Russell Means died a few weeks ago. He was an American Indian leader. I knew him in the early 1970s. I did not know him well enough to make any personal comments.
While the Indians were staging an occupy-Alcatraz media event, I rented them and Means an office in the Glide church building that I managed. I also used my sailboat to occasionally take canned foods to the residents of the island.
I never really got to know any of the Indians personally. I talked to them many times but no friendship was ever generated.
Which is the entire point of this blog. The Indians were given plenty of charitable funds but they were so incompetent at handling finance that they could never pay their rent.
Worse was the fact that they could never agree on anything. I went to several meetings and no agreement was ever possible. Even the hippies in their food co-ops were more able to reach agreement than the Indians.
As far as I could tell, the Indian community is only able to reach agreement within existing tribal structures. These adhoc activist coalitions of Indians, where each person was outside their own tribal structure, faced a complete absence of cooperation.
This always makes me think about how rare it is that Americans and some other people's are able to cooperate. Chinese, Japanese and a few other Asians as well as Israelis and speakers who’s languages derived from the same Scandinavian-Germanic origins seem to be able to cooperate.
Why is that the case?
I never really got to know any of the Indians personally. I talked to them many times but no friendship was ever generated.
Which is the entire point of this blog. The Indians were given plenty of charitable funds but they were so incompetent at handling finance that they could never pay their rent.
Worse was the fact that they could never agree on anything. I went to several meetings and no agreement was ever possible. Even the hippies in their food co-ops were more able to reach agreement than the Indians.
As far as I could tell, the Indian community is only able to reach agreement within existing tribal structures. These adhoc activist coalitions of Indians, where each person was outside their own tribal structure, faced a complete absence of cooperation.
This always makes me think about how rare it is that Americans and some other people's are able to cooperate. Chinese, Japanese and a few other Asians as well as Israelis and speakers who’s languages derived from the same Scandinavian-Germanic origins seem to be able to cooperate.
Why is that the case?
