The Occupy Movement and the American Indian (Pt 2)

The ties between my trip to Washington and American Indians didn’t stop there, however. As soon as we pulled into the camp where the protesters were spending the night, a homeless man came up to greet us. His name was Zed, and he was half American Indian. He didn’t specify which tribe.

Zed walked us around the camp, telling us about life in D.C. and his day-to-day struggles. One of his eyes was always pointed to the left and, combined with his hunched-over gait, lent the illusion of a constant bug-eyed vigilance over the area. Zed suffered from mental issues, he said. Zed had been homeless almost his whole life, and was regularly antagonized by the police. Zed was born a while after the Little Big Horn incident, and while he condemned the movement’s violence, wished he could have been a part of it nonetheless. I’ve always found “incident” to be such a brutally clinical name for the Little Big Horn struggle, incidentally. “Incident” carries the implications of operating rooms and gauze and bureaucracy—perhaps the aftermath of the occupation, but certainly not the heart of it.

Despite his American Indian heritage, Zed was very much immersed in modern white American culture. He grew up in D.C. during the heyday of hardcore punk, and was a professed fan of Slayer. He threatened to go ballistic if anyone removed the battered Iggy Pop button from its perch on his jacket. As he balanced his way between tents, I could see myself, projected fifteen years into the future. 

The next morning, our group trekked to the Smithsonian, and visited, in short succession, the Museum of American History and the American Indian museum. I don’t think Samuel Beckett could have come up with a more ironic juxtaposition.

While at the American History museum, we learned that only several hundred thousand natives existed in America before settlement (modern estimates put the number closer to several million) and that the Spanish were the first colonizers of the region (Asians arrived via land bridge several thousand years earlier, and the Scandinavians had been ferrying back and forth for several hundred years). At the Museum for the American Indian, we saw videos of groups of flabby white people trying to learn indigenous dances and an exhibit on the American Indian presence in the “Twilight” book and film franchise. Despite the efforts of the curators of the American Indian museum, it was clear that both buildings were attempting to appeal to a mainly (if not exclusively) white audience.

Still, the most representative moment for our trip occurred at the Museum of American History. In the exhibit on post-Revolutionary War issues, there was a display for the debate on voting rights. Three different segments of the population were illustrated, and a giant wheel was below each one, listing popular opinions why or why not the group should be allowed to vote. The segments for “women” and “African-Americans” displayed beaming sketch portraits above an ebullient multicolored wheel. The segment for “Native Americans” featured a sad-looking sketch of a native. Where his wheel should have been, there was only a gaping hole, the wheel itself having been stolen several months prior.