Wednesday, October 31, 2012

From our Indian, Eskimo, Finlander Agent in the Field

Actually, his heritage is even more complicated than that.  I'm currently working on a flow chart to diagram it, but we'll just say our "Indian Finlander Agent in the Field" to simplify things.  Regardless, he introduces an ingredient I was unaware of about the American (and well as Canadian) Indians.  Namely the refusal and bigotry against "things white" even though such things would help.  What's interesting about our Finlander/Indian Agent however, is that he is a capitalist, independent thinker amongst a people that are typically not (think being the one conservative at the scores of college parties).  Which begets some interesting questions and observations, one in particular I've had.

From our Agent:

I am Kindjal.  Let me describe a phenomena called Schrodingers Business Plan.  Whenever a white man has an idea which will help an indigenous people, it is simultaneously alive and dead.  It's alive because it would promote life, but it's dead because a white man thought of it.  Everyone knows that the Schrodinger paradox ultimately describes something that's dead.
Cappy's posting was followed by a bunch of reader comments explaining why it can't be done.  If Apollo 13 can survive a catastrophic hull breach 200 thousand miles from Earth, then indigenous people can find a way to implement Cappy's idea.  Sure there's differences in laws and business structure from region to region, but the basic idea can be modified for each individual case.  Indian tribes hire lawyers to do sort out these kinds of details.
Some years ago a very similar idea was presented at a meeting of my tribe here in Alaska, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. The idea died because the idea was presented by a white man who is a friend of mine  He is a white man who wanted prosperity for his half-breed daughter.  Do you know what she did instead of getting a nice job working for a wealthy indian tribe?  She overdosed on white man drugs and died.  But at least the tribe stopped an uppity white man from living out his evil colonial fantasy.  He has a dead idea and a dead daughter.  Red Power!
When I was a little boy, an elder of mine boasted that white school teachers who go to the village to work off their student loans had to learn village culture or they wouldn't be accepted.  I looked into her eyes and I knew right then that white teachers won't be accepted no matter what they do.  I saw the gloating in her eyes and it was evil.
  
White men habitually quote Socrates when discussing important things, "I know that I know nothing."  To me, this means for everything that anyone knows, white people know one more thing, and I admire them for knowing this thing.
What irks me more than anything is that the Indians (both Canadian and American) have it within their power to become richer than the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.  They could become veritable Hong Kongs overnight.  But because they've never buried the hatchet from over 200 years ago for transgressions of people who are long dead they let that irrational hold-over hatred prevent themselves from advancing, and (in my humble opinion) surpassing their socialism-obsessed white peers.  I don't say this to score "diversity" points or favoritism amongst the Indian community, I say it because  it's economic and true.  Indians, if they decided to use their sovereignty, could easily poach US and foreign businesses and in doing so become richer.

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