I seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest over on the H-AMINDIAN mailing list with my citation from George Lipsitz to the effect that Cherokee enslavement of blacks was tantamount to other forms of racially oppressed groups currying favor with the dominant white capitalist powers. They would prefer, it seems, to entertain a notion of Cherokees as being powers to be reckoned with, rather than as pitiful pawns in the race game. No amount of "specialist" research will ever convince me of this. When I discussed this with my old friend who is part Cherokee himself and a civil rights activist from the 1960s, he said that this was news to him but it didn't really surprise him. After all, he said, Creoles kept black slaves themselves. For a study of these sorts of contradictions, I recommend Jelly Roll Morton's autobiography, which was filled with open loathing of his pure-blood African cousins. I suspect that this American Indian studies is filled with all sorts of reactionaries who ended up in the field as a way to advance their career. Perhaps there are more job openings in American Indians studies than in plain vanilla American History. I'll stick around this H-AMINDIAN list until they decide to censor me outright. There's nothing I love better than speaking truth to power. Here is a post from somebody who lectures me for having the nerve to participate on the topic of Cherokees and slavery. It reeks of Mandarin snobbery. -------- This is interesting. I have never posted a response that generated so much response in itself. I have received congratulations from friends I haven't seen since my 6 year old daughter was born. Let me say to those asking questions (especially Brian Shields) that the history has not been written. Cherokee history is especially ripe for someone with the perspective of a social historian to assemble the plentiful documents and interpret them. What happened to the Cherokees' matrilineal society? We have only sketchy material. But I do recommend Theda Perdue's new monograph, _Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835_ (1998). These are exactly the sorts of questions scholars should ask. What I hope is apparent is that outside scholars without meaningful research experience had better tread lightly in areas that are not of their own specialization. I certainly do. I would never dream of stating anything so definitive unless I had fully digested a whole lot of secondary literature. Allow the Cherokee and all other native people to be people---not exemplars of any ideals that others have constructed. If subscribers wish for a list of relevant and cutting-edge scholarship, let everyone help. Melissa Meyer University of California, Los Angeles Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
