A Lumbee soldier in the Vietnam veterans memorial on the grounds of the North Carolina Capitol is the only depiction of a Native person. (VietVets.org photo)

The moratorium had been in place for a quarter-century, but the commission decided to lift it because Capitol monuments “do not sufficiently represent the diversity of North Carolina’s population.”

In this earlier post, we noted that just about everyone depicted in Capitol monuments is white. Those monuments include a statue of Andrew Jackson, who oversaw the forced removal of Native Americans from their homelands on the infamous “Trail of Tears” march that killed thousands in the 1830s, as well as one of former Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock, a leading spokesman for the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900.

The only Native person depicted is a Lumbee soldier on the Vietnam memorial on the Capitol grounds.

That could change now. As Niolet writes:

Plans for the American Indian memorial say it should be inclusive of all native peoples. Subjects suggested for the women’s memorial are Lillian Exum Clement, the state’s first female lawmaker, and Ella Baker, a civil rights leader. Ideas for the African-American memorial include a tribute to those who fought in the Civil War and U.S. Rep. George Henry White, thought to be the last black congressman of the Reconstruction era.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Andrew Jackson, buffalo post, Civil War, Ella Baker, Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock, Gwen Florio, Lillian Exum Clement, Lumbee, Native American news, North Carolina Capitol, Reconstruction, Trail of Tears, U.S. Rep. George Henry White

The newly composed “Wissahickon Scenes” – a piece that blends Lenape tribal melodies with a traditional violin concerto – was showcased this week at a concert by the Philadelphia Classical Symphony.

It will be heard again tomorrow night as part of a larger program in Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns, here.

The piece is by Maurice Wright, a Temple University faculty member, and incorporates Lenape field recordings made available to Wright by the American Philosophical Society.
The piece featured the solo work of violinst Hirono Oka.

As Stearns writes:

Violin solist Hirono Oka (Paul Arnold photo/Philadelphia Inquirer)

Native American melodies also have a lot of repeated notes that don’t meld well with Euro-based, goal-oriented functional harmony. Wright’s solution was aesthetic coexistence; it felt fairly natural in our post-postmodern age, while also maintaining a contrast suggestive of the different universe Native Americans inhabited.

The three movements of Wissahickon Scenes had extramusical significance: The first was full of pleasure dances, the second the infamous Trail of Tears along which the defeated tribes were pushed west, and the third embodying the culture’s spirituality.

Fueled by considerable inner impetus, the piece makes a good case for itself, with second and third movements that are particularly entrancing. “Trail of Tears” avoids cliched operatic pathos with a cumulative impact from numbing, plodding rhythms and gray string coloration. In the third movement, Wright gave the violin soloist a traditionally spectacular cadenza, but also incorporated a field recording of a Native American voice on tape in a melody that’s said to be a prayer. Such spirituality is reflected in Wright’s music not with anything typically beatific, but with inner steadiness that no doubt helped the tribe to emotionally survive genocide.

It sounds beautiful.

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Philosophical Society, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Hirono Oka, Maurice Wright, Native American news, Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Temple University, Trail of Tears, Wissahickon Scenes

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has announced that he ”absolutely” intends to relocate people from the city’s poor neighborhoods and downsize his city. (See Detroit News story here.)

“If we don’t do it, you know this whole city is going to go down. I’m hopeful people will understand that,” Bing said in a radio interview this week. “If we can incentivize some of those folks that are in those desolate areas, they can get a better situation.”

Rob Capriccioso, in his Native Pop column for True Slant, here, terms it “a dangerous policy road.”

Already, comparisons to the U.S. government policy of American Indian relocation have popped up.

“Sounds like reservations to me; it sounds like telling people to move,”community activist Ron Scott said in a recent news report. “The citizens of the city of Detroit who built this city, the working class, didn’t create this situation. You are diminishing the constitutional options people have by contending you have a crisis.”

Just a reminder to anyone looking in from Detroit: forced relocation of tribal citizens is now considered a failed U.S. policy. At the time, for decades even, the solution seemed like a good one — the only one — to many policy makers.

But the policy ended up robbing sovereign citizens of their traditional homes and sacred land. Poverty, broken spirits, alcoholism, and many other social ills resulted.

Capriccioso reminds us we’re still paying hundreds of millions of federal dollars to cope with the after-effects of that one – and are likely to keep paying it for years to come.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Detroit, Gwen Florio, Mayor Dave Bing, Native American news, Native Pop, Rob Capriccioso, Trail of Tears, True Slant

President Andrew Jackson

Eventually, five tribes ended up leaving, on a forced march now known as the “Trail of Tears,” during which thousands of Indians died from starvation, exposure, and disease.

Maj. David Haley carried the letter to the tribal leaders more than 180 years ago, according to this Philadelphia Inquirer story. But for years, the only evidence of it was a draft.

Jackson’s tone in the letter alternates between cajoling and bullying:

“Say to them as friends and brothers to listen[to] the voice of their father, & friend,” Jackson wrote. “Where [they] now are, they and my white children are too near each other to live in harmony & peace. Their game is destroyed and many of their people will not work & till the earth. Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of their nation has gone, their father has provided a co[untry] large enough for them all, and he ad[vises] them to go to it.”

And, he went on to say, “Tell them to listen. [The proposed plan] is the only one by which [they can be] perpetuated as a nation.”

The letter was found this summer in a private family collection, and sold to the Raab Collection, a Philadelphia-based dealer of autographs, historical documents and manuscripts.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime find,” says Nathan Raab, company vice president. “It’s one of the most important documents in American history. To discover it after nearly two centuries is nothing short of breathtaking.”

Images can be viewed at the firm’s Web site, here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Chickasaw, Choctaw, President Andrew Jackson, Raab Collection, Trail of Tears

North Carolina's Capitol (National Park Service photo)

Yet, a similar scan of the people depicted in its Capitol in Raleigh might lead one to believe that just about everybody in the state is white, points out this story in the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.

The story lists the following art works in the Capitol: Fourteen statues on the grounds; inside, an equal number of statues, busts and plaques – depicting the state’s three signers of the Declaration of Independence, former governors, veterans and the 51 ladies who organized the Edenton tea party in 1774.

That includes a statue of Andrew Jackson, who oversaw the forced removal of Native Americans from their homelands on the infamous “Trail of Tears” march that killed thousands in the 1830s. There’s even a statue of former Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock, a leading spokesman for the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900.

Diversity tiptoes into the Capitol grounds’ artwork only at the Vietnam Memorial, which depicts three members of the military, one white, one black, and one Lumbee.

Now Eddie Davis, a former teacher, has asked the state Historical Commission to add a Hall of Inclusion on the second floor of the Capitol with plaques recognizing historical contributions by racial and ethnic minorities.

Sounds reasonable, yes?

Well, no, at least not to everyone. John Sanders, an author and researcher on the Capitol who is retired from the University of North Carolina’s School of Government, opines that “to convert the state Capitol to a showcase for one cause, however worthy, would open it up as a showcase for other causes. Its significance as a local historic landmark would be compromised.”

We’re thinking its significance as a historical landmark is already compromised. But that’s just us. What do you think?

Gwen Florio

Tags: :, Andrew Jackson, buffalo post, Native American news, North Carolina Capitol, racism, Trail of Tears