Manataka American Indian Council
REAL
STORY OF THANKSGIVING
by Susan Bates
Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen - once.
The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.
But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.
In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.
Cheered by their "victory", the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.
Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained on display for 24 years.
The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.
This story doesn't have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at the big feast. But we need to learn our true history so it won't ever be repeated. Next Thanksgiving, when you gather with your loved ones to Thank God for all your blessings, think about those people who only wanted to live their lives and raise their families. They, also took time out to say "thank you" to Creator for all their blessings.
Our Thanks to Hill & Holler Column by Susan Bates susanbates@webtv.net
INTRODUCTION
FOR TEACHERS
By Chuck Larsen
This
is a particularly difficult introduction to write. I have been a public schools
teacher for twelve years, and I am also a historian and have written several
books on American and Native American history. I also just happen to be Quebeque
French, Metis, Ojibwa, and Iroquois. Because my Indian ancestors were on both
sides of the struggle between the Puritans and the New England Indians and I am
well versed in my cultural heritage and history both as an Anishnabeg (Algokin)
and Hodenosione (Iroquois), it was felt that I could bring a unique insight to
the project.
For an Indian, who is also a school teacher, Thanksgiving was never an easy
holiday for me to deal with in class. I sometimes have felt like I learned too
much about "the Pilgrims and the Indians." Every year I have been
faced with the professional and moral dilemma of just how to be honest and
informative with my children at Thanksgiving without passing on historical
distortions, and racial and cultural stereotypes.
The problem is that part of what you and I learned in our own childhood about
the "Pilgrims" and "Squanto" and the "First
Thanksgiving" is a mixture of both history and myth. But the THEME of
Thanksgiving has truth and integrity far above and beyond what we and our
forebearers have made of it. Thanksgiving is a bigger concept than just the
story of the founding of the Plymouth Plantation.
So what do we teach to our children? We usually pass on unquestioned what we all
received in our own childhood classrooms. I have come to know both the truths
and the myths about our "First Thanksgiving," and I feel we need to
try to reach beyond the myths to some degree of historic truth. This text is an
attempt to do this.
At this point you are probably asking, "What is the big deal about
Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims?" "What does this guy mean by a mixture
of truths and myth?" That is just what this introduction is all about. I
propose that there may be a good deal that many of us do not know about our
Thanksgiving holiday and also about the "First Thanksgiving" story. I
also propose that what most of us have learned about the Pilgrims and the
Indians who were at the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation is only part
of the truth. When you build a lesson on only half of the information, then you
are not teaching the whole truth. That is why I used the word myth. So where do
you start to find out more about the holiday and our modern stories about how it
began?
A good place to start is with a very important book, "The Invasion of
America," by Francis Jennings. It is a very authoritative text on the
settlement of New England and the evolution of Indian/White relations in the New
England colonies. I also recommend looking up any good text on British history.
Check out the British Civil War of 1621-1642, Oliver Cromwell, and the Puritan
uprising of 1653 which ended parliamentary government in England until 1660. The
history of the Puritan experience in New England really should not be separated
from the history of the Puritan experience in England. You should also realize
that the "Pilgrims" were a sub sect, or splinter group, of the Puritan
movement. They came to America to achieve on this continent what their Puritan
bretheran continued to strive for in England; and when the Puritans were forced
from England, they came to New England and soon absorbed the original
"Pilgrims."
As the editor, I have read all the texts listed in our bibliography, and many
more, in preparing this material for you. I want you to read some of these
books. So let me use my editorial license to deliberately provoke you a little.
When comparing the events stirred on by the Puritans in England with accounts of
Puritan/Pilgrim activities in New England in the same era, several provocative
things suggest themselves:
1. The Puritans were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the
King and the Church of England for their unorthodox beliefs. They were political
revolutionaries who not only intended to overthrow the government of England,
but who actually did so in 1649.
2. The Puritan "Pilgrims" who came to New England were not simply
refugees who decided to "put their fate in God's hands" in the
"empty wilderness" of North America, as a generation of Hollywood
movies taught us. In any culture at any time, settlers on a frontier are most
often outcasts and fugitives who, in some way or other, do not fit into the
mainstream of their society. This is not to imply that people who settle on
frontiers have no redeeming qualities such as bravery, etc., but that the images
of nobility that we associate with the Puritans are at least in part the good
"P.R." efforts of later writers who have romanticized them.(1)
It is also very plausible that this unnaturally noble image of the Puritans
is all wrapped up with the mythology of "Noble Civilization" vs.
"Savagery."(2)
At any rate, mainstream Englishmen considered the
Pilgrims to be deliberate religious dropouts who intended to found a new nation
completely independent from non-Puritan England. In 1643 the Puritan/Pilgrims
declared themselves an independent confederacy, one hundred and forty-three
years before the American Revolution. They believed in the imminent occurrence
of Armegeddon in Europe and hoped to establish here in the new world the
"Kingdom of God" foretold in the book of Revelation. They diverged
from their Puritan brethren who remained in England only in that they held
little real hope of ever being able to successfully overthrow the King and
Parliament and, thereby, impose their "Rule of Saints" (strict Puritan
orthodoxy) on the rest of the British people. So they came to America not just
in one ship (the Mayflower) but in a hundred others as well, with every
intention of taking the land away from its native people to build their
prophesied "Holy Kingdom."(3)
3. The Pilgrims were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution.
They were victims of bigotry in England, but some of them were themselves
religious bigots by our modern standards. The Puritans and the Pilgrims saw
themselves as the "Chosen Elect" mentioned in the book of Revelation.
They strove to "purify" first themselves and then everyone else of
everything they did not accept in their own interpretation of scripture. Later
New England Puritans used any means, including deceptions, treachery, torture,
war, and genocide to achieve that end.(4)
They saw themselves as fighting a holy war against
Satan, and everyone who disagreed with them was the enemy. This rigid
fundamentalism was transmitted to America by the Plymouth colonists, and it
sheds a very different light on the "Pilgrim" image we have of them.
This is best illustrated in the written text of the Thanksgiving sermon
delivered at Plymouth in 1623 by "Mather the Elder." In it, Mather the
Elder gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague of smallpox which
wiped out the majority of the Wampanoag Indians who had been their benefactors.
He praised God for destroying "chiefly young men and children, the very
seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better
growth", i.e., the Pilgrims.(5)
In as much as these Indians were the Pilgrim's
benefactors, and Squanto, in particular, was the instrument of their salvation
that first year, how are we to interpret this apparent callousness towards their
misfortune?
4. The Wampanoag Indians were not the "friendly savages" some of us
were told about when we were in the primary grades. Nor were they invited out of
the goodness of the Pilgrims' hearts to share the fruits of the Pilgrims'
harvest in a demonstration of Christian charity and interracial brotherhood. The
Wampanoag were members of a widespread confederacy of Algonkian-speaking peoples
known as the League of the Delaware. For six hundred years they had been
defending themselves from my other ancestors, the Iroquois, and for the last
hundred years they had also had encounters with European fishermen and explorers
but especially with European slavers, who had been raiding their coastal
villages.(6)
They knew something of the power of the white people, and they did not fully
trust them. But their religion taught that they were to give charity to the
helpless and hospitality to anyone who came to them with empty hands.(7)
Also, Squanto, the Indian hero of the Thanksgiving
story, had a very real love for a British explorer named John Weymouth, who had
become a second father to him several years before the Pilgrims arrived at
Plymouth. Clearly, Squanto saw these Pilgrims as Weymouth's people.(8)
To the Pilgrims the Indians were heathens and,
therefore, the natural instruments of the Devil. Squanto, as the only educated
and baptized Christian among the Wampanoag, was seen as merely an instrument of
God, set in the wilderness to provide for the survival of His chosen people, the
Pilgrims. The Indians were comparatively powerful and, therefore, dangerous; and
they were to be courted until the next ships arrived with more Pilgrim colonists
and the balance of power shifted. The Wampanoag were actually invited to that
Thanksgiving feast for the purpose of negotiating a treaty that would secure the
lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims. It should also be noted that
the INDIANS, possibly out of a sense of charity toward their hosts, ended up
bringing the majority of the food for the feast.(9)
5. A generation later, after the balance of power had indeed shifted, the
Indian and White children of that Thanksgiving were striving to kill each other
in the genocidal conflict known as King Philip's War. At the end of that
conflict most of the New England Indians were either exterminated or refugees
among the French in Canada, or they were sold into slavery in the Carolinas by
the Puritans. So successful was this early trade in Indian slaves that several
Puritan ship owners in Boston began the practice of raiding the Ivory Coast of
Africa for black slaves to sell to the proprietary colonies of the South, thus
founding the American-based slave trade.(10)
Obviously there is a lot more to the story of Indian/Puritan relations in New
England than in the thanksgiving stories we heard as children. Our contemporary
mix of myth and history about the "First" Thanksgiving at Plymouth
developed in the 1890s and early 1900s. Our country was desperately trying to
pull together its many diverse peoples into a common national identity. To many
writers and educators at the end of the last century and the beginning of this
one, this also meant having a common national history. This was the era of the
"melting pot" theory of social progress, and public education was a
major tool for social unity. It was with this in mind that the federal
government declared the last Thursday in November as the legal holiday of
Thanksgiving in 1898.
In consequence, what started as an inspirational bit of New England folklore,
soon grew into the full-fledged American Thanksgiving we now know. It emerged
complete with stereotyped Indians and stereotyped Whites, incomplete history,
and a mythical significance as our "First Thanksgiving." But was it
really our FIRST American Thanksgiving?
Now that I have deliberately provoked you with some new information and
different opinions, please take the time to read some of the texts in our
bibliography. I want to encourage you to read further and form your own
opinions. There really is a TRUE Thanksgiving story of Plymouth Plantation. But
I strongly suggest that there always has been a Thanksgiving story of some kind
or other for as long as there have been human beings. There was also a
"First" Thanksgiving in America, but it was celebrated thirty thousand
years ago.(11)
At some time during the New Stone
Age (beginning about ten thousand years ago) Thanksgiving became associated with
giving thanks to God for the harvests of the land. Thanksgiving has always been
a time of people coming together, so thanks has also been offered for that gift
of fellowship between us all. Every last Thursday in November we now
partake in one of the OLDEST and most UNIVERSAL of human celebrations, and THERE
ARE MANY THANKSGIVING STORIES TO TELL.
As for Thanksgiving week at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, the friendship was
guarded and not always sincere, and the peace was very soon abused. But for
three days in New England's history, peace and friendship were there.
So here is a story for your children. It is as kind and gentle a balance of
historic truth and positive inspiration as its writers and this editor can make
it out to be. I hope it will adequately serve its purpose both for you and your
students, and I also hope this work will encourage you to look both deeper and
farther, for Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving all around the world.
Chuck Larsen Tacoma Public Schools September, 1986
FOOTNOTES
FOR TEACHER INTRODUCTION
(1) See Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's
Indian," references to Puritans, pp. 27, 80-85, 90, 104, & 130.
(2) See Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's
Indian," references to frontier concepts of savagery in index. Also see
Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," the myth of savagery,
pp. 6-12, 15-16, & 109-110.
(3) See Blitzer, Charles, "Age of Kings," Great Ages
of Man series, references to Puritanism, pp. 141, 144 & 145-46. Also see
Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," references to Puritan
human motives, pp. 4-6, 43- 44 and 53.
(4) See "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," pp.
6-10. Also see Armstrong, Virginia I., "I Have Spoken," reference to
Cannonchet and his village, p. 6. Also see Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion
of America," Chapter 9 "Savage War," Chapter 13 "We must
Burn Them," and Chapter 17 "Outrage Bloody and Barbarous."
(5) See "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," pp.
6-9. Also see Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," the
comments of Cotton Mather, pp. 37 & 82-83.
(6) See Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving,"
pp. 3-4. Also see Graff, Steward and Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian
Adventurer." Also see "Handbook of North American Indians," Vol.
15, the reference to Squanto on p. 82.
(7) See Benton-Banai, Edward, "The Mishomis Book,"
as a reference on general "Anishinabe" (the Algonkin speaking peoples)
religious beliefs and practices. Also see Larsen, Charles M., "The Real
Thanksgiving," reference to religious life on p. 1.
(8) See Graff, Stewart and Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian
Adventurer." Also see Larsen, Charles M., "The Real
Thanksgiving." Also see Bradford, Sir William, "Of Plymouth
Plantation," and "Mourt's Relation."
(9) See Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving,"
the letter of Edward Winslow dated 1622, pp. 5-6.
(10) See "Handbook of North American Indians," Vol.
15, pp. 177-78. Also see "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," p.
9, the reference to the enslavement of King Philip's family. Also see Larsen,
Charles, M., "The Real Thanksgiving," pp. 8-11, "Destruction of
the Massachusetts Indians."
(11) Best current estimate of the first entry of people into
the Americas confirmed by archaeological evidence that is datable.
THE PLYMOUTH THANKSGIVING STORY
By Chuck Larsen
When
the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, they landed on the rocky shores
of a territory that was inhabited by the Wampanoag (Wam pa NO ag) Indians. The
Wampanoags were part of the Algonkian-speaking peoples, a large group that was
part of the Woodland Culture area. These Indians lived in villages along the
coast of what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They lived in round- roofed
houses called wigwams. These were made of poles covered with flat sheets of elm
or birch bark. Wigwams differ in construction from tipis that were used by
Indians of the Great Plains.
The Wampanoags moved several times during each year in order to get food. In the
spring they would fish in the rivers for salmon and herring. In the planting
season they moved to the forest to hunt deer and other animals. After the end of
the hunting season people moved inland where there was greater protection from
the weather. From December to April they lived on food that they stored during
the earlier months.
The basic dress for men was the breech clout, a length of deerskin looped over a
belt in back and in front. Women wore deerskin wrap-around skirts. Deerskin
leggings and fur capes made from deer, beaver, otter, and bear skins gave
protection during the colder seasons, and deerskin moccasins were worn on the
feet. Both men and women usually braided their hair and a single feather was
often worn in the back of the hair by men. They did not have the large feathered
headdresses worn by people in the Plains Culture area.
There were two language groups of Indians in New England at this time. The
Iroquois were neighbors to the Algonkian-speaking people. Leaders of the
Algonquin and Iroquois people were called "sachems" (SAY chems). Each
village had its own sachem and tribal council. Political power flowed upward
from the people. Any individual, man or woman, could participate, but among the
Algonquins more political power was held by men. Among the Iroquois, however,
women held the deciding vote in the final selection of who would represent the
group. Both men and women enforced the laws of the village and helped solve
problems. The details of their democratic system were so impressive that about
150 years later Benjamin Franklin invited the Iroquois to Albany, New York, to
explain their system to a delegation who then developed the "Albany Plan of
Union." This document later served as a model for the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.
These Indians of the Eastern Woodlands called the turtle, the deer and the fish
their brothers. They respected the forest and everything in it as equals.
Whenever a hunter made a kill, he was careful to leave behind some bones or meat
as a spiritual offering, to help other animals survive. Not to do so would be
considered greedy. The Wampanoags also treated each other with respect. Any
visitor to a Wampanoag home was provided with a share of whatever food the
family had, even if the supply was low. This same courtesy was extended to the
Pilgrims when they met.
We can only guess what the Wampanoags must have thought when they first saw the
strange ships of the Pilgrims arriving on their shores. But their custom was to
help visitors, and they treated the newcomers with courtesy. It was mainly
because of their kindness that the Pilgrims survived at all. The wheat the
Pilgrims had brought with them to plant would not grow in the rocky soil. They
needed to learn new ways for a new world, and the man who came to help them was
called "Tisquantum" (Tis SKWAN tum) or "Squanto" (SKWAN
toe).
Squanto was originally from the village of Patuxet (Pa TUK et) and a member of
the Pokanokit Wampanoag nation. Patuxet once stood on the exact site where the
Pilgrims built Plymouth. In 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims came,
Squanto went to England with a friendly English explorer named John Weymouth. He
had many adventures and learned to speak English. Squanto came back to New
England with Captain Weymouth. Later Squanto was captured by a British slaver
who raided the village and sold Squanto to the Spanish in the Caribbean Islands.
A Spanish Franciscan priest befriended Squanto and helped him to get to Spain
and later on a ship to England. Squanto then found Captain Weymouth, who paid
his way back to his homeland. In England Squanto met Samoset of the Wabanake (Wab
NAH key) Tribe, who had also left his native home with an English explorer. They
both returned together to Patuxet in 1620. When they arrived, the village was
deserted and there were skeletons everywhere. Everyone in the village had died
from an illness the English slavers had left behind. Squanto and Samoset went to
stay with a neighboring village of Wampanoags.
One year later, in the spring, Squanto and Samoset were hunting along the beach
near Patuxet. They were startled to see people from England in their deserted
village. For several days, they stayed nearby observing the newcomers. Finally
they decided to approach them. Samoset walked into the village and said
"welcome," Squanto soon joined him. The Pilgrims were very surprised
to meet two Indians who spoke English.
The Pilgrims were not in good condition. They were living in dirt-covered
shelters, there was a shortage of food, and nearly half of them had died during
the winter. They obviously needed help and the two men were a welcome sight.
Squanto, who probably knew more English than any other Indian in North America
at that time, decided to stay with the Pilgrims for the next few months and
teach them how to survive in this new place. He brought them deer meat and
beaver skins. He taught them how to cultivate corn and other new vegetables and
how to build Indian-style houses. He pointed out poisonous plants and showed how
other plants could be used as medicine. He explained how to dig and cook clams,
how to get sap from the maple trees, use fish for fertilizer, and dozens of
other skills needed for their survival.
By the time fall arrived things were going much better for the Pilgrims, thanks
to the help they had received. The corn they planted had grown well. There was
enough food to last the winter. They were living comfortably in their
Indian-style wigwams and had also managed to build one European-style building
out of squared logs. This was their church. They were now in better health, and
they knew more about surviving in this new land. The Pilgrims decided to have a
thanksgiving feast to celebrate their good fortune. They had observed
thanksgiving feasts in November as religious obligations in England for many
years before coming to the New World.
The Algonkian tribes held six thanksgiving festivals during the year. The
beginning of the Algonkian year was marked by the Maple Dance which gave thanks
to the Creator for the maple tree and its syrup. This ceremony occurred when the
weather was warm enough for the sap to run in the maple trees, sometimes as
early as February. Second was the planting feast, where the seeds were blessed.
The strawberry festival was next, celebrating the first fruits of the season.
Summer brought the green corn festival to give thanks for the ripening corn. In
late fall, the harvest festival gave thanks for the food they had grown.
Mid-winter was the last ceremony of the old year. When the Indians sat down to
the "first Thanksgiving" with the Pilgrims, it was really the fifth
thanksgiving of the year for them!
Captain Miles Standish, the leader of the Pilgrims, invited Squanto, Samoset,
Massasoit (the leader of the Wampanoags), and their immediate families to join
them for a celebration, but they had no idea how big Indian families could be.
As the Thanksgiving feast began, the Pilgrims were overwhelmed at the large
turnout of ninety relatives that Squanto and Samoset brought with them. The
Pilgrims were not prepared to feed a gathering of people that large for three
days. Seeing this, Massasoit gave orders to his men within the first hour of his
arrival to go home and get more food. Thus it happened that the Indians supplied
the majority of the food: Five deer, many wild turkeys, fish, beans, squash,
corn soup, corn bread, and berries. Captain Standish sat at one end of a long
table and the Clan Chief Massasoit sat at the other end. For the first time the
Wampanoag people were sitting at a table to eat instead of on mats or furs
spread on the ground. The Indian women sat together with the Indian men to eat.
The Pilgrim women, however, stood quietly behind the table and waited until
after their men had eaten, since that was their custom.
For three days the Wampanoags feasted with the Pilgrims. It was a special time
of friendship between two very different groups of people. A peace and
friendship agreement was made between Massasoit and Miles Standish giving the
Pilgrims the clearing in the forest where the old Patuxet village once stood to
build their new town of Plymouth.
It would be very good to say that this friendship lasted a long time; but,
unfortunately, that was not to be. More English people came to America, and they
were not in need of help from the Indians as were the original Pilgrims. Many of
the newcomers forgot the help the Indians had given them. Mistrust started to
grow and the friendship weakened. The Pilgrims started telling their Indian
neighbors that their Indian religion and Indian customs were wrong. The Pilgrims
displayed an intolerance toward the Indian religion similar to the intolerance
displayed toward the less popular religions in Europe. The relationship
deteriorated and within a few years the children of the people who ate together
at the first Thanksgiving were killing one another in what came to be called
King Phillip's War.
It is sad to think that this happened, but it is important to understand all of
the story and not just the happy part. Today the town of Plymouth Rock has a
Thanksgiving ceremony each year in remembrance of the first Thanksgiving. There
are still Wampanoag people living in Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of
them to speak at the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's
arrival. Here is part of what was said:
"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the
first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for
me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.
When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms,
little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were
to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians
living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases
that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as
human as the white people.
Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the
lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work
toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once
again are important."