February 11, 1921. Random scenes.

Thomas Alva Edison, 1847-1931, punching time clock on his 74th birthday anniversary, February 11, 1921.

Chief White Elk, February 11, 1921.

Princess Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897-1965), the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary.

 

 

Data And Storytelling Inform Food Insecurity Research On The Wind River Indian Reservation

Archbishop Chaput says what should have been said long ago. Scandal.

I'm certain that most of the readers here do not know who Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is.  For Catholic insiders, however, or for those who follow the Church closely, or for those who listen to Catholic Stuff You Should Know (which should be everybody), he's a familiar name.

The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Denver Colorado.

Archbishop Chaput is a highly respected, brilliant, and very orthodox Catholic cleric who was located for many years in Denver, Colorado.  When he came up on the mandatory retirement age for his office there was hopeful speculation in orthodox Catholic circles that the Pope would keep him in position, as will sometimes be the case.  Instead Pope Francis immediately accepted his retirement which in the eyes of many Catholics who are struggling with their outlook on the his papacy was another strike against it.

Chaput, as noted, is a very orthodox cleric and a noted intellectual.  He is a Capuchin Franciscan and also a Potawatomi Indian.  He was the Archbishop of Denver before becoming the Archbishop of Philadelphia.  Many hoped he'd be made a Cardinal, but he never was.

I wish he had been, and I'm not alone.

He hasn't gone quietly into retirement.

And he just came out for denying President Joe Biden communion in the journal First Things.

Now, right away some casual readers here, if there are any, are going to be confused.  Reading this blog some days you'd think that I was a diehard opponent of Donald Trump, and others you'd think I was a diehard opponent of Joe Biden. Rather, I'm like Catholic apologist Gloria Purvis who unleashed a blistering defense of Catholic orthodoxy, against Melania Trump, last week upsetting Trump supporters even though she wasn't supporting Joe Biden either. Rather, she was supporting Catholic orthodoxy  noting that Biden and his crew are seriously outside of Catholic doctrine in supporting things a Catholic in good standing cannot, and Melania is a baptized Catholic in a marriage that Catholics don't recognize as a marriage.  The theme was scandal.

And so is Archbishop Chaput's

This gets into something I just noted here the other day, which is that those who like to define Joe Biden as a "Catholic" President or the nation's "second Catholic President" are more than a little off the mark.

Yes, it's true that Biden is a Mass attending Catholic.  And so was Jack Kennedy.  But Kennedy, as much as he is lambasted here, and he has been, may have been a more faithful Catholic than Biden, even though Biden appears to be a personally much more honorable man, and Kennedy had the personal morals of an alley cat.

All of which assumes a lot.

Joe Biden has a heavy burden in front of him.  Donald Trump has managed to wrap himself in the mantle of populism and nationalism, even as he is personally a horrific example of personal conduct.  His personal relationships with women doesn't appear to compare favorably with Biden's and are much more like Kennedy's.  At the same time, he's been the most pro life American President since 1973 and he also has been more loyal to the working class since any President since Truman.  There's a reason that populist feel that he's a "real" American and that anyone else is a traitor, and that's a lot of what Biden has to overcome.

Biden could in no small part do that by being true to his origins. . .and his Faith.  And if his faith means anything, he should do that in any event.  With his historical track record, that won't be easy.

Which is where Archbishop Chaput comes in.  The Archbishop starts off:

Readers may recall that during the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry led the Democratic ticket. As a Catholic, Kerry held certain policy views that conflicted with the moral beliefs of his Church. This led to internal tensions among U.S. bishops about how to handle the matter of Holy Communion for Catholic public officials who publicly and persistently diverge from Catholic teaching on issues like abortion. At the time, Washington’s then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, along with Pittsburgh’s Bishop Donald Wuerl, had very different views from my own regarding how to proceed.  

I believed then, and believe now, that publicly denying Communion to public officials is not always wise or the best pastoral course. Doing so in a loud and forceful manner may cause more harm than good by inviting the official to bask in the media glow of victimhood. What I opposed in 2004, however, was any seeming indifference to the issue, any hint in a national bishops’ statement or policy that would give bishops permission to turn their heads away from the gravity of a very serious issue. At the time, fortunately, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith resolved any confusion about correct practice in these matters with its July 2004 memorandum to then-Cardinal McCarrick, Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles. It includes the following passage:

5. Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.

6. When “these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible,” and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, “the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it” (cf. Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts Declaration “Holy Communion and Divorced, Civilly Remarried Catholics” [2002], nos. 3-4). This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty. Nor is the minister of Holy Communion passing judgment on the person’s subjective guilt, but rather is reacting to the person’s public unworthiness to receive Holy Communion due to an objective situation of sin.

To my knowledge, that statement remains in effect. And it reflects longstanding Catholic sacramental discipline based on the Word of God.

And indeed it does.  

Archbishop Chaput goes on to state:

The implications for the present moment are clear. Public figures who identify as “Catholic” give scandal to the faithful when receiving Communion by creating the impression that the moral laws of the Church are optional. And bishops give similar scandal by not speaking up publicly about the issue and danger of sacrilege. Thus it’s also worth revisiting the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the evil—and the grave damage—of scandal:

2284.  Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.

2286.  Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion. Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to “social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible.”  This is also true of business leaders who make rules encouraging fraud, teachers who provoke their children to anger, or manipulators of public opinion who turn it away from moral values.

Those bishops who publicly indicate in advance that they will undertake their own dialogue with President-elect Joseph Biden and allow him Communion effectively undermine the work of the task force established at the November bishops’ conference meeting to deal precisely with this and related issues. This gives scandal to their brother bishops and priests, and to the many Catholics who struggle to stay faithful to Church teaching. It does damage to the bishops’ conference, to the meaning of collegiality, and to the fruitfulness of the conference’s advocacy work with the incoming administration.

"Scandal".

It's a word that we hardly seem to believe exists anymore but which we are seemingly simultaneously getting a reintroduction to.  

It's meaning is not the same in the secular world as it is in the religious sense, but it is related, and oddly in contemporary time perhaps it has once again intersected.

Archbishop Chaput, in First Things, calls for the observance of certain absolutes, absolutes that Joe Biden states he's for.  Joe Biden, at the same time has lived a life of moral compromise.  Most politicians do.

But most politicians haven't been presented with the challenges that Biden has.  He has to succeed.

And most politicians don't have as heavy of past burden as Biden.

And that means doing the bold and unconventional.  And that in part means going back to what is fundamental, and what we profess to be true.  Not that its easy. Great confessions are not easy, which is party of why great sanctity is not easy. But that is why we should strive to go through the narrow gate.  Going the broad path is easy. . .  but the result is far from assured. . . which ironically makes it the harder one in the end.

December 10, 1920. War, Peace, News and Meetings.

On this day in 1920, the British extended martial law to four Irish counties.

On the same day, Woodrow Wilson received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Inauguration Committee of the Senate met and was photographed.
 

And a newsboy was photographed sitting in an office window.

A group of Osage Indians were photographed in Washington D.C.

As were a group of women at a health conference.

Today In Wyoming's History: Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea and York

Today In Wyoming's History: Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Myths. Sacaga...: 

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea. An added footnote

Something I really should have footnoted in this item from the other day:

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea: Mural in the Montana State House by Edgar Paxson depicting Sacagawea and the Corps of Discovery in Montana.  Sacagawea's actual appearan...

When the Corps of Discovery went into winter camp after their first year of trekking across the western half of the continent they voted on the location and decided it by majority vote.

Both Sacagawea and York were given a vote.

From Wind River to Carlisle: Indian Boarding Schools in Wyoming and the Nation

From Wind River to Carlisle: Indian Boarding Schools in Wyoming and the Nation

The First Vice President of Color. . .

 no, not Kamala Harris.

Charles Curtis.

Curtis was Vice President from 1929 to 1933 under Herbert Hoover.  He was a Kansan who was 3/8 Native American from a variety of tribes in the Kansas region.  His first words were in Kansa and French, not English.  While his mother, from whom his native ancestry derived, died when he was extremely young, he was raised in my of his early youth by his grandparents on his mother's side.  He lived on the Kaw Reservation in this period, was an excellent horseman, and was known as "Indian Charlie."

He graduated from high school in Topeka and then read law, making him an example of a successful lawyer who had never been to university.  He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1893 and served there until 1907 when he entered the Senate.  After serving as Vice President, he resumed the practice law and died at age 76 in 1936.

Somebody worth remembering.

A Sunday Morning Scene Blog Mirror: Russian Christmas. Native Americans and Christianity

 This is obviously rather late:

Russian Christmas

And a bit unusual for our weekly post here. But it's such an interesting cultural phenomenon, or perhaps outside of what we expect, that we're putting it up here any way.

Alaska has 89 Russian Orthodox parishes, the highest concentration of the Orthodox in the United States and North America.

Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Russian Orthodox Church, Ninilchik Alaska

This is the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Church in Ninilchik Alaska.  This community has had a Russian Orthodox Church since 1846, but this structure dates to 1901.  It is a regular Russian Orthodox Church in the Orthodox Church of America's Diocese of Anchorage.

Again, while we do not generally delve into such topics here, some explanation is again in order.  This church is a conventional Russian Orthodox Church, but its subject to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America, which is one of two bodies that formed in the U.S. to govern Russian Orthodox Churches following the Russian Revolution.  The Orthodox Church in America is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church that started to govern its affairs separately when Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow directed all Russian Orthodox churches outside of Russia and was originally the Russian Greek Orthodox Church in America.  It was granted autocephaly by the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia in 1970 and changed its name at that time, although the validity of that action is disputed by some.

79% of Alaskans profess to be Christians of which 12.5% are Orthodox.  14% are Orthodox.  These figures combined mean that over 25% of Alaskans are members of the Apostolic churches.  Evangelical Protestants, however, make up 26% of the state's population, making them the largest Christian denomination.

Almost all Russian Orthodox Christians in Alaska are Alaskan natives.  I.e., First Nations.

We are so acclimated to a false concept of what and who Indians and natives are that we imagine them all to be as portrayed in current film, whatever that current film is.  Our Indians are Val Kilmer in Thunderheart as a rule.  Occasionally we get a more realistic portrayal such as that in Wind River.  

Recently there was an event in Kansas in which a city council became concerned about a large rock that was purportedly sacred to a local Indian tribe.  The concern was what to do about the stone now that we're focused on such things. Should it be removed, or honored in some way. When consulted, the tribe in question showed little interest.  They're mostly Protestants, in that case, today.

Christian identity is part and parcel of many tribes and their histories. The current desire to rip that way as somehow imposed upon them and demeaning is insulting and highly misplaced.  Indian tribes adopted various Christian religions in many instances in histories that are rich and complex.  The intermarriage between Indians and the French produced an entire Catholic culture, the Metis, who are regarded as a type of First Nation today in Canada.  Mexico's population, and by extension, Mexican American's as well, largely descend from Spanish and Indian intermarriage.  Intermarriage was a feature of Catholic European cultures, unlike the English Protestant one that dominated what became the United States, and latter day efforts to characterize this all as forced are simply incorrect.  Indeed, the French, who never colonized in North America in really substantial numbers, freely intermarried with Indians right from the onset of their presence in the country.  The Spanish did as well.  And in both instances the conversion of the native populations, in spite of what latter day woke Americans, heir to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and the immigrating Dissenters may now wish to believe, it was mostly freely done.

Which isn't to say that Protestant conversions by Indians weren't largely freely done as well, they very much were. And what this gives us is a period in which native peoples undertook to evolve their own heritage.  In Wyoming,on the Wind River Reservation, this meant that a large number of converts in the Arapaho Tribe now live near St. Stephens.  Elsewhere the Episcopal Church was very successful in establishing itself on the Reservation.  A not insubstantial number of Indians converted early on to the Mormon Church, a non Christian church in the view of Christians, which has a large church near Ft. Washakie today.

Sitting Bull

Even the 19th Century American Indians we imagine to have religious beliefs as portrayed in film often had more complex religious beliefs.  Red Cloud (Maȟpíya Lúta), who has gone down in history as the only Indian leader to have defeated the U.S. Army in a war, became a Catholic, as did all the rest of his family.  Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake) was also baptized a Catholic, although the degree to which he actually adopted the faith is unknown.  Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa), who is adored by the modern American mystic set today, was a Catholic and there exists today a cause for his sainthood and whom the Faith as accorded the title of "Servant of God".  Geronimo (Goyaałé) had complicated religions beliefs, like many Indians who made the transition from native religions to Christianity, but was baptized a Christian.  Washakie was baptized as an Episcopalian but apparently later converted to Mormonism, a faith which may have had an advantage among the Shoshone who had a tradition of sororal polygamy, although that practice was common in other tribes as well.

Geronimo in 1913.

In Alaska, the rich Orthodox heritage is preserved by the state's native population.  It's part of who they are.  

In a way, today's native Russian Orthodox Christians are lucky in that they are more isolated than Native Americans who live elsewhere.  Modern white Americans, largely heir to Protestant Christianity and and now subject to cultural influencers who have retained Puritanism to a very strong degree while abandoning its religious tenants at the same time, are attacking the religious cultural heritage of all peoples, a feature that's ironically tied to that Puritanism which attacked first the established Church of England and then by extension the Catholicism that the Church of England itself attacked.  It's also not surprising that its Alaska where Native peoples have retained their strongest cultural heritage of all types.

The two aren't inconsistent, and indeed, are strongly united.

Primary Notables

A Tribune columnist noted something interesting in an article today that I should have noted in this item below:

The 2020 Election, Part 9

Except. . . .maybe it really isn't noteworthy.

Some other things about the primary were, however.

So what was that noteworthy thing the columnist wrote an article on and I didn't note at all?  Well, the headline for the article probably aptly states it (although it should be noted that headlines are not written by the author's, but by separate writers):

Here's A Shock--Women' Top November's Ballot.

Shocking. . . um. .  . not.

In fairness to the author, she didn't say it was shocking, but rather unprecedented. It probably is, but not in a way that's really newsworthy anymore.  Like so many stories that get reported in the press as really amazing developments, the real story broke eons ago.

Women in politics is now such an accomplished fact that the only people who find a woman running for any office amazing are members of the press.  There have been lots of female members of Congress, legislators and Governors in the United States. Women have been Secretaries of State.  It's just not news.

Indeed, locally, Wyoming has always had female suffrage, so even the recent anniversary noted here of the 19th Amendment didn't do anything in Wyoming. Women could already vote.  Nellie Tayloe Ross became our Governor in 1925 and then went off to be Director of Mints for the Roosevelt administration.  She was the first female Governor in the United States and while she is, so far, the only woman to be elected to that office the well respected Democratic contender in 2018 was a woman.  The state's had two women Secretary of States, the office next to the Governor, and the last one was widely mentioned as a probably unbeatable gubernatorial candidate should she choose to run.  Cynthia Lummis was the state's first female Congressman and the current congressman, Liz Cheney, is obviously also a woman.  We haven't had a female Senator but up until the Tribune mentioned it, it didn't even occur to me that we were about to achieve that first.  That's because that first is, frankly, no longer notable.

If that sounds harsh, pointing this out would be similar to pointing out that, at this point in time, it looks as if Joe Biden is about to become the second Catholic President in the country's history, although observant Catholics would note that he unfortunately seems to fit the "Catholic on Sunday" standard set by John F. Kennedy (without, of course, Kennedy's alley cat morals). This hasn't been noted, however, as it isn't interesting to anyone except observant Catholics.  Nobody believes that being a Catholic bars a person from office in 2020.

Being a woman doesn't even really figure into Presidential weights and measures in 2020 either, except in the eyes of the press.  2016 proved that women don't vote for women because they're women.  If Kamala Harris becomes the first female President of the United States, and she now stands a good chance of achieving that, it won't really be that notable.

When we passed this bar isn't exactly clear, but I'd argue that it was as long ago, if not longer, than when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK. That's a different country, of course, but trends of our fellow English speaking transatlantic neighbor aren't irrelevant here, just as ours aren't irrelevant there.  By that point women were clearly advancing in all sorts of politics and law and by the 80s, it really wasn't novel.

Indeed, again locally, we have a female majority Supreme Court, near parity in new law school graduations for women, we have a female Federal District Court judge, and a female state attorney general.  

Indeed, I'd frankly find it to be much bigger surprise if Canada had a female prime minister, as Canada seems a lot more prone to box checking than the United States, and it hasn't achieved thaat.  Here in the US the topic just gets a big yawn from everybody but the press.

This is, I'd note, true of racial categories too, in spite of the times we're in, with some slight exceptions, which is the real story that's being missed here.

First, on race, ethnicity and related topics, we've had a black President, as we all know, and after that, the "first (fill in racial category here)" just doesn't matter.  When we have the first Hispanic President, and we will (and nearly did in 2016), the only ones who will find that noteworthy will be the press.  The first Jewish President, which we haven't had either, won't be noteworthy.  We nearly had a Mormon President, who followed the Kennedy discounting of his religion when he ran plan, and nobody really found that very interesting.  We had a really conservative candidate running in Tusli Gabbard, who is Samoan ethnically and Hindu, and both of those topics hardly came up in the press.  In order to really get people to notice in this area we'd have to have a serious Muslim President, which I think most voters wouldn't support, whether they'd admit it or not.  Muslim legislators at the state or national level. . . well we already know that in a lot of places that's not noteworthy.

Which takes us to some noteworthy items.

The first is that the state Democrats are running Lynette Grey Bull for Congress. She's a Native American and that really is noteworthy here.  American Indians are a massively disadvantaged demographic and have not really had much of a political presence in Wyoming in spite of being a fairly large minority group.  The fact that she's a woman isn't notable.  The fact that she's an Indian woman definitely is.  Indeed, while she will not win, she puts in sharp contrast Cheney's claims last election to be a Wyomingite, which she isn't.  Grey Bull is a native Wyomingite with ancestry so far back in the state it predates any other claimants.

That takes us to the Senatorial race where University of Wyoming professor Marev Ben David is running.  Ben David wasn't born in Wyoming, she was born in Israel and she's a Professor of Zoology and Physiology.  

UW hasn't sent a professor to Washington since Gale McGee, and Ben David won't win this go around. But she is notable as she's a scientist, not a lawyer.  And that brings up this point.

For the first time in a long time the Democrats are really sending candidates into the fall who should be viable in normal times, and they may actually prove to be here.  In picking Ben David, the Democrats picked the most serious candidate in the entire election locally, and rejected Ludwig, a candidate who virtually defines the unelectable, unrealistic, left that the Democrats have been mired in for the past fifteen years.  While the GOP is having squabbles with its extremities, the Democrats this year firmly pushed the eject seat on them and hurled them into the stratosphere, picking instead really solid candidates.

The press isn't, frankly, good at picking up on trends.  And it is too early to tell what's going on here.  But whatever it is, the story isn't "gosh, women are running for office here".  That's old news.  What might be the trend is that the Democrats are actually getting their act together in the State just as the GOP become really mired down in an internecine battle that regular voters don't want a part of.  Wyoming may be solid "Trump Country" in the eyes of the press, and he will do well in the fall, but GOP candidates basking in the warmth of a Trump Sun are going to be disappointed after the general election and feel like they're under siege.  If the current fights keep on keeping on, lots of regular voters are going to be looking elsewhere, and the Democrats are starting to give them a place to look.

Culture and salmon

The Lummi are salmon people; salmon is culture, and culture is salmon.

Merle Jefferson, Sr.

The march to receivership.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Oklahoma.

Along with all the other cheery news going on, there's been an increasing number of companies file for bankruptcy.

Chesapeake Energy, a major player in Wyoming, has filed for bankruptcy this past week.

The current economy has been extremely hard on oil and gas companies, a byproduct of oversupply. That's only partially attributable to the Coronavirus pandemic.  A downward trend in petroleum consumption was already ongoing prior to the disease and then the Russia/Saudi price war created a disastrous situation for the petro companies.

In addiction to Chesapeake, Lillis Energy, Covia and Sable Permian have also filed during the past week.

Aeromexico, a Mexican airline founded in 1934, also has.  Airlines have been in particular trouble in the Covid Recession due to the massive decrease in travel.

Another business likely impacted by a lack of travel due to the pandemic was Cirque du Soleil, the dance company, which also filed for bankruptcy this past week.

NPC, which owns the Pizza Hut and Wendy's franchises, filed for Chapter 11 protection this well.

Remington Arms, which has been in financial trouble for some time, is looking at taking bankruptcy.  The firearms industry has been volatile for some time and even though sales have been strong, and right now are very strong, changes in technology and the switch of emphasis in longarm sales from game fields to military style weapons has been hard on Remington.

Remington is the oldest firearms manufacturer in the United States, dating back to 1816.  In an interesting twist to the story, the company is likely to be sold in receivership and the likely buyer is the Navajo Nation which has recently been expanding its economic holdings, to include the acquisition of a coal mine in Wyoming.

The Big Picture. American Indians, California. 1916.

Exit Mia.

On July 8, 1921, Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association, a dairy cooperative, formed for the purpose of marketing their products.  They didn't like the name, however, and held a contest that ended up selecting a submission made in 1926, that being Land O Lakes, noting the nature of Minnesota itself, although we don't associate lakes much with dairy.    In 1926 the coop received a painting of an Indian woman holding a carton of their butter, looking forward at the viewer, with lakes and forests in the background.  They liked it so much they adopted it as their label and while they had it stylized by Jess Betlach, an illustrator, the image itself remained remarkably consistent with the original design, which says something as illustrations by Betlach sometimes approached the cheesecake level and depictions of Indian women in the period often strayed into depictions of European American models instead of real Indian women.

For reasons unknown to me, the depiction of the young Indian women acquired the nickname "Mia" over time.

And now she's been removed from the scene, quite literally.

In 1928 the Land O Lakes dairy cooperative hired an advertising agency to come up with a logo for them. The logo that was produced featured an Indian woman kneeling in front of a lake scene, with forests surrounding the lake, and holding a box of Land O Lakes butter in a fashion that basically depicted the woman offering it to the viewer.  From time to time Land O Lakes actually changed the logo on a temporary basis, but it always featured Mia, but not always in the same pose.  On at least one occasion she was shown in profile near a lake and seemingly working (churning) something in a pot.  On another, she was rowing a canoe.

Frederic Remington nocturn, The Luckless Hunter.  This is a fairly realistic depiction of a native hunter in winter, on the typically small range horse of the type actually in use on the Northern Plains.

The adoption of Indian depictions and cultural items as symbols in European American culture goes a long ways back, so Land O Lakes adopting the logo in 1928 was hardly a novelty.  In ways that we can hardly grasp now, European American culture began to admire and adopt Indian symbols and depictions even while the armed struggle between the native peoples and European Americans was still going on.  Frontiers men dating back all the way to the 18th Century adopted items of native clothing, which may be credited to its utility as much as anything else.  In 1826, however, a tribe was romantically treated in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, which virtually defined the "noble" image of the Indian even as the "savage" image simultaneously kept on keeping on.  The popular genre of Western art continued to do the same in the last half of the 19th Century, and often by the same artists (with Russel being an exception, as he always painted natives sympathetically, and Shreyvogel being the counter exception, as always did the opposite).  Cities and towns provided an example of this as their European American settlers used Indian geographic names from fairly early on, after the original bunch of European place names and honorifics ceased to become the absolute rule, with some western towns, such as Cheyenne, being named after Indian tribes that were literally being displaced as the naming occured.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, i.e., Sitting Bull, in 1885, the year he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  Sitting Bull received $50.00 per week, as sum that's equivalent to $1,423.00 in current U.S. Dollars.  He worked for the show for four months, during which time he made money on the side charging for autographs.  This came only nine years after he was present at Little Big Horn and only five years before his death at the hands of Indian Police at age 59, just two weeks before Wounded Knee.

The entire cultural habit took on a new form, however, in the late 19th Century, just as the Frontier closed. Oddly, the blood was hardly frozen at Wounded Knee when a highly romanticized depiction of American Indians began.  Starting perhaps even before the last major bloodletting of the Frontier had occurred, it arguably began with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, which employed Indian warriors who had only lately been engaged in combat with the United States.

The principal Indian performers, if we wish to consider them that, were men, as were most of the performers.  But women had a role in Wild West shows as well,  as did children.  As Cody was not unsympathetic to Indians in general, his portrayals of Indian women and children were not likely to have been too excessive, but this is not true of all wild west shows of the era, some of which grossly exaggerated female Indian dress or which dressed them down for exploitative reasons.

Nonetheless, as this occurred, a real romantic view of Plains Indians arose and white performers affected Indian dress or exaggerated Indian dress and an entire romanticization of a people who were still very much alive and not living in the best of circumstances oddly took off.  White performers made the circuit performing as romantic Indian couples and an adopted romanticized Indian culture seeped into the general American culture in various ways, including in the form of depictions and ritual.

Camp Fire Girls in 1917.  The first half of the 20th Century saw the rise of the scouting movment and in the English speaking world this spread to girls after it has become very successful with boys.  The Boy Scout movement had military scouting and hence military men as the model for its idealized muscular Christianity movement, but no such equivalent existed for girls.  In the US this came to be compensated for, however, by the adoption of the Indian woman as the model, as she was outdoorsy and rugged by default.

This saw its expression in numerous different ways, including in its incorporation into the Boy Scout inspired female scouting organizations and in popular "Indian maiden" literature.  But it also saw the development of the use of depictions of Indians in advertising and popular culture.

Out of uniform Girl Scouts in 1912 in clothing and hair styles that were inspired by presumed native female dress.

In 1901 one of the legendary American motorcycle companies simply named itself "Indian", for example.  Savage Firearms named itself that in 1894, with there being no intent to demean Indians but rather to name itself after Indian warriors.  Cleveland called its baseball team the "Indians".  The NFL being a late comer to American professional sports, the Washington football franchise didn't get around to naming itself the "Redskins" until 1932 in contrast.

The psychology behind this cultural adaption is an interesting one, with a conquering people doing the rare thing of partially co-opting the identify of the conquered people, even as those people remained in a period of trying to adopt to the constantly changing policy of the post frontier American West.  Celebrated in their pre conquest state, and subject to any number of experiments in their day to day lives, it was as if there were two different groups of people being dealt with, the theoretical and the real, with the real not doing so well with the treatment they were receiving.  Indeed, that's still the case.

Following World War Two this began to be reconsidered, with that reconsideration really setting in during the 1970s.  Books and films, and films based on books, that reflected this reconsideration became widely considered. Thomas Berger's brilliant Little Big Man remains in its brilliant and accurate reflection of Plains Indian culture what True Grit is to the culture of the southern American European American West.  Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee destroyed any remaining claim the Army had to the event being a battle definitively.  The 1973 American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee brought the whole thing into sharp focus.  Kids who had gone to school their entire lives with Big Chief writing tablets would finish the decade out with Son Of Big Chief, who looked a lot more like he'd been with AIM at Wounded Knee or maybe even at Woodstock.

American Indian Movement flag.

As this occured, people questioned the old symbols and depictions. But it wasn't really until the late 1990s that the commercial and popular ones began to go.

Slowly, and sometimes controversially, after that time, people began to reconsider the depiction of people it had used in advertising where those people had been minorities.  It didn't just apply to Indians, of course, but too all sorts of things.  Sombrero wearing Mexican cartoon characters and bandits disappeared from Tex-Mex fast food signs.  Quaker Oats' "Aunt Jemima went from being a woman who was clearly associated with Southern household post civil war servants, who had only lately been slaves, in an undoubtedly racist depiction, to being a smiling middle aged African American woman whom Quaker Oats hoped, probably accurately", would cause people to forget what being an "aunt" or "uncle" meant to African Americans.  As late as 1946 Mars Inc. would feel free to do something similar but without the racist depiction and use the "uncle" moniker  and a depiction of  well dressed elderly African American for Uncle Ben's Rice, something they've kept doing as they'd never gone as far as Quaker Oats.  And these are just common well known examples.  There are leagues of others.

But removing labels and depictions has been slow.  The Washington football team remains tagged with the clearly offensive name "the Redskins".  Cleveland finally retired the offensive Chief Wahoo from their uniforms only in 2018.

So what about Mia?

She started leaving, sort of, in 2018 when the logo was redesigned so that the knees of the kneeling woman were no longer visible, in part because in the age of easy computer manipulation she became a target for computer pornification by males with a juvenile mindset. That fact, however probably amplified the criticism of the logo itself, which was changed to being just a head and shoulder depiction.  Now, she's just gone.

But did that really make sense, or achieve anything, in context?

A literal association between Native Americans and dairly would be odd and was probably never intended.  While native agriculture varied widely, no Indian kept cattle until after they'd been introduced by European Americans and cattle are, of course, not native to North America.  Indians did adapt to ranching in the West, something that's rarely noted for some reason, and indeed the entire Mexican ranching industry is a mestizo one and therefore a blending of two cultures by definition.  On the northern plains some Indians were working as cowboy and even ranchers by the early 20th Century and Southwestern tribes had adopted livestock in the form of sheep by the mid 19th.

But dairy cattle are a different deal and there's no, in so far as I'm aware, Native American association with it.  Indeed, 74% of Native Americans are lactose intolerant.*  This isn't surprising as its fairly well established that lactose tolerance is a product of evolutionary biology.  By and large, the vast majority of cultures have had no reason over time to consume the milk of cattle they were keeping, which were kept first for food, and then for labor, and then as things developed, for labor until they could not, at which time they became food.  Milk wasn't high on the list.  And for Native Americans, being one of the three inhabited continents in which cattle were not native, it was obviously off the list.**

Some critics have called the imagery racist. North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, says it goes “hand-in-hand with with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls, by depicting Native women as sex objects".  But that comment seems misplaced with this logo. She's definitely not the odd blue eyed "Navajo" woman wearing blue beads that still appears on the doors of the semi tractors of Navajo Express.

Indeed, the irony of Mia is that in her last depictions she was illustrated by Patrick DesJarlait, who was a Red Lakes Ojibwe from Minnesota.  He not only painted her, but he painted her wearing an Ojibwe dress.  So she was depicted as an Indian woman, by an Indian artist.

It's hard to see a man panting a woman of his own tribe, fully and appropriately dressed, as being a racist or exploitative act.

Indeed, the opposite really seems true.  The original dairy co-op was really trying to honor their state in the name and they went the next step and acknowledged the original owners.  Mia was the symbol of the original occupants.

And now she's gone, and with that, the acknowledgment of who was there first.

Which doesn't seem like a triumph for Native acknowledgment.

________________________________________________________________________________

*As are 70% of African Americans and 15% of European Americans. Surprisingly 53% of Mexican Americans are, in spite of dairy products being common to the Mexican dietary culture.  A whopping 95% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant.

Just recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm somewhat lactose intolerant myself, something I seem to be growing into in old age.  Only mildly so, and I've only noticed it recently.  My children, however, have problems with dairy.  My wife does not. So they must get that via me.

***Cattle are not native to the new world or Australia, but are found just about everywhere else.

February 14, 1920. A Sober Valentine's Day.

Zintkala Nuni

Zintkala Nuni, who was found as an orphaned infant on the bloody grounds of Wounded Knee died of the flu contracted from her husband on this day in 1920.

Her story is uniformly tragic.

She was found by an Army burial detail still tied to the back of her dead mother.  She was raised at first by members of her tribe, who named her "Lost Bird", but was soon taken into the home of Gen. Leonard Wright Colby who referred to her, at first, as a "curio" of the massacre.  Colby and his wife Clara Bewick Cody adopted her in 1891, with Clara, a suffragette and publisher of Women's Tribune principally raising her.

When she was five, her adoptive father abandoned Clara and Zintkala and married Zintkala's nanny, thereafter moving to Beatrice, Nebraska.  Her childhood was rough as an Indian child raised among the white privileged.  Like many Indian she was educated in Indian boarding schools for part of the time, in part because Clara was so busy.  At age 17 the rebellious Zintkala was sent to live with Gen. Colby and became pregnant soon thereafter.  The father of her child is unknown but some historians suspect Colby of sexual abuse of her.  After she became pregnant Colby committed her to a reformatory for unwed mothers, where the child was born stillborn.

She then returned to Clara's home and married, leaving her husband after a few weeks of marriage and after having contracted syphilis from her husband.  The Spanish Flu ultimately brought about her death.

On the same day Konstantin Konstantinovich Mamontov, former Imperial Russian General and then serving as a White Russian General, a Don Cossack, died of typhus at age 50.

Konstantin Mamontov

And in Chicago, the League of Women's Voters was founded.

Blog Mirror: Ancestral Teachings Keep Hunters Connected to the Land

Ancestral Teachings Keep Hunters Connected to the Land

Posted by Larry Moore, Office of Communication, USDA Forest Service in Forestry

Nov 22, 2019

Sandra Broncheau-Mcfarland with a white tail buck taken during a hunt. Sandra and her family only eat meat they have taken from wild game like deer, elk, buffalo and turkey.

There's more than follows.

That is a very nice buck.  And I'd note, with my agrarian views, I note only salute her, but given the option (I'd receive spousal objection), I'd take this 100% game option myself.

Blog Mirror: Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food

An interesting article on this effort appeared in the Tribune recently;

Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food

The article addressed this in the context of addressing health issue in the state's Shoshone population.  The lesson, applied broadly, would apply of course to everyone.  Processed foods aren't particularly good for you.

Blog Mirror: Growing Resilience

An interesting effort to promote gardening on the Wind River Reservation was mentioned in the Tribune this past week.  The program goes by the name Growing Resilience.

Growing Resilience

We read of course about community gardening efforts including those in the West.  But this effort is part of a research project and therefore unique.

November 6, 1919. Congress offers citizenship to Native American veterans.

American Indian soldier on sentry duty in Europe, World War One.

On this day in 1919 Congress passed legislation allowing the approximately 9,000 American Indians who served in the Armed Forces during World War One and who had obtained an honorable discharged to apply for citizenship.

BE IT ENACTED . . . that every American Indian who served in the Military or Naval Establishments of the United States during the war against the Imperial German Government, and who has received or who shall hereafter receive an honorable discharge, if not now a citizen and if he so desires, shall, on proof of such discharge and after proper identification before a court of competent jurisdiction, and without other examination except as prescribed by said court, be granted full citizenship with all the privileges pertaining thereto, without in any manner impairing or otherwise affecting the property rights, individuals or tribal, of any such Indian or his interest in tribal or other Indian property.

Few of them actually applied.

This is a bit of a confusing story in that some Indians already were citizens, and had been for decades, but the means by which they became citizens is not clear.  As a basic rule of thumb, Indians in the East tended to be regarded as citizens and this was all the more the case the greater their degree of assimilation.  Indians who came from reservations in the West were almost uniformly not American citizens.

This is one of those odd areas that tend to really shock people as the basic assumption is that American Indians were always citizens as they were Americans.  In fact, this wasn't the case and it still wasn't in 1919.  This gets into the topic of tribal sovereignty, which is somewhat complicated, but for our purposes here we'll simply note that on this date in 1919 Congress offered citizenship to those Indians who had served in the Great War and who wanted to apply for it. As noted, very few did.

Also on this day, Arthur Eddington made his presentation to the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society regarding his observations during a solar eclipse which confirmed Einstein's theories of special and general relativity.  Einstein would learn this while ill and bedridden due to wartime deprivation.  He was famous by the following day as a result of headlines around the world which announced the confirmation of his revolutionary theories.

Doc was seeking advice on whether to trade in a car or not. . . something that we're debating here a century later at the present time.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14. Columbus and Duke William make the scene.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14:

October 14

Today is Columbus Day for 2013.



1066. Duke William of Normandy defeats King Harold Godwinson as the Battle of Hastings.  The result of this battle would bring feudalism into England and result in the birth of English Common Law.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicting the vents of October, 1066.

And its Columbus Day for this year, 2019, as well.

At least in my part of the country Columbus Day doesn't mean much, other than Federal offices are closed.  In some parts of the country there are protests regarding what ultimately occurred with the arrival of European Americans in the New World, again, and this time to stay.  Indeed, in some localities it is Indigenous Peoples Day.

Columbus was working for the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, of course.  They were having a big year, to say the least.  On January 2, Granada, the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, had surrendered to them, having failed to receive aid from any other Muslim power.  In an odd sort of way, Granada's experience was therefore similar to that of Constantinople, the seat of the shrunken Byzantine Empire, in 1453, some forty years earlier, which had failed to secure the support of other Christian powers against the Ottomans.

Columbus' expedition is typically claimed to have sighted land on October 12, 1492, but that date was on the "Old Calendar".  Using the "New Calendar", that date is actually October 21, 1492.

It's also the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, one of the single most important dates in English history and the history of the English speaking peoples.  Perhaps the single most important date.  Saxon England entered the feudal world and English met French.

What's going on with coal?

I haven't been doing a blow by blow on Wyoming coal for awhile.  It's just too depressing.  But a lot has been gong on.

That probably was emphasized by the two coal related stories in the Tribune this morning.

One headline proclaimed that the sale of the Blackjewell Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines is "dead". The sale had been approved by a bankruptcy court, but details have held up the sale and, according to the article, it is in danger of "floundering".  If it flounders, 500 laid off miners will not be returning to their jobs there, at least any time soon.

Secondly, Navajo Transitional Energy Company took out a full page ad about their purchase of three mines in Wyoming and Montana.  This is elaborated on in their recent press release, which in part states:

FARMINGTON, N.M. – Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC) announces a significant acquisition and expansion of operations outside the Navajo Nation paving the way for others to follow in its conscientious energy development footsteps. 

NTEC has purchased substantially all the assets of Cloud Peak Energy, a public company that has recently filed for bankruptcy. The primary assets are three coal mines located in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana: Antelope, Spring Creek, and Cordero Rojo mines. The properties include surface and mineral rights to approximately 90,000 acres of land.  

One of the really interesting things about this is that the company is a native owned Navajo company that even as it expands notes that its focus is to provide jobs to the Navajo people. With its purchase of Cloud Peak's assets its taking a big step in coal, even as it also is indicating that its working on future energy resources.

The Navajo themselves are a very large Southwestern tribe with over 300,000 enrolled members, making it the second largest recognized Indian Tribe in the United States.  Their history is unique in some ways, one being that they, along with the Apache, are an Athabaskan speaking people whose ancestors migrated from the Canadian far north.  Native companies are not unique, but one of this size is unusual and its clearly in an expansion mode.