My Life is an Indian Life

My life is an Indian life. I’m a small part of a much larger story. If I ever have the years of freedom necessary to write another book, I’ll appear in it only as a minor character. The personal specifics of my life are unimportant. Being an Indian, that’s what’s important. My autobiography is the story of my people, the Indian people of this Great Turtle Island. My life has meaning only in relation to them. It’s insignificant in and of itself. Only when I identify with my people do I cease being a mere statistics, a meaningless number, and become a human being.

American Indians share a magnificent history – rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It’s also rich, I’m saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity – along with our sacred lands – have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetuated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives – and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights.

Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushes us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on the Mother Land. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It’s nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it’s called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it’s called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we’re called criminals.

I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We’re not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary – and, yes, at times, extraordinary – human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren’t stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren’t sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you’d see a protest! With all else that’s been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part.

Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle’s cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!

Peltier, Leonard. Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance (43-45). St. Martin’s Press, 1999.