On the mainland of America, the Wampanoags of Massasoit and King Philip had vanished, along with the Chesapeakes, the Chickahominys, and the Potomacs of the great Powhatan confederacy. (Only Pocahontas was remembered.) Scattered or reduced to remnants were the Pequots, Montauks, Nanticokes. Machapungas, Catawbas, Cheraws, Miamis, Hurons, Eries, Mohawks, Senecas, and Mohegans. (Only Uncas was remembered.) Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders. Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature -- the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.Recently, someone said to me, "The Indians are a conquered people, and like all conquered people in the history of the world, they should get over it and learn to get along with our culture instead of looking for even greater handouts than we've been giving them for the past hundred years." I replied that here in Canada, I'm not so sure they can be considered "conquered peoples": the government signed peaceful treaties with the various bands, making promises to eventually settle the terms of compensation, and to our national discredit, hundreds of treaties are still in limbo over a hundred years later, and land developers and oil firms are constantly trying to gain control of land that doesn't "officially" belong to anyone. Just as Canadians take pride in saying that our relationship with Mother England was one of "Evolution not Revolution" (in contrast with our saber-rattling American neighbours), my understanding is that we had a different response to our Aboriginal peoples right from the start, too: while the Americans may have had a proactive "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" policy, we were content to set up Reserves where Natives would languish in perpetuity; we stole their children to send to the abusive and culture cleansing Residential Schools; and promised to eventually get around to looking at all those unratified treaty terms. Neither side of the border holds a moral high ground on this issue, and while I hope to eventually find a Canadian equivalent of this book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a horrifying and fascinating account of the treatment of the American Plains Indians in the latter half of the 19th century.
This book deals with each tribe's similar story in separate sections: the U.S. Government decides to open up territory for white settlers, compels the local Natives to confine themselves to a limited area, and when the settlers decide they want even more land, the government agents break, amend, or disregard the treaties they have signed. If any of the tribes object, the army is called in, and when the settlers clamour for even more of the reservation land, the Natives can either agree to be moved to the inhospitable Indian Lands of modern day Oklahoma or stand and fight against Civil War veterans who are equipped with repeating rifles and mountain howitzers. This same story is replayed over and over again, acting out a dozen Trails of Tears, and while that may seem relentless and like as though the government never learns from past mistakes, it's important to remember that all of the stories are happening at the same time -- the Apaches in the south and the Sioux in the north were fighting their wars concurrently, with the same brutal orders coming down from Washington concerning their treatment. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is subtitled An Indian History of the American West and it doesn't attempt balance or give insight into the government's point of view: this is a series of eyewitness accounts from the Native side, strung together with official reports and commissions. And while I hardly batted an eye learning about entire tribes that had already been wiped out in the Eastern U.S. by this point, the individual deaths in the following account of the Sand Creek Massacre (as recounted by Robert Bent) brought me to tears:
After the firing the warriors put the squaws and children together, and surrounded them to protect them. I saw five squaws under a bank for shelter. When troops came up to them they ran out and showed their persons, to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all. I saw one squaw lying on the bank whose leg had been broken by a shell; a soldier came up to her with a drawn saber; she raised her arm to protect herself, when he struck, breaking her arm; she rolled over and raised her other arm, when he struck it, breaking it, and then left her without killing her. There seemed to be indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children. There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed, and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Every one I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child; as I thought, lying by her side. Captain Soule afterwards told me that such was the fact. I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them. I saw one squaw whose privates had been cut out…I saw a little girl about five years of age who had been hid in the sand; two soldiers discovered her, drew their pistols and shot her, and then pulled her out of the sand by the arm. I saw quite a number of infants in arms killed with their mothers.(Teddy Roosevelt later referred to this massacre, "as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.") Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is an important counterweight to the official "taming of the Wild West" mythology and it is incredible that even though it was released in 1970, five years later School House Rocks came out with their Elbow Room video, happily harmonising about Manifest Destiny and western expansionism; a song I loved as a kid myself without questioning the ethics of the acts.
How odd then to read a book where I am convinced that Kit Carson and George Custer (Hard Backsides) got exactly what was coming to them; that Crazy Horse, Geronimo, and Sitting Bull (and other chiefs) were the most honorable men in the west. I know that there have been some attempts to re-examine the wild west mythology (with films like Dances With Wolves), but even all these years later, people seem to prefer the legend (and as I was looking up Elbow Room on YouTube, I saw comments from more than one grade school teacher who said they love showing the video to students and I wondered, "Is there any chance that started a conversation about how horribly mistreated the Native people were as the settlers drove their wagon trains across the west?")
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is not a perfectly written book; many readers will find it a bit dry and repetitive -- and many may not appreciate the one-sided version of history -- but I think it is absolutely required reading. The book, and this review, end with the words of Black Elk as he remembered the confrontation at Wounded Knee in which Sitting Bull was killed:
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…
The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
When Kennedy first started this semester, she came home complaining about a group of middle aged women in one of her Art History classes who were hijacking the discussion with what she found to be unrelated information. She and I shared a laugh about Mature Students in general and I explained that I understood exactly what she meant since my mother was a Mature Student in one of my classes.
Kennedy came home a couple of days later with another story she knew I would enjoy -- In her modern art class, the professor put up a projection of the introduction to their textbook, which began with something like: "Modern art is generally defined as beginning in the post-colonial era of the late nineteenth century and occurring until the middle of the twentieth century". Before she had finished reading the entire introduction, a woman was waving her arm and the professor stopped to acknowledge the question. The student said, "As a woman of Aboriginal descent, I would like to make an objection to the term 'post-colonial'. From my perspective, colonialism is alive and well in Canada to this day." The professor was respectful, explained that the term "post-colonial" was a generalised one used to denote a specific time period, and encouraged the woman to bring up any concerns when they explored Aboriginal art later in the term. Kennedy said that the entire class groaned when the woman was speaking, and she thought that I would enjoy mocking Mature Students with her once again. But this story made me uncomfortable.
I told Kennedy that I bet this woman had felt marginalised (fairly or not) her entire life and I imagined that she thought going to university would give her an opportunity to speak up for herself and her community; I bet she determined to take every possible opportunity to educate her fellow students. I felt awful for her as I imagined the class groaning as she spoke and wondered if she realised that it wasn't because she was a Native woman but simply because she was another Mature Student hijacking the discussion with information that wouldn't be on any exams. I hope this woman doesn't stop trying to speak up for herself -- I want a Canada in which everyone has the chance to speak and be heard. This country ain't perfect, and most especially so when we consider the treatment of our Native peoples.
