THAT WAS THEN -- THIS IS NOW

Now that I have a genetic niece as well as a by-marriage niece, I’ve been thinking about generations again. I was reading in Virginia Heffernan’s media blog in the New York Times, “The Medium,” about the little $100 computer (now double the price) which is meant for Third World kids with an operating system all its own and some features and capacities unlike other computers: it networks to other nearby machines and does noises and flashes, etc. for games and art. She speculated on how this will affect the kids of that generation and what it will mean in terms of their ability to relate to their parent generation.

Barrus, her faithful commentator, who is a grandfather, pointed out that by the time this set of kids using the little green and white laptops have figured them out, grown up, and are changing the world “for reals,” their own children will be born and using some new kind of phenomenal networking that we can’t even imagine now. Because this is the way it always is. Simple Simon could tell you so. (Remember him? The guy who always did what he ought to have done last time, instead of what he should do this time?)

The kids on the Blackfeet rez now are quite different than their parents or grandparents and not just because of computers. When I describe what it was like in the Sixties, a time universally considered disastrous when we were in it, today’s teens sigh and express envy! When the Blackfoot exhibit at the Glenbow in Calgary (where I’ll be day after tomorrow if the temp and snow cooperate -- we’re at four below with six inches of new snow at the moment) was designed by the tribe itself, they did not choose to replicate tipis (one was put up anyway) -- what they wanted were the little one-room shacks with wood stoves that they remembered fondly from their earliest childhood -- the very housing that was deplored in Congress when Kennedy wanted funding for “proper” houses. (This generation born since 1980 or so has grown up in split level houses with multiple bedrooms.)

What I’m sneaking up on is the idea that part of the MONAC problem was that they were already behind the times, aside from being burdened by the idea of the “Cabinet of Curiosities” always dear to Popes since the days of Cellini being commissioned to devise fabulous gold and jewel objects to be given to that pontiff. They were convinced that owning rare things, valuable things, exotic things, meant homage, recognition that they were the best and the highest. There was no concern about the origins of these objects, whether they were surrendered or made willingly, or -- indeed -- what their uses were, least of all their religious uses.

Then there’s the idea that “we’re the best” which is why “we” deserve to be in the missionary position on top and are entitled to tell these heathens what they are doing wrong and how they can get to heaven, which is -- of course -- just where all good heathens want to go. I notice that short or alcoholic or slightly nuts people love a heathen culture where they can reassure themselves by looking in the mirror and saying, “At least I’m white.”

These two convictions blind religious persons to corruption in those around them and even more so to the worldview of said heathens, which matters not at all to wheeler-dealers. MONAC began to collect artifacts just as the Indian empowerment movement began, which flipped the respect for priests (because they brought food, medicine and lots of used clothing alongside a certain amount of religious juju) onto its head (because they used painful force, denied the people’s culture, and individuals victimized little children for twisted purposes). Tribes were moving into the ambivalent period when they wanted things in their own hands -- but with fail-safe protection from the powerful, mostly in the form of money. Like teenagers. Often they screwed up, but these were the people (in the Sixties) who were born when their dads got home from WWII and told them how they had been considered worthy and powerful during the war, but dumped out broken and drunk afterwards.

Revenge and determination was on the minds of the men in particular. The women, who had gotten perms, learned to type, and moved to the city as President Eisenhower wanted them to, watched their white bosses and took notes for their own uses. These were “boomer” Indians (in their Sixties now), and they have mixed a fair amount of failure and success into their doin’s for the last fifty years or so. Little was wasted. Many would not be perceived as “Indians” if they didn’t self-identify and more are doing that now. When they come home to the rez, they look around and say, “What the...?”

So today’s Blackfeet, the ones taking the reins, are the children of the Boomers, born in the Sixties and Seventies, veterans of Head Start who now willingly send their children to charter schools, religious or not. They are the ones who can see that the Repatriation Act, well-meant as it was, had some very strange consequences. All those donated artifacts went right on out the loading dock to the thriving black market that is always created when something is suppressed. The objects that were ceremoniously but quietly returned to tribes went into the hands of individual prosperous Indians, mostly good Catholics.

The art is easier to follow because of all the auction websites and catalogues as it goes up and down in a profit rollercoaster. Schoenberg writes very little about the artists. Mostly he describes in tedious detail the efforts of “the Indians” to get control of MONAC because it was originally named a “center” but a movement to create service-based “centers” in those cities where Ike’s policy had created Indian ghettoes meant that the MONAC “center” was misnamed, causing Indians to not understand that this was meant to be an elite, priest-controlled “cabinet of curiosities.” The photosin the book are almost all of board members or other important white men who helped create the museum. A few Indian women are scattered here and there, but VERY few Indian men. The only artists pictured are the ones Van Kirke Nelson kept in his pocket, the alcoholic ones easy to control.

That era of Indians and artists is over. These days both categories are both genders and all are sharp cookies with a lot of data and experience. But the wheeler-dealers go on, like used book sellers profiting from the computers driving books out of public libraries. I’m VERY curious about what will happen next. And I’d LOVE to have one of those little green and white computers! Anyway, what would those people smarter than Simple Simon do right now? Elect Barack Obama? Could be. I keep hearing Blackfeet say, "I like that Obama guy -- he looks like ME."