I
was just a white guy from Los Angeles, suddenly finding myself working among and with Native Americans. Native Americans, of all ages, from many tribes.
This was my first experience, knowingly, being around Native people. I knew “so-called” Indians only from TV and films. I was told by the administrators of this particular Bureau of Indian Affairs project,a program designed to re-educate Indian people, that they were a stoic lot, no sense of humor and needed to learn the rules of the work world and formal education.
My story here is simple. It is not a make wrong or blame story. It is not about Native people. It’s about me. It’s about how I have lived since my high school years when I got to be around, know and befriend African American women and men, Latino families, and the ways the white buracracy, attitudes, and beliefs, often do harm to those not white, nor in positions of power. Being around Native people opened my feelngs and compassion not only for people different from me, but compassion for myself, beliefs held about others that were not my beliefs. Hurt I may have caused. And may still.
This was my first experience, knowingly, being around Native people. I knew “so-called” Indians only from TV and films. I was told by the administrators of this particular Bureau of Indian Affairs project,a program designed to re-educate Indian people, that they were a stoic lot, no sense of humor and needed to learn the rules of the work world and formal education.
My story here is simple. It is not a make wrong or blame story. It is not about Native people. It’s about me. It’s about how I have lived since my high school years when I got to be around, know and befriend African American women and men, Latino families, and the ways the white buracracy, attitudes, and beliefs, often do harm to those not white, nor in positions of power. Being around Native people opened my feelngs and compassion not only for people different from me, but compassion for myself, beliefs held about others that were not my beliefs. Hurt I may have caused. And may still.
I
see the world now as more about awareness, exquisite sensitivity to people and
ideas that are not only different, but even strange. Strange has became an adventure instead of judgment. An 18-year old Lakota Sioux native woman, without blame, smiled, looked into my eyes, and said, “You white people. You talk a lot and say nothing, then added,
“Everything in life is about relationship.
Everything.”
