise of Boston Harbor. That the colonists were protesting "taxation without representation" may be a noble thing, but the real reason for dress ing up as Indians, which was to
drive a wedge between the grow ing coalition between the British and powerful Indian confederacies, is never taught. And what about the Indian contributi on to the making of the US Constitution? The li st of such se lective truths in our history books is long. In short, let us be candid. In the 1990s the Indian tribes are at a crossroad-a real opportunity to learn America's ways while preserving theirown . America and American communities large and small must allow the Indian people, both as individual s and as tribes, to participate in their soc ieties, to integrate into their economies, in the manner and to the extent that the tribes wish to participate. Let ou r ch ildren's textbooks be accurate and comp lete. Let us turn inward to be honest with our chi ldren at home. Give us reason to set aside our reactionary ghost shirts and to, so to speak, Sun Dance together. Let truth be our li fe preserver and let honesty be our unsinkable raft. Let us gather up our own high faith and indom itable courage and, in 1992, let us set sai I together. o
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