Saginaw: A miniature
Detroit: de-industrialized, crumbling, racially and socioeconomically
segregated. Like hundreds of cities in the Midwest, it's a hard town,
down and out, used up by industrial capitalism, left to crumble by Clinton's
NAFTA and easy big business money. I'd never have guessed ending up in
Saginaw, but here I am, having arrived via Midland, where I worked for
24 years making big teacher-bucks in one of the few Michigan school
districts that, once upon a time, before anything public became the
enemy, paid well. But in my heart, I am an underdog for the underdog. What better place
for someone like me to live than an Ugly Underdog town like Saginaw?
What I love about Saginaw is that it is
the location of one of the Hot Spots of U. S. Imperialism. By that I
mean U. S. expansionism, which could also be taken to mean Invasion and
Occupation. In other words, Murderous Dirty Double Dealings with
Indians. It's all the same; then, and now in places like Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and most recently Syria, where the new
Indians are. The legacy of the Saginaw Event yet lingers like gunpowder
smoke after Fourth of July fireworks at Ojibway Island. Some of the
principal players have names of old western films and books; no real
surprise there, as this was the West. Names like Ne-om-e,
Chippewa Indian Chief; Louis Campau and Jacob Smith, Indian traders;
Lewis Cass, United States Government agent and acting governor of the
territory. Oh, what truly came down! Gleaned from White Man accounts,
no less, one can uncover the real story . . . one who knows how to read,
that is. What it comes down to is this: the encroaching Americans were
mother fuckers, one and all . . . even the White or Half-Breed traders,
who befriended and won the hearts of Indians, then sold them out for a
nice chunk of real estate as part of the deal.
One
day, four summers ago, I stumbled on that historical marker in Old Town
Saginaw, commemorating the Treaty of Saginaw of 1819. The marker,
across the street from The Stable, a nifty bike shop that was once a
funeral home, and reputedly haunted now, was sponsored and erected by
the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1919, the same year my dad
was born. With so many big players having walked around the vicinity,
no wonder The Stable is haunted. With some knowledge about and interest
in the history of European colonization of America, which pisses me off
considerably, I suddenly found myself in what seemed the Center of the
Universe of Moral Outrages, in this place I will be calling home, quite
possibly until I take my last breath in some impossible situation. I
felt lucky, and inspired. I knew of treaties with tribes generally,
having long ago concluded they were, in principle, articles of theft. I
was hungry for the details of this one, and I would not be
disappointed. I asked a handful older Saginaw residents with whom I am
acquainted about the history of Saginaw, but the earliest period of
which anyone had knowledge was the lumber era, quite celebrated on
historical markers near the county courthouse, as you would expect a
raping, colonizing peoples to do. Anything about the Captains of
Industry is Big News! No one knew a whit about Saginaw prior, as though
history began in the 1830s; about how, more precisely, the Native
Americans got fucked by the encroaching colonizer class. To be fair,
there are some references to the Indians on plaques around here,
like this one in the Eppel building, commemorating the military
garrison, Old Fort Saginaw: Nothing but Indians, and muskrats and bullfrogs could possibly subsist here.
In September of 2011, the last year of my teaching career, I took
a road map and highlighted the land giveaway, or more aptly, the land
takeaway. The amount of land ceded, and the shape of the area on a map
seemed . . .
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. . . arbitrary and
capricious, which, based on my knowledge of the United States
Constitution, violates, to begin with, the due process clause of the
Fifth Amendment. It sucks not to be a bona fide colonist descendant, I
suppose. Posted is a photo of the road map, a map every Michigan
motorist of my generation recognizes, but younger generations likely
dismiss as a quaint artifact, now immersed in, of course, Digital World.
I took what amounted to outmoded teacher's tools, a green magic marker
and highlighter, and colored in the approximately 6 million acres of
land ceded to the United States Government by the Native Americans on
September 24, 1819, following which I commenced tacking said map
auspiciously to the bulletin board adjacent to the door of my classroom
with what, as it turned out, were also relics: stainless steel tacks
with flat, round heads. I developed some lessons in my head about the
history of the event, which I incorrectly imagined would spur interest
in young people. I dropped the lessons forthwith, and, subsequently, no
student inquired about the highlighted section, displayed right to the
last day of the year, and of my teaching career, which I was not sorry
to let go. More pointedly to the astute reader of this narrative, no
history teacher in my department knew anything about the Treaty of
Saginaw, a stark reminder of how a culture (no doubt accurately
reflected by the K-12 educational establishment, if not, in large part,
caused by it) chooses what to remember, and what to forget. "Local
history is part of the middle school curriculum," said my fellows. No
wonder I never engaged them beyond the superficial.
This
web page, published in the Fall of 2011, was an education project for students that came to nothing. It was dedicated to the exploration of the
circumstances surrounding the Treaty of Saginaw, a treaty different from
all of treaties made between the United States and the Tribes only with
respect to the names of the participants, the lands involved, and the
incidence, or not, of violence; otherwise, it probably follows a
prescription, or should I say, rubric, repeated countless and various
times within this vast swath of land called the United States of
America, and elsewhere around the world, then, and now.
Divide and conquer techniques are the hallmark of colonial manipulation.
Those indigenous individuals considered the friendliest to colonizer
interests (that is, who offered the least amount of resistance) were
singled out for special favors and rewards until they were firmly
co-opted to do the colonizer’s bidding. Those who resisted colonizer
interests most vehemently were targeted for particularly oppressive
punishments. The collaborators are often distinguished in written
records as the “friendly” or “good” Indians, while those who continued
to resist co-optation were quickly identified as the “savage” or
“hostile” Indians. The leaders, thinkers, peacemakers, warriors,
spiritual leaders, healers and teachers who did not fall in line with
the emerging order were isolated, dehumanized and diminished. Thus,
colonizers ably and superbly fostered resentments between the two
groups, pitting them against one another and always calling on the
favorite “friendlies” to monitor their colonized cohort and enforce the
colonial system. These divisions severely eroded the unity in Indigenous
societies that were often simultaneously devastated from disease,
warfare, forced removals, loss of homelands, mass killings, and policies
of ethnic cleansing. The tremendous harm caused by generations of
factionalism as a direct consequence of colonialism cannot be overstated
as it has greatly affected the capacity of Indigenous Peoples to
mobilize broadly for significant change.
- Waziyatawin, Dakota activist and scholar
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