The Last Indian in the World

In June 2004, the American national media spent a considerable amount of airtime revisiting the events of June 1964 when three civil rights workers were murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi on what was the fortieth anniversary of the murders. National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) All Things Considered devoted airtime to a story, “Truth and Reconciliation in Neshoba County,” in which reporter Debbie Elliot went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, the seat of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, to examine how “people in Neshoba, both black and white, are grappling with their community’s legacy.” The story goes on to look at the activities of the thirty-member Philadelphia Task Force and dissects the activities of this group as racial networking under the black-white binary that has become synonymous with the civil rights movements in the United States. The story overlooked the several members of the Philadelphia Task Force of Mississippi Band of Choctaw tribal members whose roots in Neshoba Country predate that of whites and blacks by thousands of years; thus framing the discussion of this particular issue in “black and white” and excluding any evidence of Indian in that mix.\nThat date stands clearly in my mind, as it was my older daughter’s birthday. My daughter is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and her middle name is Nashoba, named after not the county of her father’s birth but after the clan from which that county takes its Choctaw name: wolf. It was a stark reminder to me of how Native peoples are completely taken out of a situation that is contextualized as a black or white issue, or when blacks and whites work together for the common good. There is no room for Indians in that scenario, according to the American media, because for so long the media has believed its own creation: that of the vanishing Indian whose voice no longer matters in times of national crisis or mourning. The only relevant news on American Indians the media sees as fit to broadcast follows a narrow definition of what is newsworthy: anything that has to do with casinos or tribal corruption warrants an “in-depth view” on the tracking of Indian country

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