Indianer by John Blackbird
Peter Schultz's day job has him on the autobahn for at least two hours every day to and from work in Plauen, Germany. On the way, he tells me, the beat of the pow wow drum and the lament of the pow wow singer coming from his cd player carry him from the rush and hum of the autobahn to the North American great plains.
He turns to me and says, “in the past, in North America that there must have been as many Buffalo, as there are now cars in Germany.”
Today we are driving west from Nurnburg, towards the Machenbach Pow wow, near Kaiserslautern. “the Native way of thought is very close to me,” Peter Schultz says. "First Nations culture brings me closer to the family values we lived in during the Communist times. “But,” he holds up a finger, “I am not a hobbyist. I believe in the Creator of all and I believe in dreams.” Then he points to an empty field, “once in late July, I travelled along the autobahn near Berlin. I saw an Indian Tipi encampment and a lone Indian standing in a field, but they weren't real Indians.”
Fitting into about one third of the territory of my home province Saskatchewan, Canada, Germany is home to 80 million people and as many cars. The local fascination with the North American Indians stretches back to 1896, when huge crowds were drawn to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show while it toured Europe. A German writer named Karl May wrote novels about the exploits of an Apache warrior. The warrior Winnetou and his German blood-brother Old Shatterhand roamed the great North American plains, fighting off the land-hungry government and violent pioneers. These books have since sold more than 100 million copies. Readers have included Adolf Hitler, Herman Hesse and Albert Einstein.
Indian enthusiasts in Germany are known as “hobbyists.” Some are so dedicated to authenticity that they have gone beyond the buckskin and beads of Indian life and have copied sacred ceremonies. Carmen Kwasny is the Chairwoman for the Native American Association of Germany (NAAoG), an organization that provides fellowship for American Indian soldiers stationed in Germany and facilitates cultural exchange. Ms Kwasny notes that hobbyists have been a problem for them.
“At a past powwow here in Germany, make-believe Indians complained about the visiting First Nation dancers' use of microphones and brightly coloured feathers. The hobbyists were also annoyed that the dancers wore underwear beneath their breech cloths. The guest dancers protested the protesters. The hobbyists lost the battle. They were kicked out and told not to return without open minds, and underwear.”
The hobbyist movement has copied native dances from German circuses in the 1920's and has studied items from museums well stocked with sacred artifacts of the Montana and Dakota tribes. Many of the pieces date back to the 1830s, when Prince Maximilian of Vienna explored the High Plains.
“They have weekend vision quests with people searching for their power animals,” Kwasny says. “When the animal is revealed, its image is drawn on a drum or a rattle for use in meditation. Of course, the power animals are always wolves, buffalos, eagles, which are not very common here. They never use a wild pig, a pigeon or something like that,” she jokes.
On the other hand, Peter Schultz believes he is respectful of traditional native beliefs. “I know better than to conduct traditional spiritual ceremonies,” he says.
“I have a deep respect for other cultures, particularly the First Nations people's way. In the past the White man has taken their land, prohibited them from speaking their language and now some take their culture. But I think you can't take the grandfathers and put them in the closet and keep it for yourself. The First Nations share with me and I appreciate this, so I share from myself by helping them when they get here and to also have an open mind and heart to their story.”
The 25 year-old NAAoG Association recently toured with live Aztec and Lakota dancers and a Cree filmmaker, Howie Summers, to several U.S. military installations in and around Regensburg, Kaiserslautern, Heidelburg and Mannheim. An Aztec American dancer named Roberto Martinez believes the hobbyists contribute to the dilution of native culture.
“I hate to go back 500 years,” Martinez laments, “but this is when it all began. The hobby Indians are helping us to disappear.” Roberto refers to an incident at a museum where First Nations culture was on display and he was asked to speak about Indians today. Hobbyists were also in attendance, dressed in their regalia. They stood still and unsmiling, and refused to speak to him. This was because, they explained through a translator, the real Indians no longer existed. Howie Summers, with his documentary short entitled Pow wow, said that he made the film “to show that Indians not only exist after 500 years, but are also reappearing as a political and economic force in Canada . And our faces are seen everywhere, in the workplace, sports, entertainment. And like my film says, we've started to heal ourselves from the inside out.”
In 2003 Shultz met some Choctow/Chickisaw Elders travelling through Germany. He told them of a dream he had, where an old Indian came to him and gave him a feather bustle. Later, at a NAAoG pow wow, the Elders performed a ceremony in which Schultz was brought into the dancing circle. The Elders told the crowd that his dream was a beginning. An elder admonished Shultz that he was chosen for a purpose. “I think because,” he was told, “your heart is in the right place.”
“For me, the appeal is mostly because of their spirit,” Shultz says. “For many others, they have the dream of riding a horse on the prairie with the wind in their hair.”
Most hobbyists focus on the plains Indians, pre-1880, before the last of the tribes were forced onto reservations. Many Hobbyists reject the criticism that they need to be more concerned with contemporary Indian issues, such as widespread poverty or the fight to protect the treaties. They dream of travelling to the American frontier to see “real Indians.” Chief Joseph, the leader of the Greifswald Hobby Indian Club, said that he thinks that “the Indian culture is cool, so why shouldn't the real Indians?” But their romantic notions are often far from the realities of modern life.
Carmen Kwasny agrees. “Some Hobbyists say, 'it's not necessary for me to go to Rome and get permission to study the Romans.' They think that what they do, has to do with a culture that is already dead and gone, like the Romans.”
As a Canadian-born Cree, I've seen Real North American Indians struggle for the independence of their people; they watch helplessly as their land is exchanged, torn up and exploited. Their rights are stripped away even as the trees trembling over their heads tip and fall. Other parts of Indian country are being mined for the uranium and precious metals under their feet. As the hobbyist pretends, the real North American Indian struggles for self determination, cultural and linguistic revitalization. For survival.
On the autobahn to the Pow wow, headlights sweep past, flare to white. Shades of yellow, ribbons of light and and shimmers of chrome. It's dream-like, the mixture of Pow wow music and the passing BMWs and Mercedes Benzs. At the close of the Machenbach Pow wow, a nine year-old girl named Lisa asks an Oneida Dancer why he chose to be U.S. soldier. He says he joined the army in order to leave the old hatreds behind.
“You have to leave the dark past behind and find a way of communication so that former enemies can become people who are able to live together with you and follow together,” he says. The dancer is so impressed with Lisa's question, he gives her a pin from the Oneida Nation, of Wisconsin.
Readers have left 5 comments
native is way of life not a hobbie if anyone in europe wants to learn the native american indian teaching there free to contact me aho
oyisofirewalker@yahoo.com luxembourg europe