I want to thank the graduating class for inviting me. Personally, one of my main concerns is education, and to narrow it down further, it’s BIA education. To start this off I’m going to read a statement that was used last December at Chilocco Indian School. This statement was issued by the Native American Rights Movement in Oklahoma.
In the treaties our people signed with the US Government we always specified education for our people as a provision for treaty. Our people envisioned education as a means of creating new life for our Indian people. A way of building new from the foundations of our cultures and heritage. A way of creating wholeness for our people to retain the good of the circle of life. The Government people said yes the education would be provided for our young. Instead of education we have been ravished by the plague, the plague of broken promises. The plague of self-serving politicians. The plague of bureaucracy in an unfeeling government. Where we sought to perpetuate the ways and beliefs of our people, the right to control our destinies, the government has worked to perpetuate genocidal Indian policies from the dark ages. While waiting for the white man’s government to find sanity we have watched our children be assaulted with the cultural and institutionalized racism this society is famous for. White people do not want their children bussed to school, so the government relaxes the bussing law, yet the government did not even wait for buses for our youth, they used the team and wagon until the bus could be invented yet, no one complains about our forced bussing. We do not like the idea of our young being sent to schools that do not teach. We do not like the idea of prisons because we are Indian. We are tired of beatings in the boarding schools, we are tired of the loss of our right to say what happens to our children, we are tired of the stealing of our monies by governments and White controlled school boards, we are tired of having our children taken from us so that some white institution can destroy then with its hypocritical, bigoted, puritan morals. We are tired of incompetence when it comes to our young We do not want a White political system to destroy us. We do not believe in the Great White father. There is none. He stopped being great and he stopped being a father; in his hypocrisy he has only remained white. We are tired of government educators producing our young for the slums, poverty, prisons, alcohol industries, and grave diggers. We are tired of being misused and lied to. We want no more flowery rhetoric and hollow phrases. We want an end to this administration, and the future administrations, telling us what we have to be to qualify for Indian self-determination. It is time for them to listen to us and our ideas. Their ideas have produced a five and half year educational average, a $1500 yearly income, 70% unemployment, mass suicides, alcoholism. Their ideas have reduced our land base. Their ideas have sought to destroy people. Indian people.
This statement was written in December in direct response to what happened at the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma. There was a dispute between students. There was a fight and one of the counselors at the school hit two of the girls in the face with a flashlight. I guess in a sense, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for us. We protested what this man had done. This white guidance counselor hit these girls in the face with a flashlight. We protested it. So the Bureau of Indian Affairs brought the FBI in. They brought local, county, government people in, and everyone cleared the man. The man’s name is Doyle Presley. They cleared Doyle Presley of the charges of hitting these two girls, and now this Mr. Doyle Presley is the principal of Jones Academy in Oklahoma, another BIA school. They promoted him from guidance counselor to principal. And I heard, right here on this campus, that there was a man fired not too long ago because he invited some students to his house for a party. An Indian man. He was fired without a hearing. There are a lot of Indian people that are concerned about education. We’re concerned about the protection of our people. Now, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, since the Chilocco deal, is promising us a student bill of rights, and already they’ve lied to us about it, and this came out of the national office. They promised us a student bill of rights that would be written by the students and their parents, and it would also include the administrators of that school. But that is not what is happening. We have a student bill of rights that the Bureau is dictating, and they say they want it approved by the 1st of September. They are dictating again, one more time what we should have and what we should not have. I think that it’s time now for us to make a strive forward in trying to get control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We are faced by racism at all levels. We are faced by racism through the law, we are faced by racism through religion. Organized christian religion is racist toward Indian people. The law is racist, the educational system is racist, police departments are racist, city business is racist, county business is racist. We live in a pocket of racism. We are completely, totally surrounded by it. And this racism has kept us divided. This racism has played upon our minds and made us fight with each other. It’s time now for us to defeat it, and the surest way is the one way that we have not tried yet. We have tried taking police departments to court. We have tried taking school boards to court. We’ve even tried fighting with ourselves. Well, every time we try a different direction we divide ourselves up and we split up. What it is time for us to do now is to fight the Bureau of Indian Affairs because the way conditions exist today, the BIA is going to survive and if it survives the way it stands now Indian people as people are going to perish, And so it is down to the line now of survival. It is up to us to decide for ourselves. Is survival important for me as an individual? Because as individuals, every one of us will survive. Indian people will survive as individuals, but as a people, as a Sioux tribe, Navajo tribe, Pawnee tribe, we will not survive. Twenty-five years from now, everybody’s going to be walking around the U.S. saying. “I’m part Indian” but there will be nobody walking around saying, “I am Indian .” Because that is what the genocidal policies of the U.S. are set up for. To assimilate us into the dominant society. It is not a culture, it is just a dominant society. They want to assimilate us and make us be little brown white people, and still they will not accept us. We will always be Indian. We go where the tourist people live and they look at us and we are their token Indian. We go into the heart of Oklahoma where the redneck people live and we are the enemy. They do not recognize us. They do not want to recognize our validity as people. They have done everything they could to keep us divided. We think it is time now for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to stop creating division within the BIA schools. We heard much of this talk about student rights and that students need more protection, but we are going to have to face the facts of life. They do not treat us like students even if we are in school. White students go to school and their parents get to have a say in what is being taught to them in these schools. White students get to have a say in what they’re going to do in the schools. They treat us like Indians-whether we are student age Indians, whether we are employee age Indians, whether we are grandfather age Indians, whether we are small, child age Indians, they treat us like Indians. . .there is no difference to them. They treat us like Indians because they control our lives. They treat us like Indians because they dictate how our money is going to be spent. They dictate what type of religion we are to have. And to show you how far they have dictated, they have told us that we need to be white, and now the trend is starting to come where they’re saying, “well, you can have some of your culture back.” That is dictatorship. It has nothing to do with freedom. It has nothing to do with democracy. The white people in this country talk about Hitler and what he did to the Jews in Germany, what the Nazis did to all of Europe. What about what they have done to Indian people? Freedom means you have the choice, you have the choice to decide what’s going to happen to your life. Freedom means that Indian parents have got a right to say what is going to happen to their children. Freedom means that Indian parents have the right to keep their children at home and raise their children in their own community schools. Freedom means that Indian people get to set the qualifications for those going to teach their children. BIA says that you’ve got to be qualified. To be qualified for the BIA, you have to have a Ph.D. or some other fool degree that these people are talking about. To me, the way I interpret it, an Indian person is more qualified than any white there is that walks the face of the earth today. An Indian is more qualified to come into our schools and teach. I do not agree with the theory of the BIA misspending our funds by paying agency superintendents 25-30,000 dollars a year to come and oppress us–because that is what is going on. Why doesn’t that Agency Superintendent work for $5,000 a year. He’d still be making more than the Indians in his community. Why can’t we take that money and restructure it? Why can’t we hire our own people to come into the schools and teach the native tongues to their own children? Why can’t we have our own people come in and teach the religion? Why can’t we have our own people be paid to come into the schools and teach our children what is good about their people. We cannot do that because white people don’t want us to. I don’t hate white people, but I’m not going to lie for them. I’m not going to make any more excuses for them. They have had 400 years, we have fought them, we have begged them, we have tried to reason with them, we have tried to do everything their way and they won’t listen. They turn around and they run a trip down on us about democracy and freedom. If we stand up and protest what is going on they turn around and call us names like militant, radical, communist, un-American. Well, if we’re going to talk about being American, how many people here have read the Constitution of the United States? Read the Constitution. Read Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution. That says that when they set up who was to have representation in the Congress, Indian people were, are excluded. It says in the Constitution of the U.S. that we have no representation in the Congress. The Declaration of Independence when they listed their reasons for going to war against Europe, we are one of the reasons. They passed civil rights acts during the 1800’s they fought the Civil War because people are supposed to be equal. The civil rights acts of the 1800’s pertained to black and white, excluded Indian. The civil rights legislation of the early 1950’s excluded Indian. The civil rights action of the early 1960’s excluded Indians, and then in 1968 they came up with some little fool law that says we have representation. By that time our numbers are so small, who are we going to vote for? We’re going to have to vote for some white politician to go on to the national level and do our saving for us. We have been doing that. Taos Pueblo was lucky, they got Blue Lake back. While this political system was giving one tribe some land back, this political system was taking up in Alaska and ripping-off from all the native peoples up there. They went into South Dakota, they did it there. They’re doing it to the Tesuque Pueblo! They’re going in. . .and the BIA is doing it, the BIA is condoning it. All these white politicians they went and helped to save Blue Lake and then they ran around and patted themselves on the back and said, “Look, I like Indians.” The disgusting part of it to me is that if there is any discussion about what is to happen to our land, we should be having that discussion. . .it should be Indian people, it should be the tribe that the land belongs to. It should not be a bunch of white politicians having this discussion,and in the end, doing whatever they want to do. What I was getting into earlier about the fact that I don’t dislike nor hate white people and I won’t lie for them, but I think if ever there is going to be a feeling of honesty in this land again, the white people are going to have to take the truths that we are saying and not feel guilt, not feel hatred, anger, gladness, anything. They’re going to have to take our truths and change themselves. . .and not come in and try to change us. We come up, we protest what is going on and tell them the truth, and they come over here and say, “Here, we’ll create a funding agency and give you $25,000.” That hasn’t changed the conditions. Indian activism has increased in the last 4-5 years and all of a sudden CEO and HEW and the BIA and all these other white organizations are coming up with a little bit of money to give to the leadership, telling this leadership, “we recognize you and because we recognize you, we recognize your people.” Raymond Yellow Thunder was killed in Gordon, Nebraska, after the recognition of Indian leadership, after 4 years of it. It did no good for Raymond Yellow Thunder. It did no good for the man from Hoopa, California, who was shot to death by a Highway Patrolman three months ago and left lying dead by the side of the road. It has done no good for the native peoples in Alaska. It did no good for those girls who were hit in the face with a flashlight by Doyle Presley.
I read a report put out in the state of Oklahoma. In this report, it said that 236 of our people are locked up in institutions. Do you know what an institution is? An institution is for incompetent people. I do not believe that 27% of our people are incompetent. The institutions that they’re talking about are mental hospitals, they are prisons, they are boarding schools. 23% of our people are locked up in some type of an institution. At the very minimum, our unemployment rate is 50%. That means that 73% of our people cannot produce for our society, for our world. That means through the white man’s bureaucracy, 73% of our people are slaves. They are physically alive and mentally dead. But these are things that we’re all aware of.
To the graduating class and to the students who are here. No matter what anybody ever tells you, you are all capable of thinking, and just because you don’t agree with what other people say does not mean you’re not right. It does not mean that you are wrong. Do not let this system push you into escape. Do not let the racism of this country destroy you. It destroys us with alcohol. It destroys us with drugs. There is something that really bothers me and makes me pretty mad sometimes, that is to hear people turn and condemn the drunken Indian. The drunken Indian is a drunk for a reason. I’m tired of white people telling us what our priorities are, because it is a white concept to turn on your brother because he does not agree with you and try to destroy him. It is a white concept. It is totally white. Our grandfathers never did it. But now because we have Indian people who, to escape this system, have turned to alcohol. We are told we must condemn them because they are not good for our world. That is a lie. If we’re going to condemn anybody for drinking, let’s get on the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Have you ever noticed when the BIA comes into a community to meet with that Indian community, they bring in their booze first. They cocktail reception themselves into a good time, and the next day when it is time to talk about the issues that we’re concerned about, everybody’s hung over. If they’re not hung over, they’re friends. “Well, I got drunk with him last night, that’s my brother.” If we’re going to condemn the drinker on the street, let’s get them out of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They should not be there. White people, when they stole our land a hundred years ago, they came in and they brought that bottle of whiskey and then they brought that piece of paper to sign. Now, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is doing it. That is why we’ve got to get the white people out of the BIA.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs should be totally run by Indian people. I say that, in no more than 4 years, no more than 4 years, starting right now today, the BIA should start working to turn over control of all agency offices, all area offices, and all the schools, 25% a year until 1976. In four years, they’re going to celebrate their 200 years of independence and all this. . .then we should have our freedom by then. Four years and no more.
I was in Pine Ridge, South Dakota in March (1972). In Pine Ridge they have an old peoples’ home and the old people that stay there have to give their welfare checks to the county. That old peoples’ home-all it is is a “death inn.” It is a place that they are putting old Indian people so that they can die. Also in Pine Ridge, S.D., there are small children that have no one to take care of them, these kids are put in orphanages, put in christianity type schools, put in Mormon foster homes. Why can’t those children have grandparents, and why can’t the grandparents have grandchildren? The county doesn’t want to do it that way. The Bureau is the one that should be making that possible. Every time we want something, every time we want to use our minds to create something of our own, the people that throw the wrench in is the BIA. I don’t blame the Indian people working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I don’t blame them because the Bureau of Indian Affairs is constructed under white rules. It’s got white rules, it’s got white ideas, and it’s got white people sitting in there making all the final decisions…all of our top salaried positions, the top salaried positions to the white man means that’s who has the authority.
White people. . . Even this school, an Indian man could be the director of this school, but he does not answer to an Indian on his higher up. The “higher up” is white. And they use this kind of a tactic to keep us fighting among ourselves. In this school and in every school that the Bureau is funding, whether it is a mission school or a boarding school or a day school on the reservation. The Bureau had better stop trying to divide our people.
In southwestern Oklahoma, down at Ft. Sill Indian School, there were some Indian employees who didn’t like what the Superintendent of the school was doing at the time, a man by the name of Talmadge Heard. We should remember these names. Mr. Heard was not doing his job at the school so some Indian people organized to get him out, some of the employees. Well, they got rid of Heard, then the Bureau turned around and got rid of them. Our people have no protection in the school system, our people have no protection in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If we complain about what the Bureau is doing to us, they turn around and they fire us, or they kick us out and send us home. And they’re going to continue to do it until we tell them to stop, until we make them stop.
White people have even decided what the Indian way is. Some anthropologist comes out and writes a bunch of books and says, “well, this tribe is stoic, they never crack a smile, they’re passive.” If we were so stoic and passive, why did they commit genocide on us? Why have they used every means possible to destroy us? So, I don’t worry about militancy and radicalization; all white concepts, white ideas, white terms that they have applied to us. But I do know that there is a time for people to fight. When it is time to survive, you’ve got to fight. I’m going to explain fight, fight does not necessarily mean with a gun or with a bomb. Fight means with the mind. Fight them with our minds. Resist them. Say, “We’re not going to listen to you no more.” Look at us, look at what is going on around us. Look at the poverty. Look at our people being sent to prisons. That is because we have listened to them. That’s why our land is rapidly disappearing. I encourage anyone out here to do their own study. How much has our land base decreased in the last 5 years during all this Indian activism and militant actions? Our land is still decreasing. And now the Bureau does not turn around and sell our land outright, they lease it for a hundred years. For every hundred-year lease, if one starts tomorrow, there’s not going to be one of us around here to see it when it ends. And that whole time white people are going to take it and develop it and rape it. Make money from it. Black Mesa is happening all over the country, and it doesn’t just happen with strip mining. It happens with housing developments. It happens with golf courses. It happens with supermarket complexes. So I believe to fight them, we must do it with our minds and just say, “We’re not going to listen to you any more. You’re not going to take anything again.” See, we’ve got nothing to lose. Are they going to kill us? They’re already doing that. If 44 years is our life expectancy, they are killing us. They have turned around and lied to us and said, “we’re not killing you.” A hundred years ago, they brought their cavalry and they just rode us down. A hundred years ago they brought their rum runners in and their gold searchers. All these people, they just came in and killed us, they shot us. Now they quit shooting us like that, they no longer use that method to kill us. Today they’re killing us with poverty, they’re killing us with these type of schools, they’re killing us with their churches, they’re killing us in their cities, they are killing our minds. If they can kill the mind, they don’t care if the body continues to carry on, because it is just a matter of time until the body’s gone too. They’re killing us by making us drunks. And when we become a drunk, they can rationalize, they can sit back and rationalize “Well, he did it to himself.” But we did not rob land from ourselves.
There is one question I’ve got to ask, about working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why, as in Oklahoma with this Doyle Presley, couldn’t the Indian community look at his records to see what kind of an employee he is, and to evaluate him? They couldn’t do that. You go out here in the white world and you ask those white kids if somebody hit one of them at school. Their parents could look at that man’s record and evaluate him. That’s how they’re destroying us in the schools.
There should be no American history in the BIA schools, because American history is one of the biggest lies that was ever put down on us. In American history we are told to respect white and deny Indian. How many of you have heard about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, George Arnstrong Custer, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin? And in our own American history, how many of you have heard of Pope, Keokuk, Captain Jack?That’s who we should be learning about. That is our history. Those are our people. George Washington was not the father of my country, and he never will be. Just a little sideline on George Washington, in 1763, the British passed the Proclamation of 1763, this proclamation said that there would be no settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. George Washington claimed ownership to 2.5 million acres of land west of the Appalachian Mountains, and he did not give it up. Benjamin Franklin owned 20 million acres of land west of the Appalachian Mountains. That land that they claimed to own belonged to the tribes. Those people were crooks! And yet, we’ve got to be taught to respect them. Maybe that is why they have used such methods to try and destroy us. If I have to spend my whole life respecting a crook, then I’m no better than he is. . .and I know it, so rather than live with that, I’ll escape.
I’m going to say to the class that’s graduating and the students that are returning. You’ve got rights, and wherever you go don’t ever fight for your rights as a student, as an employee. Fight for your rights as a human being. We don’t want student rights. We don’t want employee’s rights. We don’t want drunken Indian rights. We want our rights as a People. We want our Indian rights. We had so much in the past because we fought for our rights. Our nations were strong. We were strong as individuals because we did not try to lie to ourselves about anything. And I think it’s time to start that again and carry it out. Whatever you do from here to show your pride as an Indian, you decide what your pride is, whether I agree with it, whether the people up here agree with it, whether the people sitting next to you agree with it. It’s your pride, you show it and you live it. And agreement isn’t necessarily the right way.
To the young people that are going out, these are the people that are going to have to handle this whole mess in about 5 years, it’s going to be thrown on your shoulders. Forget everything white that is bad. An example, white people tell us that for Indian people to get together, we’ve got to think alike. They tell us, “You Indians want something, all of you sit down and put a proposal together, and we’ll give you some money.” They don’t even talk about our rights then, they talk about money. When we sit down and try to think alike, we fight each other every time. What it is time for us to do now is to support the idea of our human rights, and fight for our rights the only way we know how. Let’s not exclude any of our people. Let’s create no elitism. The drunken Indian has got just as much a right to fight for his people as the student does, as the employee does, as the elders do. All of our people have got a right, just because they don’t agree with us doesn’t mean that we have to fight them because that’s what we do. If they don’t agree with us and what we’re doing, we should understand. What does it matter as long as we are going after control of our lives. The first step toward freedom is to stop people from pushing you around. ~
SOURCE: Santa Fe