Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought

"Being an Indian in the world is the loneliest kind of existence. At least, such is the case when one leaves behind the comfort and security of family and tribe for the wider world of modern societies..."

Thus begins Dr. David Martinez's study of the writings of Ohiyesa, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman. I want to offer him public thanks for this insightful, serious exploration. It is the book that I, as an Eastman biographer not of Dakota or Native American origin, had been hoping for, an in-depth philosophical and literary investigation into the many themes woven into Eastman's writings.

The Eastman Martinez illuminates is the same one I had come to know through his writings and his life but one not often found in other commentary about him. Martinez does not dismiss Eastman's works as those of his wife, or as simplistic children's entertainment in the case of Indian Boyhood, or as assimilation rationalization, or as romanticized nostalgia or commercial ventures. Nor does Martinez deny that some aspects of these qualities creep in.

Instead Martinez honors the works as significant acts of reconnection and duty by Eastman to overcome that lonely alienation within the white world, bringing forth his Dakota heritage and that of other American Indians into the light of the larger culture to educate Americans and Native Americans; to preserve the values, skills, culture, stories, and history for generations to come; to inspire individuals and communities; and to establish the rightful place of American Indians as positive contributors to America's past and future. Martinez places Eastman in his rightful place as a historic American philosopher, worthy of greater attention and respect.

Through his book Dakota Philosopher, Martinez also integrates the history and writings of other significant Native Americans of Eastman's time and the Society of American Indians (SAI), connecting their issues to issues of contemporary Native Americans.

Dr. Martinez, though not of Dakota descent, is a Native American studies professor and scholar of Pima heritage and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community. Thank you!

Birchbark Books & Martinez's Book on Eastman

Yesterday I visited Louise Erdrich's lovely family-community bookstore, Birchbark Books in Minneapolis. It's a sunny yet breezy day, and the door is wide open, letting in the wind with all its good spirits and allowing the good spirits that reside inside to welcome you at the door. Many do.

Susan White greets visitors like the perfect hostess at a party, delighted and warm with each new guest, but instead of offering each a drink, she presents something better, the perfect book with stories to accompany it. Complementing her at the counter is the more reserved Prudence Johnson, with an equally welcoming demeanor and gentle jazz-singer tones. Incredible harmonies they orchestrate together.

After drawing out my interest in Ohiyesa, Susan led me to my must-read, the just released Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought. (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009) by David Martinez, an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community and assistant professor in American Indian Studies at the Arizona State University, Tempe.

Delighted but also slightly apprehensive, I opened the pages. Would this new research send me off in different directions just as I am ready to send my book to a publisher?

No -- instead this fine, groundbreaking work resonated with the same tones. He, too, had found in Eastman not a boxed-in assimilationist but a man of education, philosophy and subversion, transforming old paradigms to fit his Dakota values and ideals -- a cultural warrior of peace and respect, always advocating for a better place for all Indians and indigenous people in a new world of limited choices. The book jacket states "While Eastman's contemporaries viewed him as 'a great American and true philosopher,' Indian scholars have long dismissed Eastman's work as assimilationist. Now, for the first time, his philosophy as manifested in his writing is examined in detail.....claiming for him a long overdue place in America's intellectual pantheon."

Amen!!!
And thanks to Birchbark Books -- where such invigorating connections are made daily, weaving communities and the world together more closely and creatively -- always leaving openings to let good spirits flow in and out.

For more on Martinez's book: http://www.americantaino.blogspot.com/2009/03/dakota-philosopher-charles-eastman-and.html

And for Birchbark Books: http://birchbarkbooks.com/
http://birchbarkbooks.com/_blog/Birchbark_Blog

Louise Erdrich’s Dartmouth Commencement Speech and Eastman

Bestselling author Louise Erdrich recently launched Dartmouth’s graduating seniors into the world with an 11 ½ minute, story-filled speech that included chickens, onions, and pong. She described herself as “a member of the class of 1976, the first class that included women, the first class in the newly recommitted Native American Program”(for the full speech, visit the YouTube presentation and the Dartmouth site ).

When Ohiyesa, Charles Alexander Eastman entered Dartmouth in 1882, he, too, was the first (and only member) of a recommitted American Indian program. He, too, was a believer in the power of stories, both individual and community, and became a bestselling American author. As Erdrich learned Ojibwe as a second language, Ohiyesa learned English, but he continued to speak, read, and write in his first tongue, Dakota. Hanging on to his first language enriched his life and the nation, for with it, he collected stories and histories others could not.

No summary could do justice to the humility, humor, practical advice, and ardency in Erdrich’s speech, so you just have to listen to it or read it. Eastman was known for similar qualities and it is unfortunate that we have no YouTube presentations of him. His speeches resonated with similar pleas (though different stories, of course). When asked to participate in the first Universal Races Conference in London in 1911, he advocated respect and peace between races, cultures, and religions. He himself straddled and held on to principles of his Dakota spirituality and of Christianity. When conflict arose over religion between participants of the Races Congress about resolution wordings, he stood up:

“While I am myself a believer in the simple principles of Christianity, we who are met here are not all of that religion, and I would suggest that we substitute a term to which we can all subscribe . . . . universal brotherhood.”

Finally, Erdrich made no bones (well, actually she did mention skeletons) about how the planet needs each graduate’s talents and passions:

“Have you ever been in a relationship where you took someone for granted, where you treated that person badly but he or she seemed resilient? A relationship in which you had the feeling that things were going to be all right in spite of how you’d acted and then, boom, all of a sudden you got dumped?

“That is the relationship we are in right now with the earth. But if the earth dumps us, we actually do die of broken hearts. We get extirpated, ended, exterminated, finished. The numbers are crunched; the science is done. Our planet, which at best estimate might support 2 billion modest lifestyles, will see our population jump to 7 billion in just two years. We’re in a nosedive unless we can change as a species. . . . So don’t hold back, don’t punt. DO WHAT YOU LOVE BEST. Make your life doing what you love best, but do is as if it meant you were out to save the world. Because you are.”

In Eastman’s time, long before “green” or environmentalism,” the country was already suffering from pollution and watching species going extinct. He wrote in “Of Life and Art,” in the Society of American Indian's American Indian Magazine:

“I once showed a party of Sioux chiefs the sights of Washington, and endeavored to impress them with the wonderful achievements of civilization. . . ‘Ah!’ exclaimed an old man, ‘such is the strange philosophy of the white man! He hews down the forest that has stood for centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of Mother Earth, and causes the silvery water-courses to waste away and vanish. He ruthlessly disfigures God’s own pictures and monuments, and then daubs a flat surface with many colors and praises his work as masterpieces!’”

Ohiyesa means the "One Who Continually Wins" -- a name he lived out through perseverance, often facing failure and humiliation. Erdrich urged all to risk failing until they triumph because we, as a species, cannot survive if we give up.

Erdrich and Eastman are separated by divergent backgrounds and ninety years between their graduation dates, but they are connected by more than just their Dartmouth educations and Native American heritages. Erdrich co-wrote an introduction to a reprint of Eastman’s Wigwam Evenings, and if he could, as he did when he was alive, he would echo Erdrich's admonitions to couple knowledge with compassion and love:
“We must stop fighting endless wars and act to heal and love this world. Nindiniwemaganidok. You are my relatives. We are all related through our common humanity and through this college and all who endeavor, here, as one, to make this the best world possible.”

He would have put it this way: Mitakuye Owasin, We are all related.

Assimilated vs. Educated

Popular views of Eastman, such as in the HBO film "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," present him as a poster child for assimilation, a flat, inaccurate, diminished, and misleading portrayal of this larger-than-life historical figure. This is a loss that needs rectifying. Some of the passages or phrases in his written works and speeches, especially the early ones, bear the harsh imprint of condescending assimilation values. Taken in context, though, the passages often have a twist to them, demonstrating the tensions within him and the way he was using what he’d learned for his own Dakota agendas. Later in life his rallying cry became “Freedom and Self Determination for the Indian!” He spoke out for Indians who’d never be invited to the White House, who could not legally vote, who’d been colonized and imprisoned on reservations.

As with Obama, if the life of Eastman were told in fiction, it would not be believed. But in memoir, as in Indian Boyhood and From the Deep Woods to Civilization, his life captures one’s attention – how did he do it? What made him who he was? As a child, he survived the Dakota (Sioux) Conflict of 1862 and fled to Canada to be raised traditionally until the age of fourteen or fifteen, knowing no other language than Dakota. Then in American schools, he learned to read and write in his own tongue. He came to discern and negotiate the cultural differences in cosmic orientations, teaching and social practices, becoming facile and aware in his adapting. By thirty-two, he could read and write in English as well as in various foreign and classical languages, graduating from Boston University School of Medicine, selected by his classmates as the convocation speaker. In 1890, he was hailed nationally as the example of the perfect “educated” Indian.
However, by chance or destiny, Dr. Eastman was the physician at Pine Ridge Reservation when a Sioux party under a flag of truce was gunned down at nearby Wounded Knee Creek. Through a blizzard, he sought out and bound up the Lakota survivors, then used the press to alert the nation to the dishonorable massacre of women and children and to graft on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Government authorities rebuked him for “stirring up trouble” and pressured him to resign his post.

This became a pattern. He was promoted as the model Indian until he told the truth about the injustice and corruption he encountered. Then he was fired. In similar ways, he was admired by some Indian colleagues until he challenged reservation residents to give apathy, despair, and drink -- and later peyote -- to regain their traditional values, reclaim their outdoors fitness, rebuild their support societies, and use white education against oppression. Because of his fame and his stand against peyote, some Indians stuck him into the stereotyped category of an “apple”, red on the outside, white on the inside, a slur that may have injured him more than all the white slings of “savage.”

Like his father, Ohiyesa valued white education as the key arrow American Indians would need in their quivers to hunt out their futures. It was a door to a wider world containing art, music, and other cultures, and he wanted all Indian students to have the chance to experience the same thrills and broadness of opportunities he’d been fortunate enough to have, but he also wanted them to hold tightly to what made them who they were. Though he mourned what he and his people had lost, he did not mourn what he had gained. Some of his favorite compatriots long into his life were his Dartmouth classmates.

His focus, from youth on, was to be of use to his people, and through the course of his life, his definition of “his people” kept expanding, from the Dakota, to all Indian nations, to all Americans, to all the world’s peoples -- while never losing his heart for his own.

Trials of an Educated Indian
"I wish to contradict the popular misconception that an educated Indian will necessarily meet with strong prejudice among his own people, or will be educated out of sympathy with them. From their point of view, a particularly able or well-equipped man of their race is a public blessing, and all but public property. . . . Every complaint was brought before him, . . . and he was expected to expose and redress every wrong."
Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa), The Indian To-day

A Tale of Two Cultures

Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman – Ohiyesa -- stands as one of the most remarkable individuals of the late 19th and early 20th Century, whose legacy of writings and works remain powerful over a half century after his death. He bridged cultural divides and earned the respect of Native Americans and the general population, challenging both to higher standards of thought, action, and contributions to the nation. As a best-selling author and lecturer, he was the most recognized American Indian of his time and was highly influential in the progress of American Indians toward civil rights and self-determination.

His name, Ohiyesa, a Dakota (Sioux) name, was like the brush of swift wings to the national ear, unfamiliar and startling. It was a name that discomfited eight inhabitants of the White House and excited the nation’s youth. Ohiyesa means the One Who Wins, not just “Victor” in a single contest, but one continually striving and in the final count, achieving. This is the story of Ohiyesa, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman.

Like Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Alexander Eastman rose unexpectedly to national stature, as cream in a country frothing with contradictions within the milk of American “civilization.” Eastman first stepped out from the shadows of stereotypes into the nation’s limelight in the 1890s when he told of his Dakota youth in magazines and then in his memoir Indian Boyhood (1894):
“What boy would not be an Indian for a while
when he thinks of the freest life in the world?”

Contrary to America’s stereotypes, his “savage” life was not Godless, brutal, haphazard, bestial, or sappily “noble.” He had not defeated armies in battle, like Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse, nor led famous raids like Geronimo or Tecumseh. He hadn’t dazzled audiences with death-defying rides with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show or been sentimentalized in poetry like Hiawatha. Instead he had been formally trained by his family and Dakota band for three vocations: as a healer, as a storyteller/historian, and as a defender of his people. These goals were the emotional and philosophical framework he carried within him, and without an understanding of the internal landscape of his Dakota education, one can not grasp the complex person he was, the conflicts he faced, and the true nature of his achievements.

Eastman told America in his own words about a youth that was both “free” and carefully directed in a formal community education system. Spirituality and the virtues of honesty, respect, generosity, courage, duty, and adventure imbued all aspects of his Dakota training, qualities America worried its own young people were losing. Suddenly, youth groups, schools, and summer camps scrambled to integrate pan- Indian elements into their programs, and Eastman was their consultant. Long before contemporary fitness trends, Dr. Eastman led a movement to develop outdoor education camps based on Indian physical training, games, and woodcraft – taking a formative role in the 1910 creation of the Boy Scouts of America and Camp Fire Girls, and of YMCA Indian Scouts. Through his many articles, books, speeches, and camps, he turned “savage” from a slur into an educational aim.

His lasting contributions to the nation, though, extend far beyond his youth work. As a physician and author, he improved medical care on reservations, co-founded the Society of American Indians, and stood up for nearly forty years as an advocate for Indian rights to Congress and presidents. With the editorial and secretarial assistance of his wife, Elaine Goodale Eastman, Charles wrote more than ten best-selling books and traveled on domestic and international speaking tours, emphasizing respect and understanding between people of different cultures. He developed friendship with other writers of American classics such as Ernest Thompson Seton, Hamlin Garland, and Mark Twain. Eastman's books have remained in print for more than 100 years, still being read and consulted in many editions. His advocacy, along with other educated American Indian colleagues, led to the "New Deal for the American Indian" -- the citizenship, self-determination, and religious rites and language protection bills of FDR's Administration.