A middle-class British white guy who worked in a mayonnaise factory has retired to pursue his dream of being an Indian — the kind of Indian he learned about by watching spaghetti westerns. So now he makes fancy feathered headdresses and elaborate wooden pipes, just like real Indians do.
You know, I do sympathize with the idea of admiring and respecting other cultures, and I think it’s a good hobby to read about and study diverse people. Indian history actually is interesting, and often tragic, and complex. Maybe he digs deeper, but this story presents his obsession as being more about the idealized exotic Western image of the Indian, rather than, say, the kind of Indian Sherman Alexie or Leslie Marmon Silko writes about.
So this promise is rather horrifying:
The 65-year-old is hoping to take his talks to schools and museums to eradicate some misconceptions there are about Native Americans.
“Eradicate” is not a synonym for “propagate”.
The article itself is shit, too. First, they say “left his job” and “quit his job” when really it was “retired”, which doesn’t have nearly that story pull of “leaving a good job and going out on a limb to pursue one’s dream” so much as “guy got tired of sitting around the house doing nothing and got himself a hobby”. And then, despite all the “fair and balanced” style of reporting everyone’s into these days where any jerk with an opinion gets to negate whatever someone else has said, they didn’t interview any people who could actually have something to say about the authenticity of what he’s doing.
Do the spaghetti westerns have any cool, badass indian? Like the hispanic Django of the 1970s? That would be an ideal to emulate…
We can extend this to the Lapps: The dangerous Lapp Mafia, smuggling arctic pot hidden in the multiple stomachs of the reindeer. Kick-ass eskimo ninjas. The Amish terminator.
The local newspaper depicts him as a guy who has an actual academic interest in Native American history, not some Night-Vale-esque crypo-American. So I dare say this is the usual sort of tabloid bollocks.
http://www.expressandstar.com/editors-picks/2014/07/30/les-quits-work-to-be-big-chief/
(That’s not to say that the guy couldn’t be walking around with a head full of bad ideas.)
Some years back–and quite possibly still–“Old West” re-creation activities were, from what I’ve heard, quite popular in Germany.
Worldwide, there is the Society for Creative Anachronism doing pre-1600 (mostly European) re-creation activity, some of which involves some pretty serious research.
The facts that neither article mentions the name of a single tribe, that his quotes talk about Native American religions and culture collectively, and that he gets the number of tribes substantially wrong make me doubt that this guy is engaged in serious academic study of a culture.
Sorry I can not quote a source. One article about the making of the movie A Man Called Horse discussed how the production company wanted to make a “realistic” movie about native peoples and not a standard Hollywood one. They asked native tribes of the region where the movie takes place for information about the clothing their ancestors wore. They answered with pretty much with what you see in movie Westerns of the early 20th century. The native peoples themselves had no other source of information about their own history. This gives us some idea of the depth of cultural eradication that took place in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Another one of my favorite examples of this is that (and please somebody correct me if I’m wrong, I’d really like to know the answer if it exists) the “Delaware” tribes were named after a Governor of Maryland, Delaware, who had a good relationship with them and no one bothered to record what the people actually called themselves. Think about it.
But didn’t you see the part where he said he visited actual tribes and got to see and participate in dances? Those are totes real! It’s not like these tribes would set up some sort of dance that’s not traditionally accurate just to put on a show for tourists. /snark
Seriously, having lived in South Dakota, which has a good sized Native population, there is a tourist industry there around supposed Native culture. Much like sadunlap points out @7, it may not be easy to determine what is actually traditionally part of the culture and what is portrayed as having been part of the culture merely as a marketing ploy. I am a bit concerned that this guy may be taking things at face value a bit too eagerly.
It’s Wiki, so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently they call themselves the Lenape.
Leo Buzalsky
I’m put in mind of when a (white) friend asked me about powwows in her area, because she really wanted to get some spirituality in her life. She’s an atheist, but y’know, Indian religion isn’t actually religion. That’s just good ol’ Spirituality. And they’re all completely interchangeable.
Some days I just want to go back to bed.
This. The second article says he’s interested in tribes in Arizona, New Mexico, and the Southwest generally. Which encompasses many culturally distinct tribes. Just looking at his photos he’s mixing up several into that generic “spaghetti western” indian. His comments about the use of buffalo make that even more obvious since a number of the tribes in those regions farmed as well. This is a major peeve of mine. Too many people, even Americans, think of them as some sort of monolith with interchangeable culture and different names.
I don’t know…what he’s doing sounds so far removed from the lives of the people whose ancestors crossed the Bering Strait however many years ago that it’s almost cultural appropriation of Karl May rather than of them.
Re the issue of cultural genocide and how complete it was, a little anecdote:
Through a series of improbable events, I ended up in one of the “Indian” casinos in the northeast. I don’t really care for casinos, so I went to the attached museum instead. The tribe involved was putting a lot of money into trying to reconstruct their ancestors lives, including their language. Except that no trace of it survived. So they ended up with research into some vaguely related language groups and cultures. Even with the money an extremely successful casino could put into the research they really found nothing on the people that they were descended from.
It sounds more like a fine example of English eccentricity to me, rather than an instance of cultural appropriation. Thomas Berger’s novel Little Big Man is a fine example of the latter, but of course it’s far more than just that.
Which always puzzles me a bit. Are they really not able to tell the difference between, say, the Lenapi and the Dene and the Aztecs? Not to mention the difference between Hollywood’s version of the culture and reality? I’m trying to think of an analogous situation for European or maybe (given the amount of time and space involved), Eurasian culture. You know, Eurasians traditionally were fierce horse nomads who rode with their Khan while sipping tea and wearing helmets with horns of them. Their major food was rice and they practiced something called “chivalry”. That’s right, isn’t it?
dianne, your comment reminds me of this xkcd comic.
*sigh
As a retired archaeologist, I can assure you I have known dozens of people like this. Mostly good- hearted, but who have no idea how to research something. The worst part is when they bring me stuff they bought. Cow skulls with “arrowheads” embedded in them are a favorite. Showing them a real bison skull, noting that the “arrowhead” couldn’t pass for real in the dark if you knew anything about them, and that the ” impact” happened on bone that had been dead and dry a long time (saving the presence of Elmer’s glue holding the “point” in place for if they try to insist it must be real).
P. S. it is very difficult to type on an IPad if you have an 8 week old kitten. Just FYI.
dianne: “Re the issue of cultural genocide and how complete it was, a little anecdote:”
Which is complicated with the real genocide. The pathogens brought over by the Europeans wiped out about 90% of the native population in three hundred years (Plagues and Peoples by William McNeill). When the Vancouver Expedition sailed into Puget Sound they noticed the smallpox scars on the survivors:
http://historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5100
.
It is kind of hard to maintain a culture when entire civilizations are wiped out. The books by Charles Mann, 1491 and 1493, are very interesting reads.
.
Then there were the groups that readily adopted European dress and culture (like horses), the ones which had the Spanish culture forced on them and then the forced relocation and residential schools (denial of language and culture) by both the US and Canadian governments.
Native American history is rarely given much time and space in the US history survey courses beyond mention of the conflicts that began with the white colonists almost immediately throughout the Americas. Mention is usually made of the Spanish conquests, some of the conflicts between the North American colonists/post-Revolution Americans, the Trail of Tears, Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee. That’s pretty much it, and it seems that, depending on the student’s major, those are the only history courses that might be required in college, while many students seem to forget whatever they may have learned in K-12, if in fact they learned anything then. It’s not surprising to me that most Americans know next to nothing, much less the differences between individual tribes. I guess that’s one way to avoid mention of the systematic genocide and what would today be classed as war crimes.
Not for nothing, but it’s in the Mirror. I’d want to see a real source, first
Couldn’t the guy, I dunno… go camping? And leave the pseudo-cultural stuff out of it?
I’m always loath to take on trust what is written in tabloids, but he certainly comes across as a well-meaning enthusiast channelling that bloody awful poster with the weeping Native American stereotype and that (apparently) Cree proverb ending in “…can’t eat money”.
It is difficult to see in what context Les will take his show into schools, since American History does not feature large in the English curriculum. I would imagine that most Heads would be very cautious about inviting a man who might be seen as inadvertantly perpetuating a racist stereotype in to their schools.
(Although, given the state of the tabloids, he could actually be a poorly quoted expert.)
I pretty sure he has good intentions, but (and that is a big but) I highly doubt he has spent any real time understanding a tribal culture, this isn’t something you pick up in an afternoon or a couple visits for that matter. Having a Native American ancestry, I am thoroughly offended by him assuming he can teach the English about real Native American culture. As for the religion don’t get me started, every tribe had big differences in their ways of worship. The truly sad part it there is no way to console a white man fucking with Native American culture, again, like he’s some expert. Funny how history just keeps repeating itself. So where is the white bloke who is going to detail African culture?
Wes Aaron, doesn’t that guy write for Rolling Stone?
Hey, I like going to Renaissance Faires, so I am thus fully qualified to tell school kids all about the Elizabethan period, when everybody ate turkey legs and sat on hay bales to watch jugglers.
@Chris: Definitely a lot of genocide of bodies as well as culture involved in getting to the current state of things. Which is why, for example, my 1/16th NA ancestry would qualify me for admission to most Amerind tribes…if my family only knew which tribe we were related to. There’s not even a family tradition and the best guess just points at Northern Mexico (aka Southwestern US.)
Sounds like this guy: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1185
Chris, #17:
That was a gut-wrenching read. This account from “an ‘aging informant’ of the Squaish tribe” in the 1890s particularly:
If this is referring to smallpox, then they had no idea (not surprisingly) that it was an infection from the Europeans, and by about a hundred years afterward they had mythologized it as being caused by bad fish with what sounds vaguely like smallpox symptoms.
(Aside: I suggest folks DON’T do a Google image search for “smallpox.” Damn.)
All that and not a mention of Grey Owl.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Owl
Well it is the Mirror I suppose.
This sounds a little too much like Bob Whitely from Strangers with Candy.
http://i.imgur.com/DutnBEo.jpg
Sigh.. I seem to remember, though not in which context, that, at least in some places, the rules for declaring yourself “American Indian” don’t explicitly require that you prove this claim via something like genetic testing, or a clear line of ancestry, or anything else like that. You just have to have a group of people that are willing to register as a, “group of American Indians”. Seem to remember that Cherokee was the big popular one for… right, got at least one link on the subject:
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3468.0
I have no idea how common it actually is, based on a quick attempt to search it. But, apparently this wouldn’t be the first case of some clown doing this.
Is there a single genetic marker shared by everyone considered “American Indian” but not by anyone else? Something tells me genetic tests would get us nowhere on that front.
Nope. See Amerind not being a single population. However, there are polymorphisms that are specific to certain ethnic groups, including a number of relatively well described mitochondrial and Y-chromosome haplogroups that appear to be associated with specific ethnic groups. (I think mitochondrial groups A-D and X are mostly associated with Amerind and a few places in Asia, but could be wrong on that. Actually, IIRC, X is seen in Amerind populations and in Scandinavia, suggesting that the Viking colonization wasn’t as unsuccessful as we think.)
“Les said: “I’ve been obsessed with the Native American way of life ever since I started watching spaghetti westerns in the 50’s.”
The guy may know zilch about the Native American way of life, he is not much of an expert on spaghetti westerns either. The genre was only recognized with A Fistful of Dollars – from 1964. The first movie that may qualify if we stretch a bit is only two years older:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056448/
Spaghetti Westerns were shot in Spain, Italy and/or Yugoslavia. You find precious few Native Americans there, which is why they are largely absent in Spaghetti Westerns.
Maybe Les was thinking of this movie, not from the 50’s either:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056452/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_31
Americans may recognize the lead actor from stuff like
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041947/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_70
Several Spaghetti Westerns contain harsh social and religious criticism. This is from the most famous one:
The last line of the article has much more meaning when you realize the inadvertent (and some deliberate) destruction though microbes:
Dianne: “if my family only knew which tribe we were related to.”
Then there is complete denial. I married into a family that had strong French-Canadian roots in northern Canada. Dear spouse spent years trying to grow a mustache, and one very blond son still barely has to shave even though he is in his early twenties (the other looks like a typical Scandinavian bearded heathen).
Just mentioning that the French-Canadian ancestry might have a native American component brought peels of denial from dear hubby’s half Danish mother*. Yikes! Dear son thought it was a cool association. Ah, how times have changed.
*Um, yeah, the other half is French Canadian. Her Danish father taught her French speaking mother a version of English. A version that we who remember her treasure as part of her personality.
I forgot to put dots in for paragraphs, but then noticed the system now allows for paragraph breaks!
Yay! Thank you behind the scene software dudes!
@Chris: The reason I got the genetic testing done is that there is a controversy in my family about whether my grandmother was the genetic daughter of the two mestizo people who raised her or whether she was a white child who they adopted. The reason there is a controversy is that she and her parents made up the “adopted white child” story so that she could inherit their land and all 3 could avoid being deported to Mexico (despite being native born US citizens of ancient ancestry in the territory held by the US–Hispanic looks and last name=risk of deportation to Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s). My grandmother maintained the cover story so hard and so long that she either eventually believed it or just never felt safe saying that she didn’t and would get upset if anyone tried to ask her about it. To this day some family members refuse to accept the fact that she was Hispanic and mestizo. But, hey, it was a successful cultural genocide: I don’t speak Spanish and lack any real cultural connection to Hispanic culture so I guess the people who wanted to steal my great-grandparents’ land and deport them to a country they weren’t from got what they wanted, didn’t they?
Colin Woodard has a great cultural history of the US and Canada, American Nations. The original inhabitants of North America barely figure, because they were mostly exterminated or driven out of the nicer regions. But I think that they would make good Midlanders, because they had come from small-scale societies that did not always get along very well with their neighbors. CW describes the Midland nation: “Pluralistic and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the Heartland, where ethnic and ideological purity have never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion has been moderate, even apathetic.”
As to what the eastern Native Americans / First Nations were like, I like Jared Diamond’s description that they were a race of peasant farmers who were exterminated by another race of peasant farmers.
But what if the Cahokian society had survived long enough for US settlers to run into it? That would have been interesting to see.
I don’t like “American Indian”, since that honors an extremely dumb flub. “Native Americans” I think is rather silly, since they were also immigrants, and since much of the paleface population has now been in North America for several generations. I like “First Nations” the best.
As to some First Nations people speaking their original languages, like Navajo, that strikes me as no different from Europeans who speak Gaelic or Welsh or Basque.
Dianne, wow, just wow. I once read from someone who has a Hispanic last name that their family did not cross the border, the border crossed over them.
Growing up one of my father’s best friends was Nissei (American child of Japanese immigrant) who ended up being interned during WWII. In telling this story, which is how I learned about the internment because it was not covered in high school history, my father gets very upset (his friend did sign up to serve in the US Army, and did not survive). He claimed locking up all the folks with Japanese heritage on the west coast was really a massive land grab, pure thievery.
I see the similar racist thievery was part of your family history.