On The Anger—A Native Point Of View.
There is no Indian alive who dares to think too much on the past. If we looked too long at the past we would be too angry to live. You try to make it up to us by making us into heroes and wise people in all your movies and books. That’s fine for you. But I can still go to a museum and see my grandmother’s skull in a case and hear someone talk about it as an artifact.
And sometimes I think about all the wars between my people and your people. Those white men that fought us were men without families, lots of them. They weren’t your best people. Many of them were brutal and stupid. They did terrible things because it was fun.
My people never had a chance. We were families. We were in our homes, with our old people and our babies. And the soldiers attacked us. They attacked our homes and killed our elders and our children. Then your people have the nerve to talk about massacres by the Indians.
We did kill innocent people. I know that. It happened when our young men got angry at what was happening to the old people and the children, when they were starving or being killed. The young men would get so angry they wouldn’t listen to the old men. The old men knew we couldn’t win and that more white people would come and there would just be more killing. But the young men were so angry that they attacked anyone.
If you saw your father lying on his bed too weak to stand up because he was starving, or you saw your baby crying all the time because she was hungry, and you knew it was because someone took their food away from them, wouldn’t you be angry?
What if some men came through and killed your grandmother and didn’t have a reason? They just did it, then they laughed and rode away. And you stood there and looked at her cut up or shot. Can you tell me you wouldn’t be angry?
I don’t blame my people who ambushed the white soldiers or even raided the homes of the settlers. I don’t say it was right. I just say I understand. We lost everything. Your government sent heartless, greedy men to keep us under control, and they lied and raped and stole from us, and they could kill us for any reason and it was okay. What if someone raped your little sister? That happened all the time. What if someone took your wife and slit open her belly and pulled out your unborn child, then laid it on the ground like a trophy, still attached to her dead mother? That happened, too.
See, we weren’t even people. Did you know that? The Catholic church even held a conference to determine if we were people or not. In their great wise religion they thought they should decide if we were people or animals. That’s the way we were thought of and treated. It was okay to do anything to us.
We were taught that the old people and the babies were the closest to God, and it was for them that we lived. And your people came in and killed them. We had to do what we could to protect our old people and our families, and we couldn’t because your soldiers broke into our houses and killed them when they couldn’t get away.
It wasn’t the same when we fought the other tribes. They respected the old people and the children, too. When we fought each other there were some things more important than the fight. The greatest act of bravery was to touch your enemy —to ‘count coup’ upon him— not to kill him. But not for your soldiers. They just wanted to kill us.
Now there are skulls of my grandparents in museums, and sacred blankets and drums on walls of museums for rich people to look at. You go there and talk about how sacred it is. You call it sacred because you don’t have anything of your own that’s sacred. But it’s not sacred, because you took the sacred out of it, just like you take the sacred out of everything, and now we can hardly feel it ourselves anymore. You killed our people and you took what was sacred to us, and then you told us that’s what proved you were better than we were.
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There is no more time for fighting. Our anger must be buried. If I cannot bury mine, it will be for my children to bury theirs. And if they cannot bury theirs, it will be for their children, or their children’s children. We are prisoners of our hearts, and only time will free us.
Your people must learn to give up their arrogance. They are not the only ones placed on this earth. Theirs is not the only way. People have worshipped the Creator and loved their families in many ways in all places. Your people must learn to honor this.
It is your gift to have material power. You have much strength not given to other people. Can you share it, or can you use it only to get more? That is your challenge —to find the way to share your gift, because it is a strong and dangerous one.
It is my people who must stand as the shadow that reminds you of your failures. It is our memory that must keep you on the good road. It does you no good to pretend that we did not exist, and that you did not destroy us. This was our land. We will always be here. You can no more remove our memory than you can hide the sun by putting your hand over your eyes.
