The Lies They Tell Page 7

  Are these people “German Americans”?

  I walk in. As I enter the Festhall, which is decorated with a huge American flag and a shiny cross, a group of people carrying flags and machine guns enter as well. To my right I see two soldiers, both black. I talk with Walters, a soldier wearing a US Army uniform.

  What’s America for you?

  “Opportunity.”

  Can you be more specific?

  “Yes. I grew up very poor. In my family we shared pants, but now I’m doing very well.”

  Are you a rich man today?

  “Compared to where I started, I am.”

  Did you serve in battle?

  “Yes, I did.”

  Where?

  “Afghanistan.”

  How was it?

  “Scary.”

  Why did you serve there?

  “’Cause I’m Christian.”

  From the stage comes the sound of music: “Glory, glory, Hallelujah.”

  • • •

  I need a cigarette. I walk out. Not far from me is a square, called Military Space, where a huge American flag is flying proudly above a plane and a tank.

  I am in Germany.

  The thousands of people here must be German, I say to myself. They are so Germanic! Germans, in case you’ve never met one, are very extreme people. That’s their culture. If they decide to be nice, they will be the nicest humans possible. When they decide, for example, to be liberal, no liberal the world over will match them, not even close. If, on the other hand, their mood sweeps them in the exact opposite direction, no one will match their cruelty. One day they can be the Weimar Republic and the next day they can become the Nazi empire. They are, in a word, extreme.

  Look at the people here. Extreme. They want it all: flags, planes, tanks, machine guns and a prayer. But that’s not enough, of course. They got themselves two black soldiers; looks really cool. Is it enough now? Nope. They also have here a monument made of a steel beam from the wreckage of New York’s Twin Towers, which was given to them by New York City’s Bravest.

  Give me a break, patriotic Frankenmuth! I smoke my cigarette.

  There’s a lady here, and she tells me that Mackinac Island is a great place to be. There are no cars on the road, she says, and it’s really a very quiet place. To get my mind off the Military Space and the Red Zone, I proceed to my next stop: Mackinac Island, Michigan.

  • • •

  The name of the island was coined by Native Americans, I’m told, due to its shape (mackinac means “the great brooding turtle”). The only way to get to Mackinac Island is by either private jet or by boat. Since I don’t yet own a private jet, I take a boat across Lake Huron, where I’m picked up by a horse-drawn carriage to my new abode, the Grand Hotel.

  The first thing I notice when I get there toward evening time is the hotel’s employees who are taking down the American flags for the night. Why? I ask a lady whose name I don’t know.

  “Because the American flag must not fly in the dark. At night it must be taken down unless a source of light is shining on it. But since they don’t want to have lights on every flag – they have many flags here – they take them down and fold them. I wouldn’t say it’s a federal law, but this is the custom.”

  Each flag, I notice, is folded by two people. Can’t one do this alone? I ask.

  “No. The American flag must not touch the floor, that’s why you need two people. These flags are big, and if only one person folded them they might touch the floor.”

  Oy vey, as they say in Yiddish.

  Another person, a middle-aged man, wants to share with me his thoughts about the American flag. “For me,” he says, “the flag represents freedom. I revere the flag. We fought for it, for our freedom,” and now his voice is cracking with immense emotion: “I’m a patriot, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of it, I’m proud of my country!”

  I look at the man and I wonder: Is this the face of the Brave?

  The Grand Hotel has 390 rooms, and it’s almost full. Average price per person per day is $285, two meals included. Dinner is a four-course meal, and all the diners are white. We are served by the darker-skinned, who are mostly from Jamaica.

  Diet Coke is not included, and no alcohol. No smoking anywhere on the property.

  I go out to smoke. As I puff with pleasure, Bryan joins me. Bryan is from Texas, he tells me, and he is interested in foreign affairs. To demonstrate his wide knowledge on foreign issues he shares his opinion with me that Israel should stop building settlements in Gaza. Should I tell him that no living Jew exists in Gaza? No, I’m not going there.

  I think he should join the Henry Ford people; he would be a great asset for them.

  I go to my room and check the news, perhaps I’ll find something about the new Gaza. Here’s something from the Huffington Post: “Greeks on Sunday decisively rejected a bailout deal proposed by the country’s international creditors, which demanded new austerity measures in return for emergency funds. The vote amounted to a stinging rebuke of the austerity measures imposed on Greece since 2010.”

  And this is the news from CNN, reporting from South Carolina: “A bill that would remove the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds was approved by state lawmakers in a 37-3 Senate vote.” CNN does not indicate how many people will be required to take down this flag.

  New York’s Daily News, in a report about a white man who was beaten unconscious by a group of blacks, writes:

  Cold-hearted bystanders jeered and laughed at an unconscious tourist lying at their feet after a vicious beating in Cincinnati, a video showed.

  “Damn, n---a, you just got knocked the f--k out!” shouted one of the callous witnesses.

  The man’s face was covered in blood as he lay motionless late Saturday in the city’s Fountain Square neighborhood.

  The accompanying video is hard to watch.

  N---a stands for nigger, or nigga (in black dialect). F--k stands for fuck. American media won’t spell out nigger, because that’s racist. They also don’t like to spell out fuck because it’s not a nice word.

  Not only media. The other day I asked Siri, the iPhone “secretary,” What the fuck is wrong with you? The response: “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” When Siri is in a preaching mood, which happens, and I use the “f” word, Siri responds: “Tuvia! Your language!”

  Rooted in Quaking Puritanism as this country is, the mainstream media spells out no explicit sexual terms. If you are in the United States and you want to tell somebody in writing that he’s an asshole, this is the way to write it: a-----e. In a generation or two, cigarette will be spelled c-------e.

  I’m going out to smoke one more c-------e.

  • • •

  It’s a new day in Michigan state and I am in Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, also known as “Soo.”

  There is an Indian reservation here. What’s a reservation? A reservation is defined in official dialect thusly: “An area of land reserved for a tribe or tribes under treaty or other agreement.” In simpler lingo, it goes like this: Once upon a time, and for God knows how many thousands of years, this land was populated with people of many tribes and languages, none of which was white and none of which spoke English.

  These people, who would later be known as “Native Americans” or “Indians,” lived in this land on their own until one day a white man dropped by and desired the land for himself. The white man, who brought some friends along with him, killed the natives, raped them, starved them, stole from them, and once he was done he declared the land as a land of We the People, a shrine of democracy and freedom, and renamed the land as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

  Of course this didn’t look so nice, and so the white man, a man of supreme intelligence, kept some of the natives alive and proclaimed chunks of land here and there, there and here as the natives’ inheritance until the end of days. Those chunks of lands are called reservations, sovereign lands, and God knows what else.

&n
bsp; In a reservation, I am told, no white man roams. Why? A reservation is a sacred ground, reserved for the great Native American Indians.

  I love sacred. And so I drive through the Soo reservation, looking for holy Indian inspiration, but I can’t spot anything “Indian.” It’s just a bunch of houses and roads, but no holy rays anywhere in sight. Have I gone blind? To be on the safe side of knowledge, I go to meet the leader of the people here; maybe he will be able to show me the way and teach me about the sacred.

  His name is Aaron Payment and his business card describes him as the tribal chairperson of the Chippewa Indians in Sault Ste. Marie. He is, in short, the tribal chief, and I’m delighted at the opportunity to meet such a man.

  His hair is salt and pepper and he has a ponytail as well. He is dressed like a normal American – no Indian feathers.

  What does it mean to be Indian today? I ask him, just to get acquainted.

  “Recognizing your origin and spirituality,” he says in beautiful English.

  What does that mean?

  “I was raised both in our traditional beliefs and in Christianity.”

  You are Christian, then.

  “Yes, I am.”

  What does it mean to be Native American if you’re Christian?

  “To completely live with respect to other people and to the environment.”

  I really don’t know what this means, and so I say: That’s what every Christian on the liberal side in New York would say; what’s unique to the Native American?

  “Our struggle with surviving the American attempt to annihilate us. But we don’t give up, we persevere,” he answers with a serious face.

  That’s what Jews say as well, and blacks too. What’s unique to the Indians?

  “I don’t know that there is a difference.”

  Do you speak any Native American language?

  “No.”

  What makes an “Indian”? How do you decide if somebody is Indian?

  “Some states have a blood quantum, and only those who have one-quarter Indian blood are considered Indian. This was challenged up to the Supreme Court, since this is racist. The court agreed and decided that the tribes themselves will have the right to determine who is Indian.”

  How do you determine who’s Indian?

  “If you can prove that you have one-thirty-second of Indian blood in you, then we will recognize you as Indian.”

  That’s racist as well, isn’t it?

  “No. One-thirty-second of Indian blood is our way to determine who’s Indian, since we need some way to measure – ”

  Why is one-quarter blood racism, and one-thirty-second is not?

  This he cannot answer. And in any case he is in a hurry. Mr. Payment is traveling today to Washington, DC, on Indian business; he is looking for more government grants to help keep the Indian culture and people strong and good.

  Is what I see and hear here a fair presentation of “Native America”? I should visit more reservations, because what I witness here is not culture but business.

  Aaron, by the way, tells me that he’s one-quarter Austrian. I wonder what I am? Maybe a n---a.

  You can never tell.

  • • •

  I leave the Soo and ramble around for miles. I mix in with some Yoopers (people of the Upper Peninsula) until I reach Munising, where I take a three-hour Lake Superior cruise offered by Pictured Rock Cruises. One of the first things I hear once seated in the boat is this: “Lake Superior is as large as Austria.” They love Austria here.

  We cruise near caves situated at the bottom of the rocks at the water’s edge. The rock formations, multicolored, are brilliantly reflected on the surface of the water. It is bewitchingly glorious! Simply divine.

  This divine place, our captain maliciously interjects into my thoughts, used to serve as an excruciating hell. When Indian tribes fought one another they would take the captured of the other tribe, bring them into the caves by canoe and leave them here to die.

  Finally, I see, I get in touch with something that’s uniquely of the Indian culture. What they did here, whether I like it or not, was brutal.

  There’s no escape from these caves. The captured would have few choices: jump into the water and die fast or stay in the caves until the waters swept their bodies into the lake. If, by any chance, the water didn’t carry them away, starvation would take their lives. A slow, painful death.

  This, too, is part of Indian culture and history.

  As the boat cruises along, the mixture of ever-changing rock formations and ever-mesmerizing water colors does not end. Here nature reveals itself in its full might and glory.

  My whole being is captivated by the beauty around me. There’s no painting – realistic, impressionistic, surreal or modern – in any multimillion-dollar New York museum that matches the images unfolding in front of my eyes. Here’s where the master artist of all, call it God or nature, practices his art and performs his magic. The water is clear like a pure diamond, the rocks are mighty as eternity, and no race – Indian or whatever – is strong enough or capable enough to lord over either of them.

  • • •

  Government grants and funding, no matter how large, are never enough for those on the receiving end. Native Americans are no different from anyone else, and they have found a way to make more money – not from the US government but from US citizens.

  Since they are a government within a government and a land within a land, they make their own laws and rules, and they build whatever they want on their lands – like cash machines, popularly called “casinos.” To the Indians (interchangeable with “Native Americans”) it doesn’t matter whether the particular state in which they live allows casinos within its borders, since they make their own laws. There are Indian casinos all over this country, and today I’m going to one of them, the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Chippewa, Michigan.

  Frank, of the casino’s PR department, greets me as I arrive. FYI: Frank is one-quarter Indian, one part French, and God knows what else. Naturally, when we meet Frank first goes into PR mode and tells me that in just a few days the twenty-seventh Elijah Elk Competitive Powwow (“Gathering and Competition”) will take place at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort.

  What the heck is that?

  “A cultural exchange of competitive dance and drum of the Indian people.”

  Sadly, I’m leaving today and won’t be able to attend such a cultural event. But no worry: If I want, Frank says, he’ll take me to the local museum, where I can learn about the culture of the Indians.

  That’s how PR people think: always have a Plan B. He drives me to the museum.

  A very nice place, I must say. Images of Indians, with clothes and hairstyles that one would see in movies, are presented here. Highly recommended if you’re into feathers.

  This museum is also for those among you who are into “touch” technology: you touch a word or image on one of the screens provided and you hear it pronounced in a Native American language. For example: sugar is ziibaakwad, chair is pabiwin and paper is mzinigan.

  I ask Frank if he speaks any Native American/Indian language. “A few words only.”

  I too, by the way. I know ziibaakwad, pabiwin and mzinigan.

  Frank tells me that Indians are “First Nations people.” What’s that?

  “The Jewish people believe that they are the children of God, and we believe this about ourselves. We were the first people on earth, from which all other people came.” Christians and Jews think that the first people on earth were Adam and Eve, but the Indians believe that the first people on earth were Jibbawaba or Chippewa.

  Not bad.

  Frank is Christian, by the way. The one real difference between him and any other American Christian is that the Christian would say he that he or she believe in the “creator” while Frank says that he believes in Jimanadu, which means creator.

  Jimanadu sounds much nicer than creator, I agree.

  Plus: If you believe in Jimanadu, you don’t
have to pay state income tax. Indians in reservations don’t pay that.

  Frank is a very capable PR person, but even he cannot put his finger on what makes an Indian an Indian.

  Is this all just a little racist scheme to erect big casinos? One way to find out is by visiting a reservation and speaking to its residents.

  • • •

  Not a very easy task. There’s this proper white etiquette, alluded to above, which dictates that no white shall go to an Indian reservation and talk to its people. But I try this anyway and I ask Frank if he wouldn’t mind showing me around the reservation, because I want to schmooze with some Indians who are not working as PR executives. He complies.

  Being a PR man, he first gives me the following info.

  Name of reservation: Isabella Indian Reservation. Tribe: Saginaw Chippewa. Center of Michigan.

  Members total: 3,490 people. Living on these grounds: 1,100.

  Finances: Every adult member gets $64,000 yearly, and those under eighteen years of age get $32,000 each.

  Where do all these bundles of dollars come from? From the businesses that the tribe does. The Soaring Eagle Casino is an example.

  How do you decide who’s Indian? Could I become one? “Sadly, no.”

  It goes by quantum blood, I learn. “Here the quantum blood to determine membership is one-quarter.”

  A tribal chief I met recently told me it’s one-thirty-second.

  “You were in the Soo? There, if you get bit by a mosquito you become a member of the tribe,” Frank says, laughing.

  Frank drives me around the reservation, and all I see are houses. When I finally see a person, a woman standing outside her home, I ask Frank to stop. Her name is Dawn. Dawn is forty-nine years old; she strikes me as a warm person, and I’m curious what she thinks of Indian culture.

  What are the basic elements of Indian culture? I ask her.

  “It’s family, community, hmm, I’d say mostly it’s community.”

  Most people of other cultures would say the same about themselves. What’s the difference between you and them? What’s unique to your culture?