It's time for Indians to look to better future, not grim past, Yellowtail says

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

It's time for American Indians to stop being victims of a horrific past and start being self-sufficient individuals and entrepreneurs, determined to build a brighter future, Bill Yellowtail told a Bozeman audience Thursday night.

"We Indians have to stop identifying ourselves by our tragedies and start identifying ourselves by our hopes, expectations and successes," he said.

Yellowtail received standing applause from a crowd of about 200 at the Museum of the Rockies, where he gave the 2007 Phyllis Berger Memorial Lecture.

Yellowtail, 59, holds Montana State University's Katz Endowed Chair in Native American studies. Originally from Wyola, the son of a Crow father and Irish mother, he has been a regional Environmental Protection Agency director in the Clinton administration, a Montana state senator, and in 1996 an unsuccessful candidate for Congress.

It is time, Yellowtail said, to return to traditional Indian values of self-sufficiency and of the powerful individual, and time to end 200 years of waiting for the great white father, the church, the U.S. government or even tribal governments to come to the rescue.

* He recounted the ills plaguing Indian country — high rates of poverty, infant mortality, teen suicide, obesity and diabetes, and epidemic substance abuse. Of the 33 schools that failed No Child Left Behind tests last year, every one serves principally native students.

The poorest county in the nation is on a South Dakota reservation, and the poorest three counties in Montana all have Indian reservations. Unemployment for all of Montana is 2.8 percent, but in Indian country it soars to 50, 60 or 70 percent.

Yellowtail said it's time to be blunt, not politically correct, and to face difficult truths. Native people have the choice to stick with bleakness and despondency, he said, "or say 'Enough!'"

Some blame history — genocide, bigotry, injustice, the white man, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he said.

But, he argued, "Victimhood is even more destructive."

In addition to seeking college training to become teachers and lawyers, native people need to study economics and entrepreneurship, he said.

Yellowtail cited the example of David Anderson, a Chippewa-Choctaw tribal member who founded the successful Famous Dave's BBQ national restaurant chain and later became an assistant secretary of the Interior.

People on the Crow reservation are also showing spirit and ambition and starting their own businesses, he said, and it makes them feel proud.

Some think that individual enterprise is contrary to tribal values of kinship and community, or that it means greed, but it actually means being resourceful, Yellowtail said.

It's imperative that Indian people give themselves permission to pursue education and excellence, to pursue a livelihood outside the reservation community, and yet be welcomed back later, he said.

Yellowtail applauded native schools that have students start each day by shouting out their values: "Integrity! Respect! Justice! Stewardship! Spirituality! Excellence! No excuses! Step up!"

Asked by an audience member about the guilt and shame that white people feel over the historic mistreatment of Indians, Yellowtail said such feelings only promote a sense of victimhood.

"As regrettable as that history might have been," he said, "now it's time to move forward."