Culture Cancel.

If you read the title of this essay quickly, you may have thought I was wading into the dangerous territory of cancel culture. I’m not that brave. Plus I’m just politically incorrect enough and kind of an asshole at times, so I’m confident my time will come.

No, this is a discussion about the most horrific acts the United States has ever perpetrated on a people, which is saying a lot.

How we replaced bayonets and bullets with economic tools of destruction to nearly obliterate Indigenous people in North America, and how left and right culture continue to blithely ignore such an enormous blind spot. This is the story of how Americans (and Canadians) tried to cancel an entire culture.

And as a point of reference, this is a very personal essay for me, as I spent many years covering the political relationship between tribes in NY and the state and the federal government. And while I’m by no means an expert on tribal politics and identity, I learned a great deal in my time as a writer on such issues.

So, in the first part of the essay, we’ll level set with some definitions before our usual trip down memory lane to examine American & Canadian policies toward Native People. As always, we’ll veer into economics with an examination of our reservation system in the context of our greater economy, and spotlight the Bureau of Indian Affairs inside the Department of the Interior, which is headed by an actual, real life, gen-yoo-ine Native person for the first time ever. Some thoughts on that as well.

We’ll conclude with a plan that bridges our budget and stimulus essays to this topic. It’s an idea that could not only prove life-saving for Indigenous people, but serve as a roadmap for how our entire economic model could work in the future.

Ambitious? Sure. But not impossible. Here we go.

“They don’t look like Indians to me.” — Donald J. Trump

In the audio version of this essay, we began with a clip of then citizen Donald Trump testifying before Congress about how the “Indians” being awarded gaming licenses aren’t really Indians because they don’t look like them. Citizen Dickhead was upset that gaming licenses were being granted to federally recognized tribes in the U.S. because he owned casinos in Atlantic City at the time. What he was referring to in this testimony, as he had many times before and after, was that Native people on the east coast looked Black, not red. They weren’t “pure” or running around with a fucking headdress, whooping, scalping and taking white women prisoners, I guess.

So let’s start there and get the surface racist shit out of the way.

One of the more fascinating anthropological histories of our young nation is the relationship between Indigenous tribes and enslaved African Americans. Depending upon their journey, mostly in the 1800s, enslaved African Americans had differing experiences. During America’s westward expansion, settlers often engaged in slave trade with tribes. In fact, it is well documented that five nations in particular, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole not only engaged in such trade, but did so for decades.

Furthermore, decades into these arrangements, and even as slavery was officially abolished in the United States, these tribes fought to maintain their ownership over enslaved people or refused to grant tribal affiliation to those who had been freed and settled on reservation territories, though this was eventually reversed through several court battles. So no one is off the hook here. Like everything else in our history, it’s complicated.

Formerly enslaved African Americans and runaways found slightly better fortune, if you want to call it that, on the eastern seaboard and into the Great Lakes region and up through Ontario, with many territories serving as stops on the Underground Railroad. Mixing between Native Americans and African Americans was extremely commonplace, which is why many modern day tribes maintain a darker complexion than their ancestors. But a shitgibbon like Citizen Buttplug wouldn’t care about such nuance.

Notes on Cancel Culture

Speaking of nuance, there’s the question of what to call them. Are they Indians? Are they Native Americans? Indigenous people? First Nation people? It’s actually a good question. This is where there is some intersection with cancel culture because language can trip you up.

Black. White. Indigenous. People of Color. BIPOC, which is Black and Indigenous People of Color, but not colored people. Asian. Indian. Which Indian? Asian Indian or American Indian? Caribbean American, not African American. Native. Gender fluid. Male. Larry Summers. Southeast Asian. Transgender. Straight. Female. Cisgender. Two-spirit. Non-binary. Demisexual. Lesbian. Questioning. Gay. Straight. Elizabeth Warren. Gender neutral. Race versus ethnicity. Gender versus biology. Sexuality versus my chances of getting laid after this essay. I don’t know.

As a cisgender hetero male of mixed ethnic ancestries who presents as a white male, I know this much: One, there’s a good chance I’m not getting pulled over for a broken taillight, and even better chance I’ll get a loan before you do. And, two, this is all very confusing.

So how do we address this in the context of the larger topic at hand? Well, for starters, this journey that we’re all on, trying to get the language right, might be annoying; but it’s important for many reasons, not the least is that it does teach us a little bit about our history, our place in the world and how others relate to their own histories.

So on the one hand, I applaud “woke” culture for forcing the conversation and insisting that we try to do better. On the other hand, woke culture is a fucking pain in the ass because it tends to focus so much on castigating people for use of language while overlooking people who are doing the work. I’d rather be lectured all day by a social worker in the trenches who doesn’t have time to read up on the nuances of gender identity and cultural appropriation over an academic with health benefits and an electric vehicle wagging a finger at me for misidentifying someone.

(Told you I was a bit of an asshole at times.)

There’s an old saying in the nonprofit world that you have to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. So, yes. Let’s have it out. Let’s have the conversation and challenge one another to do better, but let’s not lose ourselves and the special parts of our cultures that make us unique and are a source of pride. Because punishing people outright without having the patience to turn these opportunities into teachable moments is making us afraid to engage, and pushing people to even further extremes. Not sure if referring to someone as Black is okay any longer? Ask them. Not sure how to address someone who might be transitioning? Ask them.

Want to know what to call an Indigenous person? Ask them. Here’s what I’ve found. In Canada, you’re likely to hear the term First Nations people. Out west in the U.S., I’ve heard and read Indigenous people. Here in New York, there seems to be little qualm about the term American Indian, but it’s certainly more colloquial and not absolute. In fact, the one thing I can tell you about reporting on tribal politics is there are no absolutes.

One term that is not okay, for example, is the one used in the Declaration of Independence:

“He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.”

Savage = Not Okay.

In our essay, The Violent States of America, we spoke about the so-called liberal Hollywood bias fantasy in that we often depict our exploits abroad in heroic terms without addressing the violent imperialistic tendencies that drag us into conflict. The longest running example of this is the devastating portrayal of Native people in film, which wasn’t reconciled until the American Indian Movement in the 1970s and remains problematic today. The best we can ever come up with to portray Native Americans even in modern cinema is in the classic white savior trope like Dances with Wolves.

Don’t get me wrong, I sob like a fucking bitch at that movie.

So it’s no wonder that we harbor images in our subconscious of Native people as these wild, almost fantastical, creatures. They’re either depicted as spirit-obsessed shamans who regularly commune with dead ancestors and burn nightmares with their dream catchers or as bow and arrow toting, horse riding, naked warriors who dance around bonfires every night. Or if you only see them on the news, they’re either alcoholics living in a single wide trailer and living off the government or fabulously wealthy casino barons in cowboy hats. Every depiction is a caricature.

UNFTR QUIZ

Do you know why so many Native Americans on reservation land live in trailers?

1. Because they’re poor.

2. They just love them.

3. They’re going for an authentic and rustic experience 24/7.

4. They can’t get a traditional mortgage because a bank cannot foreclose on a permanent structure on Indian land. This small example is one of thousands of fucked up quirks in the system we invented to rob the dignity of a people and prevent them from building equity in their lives.

(Answer: D. If you answered any of A through C, you fail. At life.)

Time to Unf*ck a Little History

Europeans began invading the continent in earnest in the 1600s. By 1700, there were approximately 250,000 new American settlers and an estimated one million Native Americans representing more than 600 distinct societies throughout what is today the lower 48. This doesn’t include Alaskan Natives. By 1900, there were 76 million settled Americans and 400,000 Native Americans. From the time the first white man set foot on this land until the turn of the 20th Century, we murdered 60% of an entire population.

That is genocide. That is a holocaust. This is the American holocaust.

For years, Native tribes and settlers lived in a constant state of flux. There was trade among them, support for one another at times, conflict at other points. Wars fought among European nations seeking to claim territorial rights in the New World with allied Native forces aligning with different invaders at different points, particularly throughout the 1700s. By the next Century, we were officially America and rapidly expanding westward in our pursuit of economic development, displacing tribes with ruthless efficiency every step of the way.

Then came Donald Trump’s presidential hero and role model, Andrew Jackson. A veteran of prior conflicts, then populist president Jackson spared little time formalizing the young nation’s policy toward Native Americans by signing the Indian Removal Act in May of 1830. While the law was written as an authorization for the President to negotiate with tribes for their own removal, it was essentially a declaration of war, as tribes were violently expelled from their territories and forced to migrate west into organized territories in the furthest reaches of the continent.

This forced expulsion came to be known as the Trail of Tears, and the documentation of this period contains horrors the likes of which most people cannot fathom and will never encounter in their lifetimes. Jackson doesn’t own this distinction, mind you. His was simply the most aggressively violent example in a long legacy of presidential disdain for Native peoples dating back to George Washington.

Canada followed a similar trajectory, often taking the tribes that had been expelled from U.S. territories and their own and confining them as well to reservation land. Stripped of their rights, their dignity and their mobility, Indigenous people in North America, who had been steadily displaced for decades already, were faced with a century of atrocities almost unparalleled in modern history. When the Nazi Party sought inspiration for the “Jewish Problem” in Germany and the conquered nations in Europe, they looked to the brutal efficiency of the American reservation system and found an answer.

Before the Nazis implemented the Final Solution—a bloody pragmatic way to eliminate the expense of maintaining concentration and forced labor camps—the reservation model was eerily similar. The goal was to first dehumanize and demoralize the conquered people. Then to strip them of their cultural identity, religion, language and heritage.

In North America, our white ancestors sought to ultimately force either extinction or assimilation. The goal of the Nazi party was to force expulsion or extinction, but not assimilation.

UNFTR QUIZ

When the Nazis came to the table at the Évian Conference in 1938, they publicly announced their decision to expel Jews from Germany. They asked the gathered nations if any of them would accept them. Only one country stepped forward to accept this offer. Which country was it?

1. The United States
2. The Dominican Republic
3. Argentina
4. Germany

(Answer: B. If you answered “A,” you’re not an idiot, just a rube. If you answered “C,” you’re early and have the wrong people. The Catholic Church helped members of the Nazi Party gain passage to Argentina after the war, not Jews before it. If you answered “D,” you’re an idiot.)

That’s right. Only the Dominican Republic raised its hand. They were like, “Let me get this straight. You want to get rid of your accomplished and intelligent, law-abiding, highly educated Jews? (Looks around in disbelief.) Um, yeah. We’ll take them.”

Back to our story.

The violence against Native people didn’t end with Jackson. In fact Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself, was responsible for signing the death warrant for the largest public execution in American history when he ordered the hanging of 39 Native Americans for attacking an American outpost, killing several people and taking women hostage.

Despite it being considered an act of war, and even though the military tribunal was hastily organized and held a complete fucking sham trial that rounded up hundreds of Native men indiscriminately, where the defendants literally had no translators and didn’t understand the charges being brought against them, and prosecutors unsure they even had the right men, Lincoln signed the order.

One man was pardoned at the last moment, but 38 hanged that day. Strung together and hooded in a long line, the men joined hands and sang an ancestral song in unison until the floor of the gallows gave way and 38 men went silent.

As our expansion continued to the Pacific, the violence continued with the practice of Residential Schools, a phenomenon that occurred in Canada as well. Native children were ripped from their families in surprise raids and shipped to residential schools far from their homes. Here they were abused, raped and often killed, either by force or simply neglect. Many were buried in mass graves.

The ones who made it through eventually lost their Native language and had no connection to their roots at all. If they were taught anything, it was the Bible. And the average education level of the lucky ones who survived to “graduate” was third grade.

These schools were property of the U.S. and Canadian governments. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996.

Resonomics

Reservations are typically resource poor and totally remote. It’s impossible to attract doctors and dentists, let alone healthcare specialists and mental health practitioners to these areas, for example. When it became unfashionable to simply murder them en masse, it was easier to relegate them to the furthest reaches of the continent and forget them. And when it was discovered over time that some of them actually had hidden resources like oil and natural gas, well you can imagine who came-a-knocking. For example, the right’s favorite rich pricks, the Koch Brothers, made a fortune siphoning oil from Native territories.

When Native people fight back to preserve and protect their ancestral land and the environment, they are met with determined force to this day. At Standing Rock, the U.S. government used sound canons and sirens to deafen the protestors standing in open fields. When the weather turned to freezing, they hit them with water cannons and gave many hypothermia. They shot them with rubber bullets. They tased them. Arrested the elders. Brutalized the warriors.

From the tar sands in Alberta, through the Sioux plains, down to the Amazon. We cut, slash, burn, drill, carve, mine and steal. That’s just our way.

I’ve often heard the counter argument that this whole “poor Indian” thing should be a thing of the past since they have casinos. You know you’ve heard that one too. Tribes “lucky” enough to be granted federal licenses for gaming facilities do so at great peril because these licenses often include language that places the facility itself into a land trust held by the federal government, which is a direct assault on the theory of sovereignty and a point of contention for many tribal members and governments. The other thing I always hear is that they don’t pay taxes. So let’s address these quickly.

Shouldn’t Native Americans have enough money from running casinos?

First off, only 30% of all Native casino operations are profitable. That’s right. And the average income per household these casinos pay is about $3,000 per year. That’s for the profitable ones.

Technically, and this is a fucking fact, a tribe doesn’t have to ask the U.S. government permission to open a casino. (Whaaaat?) Yup. So why don’t they? Because the suppliers, the manufacturers of the games, the tables, the slots, the hardware, the software, the liquor control systems, the televisions, etc. won’t supply them because the U.S. government will place them on a no-bid list.

So does this mean that Native people operate casinos about as well as Donald Trump?

No. The reason 70% of casinos on Native land aren’t profitable is because Native land is so fucking remote, no reasonable person would travel there even to gamble.

But aren’t they exempt from paying taxes? Isn’t that enough?

Native Americans don’t pay income taxes or property taxes if they derive their income from a Native business on reservation territory and that’s also where they live. Here again, because these territories are so fucking isolated and busted, few businesses thrive on reservations, and more than 3/4 of affiliated and recognized tribal members live and work off reservation land, which makes both their homes and their income subject to federal taxation.

Another thing you should know about Native politics. The recent appointment of Deb Haaland, the first Native, period, to lead the Interior Department, isn’t necessarily a welcome development. This might sound strange, but there are many who are not aligned with this kind of performative victory and do not believe Native people have a place in the government of the conqueror.

Like I said at the beginning of the essay, there are few things more complicated than tribal politics, and you cannot walk into any situation with a set of standard assumptions. A Native person getting a promotion in a white man’s world isn’t considered a victory to some. In fact, it’s considered a defeat. So tread carefully on this issue as you talk about progress.

Haaland has remarkably few resources at her disposal, as we’ll cover shortly, so she has her work cut out for her. Personally, I love it and wish her the best. But a lot has to happen for her to succeed, otherwise she’ll suffer the same fate as Obama, who opened the door for racists to claim Black people had nothing left to complain about because “one of their own got the top job in America.”

Just as the Coronavirus exposed the discrepancy in health coverage among Black and ethnic minority groups in the U.S., some deserved attention was finally given to the abject conditions on reservation land and the lack of general health resources. Beyond the limited access to care and the deplorable way in which services are doled out in tribal communities, the hard truth is that Native Americans suffer from the highest rates of poverty, drug and alcohol addiction and suicide in the country.

The meager carve outs in the CARES Act and Biden’s Recovery Act will serve as a bandage on a broken system, as we just covered in our last essay. Nowhere is this more true than on a reservation.

Unlike the United States, Canada is embarking upon a long journey called Truth and Reconciliation, a policy and program initiative modeled after similar ones in places like New Zealand. It’s a process that legislates the Canadian government actively participate in the healing process by first acknowledging the truth of their past and current actions before healing and reconciliation can begin. And the latter has a strong focus on economic recovery that will be long and arduous, but hopefully successful.

The key to this process in Canada is to incorporate economic development among First Nations in a way that doesn’t infringe upon their sovereignty, unlike the way we approach it in the United States, which is I’ll give you something if you give me a piece of your fucking soul.

A Modest Proposal

So here’s what I propose, and indulge me on this if you will, because this concept has far reaching implications beyond just lifting Native populations out of poverty. There’s little chance we’ll ever act upon the truth portion of truth and reconciliation; but if we can use these policies to inform how we handle poverty broadly in the United States, as a proving ground of sorts, then maybe we can get some buy in from our policy makers.

In 2017, the Department of Interior (DOI) reported that production and activities on DOI lands were associated with about $292 billion in economic output. But the output associated with Native American and Alaska Native businesses was approximately $115 billion, or less than half of DOI output, which means that the interior is deriving economic gain from other sources such as energy extraction, logging, recreation and mining from federal lands outside of Indian country.

The report was boastful, saying that tribal GDP was bigger than Serbia and Uganda, as though that’s a good thing considering the census estimates Native American and Alaska Natives number about 4.5 million and there are 561 federally recognized tribes. It’s important to note that there are also 63 state-recognized tribes in 11 different states that aren’t counted in this number.

So let’s talk about economic impact and economic potential.

Based on the data from the 2018 U.S Census cited by Poverty USA, Native Americans have the highest poverty rate among all minority groups at 25.4%. Household income among Native Americans and Alaskans is a full $26,000 a year less than the median white household income.

So check this out. The total amount of U.S. aid to tribal territories in the U.S. is $1.9 billion. Reduced dramatically during the Trump years and alarmingly not scheduled for much of an increase under Biden, this amount is spread out over, again, 561 federally recognized tribes.

Last year, we sent $4.9 billion to Afghanistan, $3.3 billion to Israel and a comparable $1.7 billion to Jordan. In total, we give out approximately $40 billion a year in foreign aid, with about 30% on average earmarked for military support, because we just can’t support war enough in other places.

So what if we build on the momentum of the recent stimulus package that replaces credits with direct payments and use the people we have fucked over more than any other people in our history as a petri dish of universal basic income.

First off, we could completely close the household gap and issue direct individual payments of $1,000 per month to each enrolled tribal member in the country; it would cost the U.S. $54 billion dollars a year. Sound like a lot? Too much? Hang on a sec.

As we covered in our budget essay—Priorities: War, Wealth and Welfare—our military budget is $700 billion dollars a year. And we’re about to pull out of Afghanistan, right? And we also know that we don’t need all 850 fucking military bases we maintain abroad. If we cut just 7% of the military budget to fund this kind of initiative, fucking 7%, we would still have the largest military budget—more than the next dozen countries combined—and bring service members home to facilitate the administration of security and care on these territories.

This subsidy is about 1.2% of our total normal budget before stimulus payments and Trump’s continuing tax cuts. If you factor it against our new normal budget of $5.3 trillion potentially under Biden, it drops to 1%.

One percent of our budget to begin reconciling the economic devastation on tribal lands.

One percent of our budget to lift every Native American instantly out of poverty.

One percent of our budget to curtail our obsession with military spending and redeploy humanitarian military resources to dispense care and support to a broken people.

One percent of our budget to test the theory of universal basic income on a targeted population to prove the concept.

One percent of our budget to do what’s right.

This can be our truth, our reconciliation. The beginning of a new America that leads with its heart and heals its soul for real. A new way of economic thinking that puts people and the planet at the center and charts a better path forward for those who were here when we landed, those who are still here and those who deserve grace after all they have endured.

Native mascots are racist.

No House Republicans voted for you to get a stimulus check.

And fuck Milton Friedman.

Here endeth the lesson.

In memory of Brad from Akwesasne. Father, ironworker, craftsman and Mohawk.