The Dying Underclass

In Part 9 of our readings, the section starts out with a passage written by a native woman to an unspecified patronizing individual. This passage attempts to use plain language to dispel the stereotypes often associated with being of native ancestry. She tries to make it clear that she will not give lofty spiritual advice, nor will she show any of the customs that are often expected of natives. She wants only to be left alone and unmolested by the outsider, and refuses to share anything but her contempt for how she is being treated.

This stands in stark contrast from what our culture traditionally assumes about natives--about their naivete towards outsiders and willingness to share ancient wisdom and lore with anyone who asks. Instead of the friendly savage that is so often portrayed in media we see a cynical, indifferent woman whose people have been oppressed since they day they were first encountered by Europeans, who have written and signed countless treaties only to see every one of them broken, and who have seen their domain which once spanned North America reduced to a few hundred square miles. Even in my own home, I can remember our personification of "Indians" as whooping savages with feathers in their headgear who were masters of the bow and lived in tepees Never mind that, for even the tribes that once lived a comparable lifestyle, much of this culture has by now been lost, and the true station of the native today tends to be on a reservation,[slum] a dependent of the state, with a long history of poverty, illiteracy, and substance abuse. Her cynicism and apathy can only be expected in light of these facts, and the pretense of the outsider is evident from the perspective of a native. For someone who even today, after 500 years of oppression, is implicitly viewed as less than human, her response is perhaps too gracious.

Recently President Obama addressed all native tribes about making them more involved in the political process and decision making. Though this is certainly high minded, it is perhaps too little too late. The time for such actions was clearly 200, 100, or even just 50 years ago. If there is one group in America that remains almost as hopeless today as it has ever been, it is the Native Americans. Whenever there was a need for "progress" and the natives stood in the way, American interests inevitably trumped any sense of humanity or duty towards previously made agreements. Be it displacing thousands for gold, killing buffalo for railroads, or, today, destroying sacred sites for oil, without exception the land, livelihood and history of Native Americans has been viewed as nothing more than one more obstacle to the needs of the average American. Casinos and reservations are not even a pittance for the loss of homeland, sacred sites, and cultural heritage. Be it the driving of natives from the southeast by Andrew Jackson, or, more recently, Al Gore's liscensing of the destruction of ancient sites sacred to the Kitanemuk tribe, American policy has always treated Native Americans as "in the way." Perhaps if he follows through where so many other American leaders have failed by affording Native Americans the dignity they deserve, he will have staked out at least a little change we can all believe in.

Students as agents of change

In our latest set of readings, the article that caught my attention was titled "My Age Has no Impact on How Much I Care." This article brought up the lack of respect and attention afforded to young activists and the effect that they can have on change. There are times that I feel that the causes that my generation supports, or even my generation itself, is treated as secondary, insignificant, or inherently illogical. As a former member of the Student Government Association, I felt that while many people showed respect to the opinions of its members, many others simply brushed us aside to confer with 'the adults' or 'the professionals' regarding this subject, even when such people often misrepresented us or failed to at all.

I feel that it's fallacious and a grevious misuse of civic resources to treat youths as non-participants in public debate. By age 9, I had already written a Letter to the Editor, something that many people do not do for their entire lives. When I was 17 I completed an Eagle Scout project that built a Rain Garden--an apparatus that naturally mitigates the effects of stormwater runoff, and the first of its kind in the Lexington area and a model used by the local urban-county government as an example in seminars on the subject. By the time I was out of high school, I had written my congressman, senators, and the president about the genocide in Darfur--again, something that many people simply don't do. By the end of my freshman year of college, I had appeared in televised news for a speech I delivered in Frankfort about the impact of scarce state funding of universities; in addition to that, I spoke to every state legislator of whose district I was a part(in addition to several others) about this issue in person--how many citizens even know the names of their state representatives?

It is very easy for a student to be brushed aside in a society that equates age as the only indicator of credibility on a subject. Some never even consider the fact that a student might understand where the money their school doesn't get goes, that a student is just as capable of influencing their fellow citizens, or that their youth makes students hold the largest stake in what is done in society. A line from an old Native American Song eloquently illustrates this point, "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." In light of that, alone, shouldn't our opinions on issues that have long lasting effects mean something?