OKAY IT’S BROKEN TREATIES, BUT WE’RE STILL KEEPING THE LAND

image via indiancountrymedianetwork.com

Watching Broken Treaties on Oregon Public Broadcasting tonight? It’s no bedtime story.

Too often we live in a bubble.

Not much gets in and most of what we see is our own reflection.

It’s not an ideal way of life, more a goal.

Then the bubble pops and things change, like you’ve got things to do, RIGHT NOW.

I’m thinking emergencies, life planning, illness.

Broken Treaties is one of those pops. A really loud POP.

It’s a story of native people and the U.S. government trying to agree to an equation of Indians + Land + Money.

No spoilers.

Following traditions going back thousands of years, Oregon Natives followed  a seasonal harvest routine.

When berries were ready to pick, fish ready to catch, that’s where the tribe went.

Broken Treaties call native mobility a reason for conflict with the pioneers. Why?

They weren’t home when the pioneers arrived and started setting up on ‘their’ land.

After a return from the harvest cycle, both sides had uninvited neighbors. Surprise!

Sixty tribes with eighteen languages once called Oregon home. They were named for their food of choice, The Berry Eaters, The Fish Eaters. (What would your name be?)

The tribe numbers say they liked diversity, but language numbers say they still knew how to communicate. They got along.

But how do you get along with a crusty wagon train man who lost family and friends on the Oregon Trail? He’s got a donation land claim deed in one hand, gun in the other, setting his perimeter right through your family’s ancestral graves?

The Doctrine of Discovery blanket covers the problems.

“The Discovery Doctrine is a concept of public international law expounded by the United States Supreme Court in a series of decisions, intially in Johnson v. M’Intosh in 1823. The doctrine was Chief Justice John Marshall’s explanation of the way in which colonial powers laid claim to newly discovered lands during the Age of Discovery. Under it, title to newly discovered lands lay with the government whose subjects discovered new territory. The doctrine has been primarily used to support decisions invalidating or ignoring aboriginal possession of land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments.”

If that wasn’t enough, Manifest Destiny did the rest.

“At the heart of manifest destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial superiority. Native Americans had long been perceived as inferior, and efforts to “civilize” them had been widespread since the days of John Smith and Miles Standish. The Hispanics who ruled Texas and the lucrative ports of California were also seen as “backward.””

Broken Treaties explains Oregon’s Trail of Tears.

Marching entire tribes from place to place, putting them in internment camps, then marching even further with the hope of dislocating their native identity?

It didn’t work.

After Termination in 1954, followed by ongoing Restoration, local tribes are stronger than ever and growing.

After seeing their land reduced to a fraction of the original reservations, they adapted and rebounded in the face of severe opposition.

Eventually money talked.

The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians opened Oregon’s first casino in 1994. Today all of Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes have casinos.