The fourth of July is a United States federal holiday. This is a fine time to recognize the military service of our Federal, State and non-government recognized Tribal American Indian Warriors. On many Tribal Nations land gatherings, pow wows, parades and celebrations take place on the Fourth of July.

NDN Warriors have always defended this great land for all the people. We appreciate and Honor our Military Veteran Warriors whom have stood on the battle line in combat to defend this land and our Indian Nations.

Just less than a few generations ago the way of life for Native people in America was very different. Just to provide a little perspective of American Indian history, it was not until 1924 that Native Americans were named United States citizens. And the state that I was born in 1943, Arizona, did not ratify this law until 1948. This is after my three uncles served in WW II and my cousins entered the military, along with myself, later also.

“Kill the Indian to save the man” — that oppressive motto led to restrictions on many tribe’s native language and native customs. The federal government forced Indian children to go to denominational churches and boarding schools where they were re-educated, acculturated and stripped of their cultural traditions in an attempt to assimilate them.

So it makes sense that, growing up, the Fourth of July would be a dark day, a sad tribute to the country that tried and tried again to exterminate its native people and their culture. But it wasn’t because Native American people are adaptable on the Fourth of July. Snow Cones and barbecues weaved together with older, indigenous traditions like music, song and powwows that would last deep into the night.

At the center of the festivities is the drum. “The beat of the drum means everything in the powwow. It signifies the heart beat of a people. There are different types of dances, ceremonies, give-aways and acknowledgements.”

So what are Tribal people celebrating?

It is amazing that those that struggle the most, and who’ve been forced to be the most creative to survive are those that have the most to teach us. As a Nation of many cultures and ethnicities we can learn forgiveness without forgetting with incredible creativity and resilience.

At one point, for many decades and on many Res-ervation’s, the white Bureau of Indian Affairs, BIA, superintendent issued a declaration that read like this: “Dancing, exchanging of presents, traveling from one dance to another, and dancing feasts are not to be carried to excess.”

The BIA superintendents decreed that permission for all traditional dances must be obtained in writing except for gatherings that were on the Fourth of July.

The Fourth of July, after all, was the time to teach Indians how to become good Americans. Some Indian children were even reassigned new birthdays to coincide with the Fourth. By the early 1900s, the Fourth had become a big day on the reservation, starting at dawn and lasting well in to the evening with traditional dances and ceremonies.

All kinds of singing and dancing, exchanging of gifts. People would visit friends, initiate people into societies and do all the sorts of things that they were ordinarily prevented from doing, under the cover of this patriotic celebration.

For more than a century, the Fourth of July has been a big day across Indian country. The Quapaw, Pawnee, Ponca, Kiowa and many other tribes in Oklahoma, the Ojibwe in Minnesota and the Northern Cheyenne in Montana are just a few of the tribes that have established big rodeos and powwows on the Fourth — celebrating the day, but making it their own.
Of course, not all tribes or all Indian people have embraced the holiday in the same way. The Onondaga of upstate New York decided a few years ago to stop observing the Fourth of July altogether. Right after America declared independence in 1776, George Washington ordered Onondaga villages to be destroyed — they were in the way of the new country. The film “Smoke Signals” by writer Sherman Alexie of the Spokane and Coeur D’Alene tribes captured the bitterness the day can bring in a scene between a father and son who are driving home on the Core D’Alene reservation one Fourth of July: “Happy Independence Day, Victor,” the father says to his son with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Are you feeling independent?”

That line made Michelle Singer, a member of the Navajo tribe, laugh out loud when she saw it in the theater, but she has mixed feelings about Independence Day. One the one hand, when she is at Independence Day barbecues with her little brother, “he and I would certainly joke about the irony of this being Independence Day, and yet when you think about it’s the beginning of the dominance of Euro culture, if you will.”

On the other hand, her grandfather was a Navajo “code talker” during World War II, and she relishes the chance that the Fourth provides — to honor him and his fellow veterans. Native Americans enlist in the military at far higher rates than any other group of Americans.

“We came from homes where our parents didn’t have a college education, and here we were in our nation’s capital, working in some pretty influential positions, and yet we were just these Indian kids,” she says.

The birth of this country came with caveats. But in the glow of those fireworks, it seemed to Singer that, somehow, both her countries — her sovereign tribe and the place that issued her passport — might one day figure things out and change.
http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/07/02/4th_rez/