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Rights Remembered
A Salish Grandmother Speaks on American Indian History and the Future
By Pauline R. Hillaire, Gregory P. Fields UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8578-1
CHAPTER 1
Forgotten Genocide
Let's trade places. You be "Indian" and I'll be "white," for the sake of a better understanding of how your mind might work, as compared to how mine has worked all these years, especially where it concerns this, my intense study of America's aboriginal people, my ancestors, from the beginning to now. To make a long story short, I come along to your country, assert my laws of discovery, claim your birthplace as well as the birthplaces of all of your friends and neighbors across this great continent, and take over, using my military along the way. Arriving in the New World are missionaries, merchants, and ships filled with people (many of them sick) escaping the old countries in Europe, governments that were not only cruel but also oppressive of individual, family, and community rights. You did not give up your right to this land. The fight was on.
I threw every type of unfairness against you, pretending all the while that I was an honest, upright citizen of America, the New World. Over five hundred years pass. My progress is celebrated; yours is cut off from the beginning. My laws were written; yours were silently understood by your people. I have written my history; yours is hidden or forbidden. I have been busy changing your homeland, withholding your customs and traditions from you. Your languages and cultures are nearly destroyed. It was expected that you will be another me sooner or later; but will you? Your land is extremely limited after these past five hundred-plus years.
We made solemn agreements: nearly four hundred treaties were ratified. My numbers grew from birth and immigration, while yours declined; yet you survived. But still, you are disgusting in my view: ignorant and savage. Your past has been removed by my version of history. I ridicule your silence and ignorance, wondering why you never learn "citizenry," "civilization," or "gratitude." You do not give me credit for creating "the land of the free and the home of the brave." I expect you to disappear, whether by fading away, or by blending in.
Why I Wrote This Book
My father, Joseph Hillaire, on his deathbed, shared extremely valuable information with me about the clash of our two cultures that went on during his youth; he was born in 1894. My father's interest remained focused upon Indian causes throughout his life. He asked me to find certain laws, certain letters, remembering one thing: too many years have gone by, and the government has forgotten our rights that are preserved by what the U.S. Constitution calls the Supreme Law of the Land — the treaty. My father told me to look up our 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, the Omaha Treaty, the Wheeler-Howard Act, and letters between Washington territorial governor Isaac I. Stevens and President James Buchanan. And my father told me his version of the explorers crossing the Atlantic to North America. It was of great interest to me. I wanted to make this investigation a reality.
I gathered that information, but reading it caused me such sadness, depression, and disappointment in our government. Some of the information that my father shared was what he had gleaned from the office of the Lummi tribal government during the 1920s. Like my father, I had worked for the Lummi Tribe, in the 1970s. Before that, in the mid 1960s, I had thought of a solution. I was working at the University of Washington for the Health Sciences Personnel Office, and I knew my way around the campus. At the university's Suzzallo Library I searched for the government documents section and found it — even the papal bulls. What an amazing phenomenon. White people had saved all this information? The papal bulls gave European explorers authority to take over new lands and to conquer and enslave "savages" in the name of Christian rulers, kings, and queens. The government documents turned out to be a great resource for me concerning Indian history. Historical records, Indian policy books, and books authored by Indian and non-Indian writers (historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars) helped also. Tribal history and family history from our Coast Salish oral tradition provided information from sources that are not often considered part of the "historic record."
I wrote this book with hope for a better future: for greater justice for Indian people in America, and for reconciliation between Indian and non-Indian Americans, based on recognition of the truths of history. Bringing out Indian America's a history is important to all American citizens. Therefore, in this book a review of U.S. Indian policy is opened to reason, based primarily on review of government documents mainly from the 1840s and 1850s. Along with our Native oral history, documents in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, in particular, the reports of the commissioners of Indian Affairs, provide the main historical record of U.S. Indian history and policy. These document are not easily accessible to most readers: Therefore, I quote portions of the government reports so that readers may reflect for themselves.
The focus of this book is the time surrounding the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855. The U.S. presidents for those years were the tenth through the fifteenth presidents: John Tyler (1841–45), James F. Polk (1845–49), Zachary Taylor (1849–50), Millard Fillmore (1850–53), Franklin Pierce (1853–57), and James Buchanan (1857–61). In their presidential addresses, they did not say much about the status of Indians. Before this time was the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–37), the nation's renowned Indian fighter, who was in charge during "Indian Removal." There were countless others who affected Indian policy and life: Indian agents, superintendents, and commissioners; secretaries of the interior, military leaders, surveying engineers, traders, missionaries from several churches (such as Catholic and Methodist), and employees hired by the government to staff the various offices established for Indian Affairs. Not every individual was ignorant or hostile toward Indians, but damage was done that continues in many forms today. True, the face of the presidency changed, as did all other offices of government, but Indian policy ruled most every area of life for American Indians. Owing to this history, and because of weak communications within and between tribes, individual Indians (like myself) still don't fully know where we stand as Americans.
I had to search out the Pacific Northwest tribes and my tribe, the Lummi, in the long rambling reports, but I appreciated all I could learn about how America dealt with Indians in general. Further research by others on my account of the history of my people is welcome. I quote from the government documents, providing quotations especially about the influx of white people who arrived in our aboriginal homelands of the Northwest, U.S. policies that affected the Pacific Northwest coastal tribes, and quotations that support my main message: that our rights as Indian people must be remembered and restored, by both Indian and non-Indian Americans.
This book looks back to Columbus's arrival, and it looks to the future. The focus of part 1, "The Nineteenth Century and Before," is the time when our treaties were negotiated in the Northwest. Part 2, "The Twentieth Century and After," tells about the experiences of my parents, born in the late the nineteenth century, and my own generation, born in the twentieth century. My generation was the third generation born after our ancestors signed treaties and our Northwest communities were changed forever by U.S. Indian policy, both on and off the reservations. Part 3, "Oral History and Cultural Teachings," contains oral tradition, poetry, and oratory. I speak also about the twenty-first century: how events of history, Indian policy, and the loss of our lands continue to affect today's Indian people, especially our youth, and I speak about possibilities for a better future.
This book is part of my healing experience so far. I wrote this book because I had bottled up all the abuse and dysfunction that was bashed in on me. With my education, convictions from the teachings of my elders, and the logic and common sense I was born with, I pray to the Great Spirit/God that persons beyond just myself will benefit from this effort. May white America understand that Indian people today are born of lineages who survived encounters with their ancestors. Many Jews survived their holocaust, as we have survived our genocide. May we together find that Providence is on our side: European Americans, American Indians, black Americans, and all those who have found comfort in the message of the Statue of Liberty.
If I had been born during the time when white people first colonized the Northwest, I am not certain that I could have survived it. Besides the injustices of Indian policy, non-Indians brought diseases, weapons, and the impudence of prejudice and racism. But I have always fought for my existence, although not against armies. Now I find myself fighting for my existence by writing this book, which I hope someone will read. I am fighting for my family, my tribe, and my culture: for land rights, justice, and to help obliterate the prejudice and racism that is still held against Indian America, by whoever may still hold it. White Americans and immigrants have grown curious about American aboriginal history. What was it like? They did not learn about the Indian perspective when they studied American history in the schools they attended. By researching aspects of Indian America's history, we get a more complete picture of America's history. These are the connections that historians, anthropologists, and writers like myself are trying to bring to life. This first chapter gives an overview of the topics discussed in this book.
Indian America's Ahistoric Past
Now, in contemporary times, the genocide of America's Native peoples and cultures is mostly forgotten. What do we do now? I wrote this book because much of our true Indian history is ahistoric (not recorded or acknowledged), and many of our rights have been forgotten. I believe that when non-Indians come to know us, and come to a more complete and truthful understanding of America's history, that we — Indian and non-Indian — can together restore those forgotten rights; thus the title of this chapter, "Forgotten Genocide," and the title of this book, Rights Remembered. This book tells of how Indian rights have been remembered by some of our Native leaders and how our rights must be remembered by today's American leaders and people. Our Indian history may appear to be forgotten, but throughout all these five hundred-plus years, records and remembrances remain, thanks to our Native oral traditions and the Indian value of talk. The records and remembrances of our ancestors, who lived before Europeans ever "discovered" us, are still with us.
The phrase "forgotten genocide" may sound to you like my justification for our silence all these years. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" (Resolution 260 [III] A). Article 2 states that genocide has the following forms:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Indian America has suffered all these forms of genocide. At the root our thriving as Indian people was damaged by the loss of the lands that supported our livelihood and way of life. Cultural genocide, as well physical genocide, went on from the time of first contact. Cultural genocide and its ongoing effects from earlier history are still suffered by Indian America today. One of the main messages of this book is an invitation for us to interact, to make things right for our growing populations. We cannot turn back the years on the gun violence and infectious diseases of the past. Nor can we do anything about the damage done by the settlers and missionaries of the past. But we can learn from the thinking and the deeds of presidents, Indian commissioners and agents, the military, and the courts. American citizens today are more ready than ever for truth; truth and grace are synonymous.
In her book A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes (1881) Helen Hunt Jackson quotes the eighteenth-century Swiss political theorist Emmerich de Vattel on the subject of natural law:
It is a settled point in natural law that he who has made a promise to any one has conferred upon him a real right to require the thing promised; and, consequently, that the breach of a perfect promise is a violation of another person's right, and as evidently an act of injustice as it would be to rob a man of his property. ... There would no longer be any security, no longer any commerce between mankind, if they did not think themselves obliged to keep faith with each other, and to perform their promises. ... Treaties are no better than empty words, if nations do not consider them as respectable engagements, as rules, which are to be inviolably observed by sovereigns, and held sacred throughout the whole earth.
Helen Hunt Jackson grew intensely concerned with the Indian cause during the late nineteenth century. She became a groundbreaker for Indian rights. She was dedicated to policy reform for Indians. Her goal was to encourage the government to right the wrongs that had been committed. Grace Gouvier introduces the 2006 edition of Jackson's book and explains what motivated Jackson's message to U.S. politicians and citizens: "Government Indian policy had become entrenched in patronage and inefficiency, which resulted in graft, fraud, and abuse of Native Americans." By her work, Jackson incited others unto their own best works.
Statements concerning America's Indian policy throughout history are available to us in the government documents at this moment. Therefore, we can interact with them for purposes of examining our Indian history. The truth of Indian America's history deserves recognition. Both aboriginal Americans and Americans who descended from the founders of the United States need to face some weaknesses in ourselves as "first" Americans. Weaknesses have a truthful side. We have nothing to fear about uncovering this ahistory. How else can we right the wrongs?
Please refer to the book Native Seattle by Coll Thrush. The author quotes Major J. Thomas Turner, writing in 1914: "Times have changed ... there are no more Rocky Mountains ... no more Indians, no more buffalo, and the Great Plains have disappeared. Come to think of it, were there ever any, or were [sic] their existence only an iridescent dream?" Edith Sanderson Redfield wrote the following poem:
All, all are gone, the men, tepees
E'en gone the trickling streams, the trees.
Seattle now in pride surveys
Its ports — its buildings — railroads — ways,
Where money comes and money goes;
Whose right supreme? Who cares? Who knows?
Helen Peterson Schmitt, daughter of Karl Peterson and a Makah Indian woman, describes Seattle in the 1930s as a city that hung "No Indians Allowed" signs in their shop windows, leading her to hide her Indian ancestry. At first she identified only with her Swedish side and the lutefisk, glögg, and hambos of her father's people, until years later, when she identified herself as an Indian person. Indian victims' scars from the white man's scorn are still seen on the persons of Indian America today. Many such persons can be seen today, in the doorways around Seattle taverns near Pioneer Square. Even though the Indians are mostly gone from public view, totem poles stand to attract visitors to the city. The poles stand, in a place mostly cleared of its original inhabitants, like exclamation points: proof of Indians' indictment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rights Remembered by Pauline R. Hillaire, Gregory P. Fields. Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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