What Does Their Future Hold?
IN AN interview with Awake!, Cheyenne peace chief Lawrence Hart said that one of the problems affecting Indians “is that we’re faced with the forces of acculturation and assimilation. For example, we are losing our language. At one time this was a deliberate government policy. Great efforts were made to ‘civilize’ us through education. We were sent to boarding schools and prohibited from speaking our native tongues.” Sandra Kinlacheeny recalls: “If I spoke Navajo at my boarding school, the teacher washed my mouth out with soap!”
Chief Hart continues: “One encouraging factor lately is that there has been an awakening by different tribes. They realize that their languages will become extinct unless an effort is made to preserve them.”
Only ten people remain who speak Karuk, a language of one of the California tribes. In January 1996, Red Thunder Cloud (Carlos Westez), the last Indian who spoke the Catawba language, died at the age of 76. He had had no one to speak to in that language for many years.
At the Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona, nearly everybody speaks Navajo or Hopi and English. Even non-Indian Witnesses are learning the Navajo language. The Witnesses need to know Navajo in order to do their Bible educational work, as many Navajo are proficient only in their own tongue. The Hopi and Navajo languages are still very much alive, and the young people are being encouraged to use them at school.
Native American Education
There are 29 Indian colleges in the United States, with 16,000 students. The first opened in Arizona in 1968. “This is one of the most wonderful revolutions in Indian Country, the right to educate on our own terms,” said Dr. David Gipp, of the American Indian Higher Education Committee. At the Sinte Gleska University, the Lakota language is a required subject.
According to Ron McNeil (Hunkpapa Lakota), president of the American Indian College Fund, unemployment figures for Native Americans range from 50 percent to 85 percent, and Indians have the lowest life expectancy and the highest rates of diabetes, tuberculosis, and alcoholism of any group in the United States. Better education is just one of the measures that may help.
Sacred Lands
To many Native Americans, their ancestral lands are sacred. As White Thunder said to a senator: “Our land here is the dearest thing on earth to us.” When making treaties and agreements, Indians often assumed that these were for the white man’s use of their land but not for outright possession and ownership of it. The Sioux Indian tribes lost valuable land in the Black Hills of Dakota in the 1870’s, when miners flooded in, looking for gold. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the U.S. government to pay about $105 million in compensation to eight Sioux tribes. To date the tribes have refused to accept the payment—they want their sacred land, the Black Hills of South Dakota, to be returned.
Many Sioux Indians are not pleased to see the faces of white presidents carved on Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills. On a nearby mountain, sculptors are creating an even bigger carving. It is of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Sioux war leader. The face will be completed by June 1998.
Today’s Challenges
To survive in the modern world, Native Americans have had to adapt in various ways. Many now have a good education and are college trained, with abilities that they can put to good use in the tribal context. One example is soft-spoken Burton McKerchie, a Chippewa from Michigan. He has filmed documentaries for the Public Broadcasting Service and now works at a high school on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, coordinating college video classroom sessions across the state. Another example is Ray Halbritter, a Harvard-educated tribal leader of the Oneida nation.
Arlene Young Hatfield, writing in the Navajo Times, commented that the young Navajo do not have the experiences or make the sacrifices that their parents and grandparents did as they were growing up. She wrote: “Because of [modern] conveniences they have not ever gathered or chopped wood, hauled water, or tended sheep like their ancestors. They do not contribute to our family’s livelihood as children did long ago.” She concludes: “It is impossible to escape the many social problems that will inevitably influence our children. We cannot isolate our families, or the reservation from the rest of the world, nor can we return to the life that our forefathers had.”
Therein lies the challenge for Native Americans—how to hold on to their unique tribal traditions and values while adapting to the rapidly changing world outside.
Fighting Drugs and Alcohol
To this day, alcoholism ravages Native American society. Dr. Lorraine Lorch, who has served the Hopi and Navajo population as a pediatrician and general practitioner for 12 years, said in an interview with Awake!: “Alcoholism is a severe problem for men and women alike. Strong bodies fall victim to cirrhosis, accidental death, suicide, and homicide. It is sad to see alcoholism take priority over children, spouse, and even God. Laughter is changed to tears, gentleness to violence.” She added: “Even some of the ceremonies, once held sacred by the Navajo and the Hopi, are now at times profaned by drunkenness and lewdness. Alcohol robs these beautiful people of their health, their intelligence, their creativity, and their true personality.”
Philmer Bluehouse, a peacemaker in the Justice Department of the Navajo nation, at Window Rock, Arizona, euphemistically described the abuse of drugs and alcohol as “self-medication.” This abuse serves to drown the sorrows and to help one to escape the harsh reality of a life without work and often without purpose.
However, many Native Americans have successfully fought the “demon” drink that was introduced by the white man and have struggled to gain victory over drug addiction. Two examples are Clyde and Henrietta Abrahamson, from the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington State. Clyde is of stocky build, with dark hair and eyes. He explained to Awake!:
“We had grown up on the reservation most of our lives, and then we moved to the city of Spokane to attend college. We did not care for our life-style, which involved alcohol and drugs. This kind of life was all we knew. We grew up hating these two influences because of the problems we had seen them cause in the family.
“Then we came into contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses. We had never heard of them before we went to the city. Our progress was slow. Perhaps it was because we did not really trust people whom we did not know, especially white people. We had about three years of hit-and-miss Bible studies. The hardest habit for me to quit was marijuana smoking. I had smoked since I was 14 years old, and I was 25 before I tried to quit. I was high most of my young adult life. In 1986, I read the article in the January 22 issue of Awake! entitled “Everyone Else Smokes Pot—Why Shouldn’t I?” It made me think how stupid smoking pot is—especially after I read Proverbs 1:22, which says: ‘How long will you inexperienced ones keep loving inexperience, and how long must you ridiculers desire for yourselves outright ridicule, and how long will you stupid ones keep hating knowledge?’
“I broke the habit, and in the spring of 1986, Henrietta and I were married. We were baptized in November 1986. In 1993, I became an elder in the congregation. Both of our daughters were baptized as Witnesses in 1994.”
Are Casinos and Gambling an Answer?
In 1984 there was no Indian-run gambling in the United States. According to The Washington Post, this year 200 tribes have 220 gambling operations in 24 states. Outstanding exceptions are the Navajo and the Hopi, who have resisted the temptation so far. But are casinos and bingo halls the pathway to prosperity and more employment for the reservations? Philmer Bluehouse told Awake!: “Gambling is a two-edged sword. The question is, Will it benefit more people than it harms?” One report states that Indian casinos have created 140,000 jobs nationwide but points out that only 15 percent of these are held by Indians.
Cheyenne chief Hart gave Awake! his opinion on how casinos and gambling affect the reservations. He said: “My feelings are ambivalent. The only good thing is that it brings jobs and income to the tribes. On the other hand, I’ve observed that a lot of the customers are our own people. Some I know have got hooked on bingo, and they leave home early to go there, even before the children come home from school. Then these become latchkey children until their parents return from playing bingo.
“The major problem is that the families think that they are going to win and increase their income. Generally they don’t; they lose. I’ve seen them spend money that had been set aside for groceries or for clothing for the children.”
What Does the Future Hold?
Tom Bahti explains that there are two popular approaches when discussing the future of the Southwestern tribes. “The first flatly predicts the imminent disappearance of native cultures into the mainstream of American life. The second is more vague . . . It speaks gently of the acculturative process, suggesting a thoughtful blending of ‘the best of the old with the best of the new,’ a sort of golden cultural sunset in which the Indian may remain quaint in his crafts, colorful in his religion and wise in his philosophy—but still reasonable enough in his relations with us (the superior [white man’s] culture) to see things our way.”
Bahti then asks a question. “Change is inevitable, but who will change and for what purpose? . . . We [the white men] have a disturbing habit of regarding all other peoples as merely undeveloped Americans. We assume they must be dissatisfied with their way of life and anxious to live and think as we do.”
He continues: “One thing is certain—the story of the American Indian is not yet finished, but how it will end or if it will end remains to be seen. There is still time, perhaps, to begin to think of our remaining Indian communities as valuable cultural resources rather than simply as perplexing social problems.”
Life in a New World of Harmony and Justice
From the Bible’s viewpoint, Jehovah’s Witnesses know what the future can be for Native Americans and for people of all nations, tribes, and languages. Jehovah God has promised to create “new heavens and a new earth.”—Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1, 3, 4.
This promise does not mean a new planet. As Native Americans know only too well, this earth is a jewel when respected and treated properly. Rather, Bible prophecy indicates a new heavenly rulership to replace mankind’s exploitative governments. The earth will be transformed into a paradise with restored forests, plains, rivers, and wildlife. All people will share unselfishly in the stewardship of the land. Exploitation and greed will prevail no more. There will be an abundance of good food and upbuilding activities.
And with the resurrection of the dead, all the injustices of the past will be annulled. Yes, even the Anasazi (Navajo for “ancient ones”), the ancestors of many of the Pueblo Indians, who reside in Arizona and New Mexico, will return to have the opportunity of life everlasting here on a restored earth. Also, those leaders famous in Indian history—Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Manuelito, Chiefs Joseph and Seattle—and many others may return in that promised resurrection. (John 5:28, 29; Acts 24:15) What a wonderful prospect God’s promises offer for them and for all who serve him now!
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Typical Navajo hogan, made of timber covered with earth
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Model of Crazy Horse, basis for sculpture on the mountain in the background
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Photo by Robb DeWall, courtesy Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation (nonprofit)
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Hopi and Navajo Witnesses in Keams Canyon, Arizona, meet at their Kingdom Hall, a former trading post
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Anasazi dwellings from over 1,000 years ago (Mesa Verde, Colorado)
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Geronimo (1829-1909), famous Apache chief
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Courtesy Mercaldo Archives/Dictionary of American Portraits/Dover