An apple is what grows on a tree

Thursday, September 12, 2019

By Native Sun News Today Editorial Board

One lady, a very nice lady, said she heard a Native American describe one of her progressive Indian friends as an “Apple.” She found the word to be overbearingly insulting and comparable to the word used by some African Americans to describe someone they may disagree with as an “Oreo.”

To put it succinctly, “Apple” means red on the outside and white in the inside. Just as “Oreo” means black on the outside and white on the inside. So let’s take a hard look at those folks calling other Native American “Apples.”

There are no true traditionalists left in Indian Country to put it bluntly. If you use a computer, have a cell phone, drive a car, have electricity in your house, have a bank account or text, you have accepted all of the modern conveniences that move you into a new world.

The day an Indian woman put on high heels or an Indian man put on a suit and neck tie they moved away from things of the past. Native Americans would not have survived if they did not adapt to change. Granted, too much of the rapid changes were forced upon us. The destruction of the buffalo herds in order to starve the Indians into submission was wrong just as forcing the children into boarding schools, but all of these things happened and we lived past it. We survived.

There are now Native Americans working in the fields of high technology. They are working with scientists creating electronic devices that will move all Americans in a different direction. When many of the treaties signed between the Indian leaders and the US Government happened the tribes did not have Native American attorneys to guide them. Many of the land grabs could have been stayed or even prevented if there had been adequate Native American lawyers to advise and consult.

So does this make those Native American attorneys “Apples?”

Native Sun News Today published the entire Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 recently because we wanted our Lakota readers to go over it carefully and to see how much our ancestors gave away because they did not have the legal advice of Indian attorneys.

About 28 years ago Batiste Dubray stood in front of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council in a meeting held in Allen. He admonished them for always bringing up the treaties when many of them had not even read them. He asked, “How many of you sitting on this Council have read the 1868 Treaty or even the Constitution of the Oglala Sioux Tribe?”

Bat topped it off by saying that all signers of the treaties were not heroes. He said, “The greatest Lakota warrior of all, Crazy Horse, never signed a treaty. He saw that these treaties were only tools to be used against the Lakota people.”