Kill The Indian, Save The Man!

the subtitles of a settler colonial society, genocide and ecocide.

As an Indian, in middle school I was taught about the indigenous people of North America, as Plains Indians (warlike), Pueblo Indians (pacifistic) and Woodland Indians (democratic). For us Indians born in India, the namesake aside, the distant people of North and South America appeared mythical or as entirely new figures in history, unlike what the pedagogy of the english colonizers intended to teach us real Indians. Even as we were well aware of colonization, yet not clear as to why an entire race with hundreds of distinct tribes, speaking many different languages were all identified as “Indians” forever. For it was Christopher Columbus to his dying day, who firmly believed that the Spanish had discovered a new route to India, and that every indigenous was an Indian. Digging deeper, within the pages of American history, we read about the pioneers who openly declared that “the only good Indian is a dead one”.

Within hundreds of ‘Spaghetti Western’ and ‘Gunsmoke Cowboy’ movies that we watched while growing up, the Indians were projected as violent, as savages and were often sacrificed for their own good, leading up to the creation of mighty nations like USA and Canada. Such false personification and racist myths succeeded in nearly wiping out North America's indigenous history, identity and their natural and bio-regional configurations. The fabricated history also managed to eclipse the fact that, the United States and Canada are, according to the indigenous "host" nations, what is now more accurately known as “settler colonial societies”. The philosophies that the European colonizers imposed upon the indigenous people were many, tabulating together as an imposition of civilization, at any cost. A cost that is always paid by the so called uncivilized. Enough has been written, documented, revised and put out as discourse as to how nearly 90% of the indigenous population of North and South America was wiped out in less than 350 years. Following the long drawn holocaust executed by generations of Europeans, the remaining native survivors were forced into reservations and to face new maxims like “Kill The Indian, Save The Man”.

The phrase does not symbolize the god given right to kill natives, nor the endless expansion of empires carried on by the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and British, but rather a “final solution” where by new institutions would "civilize" the remaining Indians into white society. Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt coined the phrase “Kill The Indian, Save The Man” sometime after the American civil war, leading to the foundation of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879. Like many leading racist, arrogant nation building men of the day, Brigadier Pratt also believed that it was perfectly legit to separate (and kidnap) children from their parents and homes, and force them into the "schools" then stripping them of all their “Indian ways”. To kill the identity and spirit of every new generation, thereby punishing and saving the race, to transform into men and women worthy of western civilization.

The following story transcends between three centuries, mapping the violence, and cruelty, including murder, that will never be fully known, but perhaps visualized as a timeline of a singular worldview, that has been imposed upon the uncivilized. The worldview which constantly necessitates sacrifice, sentencing countless innocent people to extinction, and pushing the survivors to the brink of collapse. What broad markers define a settler colonial society, genocide and ecocide from back then, and as it happens today.

Buying Time
With the money they made by stealing our land…
They have bought themselves some time-
Air time
Water time
War time
And underground time.
By that they believe that they have bought history.
But when I look back, past the hundreds of years
Of history they claim to own,
Through our own thousands of years,
And when I think of the millions of red flowers
That opened each Spring of those thousands of years
No matter how white the winters,
I see hours like stars in the eyes of our children.

- Jimmie Durham

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was a foundation stone of sorts, a model that was rapidly appropriated within newly formed United States and Canada, peaking at roughly 350 institutions that were built during the last 250 years. The recent discovery of more than 750 Native children graves in Canada was surely scandalous, all be it missing from the pages of it’s often glorified history. Never-the-less nearly 500 such "schools" or shall we call them jails, existed across North America. 357 in the U.S. and 139 in Canada, that enshrined the mission of "kill the Indian, save the man." The institutions most often were government-sponsored, yet many were run by churches belonging to various denominations of the Catholic order. What is labelled as “institutional kidnapping” was followed by brainwashing, prohibition of native dialects, physical and sexual abuse, and systematic extermination of native cultures. Why has it not been classified as a genocide?

By early 1900s about 85% of indigenous children had been successfully separated from their parents and reservations, forced into various reformative institutions. The process involved either forms of coercion or outright kidnapping. “This was achieved by first kidnapping the children from their homes and parents, forcing them into the "schools," then stripping them of all their Indian ways. First their long hair--a source of pride for many tribes--was cut. All their clothes were taken and burned and they were given military-style uniforms to wear. Students were forbidden to speak their language, sign, (most children did not speak English when they arrived at the schools) or practice any of their Native traditions. Strict and often very violent punishments were used to enforce these rules.” (Notes From The Frontiers) The dark legacy of Indian schools pointing back to the “Indian problem” persists in the underbelly of a settler colonial society. This is especially true about the US and Canada. We hear the native leaders, who believe that tens of thousands of Native children died at these institutions during the last 200 years.

Professor of Indian Studies at the University Of Colorado, Ward Churchill has spent a long time archiving the untold horrors inflicted upon Native children within Indian schools. He makes a compelling argument, about the extent of the damage that has transcended over generations. “Half of the children did not survive the experience, and those who did were left permanently scarred. The resulting alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, and the transmission of trauma to their own children has led to a social disintegration with results that can only be described as genocidal.” Kill The Indian, Save The Man (Abe Publishing). Ward Churchill unpacks the centuries old colonial worldview that is still embedded within modern society, one that frames the colonizer’s relationship with the remaining Natives. “A socio­-cultural retardation on the part of Indians is typically held to be responsible for the pristine quality of the Americas at the point of their "discovery" by Europeans. The carrying capacity of the continent was, moreover, outstripped by the European influx by 1850s, despite massive reductions of native populations and numerous species of large mammals”.

Ward Churchill’s analysis compels us to rethink, that unlike Europeans, the Native Americans had long ago attained a profound in­tellectual apprehension of the natural order, ecologically speaking, rather than as something apart from and superior to it. The consequent foundation of new nations, carved out by European powers within all five continents would be complicit in dozens of genocides and hundreds of massacres, all be it marching on the same tunes of “the only good Indian is a dead one” or “kill the Indian, save the man”.

By bullet, by whip, by discipline, by education and by law & punishment, the apparatus of colonization was fulfilled and the framework of settler colonial societies established, across the world. The logic of the settler colonial apparatus was insurgent, but it also turned counter-insurgent once the western empire had to expand beyond it’s pre-20th century “colonial limits”. The current laws that frame ‘Indian Law’ is actually a continuation of the “doctrine of Christian discovery”. The treason involved in all such law, consent and agreement is explained by Peter d'Errico, in his new book, Federal Anti-Indian Law. “Tribal sovereignty is always less and expendable in the face of federal laws of the U.S”. Deeper into the Indigenous logic, about western invaders and their modus operandi that “…being acted out en masse on the world stage via an insidious collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called “wetiko” (Paul Levy, Wetiko And The Mind-Virus).

Of Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe descent, Leonard Peltier has been in jail for almost 46 years now. Convicted by a 1976 jury, for the murders of FBI agents Coler and Williams. Even as Peltier’s case was collectively framed by the US government, the FBI and local police, the man’s dedication to his kin and loyalty to the land is an outstanding example of resilience and positivity. The imperial structure upon which a settler colonial society is built, is swift to impose discipline, control crime and deliver punishment or justice if you prefer. Over time, every witness retracted their testimony that was coerced (and bribed) by the FBI and vigilantes. Regardless, the US Supreme Court has rejected all pleas for clemency, even if they were repeatedly made during the last 30 years, by Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Jesse Jackson. Pelteir remains in jail for crimes that in all probability he did not commit. Who shot the agents? The state does not care nor does it want us to know. Yet the crimes, punishment and loss of kinship that Peltier documented through his childhood and youth, tugs us back to the title of this story. “The dead Indian lives, within the spirit of the earth as much as the soul of the landless”

The American state and the FBI had targeted Leonard Pelteir and other members of American Indian Movement for more than a decade, for activities that coalesced into what is known as the ‘Pine Ridge Massacre Of 1973’. The spot was close to the infamous sight of the ‘Wounded Knee’ massacre of the Lakota (December 1890). “In less than two days, the FBI and local police had fired more than eleven thousand rounds of ammunition, aimed at various outposts, homes, animal shelters and small shops dotted along the Indian reserve. No one knew how many people died during the entire standoff. Hundreds went missing… no official body count of the Natives was verified by the prosecution, FBI or the police, during the 1975 trail of Peltier.” (Seattle Weekly). Numerous accounts, including the book by Peter Matthiessen titled In the Spirit of Crazy Horse exposes the incident as a micro-genocide of sorts.

Writes Peltier, in his own book Prison Writings, My Life Is My Sun Dance - “For more than two decades, the government had gradually invaded various parts of the reserve, to lay down roads, pipelines, bridges and watchtowers… earlier what they thought was worthless wasteland, had now become valuable for the minerals and the oil, that white urbanized society wanted.. they would have no problems to eradicate us altogether in the name of sovereignty. Late 1968-69 various Lakota children disappeared from the reservation. Women were threatened and raped by unknown vigilantes positioned within the reserve.. Our sacred lands were being stolen yet again… sweeping the survivors under the rug of history…” .

There is little doubt while reading Peltier’s book as to who is framed as a criminal, when the objective is about acquisition and control of land, rivers and ecosystems. The combined verdict by the state and capitalist forces is always the same. As if the FBI, police and the state were not powerful enough to redeem the “Indian Problem” that new illegal projects like CointelPro were also aimed at members of the Native communities across the US and Canada. Orchestrated by a vicious state appointed thug like J. Edgar Hoover, CointelPro agents terrorized not only Indigenous peoples, but also communists, gay activists, black liberation leaders and even freedom fighters based in Africa and Latin America. Extending the legacy of “American homeland terrorism” the FBI and CointelPro infiltrators managed to destabilized and even falsely accuse and indict Indigenous resistance members. “Thousands of acres of land within various Indian reservations was effectively usurped by the US Govt….” (Madonna Thunder-Hawk, Indigenous Resistance Leader). Anyone can be framed as a criminal, on whatever charges and anyone can be treated as the proverbial “Indian” in order to redeem the civilized “Man”. Even an Indigenous leader like Deb Haaland cannot utter a word against such tyranny, for the the empire she actually serves, as a safe “anointed Indian”. Listen to Red Nation explain the Leonard Peltier case, still on today.

Peltier’s narrative that challenges the ruthless order of a settler colonial society, spews out simple questions and thoughts, aimed at the heart of the subject at hand. “The ultimate war which the govt of America has unleashed on the remaining indigenous people will not end as planned… We are ordinary people, just like you, and yes at times extraordinary as all of us can be… but we also feel, we also bleed, we are born and we die… but we are not stuffed dummies in a museum or a souvenir shop, we are not quaint or violent characters in a movie, we are not sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Raiders. A society that celebrates the ridicule of our likeness forever. Imagine if you saw a team called Washington White Skins or the Washington Black Skins? Then you’d see some protests.. For all else that has been taken from us, please leave us our name, our remaining history, our sense of belonging to the great human family.. Do you hear us clearly?” For over 100 years now, tourists have flocked to the West (US and Canada) to glimpse and photograph not only the vanishing wilderness, but what we perceive to be the “vanishing people” of the First Nations. That symbolic Native American, who had been a part of the wilderness for millennia. As a project, does a settler colonial society ever terminate?

Relegated to the fringes of the industrial wastelands of early 21st century, indigenous­ perspectives and knowledge is often deformed, appropriated and made to serve the ever increasing problems of late capitalism. Movies, mass media, documentaries and popular events together overshadow the physical dimensions of indigenous culture. “Trivialized and co-opted, they have been reduced to the stuff of the settler society's self-serving pop mythology, commercialized and exploited endlessly by everyone from the Hollywood moguls, hippie filmmakers, advertising gurus, corporate therapists and museum curators to name a few, who over the past 75 years have produced literally thousands of celluloid parodies, written books and invented practices, not merely of our histories, but of our most sacred beliefs…” (Struggle For Land, Ward Churchill). Within a settler colonial society, discourses that can debase the ruling order and its colonial mythologies can also stir a hornet’s nest. A very avoidable realm, across the ruling white order which make up large settler colonial societies such as US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, include Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Mexico if you wish.

Spread across the world, these societies cannot make a reconciliation with the facts (and fruits) of the conquest. Nor can they imagine a world without nations, without borders and police. The proverbial “Indian” as the figure of a ghost, is able to debase the self-serving and satisfied tranquillity of a settler colonial society. In doing so, she or he fulfills the idea to restore the “Indian” back into the realm of reality.

“In the 21st century, placing the Native peoples at the center of the struggle for freedom equates to a new threat, to the legitimacy of settler colonial societies, not just in the US and Canada, but across the world like South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Israel… The disruptions of this nature are becoming more and more frequent. The specter of extermination in favor of then colonialism, now capitalism, continues to the day…” Prof. Gerald Horne.

To cite Sartre's famous maxim that “colonialism equals genocide” - is a proposition to which I subscribe to, but it has to seek proper validation as well. Although the United States, Canada and Australia officially maintain that genocide has never been perpetrated against the indigenous peoples within their borders, the case is open to challenge across the political spectrum. Further, most white folks belonging to these nations continue to claim validation of their title and ownership of native lands on the basis that "group extinction" has run its course in most cases. Since where there are no survivors or descendants of “pre-invasion populations” the argument goes, there can be no question of continuing “aboriginal title”. Existing law calls it Titritorium Res Nullius. Ever new and clever rhetoric is invented to deflect the figures of extermination, but more crucially there is no actual proof to demonstrate that any of the peoples native to North America, circa 1500, have ever been completely eradicated. The genocide and holocaust debate within North America will go on for a long time, especially between those who bemoan the loss of past exuberance versus those who understand the dehumanization perpetuated by the above group.

Yet, we can objectively clarify certain foundational myths of a settler colonial society. Denial of indigenous rights to self-determination, based on the belief that most native peoples have “long since commingled” with the settler societies, rendering the Native’s sovereignty self-nullifying. Why must then powerful settler colonial societies continue to practice the dehumanization (and fear) of the Native? Or the outsiders, the refugees and the immigrants? The denial of self-identification or the denial to existence runs its course across other settler colonial societies, taking up genocidal proportions, as currently seen within Israeli society. “Kill The Arab, Save The Zionist” is but an imaginary slogan, to encapsulate the racist logic which frames the Zionist project called Israel - the current flag bearer of an imperially backed genocide in Gaza.

For generations Israelis have referred Palestinians as “animals” as “subhumans” and as “barbarians” which makes the “final solution” all the more prescient to maintain a settler colonial society decked on false pride and rabid nationalism. One which necessitates the killing of innocent children, women and men, the endless bombardment of civilian areas, the decimation of hospitals, schools, colleges, mosques, altogether the prospects of future life in Palestine. More than 14,000 Palestine children have been killed so far with another 21,000 feared dead or lost in war. The ongoing genocide by the Zionist regime of Israel bares a savage resemblance to earlier European and American versions, that acquired Native land, regardless if the original owners willingly consented to its alienation, or were they caged, tortured and or completely exterminated. “I think of those we left behind in Gaza, waiting for sudden death.” (Chris Hedges).

Conquest, war, indoctrination, discipline, chattel slavery, incarceration and genocide make the logic of civilization building. They are subject to constant reform and intensification. Winding down to the creation of settler colonial projects necessitated permanent destruction, both of human beings and of the environment. The sacrifice entailed the end of “certain ways of life” for new ones to be placed upon the acquired landscape. Where the Native and the Bison once roamed, now exists a self-serving machine oriented world. The exuberance of a technologically superior settler colonial society comes at a cost. One that be can be understood as a combination of ecocide and genocide over time. The limitless extraction of resources and exploitation of human beings are two fundamental characteristics of most settler colonial societies. Ecologically speaking such large societies cannot be sustained without the parallels of violence and continuous extraction.

Given we can sing a few positive tunes for assimilation and right to self-identification for all within so called liberal democracies, to compensate the specter of holocaust that occurred over centuries throughout North and South America, Africa and parts of Asia it is the remaining Indigenous people who provide the most important in­sights about survival. Akin to the children of Palestine who are able to salvage themselves and their favorite doll, out of the debris of their erstwhile neighborhood. About the relationship of humans with each other, and more importantly with Nature. Innate but global wisdom that the native people have been trying to share, all along. The indigenous also anticipate the rising fear and uncertainty, that is felt amongst us modern techno-industrial folks about the incoming future where genocide, exodus and self-defense may become interchangeable conditions, subject to which side we may find ourselves on. “Kill the X, Save the Y” - “Do this or die”

The point of writing this story was also a negation of certain beliefs, attitudes and shared myths upon which modern societies are currently standing. Ones that have wielded terrible consequences and horrible outcomes in the first place. Settler colonialism, genocide and ecocide are three aspects, amongst many that define of our great march towards a so called “better world” based on a singular “rational worldview” all be it that turned out to be a manifold disaster. That project is falling apart as we speak. The indigenous and the forsaken have transcended from the margins, into the political mainstream, as a blessing rather than a curse, like Ward Churchill refers to as “the cornerstone of survival and a radically decolonized fu­ture”. What outspoken radical wisdom that we can interpret is perhaps “kill the myths and save life itself” not just for ourselves, but for all who come after us.

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