By RAY LENARCIC

I never wondered why American Indians were referred to as “Forgotten Americans” after taking Dr. Tom Hagan’s course on American Indian history at SUNY Fredonia in 1963. They were forgotten because our “Liberty and Justice for All” Federal and state governments didn’t want them remembered. In effect, you assuage your guilt for was done to them by hiding them away — out of sight, out of mind. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Maybe the powers-that-be were right. Can you imagine what generations of school children would have thought about Uncle Sam if they knew that:

¯ Between 1778 and 1871, the U.S. government entered into over 500 treaties, all of which were subsequently violated or broken in some way. Native American people continue to fight for their rights in Federal courts.

¯ When native peoples tried to resist encroachments on their lands, they were brutally subdued and subjected to an apartheid-like system (reservations) which relegated them to a militarily enforced existence on generally worthless land.

¯ Even those nations eschewing armed resistance in favor of acceding to the white man’s efforts to transform them into apples (red on the outside-white on the inside)) found no peace. The most egregious example of the above was the Cherokee nation. By 1830, it was the quintessential example of assimilation characterized by a bi-cameral (two-house) legislature, a multi-million-dollar plantation economy, a church-going population, their own written alphabet and numerous schools located throughout the reservation. Our government’s reward for their magnificent efforts? The Removal Act of 1830. This nefarious land grab was instigated by “Ole Hickory,” President Andy Jackson, as a response to an increased demand for land by plantation owners and a burgeoning population. As a result, some 17,000 Cherokee were forced to migrate west. After being rounded up and incarcerated in “concentration camps,” they had to endure a six month “Trail of Tears” to Arkansas Territory. An estimated 4000 men, women and children perished along the way, including Principal Chief John Ross” wife. At no time during this travail did they try to resist. Another example of forced migration-check out the Navajo Long Walk.

¯ You’d have thunk that the Removal Act, which also removed several other “civilized” Indian nations from the southeast, would have been it. Nope. The supposed natural barrier between us and them, the Mississippi River, was breached again and again. Among other things the population boom, European immigration (e.g., the Irish) and the gold rush resulted in the American west being carved up into cattle, oil, sheep and mining empires. A once vast virgin prairie was now partitioned by barbed-wire fences and crisscrossed by railroad tracks. Fields of wheat grew where buffalo herds, now slaughtered by the thousands for their “fur coats,” once roamed.

¯ Unlike their eastern brethren, the nomadic Plains tribes chose to militarily resist the great invasion. The valiant efforts of the Dakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, Arapaho,

¯ Crow, et al. failed. Their acts of resistance were later romanticized in books, paintings and movies. Regarding the flicks, they were utilized to “brain-wash” my generation. In the ’50s, after attending another cowboy-Indian matinee at the Rialto, my friends and I headed home to replay what we saw. I have an old picture of myself dressed head-to-toe in cowboy regalia, two pearl-handled Lone Ranger cap pistols at my side, ready to taken on the “savages.” Oftentimes, we older kids were the good guys and the young’uns the heathens.

¯ From the 20th century on, other than being stereotypically victimized by movies and TV shows, Native Americans were basically forgotten. Relegated to lives on reservations with sub-standard housing and a general lack of “modern” amenities, they did their best to eke out existences on generally unproductive tracts of land. Government subsidies amounted to crumbs insofar as what was needed and perhaps worst of all, their children subjugated to the notorious boarding schools. Despite the sensationalizing of Carlisle Indian School grad, the phenomenally gifted multi-sport athlete Jim Thorpe, the majority of these schools were embarrassments, producing marginal men and women often rejected by both worlds, red and white. Many of the latter found solace in the bottle (alcoholism) or the grave (suicide). And yet, against these seemingly insurmountable odds and thanks to incredibly dedicated tribal leaders, the majority of Indian nations were able to preserve their languages, customs and religious beliefs. I personally experienced examples of this cultural renaissance during several visits with my Herkimer College students to the Onondaga Nation reservation near Syracuse. Thank you, Lloyd Elm.

When one examines the conditions extant on contemporary reservations, one understands why those in power want Native Americans to be forgotten. Nearly two million live a third-world existence on unproductive plots of land located in the middle of nowhere. Check out these statistics of despair:

1. Depending on the reservation, 38% to 63% live below the poverty level; 35%-85% are unemployed.

2. Those who do work earn below poverty level wages.

3. Adults leaving the reservation for jobs reserve childrearing to the grandparents.

4. Forty per-cent of on reservation housing is inadequate and it’s not uncommon for three generations to live together in a two-bedroom home.

5. Because of underfunding, the Indian Health Service meets only 60% of reservations’ health needs.

6. Life expectancy is 5 years lower than the norm; infant deaths are 60% higher than Caucasians; 82% more likely to die from suicide than us; 177% more likely to die from diabetes than us.

7. Twenty-five percent of our reservations’ residents do not have enough to eat.

If you’re interested in helping our Forgotten Americans to be remembered, send a copy of this article to the American history teachers in your school district and share it with family, friends and neighbors in your life. The Biden administration, in 2021, succeeded in getting the American Rescue Plan Act passed. It represented American history’s largest investment of resources into Indian country and tribal communities. Write your congressman/woman and Senator and ask for an update on how those funds are being utilized. Always remember, your commitment, in this regard and others, can make a difference. I leave you with the following.

TOMORROW

We have wept the blood of countless ages as each of us raised high the lance of hate …

Now let us dry our tears and learn the dance and chant of the life cycle.

Tomorrow dances behind the sun in sacred promise of things to come for all children not yet born.

Now let us lay the lance of hate upon this soil.

Ray Lenarcic is a 1965 State University of New York at Fredonia graduate and is a resident of Herkimer.