Another election - wild and woolly - 41 years ago today

Note by Hunter Bear   (March 17 2014)

And with a big, all-around clear plastic ballot box as well.


When we lived in Chicago, [where a hundred tribes or so are represented], I
was active as a Native person and volunteer in Native programs on the
Northside. Among other things, I was Chair of the all-Indian Native American
Community Organizational Training Center and a member of the 15 person
Indian coordinating committee for the Great Lakes Indian Resource
Development Program of Americans for Indian Opportunity: Illinois,
Wisconsin, Minnesota,   Our family was very active, too, socially and
politically, in the American Indian Center which was going through a period
of incredible and nationally known factionalism -- right to the brink and
then everyone would pull back just in time and catch their breath. [Much of
this, btw, had been caused by the Anthro department at University of
Chicago.] I was always intrigued by observing how outwardly venomous
combatants could be in our Indian Center disagreements and then [and
regardless, too, of tribal background or blood degree or income levels]
greet one another as long-lost friends indeed when surrounded by the harsh
and alien realities in downtown Chicago. A much older Native mentor of
mine, the late Bill Redcloud [Chippewa] and another older colleague, herself
a founder of the Center, and an enduring close friend to this moment, Susan
K. Power [Standing Rock Sioux], both commented once that "The Whites, when
disagreeing, so often try to completely destroy each other. We Indians
usually stop long before that." Both Bill and Susan certainly recognized
that there are exceptions to this -- but were talking about the general
rule. We had all just come from a wedding where the offspring of one Indian
Center factional leader married the offspring of another -- I was best
man -- with a traditional religious leader blending his Native beliefs with
a few Christian ones to perform the ceremony. A piano was played by a very
leading factionalist who, at that point, had become enamored of
fundamentalist Christianity and was a minister in the Moody Bible Institute
context. Everyone was together.

When the high factionalism of the Chicago Indian Center finally wound up as
an election dispute in an Anglo court, a weary judge eventually ordered that
each side select one Indian person -- just one -- who each side trusted and
who was a full member of the Indian Center -- and that person would set up
and carry out a new election. Each side turned and selected me. [I confess
to having had some trepidation on that one -- but never displayed it, of
course!] I constructed a long, high ballot box which was essentially clear
plastic -- so everyone could see the ballot go down and stay there. When
election time came, March 17 1973, I ordered every Anglo newsperson off
Center property and I stayed by the Box from 8 am to 8 pm -- leaving only
twice for the restroom and, then, leaving observers from all sides watching
each other like the eagles they were. Each factional side fed me well. Some
people came several hundred miles to vote. It was a wild and woolly
election -- Indians who were quite low-income and some doing relatively well
economically -- all clashing and then all gossiping congenially together.
The election, btw, was so honest our side lost. The Center pulled
together -- as Indians always do -- and lived through all sorts of
vicissitudes to survive to the present moment.

FROM http://www.hunterbear.org/NATIVE%20ISSUES%20AND%20OTHER%20MATTERS.htm


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

SHOOTING LUPUS --  Driving this oft-lethal deadly 
disease of mine back into its genetic cave and into
impotency in an eight year war:
http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm

See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual: 
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)