Will the Indians Get Whitey?

In the following article, John Greenway, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado (Boulder), challenges the prevailing assumptions and historical shibboleths long associated with the American Indian. Juxtaposed with Professor Greenway’s theme are quotations (in italics) from references discussed in the essay, pertinent news data, as well as selections from the testimony of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy appearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs.

hen 36 out of 81 superior American college students can look at a photograph of American soldiers removing piles of emaciated Jewish corpses from a liberated Nazi horror camp and identify the scene as Americans committing atrocities in Vietnam—well, is it not to be expected? The unnatural eagerness of Americans to believe themselves to be monsters is not a biological imperative, despite its constancy from the earliest period of American history. It is learned behavior, implanted neither by genes nor by experience, but by the teachings of the strangest class of intellectuals any nation has ever been damned with. With few significant exceptions, America’s professional thinkers have been anomic dropouts from their own culture, burning the American spirit as their bearded acolytes burn the American flag. They find some unrepented sin in themselves and take up whatever scourge lies at hand to visit its punishment upon their forefathers. Now more than ever before, the American Indian is a favorite scourge—as a study of ten popular, non-scholarly books* on the Indian demonstrates.

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John Greenway

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In the following article, John Greenway, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado (Boulder), challenges the prevailing assumptions and historical shibboleths long associated with the American Indian. Juxtaposed with Professor Greenway’s theme are quotations (in italics) from references discussed in the essay, pertinent news data, as well as selections from the testimony of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy appearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs.

hen 36 out of 81 superior American college students can look at a photograph of American soldiers removing piles of emaciated Jewish corpses from a liberated Nazi horror camp and identify the scene as Americans committing atrocities in Vietnam—well, is it not to be expected? The unnatural eagerness of Americans to believe themselves to be monsters is not a biological imperative, despite its constancy from the earliest period of American history. It is learned behavior, implanted neither by genes nor by experience, but by the teachings of the strangest class of intellectuals any nation has ever been damned with. With few significant exceptions, America’s professional thinkers have been anomic dropouts from their own culture, burning the American spirit as their bearded acolytes burn the American flag. They find some unrepented sin in themselves and take up whatever scourge lies at hand to visit its punishment upon their forefathers. Now more than ever before, the American Indian is a favorite scourge—as a study of ten popular, non-scholarly books* on the Indian demonstrates.