'Cowboys and Indians' fundamentally wrong
by Melissa Schindler
The Rocky Mountain Collegian
I have often expressed my woe regarding our nation’s seeming inability to cope in general. We fail to teach our children how to address and manage the range of emotions they experience when interacting with others.
We see it on a daily basis with those who choose to take their frustrations out on whoever stands in the path of their semiautomatic weapons. We see it on a daily basis with those parents unable to adequately raise their children to accept differences in others. We see it on a daily basis with domestic violence and child and elderly abuse.
At the same time, it confounds the mind and saddens the heart to acknowledge that many in our society fail to recognize that an event like “Cowboys and Indians” is fundamentally wrong. It is not, as some would say, innocuous. It is not, as some would say, just an event to rally school spirit.
It drives a stake into the hearts of Native American peoples. Sure, there was a time when Natives weren’t considered people. Sure, there was a time when the lands of the indigenous peoples were outright stolen. That part of history is in the past.
What our society fails to recognize is that it continues to be a struggle faced by indigenous people all over this great land. Native cultures are vibrant and members of those Native Nations struggle on a daily basis to continue to practice their cultural heritage without ridicule or negative stereotyping.
Natives struggle on a daily basis to hold the federal government responsible for the agreements and treaties it made with Native Nations across this land in order to allow others to live here.
They continue to struggle on a daily basis to forgive the ignorance of mainstream society that wishes to just sweep all other cultures, particularly Native cultures, under the rug. They continue to struggle on a daily basis to find a way to balance their culture and the larger American culture that surrounds them.
As a member of the Haudenausaunee people, it is incredibly offensive to know that the negative stereotypes are alive and well. I don’t drink or like to party. Many of my friends and family also don’t. Yet, I have to fight that stereotype every day.
What an ignorant person to make such a comment, to believe such a stereotype and then to use it to justify slamming entire cultures that live as vibrantly today as 500 years ago.
As a Native woman who fights every day to raise her children to learn and live their culture while at the same time learning and living in America, it is scary to know that as adults they will continue to face ignorance and fear and hostility for being who they are in a time and place that must just pay lip service to the notion that this country is a melting pot and there is, among others, freedom of speech and religion.
Those basic freedoms do not exist as a shield to hide behind when you spew hatred, callousness and ignorance. Those freedoms exist for us to learn about each other, to peacefully coexist with each other, and to watch in glorious awe when we see others practicing their fundamental rights.
In the end, if you really think about what you are asking people to do by participating in “Cowboys and Indians,” it doesn’t make any sense. Let’s have a game, “Germans vs. the Jews.”
All Germans wear swastikas and all Jews wear tattered prison garbs with no food or water for a week, or two weeks, before the game.
How many people would be offended by such a notion? How many people would then argue that point and say it’s only a game? How many people would say, “Well, the Jews love to make money, so this is just letting them do that?”
At what point do we stop this madness?
Melissa Schindler is a member of the Seneca Tribe, Cattaraugus Territory, Iroquois Confederacy. She is also the niece of Jennifer Tallchief, who is Assistant to the Chair in CSU’s Dept. of Statistics. Letters and feedback can be sent to letters@collegian.com.
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holy crap
02-08-10
9:45 PM
The guy that made that already apologized and didn’t mean to offend anyone. He’s just trying to bring back some fun from many peoples childhoods. When kids play that game they have no hate towards Natives, they are just having fun, and to take so much offense to trying to relive that fun is absurd. Last time I checked, imaginary bows were just as effective as imaginary guns.
J Tallchief
02-09-10
8:29 AM
I like your name, Holy Crap…it’s fitting.
Ridiculous
02-09-10
9:09 AM
This column is ridiculous. The points made within are tired and overstated. And to compare the conflicts between Native Americans and Europeans to the Holocaust where the Nazis slaughtered millions of Jews during World War II is the most outrageously offensive thing I have heard in this entire debate! Germans today are not the Nazis of the ’40s and to infer that they are is as ignorant as believing that all Germans were Nazis to start with.
I’m not sure some of you realize that dressing up as indians, even for some of us who played ‘cowboys and indians’ as kids, is not at all a slam on your culture but rather a benign roll play of history. A history between two aggressive groups of people, one of which conquered the other, for better or for worse. It is the stuff much history is made of and the roll play by college students in a game situation isn’t meant to dig at wounds but to mimic the greatness of a conflict in a nonviolent confrontation such as a basketball game.
No one could be or should be ignorant enough by today’s educational standards to believe the Jews were an aggressive, violent, warrior class of people ready and capable of defending themselves during the Holocaust. While the Europeans have a history of violent aggression towards Native peoples, the indians had a history of violent aggression towards each other and toward the advancing Europeans. What followed their conquest is a tragedy and no one I see is saying otherwise. But to purport to be a directly affected member of the violent conflicts of the 19th century, or to actually believe the Natives’ plight today is in any way equal to that of those slaughtered without a fight in the Holocaust of the ’30s and ’40s is just wrong and as offensive as it could be.
Zach
02-10-10
7:39 PM
Boo hoo, wah ha. That’s all I got from this column. What happened to the natives all those years ago was horrible, but natives themselves weren’t perfect either.
Your statement that we should start a “Germans vs. Jews” thing was idiotic. That wasn’t a war, and Jews didn’t commit atrocities against Germans like Native Americans did against white people. Yes yes I realize that white people did it too, duh, but no one ever talks about what Native Americans did to white people also. Claiming that your people were completely innocent is foolish.
I’m probably going to piss off half the world with my next comments, but so what? As stated in this masterful column, it’s my first amendment right to say what I feel (and no it doesn’t have to be so someone else celebrates me).
If the Native Americans would have come together to fight off the White Man, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It was a war, and the Natives lost. Get over it. You weren’t even alive when all of it went on. Did the White Man act correctly? Probably not, but that happens in war. If the Natives actually realized that no matter what the White Man was going to break their treaties and done something about it then they may have actually been able to do something about it.
As for me, I’m sick and tired of being blamed for what happened all those years ago. My family and ancestors weren’t even near the U.S. So how is it I am blamed for it? That was what happened in those times, and your “I’m still a victim” attitude helps no one, especially not your people.
Zach
02-10-10
9:36 PM
Correction to my last comment:
“If the Natives actually realized that no matter what the White Man was going to break their treaties and done something about it then they may have actually been able to do something about it.” was supposed to say:
If the Natives actually realized that no matter what the White Man was going to break their treaties and done something about it then they may have actually been able to stop the people invading their home land.
Craig Hawley
02-10-10
11:21 PM
Much ado about nothing ……More liberals worshipping the PC gods…