Note: My poem review of the book is posted here.
It’s hubris to believe that the American history we learned in high school and college is sufficient. As foreign area officers, it’s imperative that we be experts in our own nation’s history and be humble enough to acknowledge its shortcomings. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee’s central thesis is that American Indian history did not end in 1890 (the massacre’s date) but instead was a low point from which modern Indian life emerged. In its title, the author takes issue with Bury My Heart’s fatalism for the American Indian’s future–he argues that the massacre was NOT a signpost pointing back to an Indian past and forward to an American future. This is the history of modern American Indian that you never knew.
“Lost in all accounts of the years between 1918 and 1956 is the knowledge that the only reason there were any Indians left all was that they had fought. They had fought against the government, and they had fought with it. Deprived of every conceivable advantage or tool or clear-heated advocate, they had continued to fight. Nor just in the ways [Dr. Joseph Kossuth] Dixon and people like him imagined, as warriors astride horse roaming free across the Plains, but rather as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. As writers and thinkers. As farmers and soldiers in the Great War. But what to do when the actual fighting stops and pressures bear down back home? What to do when you can’t find the fight beyond the one for daily survival? What to do with that patrimony.”
Strength in this book is his liberal peppering of anecdotes
Federal government went around Indian leaders who wouldn’t sign treaties and made up other leaders who would sign.
Successive wars of under and overreach illustrate a lack of relationships and that Indians were treated as a monolithic people.
10 Wounded Knee massacre used as convenient signpost of an Indian past and American Future (i.e., no
Indian future)
11 Authors takes exception to bury my heart at wounded knee’s narrative of the fatalism of
the American indian’s future of hopelessness and squalor on the reservations
15 Thesis: the last 128 years of Indian history. 1890 (Wounded Knee Massacre date) was
A low point–but it was a point from which the modern Indian life emerged–often and
mainly painfully.
31 3 constants of 1st contact: spread of disease, attempts at slavery, and the spread of
Information. Disease, slavery, starvation and disruption.
32 2 moments in American Southeast standout: Removal and Seminole Wars
35 the real motive: Birth and growth of U.S. wasn’t driven by superior technology, or
overwhelming numbers but rather “the chief cause was the colonialist setter-state’s willingness to eliminate whole civilizations of people in order to possess their land.”
58 Spanish modus operandi: slavery, subjugation, and extermination
62-3 unique southwest: that absorbed every wave of immigation (Spanish, Mexican, and
American) that shaped “the culture and fabric of the place, so much so that to be in the SW is to feel the continued lived presence of Native America.”
64 CA densely populated: before settlers first arrived more Indians lived in CA than the rest
of U.S.--500 distinct tribes, 100 different languages–more densely settled than Europe. Had been that way for 17,000 years.
80 bison annihilation: pre 1800: 60 million Bison. By 1900: only 541 left!
82 comanche most feared and horse: by 1800, 2 million wild horses. Comanche had at
least 100K in their care–super skilled at breaking wild horses. Universally feared by Mexicans, spanish and americans.
84 Osage exceptionalism: sold land in Kansas and bought their own reservation land in
Oklahoma to include mineral and underground rights. Fierce negotiators.
94 How the west was won: by blood, brutality, and terror.
105 Oneida role in american revolution and U.S. betrayal: During washington’s winter at
Valley Forge, the tribe brought them supplies and showed troops how to prepare Indian corn. Congress rewarded them with a treaty guaranteeing their lands forever. 30 years later, it was already vanished.
114 post 1871 Assimiliation policy even worse than treaty breaking and warfare that
preceded it.
146 1887 Dawes Act passed without consent of Indian tribes. In retrospect it sold Indian land
under the guise of allotting the land, and used that money to create boarding schools that stole indian children.
149 only indian VP: Charles Curtis from Kansas (Herbert Hoover’s VP from 1929-1933). He
also passed the Curtis act which he later regretted: brought allotment to Oklahoma but
did it differently where they had autonomy living in settlements with ability to levy taxes and hold state level public office
168 singular/unique resistance of Ponemah: even to today it remains absolutely pagan with
no christian churches there. This doesn’t appear to be accurate–there’s been a Wah-bun chapel there for 30 years! https://centerforindianministries.org/ministry-outreach/
172 4 decades post Wounded Knee: a siege against Indian way of life and life
188 Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Recipients (20! For killing women and children)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/us/politics/tribes-medal-honor-wounded-knee.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/11/27/soldiers-got-medals-honor-massacr
ing-native-americans-this-bill-would-take-them-away/
Disgusting response: https://homeofheroes.com/remove-the-stain-act/
197 Joseph Oklahombi: Most decorated Indian hero of WWI. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OK091 One of the original code talkers but also received Silver Star and France’s Croix de Guerre for his valiant action at St. Etienne where he reportedly killed 79 German soldiers. The most daring, though, was Pvt. Joseph Oklahombi, a Choctaw. At Saint-Étienne, Oklahombi was among a group that rushed across 200 yards of open ground. Together they commandeered a German machine gun and turned it on the enemy, killing 79 Germans and taking 171 prisoners. They held them for four days before reinforcements arrived.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/magazine/ojibwe-big-drum.html
200 1924 all remaining 300K Indians became American citizen but still retained the treaty abrogated aspects of tribal sovereignty–a unique positions.(they weren’t included in the 1868 14th Amendment
202 “Lost in all accounts of the years between 1918 and 1956 is the knowledge that the only reason there were any Indians left all was that they had fought. They had fought against the government, and they had fought with it. Deprived of every conceivable advantage or tool or clear-heated advocate, they had continued to fight. Nor just in the ways [Dr. Joseph Kossuth] Dixon and people like him imagined, as warriors astride horse roaming free across the Plains, but rather as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. As writers and thinkers. As farmers and soldiers in the Great War. But what to do when the actual fighting stops and pressures bear down back home? What to do when you can’t find the fight beyond the one for daily survival? What to do with that patrimony.”
217 Acoma story illustrates Indian’s fight to remain Indian and “American on our terms”
231 On the disease of powerlessness that so many Indians fight “That disease is more potent than most people imagine: that feeling that we’ve lost, that we’ve always lost, that we’ve already lost–our land, our cultures, our communities, ourselves. But it’s one we’ve managed to beat again and again–in our insistence on our own existence and our successful struggles to exist in our homelands on our own terms.”
244 New deal effects were positive for the Indians in step with rest of the country
246 Post WW2 great migration which brought turkey vulture to the rest of the US as they followed the new interstate system
252 Tribes in the early 20th century began to determine how to navigate and bring suit against the state and federal governments for broken treaties and lost lands but the Ho Chunk case was illustrative of its efficacy–the Court of Claims dismissed their case not because it lacked merit but because the land they lost was too great to place a value to determine a difference from their current reservation!
255 “Indian problem” was always a “federal government problem”
263 On reservations as both a positive and negative place. Positive in their function as a home base to promote a sense of community for Indian peoples–however, in the 40s and 50s the fed gov sought instead to terminate–beginning with Menominee of Wisconsin.
277-8 reality of termination: by 1960’s “clearly a catastrophe” with unemployment through the roof and half of Indians living in urban areas by 1970–a huge shift. Most horrible: 1.37M acres taken out of trust status and 12K Indians losing tribal affiliations. Later Nixon would say “this policy of forced termination is wrong…”
279 Positives of relocation: mixing of tribes inside cities removes intertribal “bigotry” and helped them to find the common ground they previously ignored. Intertribe networks strengthened
287 Positives of termination: due to the mixing with other tribes when some returned to reservations, they started to understand themselves as Indians and not just their specific tribe. Previous to 1950, most would never use the term “Indian” to describe themselves
306 In 1972, the American Indian Movement (AIM) tookover the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in DC. WHile it was highly publicized, it achieved little but AIM for all its faults was showing that being an Indian was something for to be proud of.
339 “Let me tell you what separates man from beast. Here it is: salt.” Indian survivalist Bobby on salt’s necessity when trying to survive, otherwise everything tastes awful.
364 Many Indians refer to B.C. = Before casinos (i.e., tribal gaming) because it had as profound an effect on Indian life as did the mass migration of Indians to the cities
378 Indian kind of living: “It’s not an American kind of work, but it is an Indian kind: a patchwork of opportunities that are exploited aggressively and together add up to a living.”
380 On blood quantum: “has always been about ‘the stuff,’ and it has always been about exclusion.” The stuff being offices, annuities, casino profits etc.
401 Language, culture, and religion. On language: “when a community is whole, language grows out of the web of relationships that make that community; it is a by-product of intergenerational togetherness.” But many of the these communities lacked the wholeness, generational abuse fracturing them. “Language has a special role as a carrier of culture.” Some Indian religions could not be separated from their language and couldn’t be practiced in English. So without a language, there could be no soul, no ceremonies.
405 what we learn from Indians: author posits that the central questions posed and pondered by America’s founding fathers can be found in examining the country’s Indian communities which have always grappled with federal government overreach, individual rights vs. societal ones, how to grow and preserve the middle class etc.
412 1992 Turning point. By this point Indians had grown strong enough to resist–physically, politically, and academically. Indians were harnessing technology, Western education, and wage labor and using them. “Indians don’t waste what we kill: we use all the parts of the computer.” p. 417 this was also an inward turn away from the USG and instead occupying “cultural, social, and political space” to
415 Food–a history/culture. Sean is an Oglala Lakota (the Sioux Chef) who is a chef who is making”archival food” –that’s traced and mastered to its roots in Minneapolis through a non-profit that includes restaurants https://sioux-chef.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Eater-Vox-Sioux-Chef-Video-Short.mp4
416 “the story of “the Indian”--has been a story of loss: loss of land, loss of culture, loss of a way of life. Yes, Indians remain…but inwardly we wonder: How much of our culture remains? “ Sean’s food answer that there is much that remains and only needs to be reached out and grabbed
450 Living and adapt as a central tenet of Indian identity (e.g., Black Elk’s latter years converting to Catholicism etc.
451 Point of the book: “Indians lived on, as more than ghosts, as more than the relics of a once happy people. We lived on increasingly invested in and changed by–and in turn doing our best to change–the American character.” Takes issue with Dee Brown’s book that he contends its telling robs the 150 victims of their humanity..they are a tragedy but not a person with dreams and lives…”the victims of Wounded Knee died twice–once at the end of a gun, and again at the end of a pen.”
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