Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
That Thomas King is sure one good writer. He writes those funny stories about Indians. Not funny ha-ha, even though sometimes they are that too, but weird funny. Like his Indians aren’t Indians like you know them. I mean some of them are doctors, some of them are lawyers, some are university professors, some are professional photographers, and there’s even some who are private detectives on the side. Hardly any of them ride horses or wipe out pioneers or hunt buffalo and they all talk really good English. Weird huh?
Still they’re good stories, even though sometimes they’re hard to understand. Sometimes he gets things mixed up like the way he has white people cheating his Indian characters or the way the government will try to pull a fast one on Indians by destroying their land with dams. I think he needs to read his history again so he can get his facts straight. Especially now after I read his latest collection of stories published by Random House Canada, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account Of Native People In North America
Whew, that’s one long title that one, but the book sure is curious. For he goes on and on about the ways in which white folks have mistreated Indians. First of all there’s not much that’s funny about this book, that’s for sure. Second of all there aren’t really any stories in it. When you read it you’ll see what I mean about how he needs to read his history books again though, cause the version of events he tells isn’t what we’ve been told in movies or books that we read in school. I’m sure he’s not meaning to tell things differently. I mean it’s easy to be confused by history as it’s usually about things that happened a long time ago. But, I wonder how he could have come up with such different versions of events. Or there’s other stuff he talks about I’d never read about or seen in a movie.
Okay, maybe that kind of reaction is unfair. However, from new age bookstores, movies, history texts, memorial plaques, and baseball stadiums you’ll find Native Americans–or First Nations people as we say in Canada–being misrepresented, stereotyped, and sometimes outright lied about. How many reading this aren’t going to understand what’s wrong with making a team’s mascot a Native? You don’t have to look very far to hear somebody say “We won didn’t we–they should be glad of anything we give them and stop complaining”.
King’s book deals with the very specific history of what government after government on both sides of the 49th parallel–he doesn’t even attempt to talk about the situation in Mexico–have referred to as “The Indian Problem”. First it was a problem of what to do with them because they were on land that we wanted for settlers. Then it was the problem of what to do with them when the land we gave them was discovered to have valuable natural resources under them. Now it’s a problem of what do to with them, period. They didn’t have the decency to die out when we tried to kill them and then they had the nerve to reject all the advantages we tried to force on them through residential and boarding schools.
There are those who say Indians should stop living in the past and forget what happened and concentrate on making a bright new future for themselves. Of course most of the ones saying things like that are those who would prefer they not learn the lessons of the past thus leaving themselves open to being dispossessed of what little they have now. King takes a look at this argument and shows why it’s so disingenuous and dangerous. The problem is, no matter how governments on both sides of the border word their policies, they still have the same goal as the ones implemented 200 years ago. Instead of trying to figure out how to peacefully co-exist with the original inhabitants, everything is still based on eliminating the “Indian Problem”.
Instead of trying to kill Indians with bullets or forcing them to assimilate by locking their children up in the equivalent of jails being passed off as schools, governments are now trying to eliminate Indians legally. In both Canada and the United States there is an official government designation that qualifies a person as an Indian. In order to live on a reservation or be considered a member of a band one has to have that official designation. If there were no people with that designation there would be no need for reservations on either side of the border. So, why not just gradually eliminate the designations?
If you think that sounds highly unlikely, consider this. King quotes census figures from both America and Canada which show as of 2006 only about 40% of the Native population in North America are considered legally Indian. He then goes on to outline how both governments are now proposing new legislation, which if enacted, would work towards reducing that number even further and eventually to zero. The long-term goal being the complete elimination of anybody who is a member of a band that signed a treaty giving them control over land.
It’s the land, stupid. It’s always been about the land. Which is why it’s so important to look at the history. As King points out, you don’t even have to go too far back in history to find proof of that. As recently as 2006 real estate developers in Ontario, Canada started selling and building a housing development on land that was claimed by the Mohawks of Grand River. It was on land given them by treaty, appropriated by the Ontario government with the promise of it being returned, and then sold by local town council to developers.
That dispute ended with the government awarding a compensation package of $20 million dollars to–drumbeat please–the people who bought houses, the developers, and local businesses, for the inconvenience caused by Native people blockading the highway protesting their land being stolen. As for the treaty negotiations in regards to the disputed territory–well, they might get around to them sooner or later.
So the easiest way to make sure this problem never happens again is to ensure that there is no one around to make any legal claim to the land. Oh sure they’re couching the policy in the same old paternalistic language they’ve always used when talking about Indians. It’s good for them. The great White Father in Washington/Ottawa still knows what’s best for those childlike savages. Think of how much happier they would be in the real world where they have all the opportunities the rest of us have. So what if they have no education, no capital and no desire to live like that. So what if they think they have some sort of sacred connection to the land. So what if that’s not what they want–we know better. Anyway, what are they doing with all that land except letting it go to waste? Give them the opportunity to sell it at fair market value and see how quickly they learn to love our way of life.
Of course when Indians have the nerve to try and buy up land at fair market value, why that’s another matter all together. King recounts what happened when a band in Arizona began using some its profits from their casino to buy land around the city of Glendale. Local politicians acted like they feared they would be scalped in their sleep or they were in danger of having flaming arrows shot down their throats because a few hundred acres of land were sold to Indians.
As somebody else said earlier, that King is a good storyteller. But in The Inconvenient Indian he’s not telling stories, he’s telling history. A history that’s not going to be everyone’s liking as it runs contrary to many people’s idea of Indians. Unfortunately it’s far more accurate than any version Hollywood has told them, the one being sold in new age book stores or that which is offered in text books. While at first you might feel like King is softening the blow somewhat by injecting his dry humour into the proceedings, the more your read the more you realize it’s the type of laughter that’s closer to tears than anything else.
For as King points out, the war against Indians isn’t over, only the battlefield has changed. Spin doctors have taken the place of generals and uranium tailings and tar sands’ waste product the Gatling gun and cannon. As far as our governments and business leaders, the ones who see no problem with exploiting and raping the land for everything it’s worth and not caring what condition they leave it in for those who come after them, Indians are every bit as inconvenient now as they ever were. For in spite of everything we’ve “done for them” they still insist on trying to retain their own belief systems and defending what few rights they have left to them. They just don’t know when they’re beaten.
