Get Out of Africa!

Last Saturday a week, I attended the African Dance program presented by my son and daughter’s USU African Dance Class. Scheduling challenges had relegated the performance to a few minutes duration before a Contra Dance in the converted gym of one of those old three story elementary schools, in Logan.

The first to enter were the drummers, it seems Africans have no other musical instruments. All were white skinned men, some old, some younger, with costumes reminiscent of Bill Cosby’s Afro centric period. Most had long hair done up in Rastafarian dreadlocks like the Jamaican witchdoctor from *Predator Two*. Their drums were hourglass shaped wooden tubes, larger but otherwise exactly like the Thai drum I had bought at the bazaar held at the Buddhist temple here in Layton; goat skin tied down with nylon cord.

The lead drummer addressed the audience; I couldn’t really call it a crowd, as at least half present were our family, or friends from camp. The drummer said some things about the drumming. I believe he previewed the upcoming dances and thanked all for attending. One comment did stick in my memory, he claimed that all music began in Africa, as did human life, and that Africa is the source of all culture.

“Ya like the Parthenon!’ I wanted to yell, but didn’t. I was playing with my grandsons.
The roar of the drums began.

After several false starts the beat enticed the dancers down the ramp from back stage to fill the floor, a small basketball court. One boy, my son, and three lines of young women, including the “professor”. My son assures me this instructor has actually been to Africa and learned the authentic dances.

As I watched the interesting gyrations, the room throbbing to the repetitive cadence of the drums, I was reminded of Elizabeth Taylor’s triumphant parade in the movie *Cleopatra*. I have never understood what possessed the director of that Hollywood marvel to insert the Watusi into the show. After ten minuets of very athletic and somewhat erotic bouncing, swaying, weaving, and jumping, the drums paused and we were invited to join in for a final shake and shimmy. I played with my grandson.

As the African Dance Class and its drummers beat a hurried retreat to make room for the violins and guitars of the Contra dance band, I kept thinking I’d seen it all before. Then it came to me; O.A. Indian dancing. Mahonri’s painted face – half black, half white -, Scott Hinrichs in full head dress, the Leaping Lemhi, David Maughan’s fire hoop, Paul Harris making balls, Doug Hopper’s bare chest, Jody in baggy leather pants, Trent’s Vigil Ceremony the night the bear came, tee pees in the mountains, Chingachgook and Uncas, secret ceremonies underneath the stars of Heaven.


When I was a boy and well into my young manhood, I was very active in the Order of the Arrow (O.A.), and honor fraternity within the Boy Scouts. One of the aims of the O. A. is the preservation of American Indian culture and traditions. A Point of interest, Boy Scouting – still the world’s largest youth organization – had its beginning in the emulation of American Indian culture. Baden Powell with his South African wood beads was a rather late joiner to the program.

When I was a boy, to enable me to join in the ceremonies, my mother made me an “Indian” costume out of burlap sacks. Other than putting the fringe on backward, so that it stuck up along the top of my arms rather than hanging down, I thought the outfit a right on stunner. Never much of a dancer, I couldn’t even master the box waltz back in MIA, I spent my Indian days building fires and reciting lines in the woods.

As a Professional Scouter my activities with the O.A. were second only to Camp in degree of pleasure obtained and commitment given. Many of the young men I worked with spent a great deal of money and endless hours of their time authenticating, constructing and decorating buckskin Indian shirts, loin cloths and leggings, and working on the even more elaborate feather covered “fancy dance” costumes. Along the way they learned about a noble culture and invested a good deal of heart and imagination, their souls, into becoming part of it. Imagine our frustration when the PC backlash began to build against white boys “playing” Indian.

There had been hints of this strange bigotry years earlier. Once on a field trip to the site of the Bear River Massacre, my USU Professor of American Indian History had thrown a little cold water on my love for Seton’s Indians when she said that Boy Scouts using Indian symbols, ceremonies, and costumes was considered inappropriate. It seemed too silly a prejudice to give credence to at the time. I had a staff member, blond with a handsome face and muscles; he looked like Peter Pan dancing with Tiger Lily’s band as high chief, or like Hiawatha’s friend Mondamin. However, as the years went by memos and directives began to come out from the National Council and the National Lodge recognizing, if not acquiescing to the mounting pressure of some on the BSA to curtail its usurpation of Indian traditions.

It had long bothered me that the Federal Government had restricted eagle feather ownership to “real” Indians, but to see even the BSA begin to draw a line between “whites” who admired and copied Indian traditions and “reds” who had a natural right to this culture.

I am not as connected to the O.A. as I once was, but I do not sense in their present activities the burning passion and pride in Indian culture that my young friends once possessed. The entire view point seems to have shifted from one of proud, even amorous immersion, to a somewhat embarrassed and uncomfortable observation from the side lines. Even more discouraging is the “You white people keep your hands off Indian customs, traditions, artifacts, and culture” attitude that has developed among some Indian and among many white University professors, such as erstwhile wanabe Indian and full time bigot, Ward Churchill.

I look back with some nostalgia to the day when the two most culturally immersed Indians I knew were Red Tail and Lone Wolf. Racially they were both white men; Red Tail with long blond braids wrapped in otter fur, Lone Wolf looking like Dustin Hoffman with a button nose. They both lived in teepees up Teton Canyon, and spent their time collecting and brain tanning hides off the road killed deer they gathered from the local highways and building authentic costumes, reading up on Indian traditions, and perfuming themselves with sage brush smoke.

Once, Red Tail convinced me to loan him my station wagon to take a bunch of white Indian camp staff members to the Sun Dance at Fort Hall Reservation. It was raining “cats and dogs” when they left camp; the clouds stretching unbroken to the western horizon. But they had faith. The rain at Treasure Mountain did not let up all day, but the Indian boys returned late that night. They had a miracle to tell. All swore that when it came time for the Sun Dance the clouds over Fort Hall opened and the sun shown till the ceremony was complete. It seems the Great Spirit doesn’t, or at least didn’t, check the skin color of his worshipers.

For generations, my camp crew has performed the Maori Hucka at the flag ceremonies. It was taught to me by a friend who had gone to New Zealand on a Mormon mission. It had never occurred to me that screaming and gesticulation to a South Pacific beat might be a culture crime, but recently I was told that the BYU football team was under onus for allowing white players to Hucka, and I was warned to be careful.

As I left the African dance program, walking through the playground turned parking lot, I looked up to the white topped towers of the Logan temple. They were bathed in electric light. Christmas music played on the CD in the car. I wondered at the roots of ceremony and music all around me and wondered how long it would be before the PC police would stop an athletic and rhythm driven, but painfully white, professor of African dance from contaminating African traditions by teaching dance to white kids in a snow covered Utah valley? I wondered when the drummers will be asked to shed their Nehru Jackets and multicolored Eisenhower caps and comb out the dreadlocks because the skin beneath them was not properly colored by some accident of DNA.

In the face of this silliness I feel to call for a new consciousness, a realization that all cultures past belong equally to all peoples of the present. Let’s recognize that pluralism and cosmopolitan lives are only feared by fanatics and fools. Let’s rejoice in our common humanity and choose our cultures by our interests, not our ancestors.