Dear HCN,
I want to comment on
Bruce Selcraig’s article, “Tribal Links” (HCN, 6/4/01: Tribal
Links). Someone – Charlie Rose, I think – asked Sherman Alexie
about the morality, the vibes of Indian casinos. Like, is it a
“good” thing to do? Alexie said he was more concerned with the
morality of having enough to eat.
As far as I’m
concerned, the Indians can do what they want to get money back from
the society that screwed them over. Call it “reparations,” maybe.
They got the worst of everything, the way the deals went down.
Euro-America attempted to control everything from the language they
would speak, to the way they dressed, where they lived, to the way
they prayed. Does anyone doubt this? When the Indian Nations began
making money off their casinos, there were loud voices raised that
this was not “spiritual” behavior. Immoral, said too many
Euro-American voices. Besides, they were taking money from
Anglo-owned gambling operations.
Now, golf.
Personally, I enjoy the idea that the last bastion of “country
club” activity – read high status WASP society – is being taken up
by Indians. Those other minority people were bad enough, but
Indians?
How much water are they using? Two
percent of what goes to agriculture, according to a source in the
article. Gee whiz. How many private swimming pools are there in
Albuquerque or Tucson? But the Indians cut down ponderosas and
bulldozed topsoil. Horrors! What the hell is happening in those
cities I just mentioned? Pick 25 other cities and towns around the
West: the same thing is happening. Maybe its easier to go after the
Indians for trying economic self-improvement. A little perspective
is a good thing to have.
Tribal sovereignty means
self-determination, pure and simple. The Indian Nations do not have
to ask Euro-Americans for permission to do these things. They have
rights guaranteed by treaties, for the most part. But when they
attempt to do things that offend the environmentally and morally
correct, like the Makah’s resumption of whaling, for example, this
inalienable right to self-determination is quickly ignored. “This
is different! This is about what’s right and what’s wrong!” The
question is, who is deciding what’s right and wrong: the Indians or
the Anglos? Yeah. The same people who’ve been doing it for the last
few hundred years.
It really is time to give up
messing with the right to self-determination, no matter what
Euro-Americans think the Indians are doing to the environment. Pots
should not call kettles black.
Peter
Webster
Bend, Oregon
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Sovereignty: never having to say ‘may I’.
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