Cherokee Elder: Russia working with the indigenous people much better then USA
Right before the International Day of the World´s Indigenous People, which is celebrated on the 9th of August, special correspondent of RIA Novosti Igor Ermachenkov went to Khanty-Mansiysk with the Cherokee Elder of Bird Clan Mashu White Feather and found out the location of the Turtle island, what is the living of the American Indians nowadays, why the Blood Quantum law was elaborated in the USA and what is the difference between the reservation and concentration camp and between Russian and American oil industry.
- Who are the Cherokee?
I am of the Bird Clan of the Ani Gaduwa Tsalagi (Cherokee) tribe from the South-Eastern part of Turtle Island which is now called USA. When I say Turtle Island I mean Canada, the USA and Mexico. Indigenous people are in three parts of Turtle Island. My people are a mountain people. Cherokee territory before the European migration were the states now called North and South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, northern part of Georgia, northern part of Alabama and Kentucky.
- And nowadays?
Since European migration and colonization of our country we have three reservations. One of them is Eastern Band of the Cherokee and Cherokee North Carolina, the second is in Oklahoma, where our people were forced much too, and they are called Cherokee Nation with the capital city Tahlequah. And next to that another reservation the United Keetoowah.
- How many Native Americans live in the US?
Due to the long and ongoing migration to our country and other ethnic groups which live in our country, we now make up only 2.4% of the total population. This is the statistic from the last year. We used to be a 100%! One thing that I always find amazing, in my travels around the world, is that I find people in other countries know more about our Native history than the people in my own country. Most people think that we don’t exist anymore, but we are still here. Our numbers are bigger today than when the first migration from Europe started, although we have some tribes that are now extinct.
- How many Native American nations or ethnic groups live in the US?
We have five Indigenous nations within our country. My nation is Iroquois, then there are the Algonquin people, the Plains (Siouxan) people, the North-West Confederacy and the South-West tribes.
- How many people are in the Cherokee tribes?
We are the largest populated tribe in the United States. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I guess it is around three hundred thousand Cherokee people. We are a very educated people. Just like in any other country, we have professionals - layers, doctors, teachers, businessmen and we have people who are farmers, who work in hospitals. Some of us work and live in the modern world of today and we also have very traditional people living on our traditional lands. But where one lives and what one decides to do for their living does not determine their traditionalism. We have many traditional people all over our country in all fields of work.
- Do you have recognition of Cherokee people?
On the reservations, we have our Cherokee communities. We even have Cherokee communities across the United States. They are the same as which you will find in the reservations, as far as the closeness and the togetherness, but they don’t have official Federal Recognition status by the US-government.
Talking about all the Native Americans, we don’t have federal organization to protect our rights. Only some specific tribes are Federally Recognized, which is only about one third of our total Indigenous population. The Non-Indigenous government has taken it upon themselves to determine who is Indigenous, and who is not. Many tribes are still fighting for the recognition of their tribes.
- How many of the 300 thousand Cherokees have official status?
There are more people living off the reservations then there are on the reservations. So a lot of the people, that have Cherokee ancestry, are the ones that actually escaped the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears is when the US government force marched our people, 800 miles in one of the worst winters in the history of our country, to what is now called the state of Oklahoma. So we have along those routes, the people who got away. Another thing that happened is that our people, in order to keep their families safe, would try pass as another ethnicity besides Native American. If they could pass for Anglo they would, if they could pass for Mulatto they would, and as for the term Black Dutch, we know that is Cherokee. So there is a larger population of Native communities all over the Unites States then just on the reservations.
- Are most of the Native Americans live in the cities and urbanized?
We have a lot of urbanized Indigenous people. I think that we have more people live in the cities than on our traditional and ancestral land. Even the people on reservations are partially urbanized today. But where an Indigenous person lives or works does not determine their traditionalism or ethnicity. They are still Indigenous.
- How many people live in the reservations and what do they there?
The reservations, themselves, initially were nothing more than a glorified concentration camp. A lot of people don’t understand what the reservation is in America because our history is never really truly been told in the history books. So our people are quite ignorant when it comes to native history. This is one thing that I try to correct when I go to schools and lecture in a very positive way. I don’t want to do it in a negative way, but I am truthful and do it in a positive way so people don’t walk away feeling guilty for something that they never had to do with. It was, and is, a government thing. There are lots of people from other tribes who also talk about our boarding schools and the intergenerational social disabilities which have been handed down to our children. The two worst things that ever happen to our people is the Christian church and the US government. The Christian boarding schools took the children away from their families, put them in the boarding schools, which was very institutionalized, and basically took them from their loving families and their culture. It was really a hard hitting form of cultural genocide. And so these kids that ended up in the boarding schools grew up with no parenting skills. A lot of them were physically, mentally and sexually abused by the church people, and a lot of our children died there. There is lots of documentation that the children are buried their and even made headstones for their fellow classmates. These are things that has happened to our people continuously throughout the 600 year history of European migration/invasion to our country.
These are the after effects we are working with now in our Indigenous communities. Only recently have we even received an apology from the US government for the boarding schools and past treatment of our Indigenous peoples and tribes. The same thing happened in Canada. The only difference is that they call their schools residential schools.
- Do you have your national, Native American schools now?
We have schools on the reservations. There is a big push on a lot of the reservations to teach the language starting at pre-school and continuing it through college. Some colleges offer Indigenous students college credit towards their degree for the language courses. This is in addition to the regular school courses that are required by the Board of Education for all schools. Our people have seen that this is the only way to perpetuate our culture, and to keep it alive. This is something that we never want to lose.
- Have most Native Americans been christianized or do they follow traditional beliefs?
There is an interesting fact about that - a lot of our Native people who claim to be Christian are still traditional, because somehow, they managed to separate it. My father was just like that - he was Catholic but followed also the traditional spirituality. I am not a Christian, I am a traditionalist, I was taught old ways by the Elders in my family. But I have nothing against anybody else’s belief system. But, I don’t believe in organized religion, nor people preaching their belief and twisting it for their own personal gain.
Our Traditional belief system is over 130 thousand years old, but I respect everybody’s beliefs. We don’t believe in the Christian teaching of hell or the Devil. My grandmother used to say; “The Whiteman brought the devil with him, let him keep him. We have enough troubles of our own.” We believe that no matter what kind of life you live here on Earth, when we take our journey to the spirit world, which is equivalent, in my mind, to the Whiteman’s heaven. We all go to the same place. This is because our Great Spirit, which other people may call God, is truly our loving, forgiving and understanding God.
I see that lot of young people are starting to come back, because what they find, in the modern world, don’t have answers for them. I like to see young people in traditional ceremonies, even in powwows, for this is a start in a right direction. I have always been involved in Indigenous projects. I was Coordination of Title 9, year ago, where we would take our indigenous kids from their public school to a different location, once or twice a month to be taught culture and traditions by our elders and tutored on their required courses by their teachers. We found that with the culture being taught and shared by the elders, their self-esteem was built up and they begin doing better in school.
- What kind of problems does your nation face nowadays?
There is still genocide, that carries on today in the form of paper genocide. In Canada prime-minister Steven Harper, with just a wipe of a pen, said there are no more indigenous people in Canada. So they can get the reservations and treaty lands. This fight just actually begin in Canada and it is now trickling down into the US.
It is not only my people but this happens on reservations throughout the country. Usually social and economic status is not very good. If you are enrolled in a Federally recognized tribe, within the last probably 15-20 years, you will have casinos on the reservations, and people get per cap checks every 4 months from those businesses divided up equally among all the tribal members. That is one source of income. There are also other businesses that started in the reservations but they don’t have the impact the casinos have. This is what a lot of our people are getting known for. It is really sad because casinos are giving our people a bad reputation. Casinos are a fast way to get money but it is better to raise money in businesses which are more stable like drugstores, gas stations and etc.
The fact is that people have less opportunities living on the reservations than living outside them. It is sad because people who don’t live on the reservations lose their sense of community and don’t have their tribal home.
Lots of native communities keep fighting with one big problem - our native children being taken away from native parents. The authorities say that the parents are not fit when they actually are, and then the children are adopted out to non-native families, not only in our country but also overseas - to Australia for example. We now have a group of our native lawyers, that try to get back our children.
- What do you wish for the future of Native Americans?
The purpose of our organization “Two Feathers International Consultancy”, which we started, is preservation and sustainability of our culture, traditions, language and of course environment, because this is the basis of all our cultures. And it is not only for our people in the US but for all indigenous peoples around the world.
It is also having our native people get over the decolonization. Let’s get indigenized. In other words - thinking old way again, try to unlearn what the white man has put in our heads, try to stop the fighting between us because it is what the government and the church has done - divide and conquer by all sorts of things. For eхample, with the blood quantum, thinking that we could just breed out. I like our people to be recognized for who they are and everything that our people have contributed to our country because our people don’t get recognized for anything. This is also because most people don’t really know. Be able to maintain our traditional lands and treaty land that we have due to the agreement with the US-government.
I don’t think that our people will have the full control of our country again in the foreseeable future, but when it comes to our treaty and reservation lands, the government really needs to stop trying to take our natural resources. The government should realize that the treaties that were made with indigenous people is just like one government acknowledging the sovereignty of another government - just like if they made a deal with Russia. That’s what they did with our people. But they always found some way to get around abiding to the conditions of every treaty that was ever made between our peoples. That has to stop. There should be a mutual respect.
- Could you explain how to divide and conquer with the help of Blood Quantum law?
The US-government, in the 18th century, came up with the blood quantum scheme with the reasoning that after so many generations, there would not be any native people left in our country, and they will have more access and rights to treaty lands. It didn’t work out that way because there are more of us now than in the time they made this program. But they set out to divide our people and out us against each other, and our people fell for it. Now they get full blood natives who are looking down on natives who were born out of the reservations or natives who not being recognized by the US-government. In a lot of cases, the natives which have federal cards are look down on our people who are not recognized. Our people never were like that. We never counted blood quantum prior to European migration. There are even conflicts between recognized and non-recognized Indigenous people.
- What kind of privileges do recognized Native Americans have?
These privileges are wrong and we have to stop it. For example, traditional people who still follow the old ceremonies are not allowed to have eagle feathers if they are not enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. If our non-federally recognized Indigenous people have eagle feathers, and they are caught with them, even if they have had them in their family for hundreds of years, they can be arrested and fined thousands of dollars. A lot of times we find that the Natives living out of reservations are a lot more traditional and follow old ways as opposed to those living on the reservations. Also, in the reservations, they don’t need a hunting license.
I think that the laws need to be changed. If you can prove that you are indigenous through your bloodline, you should have the right to use those feathers and take part in any ceremony that is a part of your people’s culture. There should be no penalties for that. For those who are not Indians - yes, I agree with the laws that are currently in place.
- Does US-government hear the voice of the Native Americans?
Some people ask me, why don’t you come together, unify and take on the government. But there is no way that we can win. Our numbers are too small compared to the rest of the country’s population. Our battlefield today is the courtroom. We learned all we can about the system and we use their laws and their rules against them, to get the things that we need as a people.
That is why I and Doreen Bennet, from the Maori people in New Zealand, started an internet radio show called Indigenous Peoples Voice. Since we have been going to the UN for the last couple of years, we interview indigenous people from all over the world and compare our differences and how alike we are. The audience is about 4 million worldwide. There is hardly anything in mainstream media about the indigenous people. There is a big move among native people to save our lands from taking the natural resources but there is nothing on the news about that. Nothing in Canada or the US. So most people don’t know what is going on.
- Have Native Americans already won some battles in the courts?
I don’t have any specific data and facts, at this time, reflecting the winning of cases our Indigenous peoples have fought in the court systems. I know we have been winning some in the areas of halting oil and mining companies on treaty land, as well as keeping our Indigenous children from being adopted out into non-Indigenous families.
- What kind of natural resources are you afraid to lose?
The big one is the oil. There is a lot of fracking going on around the country, which destroys the land, wildlife, water and vegetation. We do everything we can to save our planet and our people. It is not just for our Indigenous people, we are doing it for all of mankind. But it is hard for indigenous people to come up against governments. So we depend on a lot of support from not indigenous people.
- Where is this landtaking going on?
The government is finding out ways they can get our treaty lands. One thing that just happened recently: Senator McCain took sacred land of the Apache tribe in Arizona, which is the Oak Flat community. They took very sacred land, where the ceremonies are still being done, and they attached this land on to a military bill, that went through Congress. Because one part of the bill passed through Congress, the land was taken away. This is one of the fights which is going on in the US by the Apachi people. This land was kept in the custody of the Apache people through treaty. All of our treaties in the US are the treaties of benefit. They have never been treaties of conquest. The difference is that the treaties of conquest say - I have conquered you and you shall do this, a treaty of benefit says I will allow you to do this if you allow me to do this. All the treaties between US-government and Native Americans, the number of which is up to around 600, have all been broken, and not by our people. They were always broken by US-government, and they always have some reason to back it up. But a treaty is a treaty, and at the time they were made, the governments of these tribes were just as good as when the US made a treaty with the Russian, German or governments of whatever country.
- Lots of Russians have their knowledge about Indians from the books by Fennimore Cooper. What do you think about his books?
He wrote a fantasized version about indigenous people and a lot of his stuff wasn’t very factual. There was one German author - Karl May, that was actually very factual. He never met Native Americans before in his life yet he was very factual in his writings about different tribes. But our people have been romanticized in writing for a very long time, but the truth wasn’t known about what has actually been going on.
- What is your impression about Russia?
It is beautiful. This is a place I never thought I would ever get to see. I have got to see Red Square - I have heard a lot about it. Everyone I have met here is wonderful and very gracious.
The people and region of Khanty-Mansiysk are very hospitable, wonderful, gracious and warm-hearted. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from indigenous people, I find that we are alike everywhere in the world. We put ourselves out more for the people who come from further away. The further you come more we try to make you feel that you are at home. That is pretty universal amongst indigenous people. I was lucky to take part in the national boating competition and the celebration of the water spirit, and it was so good to see people come together in a good way for a competition. If people come together they also talk about other tribal things, and have informal meetings.
- What do you think about the organization of indigenous people in Russia? Do you find this form of community useful?
I think it is uplifting. I will return to my people and talk about how things were here, how things are handled here, and the differences like governmental support of Indigenous people as oppose to the way we have back in the US. Just a fact that oil companies are actually going to indigenous people first to talk with them, then show them what is going to happen, what they can do for them and accommodate them as oppose to just going in and trying to take land and doing what they want without even considering that the land is rightfully of the indigenous people. Oil companies, here in Russia, support what the indigenous people do and want. Like this area is apparently prospering from marriage of the oil companies and the indigenous people working together. The indigenous people are having things better for them.
Russia working with the indigenous people much better then USA does right now. This is something that I can take back to my people, and hopefully make the government more accommodating there as it is here in some way. Maybe with meetings with the government, using here as an example. My concern is if it will work in my country, because we have had too many bad experiences with oil companies, and I think it is because of the government support. We have had lots of oil spills, waters contaminated, and we have had our people become sick because of the contaminants in the water from fracking. The oil companies said: “Yes, we can take care of everything, and it is not going hurt the soil”, but yet it happens and nothing seems to be done about it. Here it seems, from what I have heard from the indigenous people, this is not happening here, and there is a very beneficial cooperation between oil companies and indigenous people. The result is the indigenous people living better and able to do more things for the community. That is important.
Above all, I am still concerned about oil drilling. I think that there are better ways of energy and power, that are not so destructive to our environment.
- What message do you have to indigenous people of Russia?
Continue what you are doing, stay with your traditions, cultures and languages. Work to make sure that your children know your language, tradition and culture, because that is who you are. Learn to look at the world from your indigenous perspective. We are very much a part of the XXI century. We have very professional people amongst us, but in the process don’t lose sight of who you are and where you come from. Maintain your culture because that’s who you are. Make sure it will be passed to the future generations. The basis of any culture is the language, because only with your language you can fully express certain sacred things, which is impossible to do with any language which is not truly yours.
- Who are the Cherokee?
I am of the Bird Clan of the Ani Gaduwa Tsalagi (Cherokee) tribe from the South-Eastern part of Turtle Island which is now called USA. When I say Turtle Island I mean Canada, the USA and Mexico. Indigenous people are in three parts of Turtle Island. My people are a mountain people. Cherokee territory before the European migration were the states now called North and South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, northern part of Georgia, northern part of Alabama and Kentucky.
- And nowadays?
Since European migration and colonization of our country we have three reservations. One of them is Eastern Band of the Cherokee and Cherokee North Carolina, the second is in Oklahoma, where our people were forced much too, and they are called Cherokee Nation with the capital city Tahlequah. And next to that another reservation the United Keetoowah.
- How many Native Americans live in the US?
Due to the long and ongoing migration to our country and other ethnic groups which live in our country, we now make up only 2.4% of the total population. This is the statistic from the last year. We used to be a 100%! One thing that I always find amazing, in my travels around the world, is that I find people in other countries know more about our Native history than the people in my own country. Most people think that we don’t exist anymore, but we are still here. Our numbers are bigger today than when the first migration from Europe started, although we have some tribes that are now extinct.
- How many Native American nations or ethnic groups live in the US?
We have five Indigenous nations within our country. My nation is Iroquois, then there are the Algonquin people, the Plains (Siouxan) people, the North-West Confederacy and the South-West tribes.
- How many people are in the Cherokee tribes?
We are the largest populated tribe in the United States. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I guess it is around three hundred thousand Cherokee people. We are a very educated people. Just like in any other country, we have professionals - layers, doctors, teachers, businessmen and we have people who are farmers, who work in hospitals. Some of us work and live in the modern world of today and we also have very traditional people living on our traditional lands. But where one lives and what one decides to do for their living does not determine their traditionalism. We have many traditional people all over our country in all fields of work.
- Do you have recognition of Cherokee people?
On the reservations, we have our Cherokee communities. We even have Cherokee communities across the United States. They are the same as which you will find in the reservations, as far as the closeness and the togetherness, but they don’t have official Federal Recognition status by the US-government.
Talking about all the Native Americans, we don’t have federal organization to protect our rights. Only some specific tribes are Federally Recognized, which is only about one third of our total Indigenous population. The Non-Indigenous government has taken it upon themselves to determine who is Indigenous, and who is not. Many tribes are still fighting for the recognition of their tribes.
- How many of the 300 thousand Cherokees have official status?
There are more people living off the reservations then there are on the reservations. So a lot of the people, that have Cherokee ancestry, are the ones that actually escaped the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears is when the US government force marched our people, 800 miles in one of the worst winters in the history of our country, to what is now called the state of Oklahoma. So we have along those routes, the people who got away. Another thing that happened is that our people, in order to keep their families safe, would try pass as another ethnicity besides Native American. If they could pass for Anglo they would, if they could pass for Mulatto they would, and as for the term Black Dutch, we know that is Cherokee. So there is a larger population of Native communities all over the Unites States then just on the reservations.
- Are most of the Native Americans live in the cities and urbanized?
We have a lot of urbanized Indigenous people. I think that we have more people live in the cities than on our traditional and ancestral land. Even the people on reservations are partially urbanized today. But where an Indigenous person lives or works does not determine their traditionalism or ethnicity. They are still Indigenous.
- How many people live in the reservations and what do they there?
The reservations, themselves, initially were nothing more than a glorified concentration camp. A lot of people don’t understand what the reservation is in America because our history is never really truly been told in the history books. So our people are quite ignorant when it comes to native history. This is one thing that I try to correct when I go to schools and lecture in a very positive way. I don’t want to do it in a negative way, but I am truthful and do it in a positive way so people don’t walk away feeling guilty for something that they never had to do with. It was, and is, a government thing. There are lots of people from other tribes who also talk about our boarding schools and the intergenerational social disabilities which have been handed down to our children. The two worst things that ever happen to our people is the Christian church and the US government. The Christian boarding schools took the children away from their families, put them in the boarding schools, which was very institutionalized, and basically took them from their loving families and their culture. It was really a hard hitting form of cultural genocide. And so these kids that ended up in the boarding schools grew up with no parenting skills. A lot of them were physically, mentally and sexually abused by the church people, and a lot of our children died there. There is lots of documentation that the children are buried their and even made headstones for their fellow classmates. These are things that has happened to our people continuously throughout the 600 year history of European migration/invasion to our country.
These are the after effects we are working with now in our Indigenous communities. Only recently have we even received an apology from the US government for the boarding schools and past treatment of our Indigenous peoples and tribes. The same thing happened in Canada. The only difference is that they call their schools residential schools.
- Do you have your national, Native American schools now?
We have schools on the reservations. There is a big push on a lot of the reservations to teach the language starting at pre-school and continuing it through college. Some colleges offer Indigenous students college credit towards their degree for the language courses. This is in addition to the regular school courses that are required by the Board of Education for all schools. Our people have seen that this is the only way to perpetuate our culture, and to keep it alive. This is something that we never want to lose.
- Have most Native Americans been christianized or do they follow traditional beliefs?
There is an interesting fact about that - a lot of our Native people who claim to be Christian are still traditional, because somehow, they managed to separate it. My father was just like that - he was Catholic but followed also the traditional spirituality. I am not a Christian, I am a traditionalist, I was taught old ways by the Elders in my family. But I have nothing against anybody else’s belief system. But, I don’t believe in organized religion, nor people preaching their belief and twisting it for their own personal gain.
Our Traditional belief system is over 130 thousand years old, but I respect everybody’s beliefs. We don’t believe in the Christian teaching of hell or the Devil. My grandmother used to say; “The Whiteman brought the devil with him, let him keep him. We have enough troubles of our own.” We believe that no matter what kind of life you live here on Earth, when we take our journey to the spirit world, which is equivalent, in my mind, to the Whiteman’s heaven. We all go to the same place. This is because our Great Spirit, which other people may call God, is truly our loving, forgiving and understanding God.
I see that lot of young people are starting to come back, because what they find, in the modern world, don’t have answers for them. I like to see young people in traditional ceremonies, even in powwows, for this is a start in a right direction. I have always been involved in Indigenous projects. I was Coordination of Title 9, year ago, where we would take our indigenous kids from their public school to a different location, once or twice a month to be taught culture and traditions by our elders and tutored on their required courses by their teachers. We found that with the culture being taught and shared by the elders, their self-esteem was built up and they begin doing better in school.
- What kind of problems does your nation face nowadays?
There is still genocide, that carries on today in the form of paper genocide. In Canada prime-minister Steven Harper, with just a wipe of a pen, said there are no more indigenous people in Canada. So they can get the reservations and treaty lands. This fight just actually begin in Canada and it is now trickling down into the US.
It is not only my people but this happens on reservations throughout the country. Usually social and economic status is not very good. If you are enrolled in a Federally recognized tribe, within the last probably 15-20 years, you will have casinos on the reservations, and people get per cap checks every 4 months from those businesses divided up equally among all the tribal members. That is one source of income. There are also other businesses that started in the reservations but they don’t have the impact the casinos have. This is what a lot of our people are getting known for. It is really sad because casinos are giving our people a bad reputation. Casinos are a fast way to get money but it is better to raise money in businesses which are more stable like drugstores, gas stations and etc.
The fact is that people have less opportunities living on the reservations than living outside them. It is sad because people who don’t live on the reservations lose their sense of community and don’t have their tribal home.
Lots of native communities keep fighting with one big problem - our native children being taken away from native parents. The authorities say that the parents are not fit when they actually are, and then the children are adopted out to non-native families, not only in our country but also overseas - to Australia for example. We now have a group of our native lawyers, that try to get back our children.
- What do you wish for the future of Native Americans?
The purpose of our organization “Two Feathers International Consultancy”, which we started, is preservation and sustainability of our culture, traditions, language and of course environment, because this is the basis of all our cultures. And it is not only for our people in the US but for all indigenous peoples around the world.
It is also having our native people get over the decolonization. Let’s get indigenized. In other words - thinking old way again, try to unlearn what the white man has put in our heads, try to stop the fighting between us because it is what the government and the church has done - divide and conquer by all sorts of things. For eхample, with the blood quantum, thinking that we could just breed out. I like our people to be recognized for who they are and everything that our people have contributed to our country because our people don’t get recognized for anything. This is also because most people don’t really know. Be able to maintain our traditional lands and treaty land that we have due to the agreement with the US-government.
I don’t think that our people will have the full control of our country again in the foreseeable future, but when it comes to our treaty and reservation lands, the government really needs to stop trying to take our natural resources. The government should realize that the treaties that were made with indigenous people is just like one government acknowledging the sovereignty of another government - just like if they made a deal with Russia. That’s what they did with our people. But they always found some way to get around abiding to the conditions of every treaty that was ever made between our peoples. That has to stop. There should be a mutual respect.
- Could you explain how to divide and conquer with the help of Blood Quantum law?
The US-government, in the 18th century, came up with the blood quantum scheme with the reasoning that after so many generations, there would not be any native people left in our country, and they will have more access and rights to treaty lands. It didn’t work out that way because there are more of us now than in the time they made this program. But they set out to divide our people and out us against each other, and our people fell for it. Now they get full blood natives who are looking down on natives who were born out of the reservations or natives who not being recognized by the US-government. In a lot of cases, the natives which have federal cards are look down on our people who are not recognized. Our people never were like that. We never counted blood quantum prior to European migration. There are even conflicts between recognized and non-recognized Indigenous people.
- What kind of privileges do recognized Native Americans have?
These privileges are wrong and we have to stop it. For example, traditional people who still follow the old ceremonies are not allowed to have eagle feathers if they are not enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. If our non-federally recognized Indigenous people have eagle feathers, and they are caught with them, even if they have had them in their family for hundreds of years, they can be arrested and fined thousands of dollars. A lot of times we find that the Natives living out of reservations are a lot more traditional and follow old ways as opposed to those living on the reservations. Also, in the reservations, they don’t need a hunting license.
I think that the laws need to be changed. If you can prove that you are indigenous through your bloodline, you should have the right to use those feathers and take part in any ceremony that is a part of your people’s culture. There should be no penalties for that. For those who are not Indians - yes, I agree with the laws that are currently in place.
- Does US-government hear the voice of the Native Americans?
Some people ask me, why don’t you come together, unify and take on the government. But there is no way that we can win. Our numbers are too small compared to the rest of the country’s population. Our battlefield today is the courtroom. We learned all we can about the system and we use their laws and their rules against them, to get the things that we need as a people.
That is why I and Doreen Bennet, from the Maori people in New Zealand, started an internet radio show called Indigenous Peoples Voice. Since we have been going to the UN for the last couple of years, we interview indigenous people from all over the world and compare our differences and how alike we are. The audience is about 4 million worldwide. There is hardly anything in mainstream media about the indigenous people. There is a big move among native people to save our lands from taking the natural resources but there is nothing on the news about that. Nothing in Canada or the US. So most people don’t know what is going on.
- Have Native Americans already won some battles in the courts?
I don’t have any specific data and facts, at this time, reflecting the winning of cases our Indigenous peoples have fought in the court systems. I know we have been winning some in the areas of halting oil and mining companies on treaty land, as well as keeping our Indigenous children from being adopted out into non-Indigenous families.
- What kind of natural resources are you afraid to lose?
The big one is the oil. There is a lot of fracking going on around the country, which destroys the land, wildlife, water and vegetation. We do everything we can to save our planet and our people. It is not just for our Indigenous people, we are doing it for all of mankind. But it is hard for indigenous people to come up against governments. So we depend on a lot of support from not indigenous people.
- Where is this landtaking going on?
The government is finding out ways they can get our treaty lands. One thing that just happened recently: Senator McCain took sacred land of the Apache tribe in Arizona, which is the Oak Flat community. They took very sacred land, where the ceremonies are still being done, and they attached this land on to a military bill, that went through Congress. Because one part of the bill passed through Congress, the land was taken away. This is one of the fights which is going on in the US by the Apachi people. This land was kept in the custody of the Apache people through treaty. All of our treaties in the US are the treaties of benefit. They have never been treaties of conquest. The difference is that the treaties of conquest say - I have conquered you and you shall do this, a treaty of benefit says I will allow you to do this if you allow me to do this. All the treaties between US-government and Native Americans, the number of which is up to around 600, have all been broken, and not by our people. They were always broken by US-government, and they always have some reason to back it up. But a treaty is a treaty, and at the time they were made, the governments of these tribes were just as good as when the US made a treaty with the Russian, German or governments of whatever country.
- Lots of Russians have their knowledge about Indians from the books by Fennimore Cooper. What do you think about his books?
He wrote a fantasized version about indigenous people and a lot of his stuff wasn’t very factual. There was one German author - Karl May, that was actually very factual. He never met Native Americans before in his life yet he was very factual in his writings about different tribes. But our people have been romanticized in writing for a very long time, but the truth wasn’t known about what has actually been going on.
- What is your impression about Russia?
It is beautiful. This is a place I never thought I would ever get to see. I have got to see Red Square - I have heard a lot about it. Everyone I have met here is wonderful and very gracious.
The people and region of Khanty-Mansiysk are very hospitable, wonderful, gracious and warm-hearted. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from indigenous people, I find that we are alike everywhere in the world. We put ourselves out more for the people who come from further away. The further you come more we try to make you feel that you are at home. That is pretty universal amongst indigenous people. I was lucky to take part in the national boating competition and the celebration of the water spirit, and it was so good to see people come together in a good way for a competition. If people come together they also talk about other tribal things, and have informal meetings.
- What do you think about the organization of indigenous people in Russia? Do you find this form of community useful?
I think it is uplifting. I will return to my people and talk about how things were here, how things are handled here, and the differences like governmental support of Indigenous people as oppose to the way we have back in the US. Just a fact that oil companies are actually going to indigenous people first to talk with them, then show them what is going to happen, what they can do for them and accommodate them as oppose to just going in and trying to take land and doing what they want without even considering that the land is rightfully of the indigenous people. Oil companies, here in Russia, support what the indigenous people do and want. Like this area is apparently prospering from marriage of the oil companies and the indigenous people working together. The indigenous people are having things better for them.
Russia working with the indigenous people much better then USA does right now. This is something that I can take back to my people, and hopefully make the government more accommodating there as it is here in some way. Maybe with meetings with the government, using here as an example. My concern is if it will work in my country, because we have had too many bad experiences with oil companies, and I think it is because of the government support. We have had lots of oil spills, waters contaminated, and we have had our people become sick because of the contaminants in the water from fracking. The oil companies said: “Yes, we can take care of everything, and it is not going hurt the soil”, but yet it happens and nothing seems to be done about it. Here it seems, from what I have heard from the indigenous people, this is not happening here, and there is a very beneficial cooperation between oil companies and indigenous people. The result is the indigenous people living better and able to do more things for the community. That is important.
Above all, I am still concerned about oil drilling. I think that there are better ways of energy and power, that are not so destructive to our environment.
- What message do you have to indigenous people of Russia?
Continue what you are doing, stay with your traditions, cultures and languages. Work to make sure that your children know your language, tradition and culture, because that is who you are. Learn to look at the world from your indigenous perspective. We are very much a part of the XXI century. We have very professional people amongst us, but in the process don’t lose sight of who you are and where you come from. Maintain your culture because that’s who you are. Make sure it will be passed to the future generations. The basis of any culture is the language, because only with your language you can fully express certain sacred things, which is impossible to do with any language which is not truly yours.