ILAT Digest - 29 Feb 2008 (#2008-59)

[Rudy Troike]

Though life, and communities, must move on, there is yet value in
reminding the dominant community of the atrocities (giving tribes
blankets contaminated with smallpox) and the inhumanities (forced
removals, incarceration of children in boarding schools) visited
upon American Indian groups, since there is still abroad the "manifest
destiny" belief that all that has been done was for the good of the
native peoples. I cannot forget the story of one elderly Cherokee man
who, when asked to recall his boarding-school days, was so traumatized
by the experience that he began to shake uncontrollably as he recounted
it.

Annie's story reminds us that individuals and communities can choose
to live in parallel realities, without perforce giving up one or the
other, but it is necessary to value each life-way in its own context.
The Yaqui here in Arizona have evolved a successful parallism in their
observance of Catholic and native ceremonies at Easter. Some years ago
I met an Inupiak (I think he was) man who was head of the major North
Slope oil corporation, and functioned successfully in the corporate
board room culture, who periodically returned to his native village to
participate in whale or seal hunts, in which he was simply a junior
member of the team and appropriately deferential to his elders. The
long-standing "Stockholm Syndrome" effect has continued to erode native
languages and cultures, by transmitting negative dominant-culture
attitudes, and undermining community and individual valuation of
traditional ways. Schooling in particular, even when undertaken in
a supposedly benign way, is a major contributor to this by presenting
only a single perspective as of value or relevance. A rare and nearly
unique exception was the Rock Point bilingual school, which successfully
produced fully bilingual high school graduates, but even this was not
able to survive without sufficient community support and belief.

   Rudy Troike