The great Drama of the American Indian or Native American
is by no means ended! it may have appeared in the 1830's,
following the Removal Act of 1830, that the final curtain was
falling on this noble race. I am sure those who plotted this
tragedy thought they had succeeded. And I am sure thousands
of those who plodded along the "Trail of Tears" into exile
from their beloved homeland-place of their birth and sacred
place of burial grounds of their ancestors felt the end had indeed
come. For many thousands, whose shallow graves lined the removal
trails, the end did come through the lack of food or ample clothing
against the bitter and severe weather, the ravages of disease or
epidemics, or the butt of a gun of an impatient or calloused
soldier.
In some cases Death, even in such agonizing ways, would have
been kinder and easier than surviving to face the slow, and
deeply agonizing and dehuminizing loss of hope. The loss of
hope has devestating effects on any people. The American
Indian with all his strength was no exception, in fact, human
history would indicate that no people are excepted, from such
tragedy, under any circumstances. Speaking on such loss of
hope, Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, once
said, "The social tie, which distress had long since weakened,
is then dissolved; they have no longer a country, and soon
they will not be a people; their language perished; and all
traces of their origin disappear. Their nation has ceased to
exist except in the recollections of the antiquerries of
America and the few learned in Europe."
Some one hundred years set in that can be characterised as
virtually hopeless, for these noble people who had been so
ruthlessly disenfranchised and driven from their homeland.
This period saw widespread alcohalism and conflict that
evidenced this hopelessness. The amazing part of this drama
is there was a remnant that would not give up and die. I
believe in this story of survival is one of the greatest, noblest,
nothing short of miraculous -Dramas of human history! They
sought to hang on, keeping alive some conciousness of their
rich and noble heritage and daring to believe a new era
would dawn in which hope would flourish!
Melvin Thorn of the National Indian Youth Council once said,
"the Indian has kept his culture, while other people have lost
theirs in the melting pot."
Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota, Chairman of the
American Indian Policy Review Commision, once summarized the
Indian's plight this way, "In the past 200 years American Indians
have been experimented with, involuntarily shifted from one
location to another, robbed of their land and water, their political
power and at times, even their freedom. If the Indian people are
ever to assume a normal place in American society, the
Commision believes there must be some restoration of political
power to the tribes. That includes the recognition that Indian
tribes must necessarily control their own affairs since
control from the outside always results in both manipulating
of and deprivation for the Indian."
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