And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: While it has been pointed out in subsequent posts that this columnist is nationally syndicated. The point below is still cogent as only some newspapers picked up this particular article. The following may explain their motivation for doing so. Good points. Ish The following is a portion of discussion the following article, labelled by some as "hate speech": Union Leader Don Feder: Bias of Smithsonian's Indian museum will indict America [Entitled :Smithsonian Scalps Western Values in the Boston Herald] http://www2.theunionleader.com/articles/Articles_show.html?article=3694&archive=1 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:44:49 EDT Subject: Re: [Fwd: Check out Boston Herald .com Columnists -- Writers] In a message dated 10/13/99 11:56:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Before you start press-bashing in general or New England >> ( sorry-- think I sent email before I intended- I apologize. ) Sure, press bashing was not (bashing in general is really never) what you want to do. The press sometimes boils out a lot of the complexity of indian issues, or takes a particular side in a political debate, sometimes it does not. I would propose that whenever an article of this type is published, that somewhere in the vicinity a related issue is about to emerge into the wider public view, and the author is moving to supply a prophylactic dose of rhetoric that reinforces one side. This is not press bashing, this is an examination of the power of publishing editorials. In this case, the issue is a native vs. mainstream one, so the flavoring used in the rhetoric is a heaping tablespoon of Custerism. To identify it as hate speech in the modern sense is wrong. There _is_ an understandable and reasonable fear that one's forebears will be portrayed too harshly, but I think that's the lesser component of it. To identify it as a continuum of Baum's editorials is right, because the perception of indians in the mainstream is completely adulterated with stereotypes. Indians aren't "shoe-in candidates" as targets for hate speech, because a somewhat hateful image of indians is practically an American institution! Halloween, a white kid can show up at the typical doorstep dressed up like an indian with a tomahawk and warpaint and he's cute. A white kid shows up on the same doorstep in black face and he is a sicko. I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying that's a fundamental difference. The observation is that when this sort of editorial gets printed in a more regional paper, somewhere nearby are some indians that are about to start raising concerns about their rights, or who are about to be dispossessed of something. The question that came to me was "why is this guy in Boston worried about a museum in DC?". Well, it would seem that there are local fish to fry with the Pequots. In the case of indians-as-stereotype, there is only a recent dawning understanding in the mainstream that the ingrained stereotyping of indians is offensive. In short, the stereotype is close to what we are taught by sanctioned authorities as being the truth, if not identical. The only way to counteract this is to cause the sanctioned authorities to re-examine what they are teaching. The museum as described in the article seems to be an attempt to do this, and the neo-Custerite who is the author of the article is pushing all the alarm buttons that will enflame his fellows in the tradition of controversial editiorials anywhere. What I think is helpful to understand is that PARTICULARLY in the history of US to native relationships, that this sort of rhetoric has been used as a tool to galvanize and advance economic and political opposition to what indians want. Not as "racial invective", but as honed propaganda that is unleashed to encourage popular support for dispossessing the indians of something that incorporates "racial invective". So the dismantling of this propaganda generation system strikes at the underpinning of the neo-Custerites: the tools for disassociating indians from everyone else and stereotype propagation are being threatened. Also, in the New England area, various popular myths are held in high esteem. If the pilgrims weren't "better" than the indians, a lot of stuff needs to be re-considered, hmm? So, because it addresses an audience taught to regard everyone after the Mayflower as an immigrant, the rhetoric is quasi-supremacist, which touches a lot of nerves. Don't get caught up in the emotion of it: this is an example of the new wave of anti-indian rhetoric that echoes the tone of the neo-Custerites-- it plays all their riffs. Mike Mc Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
