In what should be called “Forbes Hates Racial Minorities Week,” yesterday, John Koppisch wrote an EPIC, and by EPIC, I mean anything-but-groundbreaking racist propaganda against Native Americans. One brilliant commenter called Koppisch out on his B.S.: see in the comment section, dbartecchi’s response. It was informed educated, historically accurate, and written by a white person. **GASP**
Let’s take a look as some of these myths Koppisch is spreading, shall we? One Native American (the lone one interviewed for the article who obvious agrees with Forbes’ side–it’s called racial self-hatred), Yellowtail, says “We accept the myth of communalism. And we don’t value education. We resist it.” Now why in the world would Native Americans not value education for? Could it be that there was an epidemic of colonial violence, sexual abuse, and religious indoctrination at the missionary schools that is just now being uncovered?
Yellowtail’s hope is in his tribe to assimilate to Eurocentrism and the triumph of the religion of corporate capitalism over the traditional religious beliefs of the Crow tribe. The myth that neo-liberals and white supremacist crony-capitalism pushes is that the victims of history are where they are at in life due in large part to their own actions. There is no way that Andrew Jackson ordering the Trail of Tears, the removal of red (red being the racial construction of the dark bodies of Native Americans) bodies from their homes and placed on reservations, where the very worst land and water conditions were provided. The histories of the Native Americans, interconnected with the histories of all colonized peoples read like an open and shut case for Euro-centric thinkers like Koppisch:
“If everyone owns the land, no one does. So the result is substandard housing and the barren, rundown look that comes from a lack of investment, overuse and environmental degradation. It’s a look that’s common worldwide, wherever secure property rights are lacking—much of Africa and South America, inner city housing projects and rent-controlled apartment buildings in the U.S., Indian reservations.”
Wait, how did Africa become a symbol of lack in the first place? And South America? The Inner-city: imperialism, more than a century of racial segregation, but we don’t like to acknowledge those ugly details do we, Mr. Koppisch? For many Native Americans, because of their religious convictions, Vine DeLoria argues that their identity is tied to the land, and not the history of the left/right divide (God is Red, page 61). Crony Capitalism and racists would have us to believe that our religions must be defined by sets of objective belief, and this describes Native Americans conflict with the U.S. American court system (282).
The Native American religionists’ NO to proponents of “private property as prosperity” is a YES to the Spirit of Life, and creation, which respects the “universal planetary history” of all of creation. Tom Koppisch’s view represents the prevailing tribalist viewpoint, that our love for creation should submit to the economic decision makers of the world. But this should not be so, for just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued, to deny religious freedom is to deny our equality before God.
But that’s the points of Corporatism, isn’t it? Capitalism, as libertarians and free marketers argue, has little need for notions of economic equality. Shoving lies down people’s throats, telling others that the victims in life (particularly the darker peoples) are lazy all the while the Powers that Be offer handouts to the Status Quo.
