“NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH”
This past
week, Caroline and I were in Baltimore to see Susan and a play that she was
directing at University of Maryland Baltimore County called “Hunting and
Gathering.” Since we were in Baltimore,
Caroline wanted to travel across the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore to
seek to find some of her Wallace relatives buried in Manokin Presbyterian
Church cemetery in the 1600’s. “Manokin”
reminded me of the Native Americans who have largely disappeared from the
Eastern Shore: Nanticoke, Wicomico,
Choptank, Tuckahoe, Pocomoke, and others.
These were names seen on streets and rivers as we passed by in our
search.
We
did not find any markers for the “early” Wallaces, though “Find-A-Grave”
indicated that they were buried somewhere in the cemetery. There were no markers earlier that 1820, so
they have faded away. We had tried to
make contact with the church, but we had no success. The church had been founded in 1683 by
Francis Makemie, with whom we had familiarity from our Norfolk Presbytery
days. We did spend the afternoon in
Easton on the Shore, a small town that is seeking to claim Frederick Douglass’
heritage as part of its own. It has a
statue of him in the square, and there were banners everywhere in the square
marking the 200th anniversary of his birthday (a guess at best,
since he never knew the year of his birth, but guessed that it was
1818-1820).
While
he has been reclaimed, the Native American ancestors have not. We got a taste of that disappearance when we
went into a used bookstore in Easton to seek to find some postcards to send to
our granddaughters. The white, male
proprietor of the store noticed my Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, and he asked
me if we were from Baltimore. When I
replied that Susan was but I was not, he asked why anyone not from Baltimore
would wear the cap of the last place baseball team. I replied that it was a gift from my daughter
and also that I could not wear the cap of my home team, the Atlantans, until
they changed their racist name and images.
He looked puzzled and asked if I meant “the Braves.” When I replied that I did, he then launched
into an explanation of why the name “Braves” and its accompanying tomahawk chop
and images were not racist, but were rather honoring the fierceness and courage
of Native American peoples.
My
response was that the Atlantans had not consulted with the Native American
tribes of the land (mostly Creek and Cherokee) about their opinions of the
baseball traditions. Indeed, the
comments of Native American culture are that such usage is demeaning and racist, especially since those
tribes do not receive any of the millions of dollars generated by the use of
their images. He replied that the Native
Americans should not be insulted by it, because it was not intended as
racist. Since I did not know him, I
wanted to add, but I did not, that it was arrogant but not surprising of us
white men to believe that we knew better about the opinions of other cultures
than those cultures themselves did. We
have pronounced it, and it must be so.
As we enter
Native American Heritage Month (or American Indian Heritage Month), let those
of us who are classified as “white” be reminded of our terrible history in regard
to Native Americans. Let us remember our
emphasis in the system of race that our intentions are much more important to
us than the outcomes of our actions. As
this Anglo man stated, if white folk didn’t express an intention of racism,
then our actions couldn’t be seen as racist.
Lest this seem like ancient history, it is the current SCOTUS position.
But, as we
enter this Month, let us also consider the many positive gifts of Native
American heritage, and at this time in our lives, none seems more important
that their reverence for Mother Earth compared to the Anglo ravaging of the
earth. As the icecaps and glaciers
melt; as the fires of the West burn; as the typhoons and hurricanes and tornadoes
blow; as the temperatures and sea levels
rise – in light of these and so much more, nothing seems more vital to all of
us to go back and learn from these cultures who understand the powerful and
complex links between all circles of life in the earth and the universe. Our ancestors and our grandchildren cry out
to us to learn and live this respect.
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