By David Treuer
JUST over a week ago, a handful of Senator Scott P. Brown’s supporters
gathered in Boston to protest his opponent, Elizabeth Warren. The crowd —
making Indian war whoops and tomahawk chops — was ridiculing what Mr.
Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, called the “offense” of Ms. Warren’s
claim that she has Cherokee and Delaware ancestry.
To mock real Indians by chanting like Hollywood Indians in order to
protest someone you claim is not Indian at all gets very confusing. Even
more so because early Americans spent centuries killing Indians, and
then decades trying to drive any distinctive Indianness out of the ones
who survived. Perhaps we’ve come a long way if Americans are now going
around accusing people who don’t look or act Indian enough of
appropriating that identity for personal gain. But in fact, the
appropriation of Indian virtues is one of the country’s oldest
traditions.
No comments:
Post a Comment