Tonto Will Not Ride into Town for You—Murfin Verse for the Water Protectors

North Dakota authorities used armored vehicles and overwhelming para-military force to attack the Water Protectors at Standing Rock in 2016.  Photo posted by Facebook from the Sacred Stone camp by Rob Wilson Photography.

Three years ago this past week combined, heavily armed paramilitary forces with armored vehicles, helicopters, and sound cannon attacked a large unarmed prayer service at a Construction site on the Dakota Pipeline.  Construction workers had abandoned their equipment and fled as Native Americans led by the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies approached the site.  There were reports of teargas canisters being dropped from the helicopters.  27 were arrested in one day.  It was a dramatic escalation of the use of state power against on-going protests which resulted in an unprecedented unity between Native nations from across the U.S.A., North America, and Latin America and support from aboriginal peoples across the globe. 

 Photo of a mural taken by my old college pal Bill Delaney at Art Alley Gallery in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Something very important was happening for the Earth, the environment, and for the Tribes and Nations who the exploiters and despoilers were once confident had been ground into helplessness.

Now three years later the pipe line was completed and has already leaked and polluted waters.  States are rushing to enact right wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation to make virtually any protest against energy companies felonies with long prison sentences and crush fines for those who even encourage or support the protests.  Indigenous people around the world continue to defend water and the earth and young native leaders have joined Greta Thunberg in her protests and in the Climate Strikes.

It is worth a look back at a poem I committed back then.

Jay Silverheels as Tonto on TV's Lone Ranger.

A note of acknowledgement—The title and the germ of the idea was borrowed from a long-ago monologue by the late, great George Carlin.  I don’t think he would mind.

Tonto Will Not Ride into Town for You

For The Camp of the Sacred Stone 9/30/2016

Tonto will not ride into town for you, Kemosabe,

            and be beat to pulp by the bad guys

            on your fool’s errand.

Pocahontas will not throw her nubile, naked body

            over your blonde locks 

            to save you from her Daddy’s war club.

Squanto will not show you that neat trick

            with the fish heads and maize

            and will watch you starve on rocky shores.

Chingachgook will save his son and lineage

            and let you and your White women

            fall at Huron hands and be damned.

Sacajawea and her babe will not show you the way

            or introduce you to her people, 

            and leave you lost and doomed in the Shining Mountains.

Sitting Bull will not wave and parade with your Wild West Show

            nor Geronimo pose for pictures for a dollar

            in fetid Florida far from home.

They are on strike form your folklore and fantasy,

            have gathered with the spirits of all the ancestors

            to dance on the holy ground, the rolling prairie

            where the buffalo were as plentiful 

            as the worn smooth stones of the Mnišoše,

            the mighty river that flows forever.

They are called by all the nations from the four corners

            of the turtle back earth who have gathered here, 

            friends and cousins, sworn enemies alike,

            united now like all of the ancestors

            to kill the Black Snake, save the sacred water, 

            the soil where the bones of ancestors rest,

            and the endless sky where eagle, Thunderbird, and Raven turn.

Tonto has better things to do, Kemosabe…

—Patrick Murfin

Nix Columbus—Celebrate the People Who Knew Where they Were

Note—While I continue to work on the next installment of the Murfin endorsements or the 2016 election, let’s not let today’s Federal Holiday and the growing movement to replace it with a day honoring Native Americans go unnoticed. This year the mighty Gathering of the Nations in support of the Standing Rock Sioux’s sacred Oceti Sakowin Camp and in determined defense of water, air, and land inspire us all.       Call it what you will—Indigenous People’s Day, Native American Awareness Day, or the Day of the Peoples Who Always Knew Where They Were—celebrate today!

The Gathering of the Nations.

Today is the Federal Holiday honoring Christopher Columbus, the alleged discover of the Americas.   The actual anniversary of his landfall on the island of San Salvador in 1492 would be October 14.  Years ago Congress, in all of its wisdom assigned the holiday to the second Monday on October to make way for a possible three day week-end for the few people who get the day off—or possibly to extend the giant mattress sales that seems to have become one of the most visible traditions of the holiday.

The trouble is, Columbus has been falling out of favor for some time, except among the Italian-Americans who used his Italian roots to claim their spot at the American table.  The Columbus Day parades in the big cities are less about the Navigator—an ironic title for someone who didn’t know where the hell he was—and more about, as an Italian friend once put it, Gumba Pride.

That worked as long as the Columbus story told in 19th Century school primers was the only information out there.  But those damn historians insisted on poking around.  Lo and behold it turns out Columbus was not a very nice man.  In fact when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella rewarded him for his voyages with the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and the job of Viceroy to rule the new lands, he was so brutal, venal, and corrupt that the Catholic Priests sent to save the souls of the natives petitioned their Majesties to have him removed.  So did various adventurers and would-be Conquistadors who he slapped in irons for horning in on his exclusive franchise.

In the end he was stripped of his titles and slapped in irons himself.

The execution and torture of Caribs on Hispanola under Spanish Viceroy Christopher Columbus.  An illustration of the accounts of missionary priests who petitioned for Columbus's removal.

One of the offenses with which he was charged was virtually wiping out the Carib nation which populated most of the islands of the Caribbean by turning them into slaves.  Within ten years the once numerous people were gone and the Spanish had to replace them by buying Black Africans from Arab dealers. 

By the 1960’s Native peoples in both North and South America were protesting celebrations of Columbus and demanding that the people who were his victims should be the honorees, not the thief.

In 1977 at a United Nations sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland the idea of replacing Columbus Day celebrations with a day honoring Indigenous Peoples was first proposed.  As the 500 year anniversary of the “Discovery” approached, Native delegates to a conference held in Quito, Ecuador in 1990 determined to plan protests and demand recognition.  “Nobody discovered us,” they asserted, “We knew where we were.”

Native groups in California were among the most vocal and organized in the protests in 1992. They persuaded the city of Berkley to become the first to rename the holiday locally to the Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People, better known as Indigenous Peoples Day.  The movement spread across the state.  Although only two other cities at first followed Berkley’s lead in officially adopting the name for the local holiday, school systems, libraries, and colleges began holding alternative events.  And activists began marching and sometimes disrupting official Columbus Day festivities.

South Dakota, with a large Tribal population, became the first state to jettison Columbus and adopt what they call Native American Day.  That name is also used by several Oklahoma based tribes.  Hawaii replaced Columbus Day with Discoverer’s Day, commemorating the Polynesian discoverers of the Islands. 

Several cities, including Columbus, Ohio have simply dropped the holiday entirely and canceled the traditional parades.  In San Francisco, with its large Italian community axed Columbus and simply declared the day Italian Heritage Day instead.

Two years ago Seattle jettisoned Columbus Day and declared Indigenous Peoples Day.  The year nine cities across the U. S., including in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Anadarko, Oklahoma; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Olympia, Washington.  Even Oklahoma City, capital of one of the most conservative red states in the nation, voted on a proposal to do the same. The movement has gathered steam and this year the state of Vermont and the cities of Denver and Phoenix fell into line.

The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has officially endorsed the switch to Indigenous Peoples Day and has promoted a number of activities and educational programs which members Congregations can use.

So far Congress has ignored calls to make a change on the Federal level.