Sake White

Here’s something courtesy of a commenter [Roy Lofquist] at Neo-Neocon’s blog.

I googled Comanches and other than my own post, here is something else, a personal view of a descendent of Comanches in modern times.

The Comanches, Apaches, Navajo, and various other Cherokee and other Ameri-Ind tribes still have pride in themselves and still feel a need to defend their land by fighting in America’s Armed Forces. Their contribution has increased our powers and martial abilities. If America had been more Imperialistic and Colonialist, we would have integrated Japan and West Germany as another United States state, enlarging the greater American Union to 52 states, and perhaps beyond. Think of the power America could wield then, not just on a natural and manufacturing resource ability, but on an intellectual, cultural, and historical basis. New beliefs, new blood, new political parties. But enough of that, read the words of a Ameri-Ind himself.

“Look, Dr, Yeagley, I don’t see anything about my culture to be proud of. It’s all nothing. My race is just nothing.”

The girl was white. She was tall and pretty, with amber hair and brown eyes. For convenience’ sake, let’s call her “Rachel.”

I had been leading a class on social psychology, in which we discussed patriotism – what it means to be a people or a nation. The discussion had been quite lively. But when Rachel spoke, everyone fell silent.

“Look at your culture,” she said to me. “Look at American Indian tradition. Now I think that’s really great. You have something to be proud of. My culture is nothing.”

“You’re not proud to be American?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m happy to be American, but I’m not proud of how America came about.”

Her choice of words was telling. She was “happy” to be an American. But not “proud” of it.

On one level, I wasn’t surprised. I knew the head of our American History department at Oklahoma State University-OKC, and I recognized his hackneyed liberal jargon in Rachel’s words. She had taken one of his courses, with predictable results.

Yet, I was still stunned. Her words disturbed and offended me in a way that I could not quite enunciate.

I could hardly concentrate the rest of the day. I lay awake that night thinking about what she had said.

On the surface, she was paying me a compliment. She was praising my Indian culture, at the expense of her own. Why, then, did it feel so much like a slap in the face?

As I lay awake that night, I thought of an old story by Kay Boyle, written in 1941, called “Defeat.” It’s about the French women in the German-occupied village of Pontcharra. All the French men were away at war. It was the 14th of July, Bastille Day, when Frenchmen were usually proud to be French. The village women, however, chose that day to give in to the German men.

They did it innocently enough. The women just wanted to wear their fancy holiday dresses. They wanted to drink and dance. And the Germans were the only men around with whom they could do it.

So they gave in.

The Cheyenne people have a saying: A nation is never conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.

That’s what I thought about as I lay there, with Rachel’s words running over and over in my mind. “My race is just nothing…. ” she had said. “My culture is nothing.”

After class, one older white student, a husband and father, had exchanged glances with me on the way out. He said to me in a low voice, “I don’t want her on my team!”

I understood what he meant. Frankly, I wouldn’t want her on my team either. A woman who won’t be true to her own people certainly won’t be true to someone else’s.

When Rachel denounced her people, she did it with the serene self-confidence of a High Priestess reciting a liturgy. She said it without fear of criticism or censure. And she received none. The other students listened in silence, their eyes moving timidly back and forth between me and Rachel, as if unsure which of us constituted a higher authority.

My goodness, if an Indian woman had said such a thing in front of Indian men, her ears would have burned for a week!

By giving in to the German conquerors, those French women in the Kay Boyle story had betrayed their men. But it was an understandable betrayal. Their men were gone. The Germans were in command.

Who had conquered Rachel’s people? What had led her to disrespect them? Why did she behave like a woman of a defeated tribe?

They say that a warrior is measured by the strength of his enemies. As an Indian, I am proud of the fact that it took the mightiest nation on earth to defeat me.

But I don’t feel so proud when I listen to Rachel. It gives me no solace to see the white man self-destruct. If Rachel’s people are “nothing,” what does that say about mine?

I believe in my Comanche people. I know that someday we’ll stand as equals before the white man, strong, prosperous and self-sufficient. But we won’t get there by listening to empty praise from guilty white women. We’ll get there by studying the white man’s ways and learning to be strong as he is.

Bold for emphasis my own.

It is a fundamental truth, you know, that the more powerful your enemies, the more likely you are to become like them and the more likely your enemies are going to become like you, should you succede in resisting them.

The US Marines have learned quite a bit of Bushido from Japan and have integrated some of the concepts, as well as the hand to hand martial training, into their Marine Corps traditions. Death before dishonor, never surrender until the last man, and duty is heavier than mountains while death is lighter than a feather. Some of these people have these phrases and words posted up on their I Love Me walls. A Naval officer-attache to the Empire of Japan in the early 1900s, 1904 for example, went to Japan as part of his duty and came to study Akido under a Japanese master and later gained several black belt degrees and ranks. The first American to do so, actually.

Patriotism, as with many other things, is something which if you don’t have, will also prevent you from understanding anyone else that does have it. A warrior understands another warrior, regardless of the cultural divide or political spheres of control.

America has defeated many people and offered them alliances, but it was only for the American Heartland that true Union was possible due to American early expansions and acceptance of applications for Statehood (something which is denied for everyone else in the world or NorthAm). This includes the American South btw.

People have said that America was built on the rule of law, but that’s not exactly true, for there were several DC laws that protected Ameri-indians and their land. Without the Rule of Honor, laws are never accepted or enforced or upheld. People speak of the rule of law in America, as if without showing American honor in Iraq they can ever have the rule of anything but chaos and deception.