Trimble: Figuring out who are the real NDNs

Posted: February 24, 2005 by:
Charles Trimble / Indian Country Today

Commment - an excellent article that needs to be read again and again.

In recent columns I used the phrase ''to out-Indian'' and the term ''out-Indianing.'' A couple of readers asked me about my seeming preoccupation with the concept. ''Actually,'' I responded, ''out-Indianing is what it's all about in much of Indian affairs - especially in the last few decades.''

In the mid-1960s, the media brought the issues of reservation and urban Indian poverty to the public forefront, and being Indian came into vogue. New leaders were emerging in Indian country, and in most cases they were ones who matched the stereotypes the media looked for as representatives of the race. Especially in the urban-Indian communities, the question often arose as to who the real Indians were and what constituted being a ''real'' Indian. Then the practice of out-Indianing came about.

As ideologies formed around that era's new activist movements, being a ''real'' Indian required adherence to certain traits, demeanor and dress. A real Indian, for example, eschewed suit and tie, but wore equally non-Indian and stereotypical Hollywood attire such as leather vests, headbands and fringes all over. So-called ''Rez cars'' were no longer embarrassments; decorated with ostentatious displays of dream catchers, little war bonnets, and ''Indian Pride'' bumper stickers, they became faddish and an effective means of out- Indianing.

Epithets like ''apple'' and ''Uncle Tomahawk'' came into derisive usage in Indian circles to describe those who didn't conform to the new traits, dress and demeanor. These were fashioned after the epithets of the more radical Black movement. As the term ''Oreo'' charged ''black on the outside and white on the inside,'' so the term ''apple'' charged ''red on the outside and white on the inside.'' In other words, a sellout, not a real Indian.

I'm reminded here of an incident from the early American Indian Press Association days when one of our associates, a bright and winsome Lakota woman, was called an apple. She responded that if some people were so insistent that she was a sellout, she'd rather be called a radish: ''red on the outside, white on the inside ... and HOT.''

In these times, there is a new distinction between the real Indian and the lesser, ''colonized'' Indian. This is based on such breaches of standards as using certain terminology, e.g., ''tribe'' instead of ''nation,'' and having Indian-kitsch curios hanging from one's rear-view mirror.

Not long ago, a grandniece of mine was wearing a T-shirt with the bold letters ''NDN'' on the front. When I asked her what it meant, she replied, ''Duuuh ... just pronounce it.'' I had to bonk myself on the forehead and apologize profusely, ''Oh, 'Indian': of course.'' But having to ask the question placed me squarely in the ranks of a new caste - un-hip Indian.

''Out-hipping'' is another form of out-Indianing. That means being hip to the latest buzzwords like NDN and the latest jokes about welfare, commodities and frybread.

In Indian circles, one can also be ''out-reverenced.'' That is having to be corrected, icily, about something that is or should be considered too sacred for jocularity. I learned to stay out of American Indian chat rooms on the Internet when I was informed that I should be ashamed for using the Lakota name Heyoka (he's sacred), and even joking about that little prehistoric Woody Herman, Kokopeli (sacred, too). I was excoriated for saying I am Oglala Sioux instead of Oglala Lakota.

The term ''frybread'' (what us old timers used to call ''fried bread'' back in the '40s and '50s) is yet another heretofore fashionable symbol of Indianness doomed for the bone yard of ethno- political incorrectness. The South Dakota Legislature, by enactment, has recently named frybread as an official symbol of the state: the state food, joining the state bird, state animal and state song. It was a nice gesture of reconciliation, but state acceptance will undoubtedly doom that sumptuously decadent dish, already on the endangered list on behalf of the real Indians who proclaim obesity as a stigma of colonized Indianness. The great economic benefits to families and non-profit fund raisers of Indian Taco sales will have gone by the wayside, as will the beneficial utility of commodity lard.

My God, Heyoka, what is an apple, colonized, un-hip, irreverent, pseudo-savage Sioux to do? Perhaps I will open up a school of fashionable Indian correctness. With such ever-changing modes in Indian vogue, I will get rich. And although excoriated from various quarters, I'll at least find some comfort in my passe, un-hip non- Indianness.

Charles E. Trimble is an Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1970, and served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972 - 78. He is president of Red Willow Institute in Omaha, Neb. and a columnist for Indian Country Today.