First American, Last American (1971)

The average income is $1,500, 75% below the national average. His un rate is 10 times the national average. He lives 10 years less than the average American. The death rate for his children is twice as high as the national average. Tuberculosis rates are seven times higher than the average Americans. These facts are the cold statistic tragedy and a national disgrace. They demonstrate first American has in fact become the last American. Indians arrived some 19,000 years before the white man did. These dancers are from the Walawala tribe west. Their rain dance is unfamiliar to most other Americans, including other tribes of Indians. The Mescalero Apaches of the Southwest wear different costumes than the Walaw Wala. They dance different dances to different tunes. They speak a different language. There are nearly 300 separate Indian languages and dialects spoken in this country. While the Apaches and the Wallawala are both Indian tribes, they're as different from each other as the English are from the French or the Chinese from the Japanese. What most Indians do have in common today are their problems in a white man's society. Indians have two major problems from which all others flaw. Non-Indians will not let Indians alone live as Indians, but keep trying to remake them into a white man's notion of an Indian. And the government of the United States, which has made countless treaties with the Indians, keeps changing its mind about living up to the terms of the treaties it has promised to observe. Senator Robert Kennedy was a strong supporter of the American Indian. Black militant Stokeley Carmichael says the white man stole it from the Indians. While scholar John Bride points out the Indian world has good reason to remain Indian. It was almost 200 years ago that the leaders of Virginia, having signed a treaty with six Indian nations, offered to educate six of their sons. The chiefs, although responding with thanks, rejected the offer, citing a previous experiment with white man's education. Their children had come back from the white man school, said the chiefs, bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear the cold or hunger. That they knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, or counselors. They were totally good for nothing. Perhaps the Indians said the governors would send a dozen white children to learn at the hands of the Indians. We will take great care of their education, promised the chiefs, instruct them in all we know and make men of them. We can no longer, it seems to me, ignore the lesson of this exchange. If we are to teach, we must also learn. They lump the negro and the Indian problem together, which is a mistake because the negro is out to attain uh middle class status. The Indian is out to retain. He's out to retain his Indianness. And so it's only in the last 20 years or so people are starting to look into this Indian world to see what's in that Indian world that is worth retaining that is making the Indian so Indian uh and why he wants to remain Indian. Some of us look at this scene of all the years that has gone by uh ever since the treaty was made with the Navajo tribe and we'd like to get to the point where uh the Indians I'm talking about the Indians which including the Navajos that it's about time that we get ourselves involved and plan some of this education plan what is needed for our Navajo children to better themselves. I think we need to get ourselves involved. The value of knowledge is in with the old man. The old man's is to advise to the younger generation. He takes little this little fell to the water in the summertime and he's 6 months old. Hold him on the water and that little fellow will swim when he's 2 years old. Right from the start that has been learned. And then he's got to learn to be a hunter and a warrior. So his father makes him bow an arrow. He goes out and kills again. Even it's a mouse. Anything but it's a game. And then the parents make big feast and say, "Come on, folks. Let's eat and be married because my son might be a great be a great warrior and and honor." America cannot tell the truth about herself. If the history of this country were written, you would have to say that this country is a nation of thieves. It began by stealing this country from the red man. B the red man. If I said to you that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, you would say that's correct. But now here come this honky from Spain. There are already non-white people here and they're not existing until he comes and discovers them. Ain't that something? [Applause] A great Indian culture survives on this Navajo reservation stretching 25,000 square miles where Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah meet. About half the nation's 700,000 Indians live in cities. The rest live on reservations like this one, the home of 140,000 Navajos. Most Navajos live in one room homes called Hoganss spread across the vast reservation. Navajo families are very close. There are few modern conveniences inside the Hogan, but there is much love. Outside the Hogan, the family spends a great deal of time together. Reuniting a baby lamb and mama at feeding time is not a chore. It's a happy experience for everyone to share, especially the lamb. The Navajo tribe has a 12 million dollar sawmill where 600 Navajo men dispel the notion that Indians are poor workers. Too often, however, outside the reservation, the Indian does not get a chance to prove himself. A young Navajo who tried and failed talks about the problems on the outside. I feel very insecure and feel I had a guilt feeling when I'm among uh the white people and other nationality like Spanish and uh color people. I feel I'm being rejected a lot of times when I go into different places and ask for a job and they refuse me. And I grew up on the reservation all my life and I went to see what's beyond the mountain on the other side or off the reservations. I went from one town to the next town for a whole year. I got a lot of help from the Navajo boys that live off the reservation. They helped me alone just to look for a job from town to town and then I couldn't find any job within a year. I just came back to the reservation. The Navajos have attracted some outside industry. In a new General Dynamics plant on the reservation, highly complex electronic assemblies are produced for aerospace systems. Unfortunately, across the 25,000 square mile Navajo land, there are too few of these jobs. Children of these workers may have to look for employment on the outside. The US government educates them at boarding schools where they live most of the year. Government officials answer criticism of the schools from those who believe that Indian children lose their identity when living away from home. It is uh rather obvious we think that the best possible education is where a child stays at home uh a nice homeass home and goes to a day school uh by day. That's the ideal situation on this reservation. That would require uh about $200 million in roads. I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't know the traumatic experience that they say is is experienced by these children. I haven't done any in-depth study, but I do know that the Navajo leaders, including Mr. Nakai and others, have gone to boarding schools, and I don't see any real permanent damage caused them. I suppose I must go by results. We are not quite sure though that if if a home is a one room hoggon without a radio, without a newspaper where where English is not spoken, uh if you're going to take children from a home like that, then you have to have some kind of special education. Now again, ideally you would do it on a day school basis, but without the road system, it can't be done here. The boarding schools are criticized for teaching the wrong culture to Indian children, for introducing the Indian child to white ways of doing things to show him that the white way is the superior way. Critics say the Indian child loses respect for his own world, yet never becomes part of the white world. [Music] The government says it brings Indian education to the children while at the same time preparing them for the outside world. All agree that Indian children must take pride in their Indian heritage for their ancestry has positive values that have been unrecognized far too long. Time to recognize that red is beautiful. [Music] One of the finest Indian schools is St. Labra in the land of the northern Cheyen. They learn about the outside world at school and discover that many of the values in white society are directly in conflict with their Indian way. Is one way better than another? Or is there no better or worse, only different? Some students discuss their doubts and fears. The more I think about it, I think I'd like to go out and and pull for our rights, but then I'd be out there all by myself. I don't know who would be there to help me. I think if they understood how they were really treating us and like just pushing us off somewhere on just some land to take care of ourselves, we'd go out there and demand our rights. But then I think the Negroes are being treated worse than we are. We've got our reservations to stand. We've got our own people here. The Negroes, they have to I mean, they're out in the big cities by themselves. They have the ghettos, but I mean, we can find jobs here. We have the BIA to help us and everything, but the Negroes don't have that. people just don't seem to understand us or anything, you know, that we are as equal as any other person. On the reservation, life is sort of like lazy. I mean, you know, fighting to get the best job. Then you go off the reservation and um it seems like people always to get better and what I don't know. We weren't brought up to be always well, you know, pushing. Yeah. Pushing. We're sheltered and we're taken care of here. And when we leave, it's just it's just like coming out of a shell or something. You just you have to pull for yourself. No one's there to help you. If I'm having trouble in college, I want to be able to come back and find help here. And there's not just problems when you go out with your schoolwork and stuff like that. There's other problems like with your social problems. The Indians were here first, but they're shoving you onto a little land and they're taking over the rest of the place. Not really that way. I mean, they're shoving they're shoving us all on uh one reservation, but uh you still can go out whenever you want. But they don't go out whenever they want. I mean, they just stay on here. They got it easy here. They got welfare. They got the BIA. They can go to the office and they can get jobs. What if we got out to the world? There was no one there to fall back on to help us. It just seems it seems like it'll be real hard and we can't do it. Everything's here that we need for our whole life. We can be born here and we can live and we can die here. No, I've lived on the reservation all my life and I'm just kind of tired of it and I Well, I'm the kind that, you know, likes to roam around. I like to go places and see things and do things. I want to be electronic engineer and after I go to college, I'll go into the Navy. I just don't feel like coming back like try to make it uh by myself and see how it is. We should go out and get our education and then come back here and help our people and show them that that we can make it that if we make it then they can. [Applause] Most Indians have avoided the generation gap but many Indian children abandon their culture to become assimilated in the outside world. Other Indians renounce the outside world for the reservation. The Indians should be allowed to enjoy the best of both worlds. There is a third alternative to preserve his Indian identity as a respected and contributing member of our society. The first American need not become the last American. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]