Indigenius Ideas : Al-Qaeda-linked Model Wears Medal of Honor Thong

Let me start off by apologizing for the traumatizing title of this blog post. I'm sure just reading that caused shock, not unlike mine by reading the headlines in November 2012 that Victoria Secret made after their models wore American Indian Headdresses along with lingerie on the runway. I was going to keep the farce going for a paragraph under the title above. I was even going to photoshop a picture, at one point. But, it was hard enough for me to type that out. I just don't have the heart to be as cruel as the people who parade around in fake chief headress, fake war paint, and fake images of American Indians.

I've wrote about many of the ways that Native Mascotry offends Indian Country. Still our voices go unheard. It doesn't surprise me. After all, I am at the end of a long line of great leaders that are trying, and have tried, many ways to get ignorant Americans to understand the gravity of pain they are causing by acting like fools. For it is only the foolish, afraid, and those that make money off of them, that can continue to abuse their neighbors. The Indigenous neighbors who were forced to fight, to die, and give up everything, including memory, just so the United States could exist.

I am sorry I may have pushed my analogy to the extreme and have surely hurt someone by what I wrote in just a blog title. I do it only to stop it all. Because it all must stop. All the Native Mascotry must end.

I'm often told to "get over it". The "it" being Broken Treaties, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Residential Schools, the forced allotments, the Termination Era, the forced sale of The Cherokee Strip, the fear that took away my language from my family, the lost graves of my ancestors, the lost children, and more than I could ever, ever write about.

I don't accept that phrase. Mostly, because the person saying it hasn't gotten over "it" either. They still talk about scalping, fire water, and sending us to reservations. They still walk around in gaudy feathers or beautiful ones and mock what we honor. They still rape and abuse our women and get away with it. They still take our children for money, because they can. They still take land, water, and leave retching amounts of pollution. So maybe I should be saying "you get over it too".

However, I don't believe that would solve the problem. The problem being lack of respect or understanding. Although, I sincerely feel many of those Indian-haters do understand. I call them all Indian-haters because they must surely hate us to act in such appalling ways. The same way my fake Al-Qaida leaders hate Americans and wish to take what America honors and defile it!

Yet, even as Indian-haters (aka 'just fans' or models) defile what I bestow with great honor and sacredness, I wish for peace. I want mutual respect given to what we hold in highest esteem. I am not the only one that feels nausea from watching "sports fans" or underwear models mock our culture, our bravery, and our valor. A single feather (or many) or certain regalia is endued with esteem and presented, like a Medal of Honor, which we only present or use with humble dignity. A humble dignity wrought from the deep respect for the diligent sacrifice made by a person who wears the regalia or who practices the sacred rights passed down from millennia to millennia.

Still you may wonder: How could you write that? or Do you not understand what you are doing? Some of you may understand what I am saying and others may not.

Something that is not understood by most in American society is that I watch people like Captain Swenson and feel moved to tears by his acts of valor. But, I feel no less moved when I see him standing with a blue ribbon around his neck than I do when I see my Chief lead Grand Entry in all his regalia followed, many times, by veterans. Because, I see not only my Chief, I see Ross, I see Mankiller, and I see my ancestor Ama Matal, Moytoy of Tellico. In the same way, I see not only the Captain, I see Gettysburg, I see Pearl, and I see my ancestor "Fighting" Charlie Rhys, a Revolutionary soldier who left the nation he fought to establish to live in the Cherokee Nation with his wife's family.

If I have angered you today with the title of this blog, or caused you pain. I am full of empathy. It is a pain and anger I know well. I feel it everytime I see what is in the pictures below the piture of Captain William Swenson, Medal of Honor recipient.

I say to you, that you can not be angry with me, with my fake title, and not be angered by what Native Mascotry is ACTUALLY doing.