A 3-MinuteMust-Hear Poem:‘Love You Some Indians’ Says It All
ICTMN StaffNatives on the frontiers of the culture wars have a host of issues to contend with, just some of which are appropriation, sports mascots, and redface portrayals—and to borrow a phrase, they are all related. Looked at separately—a racial-slur team name here, a fake headdress there—they may evoke a shrug of indifference from non-Natives and even some Natives.
It’s just a football team. 
It’s just makeup. 
It’s just a school play. 
In her poem “Love You Some Indians,” Navajo poet Rowie Shebala connects the dots with both eloquence and emotion. Her words show how the bits and pieces of insult and prejudice that confront Natives daily add up to a giant slap in the face. This performance of the piece was filmed at the most recent National Poetry Slam, held in early August in Oakland, where Shebala competed as part of the Sedona team.
Here is a little history for individuals that are fans of the movies Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick. The first Top Gun competition was held in 1949. The white pilots competed with the latest state of art aircraft while the African-American pilots were forced to compete with older obsolete planes. After 3 days of competition The Tuskegee Airmen team of : Captain Alva Temple, 1st Lieutenant Harry Stewart, 1st Lieutenant James Harvey, and 1st Lieutenant Halbert Alexander (alternate) were announced the winners. There was dead silence in the room. Not one of their colleagues applauded this accomplishment. The victory was swept under the rug and the trophy was not seen by the public for 55 years. Introducing the real Top Guns.

​“Huck and Jim in Their Final Years”
In 1903, on his last visit to his in-laws at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, Mark Twain (1835-1910) posed for this photograph with his friend, John T. Lewis (1835-1906), who was born a free man in Maryland and who had migrated to upstate New York.
They met in 1877 after Lewis savd the lives of Twain’s sister-in-law and her daughter by courageously stopping their runaway carriage at no small risk to his own safety.
Lewis was an Elder in the Church of the Brethren (the Dunkers), and he and Twain often talked about religion and other such matters.
Lewis loved to read, and Twain would send him every one of his books when they came out, with a loving inscription in each one.
After Lewis retired from farming, Twain and his in-laws arranged to have him receive a pension.
When Twain returned to writing Huckleberry Finn, in 1879 while at Elmira, Lewis was one of the real-life people upon whom he based the character of Jim, and it is even possible that his acquaintance with Lewis caused Twain to continue working on the novel after having earlier set it aside.
Twain’s friendship with Lewis was hardly a typical one; of all the white authors in this period, he was the one most fully immersed in and appreciative of African American culture and the one most at home in the company of African Americans.
Near the end of his life he recalled a time in New York City when he was walking with another black friend, George Griffin, and people stared at them: "A 'white man' and a negro walking together was a new spectacle to them. The glances embarrassed George, but not me, for the companionshp was proper: in some ways he was my equal, in some others my superior.”
Published in 1884/1885, Huckleberry Finn is about a racist boy’s realization of the full humanity of a fugitive slave.
Ten years later, in Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain would deconstruct the very idea of race itself as nothing more than "a fiction of law and custom" without any basis in biology. As Toni Morrison stated, "Mark Twain talked about racial ideology in the most powerful, eloquent, and instructive way I have ever read."
Mark Twain and John T. Lewis are both buried with their families in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira.
If you are confused as to why so many Americans are defending the confederate flag, monuments, and statues right now, I put together a quick Q&A, with questions from a hypothetical person with misconceptions and answers from my perspective as an AP U.S. History Teacher:
Q: What did the Confederacy stand for?
A: Rather than interpreting, let's go directly to the words of the Confederacy's Vice President, Alexander Stephens. In his "Cornerstone Speech" on March 21, 1861, he stated "The Constitution... rested upon the equality of races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
Q: But people keep saying heritage, not hate! They think the purpose of the flags and monuments are to honor confederate soldiers, right?
A: The vast majority of confederate flags flying over government buildings in the south were first put up in the 1960's during the Civil Rights Movement. So for the first hundred years after the Civil War ended, while relatives of those who fought in it were still alive, the confederate flag wasn't much of a symbol at all. But when Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis were marching on Washington to get the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) passed, leaders in the south felt compelled to fly confederate flags and put up monuments to honor people who had no living family members and had fought in a war that ended a century ago. Their purpose in doing this was to exhibit their displeasure with black people fighting for basic human rights that were guaranteed to them in the 14th and 15th Amendments but being withheld by racist policies and practices.
Q: But if we take down confederate statues and monuments, how will we teach about and remember the past?
A: Monuments and statues pose little educational relevance, whereas museums, the rightful place for Confederate paraphernalia, can provide more educational opportunities for citizens to learn about our country's history. The Civil War is important to learn about, and will always loom large in social studies curriculum. Removing monuments from public places and putting them in museums also allows us to avoid celebrating and honoring people who believed that tens of millions of black Americans should be legal property.
Q: But what if the Confederate flag symbol means something different to me?
A: Individuals aren't able to change the meaning of symbols that have been defined by history. When I hang a Bucs flag outside my house, to me, the Bucs might represent the best team in the NFL, but to the outside world, they represent an awful NFL team, since they haven't won a playoff game in 18 years. I can't change that meaning for everyone who drives by my house because it has been established for the whole world to see. If a Confederate flag stands for generic rebellion or southern pride to you, your personal interpretation forfeits any meaning once you display it publicly, as its meaning takes on the meaning it earned when a failed regime killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to destroy America and keep black people enslaved forever.
Q: But my uncle posted a meme that said the Civil War/Confederacy was about state's rights and not slavery?
A: "A state's right to what?" - John Green
Q: Everyone is offended about everything these days. Should we take everything down that offends anyone?
A: The Confederacy literally existed to go against the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the idea that black people are human beings that deserve to live freely. If that doesn't upset or offend you, you are un-American.
Q: Taking these down goes against the First Amendment and freedom of speech, right?
A: No. Anyone can do whatever they want on their private property, on their social media, etc. Taking these down in public, or having private corporations like NASCAR ban them on their properties, has literally nothing to do with the Bill of Rights.
Q: How can people claim to be patriotic while supporting a flag that stood for a group of insurgent failures who tried to permanently destroy America and killed 300,000 Americans in the process?
A: No clue.
Q: So if I made a confederate flag my profile picture, or put a confederate bumper sticker on my car, what am I declaring to my friends, family, and the world?
A: That you support the Confederacy. To recap, the Confederacy stands for: slavery, white supremacy, treason, failure, and a desire to permanently destroy Selective history as it supports white supremacy.
It’s no accident that:
You learned about Helen Keller instead of W.E.B, DuBois
You learned about the Watts and L.A. Riots, but not Tulsa or Wilmington.
You learned that George Washington’s dentures were made from wood, rather than the teeth from slaves.
You learned about black ghettos, but not about Black Wall Street.
You learned about the New Deal, but not “red lining.”
You learned about Tommie Smith’s fist in the air at the 1968 Olympics, but not that he was sent home the next day and stripped of his medals.
You learned about “black crime,” but white criminals were never lumped together and discussed in terms of their race.
You learned about “states rights” as the cause of the Civil War, but not that slavery was mentioned 80 times in the articles of secession.
Privilege is having history rewritten so that you don’t have to acknowledge uncomfortable facts.
Racism is perpetuated by people who refuse to learn or acknowledge this reality.
You have a choice. - Jim Golden”