Museum Visit Part I — America Has a History of Kicking Their Own Host
During a recent visit to the Cincinnati Museum of Art, I came across a painting by Henry F. Farney, titled, An Unwelcomed Guest (1887). The following is a description describing the painting:
“This tense scene shows a native American, holding his hand in the air, as he casually approaches a group of white hunters. In the background, other Indians wait to see how the meeting transpires. The hunters seem suspicious; their rifles lay across their laps, ready to fire if necessary.”
The title and the description of the painting seemed pompous to me. The Indians were in their own land. The “white hunters” were relatively recent arrivals to the land. They were hunting, fishing, and using resources on some land that the Indians had been using freely for thousands of years. Yet, the Native Americans were the ones who were looked of upon a guest in their own land. Not only that but an unwanted guest.
I do not know if Farney was being sarcastic when he titled that painting, or if he subconsciously conveyed the Puritan notion of manifest destiny. Manifest Destiny was the prevalent attitude of the American ruling class. Farney’s painting and its title is a deeply embedded fallacy that still prevails even today. The idea that Europeans, by virtue of their institutions, religion and skin color, had the right to the land of America and all of its resources, is an idea that is hard to kill.
The Indians in the painting are apparently approaching the white hunters in peace. However, the hunters clutch their weapons and are ready to use them. The rest of the tribe stands passively in the background, hoping that their leader does not get his head blown off.
It is almost hard to believe that an entire culture could be ignored and considered inconsequential, while their invaders destroy everything that they know and love. It may never be enough to understand why the Indians were decimated by the new Europeans. To understand it better, we have to really take a close look at the religious-based rhetoric that manifest destiny was based on. Settlers killed many Indians on their way to their own materialistic, religious and utopian destiny.
Greedy, materialistic people could hide behind the idea that it was “God’s Will” that all Americans should spread Christianity all over the land and it was their responsibility to conquer the new land. Nothing would get in their way, least of which is a sub-race of savages that lived in and depended on that land for their livelihood. In other words, people of European descent had the right to destroy Indians and anyone else who got into their way. The upshot: Large scale annihilation.
This is the dilemma of a sensitive man like me. The trip to the museum was meant to be a nice little trip to admire artistic culture. But it was ruined by my sensitivity. I can’t just look at a work of art and appreciate it without going into the rabbit hole of deep cultural contemplation. Racial issues show up in the damnedest places! While looking at this painting I’m thinking about the social implications that racism has caused in our everyday life. I’m thinking about how all of American history is framed in stories of sorrow and atrocities. I am thinking about our current situation in American and how I, as a black man, still face an uphill struggle with fairness in law enforcement and the judicial system. And in this time of racial and political division, I am thinking about how sad it is that for the first time in my own life, I am considering buying a gun, not to go hunting for quail, but to protect myself and my family while we are shopping in Walmart, praying in a church or attending a music concert.
All I wanted was to just enjoy the damn paintings!
But everywhere I look in the museum is a reminder that we did not become a world power by strictly adhering to Christian doctrine.
American Indians are, “Destroying our Western way of life.”
Republican Liz Cheney, the House Republican Conference Chairwoman, stated that Indians were, “Destroying our Western way of life.” Cheney made this statement after losing litigation in a court case against the Indians. As reported in Native News Online.Net;
“One of the largest tribal-plaintiff alliances in recent memory prevailed in the landmark case, Crow Tribe et al v. Zinke last September, when US District Judge Dana Christensen ruled in favor of the tribes and environmental groups after finding that the Trump Administration’s US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) had failed to abide by the ESA and exceeded its authority in attempting to remove federal protections from the grizzly. Tuesday, USFWS officially returned federal protections to the grizzly.”
The Indians were trying to ensure the survival of their sacred grizzly bear by preventing the removal of restrictions proposed by the Trump Administration. Tom Rogers, the Senior adviser to the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council said, “If this wasn’t Liz Cheney and the era of the Trump Administration, you might be rendered speechless by the insensitivity and mendacity of the statement.”
Many Americans of European descent still feel it is their right to use land and resources for their own benefit, even at the expense of the rights and safety of the original occupants, people, and animals alike. They feel this is God’s will. The painting by Henry F. Farney and the title of the painting only remind us that we have yet to learn the destructiveness of this type of rationalizing. And every time we feel like kissing and making up with America, someone like Liz Cheney reminds us that we are not there yet.
