American Embassy/Beijing
FPO San Francisco, CA 96655
October 24, 1991
Mr. William Means
American Indian Council
c/o Crossfire, CNN
Atlanta, Georgia
Dear Mr. Means:
I have nothing but the greatest respect for the American Indian and the American Indian movement. Indeed, I have seven nieces and nephews and grand nieces in two different branches of our family who bear Indian blood and are proud of it. I hope your are not so racist that you resent this type of inter-marriage, which all other Americans take for granted and which has made our country truly the melting pot of the world.
I have some trouble with both negroes and Indians who, in the interest of some form of racial particularity (which by some form of illogic they seem to think is counter-racist) oppose such intermarriage and even insist on trying to change the names that history has traditionally assigned, i.e. trying to get the whole world to call them African Americans, or, in your case, the Original Americans. We're all Americans. That's the beauty of our culture. Anthropolgists have used the term "Amerinds" to describe your historic culture, which certainly seems less arrogant and particularistic than "Original Americans".
If you truly love the land we jointly occupy, you might be interested in the belief of some, for which interesting new evidence is emerging, that humanity, i.e. all of us, didn't start out in Africa or the Middle East, but in what is now the United States. And the original men migrated first towards Asia across the land bridge, spreading to Africa and Europe long before the last Ice Age, whence whey again re-migrated back to the New World, becoming the Amerind race. Now that's something the American Indian movement might consider integrating into your teachings to boost the self-image of yourselves and your children.
A final word or two about your strong feeling that calling sports teams "Braves" or "Indians" is demeaning. As Fred Barnes said on the Crossfire show, one doesn't name a sports team after something one doesn't hold in the highest regard. If we're not to have "Utes" (the name of my old college team), or "Braves", or "Indians", or "Seminoles", must we also give up such team names as "Vikings", "Spartans", "Trojans", "Irish"? These names were also clearly chosen because of the respect in which the fighting qualities of the Irish, Spartans, Trojans etc. were (and are) held.
You leaders of the Amerind movement would do better to take hold of the great respect indicated by the choice of Amerindian tribal names for winning sports teams and to build on this as a means of installing self-confidence and self-respect in your children, pick-a-backing your movement's aims on this basis of respect. Sincerely,
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