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Time to stop mythologizing American Indians
To explain why the Cherokee "rite of passage" story concerns me, I have to go back to a day in 1962 when I was a Speechwriter at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I worked in the part of the department responsible for the ANA, the Administration for Native Americans; so, one day when my wife walked up to a group of us, I said, "I'd like to introduce my wife Brunetta, who's a Native American." She smiled sweetly and replied, "Gee, honey, I thought you were born here, too." Later that day, I asked her why SHE was upset. She responded that American Indians are being marginalized by a mix of political correctness and mythology, most of it invented by non-Indians. "Both make us less human. Native American is a politically correct term invented by guilt-ridden Liberals in academia and the bureaucracy who are too lazy to learn tribal names." Her solution, interestingly enough, is paralleled by mystery writer Tony Hillerman (author of the Navajo Tribal Police novels) at the end of "Hunting Badger," in his account of a Smithsonian-sponsored conference he attended. Award-winning American Indian author Sherman Alexie (I urge you to check out his website), Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, also bristles at the use of Native American and at well-meaning but inaccurate portrayals of the First Americans. In fact, in an example of deja vu, he told a British newspaper reporter that he doesn't use Native American because it's a term made up by "guilty Liberals" (and this was years after Brunetta chastised me). My wife is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation, one of the Five Civilized Tribes marched by Pres. Andrew Jackson on the Trail of Tears. To the extent that you mythologize a people, you diminish their existence as real human beings and reinforce their existence as a mere caricature as themselves. I'm not suggesting that anyone set out to do that on purpose. I'm merely asking people to keep that in mind whenever they read anything that portrays American Indians as "quaint" in some way. One of my sisters actually took time one day to tell my wife what Indians "are really like." Brunetta's patience was greater than mine would have been in her position (as you may have guessed by now). I'm Irish-German, so I have much less at stake from caricatures. American Indians are still finding their place in our society. Different people use them for political purposes, or for literary or cinematic props. The least we can do is not make their situation harder. Thanks
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