November is American Indian Heritage Month and also the month when people across the country remember the Native Americans who are part of the Thanksgiving story. But some Native Americans are not happy about Thanksgiving because the stereotypes of their people are often caricatures and don’t reflect the complexity of the tribes and nations that lived on the lands that stretch across this country long before the Europeans settled here.
ANDREW MILLER staff Helen Rende, Marlboro, vice president of the Intertribal American Indians of New Jersey, stokes the fire at a discussion and demonstration of Native American customs and crafts at Thompson Park, Monroe Township. “For many American Indians, the holidays are bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s wonderful to get together with friends and family, but all that joy is overshadowed by the assault of stereotypical images of Indians that begin to appear on TV, in newspapers, and on greeting cards around Halloween and continue throughout Thanksgiving.
“It’s very painful,” said Helen Rende, who is a Kahnawake Mohawk and vice president of Intertribal American Indians of New Jersey, (ITNJ), a group that is dedicated to educating the public about Amer- ican Indian culture, and history. ITNJ provides programs for schools, corporations, universities and health-care organizations.
ANDREW MILLER staff Examples of Native American jewelry, authentic and fakes, were on display. She explained that the Kahnawake Mohawk is a nation as opposed to a tribe. By definition, tribe refers to a group of people of any size who have no specific rights, while nation refers to people who, over centuries, occupy an area, have and speak the same native language and have had their government in place since time immemorial. They know who their people are and where they come from.
ITNJ meets monthly in the log cabin at Thompson Park in Monroe. Last week, the discussion focused on an article written by the prominent Native American writer Michael Dorris, “Why I’m Not Thankful for Thanksgiving.”
Dorris says in his article that feasting was an important Native American cultural tradition. He noted that it is most likely that there had been a Thanksgiving feast with Pilgrims and Native Americans, but it would have been the Native Americans who prepared the meal of pumpkins, turkey, corn and squash.
He writes that “Thanksgiving, like much of American history, is complex, multifaceted and will not bear too close scrutiny without revealing a less than heroic aspect. Knowing the truth about Thanksgiving, both its proud and shameful motivations and history, might well benefit contemporary children. But the glib retelling of an ethnocentric and self-serving falsehood does not do one any good,” he writes.
Mary Anne Ross, whose husband was Lakota, said she lived on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota for a while. Although she is not a Native American herself, she has been closely associated with them, and her children are part Lakota. She noted that there are still about 500 different tribes and village groups that speak about 140 different languages.
“I did volunteer work in South Dakota and got used to the Dakota Indians, but when I came back here and met Mohawks, I realized that they are a very different group,” she said.
Ross added that most people don’t know that each nation is a separate ethnic group with its own culture, even though there are some commonalities.
“They each have their own identities. But Thanksgiving kind of glosses over that and many of the horrific things that happened to the Native American people,” she said. “Thanksgiving shows the Pilgrims and the Indians getting together. But it doesn’t show what happened afterward when there was a lot of fighting with the Indians and Indians were massacred.
“The stereotypes are very painful for my friends. It discounts what the American Indians suffered within this country,” she said.
According to the Web site NativeAmericans. com, when the Europeans came to America, there were probably about 10 million Indians populating America north of present-day Mexico. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last ice age, approximately 20,000-30,000 years ago through a land bridge across the Bering Sound, from northeastern Siberia into Alaska. The oldest documented Indian cultures in North America are Sandia (15,000 B.C.), Clovis (12,000 B.C.) and Folsom (8,000 B.C.)
Although it is believed that the Indians originated in Asia, few, if any of them, came from India. The name “Indian” was first applied to them by Christopher Columbus, who believed mistakenly that the mainland and islands of America were part of the Indies, in Asia.
When the Europeans started to arrive in the 16th and 17th century, they were met by Native Americans who regarded their white- complexioned visitors as something of a marvel, not only for their outlandish dress and beards and winged ships but even more for their wonderful technology, i.e., steel knives and swords, cannons, mirrors, earrings, copper and brass kettles, and so on.
However, conflicts eventually arose, especially over the land, which, for the Native American, has its own rhythms and spirit. Nature to the Europeans was something of an obstacle, even an enemy. It was also a commodity: A forest was so many board feet of timber, a beaver colony so many pelts, a herd of buffalo so many robes and tongues.
According to the Native American Web site, the Europeans brought with them not only a desire and will to conquer the new continent for all its material richness, but also brought with them diseases that hit the Indians hard. Conflicts developed between the Native Americans and the invaders, the latter arriving in overwhelming numbers.
At the last ITNJ meeting, member artisans demonstrated the differences between genuine American Indian arts and crafts and false imitations.
“We want people to understand why it’s important to know the difference. American Indian arts and crafts are actually protected through federal law,” explained Brenda Davis, treasurer for the group.
Intertribal American Indians of New Jersey is a nonprofit organization that also provides social activities and support to American Indians living in New Jersey.
“We feel it’s important to educate the public to counter stereotypes. We develop presentations to meet the needs of our audiences, using different modalities. Sometimes we may do a craft workshop, a demonstration of dance and music, a lecture or film presentation. Our programming for schools meets the curriculum guidelines for grades K-12,” Rende said.
InterTribal American Indians of N.J. is an organization, created circa 1980, to meet the needs of American Indians from across North and South America who are now living in New Jersey. Members have represented nations including Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, Cherokee, Delaware, Apache, Lakota and Hopi.
Programs include language (Mohawk and Lakota) speakers from different reserves/reservations, on current issues affecting American Indians, and American Indians representing different professions
and agencies discussing
their purposes or possible opportunities.
On Dec. 15, the public is invited to a demonstration of American Indian toys and stories about Mohawk holiday celebrations. Children will be encouraged to make an American Indian item.
On Jan. 19, during a presentation called “Winter Games,” families will learn about the Snow Snake and how and why snowshoes were made.
For more information about ITNJ meetings or to arrange for a speaker, contact Mary Anne Ross at (732) 238-3792 or e-mail her at [email protected].