When
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Everybody wants to be an Indian
A pow-wow fancy-dancing
Feather-wearing Indian
Everybody wants to be the
Noble Savage of America
The old man on the banks of the river
Crying about pollution.
But who wants to live on the reservation
Bad coffee, beans, lard, diabetes
And too much TV
Who wants to farm on swampland
Bedrock and waterless sand?
Who wants to wrestle alligators for a living?
Everybody wants to wear suede
And fringe leather jackets
Patterns from Guatemala
Pretty beaded hair barrettes
And turquoise
But who wants to dress up
In fake Indian clothes
For snotty-nosed camp kids
Who call you "Hey Indian"
While you give them a tour
Of your culture?
Everybody wants to be an Indian
To be indignant about
"The crimes of white America"
To be spokesperson for the slighted
And the slaughtered
To write books about ecology
To teach workshops on herbology
But who wants to send their kids
To foreign schools that teach foreign language
Foreign culture
Shame
And how to disrespect?
Who wants to be laughed at in traditional dress
And told they have no culture
In the same breath?
Who wants to be idolized, romanticized
And iconized into something
You can never represent?
Everybody wants to be an Indian
A vision-seeking, sage-burning
Dream-catching Indian
Everybody wants to eat peyote
Dance at the Sundance
Sweat in the sweat lodge
Return to "the way things were"
And dress up like Pocahontas for Halloween
But who wants to have
Sports teams
And four-wheel drives
Named after your ancestors
Or your tribe?
Who wants to be studied
And who wants to be questioned
And who wants their every action
Scrutinized
By non-Indians who claim
To know more than you do
About your way of life?
Everybody wants to be an Indian
When its popular
When its glamorous
When its easy
When its fun.
From the anthology
Turtle Island to Abya Yala
