Conscious Choice: Ethnic Cleansing in the USA

March 1996 | News of the Earth

Ethnic Cleansing in the USA

by Mark Long

Whether or not one accepts the overused cliches about a communication revolution in the late twentieth century, it is hard not to agree that there is more information vying for our attention than ever before. As a result it is often hard to know what constitutes important "news" and what is mere passing anomaly. (Certain choices still seem easy to make, such as deciding that the return of ethnic cleansing in Europe is an event of significant importance and the release of five different‘insider accounts’ from O. J. jurors is not.)

Additionally, it is ever the role of the corporate media to present news in as decontextualized/a-historical a manner as possible so as to be able to claim that it is "informing" without actually provoking critical thought. This, of course, is not a new idea, but with the advent of yet another issue-free presidential campaign the glaring failure of mainstream media to engage in the exchange of ideas is never far from my mind.

An infuriating case in point could be found in the New York Times for Sunday, January 14th. Having plowed through the first 17 pages of occasionally important but often trivial and inconsequential coverage of "personality" politics I learned via an obituary of Carlos Westez that the Catawba language was no more. It seems that Mr. Westez, or Red Thunder Cloud, was the last known speaker of Catawba. With him went the formal passing of a culture.

Not surprisingly this bit of news did not trigger a reflection on the part of the newspaper of record regarding the ethnic cleansing of the First Nations that still is taking place in our own country. While I am grateful to the Times for printing the obituary of Red Thunder Cloud I was dismayed that it was presented as a mere ethnological anomaly rather than a news story. Thus are unfolded the metaphysics of oppression: Native issues are presented as historical or anthropological curiosities, emptied of any contemporary political content.

This same perspective has been adopted by museums and, increasingly, contemporary (particularly New Age) culture. Note how frequently Native culture is described in a "positive" light as a source of spiritual enlightenment, a culture that was spiritually and environmentally more sophisticated than our own, while at the same time, the media ignores the very real struggles faced by Native American communities today. When the Times presents the news of the passing of a language as a mere anthropological curiosity, it deflects critical insight into Euroamerican genocide against native peoples.

We do not learn from the Times editorial who the Catawba people are, the contours of their history, the nuances of their culture or how there came to be no one left who speaks Catawaba. Instead we learn (because this is an obituary after all, not a news article) that Red Thunder Cloud made a living selling tea from herbs he gathered from around his house. And that, according to a close friend, he prayed each night in Catawba and that his dog only responded to commands given in Catawba. The closest the Times comes to historical context for this genocidal tragedy (and if this sounds like strong language it is meant to, for that is what is too often lacking when history is written by the victors) is a remark offered by a professor of anthropology who tells the Times reporter that visits by Mormon missionaries "may have hastened the decline of the [Catawba] language."

What provoked such an angry response from me is this: Native peoples still live on reservations a fraction of the size that is legally theirs; they are still the poorest ethnic group in the country; they are still subject to forced sterilizations in reservation medical facilities; etcetera, ad nauseam. The tragedy of the European wave that ripped through native cultures on this continent is far from over, but you wouldn’t know it by perusing the mainstream media, who only cover Native issues when there is violence or inter-tribal conflict involved. All we get by way of information of our own policies of "ethnic cleansing" are quirky human interest stories of an ethnologic bent about the passing of a language. (Is it only a matter of time before we read in the obituary section of the passing of the last resident of Sarajevo, with no mention of the bloody war of racial hatred that brought about the demise of the multi-ethnic republic that was Bosnia-Hercegovina?)

What made this "cute" obituary even more infuriating is that the Catawaba people have been engaged in a years-long court battle with the State of South Carolina to re-gain possession of lands guaranteed them in treaty rights but subsequently stolen from them by an ever-expanding and ever-resource hungry Euroamerican culture. Not only have the Catawabas been robbed of their language and, hence, of a significant part of their culture; not only have they been robbed of their land; they have been robbed of their visibility from a dominant culture that values the visible most of all.

To most readers of the Times obituary, Carlos Westez was surely thought to be the last of the Catawabas. What better occasion for the Times to cover the Catawaba battle for their land and the issue of First Nation land claims in general. Rather, we were treated to endless pages of why Dole enjoys an advantage in Iowa and how much of his own money Forbes has spent trying to buy himself a room with a view of Pennsylvania Avenue.

White culture seems ever-so-ready to forget what has taken place in our name—actions from which we still benefit today, regardless of our lack of involvement in the "Trail of Tears" or the Sand Creek Massacre. We are living on land that was gained by these atrocities, living off resources that were "freed" for our exploitation by a campaign of physical and cultural extermination. We may have had no hand in past deeds but we surely have a hand in their continuance.

We, not General Custer and Andrew Jackson, are writing the closing chapters on cultures such as the Catawaba’s.

Progressive non-Indians must speak out for the material and cultural survival of native peoples. We must offer a strong voice in on-going land battles and insist that our government do what is right in native settlement claims. This includes the battle of the Catawabas. It also includes Lakota claims to the Black Hills, which were stolen from them after the discovery of gold and in spite of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty securing those lands for the Lakota forever. We can not let these injustices be consigned to historical memory. The genocide against native peoples is not a historic relic to be lamented in passing as the price of empire.

The environmental community in particular needs to lend its collective hand to advance the cause of social justice in these cases. There is a growing interest among environmentalists in the sustainability of traditional Native culture. Further, as a significant portion of the rural poor, Native peoples are constantly the targets of environmental despoliation and its attendant ill effects. From Yucca Mountain to Ward Valley to the uranium mines that dot western Native lands, the intertwining environmental and social justice issues must be addressed by non-native activists as well. For our own sakes, if that’s all that matters, we can no longer afford to look the other way as the First Nations of North America continue to pay the unjust price of European empire.

Local (Northern Illinois)
• It’s nice when we win one. The years-long effort to convert the de-listed Joliet Arsenal into a significant addition to Illinois’ wild lands has finally come to fruition. The legislation converting the arsenal into the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a new holding of the National Forest Service, has been passed and signed. The transfer will occur in six to nine months, with a total of more than 19,000 acres. The Openlands Project is currently coordinating tours of the area in conjunction with the Forest Service. For information on tours call Julie Sacco of Openlands at 312-427-4256.

• Here is a piece of nefarious state legislation to keep an eye on: Senator Burzynski (R-Dekalb) has introduced a state version of a Takings bill in Springfield. Takings legislation is spreading like wildfire throughout state legislatures, where it often goes unnoticed. Burzynski’s bill has not gone anywhere yet, but environmentalists would be well advised to keep on eye on this nightmare and nip in the bud any momentum in that direction. (See Conscious Choice, Jan/Feb 1996 for more on Takings.)

Also, keep your eyes on "Operation Silver Shovel." It is a perfect example of the ways in which racism, class hated, political corruption and environmental politics entwine to create the bleak and poisoned existence that has become inner-city life in late capitalist America.

National
• The Salvage Rider, which exempted any "salvage" logging from environmental regulations and mandated that billions of board feet be cut has created an Armageddon in our national forests. The rider is being used as a cloak for already pending timber sales, which protects them from environmental review. In essence, all timber sales have become "salvage" sales. Representatives Furse and Morella have introduced HR 2745 ("Restoration of Natural Resources Laws on the Public Lands Act of 1995"") which would repeal the Salvage Logging rider. The bill has 85 co-sponsors in the House already and a Senate version is pending. Please make all the noise you can in support of the Furse/Morella bill. Repealing the Salvage Rider may just be the most important national environmental battle of 1996.

• Further evidence of the duplicity of the major environmental groups: According to the New York Times the March/April issue of Audubon magazine was pulled off the press at the last minute by order of the President of the National Audubon Society, John Flicker. The problem with the issue, it seems, was not the virgin paper stock that it was to be printed on (Audubon ranks dead last among environmental journals in its use of recycled materials) but an article by noted journalist Tom Wicker describing President Clinton’s environmental policies as "inconsistent," a mild accusation at best. Wicker was told that Flicker "had decided that [the article] could damage Audubon’s future lobbying efforts." The editors of the magazine are apparently upset at the meddling from above, although apparently not upset enough to resign. Flicker defends his action by arguing that the story was old news (although not news that has seen the light of day in Audubon‘s pages) and that the magazine couldn’t "be involved in every environmental issue that comes along." As if the environmental record of the President of the United States was a trivial issue that just happened along. Is this the path to a sustainable future?

International
• Things sure are grim in Russia. Greenpeace warns of an escape of one ton of radioactive steam from a power plant in Dimitrovgrad in late January. Meanwhile the Russian Security Police (FSB) arrested environmental/nuclear activist Alexandr Nikitin in his home in St. Petersburg on charges of espionage and working in the interests of foreign powers (a charge that carries a potential death sentence). Nikitin was in the process of preparing a report, with material collected from public sources, on the fragile nature of the Russian nuclear industry.

None of this has stopped the American timber industry, funded with grants from the U.S. Defense Department, from engaging in a massive logging effort in Siberia, the world’s largest remaining conifer forest. The program involves treating the raw logs for export to the U.S. with radiation to sterilize them. This comes at a time when the Yeltsin government is arresting environmental activists and is willfully disregarding all notions of a democratic free press by firing reporters and editors in the electronic media who exercise the legally granted rights of a free press and criticize state policy.

Then again, no one ever confused the logging industry for one that was sensitive to issues of human rights or democracy.

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