The Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School (Santee, Nebraska), 1929-01 - 1929-02

              THE WORD CARRIER
OF
SANTEE NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
VOLUME   XLXIX
HELPING THE   RIGHT, EXPOSING THE WRONG
NUMBER 1
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
January-February, 1929
FIFTY GENTS PER YEAR
Our  Platform
For Indians we want American Education! We
want American Homes! We want American
Rights! Tlie result of which is American Citizenship! And the Gospel is the Power of God for
their Salvation!
Feathers Required as Court Dress
in Washington
Here it is again! Any7 Indian who appears
in Washington must be blanketed and feathered, no matter whether he or his father before him ever wore them or not. Mr. Indian
may7 have to borrow his feathers from a museum or rent them from a costume house. Here
is the incongruous spectacle of our Government spending millions of dollars to educate
and civilize the Indians but requiring them
to revert to savagery7 when they visit the National Capital. Hurrah for the one Indian
tribe that has rebelled!.
ONE INDIAN TRIBE NOT TO MARCH IN
HOOVER  PARADE
When those in charge of Herbert Hoover's
inaugural pageantry planned to have eight
members of every7 Indian tribe in the United
States march in the parade, the.v did not reckon with the dignity of the Nez Perces.. After a tribal council the Nez Perce chiefs announced that "although other tribes may send
warriors to march in the great parade for Herbert Hoover, the Nez Perce will not. It is
undignified for them to dress up in feathers
and parade for anybody7, even the great white
father.",—Sioux City Journal.
The Atlantic City Conference
At the Atlantic City Conference of friends
of the Indian held December 15 and 16, under
the auspices of the Indian Rights Association,
the recommendations of the recent Indian
Survey of the Institute of Government Research were discussed.
Dr. Herbert R. Edwards, Director of the
Bureau of Tuberculosis, and staff member
for health of the Indian Survey7, said disease
among the Indians is more prevalent than
among people in the average white community7. More deaths occur per 1,000 of
population, more infants and children die.
Tuberculosis is causing thousands of preventable deaths. Trachoma is leaving blindness and suffering in countless instances that
are unnecessary. More means to do with
in the health department is urged.
WHY ARE INDIANS LAZY?
Why are Indians lazy7, was the subject of a
paper presented b.y Miss Mary L. Mark, Professor of Sociology, Ohio State University,
and staff member of the Indian survey assigned to problems of women and the home.
Why are Indians "lazy"? It is partly that
they are sick, partly that they do no know
how to make a living, and partly that their
economic wants are few and that they7 see
little to gain by steady7 industry7. But these
are all superficial explanations. The real
answer is that they have too long and too consistently had to follow other people's wishes
instead of their own. For generations we
have been bent upon trying to do something
to them, not with them. Reluctant to admit
our lack of success, we say7 that Indians are
hopelessly primitive. But our failure has
little to do with cultural differences; it rests
rather on the disregard of the fundamentals
of human nature. The Indians are too human
to make good marionettes. The development
of native leadership is the task ahead. But
native leadership can be developed only7 by employees who are themselves successful leaders,
humanbeingswhocanestablishwarmsocial relations with their wards We should like
to see in employees in the service those whose
effort would be to make themselves superflous
as soon as   possible—emplo.yees  sufficiently
competent not to be afraid to work themselves |
out of a job.    Official competence is the best
remedy I can   suggest for   Indian   incompe-
THE INDIANS ARE POOR
Dr. E. E. Dale, Protfessor of History, University of Oklahoma, and staff member for
economic conditions of the Indian Survey
discussed the Indian's financial condition.
Most Indians are very7 poor. It is unfortunate that public attention has so often been
brought to the very few that are wealthy and
so little has been said about the great mass
who are in extreme poverty. Such statements create a wrong impression with respect
to the Indian populaton as a whole. The
economic status of any7 person is dependent
upon certain fundamental factors: (1) those
personal resources within himself that may
enable him to earn a decent living by his own
efforts alone; (2) property7 resources which
through intelligent administration by himself
or some one acting for him may yield income (3) that intangible commodity7 called
"good will", which is a very7 real asset that
may greatly enhance the value of other
factors.
At present the individual Indian is lacking
in all three. He has not resources within
himself; he has little productive property
and too often he does not have the good will
of the whites with whom he must live and
work.
That the .young Indian in particular does
not have resources within himself that will
enable him to earn a decent living is due in
great measure to the defective training he
has received in the school. Appropriations
for the operation of the schools are so low
that most of the labor must be done by the
children. Education must be sacrificed to
production. Industrial training is a name
rather than a reality.
In adult education we have done no better.
Most so-called Indian Reservation farm Superintendents know all too little of either education or farming. They are, furthermore
kept so busy with a multitude of other tasks
as to have little time left to instruct the
Indians.
INDIAN WELFARE
POVERTY AND THE INDIAN
By Rev. John A. Ryan, D. B., Catholic
University7 Washington, D. C. "The overwhelming majority of the Indians are poor,
even extremely poor. In dealing with the
Government in the main is handling a problem of great povert.y. In these sentences we
find the fundamental explanation of most of
the evils suffered by7 the American Indian.
Neither health, education, morals, family life
nor social conditions can be normal or satisfactory7 in any social group which is sunk
in a condition of extreme poverty. Congress ought to face frankly the question
whether it intends to maintain the Indians in
idleness or to make them self supporting.
Nowhere has a well rounded program been
throughly tried out of economic training with
reference to the natural resources of the reservation upon which the Indians reside."
—From the report of the Indian Rights Association. __	
Missionary Gifts by Indian Churches
"One of the best tests of our Christianity,"
j says Rudolf Hertz, "is, not what we do for
j ourselves, but what we do for others. Dur-
ing 1928 our twenty Congregational Indian
churches gave over two hundred dollars on
the apportionment besides S 1,450 to their
own native missionary society, an organization through which they help weak mission
stations on the Indian field."—The Congregationalism
Study in Line and Subject
Woman   Finds   Indians   Have   Much   to
Contribute to American Art
Miss Mary Austin Who   Has Studied Native
Achievement   in   Southwest   Praises
Design, Drama and  Music of
Tribal Culture
It has been the average custom to think of
the North American Indians as a vanishing
race whose few remnants, sequestered in the
southwestern and other desert regions of the
United States, were chiefly distinguished for
presenting an intricate governmental problem.
On the contrary7, Miss Mary Austin explained in Boston, the contributions the Indian is equipped to make to the culture and,
especially, the arts of the country and of
civilizations, far exceed the degree to which
he can justly be considered a liability. Miss
Austin, who went to live on the eastern side
of the Sierras soon after the beginning of the
century, is a ranking authority on the subject
of the Indians. She is soon to lecture at Yale
University, the first woman to be invited by
the Department of Drama to discuss the In"
dians of the Southwest.
Miss Austin was born in Illinois, but the
roots of her family7 were in New England soil.
When she began to study the Indians who
lived about her, after she went to the southwest, she saw how necessary7 it was that each
race should preserve not only its own language, but its own song, its drama and other
art forms.
Indians Have Much to Give
She had ample opportunity to study the
attitude of the white man toward the redr
and she rejoices now that "we are developing
a new 'Indian policy.' We used to think we
had everything to give the Indian, though he
had been here 1000, perhaps 2000 years before
us and we, not the Indian, were the new and
untried. Now we are beginning to discover,
from the fragments we have seen of his textile
and pottery designs, and heard of his music
and occasionally seen of his drama, that we
have been wrong and that, on the contrary7,
the Indian has a tremendous amount to contribute to the culture of the country."
Miss Austin spoke especially of the Indian
drama, "which is practically in the state of the
Greek drama just beforethetime of Aristotle."
"There is more to be found out in New
Mexico about the beginnings of the drama,"
she said, "than anywhere I know of in the
world. The characteristic Indian drama has
a well-defined chorus which dances while it
sings; this drama is strictly7 communal, with
no hero, no heroine, and deals with the fundamental things of life. It is highly religious
and reverent in its implications and is presented with settings of the most sumptuous
majesty and color."
Humbling the Braggart
Miss Austin said there was also the comedy
form of the drama which was utilized as a
social corrective.
''If there is a bully or a braggart in the
village," she said, "a little farce is made up
about him by7 the 'Koshari' or 'delight makers' and the village is acquainted with the
folly of such behavior in a thoroughly
good-humored way calculated to cure the
tendency  in   the   village  to such   frailties."
Miss Austin has been influential in the
affairs of the Indian Arts Fund, established
at Santa Fe several years ago to collect and
preserve handi-crafts of the various Indian
tribes of the region, and especially7 old types
of Pueblo pottery7. The activities of the State
Museum and Archaeological Society having
proved inadequate the fund group has therefore set up a cooperative group to save Indian
art for the Indians themselves, and to complete a historical record of the numerous and
varied Indian arts of the Southwest.