Wampum

Tim Giago has an interesting editorial in this week's Native American Times. He responds to the criticism of Oglala Sioux Chairwoman Cecelia Thunder Fire's proposal to open a Planned Parenthood Clinic on her own land within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge reservation. Thunder Fire, you might recall, was none to pleased with the surrounding state of South Dakota's new law prohibiting abortion except to immediately save the life of the mother.

A few individuals on the reservation took issue with Thunder Fire's statements, and pulled out a Oglala "law" which declared a fetus a "person" after conception, and thus protected from harm. They used this to argue to Thunder Fire's impeachment. Giago offers his own take on such "modern" legislation:

Rather than debate the issue in a mature manner, some are already calling for Fire Thunder's impeachment. Fire Thunder saw a problem. She expressed her concerns and suggested a possible solution. Is expressing an opinion now an impeachable offense? I would say only to those who have a political agenda. The juvenile code some dissenters are using against Fire Thunder has never been enacted into law. And even if it had, it can certainly be amended to coincide with the more traditional beliefs.

What? Isn't the "sanctity of pre-born life" a value inherent to all "native" cultures?

Let's get back to brainwashing. Some of the Indian people vehemently opposed to a Planned Parenthood Clinic are devout Catholics or of other religious denominations. When they first took up the mantle of Christianity they stepped outside of the beliefs of their ancestors. They embraced the religious beliefs of the foreigners who came to the shores of this continent determined to convert the Indian people to their own beliefs and to force them to denounce their own cultural and traditional beliefs.

...

One Lakota wicasa wakan (Holy Man) told me on the condition that I protect his anonymity, that those people attacking Fire Thunder do not know their own cultural history and he used the term I used at the beginning of this column. He said, "They have been so 'brainwashed' into thinking like the white man that they can no longer think as an Indian. Traditionally Indian men never interfered with the rights of a woman to do whatever it was she chose to do when it came to having or not having a child. He always assumed that the woman knew what she was doing and didn't need direction from any man."

Heh. Take that Old World Patriarchy.