Summer of Stein

"Imagine the Grand Canyon turned into a lake."  (Up the Yangtze)

Last night we watched Up The Yangtze , the 2007 film by director Yung Chang.  The film documents China's Three Gorges Dam and the relocation of young Yu Shui and her family.

It has taken four years for Ms. Niki Lee to face Chang's film—four years to prepare to endure the harrowing sorrow and despair she knew the film would provide given the obvious parallels with the Garrison Dam on the MHA Nation.

"Did you know we're going to be flooded?  Did you know we're going to have to leave everything behind and we're going to be flooded?"  (Waterbuster)

During the building of the Garrison Dam one fourth of the MHA Nation's lands were flooded for the creation of Lake Sakagewa—a lake named after the celebrated Shoshoni slave, and "unwed mother," who helped Lewis and Clark on their expedition, as they forged the Oregon Trail— another monument to western expansion, and the relocation and molestation of tribes in the process.

Up The Yangtze begins with the story of the Ghost City, the place were dead souls must pass before they can return to the earth as reincarnated spirits.  The Three Gorges Dam floods some of that city and some of the sacred sites that relate to this spiritual point of entry.  Where will the souls go on their journey now? 

The Chinese need the dam for three principle reasons:  electricity, water control, and navigation (water recreation).  This is what they say.  This is what we hear.  They told the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations similar things when they began work on the Garrison Dam in 1946, work begun as part of the Pick-Sloan Project along the Missouri River.

As we watched the land be flooded by overweight Americans, tourists, cash economies, mass produced commodities and water I kept thinking of our Nations and our own relocations (to reservations, cities, and casinos as employees).

Every night I dream this dream.  I open my eyes to the end of the world; I have survived.  I wander, sometimes with Ms. Niki Lee, sometimes on my way to find her.  Once I fell off the face of the earth.  I survived that too.  Sometimes I wander for hours.  No one can kill this dream, not even needles from my Chinese doctor.  The dream is old; I've had it since I was a child, sans Ms. Niki Lee.  Relocation is an ancient nightmare, one the ancestors remind us to survive and one we are responsible to recognize the reoccurring terrain of.

Our connection to China is not only one of commerce and mass consumption.  We share the earth; we share humanity.   This goes beyond my constant harping about flicking switches— turning off as much electricity as we can (lights, computers, and chargers), and my concern with the toll technology takes on our humanity and personal relations (including the mass suicides of Chinese workers confined to produce iproducts, or those Chinese whose bodies were savagely put on display for an international tour in the name of science and education).

Watching Up The Yangtze underscores the fact that the greatest war in progress today is the war against the land and against landed people—indigenous people everywhere, those that emerged from Mother Earth, those that fell to her, from stars or rain clouds, those that know first and foremost their place as relations among her children, those that seek balance.

The film is a painful reminder of all our rivers and relocations.  What do we do and where to we go?

D'Arcy McNickle's 1978 Wind From An Enemy Sky begins with Bull, the tribes strongest and most respected man, walking up the mountain to see this lie he refuses to believe:  the dam.  In his sorrow and fear he shoots the dam with his gun.

Bull tells his grandson:  "I am a big man.  I have always been called so.  They gave me my name, Bull, because they said I was strong even as a boy, growing up.  But when we saw how the white man built that place in the rocks and stopped our water, turned it away, I was not a big man.  I fired my gun—a puff of smoke.  You were frightened because I could do nothing. . .After a while, you will understand it.  The white man makes us forget our holy places.  He makes us small." 

McNickle wrote this novel to honor the MHA Nation and their experience with the Garrison Dam.  He wrote a novel.  He created in light of devastation and destruction.  He devoted himself to his passion and purpose—to language and story.   

In 1837 Geroge Sand wrote: "To destroy life is the past time of a Gentleman."  Patience, in Mauprat

Kundera tells this story in "Works and Spiders" a chapter in Testaments Betrayed.  He was 13.  His father hired a friend, a Jewish composer, to teach his son the basics of musical composition.  Kundera wasn't a gifted musician.  The war was everywhere around.  The composer wore the star, and people had begun to avoid any connection to him.  Asking him to teach Milan was his father's show of solidarity—shared humanity.  Kundera followed the man from place to place, each smaller than the last, as the man kept getting relocated throughout the ghettos.  He took his lessons among strangers, strangers to both men, as the composer simply had to go where they sent him.  The bustle of ghetto business surrounded them.  Kundera remembers one moment in particular, this moment shaped him profoundly.

After one of his lessons the composer walked him out and stood by the door.  For no reason Kundera could recognize he said:  "There are many surprisingly weak passages in Beethoven.  But it is the weak passages that bring out the strong ones.  It's like a lawn—if it weren't there, we couldn't enjoy the beautiful tree growing on it."

Kundera continues:  "But dearer to me than the remark in itself is the image of a man who, a while before his hideous journey, stood thinking aloud, in front of a child, about the problem of composing a work of art."

I have been reading story after story of escapes made by people fleeing the Nazis and the Gestapo.  Every artist carried their work with them, no matter how cumbersome:  Beckett, Benjamin, Man Ray and Gertrude's long time collaborator Virgil Thomson. 

Man Ray and Thomson fled Paris together by train.  Man Ray took one loaded camera and Thomson brought 14 pieces of luggage, including 6 trunks of scores he planned to debut in the states once he returned.  The Spanish border guard thought the scores might be military code and refused them entry.  Thomson would have to go on without them.  Thomson refused and offered this explanation:  they were Mozart sonatas.  The guard replied, "Ah, Mozart!" and let them pass.

The artist devotes her life to creation, not destruction.  Elzéard Bouffier plants trees.  I write.  Ms. Niki Lee sews.

"This is how walls have fallen." (Those Who Thunder, Linda Hogan)

For Future Reference: Each Death is Different

Nathan Goodiron's wake was held two years ago, today, at Mandaree North Dakota. He was the eldest son of Harriet and Paul Goodiron. The father of three and the husband of Eileen, of Minot, was a graduate of Mandaree Senior High School. He enlisted in the North Dakota Army National Guard on April 17, 2001. In May he was promoted to Private E-2. The following April he was promoted to Private First Class, E-3 and in December 2003 he was promoted to Specialist E-4.

He was killed in Afghanistan on November 23, 2006, Thanksgiving. That day, posthumously, he was promoted to Corporal. He was 25 years of age, a Hidatsa.

Roughly 1,500 people from the MHA Nation, Fort Berthold Reservation, filled the halls and gyms of two schools for the funeral. After a prayer, a Flag Song by the Oakdale Singers, the Veterans Posts and Ladies Auxiliary marched in procession. Chairman Wells, Eah-Bah-Dah-Gish (Bald Eagle), offered words to everyone and a memorial song was sung for Cpl. Goodiron, Young Eagle. A closing prayer was given for him and for all the TAT men and women soldiers serving the U. S. Armed Forces.

At the Bearstail Family Cemetery in Mandaree, Cpl. Goodiron's uncle, James Johnson, watched over the graveside ceremony ensuring the Honor Guard was in place.

Young Eagle's mother said, "It's hard to accept how he died. When kids are growing up I never knew I was raising my son to go into war and be killed. You read it in the paper and see it on tv, but you never know it could be you."

In 1969 Vine Deloria Jr., wrote: "consider the history of America closely. Never has America lost a war...but name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory, yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict."

Antiwar.com offers the following numbers: the official count of the U.S. wounded, as of 25 November 2008, is 30,832, the estimated count is over 100,000. Since the war began, at least 3,395 American servicemen and women have died.

JustForeignPolicy.org estimates that over 1,288,426 Iraqi's have died as a result of the U.S. invasion.

CNN offers larger numbers, noting that 97 U.S. women have died in combat, and 3,979 U.S. men have died. Of these men, 1,205 were under the age of 22, and 991 were under the age of 24, 1,033 were in Nathan Goodiron's age classification (25-30). Of the total 30,275 U.S. wounded 20,710 were his fellows from the Army, 620 were Navy, 8,462 Marine and 390 Air Force.

This Thanksgiving was an especially cruel one.

Jdimytai Damour was killed in a stampede at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart in New Jersey. His mother is traveling from Port-Au-Prince Haiti to Jamaica Queens to prepare his funeral.

30 years after the original God Is Red, Vine Deloria Jr., revised the entire text and reissued an anniversary edition. Unlike most anniversary editions, his 30 years later offers a true revision and update to the original. In both books he offers a painstakingly detailed indictment of Christianity, naming it as the source of the U.S.'s weakness and consequent inability to keep a peace.

Christianity as a program of Assimilation and resource management gains its strength from its inability to respect and tolerate those who are different. Evidence lies in the article, the. While the Christian faith may be a bitter pill to swallow for some, it is an easy pill and by its own declaration to the world, it is the only pill. I am the Resurrection and the light.

Assimilation is to the United States as conversion is to Christianity. Holidays and Holy Days are more than symbols of faith, they actually keep the faith by clearing space and forcing observance, even if that observance is in opposition (ie., a Thanks for Taking Day, or a Gratitude Day). Holidays force participation. They form a present axis around which everything, in some way, spins. Offices are closed. Mail is undelivered. I am forced to either ignore or answer, politely or rudely, honestly or dishonestly, when people offer a perfunctory "Have a Nice Thanksgiving."

The United States national culture is characterized by the feeding frenzy known as shopping. It's a positive feedback system of sameness and speed. Everyone has to have it; they have to have it now; and they have to have it cheap.

Poverty and subjegation go hand in hand. We've known this for generations. During the Navajo Round Up the U.S. sought to exterminate the People by burning our fields and stealing or slaughtering our livestock. In this way they brought even the wealthiest and most isolated of our community in to the agency. Once there they were forced to make the Long Walk to be incarcerated at Bosque Redondo. Through ceremony were won a return to our traditional lands, in exchange we were given education.

Chief Manuelito said it was a ladder. Taking us where?

In exchange for our culture and traditional knowledge we were asked to assimilate. Once we (all of us) knew who we were, how we came to be and how we were to act in relation to the land and each other. At great cost to our intellect and spirit, and at great cost to the earth, we have been asked to become full participants in the U.S. economy and to adopt the Christian faith.

Poverty and subjegation form a positive feedback loop it is difficult to get outside of. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is an unequivocal example of hatred and intolerance. Some call it a Holy War, some say it's about U.S. security, each explanation is fueled by fundamentalist thought and greed.

The Church is a fiscal entity and a political institution.

Black Friday and the credit crunch (a.k.a. World Financial Crises) reflect the use of poverty to subjegate. The passage of the hateful Proposition 8 in California is a direct consequence of the unwillingness to hold Christians and bigots accountable for their beliefs and actions.

Wealth, today, is largely created by the adoption of new, instantly obsolete, technologies and the manipulation of tax law. We, at the bottom, are left with two options in this reality: get what money you can and spend what money you have. When our participation in this system is given we are left alone, to work and shop. Those who refuse to play the parts set aside for them are targets of violence and poverty, personally and communally.

War in Iraq and Afghanistan, here on the Americas, and in our most private and sacred of spaces, our homes, takes two approaches: the Christian and the consumer.

As the world attempts to stabilize the economies of the most affluent nations, and the wealthiest citizens of those nations, people and land are still being destroyed by armed violence, environmental abuses, dehumanizing and inappropriate technologies and the assault on individual and communal land based identities.

The U.S. has been driving its car into a granite wall at 190 miles per hour. The Land and Housing Era was driven by credit and the fanatical desire for endless growth. Instead of calling out the perversion of this way of living many developing nations (like China and the Navajo Nation) are following the model, though a few steps behind, laid out before them.

Every death has meaning.

Each death is different.

A man was murdered and people continued to shop. They want toys, clothes, food, all the same products, made by strangers. Their desire driven by marketing campaigns, not by self awareness or self possession, they lined up to prepare for the celebration of their Christ by buying things. They did it because it's an American thing to do. They did it because it's a good deal. And in the process Jdimytai Damour died, at work.

The key to understanding the obscenity of his death is to acknowledge its relationship to the blind faith of Christianity and commerce.

For Future Reference: Water Is Not a Renewable Resource

On August 1, 1953, during the 83rd Congress, the House unanimously passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, and while house resolutions are not enforceable by law, as statements of general intent they are binding.

Here is some language: Whereas it is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, and to end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship; and
Whereas the Indians within the territorial limits of the United Sates should assume their full responsibility as American citizens. (emphasis my own)

H.C. 108, Termination policy, was comprised of a bevy of interlocking pieces, each designed to sever the U.S.'s Federal trust relationship with tribes and Pueblos, ending the trust protection of tribal lands, and liquidating tribal assets (disbursing after sale funds through per cap payouts) from tribal to individual ownership, converting homelands into "fee simple" titles sold at large and to (former) tribal members. In other words, dissolving the tribe as if it were a corporation. In this way the People would become Americans.

Termination would in effect grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship, and in return the People would assume their full responsibility as American citizens. The tribe, as an entity, a body with a mind, a spirit and a responsibility of its own, would no longer exist, as would the U.S. Federal government's responsibilities and obligations to the Nations.

In the House Report No. 2680, 83rd Congress, Second Session, 1954, The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara of Fort Berthold were determined to be one of 96 in a list of 179 tribes and Pueblos local BIA officials believed ready to "handle their own affairs."

When tribes vocalized their opposition to being eliminated Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah countered, "They want all the benefits of the things we have, highways, schools, hospitals, everything that civilization furnished, but they don't want to help pay their fair share of it."

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations have paid.

George Gillette, Hidatsa leader, wept while the Secretary of the Interior J. A. Krug signed the document that allowed the flooding the prime river bottom lands of the Missouri River to build the Garrison Dam, resulting in the creation of Lake Sacajawea. The U.S. snatched 152,360 acres, one quarter of the reservation was flooded by the dam reservoir and 325 (80% of the total tribe) families were relocated, losing 94% of their agricultural lands, as well as their ability to "handle their own affairs."

Forced relocation and homeland destruction has left a spiritual and psychic wound in every member of the three tribes that comprise the MHA Nation, both on and off the reservation.

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara continue to pay. As part of the national Fossil Fools Day (April 1) Kandi Mossett, coordinator for the Campus Climate Challenge (Indigenous Environmental Network) scheduled a meeting on Fort Berthold to discuss clean (solar) energy on the reservation. The tribes are currently in the midst of heated negotiations regarding a proposed oil refinery on the MHA Nation. The signs for the meeting were torn down, the event unceremoniously moved and the North Dakota Division of Homeland Security was contacted. (For a full account see ICT, April 14, 2008, New Town, N.D.) Aside from the particulars of the MHA Nation's thinking and action, what is clear is that they are still paying for other people's resources (fuel, electricity) and entertainment (tourism in the form of water based recreational activities) while trying to address the poverty that has resulted from the U.S. reservation system and the MHA Nation's relationship to U. S. citizens, at large, as well as their own status as U.S. citizen, under the 1924 Citizenship Act.

During the Termination Era roughly 3% of the U.S. Federally recognized tribes were terminated, including 41 California tribes in a single "Rancheria Bill" in 1958. The unsophisticated language served further notice to tribal people of the time to what our ancestors knew during the U. S. government sanctioned wars and mass western expansion of settler colonists in the 19th Century. These policies still stand as statements of intent today.

Today, on the anniversary of the H.R. 108, it is necessary to remember that the desire to absorb First Nations into the general American populous remains the same. If we wish to maintain our position, in the land, as handed down to us (in oral tradition and tribal history) through our medicine, wise people and elders, we must discriminate and evaluate our daily participation in American culture.

Water is not a renewable resource. Those with dams on their homelands and on their sacred rivers (like the great Colorado) know this intimately.

Termination policy makes clear the entire project of Americanization—to rid the hemisphere claimed by the "original settlers " of all obstacles to what they envision as life via extermination (of people and their way of living). American consumer culture is not an inevitability, though many cannot see anything outside it, but the culture does exert itself with such force and persistence that it feels irresistible, and somehow a natural part of "progress" as if it is the very definition of "civilization" itself.

We face the legacy of Termination today in advertising, commerce, education, home improvement, enrollment, federal recognition and employment: Nike, Pepsi, Exxon, iLife, MySpace, TMobile, ATT/Comcast Broadband Cable, Direct TV, NASCAR, alcohol, Meth, Water Recreation, English, French and Spanish.

We face it in a flat and unimaginative notion of civilization.

Termination told the truth: They don't want us here and will stop at nothing until we disappear. The immigrant mythology of the U.S.A. is a powerful tool, able to lead new arrivals on the program of abandoning their origin stories, their ancestors and their way of life in exchange for the promise of full participation in the American Dream, in exchange for a flat screen TV, cell phone and iPod.

We are not immune; never forget. What's at stake and what are the costs? America needs Indians, for their mascots, entertainment, and for their national history, but tribal people engaging in tribal culture are the problem—always have been and always will be.

For more information about these policies read Creek/Seminole/Shawnee/Sac and Fox historian Donald L. Fixico's book Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960

For more information about the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations visit: http://www.mhanation.com/main/history/history_garrison_dam.html