traditions of assimilation...

Sat Feb 16 18:39:17 UTC 2008

Thank you very much for this.  Would you allow me to share it with classes?

MJ 

On 2/16/08 2:57 PM, "Richard Smith" <rzs at WILDBLUE.NET> wrote:

> sorry for it's length
> but this is a response to those who feel "Christianity" was the best thing
> for Native Americans...
> this is from my point of view (a Wyandot tribal member)
> 
> How Christianity affected the Wyandot people in Ohio in the early
> 1800's is an interesting story. There are the journals and historical
> accounts still available, often kept by missionaries themselves.
> With careful reading one can read between the lines, to understand the
> conflict of two very different ways of understanding reality.
> 
> An African American Methodist missionary (Jonathan Stewart) came from the
> east with the call to spread the gospel where he encountered the Wyandots
> in central Ohio when they had been backed into small reservations.
> Using an interpreter he called meetings and told the story of the cross.
> For many Wyandots who were stressed from white settler encroachment,
> a black minister was different and revival flooded the whole reservation.
> Many traditionalists destroyed their medicine objects and stopped dancing,
> bowed their heads to King Jesus Christ as their Savior.
> 
> A church was hand built of limestone rock that still stands today in Upper
> Sandusky, surrounded by a cemetery of those pious converts.
> Hair was cut to the proper length for men and soon the little church was
> filled to capacity. European songs were rewritten using Wyandot lyrics and
> the people began to learn a different way of singing...and seeing.
> When this man spoke the story of Jesus and the message of salvation from
> their wicked sins, they were moved to tears and walked the sawdust trail.
> 
> They began to see through a very different LENSE for the first time in
> their lives...and conversion was widespread through the reservation.
> Soon government schools were built and the new stories, Adam and Eve,
> the tower of Babel ,the story of Moses in the bulrushes ,the stories of
> David fighting the Philistines, the mighty Samson, could be taught to the
> children as historical fact . Many felt that if they embraced the settlers
> ways, they might be accepted by the encroaching ones who were also
> building churches and schools for their children on their old hunting
> grounds.Fear drove many Wyandot people into a survival mode of conformity.
> 
>  This new paradigm (LENSE) soon began to replace all original paradigms.
> Conversion was complete and men began to take more authority over
> property and took charge of tribal business, women and family.
> Some Wyandot men were buying African slaves to work their fields.
> Steel plows were pulled by oxen and mules. Crops were being harvested,
> a mill was erected, and every Sunday the men and women would go to the
> little stone church and sit on the hand sawn wooden pews, listen to the
> gospel and sing new Hymns. More missionaries soon came to teach.
> Wyandot men became more patriarchal, became farmers, blacksmiths,
> and even disciplined soldiers for the British, or for the Americans, which
> ever they preferred. But settlers kept coming
> and still Wyandot hunters were being shot for being "Indian" .
> 
>  When forced out of Ohio, by the Indian Removal Act, Wyandots left as Bible
> believing Christians. We have a copy of the final farewell speech given
> before they left. White settlers lined up on the streets of Cincinnati to
> see these last Ohio "Indians" passing on their journey to the west.
> Settlers might have been disappointed by the "parade" because they saw
> only men in common long coats and women who looked like their neighbors.
> Wyandots were mixed in race and accounts were they looked like "gypsies".
> They held their heads high as they passed these staring crowds.
> The ones without livestock boarded new Steamboats and made their trek by
> Ohio River to the Mississippi, then the Missouri to be forced off in the
> middle of a severe downpour of rain, there where the Kansas river flowed
> into the Missouri.
> 
>  Some determined to build a new church before they even built their own new
> homes in Kansas. These were total converts and believed every word.
> They bought the land that is now Kansas City, and after almost half the
> nation died of starvation, diseases, they built two Methodist churches and
> two towns were formed. One was Quindaro one was Wyandotte City.
> Quindaro soon became a safe haven for the Underground Railroad,
> was aided by both Wyandots and Whites....This town was razed and destroyed
> by pro-slavery groups and the Methodist church was burnt by mobs.
> (The ruins still exist today) The other town thrived to become Kansas
> City.The KC Methodist church was also burnt to the ground. The Christian
> Indians were divided...just like the American nation, family against family.
> 
> Did replacing original Wyandot lenses with Christianity help the people?
> Did putting aside the old and adopting new foreign paradigms,
> Middle Eastern creation stories, blood sacrifice cultural understandings,
> give them an advantage in their new Kansas homelands?
> Did replacing Spring Seed blessing ceremonies with Easter
> give them a better life? Did replacing the Green Corn Ceremonies with
> American Thanksgiving help them to better fulfill themselves?
> Did replacing Midwinter Ceremonies with Christmas create wholeness?
> 
>  ALL of the land allotments (except our cemetery) of Kansas City, were lost
> by fraud and poverty. Most Wyandots were reduced to another group of poor
> Indians destitute and even dependant on the Fed. Gov. to keep promises.
> Traditional Wyandot infrastructure survived when the last vestige of the
> traditionals headed to Oklahoma and tried to keep the circle together.
> Once again a pipe was passed at monthly meetings and traditional prayers
> were prayed, and ceremonies began to have a small comeback.
> The Methodist church followed them, and more missionaries came,
> and soon the Christian boarding school era began, enforced by the US
> Government educating children in service jobs, proper religion and
> punishing Wyandot language out of them while rewarding the children who
> yielded most to the system.
> 
>  There exists not far from here a circle of old weathered cedar trees
> where native kids during school would secretly gather to speak their
> language. But on weekends they'd be sitting on pews in starched outfits
> singing hymns about fountains filled with blood, King Jesus, the Good
> Shepherd, America the Beautiful, and gold crowns awaiting them at a
> Throne.They would learn to make Pilgrim hats with big buckles of paper in
> class during Thanksgiving, and make paper cut outs of Santa Claus and
> reindeer in school, and learn the art of dyeing eggs and making Easter
> baskets. Any traditional thanks giving ceremonies were taught as pagan
> ritual.Ceremonies were still held in secret and shared with the
> Seneca/Cayuga and Shawnee. Less and less attended as Christianity took
> control and spread its fear of a devil lurking everywhere.
> 
> Today, few Wyandots are active in traditional ceremonies, though a Wyandot
> presence survives among those intermarried with the Seneca/Cayuga.
> Most Wyandots are totally assimilated ,Some participate in Intertribal
> Pow-wows and find connection , a shared pride among other Native
> Americans. There is a small but growing presence of Wyandots attending
> traditional ceremonies shared with the Seneca/Cayuga, and I'm proud
> to join them in the longhouse every ceremony I can attend.
> Today many of the elders who preside over traditional ceremonies are
> also Baptists, Pentecostals and Methodists as well, feeling no
> contradiction,never giving in to the notion that these things were evil.
> 
> This is our Wyandot Christian conversion history
> and someday our own people will awaken to see what happened to them.
> This is my hope anyway,and with this awakening will come the hunger
> for language and culture - distinctly Wyandot.
> 
> Richard Zane Smith
> Wyandotte, Oklahoma
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2/16/08 9:29 AM, "MJ Hardman" <hardman at UFL.EDU> wrote:
> 
>> "Assimilation" is a mild way to say it.  And as to Republican candidates --
>> the drop-out -- that religion does indeed hold as a dogma that the US was
>> founded in order for the true church to be reestablished & thus, yes, the US
>> belongs to white people, who have come to bring the Native Americans back
>> into the fold, after they transgressed (explained in one of their sacred
>> books) and thus were made dark -- the fold of the white folks, of course.
>> The Native Americans aren't as dark as blacks, whose transgression was
>> worse, being descendants of Cain, though they have now been forgiven and can
>> be brought into the fold.  Since Native Americans are all from the lost
>> tribes of Israel, they have been rapidly welcomed into the fold, including
>> by adoptions whenever possible.
>> 
>> And if what I wrote above sounds psychotic -- well, Mia, it's what they do
>> indeed believe.  They soft-pedal a lot of it for outsiders, they are *very*
>> concerned about 'image' -- they are, after all, selling a religion.  It was
>> scary.  And what scares me now is the vice-presidency.
>> 
>> MJ
>> 
>> On 2/14/08 3:08 PM, "Mia Kalish" <MiaKalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US> wrote:
>> 
>>> There IS a tradition of "assimilation," usually no matter what it takes to
>>> get there. There was a story . . . Carolyn, Harrington's ex-wife, found
>>> papers in California that demonstrated the Indians were being "baptized" by
>>> 1st, clubbing them over the head until they were senseless and couldn't
>>> protest, and 2nd, being carried to the baptismal ceremony by their guards,
>>> who also functioned as the witnesses or whatever they call them.
>>> The whole purpose of the boarding schools was to take children away from the
>>> influence of their families and cultures so they would grow up "white."
>>> I think the fact that they wrote this is very Freudian: People are
>>> admitting, albeit subconsciously, that they are deliberately interfering
>>> with the lives of others.
>>> 
>>> I heard a speech the other day by one of those Republicans who dropped out
>>> of the presidential race, and he actually seemed to believe that this
>>> country "belongs" to white people. He had no understanding or recognition of
>>> the fact that colonizers engaged in active and sustained genocide to kill
>>> the people who were living here originally. And by the way, he had all these
>>> statistics of the number of "out of wedlock" births by people of color.
>>> Implicit in this is the cultural moré that womens' only function in life is
>>> to take care of men. (NOT.)
>>> 
>>> Mia  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
>>> On Behalf Of Richard Smith
>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:40 PM
>>> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>>> Subject: Re: [ILAT] traditions of assimilation...
>>> 
>>> yeah,
>>> did you catch that....?   "a Tradition of Assimilation"
>>> wow...amazing... we have traditionalists in office!
>>> By the way...who's "tradition of assimilation?"
>>> 
>>> richard zane smith
>>> Wyandotte, Oklahoma
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 2/11/08 8:55 AM, "phil cash cash" <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Momentum Building for Oklahoma Official English Bill
>>>> 
>>> http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-11
>>> -2
>>>> 008/0004753576&EDATE=
>>>> 
>>>> ~~~
>>>> 
>>>> While there seems to be  respect for Native American languages, these are
>>> the
>>>> words of legislators behind the English-only bill in the Oklahoma state
>>>> legislature:
>>>> 
>>>> "...maintain a tradition of assimilation through our
>>>> common language of English."
>>>> 
>>>> It seems hard to reconcile this position with Native American language
>>>> preservation.  Though I imagine the architects of such legislation view NA
>>>> languages as "preservation at a distance".
>>>> 
>>>> l8ter,
>>>> 
>>>> Phil
>>>> UofA
>>> 
> 