America: Come for the Civil Disobedience, Stay for the Thunderdome

During the early days of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, when police departments were freaking out and the White House was clearing a churchyard with smoke grenades and batons, I was reading a book about American Indian law, and I was struck by some unfortunate similarities between what I read on the page and what I saw on the screen.

On Twitter I shared this image with the caption, "America: Come for the Civil Disobedience, Stay for the Thunderdome." In retrospect, though, the image is perhaps more like a scene from the Roman Coliseum than a Mad Max movie. Demonstrators were more like Christians being thrown to the lions than they were like Mel Gibson fighting Tina Turner's goons.

Mad Max: Police Academy?

At the same time, I was reading about a Supreme Court case, United States v Sandoval (1913), in Walter Echo-Hawk's book titled In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided. With that case, and several that Echo-Hawk relates to it, the U.S. government claimed broad guardianship authority over American Indians, authority it did not claim over other Americans. He wrote:

Big Brother can and did "do things" to Indians as their "guardian" that it could never do to regular citizens (202).

That guardian authority included the imposition of some religious beliefs and the denial of others (Native religious practices were explicitly outlawed well into the 20th century); control of property and financial transactions; and unilateral law enforcement and judicial processes.

This guardianship was based on the false assumption that American Indians were inherently inferior to white Americans and needed their guidance, as if they were children. It was also based on the assumption that the guardians were free of any repercussions for harming their wards. (Echo-Hawk demonstrates how this guardianship authority was repeatedly used to abuse rather than protect American Indians.)

I thought of this as I saw police officers swinging batons like baseball bats against unarmed, non-violent demonstrators in downtown Los Angeles. And when I saw a police officer using his shield as if he were Captain America and a photojournalist were Thanos. I thought of it when I saw an armored personnel carrier rolling through a Philadelphia neighborhood.

@ryanvizzions

The militarized police response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations were very familiar to Indian

Country. In 2016, we all saw the response to water protectors trying to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on unceded land belonging to the Great Sioux Nation. South Dakota brought armored cavalry to confront unarmed civilians. The water protectors were attacked by dogs, doused with pepper spray, and blasted with a water cannon on a freezing night. 

I do not know how much of the nation was outraged by the events at Standing Rock. President Obama delayed the construction of the pipeline, but he did not intervene in the violence, saying he would "let it play out for several more weeks," as if the opposing forces were equal in strength and legal justifications.

I think it was easy for many Americans to watch the events and remain unmoved. The events were happening on a fairly isolated reservation, so there were no traffic jams nor curfews to inconvenience people not directly involved. Many viewers may have been undisturbed also because this was a confrontation they were accustomed to: the Cavalry vs. the Indians. Even if their sympathies were with the Native people, they were accustomed, through national mythology, to understand Indians as potential enemies. That is the slippery slope in the guardian relationship between the federal government and Native communities: some times there was little difference between being a ward and being a prisoner of war.

But the violence at the Black Lives Matter demonstrations took place in the center of the nation's largest cities, not on the faraway Great Plains. I thought of this notion of abusive guardianship when I read about curfews that were declared 10 minutes before they were enforced, and when I read about groups of demonstrators who were not allowed to leave public spaces and who were then arrested for violating the curfew. Demonstrators were shot directly with rubber bullets (not how they were intended to be used) and hit with gas canisters. Limbs were broken. Eyes were damaged.

I asked at what point did the police gain such authority over U.S. citizens? When were they given the authority to injure people who were not violating a law and who were not threatening other people? Citizens are not given the authority to protect themselves against this violence. Would the police wield pepper spray with such nonchalance if they knew there was a good chance someone would spray them back? When were they given authority to swing their batons at people's legs simply for "crowd control"?

When did we surrender the right of self-protection?

How were people so easily transformed from citizens to enemies?

A legal scholar can probably tell me when this state of affairs evolved, and I assume it is involved with the concept of "qualified immunity," so perhaps my question is more "why?" or "how?" What is the legal reasoning behind the government declaring that demonstrators have surrendered their right to assemble, their freedom of speech, their freedom of movement, and their right to protect themselves?

And why should we let this continue?

To me, the assumption being made is similar to that articulated in Sandoval. People voicing their displeasure with the government are being considered (without legal or formal declaration) inferior to other citizens and surrender, like minors or children, many rights to their self-declared guardians.

Viewed in the light of an abusive guardian relationship -- the assumption of inferiority and the removal of Constitutional rights -- I think most Americans would agree that it is time to reconsider the authority that federal and state governments claim over their citizens.

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American Indian Studies has important lessons for all U.S. citizens because it considers some fundamental questions of interest to everyone. In this case, what does it mean to be a citizen? What is the right relationship between a person and their government? What responsibilities does the citizen have to their government and their government to them?

It is useful for them to study cases in which the government has for so long denied its obligations and disregarded the rights of individuals. It is useful for them to see how arbitrarily and self-servingly the federal government has conducted its relationship with Native nations, and for them to consider the possibility that their government could do the same with them.

A big reason people in Indian Country were so happy with this week's decision in McGirt v Oklahoma was that the Supreme Court simply followed the rules. It offered simple, clear interpretations of the law and honored a treaty the U.S. government had signed. Indian Country expected the usual contortions of legal and moral reasoning from the Supreme Court to justify the continued dispossession and abuse of Native people. When that did not happen, Native people were elated. The court decision was good news, but its reception is sad, really. It is a commentary on how rare "doing the right thing" can be.

Marriage equality is a family value

In art, song, poetry, fiction, and film, Family is perhaps the most common way for imagining membership in a group, including the nation.

Think of the Civil War in the United States and how it was described as being a war between
brothers, which was literally true at times. Think of the HBO series about World War II, Band of Brothers.

Think of Walt Whitman in Song of Myself claiming that all men and women "ever born" are his brothers and sisters.  Although his statement is made in relation to all humanity, the poem is most clearly about his nation; the brothers and sisters he describes in his epic poem are his fellow Americans.

In his book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson considers the ways humans create nations through their imaginations. Nations are rather large groups of people, and often times those people do not have that many things in common.  One way of overcoming potential divisions is by imagining connections.  He writes that a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion."

Thinking of themselves in terms of a family allows a group of citizens to imagine they have a shared history and a shared future -- as do members of a family who have common ancestors and descendants.  For instance, a group of school children might have been born in a dozen different countries, but, now that they live in the United States, they are encouraged to think of George Washington as a type of shared father figure. 

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)

Families and nationhood came to mind recently when Sen. Rob Portman ended his opposition to same-sex marriage after learning that his son was gay.  (And it is especially pertinent now that the Supreme Court is hearing arguments concerning legal definitions of marriage.)

My initial reaction to Portman's announcement was, "How convenient."

He changed his mind only after learning that a member of his family would be negatively impacted by a legal principle he had supported.  While I appreciate his new outlook, I am troubled by what this says about his old outlook -- and the outlook of many others who have not changed.

Although Portman has changed his perspective on same-sex marriage, the reason for his change may mean an earlier principle remains in place: a mindset that extends justice and compassion only to members of one's family and those who closely resemble one's family.

It is a principle that suggests: If you are different from me, I am not concerned with justice for you.  

I would prefer a sense of justice and compassion that extends to everyone, regardless of whether they look or act or think as I do.  In other words, I would prefer we treated all people in the country as if they already were part of the family.  Just as Portman wants justice and equality for his son, we should want the same for all of our "relatives" -- which is to say, "everyone."

When it comes to the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship, we should ask not "What is right and wrong?" so much as we should ask "How would I want my brother or sister treated?  How would I want my son or daughter treated?"

In this sense, I wish Americans more thoroughly imagined themselves as members of the same family, people who can find ways to overcome their differences in order to preserve and honor their greater shared humanity.  I wish we had that kind of "family values," rather than the kind that are often used to justify the limitations of another person's rights or privileges.


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As an addendum, I would say that the notion of kinship is a powerful tool among Indian tribes in the United States and First Nations people in Canada.  To treat fellow citizens as family members is to seek resolutions to problems in a particular way.  In American democracy, we resolve problems with voting, and the majority rules; the system is built upon power and who possesses it.  The tribal conception of democracy is built more upon consensus; each party in a dispute should consider seriously what the other side wants or needs.  Both sides of a dispute should seek a resolution that keeps both parties healthy and fully engaged and invested in the community.  Like a family.

One articulation of this principle is frequently used by a university colleague of mine in American Indian Studies.  She signs off her correspondence with a phrase in Lakota: Mitakuye Oyasin.  It can be translated as "We are all related." 

I realize this is an ideal.  Many disputes within tribes can get very ugly, and people can behave according to their power or desires rather than their responsibilities to each other.  But that ideal relationship -- citizenship as kinship -- can be a powerful tool.  Perhaps it is a tool powerful enough to remedy our nation's political and cultural paralysis.