FOUCAULT AS EXPLAINED BY KOOPMAN

Foucault

This post is selfish, because it helps me but I have a strong hunch it will be gibberish to most of my readers.  It is about philosophy, about which I know very little because it is complex, arcane, and turns human thinkers into adjectives — one studies these guys and then refers to them as shorthand for their main theories.  They are all constructs using rational methods, logic but not research.  Therefore in the end their ideas comes from their life experiences, their context.  To know their stories is always my favorite means of understanding their ideas.  

Their lives dictate their “point of entry” into the field of thought and since most of them enter through academia as invented by Europeans, the path markers are degrees, articles and books.  Few, if any, consider my fav philosopher, who is Suzanne Langer — her point of entry is feeling.  She is part of a tissue of thought that I take to include Eliade, the new neurology research, the actor’s “Method” thought to be justified by Stanislavski, and so on.  This lets me consider the thought of indigenous people, poets, and sexual nonconformists, whether based on biology or not.  Once, I was interested in the “structure of the subconscious” as pursued by psychoanalysis, but it is a dying art, outdated by lack of time and money though there are still people fascinated by their own dilemmas.  Luckily, Lakoff’s ideas — which have a literary dimension through metaphor — have come along and I embrace all that.

Doesn’t this sound pretentious and learned?  I assure you my grasp is weak, but sometimes this stuff is actually useful.  Here’s the “cheater” provided by Colin Koopman in his Aeon essay called “The Power Thinker,” which is showing up in several publications.

Plato = forms

René Descartes = mind

John Locke = ideas

John Stuart Mill = liberty

Jacques Derrida = text

John Rawls = justice

Judith Butler = gender

Jacques Lacan = the unconscious is structured like a language

Richard Rorty + Jurgen Habermas = ‘grounding the social sciences in a theory of language’

Foucault = power

“Foucault remains one of the most cited 20th-century thinkers and is, according to some lists, the single most cited figure across the humanities and social sciences. His two most referenced works, "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" (1975) and "The History of Sexuality, Volume One" (1976), are the central sources for his analyses of power.”

“Herein lies the richness and the challenge of Foucault’s work. His is a philosophical approach to power characterised by innovative, painstaking, sometimes frustrating, and often dazzling attempts to politicise power itself. Rather than using philosophy to freeze power into a timeless essence, and then to use that essence to comprehend so much of power’s manifestations in the world, Foucault sought to unburden philosophy of its icy gaze of capturing essences. He wanted to free philosophy to track the movements of power, the heat and the fury of it working to define the order of things.”

Foucault is fascinating right now for several reasons.  One is that his topics of prison and sex are so “hot” in several dimensions.  Another is that he paid no attention to boundaries, moving from one formal “discipline” to another and ignoring the conventionalities of them all.  And maybe one of the most intriguing attractions is that somehow he managed to escape his dominating and punishing father, the preoccupation with morbid self-destruction that seems characteristic of a “queer” man trying to justify himself at adolescence, and the ordinary forces of conformity.  It’s hard to know how he managed this.  Probably through a series of intimate and admiring relationships plus a huge capacity for work.  Some will want to know whether SF gay culture, the study of Zen, his practice of kindness to others, or some other “defined” context or practice was the source of his final serenity.  He did contract AIDS and died from it in the early wave of SF infections at the beginning of the Eighties.  His partner’s reaction was to start an organization to address the pandemic.

“The theme that underlies all Foucault's work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in the eighteenth century 'madness' was used to categorise and stigmatise not just the mentally ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, indeed, anyone whose expressions of individuality were unwelcome.

— Philip Stokes, Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers (2004)”

It is a given among counselors that “power” in the sense of socially compelling people to behave in certain ways, believing that it is their only option, is not just a matter of forceful domination (sovereignty).  The underdog, the dominated, the co-dependent also have their power.  (Watch what happens on a rez, where sovereignty is being pursued on grounds of victimhood.)  An obvious example is that Trump, who seems so powerful and rich, is controlled by what Vaknin calls his praise stream, which to Trump is a product of media — mass sensational stories.  It appears this is also what creates the reality of the people who voted for him.

Foucault “queried” (as they say) hierarchy, its source and structure.  I take Trump et al as being driven by a desire for “status”, for being at the top of the hierarchy, but accepting indicators on the terms that North Korea would recognize: the power of weapons, inheritance, titles, and control.  Marked by vulgarity of display, poor persons' idea of sophistication.  In my life experience the hierarchical indicators of status my family accepted (education, helping others, and the middle class indicators: neatness, fashion, and possessions — matters of presentation) have been emptied by some social movements with a religious dimension, valuing simplicity and humility, living close to nature.  Hippies, granolas, Bioneers.

More painfully, my family’s respect for teachers, doctors, religious leaders, police, soldiers, has been challenged by removing the protection of secrecy over their mistakes and shortfalls.  The larger society now seems to value only power and status in terms of money and laws, esp. those controlling imprisonment and investigation.  The sexual revolution has meant not only that everyone is free to “sleep around” but also that things like abuse of children, hypocrisy among religious leaders, and betrayals of trust cannot be covered up.  I find all this so painful and confusing that I elect not to participate.  But not to deny the mess.  And not to become “a docile subject” in Foucault’s phrase.

Now the practice of data collection, the details of our ordinary lives, is becoming a surveillance with power.  One of the first studies, “A Billion Wicked Thoughts,” about the recorded sexual proclivities of people who used the internet to access pornography, was a challenge to realities of people who didn’t know much about conventional forms of interaction.  (Of course, those without access to computers remain unknown.) Recently, the makers of a device that translates telephone or computer code into genital stimulation were sued.  Each use of the codes was recorded — a little diary of where and how much stimulation with whom.  The lawsuit required the destruction of the records but there’s no way to use code without it being recorded.  And cyber records are never really wiped.

So the international use of code for spying has the same dimensions.  It’s a form of intercourse.  The conventional (weapons, money, oppression of the weak and needy) is right up front.  But what about “queer” intercourse among nations, especially the ones that are “deconstructing”.  Is the result disease?  Dissolving borders between nations?  Or is it an evolution towards a whole new reality, not yet negotiable because we can’t quite see it.  So far, we only feel it.


PS:  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124201-web-creator-tim-berners-lee-speaks-out-on-fake-news/?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2017-1603-new-newtemplateGLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS
This post discusses government use and misuse of data compiling.

CONSENT TO BE GOVERNED

This series within the strip follows the idea of the Holy Fool 

that was used in the comic strip called "Brother Juniper."  It's also part of the story of the historical Saint Francis.

The world is confronting many issues of confidentiality and disclosure, which emerge from and deeply affect the prioritizing of authority.  We ask who can know, who has the authority to decide what is censored or hidden, and when it is justified to turn out the secrets that may make previously trusted authority ineffective.  “Consent to be governed” is particularly challenging when it has a religious component.  Two interesting cases reward reflection.  At the liberal end of the religious scale is the slow investigation by Starr King School for the Ministry where a student who had been a dedicated activist in the larger world, even taking damage for the cause, evidently turned the same weapons (disclosure) against the seminary.

Most lay people who have a simplistic understanding of law do not understand the nature of authority in the Western legal world.  The first fact about law is that it is useless without enforcement -- note “force” is in the long word.  Law is derived from war.  It is meant to prevent the violence of war, not justify it.  War derives from nations.  Nations derive from consensus.  When the consensus is lost, the people do not consent to be governed.  They march, they fight, they leave, and the nation dissolves.  It’s in the news every day.  In Europe and her empires, authority finally went to Christendom -- we still swear by God.

In Europe -- not so long ago -- there were long periods of time when people fought mercilessly, ceaselessly, just as the Middle East is doing now.  Ever hear of the Thirty Years War?   The disorder was so violent and bloody that even the king’s claim of being authorized by God was contested.  There were competing kings, all claiming to be God’s favorite.  So the Pope stepped in, on grounds that he was closer to God -- in fact, a personal and historical confidante.  When he could make that claim stick, he could mediate between nations and authorize kings by crowning them.  Until the Roman Catholic church became so corrupt that it triggered both the Protestant movement and the Reformation, everyone mostly went along with a religious consensus.  It began to break down when the Pope at the time of WW was so afraid of the claims of the Nazis and the possibility that the authority of the church would be diminished, that he failed to challenge the Holocaust.

Today we have lost our religious consensus.  We don’t even agree that there IS a god.  The Pope has to rely on reason, compassion, good will, fancy buildings and juju to maintain his authority.  He uses big rule books and some formidable old crustaceans who know things that will keep their underlings under control.  (I’m exaggerating to make the point.)  Then pedo-predation is revealed everywhere and introduces a new consensus, that children must be protected.  When it becomes apparent that the church representatives have not obeyed this rule, which is rooted in the teaching of Jesus, the whole justification of the church as a source of virtue is destroyed.

One of the control management mechanisms was undoubtedly knowing about and threatening to reveal corrupt behavior among church leaders.  Now the revelations have emptied that element of control and revealed that corruption was tolerated for convenience and to protect the reputation of the church.  Before the trial of this ancient and disposable old pedophile, Ex-Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, now confined in the Vatican, the only crime prosecuted was Paolo Gabriele snitching on the previous Pope by “liberating” his confidential papers.  Both of these men are accused, confined and tried by the Vatican as an autonomous nation by its own laws, though it is only a claimed diasporic "nation", scattered around the world as the international corporation it really is without God’s authority.

The REAL reason the Roman Catholics will not allow secular prosecution of their priests is that it is a challenge to their sovereignty.  If the secular nations can enforce their laws on the Roman Catholic church, the next thing after prosecuting pedopredators will be civil prosecution of financial corruption.  If nations begin to investigate and prosecute money matters, the sanctified exemption of the church from taxes, sheltered transactions, and the protection of the inventory of their assets will be removed.  If anything can trump the RC “machine,” it will probably be abuse of children.  Some forces have been waiting for this moment.

Now let’s change focus back to the other end of the spectrum, the liberal seminary of the Unitarian Universalists, Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley.  In this context, the ultimate source of authority is the Protestant claim of individual conscience, a matter of relationship between the person and his or her God -- or at least their better self.  Now that we’ve pushed God out of the room, individual conscience, esp. as enacted in social activism, has claimed precedence over everything else and allies with political forces.  Civil disobedience challenges authorities when there is a consensus among some persons that the laws are unjust.  This is how we resist slavery, starvation, cruelty, abuse of children -- issues of injustice and abuse generally generating consensus.  Though Americans may be arrested for demonstrating, persons are generally protected from violent harm and may sue for damage.  One of the weapons effective against overbearing authorities is disclosing privileged information, like the Pentagon Papers, or the recent Wikileaks breaches of internet secrecy.

At Starr King seminary, which is well-known for supporting individuals who are social activists, a new president of the institution was chosen that some students did not accept.  They didn’t resort to violence, but they did break confidentiality by distributing records of the process, which they evidently assumed would bring the consensus to their side.  It’s unclear whether any opinions were changed.  But consensus did not achieve authority.  The social activism in this case was seen as fouling the nest of the mother institution, which continued with its planned course of action but used its authority to withhold degrees of the suspected tattlers and start an internal investigation.  This is not secular, not accessible to civil secular authorities.  It’s a “Vatican” crime.  Sovereignty within an institution.  In fact, the institution of the seminary inside the institution of the denomination which has standards of confidentiality and ministerial performance of its own.

It would be wonderful if everyone could know everything, reflect on it rationally and come to opinions that were clear, actionable, and valid.  It can’t happen.  Partly it’s a matter of the unforeseen consequences of knowing, partly it’s the ease with which most people can be scandalized and overwhelmed by their own personal opinions, and partly it’s the old Jack-says-you-can’t-handle-the-truth. 

Much of life is negotiated by being a tight-wire walker -- not looking down.  They say 1% of men [sic] are psychopaths.  That means there are maybe four in this little town of 400 or so.  They say one-fourth of boys and one-third of girls are sexually hassled or outright assaulted in their lifetimes.  As a minister I knew of maybe ten men in ministry and a few women who acted sexually outside the guidelines, but they were rarely identified or defrocked.  One of the worst was, but a wrong-headed congregation hired him anyway.  I never heard how that turned out.  We’ve been confused by the sexual revolution as well as the impulse to “level” authority figures, not holding them to a higher standard, so that they feel entitled to indulge themselves.

Human beings are a roaring mess and it’s a wonder any of us survive unscathed -- maybe none do.  The least we can do is arrive at a consensus we can all live with and stay aware to the extent that we can bear it.  Not easy to do in a nation of immigrants obedient to inner voices from far different places.  That means if we know that children are being abused, whether sexually or in some other way, then we’re all obligated to do something about it.  But if we are just objecting to the choice of leaders of some movement, we should probably be the ones to move on.

I've used comic strips as illustrations.  This article describes how a sense of humor can be effective, an idea missing from the above cases EXCEPT by the inspired cartoonist.
http://www.ozy.com/c-notes/protests-go-absurd/34130.article?utm_source=dd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10012014

INTERESTING TIMES ON THE REZ BORDER

We have an “interesting” situation here on the interface 3-way interface (rez/county/fed) with the Blackfeet reservation but before I address it I want to tell two stories.

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/041121.gilkey.shtml

The first one is from “Shantung Compound” by Langdon Gilkey, one of my most brilliant and inspirational professors at the U of C Div School.  Gilkey was a colorful guy who wore a necklace and bandanna instead of a tie and ran class by sitting on his desk, inviting us to suggest a topic on which he could riff.  He wrote quite a few books, but “Shantung Compound” was about being interned by the Japanese at the beginning of WWII.  He was a young man at that point, not quite as young as in the movie, “Empire of the Sun”.  Most of the Westerners who had been rounded up were missionaries, and some of the stories were about the conflict between the different styles and assumptions.  His fav group was the Trappist monks, whose worst suffering came from being unable to achieve solitude in the camp, but whose strength was their solidarity.  If the Japanese demanded that offenders step forward, the whole group would step forward to accept punishment.  Because they tended to be big guys in identical robes with full beards and long hair, the Japanese couldn’t tell them apart, so this foiled all attempts to divide and conquer.

The conservative Protestants were interned as family units and the often aggressive parents put their family well-being ahead of even their Christian principles.  The camp was ruled by a committee of intern representatives, one of whose duties was the allocation of resources.  The most precious of these was space.  At some point it became necessary to shrink the spaces allotted to the families, but the policy was so ferociously opposed that the committee could not make the families comply.  In the end they had to resort to getting the Japanese guards to come with guns to force the families to obey.

The second story was told to me by the daughter of a white Browning school administrator deep in the past. I ran into her in Portland twenty years ago, so I may have the details wrong. In those days the administrators (principals and superintendent, both white and enrolled) did their drinking in Valier, which had bars then.  They were adult male entitled people who drank together to show solidarity.  It’s a status marker, a way to be seen publicly as a unit and to blow off steam in enough of a group to be relatively safe. Like a cop bar.

But the father of the woman who told me this story didn’t like to drink, didn’t want to be out at night, and liked time with his family.  So he refused to join the group.  They didn’t like this, so after they got pretty well lubricated, they piled into a car and went up to this administrator’s house to make him come drink with them.  He wouldn’t even open the door.  So they began to pelt the house with rocks, eventually smashing the big picture window in front.  That sobered them up enough to scatter.  How this was finally resolved is unknown to me, but it stayed in my head as a good example of pack behavior.  I know the people involved, and they are decent human beings.  But they didn’t like anyone getting out of line.

So now let’s talk about Shannon Augare.  I don’t know Shannon.  I knew Calvin Augare, who might be his uncle, and who was Bob Scriver’s hunting buddy, the man who saved Bob from going blind by forcing IHS to look at Bob’s enflamed eye and then driving him to Great Falls to a specialist.  He was a man of principle who insisted on results, so that’s the way I think of Shannon.  The deal was that a Cut Bank cop followed Shannon from a bar to  the reservation, pulled him over, accused him of being drunk, argued and reached into the car for the keys, which caused Augare to drive off.  He was served a citation the next day.

We’ve got several “third-rail” issues in this situation:  one is drunk driving and another is law enforcement on reservations.  People die in car accidents a LOT -- often by colliding with livestock.  There are also many violent incidents on the rez, often against women or even children.  The FBI sort of waves the cases on.  The newspaper stories -- which always have a sensationalist tilt anyway -- testify that this is a place and time that is having a hard time re-aligning laws, perps and victims.  Shannon is both a state senator and on the tribal council, which means in some minds he is presumed to have too much power.  An enduring Blackfeet sin is “getting the big head.”  Montana feels that way, too, except for recent immigrants.

Shannon Augare had previously been involved in one of those strategy blockades in the state senate, foiling a planned vote by not showing up.  (He’s a D, Cut Bank is R.  He's either culprit or rescuer, depending on which side you favor.)  I went to look at the drinking “hole” in Cut Bank, which is in the middle of town and newly redecorated, probably benefitting from the renewed oil-drilling action, maybe a half-mile from the rez -- the dividing river is at the edge of town.  It is not a big town.   I did a walk-through before business started because the last time I was in a Cut Bank bar was 1962, the height of oil-drilling action, and it was a very unpleasant experience.  Cut Bank is an oil town and a reservation vampire.  They are not friendly to reservation law enforcement and would love to see some fancy Blackfeet “suits” brought down to what might be considered their proper status, according to Texas immigrants with images of John Wayne dancing in their heads.  I don’t suppose the rez cops are very fond of oil roughnecks.

MONTANA FREEDOM CAMPAIGN REPORT CARD

Looks good from my point of view -- just turn it upside down.

Of course, it was stupid and self-deceiving for Augare to think that he could step out of line in any way, even if his mother was with him, which she was.  And it was stupid of the local cop to pursue and attempt to detain Augare in a way that could easily have escalated into tragedy.  The cop had a partner with him and a video cam running which may have given him an exaggerated sense of authority.  But my guess is that he just wanted to nail Augare.  Every person on the scene was offending, enabling, and persecuting.  Very mixed.  

Then came the FBI, rubbing its hands together in anticipation.  It appears Carl Pepion called them in, setting up a competing triangle of motives and roles.  Essentially, he brought in guards to use their fire power to force compliance to what he considers the “right thing.”  (Carl is the Tribal Chief Prosecutor.)  Sharp, the tribal council chair, is sticking to the principle of sovereignty.  A body cannot be sovereign if it has to resort to the FBI, which originally was limited to ten major crimes (murder, rape, and others) but has managed to wiggle into many situations without really being on the scene: armchair analysts playing a long game with no skin in the game.  (see footnote)

I’m in Valier, adjacent to the rez.  We’re involved in all sorts of three-handed games, but so far the FBI has stayed out, though there is other Federal pressure.  Mostly we’re wrestling with infrastructure erosion versus economic issues, which are less violent but sometimes seem equally insoluble.  Water rights, for instance, are as much a sovereignty interface problem as who gets to pull over whom for drunk driving.  At least it’s not likely there will be a massacre like a hundred years ago when the cavalry was called in to show who was boss.  At least I hope not.  I don’t want to see blood, no matter the source or kind.

FOOTNOTE:

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/may-2012/indian-country-and-the-tribal-law-and-order-act-of-2010

Indian Country and the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010By Michael J. Bulzomi, J.D.

“In 1885, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act to address the resolution of cases in which a crime involving two Native American parties occurs in Indian country. This Act established federal jurisdiction over seven crimes committed in these instances. The original seven covered by the Act include murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, and larceny. Subsequent amendments to the Act have added seven more offenses: kidnapping, incest, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault resulting in serious bodily injury, assault with intent to commit rape, robbery, and felonious sexual molestation of a minor. “

This whole document is worth reading in regard to the Shannon Augare incident and the general background.

"HIPPIES, INDIANS AND THE FIGHT FOR RED POWER" by Sherry Smith

A much better review of Sherry Smith’s “Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power”  was published at www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=38813  David Farber wrote it. What I mean by “better” is that it is more measured and addresses Smith as academic-to-academic, because this is an academic book based on written archives and formal interviews.  That’s not my turf.  I chose ONE tribe (Blackfeet) fifty years ago and most of what I know comes from first-hand experience.  Not bigshots, just whoever was here when I was here, including now.

Smith’s idea is to understand how Indians and their supporters came together to make social change on big occasions, one chapter for each.  They are:

Frank’s Landing on the Nisqually River  (Nisqually)

Alcatraz Island in San Francisco (pan-tribal)

The commune country of northern New Mexico (Hopi, Navajo)

The BIA building in Washington, D.C.  (pan-tribal)

Wounded Knee Village on the Pine Ridge reservation (Sioux)

Oddly, or perhaps because of the way Smith researched, the “tribe” that comes out looking good is the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee).  My own denominational affiliation during this time was Unitarian Universalist.  (Like many Blackfeet, I couldn’t make a living on the rez so I had gone back to Portland.  I found the UU church in 1975.)  The UU’s, often fellow travelers with the AFSC, pretty much stayed clear.  They had suffered major trauma over black and Vietnam issues, but also -- I found after I had entered the UU ministry -- they were mostly progressive, urban, liberal people who could NOT understand Indians except in the most literary terms.

In 1976 my Portland UU minister, Alan Deale, knowing my background, asked for advice.  Dennis Banks, Russ Redner and Kenneth Loudhawk (with others) had been arrested while driving a Winnebago loaded with unstable nitroglycerine in eastern Oregon.  They were lucky that this happened in a far different political climate.   They were released on bail.   Deale had been asked to be the person to whom they reported daily and he wanted feedback about “Indians” from me.  My sympathies were with them, though I thought driving around in a hot climate with a load of explosives was pretty ill-advised.  In fact, the sheriff of the impounding county was so nervous that he ended up taking it out into the sagebrush and exploding it.  This offered a way out of a very “hot” trial, since there was now no evidence and that particular case was dismissed.

However, Banks was still wanted in connection with the death of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash and it was unclear what Oregon would do about extradition to South Dakota.  It was certainly clear to the rest of us what South Dakota would do to Banks.  Governor Jerry Brown in California would not extradite, so Banks ran for sanctuary.  The sympathetic old lady who had put up the sizable bail lost her money, but Deale managed to get her reimbursed through connections within the UUA realm.

There were funny blunders in the practicalities.  Banks gave a very Vine DeLoria Jr. - type “sermon” one Sunday and the Loudhawk and Redner group served fry bread during the traditional coffee hour afterwards.  They understood UU’s as “granolas,” so the frybread was whole wheat.  When I teased the women -- really little more than kids -- their eyes went big for fear that they had broken some rule.  That’s the use of teasing on a rez.

But when there was an appeal for food, I loaded up a box of what I considered to be “pow-wow food” -- hamburger, eggs, oranges and Sailor Boy hardtack -- and they were at a loss.  There was too much of it for them to eat in a few days and they had no freezer, so what would they do with all that meat?  They were urban people and I was used to rural culture.  On the rez there would be no problem at all, because everyone’s relatives would be over to share in the feast.  But if you live in ghetto apartments, you don’t let people know what you have.  Anyway, you might end up living in your truck.  No fridge.  I should have loaded them up with canned food and packaged cookies.  

What impressed some UU people most was that Kenneth Loudhawk’s father showed up and he was one of those solid, grave, intelligent people that every culture depends upon.   The other point of connection was parades: every UU dearly loves a demonstration.  These things don’t generally show up in journalistic accounts or scholarly aggregations of names, dates and so on.  No one would read this book for the pure adventure of it.  It’s not “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee,” though Smith’s account of the book’s influence is pretty good IMHO.  This is like Paul Rosier’s book about the Blackfeet -- hard to read, but an indispensable reference work if you’re doing old-fashioned history: names and dates, quotes, and so on.

I was off the rez between 1973 and 1982 but being in Portland gave me the chance to attend speeches by prominent NA writers: Erdrich, DeLoria, Welch, Sarris, Alexie, et al.  Every summer I went back to Browning where things got more and more tense.  Since I wasn’t risking property or my person and since I was contemptuous of the constant FBI whispering campaign and since most of the AIM people on the rez were former students, I saw things quite differently from Bob Scriver and the other white townspeople, a dwindling group once the BIA began to use Indian preference in hiring.  The small town whites had come after WWII and were aging out, simply locking the door on their businesses.  

In the morning I’d take my mail down to the Red Crow Kitchen and sort it in a booth while I had breakfast.  At one table sat the white locals and at a booth across the room sat the AIM prominants and fellow-travelers.  I’d eavesdrop, then on the way out stop off to exchange a few words with each group.  Except for their points of view, they sounded remarkably similar.  The dominance/submission dynamics that are in every society were palpable but never flared high enough for violence at breakfast.  The kind of woman who runs a cafe on a rez does not tolerate any behavior that will interfere with business. 

Anyway, the two groups justified each other.  Each needed the other to brace against, to make their lives seem bold and romantic instead of the constant pursuit of small profits.  A couple on the white side helped to keep the lid on.  Paul Kingston came to Browning as a priest, stepped out to secular life, married a nun, Barbara, who was his equal in dedication and faith, and raised a set of exceptional kids.  They have been a stabilizing force for good by example and faithfulness to both their God and their community without being overbearing or sentimental.  For income they run a Subway franchise.

In fact, both Curley Bear Wagner and Buster Yellow Kidney, both gone on ahead now, gradually evolved from politics to a kind of shamanism, looking for the values of ancestors.  They made money from it but it’s hard to blame them for that.  Maybe it’s more problematic that they distracted interested parties from the real-world politics and institutional templates that still pin down tribal people, but are now being addressed.

Smith’s previous book was “Reimagining Indians” which reviewed individuals (mostly men) who had interfaced between whites and Indians.  I took offense at her depiction of Walter McClintock, whose “The Old North Trail” tells me more than Ewers’ official history of the tribe.  She seemed to want to take down most of the people in the book, all of which were prominent in their time.  Her “take” appeared to be heavily post-colonial and hard-line feminist, though it was all well-researched.  This new book is mellower.  

Curley Bear in a mellow mood.

"THE LONG GAME" ON THE REZ

The “long game” of the FBI is paying off (from their point of view) with raids that appear to be effective roundups of criminals: financial corruption, child trafficking, drug cartels, and the like.  It is a two step technique perfected in the continuing sand wars.  

The first step is to bring up the evidence for wrong-doing, vivid enough to rally public outrage.  Soon a committee will be formed “demanding” some action from the FBI.  They will have strong views, which they will indignantly express in what they assume is confidential testimony.  

In response, there will be a number of obvious offenders brought in and interviewed.  They are accused, pressure-interviewed separately, and the information triangulated and evaluated.  They are arrested, charged, and quietly released -- people assume because bail has been posted.  There is negotiation about indictments.  

Costs of litigation are very high and it is suggested to people that it may be sensible to simply plead guilty.  Or that sentences may be mitigated by cooperation.  As those accused sweat over the coming time, there are hints about cooperation.  As time goes on, the suspects become more willing to offer names and tell tales.  Nothing much seems to happen.

Maybe a year later, the accumulated information is used to dragnet the real targets, now well-enough documented to make conviction easy.  Often they are relatives of the original committee and/or the first accused, because that’s the information that is effective in getting  deals.

Reservation people are not good at long-game.  Poverty, war, culture-difference teaches people to grab today (Hey, what would that be like in Latin???) because there might not be another chance.  Until a century ago, the bands were held together by a common language, the need to cooperate in order to survive, and religious ceremonies that were an opportunity to make amends, get back into harmony with the universe.  Those have been destroyed.  

In a poverty setting a new economy of secrets grows up, because that’s all people have for barter and to form alliances.  Negative information is more potent than positive.  Sweet deals behind the scenes are the way business was done on the frontier, particularly with the government and especially after the Civil War.  (Still that way.)  Distances were great and many languages were spoken.  The status of Indians -- not citizens until late (though not as late as women) and just recently enemies -- was ambiguous at best.  It was a place where information was as crucial and faulty as it is on today’s internet.  Emotions were high enough that anyone believed anything and probably ought to.

The dictionaries claim that the term “long game” comes from golf and refers to the skills of a player in the phase where the ball must be hit hard enough to travel a long way, as compared to “putting” the ball in the hole once it’s on the green.   But the blog called “Britishisms” suggests that the term has jumped to something much bigger:   “The most common contexts have been diplomacy, espionage, and statecraft, as in a 1944 comment in The Times that “ … so well and successfully have conspirators played the long game.” But it’s been used in all sorts of ways. In 1917 an anonymous author in The TLS intriguingly commented, “We are reminded of a pregnant saying of Hart’s that the long game is the Church’s game.” A 2005 episode of the BBC series Dr. Who was titled “The Long Game. . .”  There are video games and blogs called “The Long Game.”

On a reservation the short term “game” is at least surviving the next election (as it is in the whole country now) or maybe even as short as surviving a night of revelry or a weather emergency or a family row.  The white long game is about ending reservations and dissolving Indian identity.  This has been in play since Eisenhower.  In a sense it began when the first ships arrived from Europe.  There is a kind of apartheid always at play.  There is never any such thing as “separate but equal.”  Law on reservations is different -- not just for Indians, but for everyone on location or doing business.

The more Indians work for reparations to compensate for past injustices, the more they are risking the government (and the public opinion that gives it permission) being able to say,  “Okay.  We were wrong.  We’ve paid you off.  Now we’re even.  Don’t ask again.”  Since so much of the economy depends upon federal subsidies and compensations for the lack of state taxing power, this means that tribes will be crippled.

Corporations also play the “long game,” so that decades ago the leases were negotiated for laying the groundwork for present and future drilling.  Natural resources, including the marketing of scenery and the law differences (casinos), may seem like the way to guarantee sovereignty with economic viability.  The problem is that the kind of education that allows tribal people to operate on a level playing field with corporations and European governments is an education that will erase tribal culture in general and the identity of individuals in particular.  

“White” codes of operation and “Red” codes of operation are based on different assumptions.  The assumptions of the red man are cooperation, protection of the vulnerable, harmony with nature, because that’s what worked before “civilization” arrived.  There were other, less idealistic assumptions: for instance, always go to the limits of your capacity in conflict, even murder.  Or going out of one’s mind is a good thing (before alcohol).  White codes mostly boil down to control and profit.  Tight moral rules about sex, came in with the Christian missionaries and lent much energy to stigmatizing relationships that hadn’t been formally sanctioned by whites.  These are playing cards in the “long game” as well as putting on the green, getting reds into the hole.

The real long game pits sovereignty against assimilation.  The FBI has nothing to do with this except in the short term.  When there is true sovereignty on the reservation, which would mean self-determined and self-controlled law, a huge part of the FBI bureaucracy will be destroyed.  (This is also true of the federal Native American agents and systems, such as the Indian Health Service.)  Attacking these entities is in the short term a move towards sovereignty: demanding to self-prescribe the agenda and rules.  In fact, it is playing into the long term goal of simply abolishing those bureaucracies.  

In the long game, criticism of the governmental oversight and “meddling” can only be justified by assimilation, Indians being just the same as anyone else.  The reservation system was created because Indians were so very different from “whites,” but as they become more and more like all people, the justification can only be an historical remnant.  The People should have started Blackfeet language lessons the day the reservation was invented.  The government figured that time was on their side and that Indians would simply age out.  For the most part, they have.  

But the strategy also created a new category of people who are unregulated and hard to govern:  mixed bloods.  They have no long game.  This means their loyalties must be captured by other means than money and territory.  Thus we see the FBI strategies of stings, division, ambiguity, long waits, impenetrable rules and laws, intimidation and possibly even black ops.  All meant to separate the “swing citizens” from the tribal agenda.  Mixed blood people (who are more than just red/white but also red/red, red/black, red/yellow, and so on) can play on both sides.  They call it “code-switching.”

http://cutbankpioneerpress.com/articles/2013/08/14/glacier_reporter/news/doc520a745e94cc0444857678.txt   Recent indictments.

(There is no FBI field office in the state of Montana, though there are nine tribes located in Montana.)  

LAST TRIBAL OFFICIAL STANDING

One of Langdon Gilkey’s very best books -- perhaps the least theological -- is “Shantung Compound.” Gilkey, who was one of my professors at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a whole lot besides, was a child in a mission family in China when that country was invaded by Japan. The family was interned in a compound in Shantung where the other Westerners rounded up were the best and the worst: several kinds of Christian missionaries and a slew of dock and black-market toughs and sex workers.

The book, while a memoir, is also a reflection on the moral capacities of this mixed bag when put under severe pressure to survive. It turned out that the only person who could be trusted to guard the precious food supply was a hardened criminal sailor who knew that if the food were lost, the whole community was lost -- so he slept at the door, preventing theft by the hungry or by the greedy who would sell it. The Trappists, who suffered the most from the loss of their vows of silence, were big, bearded, robed bears of men who were indistinguishable from each other to the Japanese and therefore got away with small acts for the benefit of the whole.

The most troublesome people were the Protestant missionaries who had families to think of and who constantly agitated for more food, more space, more fuel, for their children and wives. The compound had its own internal Westerner’s government, but at least on one occasion the leaders had to go to the Japanese head of the guards and ask him to have soldiers come to settle quarrels at gunpoint.

That’s background. The Rocky Boy’s Reservation in Montana was originally federal land because it was a fort. When the Indian Wars ended, Rocky Boy’s people had been left with no land of their own and were making trouble on the Blackfeet Reservation where they had been unceremoniously shoved in. So the old fort was converted to the use of Rocky Boy’s people, to be their own reservation with their own sovereign tribal government as well as Federal BIA oversight. Tribes are proud of their sovereignty, which sometimes means economic advantage since they can choose not to accept some state laws. But there is a dark side.

When sovereign tribes turn against members of their own tribes, there is no recourse except the tribal council and tribal courts who may have decided to penalize their members for their own selfish reasons. So Jeanne Hobbs, a Chippewa-Cree elder, has been accused of “slander” and the possible penalty includes the sale of all her property (home, possessions, horses, vehicles), a declaration that she is dead, and banishment from the reservation. Oh, plus a $5,000 fine. Hobbs is accused of writing anonymous letters with copies of canceled checks proving misappropriation of funds. She says she didn’t write the letters.

State supreme courts have no jurisdiction over reservations unless specifically given it in a contract with the tribe. Federal courts and the BIA are very reluctant to get involved. I suspect they feel rather like the Japanese did when trying to pin down the Trappists who defied them.

Reservations were created out of the realization that indigenous peoples with their own culture could not be fairly judged by a dominant invading culture, particularly one that had been trying to eliminate them from existence. But as Indians have assimilated to white ways, they have absorbed the bad with the good. What would once be settled by people going off to cool down or join another band, is now confined to the social pressure cooker that is a reservation with too few resources for the people expected to live there. Leaders have taken on the strategies of the white men they have observed in the school systems, the hospitals, and the businesses of the high dry prairie. As one nursing home administrator put it, “If anybody gives you trouble, fire the sunnavabitch. Plenty of other people need jobs.”

My sympathy with Jeanne Hobbs is born of experience, not with a sovereign tribe but with bullying administrators who keep control through threats and punishment -- following by firing if they can swing it. What will prevent that, and possibly lead to the leaving of the administrator, is a strong local coalition of family members. Thus, I know that probably if Jeanne Hobbs has a strong family that wants her protected, it will be the criticized leadership that may find themselves “declared dead” and ordered to leave.

Thus such strategy leads in circles, feeding back bitterness on itself and often fomenting violence in a place that can ill afford it. There’s not a lot of difference -- except for the naked naivete of tribal leaders doing such a thing as compared with the sly behind-the-scenes pit traps invented by Washington D.C. lawyers -- from the sort of thing the Bush administration has been doing: marking internal critics (ie. enemies) for destruction. I’ve taken to quoting over and over whoever it was who said that Russia’s fatal flaw is their belief that “the last man standing” is the way to define superiority. Sure, if you don’t mind standing there all by yourself in a howling flat lonesome snowscape, having destroyed everything else.

In 1961 when I first came to teach in Browning, I had a speech and drama class and was quick to launch what I had just learned from Dean Barnlund at Northwestern University. Discussion techniques like “bird-caging,” repeating opinions back to the expressor of them, summarizing what had been said so far, pointing out agreement, making an opening for the quiet or shy, were -- we hoped -- the salvation of democracy. But you couldn’t learn these techniques without issues that the discussers cared about. The kids wanted (BADLY) to discuss being beaten up by the cops. So we did. But the chief of Tribal Police immediately showed up at my classroom door with his citation book out, another version of “beating up,” though he had no jurisdiction over white people.

The superintendent, Phil Ward, had a long talk with this man -- pointing out that the defense for slander and libel is simply proof that the allegation is true. But he also ordered me to drop the topic. Later, one of the students witnessed a beating in the jail -- her bedroom overlooked the jail window. By that time I was with Bob Scriver (city magistrate and justice of the peace) and he stepped in. I don’t know what he did, but the cop in question stopped. At least for a while. That’s how things work on a reservation -- or did then.

In the past there have been efforts to organize a National Tribal Supreme Court that could adjudicate sovereignty gone haywire. It hasn’t worked, probably at least in part because threats like those against Hobbs are so useful to some people. What they don’t see is that eventually the erosion of sovereignty will end tribal courts, tribal justice, and possibly reservations. Then they can stand with pride on a flat, howling, lonesome snowscape -- all alone.