This Native Stands By Ukraine!
The Parallels of Ukraine & Native Americans
by E. Brokencoyote
Our guest blogger, E. Brokencoyote, is a visual artist and writer from Denver, Colorado. He is of the Taos Pueblo Nation, though his mother never registered him as such in an attempt to spare him from racism. We were introduced to E. Brokencoyote by Territorial artist Michael Tenneson, who connected him with Fury Young in 2020 for visual artwork around the Tlaxihuiqui album. Since then we’ve had the pleasure of working with E. Brokencoyote on several projects. E. Brokencoyote is currently serving a life sentence in Colorado DOC.
If you have questions about this blog or Native history in general, you can contact the writer at:
Eddie Loredo #1082
Arkansas Valley CF
12750 Hwy 96, Lane 13
Ordway, CO 81034
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Though our experiences are of different eras, the facts expressed involve the past of each, and still persist into today. These will be pointed out.
Please understand this article is not meant to distribute guilt and shame. Sometimes historical facts hurts… all of us.
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I begin with Invasion:
Ukraine was invaded by a hostile force. This has not only recently happened; it goes back to the early days of Communism. Perhaps before then. Technically Ukraine was told they were equal under Communism. In actuality they were made a slave state and drained of their resources while millions died of starvation under the brutal Communist rulers.
Because they were seen and treated as inferior peoples, they were forced to speak and write in Russian. Even today most Ukrainians do not know how to speak or write in their own language. Those who have been captured in this recent way have been forcibly taken to Russia. There they are forced to speak Russian and fed propaganda that they have been rescued from a Nazi regime. They know better, but must go along or face consequences.
Images provided by E. Brokencoyote of Native boarding schools.
The Native parallel:
Our invasion is what one may call a soft invasion. By that I mean that Europeans may not have come with hostility, but like a slow-burning flame, it became such. Individual incidents are too numerous to explain. They may be clarified at another time.
As to being removed, of course it’s known Natives were removed because of American expansion. Again, the history is too large to go into. I will, however, focus on the removal of Native children.
At the end of the Indian Wars, when Natives were put on reservations, they were at the mercy of unscrupulous politicians who instituted that Indian people must be remade - forced to assimilate into the mainstream culture and become like all other Americans.
What’s wrong with that? We were Natives, not Americans. What if space aliens landed and told you that you must become aliens? That you can no longer be human. It must be one’s choice to become American, or Native, or both.
They began by “taking” Native children from their families without consent of tribes and/or families. The children were either given to white families, or put into boarding schools. These schools were run by individuals, religious organizations, or subcontracted by the government.
In 1879, Captain Richard H. Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School. He had fought in Indian campaigns and had no trouble defining his goal of taking Natives from their homes to his boarding school. His (and the government’s) saying was: Kill the Indian, save the man.
In these boarding schools they were stripped of anything linked to being Native. Their clothing was taken and replaced with uniforms (much like a prison’s). Their long hair was cut, and Anglo names were assigned. They were forbidden to speak their Native language; if caught, their mouths were washed out with soap, they were withheld food, and slapped or beaten - sometimes to death. They were denied their spiritual faith as “heathen,” and forced to participate in Christian faiths.
Propaganda was given to the children that the white society was better. They were shown images of their Native people as evil, murderous, and savage to make them doubt their own identity. They were denied their true history, achievements, and accomplishments.
Speaking of her experience, a Chippewa woman given the name Mertha Bercier said, “Did I want to be Indian? After looking at the picture of Indians on the warpath - fighting, scalping women and children, and Oh! such ugly faces. ‘No! Indians are mean people - I’m glad I’m not an Indian,’ I thought.”
“Each day stretched into another endless day, each night for tears to fall. ‘Tomorrow,’ my sister said. Tomorrow never came. And so the days passed by, and the changes slowly came to settle within me… Gone were the vivid pictures of my parents, sisters, and brothers. Only a blurred vision of what used to be. Desperately I tried to cling to the faded past which was slowly being erased from my mind.”
These experiences were only the beginning of psychological abuse. With their culture ripped away, they were told to adapt to white ways and culture, but that they would never achieve equality with Anglos because they were Indian. Their self-esteem was swept away from them. The psychological abuse did not stop when they left boarding school. From ages 16 to 18 these “civilized” Natives were returned to their reservations. They wore white man’s clothing, slept in better beds compared to reservation beds, ate with Anglo utensils, and lost their language and culture. Thay might as well have been sent to a whole other country.
For those on the reservation, who still held their culture, they considered these “civilized” Indians as white men in Indian skin. In later years they were called “Apples: red on the outside, white on the inside.”
A Taos Pueblo man named Sun Elk recalled: “It was a warm summer evening when I got off of the train at Taos station. The first Indian I met, I asked him to run out to the Pueblo and tell my family I was home. The Indian didn’t speak English, and I had forgotten all my Pueblo language… Next morning the governor of the Pueblo and the two war chiefs… came to my father’s house. They did not talk to me; they did not even look at me…”
“The chiefs told my father, ‘Your son who calls himself Rafael has lived with the white men. He has been far away… He has not… learned the things the Indian boys should learn. He has no hair… he cannot even speak our language.’
‘He is not one of us.’”
Can you understand what that does to someone? Not good enough for the white world, and not accepted by his original people. One’s low self-esteem begins to become a self-perpetuating reminder of becoming nothing. Depression, self-hate; no drive or ambition, no help or guidance.
Now I must mention a most grievous subject, sexual abuse. These boarding schools were rife with this behavior. It made no difference in religious or nonreligious schools. It didn’t matter if it was girls or boys. They were set upon at the whim of those in charge.
There were no worries of accountability or consequences for their criminal and perverted behavior. Every sort of depravation was accosted to these children one could think of… and some one dares not think of. Imagine being returned to your tribe with that kind of pain of bad treatment from both worlds. One was on their own to figure things out of who and what they wanted to be.
I know this is painful to read. You may ask, “Could you have just given a shortened version of this information?”
I just did.
I have yet to mention the unmarked graves at these schools. Canada has been excavating hundreds of these boarding school graveyards, with hundreds more expected. Many of these skeletons were discovered with violent blows to the head and/or bodies. The families were never told about their missing and killed children. The United States is embarking upon a similar discovery in our boarding schools.
Now, in 2022, Ukraine is experiencing unmarked and uncounted graves. In the past killing a Native had no consequences, because they were not American citizens. In fact they (along with our African brothers and sisters) were considered only 75% human. The invading Russian army has the same mindset. The Ukrainians are not “really” Russian. So they raid, loot, rape, and murder with abandon. Sound familiar?
The good news is no matter how much tragedy is heaped upon our peoples, there are those who break through the sorrow and pain, who rise to stand tall. In spite of all this, strong hearts prevail and persist. Hope and tenacity cannot be snuffed out if you don’t want it to be.
We each have tragedies of different sorts in our lives, and it’s easy to give up. I have done it myself. But it’s not the end of our movie yet - you still have time to re-write your script and story.
Do you dare? There is more to be said… much more.
Thanks for your time.
