While our Governor waits for someone else to pay for Medicaid expansion and lets a useful social service program die, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper shows us how a Governor can use his office to effect some real change.
On Monday, Governor Hickenlooper created a task force to discuss American Indian high school mascots.
Wait—task force? Discuss? Doesn’t that sound like convening a committee to talk a lot but not do anything?
But look who will be talking:
The Commission shall consist of no more than fifteen (15) members and shall be appointed by the Governor. The Governor shall appoint the Chair and Co-chair of the Commission. Efforts will be made to ensure representation from all areas of the state. The members of the Commission shall be as follows:
- Chair;
- Co-Chair;
- Four representatives from statewide education organizations;
- One representative of the Southern Ute Tribe;
- One representative of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe;
- One representative from the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs;
- One representative from the Denver American Indian Commission;
- One representative from the Native American Rights Fund;
- The Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Education or his or her designee;
- Three members of the public [Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, Executive Order B 2015 006, 2015.10.05].
…and where they’ll talk:
Hickenlooper’s order doesn’t include penalties, House said.
“This is a different approach to having that discussion, he said.
Once a month in communities that have the mascots, the task force will hold public meetings. Ideally, tribes and schools can work together, the way Arapahoe High School in Centennial worked with its namesake tribe in 1993 and 1994 to preserve the Warrior mascot and make sure its representation is dignified and historically accurate.
Colorado is home to such mascots as the Lamar High School Savages, the Eaton Reds, the Frederick Warriors and several schools called the Indians, including Arickaree, Yuma, Montrose, Kiowa and Loveland [Joey Bunch, “Colorado Governor Creates Task Force on American Indian Mascots,” Denver Post, 2015.10.06].
Governor Hickenlooper is taking perhaps the most useful action a leader can on this issue. He’s not sending the Highway Patrol to tear down offensive posters or threatening to withhold school funding. He’s piercing the parochial defensiveness that often surrounds this mascot issue and hosting conversations right where the problem lies, right where white people wave banners reading Savages! and Reds! and asking them to talk about what their words and their stolen images mean to their real live Indian neighbors.
Getting citizens to have challenging, educational conversations is the first duty of political leaders. Getting them to act on those conversations is the second. On this issue, Governor Hickenlooper is doing his job by getting his fellow citizens to do the job of civil discourse.
Ah yes, when Democrats are in charge, democracy works. When republicans are in charge…they pull a Daugaard, which is a kind way of saying..natta, zilch and a big fat zero. There certainly needs to be a dialogue that brings all to the table to discuss matters of racial importance. By doing so, it may even save a young life or many.
These are little towns, mostly on the prairie half of the state. Little towns which, like Watertown, have no Indian population so the whites can’t understand how they’re disrespecting anyone. Bringing that committee to town will be an event in itself. It’s easy to act the bully on social media but standing face to face with NA leaders and telling them to “get over it” takes more courage than the cultural appropriators usually can muster.
This is a very wise plan! I’m impressed.
In an effort to add to the conversation, I’d like to include a poem a friend sent me today. The author, Sherman Alexie, is an Ojibwa member in Minnesota. It’s really a lovely bit of writing.
The Powwow at the End of the World
BY SHERMAN ALEXIE
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.
Excellent poem. Thanks for sharing, Ms. G.
Thanks,Deb. Good stuff
Go to the library or book store for other Sherman Alexie books. He writes mostly nonfiction about rez life. While the books are accurate, Alexie writes with humor and heart. I highly recommend him.
Thanks, Deb! I hope Mr. Alexie doesn’t mind our sharing his good poem.
I find many Christian concepts useful. Forgiveness is not one of them. I don’t get how it works or what practical good it does.
Reading Alexie’s poem, I think of the “many of you” he addresses and wonder how any of us can demand forgiveness from the people we have wronged.
Are you kidding me, Mr. Heidelberger? Forgiveness is what sets us above capital”C” conservatives.
Not kidding, Porter. I’m all for compassion and problem-solving. I have yet to figure out how forgiveness fits into that picture, or what it practically means or changes.
Cory, the message about forgiveness is so consistently screwed up that I’m not surprised many folks feel it’s a waste of time and energy.
I’ve had the most personal good from forgiveness when I don’t push it. I come to a place where I decide it would be more beneficial to Me to forgive another. I never make it my duty or my responsibility to the other. Eventually a time comes when I realize that person is just not that important to me any more. When that happens, it’s so freeing!
The hurt is mostly gone, though it is not erased and occasionally pops up again. The most difficult one, a family member, took several years. In the meantime, I know that what that person did is as wrong as it was the first day. But it’s no longer my problem.
The person who perpetrates the wrong has a great deal harder time. As hard and painful as it may be to forgive another, it’s worse trying to forgive one’s self for inflicting the pain.
In Christian terms, asking God for forgiveness is easier than truly believing it and forgiving the self. God forgives and forgets. In fact, God puts that as far away as the East is from the West. For God, it’s gone. But for us it’s still there. The shame, self disappointment, the guilt lingers long afterward.
I believe that’s why so many hard righties are so angry. They know, deep inside a place they try to hide from themselves, that bullying people who have less is wrong.
I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore
These times are so uncertain
There’s a yearning undefined
People filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age?
Ah, the trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They’re the very things we kill, I guess
Oh, pride and competition
Cannot fill these empty arms
And the work I put between us, you know it doesn’t keep me warm
Read more: Don Henley – Heart Of The Matter Lyrics | MetroLyrics
I know, right Cory. You’re reading the wrong part of the bible. The first half is the history of why we needed someone like Jesus who could “turn the other cheek” to all the hate and selfishness that the Hebrew culture was passing off as righteousness. :) You say it just to act scientific but deep down you forgive the people you love just like all of us do.
So what would forgiveness mean in the Native American context?
1. Is it moral to forgive and immoral not to forgive?
2. Is forgiving the white man just an emotional decision not to be angry?
3. Does saying “I forgive the white imperialists for their crimes and their descendants for continuing to derive privilege from those crimes” erase those crimes and white privilege?
4. If a Lakota activist “forgives” us, how does that affect the activist’s pursuit of justice?
We forgive because resentment is self torture.
and then there is the other eagle’s song, not that there is anything wrong with it, that says “get over it”-which seems to be the state of South Dakota’s primary attitude.
seems like there aren’t a lot of other Rumi poems and biblical precepts that keep that sentiment from the dustbin of the decades.
Porter, are you saying the answer to my #2 is “Yes”?
If so, is forgiveness just self-help? How does it affect the forgiven? How does forgiveness applied at the social level advance the cause of Native justice?
” In the time and words it takes to say,honey I’m home. How was your day? You dropped a bomb right where we live and just expect me to forgive.”
Rebecca Lynn Howard-Forgive
In April in a public meeting, one white guy and his wife sat for an hour, 80 years old, rail-thin cowboy, listening to passionate individuals standing, telling how much it meant to them to change the name of Harney Peak. He stood, said, “talk about being in the lion’s den”, then proceeded in ancient “custer-speak” to tell the hundred or more there, and castigate the SDBGN for their unmitigated “PC”gall of even entertaining the proposition under the State tax-payer’s dime, to “just get over it, its been 150 years”.
It was personally clear to him in his life-time that he had never seen an Indian praying on Harney Peak in all his hikes up there. He left and people continued to cry and passionately, mostly politely, to campaign for the change for the full 2 1/2 hour meeting.
mean while, 158 families, one and one half of a percent of a percent of a percent, contributed 1/2 of the money raised for the 2016 campaign.
fovergivness of them by the rest of us seems a bit misplaced.
http://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/12/new-york-times-158-families-contributed-half-the-money-raised-for-2016-campaign/
The answer to #2 is yes. I don’t know all it is, but primarily forgiveness is self-help. How can you know what the forgiven feel? And actually, why would you care. Justice is a legal principal devoid of feelings. That’s why she wears a blindfold.
Leslie, I suspect that old man’s speech is the sort of demand for “forgiveness” to which Alexie is responding. I also get the feeling that “getting over it” isn’t equivalent to the full Christian concept.
But if “get over it” is all the imperialists and racists really want, then of course, we must say, “Nuts to that!” We should never get over injustice.