White Man take picture of Indian

We all play many stereotypical roles in life. I, myself, have played the french maid, the farmer's daughter, and the school mistress. I always charged more than a dollar though.

Hope you don't mind, dys; I posted this elsewhere, but it's one of my favorite Native Injun American tales.


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I have my life through admired the native American Indian and have been outraged that encroaching whites committed their crimes against them. I reverenced a vision of the wise old Indian, a man in tune with the Earth and his past and felt I had perchance met one that day in New Mexico, when I the hitcher got let out at a restaurant. He was standing beside the door, his greeting scarcely a grunt. I felt honored that he followed me in and sat next to me at the counter. "Give my friend a hamburger," he told the waitress, who frowned.
"Give my friend a hamburger," he repeated.
She scolded the old Indian, who broke into a fit of coughing.
I got a cup of coffee. As I sipped the tepid liquid, the Indian decided to impart a great wisdom upon me. "Don't ball up," he said between fits of coughing. "Don't ball up," he said several times.
I gulped the last of my coffee, paid hurriedly, and got the hell out of there.

I can make you talk like an indian....

I was hitchin' somewhere between Gallup and ShipRock and this Navaho man in a new Chevy pick-um-up stopped an gave me a ride into town. I got into the front seat and looked out the back window to see a couple of women riding in the back of the truck outside in the wind. I turned to the driver and said "why are they in the back and you let me ride up here." He said "they stink."

Okay, Individual, I'll bite

HOW?

Individual plans on teaching us Hindi.

Edgar and Dys: isn't it amazing that Indians are just as honorable and just as weasely as all other human beings? The two of you are not being very PC (thank heaven).

Waiting for an answer, Individual...how?

Hey, Diane. Know how to keep a certain individual in suspense?

Yep. That old phrase "honest injun" has some basis, at least so far as the spoken word goes. Does not extend to pulling the leg of the the occasional anthropologist

When I was a boy my older brother became blood brothers with a Pima Indian. The Indians lived in a railroad camp set up near Calwa. The entire camp was fenced and the only way in was by way of a stair built up and over the fence. On weekends my brother stayed overnight, where there was much dancing and drinking. He at age 15. One morning he returned injured. He told me he was making merry with the rest of the tribe and woke up in bed with another 15 year old. This girl's brother cut his forearm with a beer opener. Eventually the Indian boy moved to Albeturkey and we moved to Texas (take off yore hat, boy). They never saw each other again. I went back once while in the Navy. The camp was almost deserted. By coincidence, an Indian of my own age happened to be home on leave from the Navy and we had fun discussing childhood days. I always envied my brother, his ties with these good folk. I remained just an interested visitor, though.

Edgar, I loved the post on the childs play thread and I love the post here.

I was doing a tour with a Nashville band and we were traveling from one Wyoming club to another. It was after 2 a.m. and bitterly cold with the moon glaring off the frozen grass. I saw a Native American stumbling along the shoulder drunk as a coot...then many more. One was even stooped over a passed out reveler rifling his pockets. Seems the whole tribe was making their way home from the tavern. The moment...the uneasyness...etched in my mind.

My favorite modern day Indian is, I guess, Buffy Sainte-Marie. She puts herself on the line year after year. Plus she makes good music while doing it.

From thje Houston Chronicle:

a group re-enacting the Lewis and Clark expedition were confronted in South Dakota by American Indian leaders who questioned the legacy of the 200-year-old trip and its effects on native culture.

An American Indian delegation greeted the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles over the weekend with protest signs, including one suggesting the original expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led to genocide of their people and destruction of their culture. The re-enactors were asked to go back home.

"I went as a peaceful emissary and asked in a kind way if they would leave," said Alex White Plume, a Lakota from Pine Ridge, S.D., who led the protest. "They should go home and rethink what they did to the native population."

Jon Ruybalid, a spokesman for the re-enactors, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the group expects more dialogue with the American Indians they met Saturday near Chamberlain, S.D.

"It wasn't easy listening," Ruybalid said. "What they said was filled with a lot of pain. We are being educated and, in the process, we are a platform for people to express their concerns."

About 20 people taking part in the expedition left St. Charles, Mo., on May 23 on its planned journey along the path of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06. The expedition is heading up the Missouri River in a replica boat.

Ruybalid said members of several South Dakota tribes planned to take part in bicentennial events this weekend near Pierre, S.D. But White Plume said he was "saddened that some tribes welcome them with open arms."

Larry McClain, the expedition's executive director, said last week that the group has had positive experiences with native people throughout the journey.

"We're kind of a platform for education on a lot of issues," he said. "We obviously would like to help them have a voice and a platform for education."

Edgar, Rita Coolidge is another who has become involved with her heritage over the past years. I always loved her voice.

Rita's fine also.

A woderful book is the autobiography "Nino Cochise." Here is a clip about him I found surfing just now.

For the trivia buff, Nino Cochise was the grandson of Cochise. He was the son of Taza and born in 1874. When Cochise died in 1875, the Chiricahua Reservation was slowly dissolved, mostly because the white man had found copper and silver on the Apache lands and were greedy. When the Cochise Apaches, as that band of the Chiricahuas were called, were ordered to San Carlos under Indian agent John Clum, Tom Jeffords resigned in disgust. Fearing what would happen to his people at San Carlos, Taza journeyed to Washington to try and get his people back under the protection of Tom Jeffords. He caught cold on the journey and died shortly after he arrived in Washington of pneumonia, but before he left Arizona, he had made arrangements for his wife and son to escape into Mexico. When the Army came to forcibly move the Cochise Apaches to San Carlos, Nino Cochise and his mother were among the 40 families who managed to escape. They lived under the protection of Nino's Uncle Juh of the Nedhi Apaches, until Juh's death, at which time Nino's notorious Uncle Geronimo sort of assumed responsibility for them. But, Geronimo was still waging war on both sides of the border, and it made for some interesting lessons for young Nino. When he was sixteen, Nino was elected chief.

Throughout Nino's childhood, Tom Jeffords came to Juh's Stronghold many times. He taught Nino how to count and to read and was generally a "father figure" to Nino until the day Jeffords died. He was one of the very few outsiders ever allowed inside the Stronghold by Geronimo. When Jeffords led Teddy Roosevelt to the Stronghold to enlist the aid of Nino and his Apaches during the Spanish-American War in 1898, Nino refused, concerned that it wasn't yet safe for him to cross back into American territory. Nino never came into Arizona that he wasn't in the company of Tom Jeffords, whom he loved and trusted completely. It was well into the 1920's before Nino felt it was safe enough to come to America to live.

To make a long story short, when David Dortort was looking for authenticity in his television western The High Chaparral in 1967, Nino Cochise asked for the part of Cochise, his fabled grandfather. At that time, Nino was 92 years old, missing one leg, and needed to be helped into and out of the saddle, but he won the role. There has never been a greater coup in film-making history before or since.

Australians have a similiar ambivalent attitude to Aborigines.

Indigenous Australians sum up the 'Australian' experience and culture, they're constantly used as images for tourism and history, their culture plundered to advertise every thing under the sun and they are by far the MOST excluded group of Australians around.

They are unable to put a foot straight. Any Koori that makes a go of it is any field other than sports is an amzing spectacle for white Australians. Any moves in a foreward direction for them as a class of Australians is always reported as some sort of set-back for the rest of 'us'.

This observation, along with the sort of lunacy that a pending election brings on, has convinced me that the practice of dumping Europeans in the Pacific, letting them breed like rabbits and feeding them huge amounts of alcohol for two centuries is NOT the way to create a stable, happy nation. Nut-jobs, every last one of us. I need a drink.

tODAY we went to dC to see the opening of the American Indian Museum , on the mall. Its jusy up the street from the East wing of the Nat Gallery and just over from the Air and space museum.
I was amazed at the different tribal reps who were there in their costumes . Many took opportunities to remind whoever looked non-Indian that they were there to remind us non Indians that they were here first.
The building is supposed to be an architects interpretation of a mesa. I dont know why a mesa represents the Amerind culture any more than a long house or a ridge in the Appalachians. Its almost like Disneys hand was the grand interpreter . Why not shape it like Kahokia or build a mound . I hope I grow to appreciate it. I understand that the architect was part of a competition but the selection was based upon a committees decisions and reccomendations.
I think the Freedom Tower in NYC is gonna be like this . The problem with democracy is that it aint art

Right on F-man. I'm pretty sure the Taj Mahal was an outhouse designed by a committee.