How Americans View Native Indians?

4 varied Attitudes toward Native American Indians – NAI

US Pilgrims & Revolutionaries – from 1500s to 1800, we very awed, scared of &or dependent on Natives who showed & instructed them how to live in the ‘strange new’ lands of deep dark wet ‘scary’ forests, from Europe they came has to hunt & farm or die. In mid 1700s Ben Franklin & other learned deeply with Indians who helped them organizing their new declaration & US Constitution based on Indians nations confederacy style of meetings, representatives & decision making, from home village family style democracy Iroquois Indians working ‘Great Law’ they still used, use & still are unknown to most Americans.

See In Absence of the Sacred – The Failure of Technology & the Survival of the Indian Nations” - Jerry Mander, 1991, Sierra Club, SF

~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Children’s views of NAI are simply more questions than perception, beliefs & experience with Indians. Who are/were they? How’d they live where? Why they disappear? How/why did we white pilgrims/pioneers kill them off? What happened to them after being moved, or killed? Where are they now? Maybe pity for them, seeing them in cities or dirt poor on reservations?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Adults business & political views – We had to take their land, or kill them for it to migrate to east coast & learn from them how to live in huge dark wet & wild forests. Indians had the best places for living near water & wildlife, so we had to take it from them killed & pushed onto reservations to suffer & die off. NAI seemed more like animals to Christian Americans who worshiped their patriarchy god & savior, rejecting Nature Spirit as guiding forces of peaceful living on the land in harmony with weather, wildlife, fish & waterflows. So their children were taken to white American schools with god, math & science to grow up for business. But most Indians didn’t like becoming good smart Americans who work for a boss, living in boxes far from their root families. Most the Indian traditional ways & lands were taken form them & deny their sources of giving & helping white pilgrims & pioneers, who came, saw, needed, learned, benefited &or stole their goods lands, women, horses, etc. Indian in tribes are more cooperative than most American imagine.

Indians now have become Americans on welfare, or rich from Casinos & rarely form mining claims in their lands, & poor sad or mad drugged drop-outs, like bums, beggars & poor campers. Many still live in native villages of families with strong visions of advocating natives be granted Constitutional civil rights for tribes, via law, protest being jailed, eaten killed, & some educating us about nature, & our responsibility to native peoples.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Curious & Sympathetic US Adults –

Nature loving, eco-freaks, spiritual seekers, deep ecology back to earth, hairy hippies & stoners. Idealize or study or learning to practice ancient simple Indian ways, work to help them on reservations, follow native spirit ways, build &or live in tipis, yurts & hand made huts, so sweat lodges, beading, hunting, foraging, herbs, vision quests, make, buy or wear ‘Indian’ style clothes, native tattoos, etc. Meet Indians to learn who they are, traditions, skills, etc. Many feel/think pity for Indians so abused by American for centuries reflected in many movies since Little Big Man, Dances With Wolves, Emerald Forest, 500 Nations & others. 1000s /year travel to native tribes to learn how natural traditional people live, as many have/done in anthropology, esp after Margaret Mead writing books about in 1920 & 30s. Even Eskimos, Tibetans, Siberia, Mayans, in Peru & Amazon jungle, New Guinea, Africa, India Aboriginals, etc.