Savage Anxieties by Robert A. Williams Jr.

Robert Williams teaches law and American Indian studies at the University of Arizona. So - monolithic? Hardly.Īnd that’s why my guest is Robert Williams, who is out to change how we think about Indians and to challenge the laws that embody bigotry against them. To some Indians that would be sacrilegious. Yet at the same time, in the same state, Navajo leaders want to build the Grand Canyon Escalade, a tramway nearly a mile and a half to the floor of the canyon to facilitate tourism. Or that Navajos in Arizona have protested the Snowbowl ski resort’s use of recycled sewer water to make snow on sacred mountainsides. Or that Apaches in Arizona are furious that Congress just slipped through a law turning over sacred land to the foreign corporate giant Rio Tinto for mining copper. Then you wouldn’t be surprised, that the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. How is it they came to be mythologized as so ignorant and primitive they didn’t even know the value of Manhattan island, which they sold on the cheap to the Dutch? And how is it they became stereotyped as monolithic when in fact, opinions and beliefs among the 550-plus tribes are as diverse as any other society’s?įor example, suppose you were to think all American Indians share a belief that untouched land is sacrosanct. Rarely, though, are we summoned to think about the fate of indigenous people, the Indians, who were already here when Europeans “discovered” the so-called “New World.” Even the controversy over the name of the Washington Redskins fails to hold our attention for very long.Īnd you can safely bet that not many school children are taught that these native people wound up in the Declaration of Independence as “merciless Indian savages” – right there in the birth certificate of our nation. Mention America's original sin and most of us will quickly think of the enslavement of black people, with a bitter fruit we're still harvesting.

Savage Anxieties by Robert A. Williams Jr.