Native Americans: Thankful for what exactly?

GUEST COLUMNIST

As Americans gather together to celebrate this Thanksgiving holiday, one American won't be celebrating this day. That American is the one true American, native people, or Indians, as Columbus misnamed them. What do native people have to be thankful for? Let's examine some things. As of the 2000 Census, total population of the United States was 281.4 million. Of that, native people comprised 4.1 million, or 1.5 percent. They can be thankful for being almost exterminated by the white man.

Between 1778 and 1868, the U.S. approved no less than 370 treaties with Native Americans. Under these treaties, native people gave nearly 1 billion acres of land to the U.S. government. The government, in turn, pledged to protect the remaining native lands. The government's "pledge" to protect remaining lands meant nothing if it wasn't in the government's best interest, i.e. the sacred Black Hills in Dakota of the Lakota Sioux when gold was discovered in 1874 by George A. Custer. I guess they could be thankful for giving up most of their land and having the rest just simply taken from them. "The Indians must conform to the white man's ways, peacefully if they will, forcibly if they must." The words of U.S. Indian Commissioner Thomas Morgan in 1889.

Native people are one of the poorest minority groups in America. Unemployment in their communities averages 50 percent. This is double the rate of the Great Depression. On some reservations, unemployment can be as high as 75 percent. Three out of four native people are unemployed compared to the historic national high of one out of four during the Great Depression (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development). Twenty-five percent of all native people earn incomes below the poverty line. The national average is 12 percent. They can be thankful for being one of the most unemployed and one of the poorest.

Alcohol was introduced to native people to keep them in a drunken stupor to make it easier for the white man to control them, much like how alcohol and drugs are used in black communities to achieve the same thing. According to data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (1989), 50 percent of all U.S. adolescents have used alcohol. The comparable figure for native adolescents is approximately 80 percent. Why is alcohol usage so high for native people? There are many reasons and they all spin off of this. Native people's history of oppression and present circumstances have created in them a sense of despair and hopelessness and a feeling of being invisible, like they don't exist! Alcohol is a temporary way to numb those negative emotions, one more thing to be thankful for.

One in three Native American women will be raped in their lives. That's two and a half times the rate in the general population, according to a spring Amnesty International report. More than 86 percent of the rapes against native women are committed by non-native men, according to the U.S. Justice Department. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tribal governments have no criminal jurisdiction over non-natives. That was 29 years ago. If that ruling hasn't been changed, add this to things to be thankful for.

Native students have a dropout rate twice the national average, the highest dropout rate of any ethnic or racial group. Academically capable native students often drop out of school because their needs are not being met while others are pushed out because they protest in a variety of ways about how they are treated in school. Thanks again.

Native people have influenced how all Americans live today. Crops such as corn, pumpkins and squash are distinctly Native American, as well as maple syrup and maple sugar. About 170 plants identified by Native Americans have played a part in a healing role in American life for centuries. A great number of our cities and states bear Native American names and rightfully so since this was their country before Europeans stole it. Our own state of Michigan is derived from the native word Michigama, which means great or large lake.

"Many native people object to this holiday because it falsely represents American history, perpetuates stereotypes and brings to mind, for them, the theft of land, religious oppression, grave robbing and cultural suppression by European settles." - "Rethinking Columbus," Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson.

Thanksgiving for native people is a yearly reminder of the beginning of the end of life as they and their ancestors knew it. As you enjoy family and friends around that nice dinner table with turkey and all the other goodies, think about this. What if you were Native American? How would you feel?

James J. Smith is a lifelong Battle Creek resident, a free-lance writer and a poet. He is the author of "Stirrings from My Soul."