Cowboys & "Native Americans"? Nahhhh!

Ever since moving to Santa Fe, I’ve been writing about “Cowboys and Indians”. Here on Substack. “Cowboys & Indians”. Something like Frank Sinatra singing:

Love and Marriage. Love and Marriage.

Go together like a horse and carriage.

This I tell you, brother

You can’t have one without the other.

True dat, right?

Well, that’s what I always thought. Having grown up in the tv-cowboy 50s and 60s, those were my Saturday mornings: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy. Andy Devine and Gabby Hayes. And my favorite, The Lone Ranger, who of course, had his faithful sidekick, Tonto.

And after school, even Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody had “Chief Thunderthud” and “Princess Summerfall Winterspring”. At night, there were “Brave Eagle” and “Broken Arrow”. Historically, there were the indefatigable Cochise, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo, and even when “the Indians” were portrayed in the media as “the bad guys” which, of course, they often were… there they were circling the covered wagons in John Ford Westerns, being driven further West by the U. S. Army, or every once in a blue moon, there they were, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Chief Sitting Bull, actually defeating General George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at The Little Big Horn.

But sadly and more accurately, the brutal historical truth, shame, and crime of the matter, of course, was that originally, the colonizing Spanish, and then, the U.S. government, completely decimated the population of the indigenous people of the American continent, first, unintentionally by disease, then far more nefariously, with false promises and broken treaties, forcing far too many tribes on far too many “trails of tears” - off their own sacred lands - then by rounding them up onto far too many barren and hostile “Indian reservations”.

Do the free-flowing poker chips and seemingly endless income of the modern-day “Indian casinos” make up for these century-long crimes against the indigenous tribes? I’ll leave that question and the whole issue of “reparations” for some smarter academics and modern-day scholars than myself.

But here’s the thing about my moving from the Pacific West Coast of Los Angeles to the Southwest mountains of New Mexico: My high school-educated and politically-corrected son, the wise(ass) and outspoken 16-year-old, Exsel - won’t let me use the word “Indian” anymore!

For example, we’re driving from LA to Santa Fe, and we come across a well-worn billboard on the side of the road that reads:

Handmade Indian Jewelry and Pottery Ahead

And I say something to my wife and son like,

Do you guys want to stop at the Indian reservation?

Well, immediately, Exsel will pipe up,

You can’t say that, Pak Trules. (As I’ve said before, that’s what he calls me: “Pak Trules”, a silent “k” on the “Pak”, an Indonesian word of respect for elders.)

Why? We can’t stop at the reservation and buy some turquoise? You know New Mexico has some of the best turquoise in the world. And the Indian craftsmen and women are world-renowned.

No, you can say the word. ‘Indian’. You have to say ‘Native American’.

But the sign says ‘Indian’.

It doesn’t matter, Pak Trules. You can’t say the word Indian. It’s like “the N word.”

Are you sure about that?

Yeah!

The Pueblo people, or “Puebloans”, are a collection of indigenous or, ok Exsel, “Native American” tribes of the Southwestern United States who share common agricultural, material, and religious practices. Pueblo is a Spanish term for "village." When Spanish colonization of the Americas began in the 16th century with the founding of “Nuevo Mexico”, they came across complex, multi-story villages built of adobe (mud and water), stone, and other local materials. Many century-old homes built right into the cliffs, accessible only by ladder, have existed for millennia, along with carefully preserved ceremonial worship sites. These can be seen today at U.S. national monuments like Bandelier and Puye Cliffs, which the Trules family have already visited. They are among the most popular tourist sites in all of New Mexico.

New Mexico contains the largest number of federally recognized Pueblo communities, while some Pueblo communities can also be found in Arizona and Texas, mostly in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, along the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers and their tributaries. Among those Pueblo tribes still currently inhabiting New Mexico, the ones of Taos, Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and San Ildefonso pueblos are perhaps the best-known. Pueblo people, approximately 75,000 in number, are a tight-knit community revolving around family clans and respect for tradition, who speak languages from four different derivations, and each Pueblo is further divided culturally by kinship systems and agricultural practices, although all cultivate varieties of maize.

Pueblo peoples have lived in the American Southwest for millennia and descend from the “Ancestral Puebloans”, who have left archaeological traces from 1100 BCE. The term Anasazi is frequently used to refer to all ancestral Pueblo people, but it is now largely avoided, another recent casualty of “political correctness”. Anasazi is a Navajo word that means Ancient Ones or Ancient Enemies, hence the Pueblo peoples' rejection of it.

I see, I see. Now the Pueblo People are forskaing the Navajo name, “Anasazi”, the very name of the popular restaurant where my wife has worked since we arrived in Santa Fe, “Inn of the Anasazi”.

I understand. It’s not cool anymore to be called “ancient enemy” - in the actual language of your enemy.

But how then, do I get to the bottom of this? Indian or Native American? I mean, as the name of this post says, you won’t be catching me saying, “Cowboys & Native Americans”? Nahhhh!

I know where to go! Deep into The Substack! To a writer named Sherman Alexie.

Have you heard of him? Maybe? Maybe not? Google him or click on my link. He’s the most renowned Indian/Native American writer in America. Number One! His most famous and ground-breaking novel is “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”. That’s a good enough title for me!

And he has a Substack. Like me.

I go there.

Born in 1966, the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Award, Alexie is a novelist, poet, short story writer, filmmaker (“Smoke Signals”), and performer. He’s the author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian”, the beloved classic that has sold millions of copies worldwide. He was raised in Wellpinit, Washington on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Good credentials. I read the man. He’s prolific. A great writer.

I write to him on Substack and tell him so.

He gets back to me:

Santa Fe! The Indian amusement park! Such an intense blend of spirituality and capitalism. I have quite a few friends there. I love the food but I try to avoid the ethereal. That's my walkabout everywhere!

I write back,

I have a question for you. My Indonesian-born son just turned 16, and he has been politically corrected to not allow me to use the word "Indian", even when I talk about the "cowboys and Indians" of my tv youth. So when you say, "Santa Fe, the Indian amusement park!", are only YOU, as having come from the reservation, allowed to say or write it, like so many other politically-corrected, racially-loaded names, or is "Indian" cool for me to use as well? Do you understand my question? Or am I just an old fart, like my son thinks?

Mr. Alexie replies,

Next time your son gets after you, send him to my tribe's homepage.

https://spokanetribe.com

He'll see that we call ourselves The Spokane Tribe of Indians. My analogy for non-Indians is that Native American is business casual and Indian is weekend wear. There are very very few Natives who would be offended by being called Indian.

Trules: Man, are we going to have A DISCUSSION!

Thanks!

Then,

Trules: Wellll.... we had our "discussion" and I read my son your comment. He hung his head in "defeat" for a moment - but then rallied to claim "historical" victory by saying that you and your tribe are certainly entitled to call yourselves "Indians". However, it is STILL a historical error because Mr. Columbo, and his fellow conquistadors, when thinking they "discovered" the East Indies, called the indigenous people, "Indians" - incorrectly!

My son is a privileged "urb", as you call some of your fellow tribesman, and yourself, in one of your recent Substack posts that I just read. But I have much tolerance and compassion for him because he also grew up "on the rez" - that is, in very poor, 3rd world Sumatra, Indonesia, until we brought him here when he was eight years old!

Any comments?

Alexie: Your son's point that "Indian" is a historical error means he implicitly believes that we Indians are making the same historical error in calling ourselves Indian. Sounds condescending, perhaps? "You can call yourselves what you like but I have the true knowledge."

Sounds like Mr. Alexie thinks Exsel is a bit condescending; like he, Exsel knows what’s what, and “the Native Americans” don’t!

Well…. I think I’ll leave it at that.

For now!

Whataya think, Substackers?

Please leave your comments on the post.

Hey, I’m a newbie to Santa Fe and New Mexico. But heck, pardners, I think I have Mr. Alexie’s “permission” to call “indigenous Native Americans” - “Indians” if I want to.

And now, even Exsel agrees!!!

My Indonesian wife, son & I all went to the San Ildefonso Pueblo (Reservation) this last Sunday. We were the only "guests" there. The pueblo was at the foot of the sacred Black Mesa, where the Pueblo Tribes retreated from Bandelier, New Mexico in the 1300s and again in 1680 during the "Pueblo Revolt", when "the Indians" temporarily kicked out the Spanish.

It was sort of lonely.

Then again, if you’re lucky, like Sherman and Exsel, smart, talented, ambitious, hard-working, and privileged,

you don’t have to “stay on the rez” forever……………

Best from the Southwest,

Trules

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