The Rhetoric of Empire and Our Image of Indians

My most common memories of American Indians, although I realize they are false, are those from old Western movies. The Apache, Commanche, and other Plains tribes were favorites for directors and writers to use to exemplify the "Savage". It makes me laugh to think about the context which we talked about this representation today. It is nothing more than a way to push what we fear about ourselves (as Westerners) on other groups of people. Although the tribes of the plains may have had a strong warrior tradition, that does not mean that they are unthinking monsters who rape, pillage, and destroy. But if we think of them that way, we have a much easier time rationalizing our own agenda. It becomes much easier to kill a group of people and take their land when they are not on a moral par with you. Western movies are just one example of how we have continued to use Colonial discourse to defend our mistreatment and general disrespect of the cultures of American Indians.

The Books of Mausape

For one of my other classes, I'm reading a book called The X-Indian Chronicles: Books of Mausape. I really liked reading the book. It presents the story of 4 friends growing up in NDN City. It's really enjoyable because it's told in a series of separate short stories. Some stories are related to the characters, some are myths, and some are a combination of the two into one. Those are my favorite, when the world of the spirit enters into the real world. Unlike books more in line with Western ideas, there is nothing strange about interacting with spiritual beings in the real world.
It gives one a chance to see a different view of the world. It's a different voice, one that cries out with the joy and pain of being an American Indian. The power of the author's voice is sometimes shocking, sometimes enlightening, but always extraordinarily enjoyable.

Balancing the Scales

I think we often forget just how many American Indians have died due to one cause or another since Europeans have settled here. Like the reading pointed out, we have no sense of American Indians as agents in the struggle between themselves and Europeans. We have a vague idea that they were there, they were doing things, and then they were gone. The tribes are never presented to us as making choices of equal importance to what Europeans were doing. I think it comes from the idea that we already know the ending to the story. The American Indians, to a certain extent, lose. They're overwhelmed and pushed out.
The Western view of history is one fraught with the idea of historical inevitability. We assume that events occurred the way they did to lead us to where we are right now. Thus, we can marginalize the agency of American Indians because what happened to them was what had to occur. We need to give that up. As long as we consider it conscionable to think this way, we can never deal with what happened in our collective past. And if we never work to understand the past, we cheat ourselves of the chance of crafting a better future.