'Indians First, Always,' Demonstrator Declares
'Indians First, Always,' Demonstrator Declares
The hundreds of young Indians ranging through the government-drab corridors of the Bureau of Indian Affairs these past two days share the exuberance of radical pride and anger over the age-old suffering of their people.
"We are Indians first and always," said 16-year-old Morgan Grass, a Cherokee Ponca.
The long hair, beads and rough-hewn clothes they wear are not just an identification with the mode of present-day America, but also a link to the past, to the costumes of their Indian forebears.
Even their slogans mix modern militance with sagas of another time: "Indian Power," "Geronimo was right," "Custer had it coming and so do some others."
Martha Grass, the mother of Morgan and a proud Cherokee herself, took a measure of the scene Thursday afternoon, as the Indians barricaded themselves in the building, and said:
"It's for these youngsters to take us back to Indian ways. They're the ones that can say 'now we will take care of ourselves.' The older people are just beat. They don't think change is possible."
The 800,000 Indians in the United States have a heritage of special agony that they say sets them apart from other minorities. Most of their land has been taken, their numbers have dwindled and many of their customs have become tourist caricatures.
The beating tom-toms, the chants and dances of the young in the auditorium of the Indian Affairs building will bring back neither land nor brothers, but they revive the spirit and remind all who listen of former Indian glories.
The Indians who came to Washington this week on what they call "The Trail of Broken Treaties," have traveled long distances, from Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas and North Carolina, the organizers claim 5,000 will come; so far, it is closer to 1,000.
Their leaders, mostly from the organized American Indian Movement, are smooth and experienced in the ways of protest, comfortable in the televised glare of press conferences, adept with crowd-calling bullhorns and tough in the closed-door negotiations with the officials they have come to challenge.
Peter La Pointe, a 42-year-old Winnebago Sioux who is the Nebraska state coordinator for the AIM, said the purpose of the week of demonstrations was "to show that Indians will no longer be at the bottom of the totem pole."
"We demonstrated before 100 years ago when we fought the white man; we lost that," he went on, "but there is a new awakening now. The black has accomplished his goals. We want ours."
Those goals are encompassed in a lengthy manifesto of 20 points, a complicated compilation of long-time Indian demands: the right to self-determination and the promise of a richer, better life.
Few of the demonstrators can tell you much about the details of that manifesto. They talk instead of the white man's prejudice and oppression and their intention to win back what is rightly theirs: not land so much, but dignity.
"This country should let me live as I always did," said Jerry Rogers, a 28-year-old Chippewa laborer, "they shouldn't be telling me to do a lot of things, like fighting wars where we don't belong and going up in space where don't belong either."
For Lydia and Hope Heis, 14 and 16 respectively, the problem takes a different turn. They are Sioux from Minnesota and until this year went to the public schools. Now they attend a "red schoolhouse," what they called, "a survival school for Indians."
"We were surrounded by white people in white school," said Lydia. "It was too much of a hassle because they kept saying they were best and Indians are nothing. I'm not worried anymore, though, because Indians will get their rights."
Behind the BIA building, in the parking lot crowded with the Indians' cars, three young men sat talking, matching each other in the sharpness of their rhetoric.
One said his name was Len Not-Afriad and he used an American flag to wipe his nose. "We are prisoners in our own country," he said. "Who ever gave you white men the right to do that?"
Another youth said he was Joe Moving-Around. "We are ready to fight and die for what we believe in," he said, "just like the people who lived here 100 years ago."
Len Not-Afraid listened. "Right on, right on," he said.