Standing Bear and the Nebraska Revolution

1001 Books to Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 110
Joe Starita, “I Am a Man”: Chief Standing Bear's Journey For Justice

Chief Standing Bear didn’t want to upend American legal principles or found a new Native American nation; but he did both these things anyway. When he packed his meager belongings and left the badly organized Ponca reservation without permission, he wanted only to bury his eldest son on his ancestral homeland, overlooking Nebraska’s Niobrara River. He might also, perhaps unconsciously, have hoped the United States Army would kill him.

As a journalist rather than a credentialed historian, University of Nebraska professor emeritus Joe Starita brings a distinctive approach to this account. Like a historian, Starita prizes primary sources, which this case provides in abundance. But he also incorporates oral history from Ponca people, many directly descended from Standing Bear. He focuses not just on describing events, but also contextualizing them for audiences not necessarily familiar with one of American history’s most contentious cases.

The Ponca Nation probably originated east of the Mississippi River, but by the time they encountered White colonists, they were a settled, agrarian people overlooking the Niobrara River. Like other nations, they had contentious relations with Whites, but by the 1870s, they lived peacefully with their White neighbors. That wasn’t good enough for the Department of the Interior, though, which imposed a forced resettlement program.

Thus a succession of Indian Agents from New England, and infantry officers unfamiliar with Nebraska, forced the Ponca off their land. Force-marched to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), the Ponca found inhospitable terrain, neighbors who didn’t speak their language, and malaria. Many Ponca, including several members of the council of chiefs, died. When sickness took Standing Bear’s teenage son, he left one dying request: bury me in our people’s homeland.

Many Americans know, and lament, our history of forcing Native Americans off their land. But Joe Starita stresses how slapdash and poorly organized this practice was. American generals signed Indian treaties hastily, without bothering to check whether they might contradict existing agreements with other nations. The United States promised Ponca land to the Ponca and also the Lakota, and because the Lakota were better-armed, the Ponca had to move.

Besides being internally consistent, it had become unpopular with many Americans. By 1879, when Standing Bear defied the Indian Agency and walked back to Nebraska with about thirty followers, the local White population favored the Ponca’s claims. General George Crook, a decorated “Indian Fighter,” was ordered to arrest Standing Bear, but even he didn’t support the action. Soon the nascent wire services grabbed Standing Bear’s story and took it nationwide.

Chief Standing Bear (left) and General George Crook

(The Ponca’s popularity wasn’t entirely without White judgment. White settlers liked the Ponca because they wore European-style trousers, lived in timber-framed houses, and worshiped in an Episcopal church. Unlike their warlike neighbors, the Lakota, the Ponca reassured White settlers that White civilization was popular and desirable, and their settlements in formerly Native lands served a Christian mission. Starita describes, but doesn’t judge, these facts.)

Standing Bear made his real breakthrough, though, when his White supporters convinced him to do something no Native American had ever done: sue his arresting officer, General Crook, for the writ of habeus corpus. Before 1879, Native Americans had no legal standing in American courts. Standing Bear’s supporters believed something had happened to change this condition: the 14th Amendment had redefined citizenship. But they needed a court case to test this belief.

Starita’s account changes at this point, shifting from a tragic history of racist actions, to a courtroom drama. The Omaha federal court preserves copious records of the trial. But, as even Starita admits, the outcome wasn’t entirely certain; American courts had historically been self-serving in dispensing justice, and under the original Constitution, “Indians not taxed” weren’t legally human. Standing Bear’s lawsuit wasn’t small change for a tumultuous, barely unified nation.

The case unfolds through evidence, testimony, and public sentiment. But Starita, an engaging storyteller, knows something the original 19th-Century audience wouldn’t have known: General George Crook, the named defendant in Standing Bear’s lawsuit, actually supported the prosecution, and actively helped their case. Like many frontier Americans, Crook had grown discouraged by ceaseless Indian Wars, and wanted to force a change.

History records that Standing Bear won his case, forcing the United States to recognize Native Americans as legal persons. History also records that Standing Bear led the Northern Ponca back to Nebraska, where their descendents remain. But Starita demonstrates, through evidence and compelling storytelling, that this outcome wasn’t certain. Then as now, America required brave individuals and groups to stand against power, to force America to be free.

Lindsay Ellis, Steven Crowder, and the American Doom Spiral

Lindsay Ellis (promo photo)

I was baffled and frustrated when, late in 2021, popular internet personality Lindsay Ellis quit YouTube, her primary platform. And not just because I’m a fan, either. Ellis’ retreat from a controversy that never should’ve happened feels misplaced. I mean, I understand Ellis’ personal pain at the vitriol dedicated against her for a single misplaced tweet. But considering that Lindsay Ellis is gone, and Steven Crowder is still working, something seems deeply misguided here.

For those who don’t follow internet pissing contests, in March of 2021, Ellis posted a flippant tweet noting that Disney’s Raya and the Dragon followed the same beat sheet as Nickelodeon’s Avatar: the Last Airbender. Because both properties feature Asian protagonists, this statement was construed as anti-Asian racism on Ellis’ part. Never mind that both properties were developed by American companies for primarily White audiences. Tweeters know racism when they see it.

By contrast, Steven Crowder, a failed actor and part-time stand-up comedian who mainly makes his living as a conservative podcaster and vlogger, has literally donned yellowface and a conical hat to shill anti-Asian feeling on his YouTube channel. This is in addition to having been censured (but not de-platformed) by YouTube for racism, homophobia, and other forms of undisguised bigotry. He consistently excuses his inappropriate behavior with “Hey, it’s just comedy!”

Again, I understand Ellis taking the Twitter outrage personally. The swarming behavior that followed her casual tweet was ugly and, in her telling, persisted for months afterward. We know this happens: in 2013, a similarly flippant tweet submarined a private citizen, Justine Sacco, who still apparently can’t find work. In 2016, netizens likewise mobbed poet Calvin Trillin for a silly poem about food hipsters, because he mentioned Chinese cuisine. Swarming behavior is the norm, not the exception.

Initially, I thought Ellis retreated, while Crowder absorbs the outrage directed against his racist behavior, because Ellis cares what others think, and Crowder doesn’t. But I’m not sure anymore. Watching their respective platforms over time, I think Crowder cares deeply about the anger directed against him. In recent months, he’s donned yellowface, claimed the only crop Black farmers grow is cannabis, and aimed a stereotypically “faggy” voice at gay journalists. Crowder wants people angry.

Steven Crowder demonstrating his usual benevolent, uplifting views
on race in America (click to enlarge)

No, the difference isn’t that only one cares, it’s that anger, for one, is a desired outcome. Lindsay Ellis’ entire internet presence, from her work with Channel Awesome and PBS to her own long-form video essays, has focused on helping people consume arts, literature, and current events more carefully. She wants people to read for greater nuance, to savvy complexity, and to sit with difficult art before having strong emotional reactions. She cares about subtlety.

Steven Crowder, by contrast, gins up anger. He doesn’t much distinguish between directions or nuance, the very issues that define Ellis’ critiques. Whether his True Believers share his performative outrage at minorities, women, the poor, and other out-groups, or his opponents direct their rage at him, it doesn’t matter much. Crowder gets paid by subscriptions from True Believers, and opponents voicing their outrage are money in his coffers. It’s all the same to him.

Lindsay Ellis wants audiences to slow their thinking, consume more carefully, and pay attention to fine details. Steven Crowder wants people to swarm like yellowjackets. Notably, however, this has a paradoxical effect. Ellis, whose work is often lumped together with “LeftTube” despite not being overtly political, believes that more thoughtful individuals will collaborate in building a better society. Though Crowder preaches conservative individualistic ideals, he wants audiences to sacrifice their individuality.

Thus, as critics before me have stated, individualism is the enemy of individuality.

Ellis believes society benefits if more people think more deeply about difficult situations. Crowder wants masses to surrender to pre-conscious anger, fear, and rage. Therefore, when one poorly received tweet turned into gut-level wrath, it wasn’t just that they directed that anger against Ellis, it was that Ellis’ entire philosophy failed. Crowder gets similar incensed responses to his racist, sexist, homophobic behavior regularly, and he’s never going to stop, because it feeds his roots.

Besides Justine Sacco and Calvin Trillin, similar Twitter-based rage has turned against Ellis, Laci Green, and Natalie Wynn. (Huh, that’s a lot of women.) Most have gone, at least temporarily, into retirement; Sacco is reportedly still living in hiding eight years later. This continuing saga calls into question the Leftist belief that we can fix society by good people doing the right thing. It appears too many people are one trigger away from complete surrender.

The Fable of Modern Industrial Ruin

Scott Cooper (director), Antlers

An idealistic schoolteacher returns to her Oregon hometown, a move more optimistic than smart, given the trauma baked into the landscape. One of Julia’s middle-school students is a talented artist and storyteller, but his stories are dark, and his drawings are in shades of blood red. Julia projects her childhood abuse onto young Lucas, and makes him her personal project, perhaps seeking her own redemption. But things are secretly far, far worse.

Writer-director Scott Cooper’s latest, which languished in post-production for two years, isn’t quite sure what it wants to be. He populates his economically bereft mountainous setting with characters who would’ve been better served by a character drama. Its Native American-inspired horror makes for engaging allegory, without being particularly scary. Cooper’s heart was clearly in the right place, but watching this movie, his storyboard apparently wasn’t.

Young Lucas Weaver retreats from bullies, studies his lap during class, and hurries home every afternoon. The local sheriff acknowledges the apparent open secret: Lucas’ junkie father operates a meth lab, which everyone quietly tolerates. Except, his father Frank hasn’t been seen outside in weeks. We, the audience, see what locals never see: Lucas keeps his father and younger brother locked in the attic, dopesick and howling impotently.

Julia Meadows left Oregon when she turned eighteen, but has returned, for reasons never explained. She shares her childhood home with her brother Paul, who became sheriff largely because nobody else wanted the job. She hates the house, though; every shadow contains traces of childhood abuse, which is never specified, but clearly sexual. (If Julia and Paul didn’t explicitly declare themselves siblings, you’d assume something closer. Call it trauma bonding.)

Therein lies an important problem with this movie: Julia’s lingering unresolved trauma gets explored in some detail, causing audiences to feel strongly for her, but beyond this exploration, nothing comes of it. Her flashbacks maybe justify her disproportionate investment in trying to understand and protect Lucas. But the trauma serves the movie’s themes, not its story, and Julia never clearly indicates whether she’s achieved anything by revisiting old wounds.

The real story is Lucas and his family. Lucas is smart, sensitive, and artistic, a fish-out-of-water in his blue-collar hometown. His junkie father has become an eating machine, diseased by years of using substances to dull the pain, and Lucas feeds him by throwing roadkill and wild-caught game into the attic where Dad lives. Now Lucas’ little brother Aiden also shows signs of the family disease, and Lucas risks having to watch the cycle repeat.

Jeremy T. Thomas as Lucas and Keri Russell as Julia in Antlers

This allegory of rural anomie and generational anguish should’ve been the entire movie. Julia might make an engaging protagonist in a Bergman-style drama about someone trying, and failing, to overcome her personal demons, but in this movie, she feels like a supporting character who received way too much screen time. Because Julia fails to achieve closure, or at least progress, she leaves us frustrated. Lucas carries the real story.

Lucas’ painful myth unfolds against an atmospheric background. In several shots, the Oregon landscape dominates the characters. One chain-link fence might separate virgin forest from roads once paved but now abandoned, a labyrinth of ruts and cracks. Lucas, walking home, is dwarfed beside a clear-running stream, and the mountains beyond. Every shot is dreary and overcast; never once does the screen picture include enough sunlight to cast a shadow.

I’m reluctant to say what comes next, but it needs said: Scott Cooper, and maybe Nick Antosca’s short story which inspired Cooper’s movie, shouldn’t have used Native American mythology. An introductory title card includes narration spoken in Ojibwe, and the monster, once revealed, comes from Algonquin legend. These nations are nowhere near Oregon, which Cooper presumably chose for its evocative landscape shots. There is no pan-Native culture or religion.

Cooper has, sadly, conscripted Native American fable into telling a story of White spiritual dislocation. That’s frequently an effective technique, because White American culture has long recognized that Natives have a connection with land, medicine, and spirit that colonists lack. But getting the details right matters; transplanting a Great Lakes myth into Oregon shows ignorance of both Algonquin religion and Oregon.

I enjoyed plenty about this movie, particularly the way Lucas attempts to appease the father who increasingly becomes monstrous. (“I’ll feed him,” Lucas whispers with eyes wide, “and he’ll love me.”) But that could’ve been accomplished, probably in more depth, if the movie had jettisoned the unnecessary grown-up characters and misplaced Indigenous myth. This movie’s heart got lost in the bells and whistles.

Challenging the American Heresy

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

Christianity, a faith founded by a country preacher who called followers to feed the hungry and challenge the powerful, has become the religion of American dominion. Jesus called the lowly and disfranchised to band together and raise one another up; but the loudest, most media-savvy portion of American Christendom has thrown its weight behind militarism, White supremacy, and anti-egalitarianism. White Evangelicals are the demographic most likely to have voted for Donald Trump. So what happened?

Obery M. Hendricks, an ordained elder and sometime seminary professor, wondered exactly this. How could people calling themselves Christians believe principles so clearly unaligned with Christ’s message? His answers will cause discomfort among many Christians, including those like me, who don’t support today’s Evangelical message. He ties political Evangelicalism with Christian Nationalism, a philosophy that supports American aims, right or wrong, and believes in the saving person of Jesus, but not in Jesus’ recorded teachings.

To begin, Hendricks creates meaningful definitions of Christianity and Evangelicalism. Both share common roots, and sometimes represent conflicting visions. Christianity begins with Jesus Christ, but not every Christian reads Jesus’ message equally. Likewise, Evangelicalism has historically been tied to progressive values, including abolition and women’s suffrage. During the Twentieth Century, though, Evangelicalism has drifted politically rightward, and is frequently associated with retrogressive, even repressive values.

With his scholarly foundation in Biblical history, Hendricks emphasizes that our Christian message derives from not only what Christ, the Apostles, and the Prophets said, but what they meant to their original audiences. Conservative Evangelicals love quoting orphaned Bible verses, like Mark 14:7 or 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Hendricks puts these and other verses in their Judaean context, demonstrating with evidence that withholding food, clothing, asylum, and other support is never in accord with Christian principles.

The Evangelicals whom Hendricks describes share one important trait: they’re White. Hendricks, and several religious scholars he quotes, agree that Black Evangelicals believe oppression and injustice happen in America, and exercise their liberties to challenge the forces of repression. White Evangelicals, by contrast, believe oppression happens elsewhere, or inflate insignificant incidents (cake) to the level of Herodian tyranny. Though America’s racial delineations aren’t as ironclad as in the past, this racial distinction still matters significantly.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.

Different narratives have emphasized different origins for right-wing American Evangelicalism. Historian Kevin M. Kruse, whom Hendricks quotes, connects Evangelicalism with pro-business libertarian economics. Hendricks finds much compelling about this hypothesis, and spends an entire chapter on Evangelical economics. Meanwhile, Evangelicals claim the Roe v. Wade decision galvanized their movement, but Hendricks uses documentary evidence that it actually took fifteen years to push that to prominence.

Instead, Hendricks associates Evangelicalism with Green v. Connally, the case that stripped tax-exempt protections from private schools, and other church-owned operations, that practiced racial discrimination. A slurry of right-wing religious and political leaders, like Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and Pat Robertson, organized behind opposition to this change. In other words, issues like libertarian economics or anti-abortion politics are latecomers to the Evangelical story. This movement first gelled around White Supremacy.

Many Christians, including both clergy and congregants, reject this Christian Nationalist violence. Hendricks contrasts Christians who still believe loving our neighbor, and protecting “the least of these” are foundational values, with Christians who support guns and borders, and seek an earthly King. (Hendricks quotes generously from the Parable of the Sheep and Goats; parables loom large in his theology.) Not all American Christians support the Trumpist wing, Hendricks emphasizes, though anti-Trumpists often haven’t been media-savvy.

Throughout his work, Hendricks has frequently emphasized Christianity as a community, and Christian action as cooperative solidarity. He contrasts this with right-wing Evangelicalism, which is individualist and egocentric. In Hendricks’ reading, Christianity focuses on how we live this God-given life, not whether we get to Heaven after death. This means always remaining conscious of how we treat our neighbors and how we greet strangers, something right-wing Christianity has completely abandoned.

Throughout this book, Hendricks attempts to reawaken the Evangelical Christian conscience. This isn’t easy, since he describes demagogues who haven’t always shown they have a conscience. In his final pages, Hendricks describes himself finishing his manuscript in December 2020, believing he’d seen the lowest depths of American Christendom. We can only imagine how he received the following weeks and months.

Christianity has served diverse purposes for diverse people; some purposes have been, sadly, harmful. Hendricks encourages Christians to remember not only the person of Jesus Christ, but also His message, of comforting the bereaved and finding the lost. Hopefully Christians still have time to remember.

No More Hot Takes

J.K. Rowling

Nobody likes to admit they’ve been wrong. Neuroscience has shown that being proven wrong triggers your brain’s pain receptors, shifting recipients into self-defense mode. We will defend our beliefs as violently as we’ll defend ourselves against somebody chopping off our arm. I haven’t encountered anybody researching from the other angle, but I suspect the reverse is also true: taking down somebody’s cherished beliefs makes us feel like avenging knights.

I started this blog because people started sending me free books, because they determined my opinion was worth something. Some bean-counter deep within the catacombs of Corporate USA decided that well-written opinions from non-professional critics could move product, and my reviews were sufficiently well-written to be worth money. This made me, perhaps, a bit big-headed, convinced that the world deserved my opinions published in a centralized location.

To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, the internet is great because it gives every pissant their own anthill to piss off of. Popular blog platforms like Blogspot, which hosts me, and other sites specializing in user-created content, like YouTube, are full of people who review books and other products. Opinions written by dedicated amateurs are gold for parent companies like Google (which owns both Blogspot and YouTube). To say nothing of publishers.

Most such opinion-mongers aren’t subtle. Though I try to keep my reviews to 750 words—conventional newspaper length—many will spew thousands upon thousands of words per book. YouTube reviewers, who seemingly review mostly self-published books by other YouTubers, often make “reviews” longer than feature films, criticizing on a line-by-line basis. I wonder who actually reads or watches these reviews, many longer than doctoral dissertations.

William Shakespeare

If you actually have consumed these reviews, however, you’ve probably noticed something I have: these reviewers make bank by hating everything. Apparently the key to success at online opinion marketing is to hold disdainful views and practice fine, granular fault-finding. The negative Hot Take, in which reviewers offer proof—proof I tell you—that whatever you like is secretly terrible, and you’re probably terrible for liking it.

Consider the recent dogpile on J.K. Rowling. Lord knows I have. Her Harry Potter novels still engage and enthrall children because they address an otherwise unmet storytelling need. But as she’s descended into her own mean-spirited id, multiple critics, professional and amateur, have swarmed her, nitpicking her writing. Most home in on two claims, that her writing justifies slavery, which I would refute, and that she’s frequently antisemitic, which I can’t deny.

However, I find this swarming deeply thorny. When this many people claim moral and intellectual superiority to the author of the bestselling novels of our generation, they aren’t just deconstructing Rowling. Like anti-Stratfordians, who claim they uniquely have insights proving that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare, they’re claiming to be smarter than the author whose works have uplifted audiences of millions. They’re also, by extension, claiming to be smarter than you.

Billboarding our ability, as critics, to find fault with very popular works, is a form of self-aggrandizement. We want to establish our credentials on the bones of more popular, more established creators. The Internet, where Hot Takes and “you won’t believe this” listicles make bank, has proven itself a great host for this self-aggrandizement. Internet reading rewards surface-level literacy, short attention spans, and grandstanding at other people’s expense.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m frequently guilty of this tendency too. As a critic, it’s fun to offer Hot Takes where we ballyhoo ourselves. I’ve complained about this recently. By proclaiming how I’ve uncovered the shortcomings in some unbelievably popular novelist, playwright, songwriter, or whatever, I gleefully declare I’ve triumphed over that person. But tacitly, I also claim I’ve triumphed over you, for enjoying their product, you philistine.

Stephen King

Mean-spirited reviews are fun to write, and sometimes, they’re justified. Sometimes, professional creatives get so suffused in their field that they lose contact with regular audiences; consider how many novels Stephen King wrote in the 1990s about novel-writing and novelists. But when attacking powerful people, it’s necessary to remember that it’s not only about bringing down misguided potentates; their fans also trust them, for their own reasons.

We’ve reached the annual cycle where everybody takes stock of their lives and makes plans for the future. I must acknowledge that, at this life stage, maybe I’ll have a creative career, and maybe I won’t. But I can use the platform I have, however limited, to raise up others. Not just fellow creatives, but those who love and trust them. And I must use that platform responsibly.