The endless kvetching by establishment droids concerning the rise of identity and grievance politics and its negative effects on the great individualist democracies of the West brought to mind the famous anti-pollution ad that aired in the early 1970s: Keep America Beautiful: The Crying Indian. This ad became more controversial recently as “cultural appropriation” entered the political zeitgeist, and the main actor was discovered to be of Sicilian descent, Espera Oscar de Corti.
The ad begins with a “Native American” riding a canoe dressed in traditional garb with a feather crown, Espera is pictured shedding a single tear as a car of White Americans sling garbage out of the window onto the road. The noble savage is framed as having tremendous respect for the land and country of his people, whereas the colonial invader carelessly destroys the environment. This is something we have come to expect now within the current political sphere, but even in the 1970s, these same themes of identity politics were working their way into the minds of the average American as an ethnic guilt-based trick used to manipulate behavior and shame compliance. The anti-pollution message, in itself, is not powerful enough to motivate action so it is injected with historical narratives of the racial genocide of the American Indian as a disingenuous sweetener.
Besides the amusement, this ad represents one of the very few instances where American Indians are used politically in the United States with any success. It is not unusual in countries like Canada, Australia, or New Zealand for the original inhabitants to play an important political role, and consume a tremendous amount of time and money from the state via grievance politics. All these countries have “Native” populations of varying percentages, but Native Americans only represent around 1% of the population as of 2020, therefore they are not a significant enough voting bloc to matter especially compared to groups like Blacks (13%), Asians (6%), and Hispanics (19%).
Even Canada, a nation geographically and culturally similar to the United States, has a Native American population of around (5%)—possessing considerable political capital. It could be argued that Native Americans in Canada had real working relationships with Europeans, for instance, figures like Tecumseh aiding the British against the United States can be used to provide a historical narrative of deep connection against a common enemy. The American mythos surrounding Native Americans and Europeans is dominated entirely by racial war, especially with the Plains Indians in the late 19th century. The redeeming qualities of partnership, nobleness, and unification into European civilization make the Canadian tribes more familiar for political purposes along with an effective victim mythos used as an anti-colonial tool.
The American context, however, leaves nothing but a political narrative of calamity for the Native Americans, many of which have been cross-bred with Europeans to become “White” and therefore politically unreliable. In Canada, the Metis (mixed French-Indian) have a deeply intertwined history and relationship together against the English Crown that bolsters “First Nations” total numbers and political influence as a minority within a minority in French Canada.
The liberation theology at the core of the American State attempts to privilege these groups based on their weakness, which conveniently can only be solved through “dem programs”, race hustlers, and the social genuflection of Whites. This racket is run and funded by the government, which allows delicious tax dollars to flow right into the pig trough that is the Black, Asian or Hispanic communities. Liberation theologies, although based on victimization and inequality, contain an important core of redemption in which victim groups theoretically provide tremendous worth to the country and the world. It is only due to their race that they are discriminated against which in turn prevents a contribution more observable among “privileged groups” such as Europeans.
The Blacks have tremendous cultural and social influence in the realm of sports, music, and movies. The Asians have excellent institutional intellectual ability and high incomes, and the Hispanics are an increasingly large voting bloc, as well as provide cheap slave labor pools for southern blue states. Beyond their redeeming, highly involved cultural and social aspects, they all have highly coveted historical victim narratives: slavery for Blacks, railroads for Chinamen, and labor abuse/colonialism for the Latin Americans.
The Native American, however, provides nothing of influence or worth, the redeeming inspirational narrative does not functionally exist at the state level. They have no impact on daily life in America, they have no political power, and they are mired in: murder, suicide, drugs, alcoholism, abuse, defeat, and shame. The entire narrative of Native Americans is all bleak—the inspirational core is not present. Native Americans are mentioned infrequently at the state level and seldom on the national stage, largely due to the totalizing annihilation perspective that confines Native Americans to a historical reference point rather than a current living people—much like the Visigoths. Native Americans are frozen in time as past people that historically had a real sense of self, ethnic redemption, and worth befitting a warrior spirit, but now there is only victimhood left. Even amongst deranged leftists, this is too depressing of an image to galvanize around politically, and too weak demographically to print money from the state. The best they can hope for is reservations, casinos, and blending into the larger Hispanic horde. With little social or political capital, they are merely used as a cynical battering ram to challenge European people’s foundational claims to an American homeland.
Hollywood has made the modern insignificance of American Indians quite clear in the “SNUF-like” films they create about Native Americans. Always reinforcing their existence in the past as a kind of warrior-loser, but nothing in the present but an endless victim of oppression and annihilation that should be pitied. Dancing with Wolves (1990) is a film that creates a sympathetic heroic portrayal of the Sioux as rebel warriors that will not cower in the face of the White Man’s destruction of their people and traditional way of life. The Sioux are not merely savages but extremely kind to their supposed enemy by accepting Lt. John Dunbar into their tribe. Despite the redemptive qualities and courage of the American Indians in this film, the ending is already a foregone conclusion in which American Indians are almost all wiped out, imprisoned, or moved to reservation lands in chains. There is never a happy ending, no matter the heroic circumstances or warrior spirit in the plain Indians' hearts.
There is no Django, 12-Years a Slave, and Black Panther for the Indian which is used to craft a partial historical narrative bolstered through fiction to establish a redemptive spirit of power against the backdrop of constant victimhood. Those few movies that reflect a kind of powerful narrative for American Indians always feature a White man who aids and seeks redemption on behalf of the Indians; The Last of the Mohicans, Hostiles, and Pocahontas to name a few well-known works, of course, the White man is usually doing so out of a rejection of his people.
A film like Wind River (2017) perfectly encapsulates the political and social narrative of the modern Native American; it is a bleak movie of reservation life in Wyoming featuring the persistent issue of Native American women going missing and/or murdered. It displays a graphic scene of a Native American woman being gang-raped and murdered by White American security guards. The main character is played by Jeremy Renner who sets out to solve the case, as well as get revenge for the impotent crying Native American father of the dead girl. The cause of the Indian's pain and the redemption of the Indian's honor are both carried out by the White Man. It is victimhood followed by impotence that is the most destructive psychological narrative and also the reason that the American Indian cannot join the other minority groups as political pets for leftist activists and the tech-media-state department.
Native Americans must therefore remain only as a useful historical narrative or polemic to smash White Americans for colonization. Even the colonial narrative is used in a kind of dissociative way, in which the Indians of old have been destroyed while simultaneously still living as shells of their former self. The pain and destruction of the Indians are therefore only ever used as political framing, not out of genuine moral feeling for those of the past, but to acquiesce to state and social power out of some nebulous idea of social justice. Even the ad described previously uses the pain—tears—of Indians as an illustrative tool against littering, therefore having functional utility for political projects such as anti-white rhetoric or environmental messaging that has no interest or concern for current Native Americans. Consequently, the producers of such propaganda can’t even get an authentic Native American to play said acting role, suggesting they may no longer exist—it is entirely kayfabe.
As for all other minority groups, no amount of liberation or progress is ever enough, therefore the money must continue to flow, the race grifters must continue to hock their wares, and the Indians will continue to be portrayed largely as eternal victims. The unfortunate reality is that no one is coming to authentically help them or inspire them to take action in their own lives because they are—as deemed by activists—extinct people only usable for occasional shameful polemic. No amount of authentic liberation can be bought, and must instead be earned through sheer force of will and destiny at a group level. The crying Indian must stop his crying and reject the spinster activists looking to collect his tears in exchange for crumbs from the minority pie. It is not easy to live in the society created by, for, and amongst those who defeated your people—the past cannot be forgotten but dwelling in despair will neither garner power amongst the ranks of the other minorities nor the ability to ascend to the level of self that their ancestors possessed.
In conclusion, the Crying Indian advert is a rare glimpse into the early identity politics of minority groups in a time when there were few minorities—in a predominantly white nation—and the Native Americans presented a valuable opportunity to test this rhetoric—highly effective for the time. The Immigration Act of 1965 and the mass immigration that followed presented a much more promising, unending stream of divisive groups that could be used to change the structure and balance of power in the country. Incidentally, Native Americans fell into obsolescence. The cultural and historical importance that Native Americans once held—to the degree that they ever did—was supplanted by larger more easily politically mobilized populations in large city centers, easily wooed by liberation ideology. In many ways, the end of the old Western film genre featuring Cowboys and Indians cemented the cultural and political death of the American Indian, and to some degree the traditional “Amerikaner”. There is much to learn from Native Americans; maybe the future will feature ads of crying white men watching as favelas are raised towards the sky on his once beautiful land.