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Washichu - He Who Steals Fat
he first time the Lakota ever saw a white person, as the story was told me, he was starving. He came into their camp on the prairie in the middle of the night and started looking around for some food. They all just watched. They were really astonished by what they were witnessing. They watched this guy. He goes in there, gets down in their food, grabs something and runs away. So then they go see what he took. He took the fat. So the Lakota word for white person is washichu, which means, He Who Steals Fat. That’s what I call industrial thinking.
It is my experience in industrial thinking that instead of viewing natural law as pre-eminent, we are taught of man's dominion over nature. The god-given right of man to all that is around him, all of which has value only in terms of its utilitarian benefit to man. So, for instance, the argument, "Does a tree have standing?" is an unusual argument in this society. Because we are taught in general that man has superior rights to all that is around him. Within this context, we have coined a phrase in the indigenous community. It actually came from a friend of ours, Jerry Mander, who talked about the "commodification of the sacred." What has happened is that over time, all that is alive, has spirit, or has standing on its own in an indigenous worldview is now viewed only in terms of its utilitarian benefit to man.
I am arguing over clear-cutting on my reservation. I'm trying to keep trees standing, and Becker County is trying to cut them down. I go down there and I have meeting after meeting with the Department of Natural Resources down there. I sit in the meetings with these five guys and they refer to my forest as "timber resources." I do not refer to my forest as timber resources. I refer to them as forests. They are not timber resources. They are forests. That is the difference between an animate noun and an inanimate noun. The Hopi or the Navajo people will tell you, for instance, that Black Mesa coal field is the liver of Mother Earth. Arizona Public Service will tell you that it is worth $20-a-ton delivered. That is the difference between something which is alive and something which is viewed in terms of its utilitarian benefit to man. The commodification of the sacred. I believe that has occurred in this society.
Defining Progress
third concept, which is a very American concept, is that of linear thinking. You all go through it. The best example is how we are taught time in this society. We are taught time largely on a timeline. Usually that timeline, as you all know, begins around 1492 and continues from there on out with some dates that are of some importance to someone. That is a linear concept of time. I would suggest that there are certain values associated with that concept of time. For instance, the idea of progress. Progress as defined by indicators like "economic growth" and "technological advancement."
I would suggest that there are other concepts or values that go along with that. For instance, the idea of the wild and the cultivated. This America is based on a pastoral view that came from Europe. So when this American worldview looks at the north, it thinks of barren Arctic tundra. That is how we are taught. It has no utilitarian benefit, unless it is brought under the mine, or brought into clear-cutting. When Americans first looked west, they saw the great frontier, the great expanse. Some of it was called the great wasteland. Some of it was called the wilds. It was a god-given right of Americans, in the conceptual framework of Manifest Destiny, to cultivate it. Those concepts, I suggest to you, carry with them a set of values. They view those of us who lived in the wilds as savage or primitive, and people who live elsewhere as civilized. I suggest that those are values which permeate education in this society. That is why indigenous intellectual traditions are not presented in most universities. Or if they are presented, in my experience, quite often they are presented by white scholars and not by indigenous people themselves.
I also suggest that [the European pastoral view] is fundamentally racist. Because it is my experience that most people who are viewed as primitive are people of color and people who are viewed in general as civilized are people of European descent. I would on that basis alone suggest that the concept is racist.
Capitalism & Natural Law
last concept which is American—a washichu concept—is that of capitalism itself. We are taught in America that capitalism is a God-given right. I believe we are taught that it is a dominant economic institution which exists in the world. I will tell you that in many parts of the world capitalism does not exist. Many communities continue in their own economic systems, which are independent. Yet now, with the passage of international legislation like GATT or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), many communities are going to be brought under the hammer of capitalism. The impact of capitalism on our communities has historically been devastating. I will ask you to consider that the contextual framework, the actual framework for capitalism itself, makes one need to consider both the permanence and the structure of capitalism as we embrace our future. In my experience in economics class, capitalism is taking labor, capital, and resources and putting them together for the purpose of accumulation, right? That is the basic formula of capitalism. You take labor, capital, and resources and you put them together for the purpose of accumulation.
A successful capitalist puts together the least to accumulate the most. That's how it works. So sometimes you get cheap goods someplace, and you bring them in. Sometimes you get a maquiladora. You hire your workers down there on the Mexican border. You don't have to pay them more than forty cents an hour. That's pretty good. Sometimes you get your trees free from the federal government. Those are formulas for successful capitalism in the 1990s. There are different formulas that have existed prior to this. Slavery, of course, being one of the most apparent examples. The reality is that the structure of capitalism, however you look at it, is inherently about putting together those pieces for the purpose of accumulation. So in its structure capitalism is inherently about taking more than you need and not leaving the rest. As such, capitalism is inherently out of order with natural law.
The conflict between industrial and indigenous thinking has been manifest in terms of holocaust. That is the reality. It is not abstract In the past five hundred years, the holocaust which has occurred in the Americas is unparalleled in the world. That is the reality. There are over 2,000 nations of indigenous peoples who have become extinct, and in the past 150 years there has been an extinction of more species than since the Ice Age. There is, from our perspective. and the perspective of many, a direct relationship between extinction of people and extinction of species. That is also the impact of the conflict between two different societies.
The problem, however, is that this holocaust is not recognized as having occurred. It is trivialized and minimalized, whether it has to do with human beings or not. That is very much the reality. In my experience, we do not discuss holocaust in American textbooks. American textbooks do not talk about the American experience of indigenous peoples as an experience of holocaust or genocide. Instead, it is largely whitewashed and covered over as something which was inevitable with progress. That is very similar to the treatment of most animals which have become extinct in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere in the world. It is social Darwinism, and Darwinism is presented as the cause of he extinction. I do not think the buffalo was exterminated by Darwinism.
The impact of holocaust on our peoples is something which cannot be trivialized or minimized. Yet in this America what has happened is that we do not discuss holocaust as having occurred. That is why most people cannot name more than ten different kinds of Indian people in North America, because we do not discuss native people as existing. Historically, very minimally, and presently almost none at all. That is why it is my belief that America is predicated on the denial of the native.
When people think of native people in this country today, when I ask people what kind of Indians they know, in my experience, having done this a number of times, they can usually name Indians from Westerns. That is the kind of Indian people they can name, largely because the image of a native person that exists today in America is an image created on television. That is why the native experience is trivialized, and that is why the native experience is romanticized. We are not viewed as human beings as such. Instead we are viewed as caricatures. We exist in cartoons. We are people that you dress up as on Halloween, and we are people used as mascots for sports teams. That is how we become trivialized and do not exist as full human beings with full human rights.
