(From the Fall 1995 issue of The Runestone, reprinted here with permission).
Relations between the Norse settlers in Vinland and the Indians were not exactly a model of harmony and cooperation. Simply put, we killed some of them, they killed some of us, and we traded for various goods. Ultimately, they pushed us off the continent because there were too many of them even for our fine iron swords and axes.
Woven between the words of this condensed account are stories of courage and cruelty, of sacrifice and stubbornness; but as they say, that's all history now...Or is it?
The Indians are still here, and so are the Europeans. But a lot has happened to both our groups since Leif Erikson colonized the forbidding forests of Newfoundland. The red man has been pretty much dispossessed, but the white man hasn't done so well, either. A millenium later, after a spectacular career as the builders of modern America, we too are headed for the warehouse reserved for history's has-beens. It is a road the Indians know well. Maybe the time has come to take another look at the relationship between our two peoples, and see what we can do for each other.
Perhaps the most significant issue in Indian spirituality today is the all-pervading presence of a new tribe- the Wannabees. These are non-Indian, overwhelmingly European American, men and women who want to adopt or adapt bits and pieces of Indian religion. Peace pipes and smudge sticks are sold in New Age book stores, and dream catchers are even more ubiquitous; they clutter the checkout counter at the local five-and-dime. Non-Indians make big bucks sponsoring sweat lodge experiences, drumming sessions, and vision quests. Perhaps the worst abuses are the sun dances done on Astroturf, and the sex orgies conducted under the guise of Cherokee tribal ritual.
The Indians are angry, and who can blame them? Excerpts from the Lakota "Declaration of War" that accompanies this peace documents their determination to end the ripping off of their religion. As followers of an ethnic religion ourselves, we cannot help but be sympathetic. Before you moan about us giving space to non-Asafolk, think: Today, they are being ripped off; tomorrow it will be us. In fact, the theft of Asatru started ten years ago with Ralph Blum's Book of Runes and continues today in the form of attempts to de-tribalize and universalize Asatru.
There's another reason for our publishing parts of this "Declaration of War". It is a stirring affirmation of American Indian tribal and ethnic unity. When will we European-Americans wise up and adopt a similar attitude.
To fix the problem, Indians are turning New Agers away from sacred sites, overturning their teepees, and passing out flyers decrying cultural genocide. Some of them, though, are trying something different. Mohawk newspaper editor Doug George said, in a recent issue of New Age magazine ("A Theft of Spirit?", August 1995) "If you look far enough back, you'll find that the Celts and the Anglos [sic] and the Saxons and the Jutes all had similar rituals of thanksgiving based on the cycles of the moon and the growing seasons of the Earth. That's what needs to be revived. Maybe we can use this as a kind of spiritual judo. When people come to you with a desperate need to know more, just turn that around and say the solution is within your own self. The solution is in your own community."
Well, we couldn't agree more! Indians want to be rid of troublesome White wannabees, and we want those spiritually-adrift kinsmen of ours to return to their ancestral ways. With this in mind, the Asatru Folk Assembly has been contacting American Indian groups, asking them to refer European-Americans to us. We even wrote up a brochure they can use, if they want to. Will this work? The first responses are encouraging.
Native American leaders have managed to inject ethnicity into the discussion of religion. Vine Deloria, the well-known Indian writer, accomplished that back in the 1970's, in his book God Is Red. (See Runestone #9, Fall 1994.) Many Indians are reluctant to let European-Americans participate in their religion simply because they think of it as something that belongs to them, and they see its adoption, or distortion, by outsiders as a form of genocide. Like us, they believe that there is an intimate connection between ethos and ethnos.
A thousand years ago, we Teutons and Indians got off on the proverbial wrong foot. Today, ironically, we find ourselves faced with similar problems. When the Lakota complain of those who take their religion out of its cultural context and mix it with "non-Indian occult practices in an offensive and harmful pseudo-religious hodge-podge", doesn't it sound familiar? When they"assert a posture of zero-tolerance for any 'white man's shaman' who rises from within our own communities to 'authorize' the expropriation of our ceremonial ways by non-Indians", does it remind you of anything? Both their traditions and ours are being eaten away by a liberal ideology which says that ancestry- that long line of forefathers and foremothers stretching back thousands of generations- doesn't have any spiritual significance!
Last year, a Haida woman named Antionette Helmer spoke at a United Nations Treaty Forum. She said, "...As a people, we have a right and a responsibility to define ourselves and determine our destiny...The further away we are forced to travel from the primitive values of our ancestors, the sicker we become as a people." We European Americans feel exactly the same way. Clearly, we can never be Indians- neither we nor the Indians want that. But as tribal peoples, respecting the Earth and each other, we have some common interests.
Let's not blow it this time!
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Hnikar's postscript
It has been observed that a huge portion of the European American population, having grown up without knowledge of their own tribal history and traditions, with little knowledge of racial genetics, and perhaps having seen a few too many movies in which Indians were portrayed by Whites with long hair, often invent Indian ancestors for themselves. Generally, these are Cherokee grandmothers, for some reason. Often these fictional ancestors will become entrenched very quickly in family folklore. The unerring appearance of recessive genetic traits alone reveals the falseness of the claim- I've had people whose entire family was blue-eyed and with distinct Nordic features claim Granny was a Cherokee. Here in Southern California it's useful to point out mestizos as examples of native racial types, hoping they'll look in the mirror and understand the sheer absurdity of their claims.
But on another level, we need to understand the need that drives the claim. In some cases, particularly in Canada, there is economic advantage to be gained, but in most cases it seems not to be a consideration. For most, there is a need for a sense of identity on a primal level, a tribal sense, something close to the Earth but with a spiritual meaning, an ancestry and a history. They crave something deeper than universal sameness, something more than being an interchangable unit of the modern society,adrift from a spirit ancestral, primal and true. To be part of a culture of real heroes, not mere sports stars and celebrities. This they think they find in Indian traditions.
Naturally, the Indians object to this cultural invasion, this theft of what is their own. Naturally, most object to the charletans among their people who exploit the cravings of Whites by selling a debased form of Indian spirituality, as some once sold tribal lands. Their religion expresses the spirit of their people, to surrender it to others is to foul the beauty of the faith in its natural, ethnic form.
Our task as Asatruar is to show our people our own natural faith, our own history, to bring them back to a knowledge of and a pride in their true ancestors. What they sought in Crazy Horse, they will find in Hermann. The Iroquois history they identified with will be found false to themselves when they know of the Saxons and the Lombards. Wakan Tanka will pale beside the glory they find in their own gods, the gods of their ancestors, the gods true to their spirits, to their very being at a deep and primal level.
Hnikar AORV
� 1997 [email protected]
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