Volume 4 Number 2
January 1965

Cipriano Manuel

This speech was recorded at the fourth annual Indian Education Conference,
March 22, 1963, held on the campus at Arizona State University.

One of the deeper aspects of American Indian cosmology is that you are not really well, not really whole, unless you are in harmony with your environment.

It certainly has been that way since I have come to this conference.

There are many things that sometimes affect the Indian in continuing his values and his standards. Listen to me, because you sometimes get interpretations of what I say when really it doesn’t mean that at all. For that reason I would like to make some remarks here.

I’m very grateful to live in this country of ours, this nation, because here in this nation, though as loyal as you may be to the country, to the nation, and to the government, you can still oppose some of the measures which you are dissatisfied with; and I am happy for that. This afternoon I would also like to make it clear that these principles, these values of the American Indian, I deeply believe in. I sometimes want to call them doctrines, these things which some people want to call superstitions. I want to say here that though I deeply believe in these American Indian values and standards, I am not in any way insisting that the American Indian has a monopoly on sound ideas because there are also many other people who have real, sound common sense, stable philosophies, and aims. I can’t help but mention at this point, such as this institution, and for that reason we can enjoy these things which we are now enjoying. The leaders of the institution exemplify sonic of the things which I am trying to say at this time, that the American Indian has no monopoly on sound ideas.

There are many things which have been prominent in American Indian life, and I would like to share with you some of these things. Possibly this varies among different tribes and different areas. I would like to ask if I may speak at this time about the tribe of which I am a member. This will not necessarily mean that other tribes have the same values or the same standards. I think that not only Indian groups have these standards and these values but I also believe that they are prevalent among other people. We sometimes feel that maybe we have the best, but this distorts the whole thing because we become selfish with ideas that actually are for everybody.

The first thing I would like to point out is this thing which we like to call waiting, some of us prefer the word patience. Some time ago we had an employee on the reservation who kept trying to ask me many things, and I told him that I couldn’t tell him these things until I got acquainted with him. He was there one year, two years, then he told me that his patience had run out. And I said that we have in the Papago culture a minimum of four years before we can share some of the most intimate things that we share with each other.

I don’t know, some people say that this is too long; but you know I’ve seen many things which require four years, such as college training; you have to wait four years before you can go through college. I recall when I was in the Navy, they gave you this thing which was referred to by several names, but I don’t want to repeat them. It meant that you had to wait four years before you could wear one of these marks. Like I say, I don’t want to give the name that has been referred to, but there is really no difference as I see it. You take the President, the highest office in the nation, why should we wait four years to elect another president? There are these things, but when it comes to the Indians, they don’t want them to practice this waiting. This confuses me sometimes because this is something which exists among other people, and yet we try to deny this to the Indian. But I’m going to tell you that this is the fourth Indian Education Conference and I’m really going to tell you some things!

You know they have been very disturbed over on the Papago Reservation. I’ve been the Chief Tribal Judge since 1959 and at times some of the people have tried to replace me. I know that the Bureau made certain safeguards so they could keep me, but do you know what their reason for trying to replace me was? They were merely testing me. I’m in my fourth year now and they can’t do anything. These people got all excited, and they did many things because they were fearful; and yet all they were doing was trying me out to see if I could really hold that job. It’s the same way, I believe, with your schools, your coIleges; you’ve got to find out if they’re able to do the work, and this is no different from the Papagos. That’s what they were doing, they were just testing me, now they’ll tell me whether they want me or not. I’m real happy because of all these things now that I’ve gone through four years of that thing called the judgeship.

You know I can’t help but think of my grandfather who was imprisoned in the San Xavier jail when the Papago Agency was located in San Xavier. If some of you don’t know where San Xavier is, it’s just on the other side of Tucson, about five miles. The reason they put him in jail was because he had some principles: He had certain aims and objectives which he wanted to express and the thing that these aims and objectives desired did not include this thing called education. That was the reason he was in prison, and my mother, in telling me about this, tells me I shouldn’t come over here because they put my grandfather in jail for such a thing as I am attending now.

There are things that have to happen. We need patience. Sometimes we resort to looking for solutions for problems, and we resort to self-despair because we can’t find them immediately. Yet I know that some of the best and most successful businessmen are the businessmen who wait, who know the strategy of waiting. This I feel is recognized; it is known among non-Indians. But it’s just because we are more determined to emphasize these things in different manners that we do not understand each other.

There is something else that is lacking that is also a prominent value among the American Indians and that is faithfulness. Here we have many leaders. Faithfulness is something that you do when you know that this is what you have to do. You do not do it because somebody is watching you or because you want to impress somebody. We have too few of this type of leader; there are leaders who now will give in under ridicule, failure, all of these kinds of things. They want to be something else besides what they have been assigned to be. This is the reason, as I look at many different leaders among the various tribes, I find this quality that appears to be something that is not very important, but which I believe is very basic if we want to get the right kind of leaders. This is not only among Indian leaders, I believe it’s also among the other group leaders. These are some of the things that once were very important and very much a part, just second-nature, to Indian leaders in the past. Too often now we feel that a leader is the person who has the most people on his side. Yet to me, a leader is a person who leads his people, who does not conform to the status quo. He’s a person that looks past disappointment and is willing to endure ridicule, scorn—all these things which we sometimes feel now are not part of the leadership qualities. These were very basic in the past Indian-type leadership. We had one leader among the Papago, some of you are not familiar with him, they called him Chief Pima-chu-tah. He had principles, he had convictions, but the whole nation turned against him and arrested him because he refused to allow his young men to go to war during the Second World War; he had definite principles, even if he went to jail. When the Federal officials turned against him and turned him in to be arrested, he still went on with those beliefs, those convictions. Do you know why he could not see his young men go to war? He knew that there were going to be some things that we would not be eligible for because we were not the same as other people. I don’t know how these people know, but they know of a lot of things. It’s true, we went to war. I spent two years in combat during the Second World War. But do you know I can’t get the same privileges that a non-Papigo veteran can get? I’ve been trying to build my own house, and I know that outside all you have to do is prove that you’re making sufficient money to get credit approval, and you get housing. You get liens to start yourself off in business, but not the Papago veterans. These were some of the things that this one particular leader saw and he didn’t want these things to be experienced because he knew what would result. To me I accept this as being normal. If I am going to be deprived of these things it’s all right with me, but there are feelings because we are sensitive people, because we do not share equal opportunity, yet we saw the same things as other veterans did and yet they enjoy more than we enjoy.

Another quality which I would like to share with you, and here again we become unrestful, we become disturbed when we do not see this thing take place is that it always has been that the Indian puts more emphasis on reaction and not on action. You have a person who may ask (and they do ask) why don’t they want to get things moving? But the important thing as we look at Man is what will be his reaction if something does not go the way that it should go? This is very important, this is the thing that we are looking for. As someone said, there are different types of Federal employees that they choose for a particular area and they say (as it was pointed out to me one time) that if you want one particular type to go to this area you pull out this drawer. You pull him out and say this is the one that’s going to go over there. In one drawer you have action people; if you want action in a particular area you get this person assigned to that area. You know that this doesn’t really matter to us, it’s the reaction that we want to find out first. What is the objective, what is the aim of these people, these persons? This determines whether the Indian will accept or will reject, and we continue to go on because this is common knowledge. Some of you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but this is why we go on and we are going to go on.

We believe in these things. Like I said, this is the Fourth Indian Conference and that’s why I share with you these things. This is better than my notes that I put away a while ago.