Half Breeds: The Plight of "Invisible Indians"

Invisible Indians: Mixed Blood Native (Americans) Who Are Not Enrolled in Federally Recognized Tribes, by David Arv Bragi (Muscogee/Seminole) is a book about people like me. We constitute two-thirds of the Native population in the United States, and sadly, we are not recognized by the United States government, and worse, sometimes by other Natives, as Natives. Ward Churchill, who is himself, like Bragi, mixed blood but enrolled, has cut through the confusion by defining a Native as anyone who has Native ancestry. Thus, my self-identification as Native is, in Churchill's definition, quite accurate - accurate enough to give my entirely Native life-style, including my spirituality, my culture or way of life - my way of thinking, feeling, acting, and speaking - my politics, my dress, my hairstyle, my jewelry, my attending Native political activities, spiritual Ceremonies, spiritual/social/cultural gatherings, my choice of reading, my choice of music, my choice of a traditionalist Native mate..."credibility" - a basis or foundation in my ancestry. I am not a dreaded "wannabe" - someone of European ancestry who "wants to be" a Native. HOWEVER, because I am "ONLY" an Ieska - a Mixed (Half) "Breed" rather than a Full "Blood" and because I look European more than I look Native, and because I was adopted out and raised by Europeans and because I was given a European name...I am viewed with great suspicion. Am I a spy? Am I an FBI (agent)? Am I a contemptible "wannabe"? The hated enemy who is at the same time a pathetic imitator and a reprehensible thief of culture as well as land, and worse, a distorter and perverter of that sacred, ancient culture, all Natives have left and cling to and attempt to resuscitate feverishly and fervently? Ward Churchill refers aptly to the appropriation and destruction of Native culture by Euroamericans and Europeans as cultural genocide. And after the physical genocide of 95% of the Native populations of Turtle Island, "North America" and "South America" to destroy the descendants of the remaining five percent by destroying their very group identities, their very existence as definitive cultural groups, is to complete the genocide of Natives of Turtle Island one hundred percent. So the cultural struggle, the cultural war, to protect Native cultures from forced assimilation, from voluntary assimilation to European culture, and to protect it from being lost and forgotten, and to recall it and revive it and live it again, in its traditional purity as it has been thought and felt and believed and spoken and acted for thousands of years, WITHOUT being stolen by others, without being used by others, without being ALTERED, CHANGED, DISTORTED, PERVERTED, INFLUENCED, TAINTED, by ONE DROP of EUROAMERICAN or EUROPEAN THOUGHT, BELIEF, BEHAVIOR, CULTURE, by CHRISTIAN RELIGION or MORALITY, by WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT or PHILOSOPHY is the struggle, the war, for the survival of Native people, the struggle, the war, against genocide, against the official policies of physical genocide, then cultural genocide of the United States government. And I remind my Native relatives of this threat, this death threat, this genocidal policy of Boarding Schools, and Relocation ("Kill the Indian, Save the Man") and I remind them of the way Native culture is stolen by whites who attend Ceremonies and visit Spiritual Men and Spiritual Woman and learn Native languages and "study" Native culture...and of the way that culture, that way of life where the sacred is everwhere and everything, reappears MIXED, IMPURE, DISTORTED, PERVERTED, and thereby ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED, DESECRATED, SACRELIGED, BLASPHEMED, the opposite of SACRED, where before Columbus, before Colonization, before Conquest, there was no opposite of Sacred, there was no Profane, there was no "Wasicu" - selfish, greedy, egotistical, individualistic, materialistic, acquisitive - thought or feeling or behavior or person. And this cultural mixture, more destructive than blood mixture, is absolutely destructive. To touch the sacred with the opposite of the sacred, unknown for tens of thousands of years, then introduced, then dominant, then forced, then insinuating itself ubiquitously, is to destroy the sacred, and to destroy the sacred is to destroy the ancient culture of the people, and to destroy the ancient culture of the people is to destroy the people, the final answer to the Indian questions, the final solution to the Indian problem. But Natives will fight to the death to preserve their life as Natives, to preserve in its pristine form our ancient sacred culture, our ancient sacred way of life, our ancient, sacred life, our ancient sacred identity. We will not allow it to be stolen, to be tainted with one drop of European thinking, feeling, speaking, writing, behavior. And to be strong enough to resurrect that which was not written down, that which is so powerful and so fragile, that which is our very life, and which can be taken from us by the smallest change, the simplest alteration, we need to have the power of coming together and fighting together, as the people came together when Sitting Bull called them to protect the Paha Sapa from the gold diggers and the man who found gold in them, Golden Hair himself. The people, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Cheyenne, came together and fought together and won, defeating the army of the United States on June 25, 1876. No one took blood quantums or asked for degree of Indian blood cards or certificates of enrollment. If you were there, and you were fighting against the United States and those who would desecrate the Sacred Black Hills in their Wasicu lust for gold, backed by their gatling guns and cavalries, you were Native enough. May the same be true today. And may we meet, as we have been called to meet, to protect the Most Sacred Bear Butte, July 4-August 14, to protect our Sacred place where we go for our Sacred prayers and ceremonies, from those who have the Wasicu lust for money that would drive them to desecrate our most sacred place. And may those of us with Native ancestry, who are on the Learning Journey of the Red Road, who meet there, to heed the call, to defend our land, our Sacred land, to fight for our Sacred traditions, our identity, our very lives, know that we are Indians, and no longer invisible Indians. Mitakuye Oyasin, Hante Unpan Winyan, Cedar Elk Woman
Spirituality, Solidarity, Sovereignty, Sobriety/Native Land for Natives Now/Defend Bear Butte