Re-posted from August, 2005
"Redskins": One Indian's View
In a piece by Tucker at Town Hall: "The federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has already ruled that the word Redskins is racially derogatory and offensive." My reaction to such nonsense:
I am Iroquois, by partial but adequate blood. You can see it in my face if you look carefully, but it mainly comes through in my eyes - I can see stuff outdoors that the Paleface cannot. Baby snakes and quiet birds and a rustling leaf and a turtle just thinking and a canvasback hidden in a snowstorm and a red-tail in a cloud. I love the name Redskins. Or Chiefs, or Indians, or anything that reminds us of our ancestry here in the New World. I do not know why almost any reference to Indians is racist. And I hate the undignified racial and ethnic whining and victim talk from Indians or from anyone else. Everyone should be thanking their God or gods that they are in America. And every human should grant themselves the dignity to not be a complainer. It is childish and reflects poorly on the complainer.
In fact, I don't even mind "filthy savage," which Mrs. Bird Dog has been known to endearingly (?) label me after an unbathed and unshaven weekend clearing brush and drinking Ballantine Ale and covered with sweat and bloody scratches from prickers and branches. It's sort of a badge of pride - our Indian ancestors were not exactly emerged from the Stone Age and we did not bathe and did not change our clothes, and probably smelled terrible, and, compared to Samuel Pepys, we were savages for sure. We were happy to burn people, cut off their genitals and eat them, scalp them, and torture them, and we were always fighting with our neighboring tribes for fun, for glory, for land, or for no reason at all. Our people looked red because of the red-tinted bear fat we anointed ourselves with in the winter to keep warm. We didn't have central heating, or down parkas. Stone Age, although there was a culture worthy of anthropological study, if pre-literate barbarian culture is your bag. So I say quit it with the hyper-sensitive PC BS in our name - I would prefer that the Indian past be remembered rather than erased, stone axes and all.
So Hello Atlanta, Hello Dartmouth - quit erasing us - we were tough deer-hunting, enemy-slaying, stoic, happy-to-die and short-lived braves, and hard-working squash and corn-planting and oyster-picking squaws. Our old ones crawled off into the woods to die when they felt they couldn't keep up. We had a concept of dignity. We learned to handle pain and a difficult life was what we expected. In the Northeast, our greatest discoveries were maple syrup, corn, squash, and tobacco. Good things. We got here first. Probably by mistake, while chasing a herd of Musk Ox across the Bering land bridge and getting lost in a snowstorm, and losing our GPS in the snow, so we deserve no credit for adventurous exploration.
So call us whatever you want, (I prefer being called "Chief") but just don't forget us. We are part of the American heritage, but we were on the wrong side of history. It happens, and we died, mostly from new diseases like colds and flu introduced by the earliest fishermen and explorers long before the Pilgrims, but alcohol didn't do us much good either: Indian Brave like firewater too much. Not your fault, white man - you had your own problems and your own views, and we had no idea what was happening, and in a sense, we are lucky that you English saw us as even human, with souls, thanks to your Christian educations. True Indian braves, like cowboys, never complain.
(Photo: An Ogalala Chief, 1907)
