Where is America’s outrage?

When New York Mayor Bloomberg asked Gov. Patterson to act like a cowboy to shut down the Seneca tobacco industry, little was heard from mainstream America to condemn such an outrageous statement.

The use of force to subdue, dispossess, disempower and eradicate the Native American is a disgraceful part of American history and Mayor Bloomberg is encouraging its continuation. The image of the cowboys shooting and killing Indians, defending settlers and moving them off their lands is the stuff of American legend. Indians were the villains of American expansionism and it created Manifest Destiny to justify their elimination.

America loves its cowboy image. Bloomberg wants to resurrect John Wayne as a solution to the “Indian problem.”

But if anyone in America should understand Native Americans, it should be Bloomberg. He is a part of an oppressed people: Persecuted, dispossessed and eradicated. Being Jewish, Bloomberg should feel the same way Native Americans do.

After all, to the Seneca and the Iroquois Confederacy or Haudenosaunee, northern New York state is our Israel. We are the freedom fighters and defenders of the land, not the cowboys. The cowboys are the invaders and looters.

We have lived in the area from time immemorial; we have a constitution predating European contact and a federation of nations that American founding fathers studied to replace a system based on a monarchy. We are an ancient people with our own language, customs, spirituality and government, living on our own homeland; our Israel.

Would Bloomberg accept Hamas enforcing tax collection in Israel? I don’t think so.

Yet that is the reality for Native Americans. America wanted our land and our natural resources, which made this the richest country in the world. Now America wants to continue the impoverishment of Native Americans by collecting its taxes by force.

Bloomberg’s blindness to our history must not be limited to only him. The rest of America seems not to care very much.

If the mayor had suggested that the Klu Klux Klan be sent in to collect taxes in Seneca territory, there would be outrage. His suggestion for the governor to act like a cowboy is comparable to sending in neo-Nazis to settle the “Jewish problem.”

Shocking as that may sound, this is the image from a Native American perspective.

Yet there is no outrage from mainstream America.

It is in the American culture to idolize the cowboy and villainize the Native American. Americans don’t see the comparison of Israel and the Jewish people to the reservations and territories of Native Americans. Or they refuse to see. It would be too painful or, more likely, too expensive. Or they do not want to offend the Jewish community?

It is okay to offend Native Americans. That is American culture.

When will America stand up for the rights and freedoms of Native Americans?

-Kenneth Deer
Kahnawake