An interview wtith Matthias Dell, who I first met in 2017 when he contacted me for an article in der Freitag on our documentary and related topics. Follow the link to listen to the interview at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Sound clips of the documentary are included, such as of Dr. Hartmut Lutz and Gerald Dittmer (Ho-chunk). Interested in a screening for your organization, university or group? Here.
Germans are still asking the same questions, and generally ignoring the answers.
“Indianthusiasm” still continues despite the possibility of having positive, reciprocal and healthy collaboration and cooperation with Native and Indigenous peoples than ever before. Not the “white” decided and written narratives, the fake Indians in red-face at big parks and shows, the scholars who make “Indians” their career yet are employed by and supported organizations, groups and other entities that have actively harmed and continue to harm Native peoples and cultures, and more! That’s all loving in the wrong way, just like our documentary and multiple other resources have showed.
The same issues are present despite educating on Native stereotypes and the effects, origins and interconnections of stereotyping. Why? Because of willful insistence on violating the rights of other peoples and groups. Because of Eurocentrim and self-important prioritization “white” desires, gratification and “fun” over over the heal and safety of another person or peoples, which is Rape Culture. Ignoring when someone says, “No, stop, you’re hurting me,” but you not only rationalize or defend your activities, but you teach your own children such inherently violent acts, is one of the most horrible and life-affective idealogies to teach.
This in turn teaches lack of empathy, selfishness and cruelty, usually with a smile and a dose of gaslighting the victim, “See? That’s not so bad. You’re just too sensitive.” That mentality also contributes to be epidemic of pedophilia and pedo-fetishization, the apathy people display when children as harmed, especially if it’s certain ethnicities. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard, “That’s just how those people are!” Always pointing fingers but, as the saying goes, three fingers are pointing back at you!
Germany today is the reflective of Germany of it’s worst past. Using the excuse of defending it’s (non) culture, it’s racist culture, to passively and aggressively violate others. It’s no surprise that it also continues to rationalize and ignore the violations, genocides and ethnic cleansings happening around the world, and in fact, is actively supporting and defending. It’s sad and maddeningly to see a country and society that prides itself on being an open-minded, democratic space yet are horribly outdated, inflexible, and not incapable but unwilling to accept its dupliciality in those acts. Homegrown self-delusions about racist, stereotyping behaviors helps keep this critical flaw alive and well.
Germany as a whole continues to ignore and dismiss the reality of how stereotyping, whether one believes specific ones are positive, are connected to all other negative behaviors and situation in society. Stereotypes oversimplify and reduce highly complex knowledge, peoples, groups, etc. to snipets of usually false and harmful gossip. Even stereotypes like “Natives are so peaceful, spiritual and good” is negative because we’re people just like any others, with good and bad, bigots, shysters, whatever, so we are then not allowed to be ourselves but are expected to meet the fantasies of those who have gained power and dominance through horrific violence, and control virtually everything. A job as anything else but a dancer or using your “nativeness”? No way, your university degrees mean nothing! A date who doesn’t want to play, “Cowboys & Indians”? Not a chance!
Most people don’t realize or care, I’m a psychologist who specialties are intergenerational trauma, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and LGBTIQ2S support. Do I ever get asked about that? The 1st one, rarely. The others? Never. I’m a writer of modern gothic and romance novels, award-winning and positively reviewed. Never had my books accepted by Dussman or anyone else in Germany.
Natives are only allowed to be one way to meet “their” wants and needs. Otherwise, they have zero use or place for us. We are not us. We are a tool, a toy, a marketing strategy, an object lesson, that is destructive to minds, to cultures, to communities. It’s a large part of the suicide epidemic to Native communites, for your information. And tokenism can still be tokenism, as can speaking for us instead allowing us to speak for ourselves, or needing us just when a new film comes out to explain the same information again.
The practice and following of stereotyping is a reductive, inherently violent belief system which Natives continue to be subjected to. And we share this deplorable situation with other marginalized and minoritized groups. There is power to do good, to be fair, to apologize, to change, to be better, but there’s a collective decision not to do so. To waste time with whataboutisms, “gatchas” and “But….!!!” The collective decision to be racism, to be warmongers, to be apathetic, to reject responsibility for the harm, violence and death means no justice. Not for us, not for Gaza, not for the Sudan, Namibia, and I can go on and on and on. Interconnectedness. All of these things are connected.
We have a common enemy of life, it might be said, so we must work together with others who do want a better world for all children, a better future and treatment of differences as strengths, not something to be villified or exploited. All of us who used, misused, ignored, and our lives, cultures, and bodies politicized, appropriated and defiled, and its more of us than “them”, and we are commited to happiness, not suppression, labeling and control.
Red Haircrow 
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