Something got stuck in my craw this morning and I couldn’t help but post on the topic. I was watching the Today Show while drinking my coffee before work and saw a segment on a couple of American tourists who were brutally attacked on a beach in Ecuador by a local gang (“savagely,” according to an NBC correspondent). Part of the segment involved an interview of Clint van Zandt, a former criminal profiler with the FBI. Near the end of Mr. van Zandt’s explanation of the crime he warned viewers to (paraphrasing from memory) “be careful when you travel abroad or you could end up in Indian Country pretty quickly.”
This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard this phrase. My brother-in-law, an Iraq war veteran who served two tours , has told me that commanders over there refer to hot-spots as “Indian Country.” When soldiers leave the safety of their bases, they go on missions into “Indian Country.”
This phrase has always bothered me. The fact that it was tossed around on the Number One morning news show in America by a former FBI agent bothers me even more, as the FBI is responsible for law enforcement in the real, non-hostile “Indian Country” here in the U.S.
The use of this phrase, and similar language (like that used by Justice Kennedy explaining that the second amendment was added to the Bill of Rights to allow settlers to defend themselves from wolves, bears, and “hostile Indians”) is symbolic of a view of the real Indian Country that has not yet faded from American consciousness. More than that, however, I think that this type of language, along with mascots and similar imagery, feeds back into this view of Indian Country.
The fact that our military, federal law enforcement agency, and Supreme Court conflate Indians and Indian Country with dangerous wild animals, foreign gangs, and enemies of the state is evidence that we are still viewed as dangerous outsiders in our own country – even by those charged with preserving the security of, and administering equal justice in, the real “Indian Country.”
Turtle Talk 