this is almost half of the whole thing:

Becoming Indigenous

By John Curl



1

"Tell them you're an American."

I was somewhat of a mystery to the other kids in Washington Heights. They would ask
me, "What are you?" I was part everything.

The neighborhood was Irish and Jewish. This was Manhattan, 1948.

When I told the Jewish kids I was part Jewish, they'd ask, "Mom's side or dad's side?"

"Mom's side," I would answer.

"Then you're a Jew," they'd say.

I would correct them: "I'm part Jewish."

"You can't be part Jewish. You're either a Jew or you're not."

When I told the Irish kids I was part Irish, they'd ask, "Are you Catholic?"

"One Grandma was Catholic."

"Were you confirmed?"

"No."

"What's your Grandpa?"

"English Protestant."

As far as they were concerned I was not really Irish.

The Irish and Jewish worlds were very separate; each group kept to themselves. I knew
the Jewish kids better, because they went to Public School with me. The Irish kids of
course went to Catholic school, and I only saw them on the street. There were very few
Protestants in the neigh-bor-hood, and I wasn't one of them either. There was one
Chinese-American girl in my class, and my second grade teacher was Black. These
were my first close contacts with people of different races. I never got to know Joyce
very well; she kept to herself, like me. I was in love with Miss Owen, who was a real
sweetheart. I can only speculate on their lives outside the class-room, which probably
would have shown me very different worlds.

Where did that leave me? I was not brought up in the traditions of any of my blood
groups. I was an outsider, and they were the only worlds in my neighborhood. I couldn't
say I was ethnically anything, other than mixed.

This was a dilemma.

I talked with my mother about the problem. She said, "Tell them you're an American."

But her answer didn't satisfy them in the school yard or on the corner. You couldn't be
just an American. You had to be something else too.

In school I was learning about the "American meltingpot", where immigrants joined from
around the world to become something new and different. But this idea did not translate
into reality. New York City was divided into ethnic neighborhoods, and mixing was, to
say the least, discour-aged.

My family seemed to be the only one who really believed in the "meltingpot". Nobody
else seemed to have the slightest interest in melting. On the contrary, they clung fiercely
to their ethnic identities, and seemed to find great strength in them.

In my childhood consciousness, there was no clear distinction between ethnic groups
and races. Maybe because so few people of color lived in my neighborhood. Jewish
people said, "The Jews are a race." I understood that I was "white", but what that meant
was not obvious to me. People never talked about being "white", so I did not have any
deep racial identity. This was still close to World War 2, and Nazis did not consider
Jews to be "white". The terms were not clearly defined.

So I did not particularly identify either racially or ethnically. Jewish kids treated me like
a goy, and Irish kids treated me like an English Protes-tant Jew. Yet I had a lot of
pressure on me to choose one ethnic group or the other. The thing they seemed to have
in common was being offended that I preferred being mixed. Later when I got to know
Black people, they treated me like a white; when I got to know Rednecks, they treated
me like a Mestizo; and when I got to know Mexicanos, they treated me like a Gringo.

The only identity I had was an American. I have spent many hours trying to figure out
what that means.

2

Origins

All kids need an origin story, some explanation of how they arrived in this place in the
world. The origin story they told in New York Public School 187 was: Columbus
discovered America, then came the Pilgrims, and the Dutch bought Manhattan Island
from "the Indians" for $24. Then "the In-dians" went away somewhere, nobody seemed
to remember where, or care. The claim was that this foolish "sale" gave us smart
Europeans a legit-imate right to be here in New York.

It was only years later that I caught up with "the Indians". After living in a place where I
got to know Indian people, I acquired a different perspective on history.

There are two different American Indian origin stories. One is that The People emerged
from a local sacred spot, usually a lake, mountain or cave. The other origin story is that
The People emerged at a far-away sacred spot which they left in fulfillment of a
commandment or a prophesy, and wandered until they arrived at the sacred spot where
they are today.

Who is an Indian? What is a Race?

"Race" is a concept that seems obvious from a distance but breaks down when looked
at closely.

Racial classifications in general use in this country (mostly without legal status) are
inconsistent, reflecting prejudices and institutional racism.

The classification "Black" or "African-American" is an inclusive biological defi-nition.
People with any African blood are in this category.

The classification "white" or "Caucasian" is an exclusive biological definition. People with
only "white" blood are in this category. "White" defines itself as pure; any mixing results
in "non-white" offspring. The very concept of a "white" race is racist. Mixed-race
people can consider them-selves African-American, Native American, Asian-American
or Latino-Chicano-Hispanic American, but they cannot consider themselves "white".
However, in reality there is no unmixed blood.

The classification "Hispanic" or "Latino" is not a biological definition at all, but a cultural
definition. People from any Latin American background, of any biological racial group,
fall in this category. Thus all "Hispanic" people are also Indian, African, "Caucasian" or
Asian. However, the "Hispanic" classifier is commonly used as if it were racial.
Twenty-two million people identified themselves as this in the last U.S. census. A large
number of "Hispanic" peo-ple in the U.S. are wholly or part Indian.

The classification "American Indian" is both a biological and a cultural definition. To be
recognized as Indian by the United States government (that is, enrolled by the Bureau of
Indian Affairs), in general, a person must be one-quarter biolog-ically Indian and a
member of a recognized tribe. People from outside the United States, even if 100%
native biologically, are not recognized by the government as American Indians. One
reason why the government is so selective about this recognition, is that along with it
come the legal responsibilities that the colonial peoples have to the Indigenous peoples,
in this case amounting to eligibility for special treaty benefits. There were two million
Indians in the last U.S. census.

However, census counts, as distinct from the BIA roles, are based on self-identification,
which is somewhat subjective. Mixed-race people tend to choose self-identification with
whatever group has the greatest social ad-van-tages. Recently there has been a large
jump in numbers identifying them-selves as American Indian, who chose a different race
in an earlier census.

"Hispanic" as distinct from "Anglo" is a carryover from the historical rivalry between
Spain and England. The arm's length relationship that is still often kept between
English-speaking America and Spanish-speaking America, is a reflection of this
obsolete cultural and political competition. The same arm's length relationship ironically
often exists between English-speaking North American Indian nations and
Spanish-speaking Latin Amer-ican Indian nations. It is a result of the different historical
experiences of the Northern and Southern conquests and colonizations. The Portuguese
and French experiences in America add even further complications.

In most of Latin America the definitions of "Indian" and "non-Indian" are based much
more on culture than on blood. To be Indian in Latin Amer-ica (Indio, Indigena,
Natural) means following a traditional way of life, in an Indian community. By this
definition, any person living in the "Western" style is not an Indian. In Guatemala, for
example, a person of any race living in the Euro-American style is a "Ladino", even a
person 100% biologically pure Indian; in central Mexico that same person would
probably just call himself a "Mexicano". Therefore of two brothers biologically 100%
Indian, one can be an "Indian" and the other can be a "non-Indian".

Before the coming of people from other continents, the American Indian peoples had no
concept of race, only tribal or national identities. They were no "Indians" at all, until they
became distinct from Europeans, Africans and Asians.

In the same way, the consciousness of being European only evolved out of the same
tribal consciousness as every place else, and has always been secondary to national or
ethnic identity in Europe.

For American Blacks and most Mexican Indians, their tribal identities were stolen by
the Anglo slave system and the Spanish encomienda system. Since very few American
Blacks know their specific tribal identity, they identify as African. In the same way, the
tribal identity of most Mexican Indians was taken away, and most identify as Mexicano
or - if they live in the U.S. - as Chicano. Spain never recognized any Native
sovereignty. The Northern Indian nations have hundreds of treaties, violated by the U.S.
government of course, but the Southern Indian nations never had any treaties. At best,
an Indian pueblo might receive a royal land grant by His Majesty's largesse; these often
became the foundation for future land struggles. The Southern Mexican Revolution,
centered in the State of Morelos and led by Zapata, was an expanded version of this,
and won the ejido system of communal land, only recently reversed by Salinas-Gortari.
Zapata, by the way, was pure Indian, and chosen as chief in a traditional way.

Each ethnic group has its own self-definition. According to the Arabs, all people who
speak Arabic are Arabs, no matter what their racial background. This is the result of a
complex racial and ethnic historical mixture. However, not all Moslems speak Arabic.
Iranians, Turks and Pakistanis, although Moslems, are not Arabs.

"White" racial separatism in the U.S. is traceable to the island mentality of Little Britain.
The Spanish were less racist than the British, and so is Latin America today. To say this
does not excuse the racism of the Spaniards, or the racism that continues today in Latin
America. It is simply an historical fact that intermarriage between the Spanish and the
Indigenous people was much greater than that of the English, and more acceptable in
society. Spanish and Moorish blood had already been mixing for eight hundred years.
The racial makeup of much of Latin America today reflects this.

Due in part to the huge immigration into the United States from Latin America, the
ethnic and racial situation here is rapidly changing. Because of the physical proximity of
the U.S. to Latin America, and because the western third of the U.S. was Mexico until
the war of 1848, Latinos are in a different position from any other ethnic group. There is
a cultural continuity from Mexico into California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. As the
marching chant goes, "We didn't cross the border: the border crossed us." Although
there are pressures on Latino immigrants to give up their cultural identity and assimilate,
there are also countervailing forces to retain their culture. Because many Latinos are
entirely or part Indian, this population movement has great implications for Indigenous
people in North America. According to demographers, in 20 years the majority of
Californians will be people of color, the largest group of these Latino.

There is absolutely no scientific way of distinguishing "races". There are infinite
gradations and variations, but no sharp lines. Ethnic groups can continue through even
biological racial changes. This is actually common, and can be clearly seen in groups
such as Magyars, Turks, Arabs, Gypsies and Jews. Compare Ethiopian Jews and
European Jews; it should be clear how biological makeup can change over a long
period due to mixing with another population, while the culture - the ethnic group - can
be preserved.

The blood of the world is very mixed.

3

Colonial People and Indigenous People

We all descend from Indigenous people. Our ancestors, if we go far enough back, were
all indigenous to somewhere.

But over the centuries there have been great population movements, most of these
connected to imperialism and colonialism, resulting in large numbers of people residing
in areas where their ethnic groups have no claim to indigenousness.

In no place is this situation more pronounced than in the United States of America. Here
the European conquest of the Indigenous nations has been so thorough that only a small
minority are Native American today, although they still make up a sizable population
and even a majority in some areas. Even more thorough has been the cultural conquest.
A much smaller number of Indigenous people are still living traditional lives in traditional
communities. Most of the U.S. is now populated by non-Indigenous people,
post-colonial people whose ethnic homelands are far away. The society they live in is
not based on Indigenous ideas, but colonial or post-colonial ideas. Despite their
independence from the "old country", their attitudes toward the Indigenous people are
not very different from the attitudes of the old colonists.

The idea that the U.S.A. is different from the rest of the world, is a mythological
coverup of the conquest. While the rest of the world is made of ethnic homelands, the
myth declares, the U.S. is open land, an experiment in freedom and democracy, a place
where anybody in the world can go and join. The myth is based on the historical
fairytale that the American continent was vacant, except for a few small tribes
wandering in the trackless wilderness. Only European audacity could declare a
populated continent vacant! Europe tried to solve its social problems by dominating and
exploiting other peoples and their homelands, using the colonized world as a pressure
valve, dumping troublesome people into the colonies, and transporting the wealth of the
colonized lands back to the "mother country". After Independence the ideology changed
to the revolutionary ideas of the 18th century. To the Indigenous nations, the change in
1776 was simply that the invading government was run by a colony-based group
instead of from England. This was not a positive change. The King of England had often
served as a protector of the Indigenous people, holding back depredations of colonists
into the Native nations. Under the new U.S.A., these forces were less checked, and the
attacks against the Native nations increased. The political ideas of freedom and
democracy are great experiments, but Euro revolutionaries had no right to situate their
great experiments on somebody else's continent.

Many of the inheritors of the colonial conquest see things differently. They view
colonialism not as a crime, but as a good thing, an historical necessity, "God's will", or
"Manifest Destiny". They describe the U.S. as "a young nation of only 200 years,"
intimating that the inheritors have no responsibility for the conquest. They proclaim that
Europe brought the gifts of civilization to primitive native peoples. They tell the
Indigenous people that this is for their own good, that assimilation is a step upward into
a more advanced society. They claim that it is the Indigenous people who owe much to
the Europeans, instead of vice versa.