Affiliated Ute Citizens

Trimble: Let go the chains of victimhood

By Charles E. Trimble

Story Published: Aug 18, 2008

Story Updated: Sep 11, 2008

In this new social and political era, we will be challenged to solve the problems that plague our tribal communities, moving up from victims to victors; the one thing we must do is shed the chains of victimhood.

In the early 1970s, when I first took office as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, there was much Indian legislation before Congress. In my testimony, I almost always led off with a litany of woes describing Indian country: the highest infant mortality; the lowest life expectancy; the highest unemployment; the lowest per capita income, and on and on. I did this to point out the devastation resulting from misguided and malicious Indian policy over many years. But I did it mostly to elicit pity or guilt, and to justify our requests for more appropriations, new programs and policy changes.

Eventually it got to me that I was almost bragging about it, like one might brag about the Pine Ridge reservation encompassing the poorest county in the U.S. So I dropped that pathetic preamble.

And today, 30 years later, it sometimes seems we treasure our victimhood. Through guilt and public embarrassment, we reason, pressure is kept on our federal trustee to do more for our people. In that sense, victimhood is working for us. But we must ask ourselves: what is victimhood doing to us?

Victimhood is a prison from which we must free ourselves if we mean for our children to go forward into a better future. The generally pathetic conditions in reservation communities cannot be simply shed or denied. Those conditions are real, and it’s going to take a persistent effort and a long time to remedy them. We must understand that our problems cannot be solved by anyone but ourselves, our tribal communities and leaders. And we must begin now. There is not much more time, and resources will dwindle when we are seen as hopeless.

We must first reject the notion that poverty and suffering on Indian reservations is inevitable for our people and our children – or that it is part of being a real Indian. There are Indians who say that an Indian person who makes a decent salary and enjoys material goods is not a real Indian; that the real Indians live in poverty on the reservations; that being poor is the price of being real Indian. But the notion that it is somehow noble to forego financial security, material goods, modern conveniences, and self care for the sake of some strange fantasy of Indianness is folly. From the beginning, our tribes were formed as survival units to collectively deal with want and suffering, not to perpetuate it.

But the inevitability of our plight and the nobility of our sacrifice are being instilled in the minds of many of our young people when we keep reliving it in our writings and our classrooms, in Indian studies courses in colleges and universities, especially.

The history of injustice and inhumanity to the tribes must be taught, for history not learned is history to be repeated. But the history must be taught with accuracy and dispassion, as history and not as indoctrination to give Native youth a sense of resentment or embitterment, and the white students a sense of guilt. And journalists have a responsibility as well to relate history with accuracy and truth.

In a recent column by Native journalist Jodi Rave, Sam Deloria is quoted extensively on the subject. His comments are hard-hitting and to the point. “College professors,” he says, “could help … if they stopped objectifying Indians and treating them as victims. Students deserve better.”

Deloria urges professors to quit perpetuating the theory that Indians are victims of multigenerational suffering because previous generations attended boarding schools: “Get over the trauma,” he said.

“These kids should not have to succeed and develop healthy attitudes in spite of those who are supposed to be teaching them in college,” he said. “We sell them short when we treat them as victims.”

In 1956, I attended a summer program in New York City called the Encampment for Citizenship. It was a month-long workshop that annually brought together youth from all across the country and from abroad for some special learning about humanity and rights.

At the encampment, we had an instructor named Matthew Ies Spetter, an intellectual man and a Jewish native of Holland. What stands out in my memory of him were the large jagged numbers tattooed down his arm. He was apparently very young at Auschwitz or Dachau, or whichever camp this inhumanity was carried out, when the tattoo was cut into his arm; and as he grew, the blue-black numbers became distorted.

He was a warm, gentle man, a mentor to many of the young people who came to the encampment to learn about humanity and justice, and what we might do to make the world better. Spetter never said anything about the numbers on his arm, or about his experiences in those Nazi camps of unspeakable horror. Instead, he helped us envision a bright and hopeful future in a better world, if we would strive to make it happen.

His unspoken message was that, personally, you must put the past behind you, no matter how painful. You can never forget, but you must look to the future with hope for a better world and determination to make it so.

The chains of victimhood keep many of our tribal people imprisoned in the depths of dependency, complaining about the wrongs that were done to our ancestors, and using those wrongs as excuses for our inability or unwillingness to progress. And many of our teachers, scholars and journalists make excuses for our condition, and validate societal dysfunction and failure as normal because of the history of our treatment at the hands of white America.

Our tribes have a long, proud history of survival, and we must bring forth that pride in our ongoing fight for a better life we make for ourselves. Sovereignty itself presumes and proclaims superiority. We must not prefer the inferiority that we press upon ourselves when we wallow in victimhood and see ourselves as hopeless people, forever haunted by the self-fulfilling theories of multigenerational trauma.

We cannot sacrifice one more generation to failure.

Charles E. Trimble, Oglala Lakota, was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1970 and served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972 – 78. He is president of Red Willow Institute in Omaha, Neb., and a columnist for Indian Country Today. E-mail him at cchuktrim@aol.com.

A call for unity and activism

National Congress of American Indians’ annual conference rallies the nations

By Gale Courey Toensing

Story Published: Oct 25, 2008

Story Updated: Nov 10, 2008

PHOENIX – Joe Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians, opened the organization’s 65th annual convention with a rousing call for unity and a new, informed activism to move tribal nations forward as full partners in federal government decision making and leaders in the Earth’s healing.

“We’ve learned our lessons. We’ve set some wheels in motion now that are going to get us to the next level in protecting our people, in protecting our children, in protecting our grandchildren. Right now we’re at a transition, and this is a critical point in time and in history for us to be even more united.

“Unity means a whole lot to Indian country, more than it has ever meant,” he told hundreds of delegates and tribal members from across the United States who had traveled to Phoenix for the convention.

Garcia addressed the attendees on Oct. 19, the event’s first official day.

The intense six-day meeting of the largest national organization representing the indigenous peoples of North America took place Oct. 19 – 24 in the Phoenix Convention Center. Each day kicked off at 7:30 a.m. with regional caucuses, where committees discussed and shaped resolutions to be adopted at the end of the convention. The caucuses were followed by a general assembly with reports from NCAI officials, speeches from politicians and other dignitaries, and special speakers who focused largely on getting out the vote and implementing NCAI’s transition plan for the much-anticipated new administration. Afternoons were dedicated to breakout sessions.

NCAI plans administration transition

Tribal nations have been left behind in the past when it came to presidential transitions, but the National Congress of American Indians has an ambitious and comprehensive transition plan that would place knowledgeable and qualified Native people in key positions that impact Indian country.

The plan was distributed and discussed at NCAI’s 65th annual convention October 19 - 24.

NCAI President Joe Garcia introduced the plan during his welcoming speech:

• White House adviser on Indian nations.

“We need a White House adviser on Indian nations, not a government relations person with an Indian person below that. That’s not what I’m talking about. We want a full-fledged person who is attending to Indian issues at the White House.”

The position must be accompanied by adequate staffing and support.

• Secretary of the Interior Department.

The Interior secretary is charged with protecting tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, administering trust responsibilities and a wide range of responsibilities to Indian people.

“So, who should that person be? It must be a person who knows tribal governments, who knows the Indian peoples, who knows what a nation to nation responsibility means. We need to have somebody who is knowledgeable, not on the job training.”

• Office of Management and Budget Assistant Director for Native American Programs.

NCAI’s plan recommends reorganizing OMB to prioritize the budget for Indian nations.

“The budget is set by the president and OMB. All these years we complained to the wrong people about our budget and about lack of funding. We talked to the BIA and IHS and other departments, but to no avail because they have no control.

• Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

“The ASIA bears the full weight of the responsibilities of Indian affairs. That’s a lot of weight, but why should the assistant secretary set the tone for what we can or cannot do? It ought to be us directing the assistant secretary. We ought to help that person find solutions.”

• Department of Justice.

“The Justice Department has ignored its responsibilities for prosecuting crimes committed on Indian reservations, while violent crime, sexual assaults and drug trafficking have reached epidemic proportions on some reservations,” NCAI’s plan says.

“We have to have strong leadership in the Department of Justice and not just in the U.S. attorneys, but in the way the department manages its business. We have to be serious about the DoJ because a lot of or peoples’ lives are affected. We need to work on making the Justice Department more accountable,” Garcia said.

• Federal judicial appointments.

The process of appointing federal judges needs to get beyond politics, hesaid.

“We better have some names of appointments that should be made. We’re soliciting resumes and people who are interested in these positions to send their resumes to NCAI. Who appoints federal judges? The president. We must place some names of potential judicial appointments, so that’s another challenge.”

NCAI’s transition plan has also identified Indian country priorities “where a transformation is needed in the way the federal government interacts with Indian nations.” These top issues should be the new administration’s focus for the first several months, the plan says. They include: trust reform and tribal natural resources management; tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and consultation; funding of tribal government services; law enforcement; and taxation.

The transition plan has also identified national policy initiatives that are likely to be key priorities upon which Indian country should act proactively in order to make sure the nations’ concerns are incorporated from the beginning. They are: economic stimulus; health care; climate change and energy; education and job training.

The plan also includes recommendations for protecting sacred places and reforms in the Department of Homeland Security’s way of interacting with tribal nations, as well as a number of policy statements on issues such as climate change and the Indian Reservation Roads Program.

In looking toward NCAI’s future, Garcia reflected on the past to the events that have brought the Indian nations to the present beginning with NCAI’s creation in 1944.

He quoted from a letter sent to the tribes in October 1944 to rally support for the organization – a letter that in some ways illustrated the conventional wisdom in the saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”:

“‘There are good reasons why an Indian organization is needed. Many tribes have claims against the government because of land that was taken from them without their consent or because of some provision in a treaty or agreement or some legislation and the government has not lived up to its obligation and a strong national Indian organization in many cases will be in a better position to present matters of this kind.’”

Sixty-five years later, the nations have made much progress but have to stay on top of everything, he said.

“Legislation is so fast moving that unless we’re on top of it, we will surely be left behind and we’re not going to let that happen. So, my brothers and sisters, I truly believe the work that NCAI is doing with all your help and all your support would make our founding fathers so proud. But in order to achieve our goals of tribal and cultural sovereignty – the sovereignty I speak of – we must work both within and outside the U.S. system.”

Tribal political influences now are “so powerful,” Garcia said, referring to a number of laws empowering Native people and tribal nations, such as the Native American Self-Determination Act, the Indian Citizenship Act and others.

“But they didn’t come as natural and they didn’t happen overnight. Let’s not let it die; let’s continue to push even more so: and the political process must be a part of this too. I’m Indian and I’ll vote in two weeks.”

The new push in Indian country will begin with the transition, Garcia said. In the past, Indian people have been “an afterthought” in the transition process.

“No more will that be. We have a strong proposal and it’s going to involve Indian country. Indian country must be a part of the transition,” he said to a great burst of applause.

The transition plan – a 45-page white paper – details a strategy for influencing political appointments in key positions that impact Native people, identifies national policy initiatives and provides policy guidance on major issues. And NCAI is calling for recommendations and resumes of people who are interested in serving in the federal government in positions from White House policy adviser to department secretary to staff.

“Before I leave the podium I want to encourage all of you brothers and sisters that this is the time of change; this is the time when we must come together. We must be ever so relentless in all of our efforts to protect our people, to protect the future and build the future for our children and our grandchildren, because that is what life is about and that’s who we are and that’s why the Great Spirit put us on this Earth: to also protect Mother Earth. Global climate change and whatnot – had we followed our ways and if the dominant society followed our ways, we wouldn’t be in this world of hurt,” he said to great applause.

“Let’s build that. Let’s do all we can not only for ourselves, but for the betterment of this country, this great United States of America, because we are all a part of it – and whatever we do to ail Mother Earth we ail ourselves. But we’ve got to stay strong. We must continue to band together to stay strong so we can survive and build the country and bring back Indian nations the way they were long, long before the dominant society. Let’s do that, brothers and sisters, Great Spirit.”

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