Charles Trimble: A proposal for a new tax on all those wannabees

Opinion

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

I don’t mean to offend Cherokee friends in writing about wannabees. I mean they can’t help it if seemingly every person this side of Nepal wants to be one of them. It’s like having a mangy rez dog take a liking to you and following you around, wagging its tail and wanting a pat on the head. What does a person do, shag him away? “Gitouta here, you crusty mutt!”

But Wannabees persist like that, and they’re not thin-skinned; they’re really hard to offend. Actually I would imagine that long-extinct tribes are the only ones free of wannabees, and likely all tribes in North America have them, but Cherokee wannabees outnumber all other tribes’ by a margin of probably 500 to 1, at least. The wannabee phenomenon makes for some strange observations.

In Washington, DC, in the 1970s there were many wannabees who would haunt Indian hang-outs and gatherings. They all claimed Native American blood, and had some strange backgrounds – say a great-great grandfather who was chief of the Lakota Tribe in Nova Scotia. Others claimed strange blood quanta, like one-third Cherokee.

At one gathering of Indian Republicans – you might guess what a zoo that was – everyone was asked to tell his or her tribal affiliation. Of course, some said Navajo, others Cheyenne, Sioux, Lumbee, or Cherokee. Some claimed two tribes. One man stood up and listed several tribes from all corners of North America. It would have taken several generations of promiscuous forebears to arrive at his heritage; but he figured the more, the better.

There was also an obvious wannabee who claimed to be an Abanaki holy man, and was always invited to give an invocation at some event or other. He had a prayer book that was printed in the Lakota language, and would read his invocation from it. He murdered the language with his pronunciations: like “Wakan tanka,” the term for Great Spirit, he pronounced Wonkatonka, like Honkytonk. I corrected him once, using my best Lakota guttural, that it was pronounced Wakhan Thanka, whereupon he responded, "That's what I said, Wonkatonka."

He had gotten a trip to Australia from some agency in DC to represent Native Americans at the meeting Down Under. When he returned he told me that he had "made a chief" while at the meeting, and named him Wanbli Wakan or Holy Eagle. That was too damn much for me, so I put my nose to his and asked him who in hell he thinks he is to make some Aussie a Lakota chief? He said calmly, "I'm a holy man, I can do that."

Not long ago in one of the many curio shops in Estes Park I saw a basket full of nicely braided sweet grass. I picked one out to smell that magnificent aroma. I checked the tag to read the price, which was quite steep. When I asked the lady why the price was so high, she said that it was “pre blessed” by a Sioux holy man.

Doing my best to keep from laughing out loud, I explained to her that Lakota law requires any holy man to put his holy-man permit number on a tag and attach it to each sweet grass braids when he pre-blesses them. It was illegal in Lakota law to fail to do this, and for her to even sell it. She was shocked, but said she would ask the holy man for his license number. Then she took the basket off the table. However, I noticed as I looked back from the door upon leaving, that she was placing the basket back on the table.

My wannabee brother Roger Welsch (he’s actually my adopted brother, but a wannabee-Indian) gave some suggestions on what to do with wannabees and others who claim tribal affiliation and sacred powers. Here is how he put it:

“This past week I had the opportunity to attend a social event, and to observe white culture in action. There were 80 people at this event and five of them represented to me that they had a great-great-grandfather who married a Cherokee. Indeed, two of those great-great-grandfathers had married Cherokee “princesses” no less. I think that out of the 80 people at this gathering I maybe talked with only half of them. That suggests to me that there were perhaps as many as five more people in the group who had Cherokee great-great-grandmothers, conservatively. That would be a total of ten (over one-tenth of those present), of which three or four had married into Cherokee royalty.

“That percentage brought to my mind a number of questions. First, where did all those Cherokees come from? The US population in 1860 was 31 million. So how many misogynistic marriages are we talking about? Three or four million? And maybe two million white guys who married princesses?

“As I looked around that social gathering, I noted that a lot of these wannabee Cherokee descendants are actually doing quite well financially. So I would like to suggest to the Cherokee Tribe that they institute a “user-tax” assessment...maybe $100 per head, billed to those who claim to have ancestors that married Cherokee women. And maybe $500 from those who claim a great-great-grandfathers married a Cherokee princess.

“I can see earmarking these assessments as heritage maintenance fees...a kind of license that acknowledges and attests to tribal royalty privilege. I can imagine offering official cards of recognition upon payment of the assessments indicating that the bearer is the descendant of a Cherokee princess and is therefore entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto. All those who proudly announce their Cherokee origins should be more than happy to contribute to their wannabee tribe's general welfare and treasury. And this annual assessment would apply to their children who carry royal Cherokee genes.

“Don't you think we could clear up this whole situation by establishing tribal taxes on all those with wannabee tribal blood? Whenever anyone comes up claiming tribal heritage, present him or her with a Heritage Invoice bill. I'm betting the population of wannabee Cherokee, Sioux, Chippewa and others would drop down close to extinction within days. It might be fun just to start telling these people that a tribe-wide assessment is being worked on and they should get registered right away so they won't be missed.”

What? You say that Brother Roger has way too much time on his hands, and ought to get a job?

He has a job – he’s a full time Wannabee, and he’s writing a book about it: Confessions of a Wannabee. It will appear in the bookstores next year in time for Christmas, and will be available on remainder tables a month after that.

Watch for it.

Charles “Chuck” Trimble, Oglala Lakota, was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1970, and served as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972-78. He may be reached at cchuktrim@aol.com. His website is iktomisweb.com.