INTRODUCTION
Ruth Muskrat reframed the prevailing narrative that indigenous communities and cultures needed to be isolated from the rest of America. A Native American poet and activist from Oklahoma (known at the time as “Indian Country”), Muskrat served on the “Committee of One Hundred” created to advise the White House on Native American policy. In her 1923 speech to President Calvin Coolidge, Muskrat forcefully argues for the full participation of Native Americans in civil society, while supporting the maintenance of their cultural particularity. Similar to the participation of other ethnic groups, Muskrat stressed such inclusion as equally important for America’s spiritual and artistic unity as it is for the nobility and greatness of Native Americans.
Values to Appreciate in the Text:
Heritage, Equality, Multiculturalism
TEXT
Mr. President:—This volume of the “Red Man in the United States” is presented to the “Great White Father” in behalf of the many Indian students of America. It is a book which bears the best we have to offer —the story of our struggles and our tragedies, of our victories and our developments. . . . Back on the Cheyenne Reservation in Oklahoma Indian women have worked with loving and painstaking care to make this gift worthy for the “Great White Father,” weaving into this beaded cover the symbolic story of our race —the story of the old type of Indian, greeting with the hand of friendship the founders of this great nation, and the story of the new Indian, emerging from his semi-barbaric state, tilling his soil, and building for citizenship under the guidance of the school. Mr. President, there have been so many discussions of the so-called Indian Problem. May not we, who are the Indian students of America, who must face the burden of that problem, say to you what it means to us?
. . .
The old life has gone. A new trail must be found, for the old is not good to travel farther. We are glad to have it so. But these younger leaders who must guide their people along new and untried paths have perhaps a harder task before them than the fight for freedom our older leaders made. Ours must be the problem of leading this vigorous and by no means dying race of people back to their rightful heritage of nobility and greatness. Ours must be the task of leading through these difficult stages of transition into economic independence, into a more adequate expression of their art, and into an awakened spiritual vigor. Ours is a vision as keen and as penetrating as any vision of old. We want to understand and to accept the civilization of the white man. We want to become citizens of the United States, and to have our share in the building of this great nation, that we love. But we want also to preserve the best that is in our own civilization. We want to make our own unique contribution to the civilizations of the world ——to bring our own peculiar gifts to the altar of that great spiritual and artistic unity which such a nation as America must have. This, Mr. President, is the Indian problem which we who are Indians find ourselves facing. No one can find our solution for us but ourselves. . . .