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FROM: INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY NEWSPAPER

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410846

Newcomb: On Matriotism And Patriotism

Posted: April 28, 2005
by: Steven Newcomb / Indigenous Law Institute


After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11,
2001, millions of Americans became more fervent in their patriotism toward the
United States. In this era of the Patriot Act, those who dare to question
''patriotism'' are made to feel that they may be ''treading on thin ice.'' One
American Indian leader even suggested that you can tell who a ''real'' Indian is
because a ''real'' Indian is patriotic toward the United States.

This made me wonder about my own thoughts on patriotism. After considerable
reflection, I have decided that because of my spiritual beliefs, and because of
all that our Native ancestors have suffered at the hands of the United
States, I consider myself to be a ''matriot.'' A matriot is someone who loves, is
loyal to, and promotes the interests of Mother Earth. I consider myself deeply
matriotic.

Matriotism is based on an appreciation of the fact that the source of life,
air, food, and water and our very existence is Mother Earth, not the political
construct known as the United States. When people talk about ''a country'' in
relation to ''patriotism,'' they are talking about a political entity, not the
Earth.

Matriotism and patriotism are worlds apart, as revealed by etymology. Mater
(from which ''matriotism'' is derived) is the Latin word for ''mother,'' a term
that means ''a woman who has given birth to a child.'' Matriotism, like
motherhood, suggests nurturing, warmth, affection, closeness or ''one to whom a
filial affection and respect are due.'' A mother is also ''one that has produced
or nurtured something; source.''

The word ''patriot,'' by contrast, is an extension of the Latin term pater,
meaning ''father.'' Patriot refers to ''one's father; of or characteristic of
one's forefathers,'' but it is also defined in terms of ''a person who loves
his country and loves and promotes its interests.'' These meanings are, of
course, patriarchal and full of testosterone, with none of the counterbalancing
feminine influence so vitally important and essential to a meaningful existence.

As a result of those who had a patriotic dedication to promoting the
patriarchal interests of the American empire, entire Indian nations no longer exist:
their ancestral lands that made their way of life viable were taken over by an
imperial country. Look east of the Mississippi River, where highly intelligent
and vibrant Indian civilizations once thrived on hundreds of millions of
acres of land, with their own languages, cultures, economies and spiritual
traditions. How many of those Native civilizations still exist there?

Thanks to U.S. patriotism and the Indian Removal Act, relatively few Indian
nations exist east of the Mississippi, on extremely small areas of their
once-vast ancestral lands. Almost all Indian nations west of the Mississippi have
been squeezed into smaller areas of land, the vast majority of their ancestral
lands stripped from them.

Look at all the lands where my matrilineal and matriotic Delaware ancestors
once lived, in what is now known as Manhattan Island, Delaware, New Jersey and
eastern Pennsylvania. With patriotic fervor, first European colonists and
later the United States took over our lands, thereby destroying our traditional
world and spiritual way of life.

Think of the many thousands of years in which our respective indigenous
languages evolved, accumulating knowledge and wisdom over eons. And think of all
the patriotic effort that U.S. government officials and Christian missionaries
dedicated to destroying our respective Native languages, right down to their
cognitive roots.

In their patriotic fervor, such people had no regard for our rich heritage,
only contempt for our cultural and spiritual knowledge. Their patriotic work
involved an ardent and greed-laden desire to destroy us in order to fatten and
enrich themselves, as ''God's chosen people,'' on our lands and resources, to
which they felt eminently entitled based on the ''promised land'' narrative of
their ''good book.''

Because our indigenous languages reflect our own indigenous conceptual
systems, which are rooted in our brains, the systematic abuse of American Indian
children by the United States in an effort to destroy our Indian languages
affected those Indian children to their core. Those children were our ancestors, our
aunts and uncles, our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers -
relatives of all the members of our respective nations.

One of the things U.S. boarding schools beat into American Indian children
was patriotism toward the American flag and devotion to the Bible, in part by
working to make Indian children ashamed of their own Native spirituality. As a
spiritual matter and as a matter of conscience, how can I feel patriotic toward
a political entity that worked so hard to destroy us as distinct nations and
peoples that have existed in this hemisphere for thousands and thousands of
years?

However, I am extremely matriotic toward Mother Earth. Matriotism is entirely
consistent with our traditional cultural and spiritual way of life. I believe
that a society dedicated to the values of matriotism would honor and respect
motherhood and ''the motherland.'' It would acknowledge women as a source of
life. It would support women and help them to thrive and excel by powerfully
nurturing their innate intelligence. It would not abuse them emotionally,
physically or sexually. A matriotic society would not regard women, or men, as a
kind of property.

A society dedicated to matriotism - a sacred regard for the Earth and all
living things - also would not allow poisons, such as pesticides, petroleum and
toxic nuclear wastes, to leach into the veins of Mother Earth.

One example of Mother Earth being poisoned is found in the town of Moab,
Utah, on the edge of the Colorado River where, according to a recent report in the
San Diego Union-Tribune, some 58,000 gallons of radioactive liquid leach each
and every day into sacred waters upon which animals, fish and millions of
people rely.

Another such example is the Columbia River. For generations, highly
radioactive liquid has been leaching from decomposing steel drums at the Hanford
nuclear facility into the groundwater that runs into the Columbia River and the fish
that live there. Now the U.S. government plans to bury 77,000 tons of
radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain in the Western Shoshone territory.

Given such patriarchal desecrations, I am content to be matriotic like my
Shawnee and Delaware ancestors. As they and all our indigenous ancestors knew, we
only have one Mother Earth, and we are all her children.

Steven Newcomb is the indigenous law research coordinator at Kumeyaay
Community College on the Sycuan Indian Reservation, co-founder and co-director of the
Indigenous Law Institute, and a columnist for Indian Country Today.

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Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear... just sing, sing a song.