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Indians Will Be Indians, cont.
Now, how can an Indian live an ethnocentric life while also living as a citizen of America (or Canada, for that matter)? Is there really an Indian who is at peace with America and willing to swallow the bitter pills of defeat?
I don't know how individuals acknowledge defeat, whether at work, play, love, and in the case of Indians, of their whole tribal ancestry. I think it requires a certain, perhaps saintly, humility, and a constant prayer for strength to accept what has happened.
Yeagley does this, to a certain extent. But, here starts the contradiction. Despite a professed love for America, I think Yeagley, naturally, loves Indians first – and best. So he has to find ways to incorporate the defeat of his people with their uncomfortable and humiliating lives in modern America. Hence, his strange, and constant, discussions of the subliminal effects of Indians on America, and even the world.
Now, I understand this. Yeagley wants non-Indians to see Indians as some supernatural – and perhaps in a more mundane world more of a subliminal psychological – presence, guiding people with the wisdom they have acquired through their suffering. He wants to give an honorable role to Indians who have survived this historic defeat. But, unfortunately, I think he goes to far.
For example, his position is that America, through treaties of many guises, is obligated to support Indians, like infants still feeding on their mothers' milk, for eternity. Where is the strength in that? How can the reality of the Indian reservations’dismal failures give Indians the licence to be the keepers of America? Where does a losing party suddenly become the winner?
I’m afraid that Yeagley, cleverly and sincerely, is using psychological tactics to give Indians the importance they don’t have. We have some magical properties, we can heal your ills, he says. Yet, he rarely talks about the dreadful ills his own people are going through; their weak and fallen positions. This is hard medicine to take, but it is better to face reality, then at least you can do something about it.
Unfortunately, Yeagley seems more interested in giving Indians a false sense of their position in the world based on feelings and emotions rather than provide recourse for actual achievements. He is acting like any other (leftist) Indian in this case, who professes magical, spiritual, qualities, which unfortunately have not been proven yet.
(Compiled from my various posts at Reclaiming Beauty and Camera Lucida).
