Capital and Tribal Sovereignty

We have all faced, at one time or another, the system of capitalism that consumes individuals through the process of conformism.  I side on that of Marxists when it comes to capitalism in the fact that it reduces to nothing but a faceless worker—yet we’re fooled into thinking that everything we do is for our own possible gain.  The more we put into the system, the more we lose of ourselves.  The more money we get, the greedier we become.  Our fellow humans are nothing but mere competitors in this weird exchange of soul and capital. 

Money…Money…MORE money….God is Money. 

In the face of Capitalism Sovereignty is exchanged for slavery.  WE are all enslaved to something which we are conditioned from the time we are young to the time we draw our last breath, even if it is not our inheritance

 Let’s face it; if you work for corporate American you know what I’m talking about.  I work for a large corporate bank.  I have the lowest position in the company—I’m a bank teller.  Needless to say, the bank couldn’t function without workers like me.  THEY need us. Yet we can be fired, replaced, and interchanged by those above us.  I have to laugh because upper management says it has “our” best interest at heart.  BUT the moment you stop doing work that is profitable, that’s the moment you can kiss your job goodbye.  Therefore, I work as hard as I have to just to survive ignoring all my human qualities.

The moment you realize capitalism is a form of slavery is the moment your soul and body are liberated. But at the expense of what, because doesn’t freedom always come with a price?  Once you learn the rhetoric of Capital it is impossible to go back.

The bottom line is that NO one escapes recognition from capitalism, once you’re in its thrall it’s hard to let go or even escape its ability to make the individual conform to a certain social structure.

How does the concept of enslavement to capital apply to this week’s readings? How does capital undermine the concept of tribal sovereignty?

Vizneor recounts Luther Standing Bear’s narrative upon his arrival at the Carlisle Indian School where a strange event takes place.  According to Luther’s account, White people threw money at the Native Children who in turn threw it back (Luther Qtd in Vizneor 139).  Luther Standing Bear’s first experience with capital shows the naivety when first introduced to capital.  For one Bear, did not have the understanding of the rhetoric of Capitalism.  If he did he would have held the money tight in hand and realized that he would need it if he were to survive in the White man’s world. Nor Did Luther Standing Bear understand that the money in his hand was and would be the eventual destruction of tribal unity.  He cast the money back not out of fear of it but naivety of it.  In all theory he should have destroyed!  Sadly it didn’t work that way.

Ah the irony. Fast forward several generations, and we get what Vizneor calls a “weird contradiction” to Luther Standing Bear’s first naivety of the rhetoric of capital. 

Vizneor states that:

Five generations later many of the tribes that endured colonial cruelties, the miseries of hunger, disease, coercive assimilation, and manifest manners are now moneyed casino patrons and impresarios on reservations. The white people are throwing money at the tribes once more, but not to tribal children at the train stations; millions of dollars are lost each month at bingo, blackjack, electronic slot machines, and other mundane games of chance at casinos located on reservation land. The riches, for some, are new wampum, or the curious coup count of lost coins. The weird contradiction is that the enemies of tribalism have now become the sources of conditional salvation. (139)

 Several ideas stand and demand explication within this passage. 

First that Wampum was replaced with money (Capital).  According to Oxford Reference:

For many centuries, Native North Americans made beads from whelk and clam shells, which were strung together to make broad, patterned belts; both the beads and the belts are called wampum. The beads were held to symbolize inner qualities (e.g. harmony, contentment) and the belts had ceremonial importance. In societies without written language, they also had textual qualities; wampum belts, through the use of patterns and multicolored beads, conveyed stories, embodied treaties, and acted as a method of record-keeping to be passed down generations. (Oxford Dictionary Online, KU Lib)

This definition shows that Wampum didn’t represent money it represented a form of cultural, textual, and tribal history.  It also held a deeper meaning of spiritual harmony as well. 

Capital reduces humans to nothing.  Thus, it comes as no surprise that it destroys cultures. Let’s look at a simple formula.

 Wampum=CultureàCulture=SovereigntyàMoney=Capital

àCapital=CultureàCapital=Sovereignty

Therefore, Enslavement ≠ Sovereignty

Second thing that stands out within this passage is the sentence “Enemies of tribalism have now become the sources of conditional salvation” (emphasis added Vizneor 139).  Enemies become saviors.  Since, we know it’s not just the White man himself that is the enemy of Natives—it’s subversion through capitalism that is the enemy.  Yet, it is the Whiteman—enemy of tribalism—that conditions Natives to forsake Tribalism.  Conditioned for salvation through Capitalism, which I have already established, is a threat to tribal consciousness.  The Whiteman becomes the Capital that has enslaved his very own essence.

Europeans first introduced capitalism and enslaved Indian culture.  But once the American Government realized that Indian’s were surviving on their own, the Indian Regulatory Gaming Act was instituted.  This regulation took power out of tribal hands and forced a division of power among tribes (Vizneor 145).  Isn’t it bad enough that the Whiteman destroyed Native culture? Now it took back the very tool—capital—that the Indian was unconstrained by forcing Government regulation which in turn creates problems between tribes. 

The only way Natives can regain any tribal conscious is to reject the capitalist practices that were used as a form to control and appropriate Native culture.

I said it was impossible to decolonize one’s mind from the enslavement of Capital.  Maybe what I meant to say it’s impossible to be the same as one was before because of exterior physical circumstances.

It is possible to reject the enslavement of colonization.  Tribal consciousness just needs to remember itself through the process of decolonization.  We have to picture what Capital has done.

I leave you with a statment that echos Thomas King: Take this picture and do with it what you will, but don't say you would have lived your life differently if you hadn't seen it.