Thank you. I’m very grateful for your question, but gratitude will not answer it.

Your question depends on which Indians and which blacks you mean.

I know the general history but I am only able to talk about communities I know. During the Movement, I knew blacks in SCLC, SNCC, and the Black Panther Party. I did an interview in the underground press with Don Cox, who just published his memoir of the Panthers.

Besides the Cherokee people of my blood and the Creek people among whom I was raised and relatives among the Osage and Sac and Fox, I am most familiar with pan-tribal Indian rights organizations. I’ve done work for the American Indian Research and Education Coalition and I’ve served two terms as President of the Texas Indian Bar Association.

So I must know a lot about Indians, right?

I suppose I do compared to somebody who just fell off the turnip truck, but we are talking about 573 federally recognized tribal governments. I know that figure is not realistic because there are many unrecognized tribes that ought to be recognized but are caught in a political wringer between white people who consider tribal governments obsolete and discriminatory and misguided Indians who think there is a pie being divided up and they want fewer, larger slices. Those considerations make 573 too low.

Making that 573 figure too high, there have been historic slicings and dicings of people who were not separate, such as my citizenship in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma being different from citizenship in the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees or the Eastern Band of Cherokees.

Just off the top of my head, there are multiple recognized tribes of Kickapoo, Apache, Shawnee, Paiute, Yavapai, Choctaw, Coushatta, Seminole and Creek. Some bands were preexisting political entities and some were created by clashes with the settlers.

They all live in different places and swim in the political waters of those places, meaning their attitudes differ just like white people’s attitudes do.

Then Alaska Natives are a special case, as are Native Hawaiians.

Like all Indians, I have anecdotes.

There is a contest called Miss Navajo Nation, which I will not call a beauty contest while still appreciating the beauty of the winners over the years. But there is no swimsuit competition. There is a cross-examination of contestants over Navajo history and traditions conducted in the Navajo language, and required demonstrations of cultural competence that include butchering a sheep.

The winner of Miss Navajo Nation in 1997 was the prodigiously talented Radmilla Cody, who in her traditional introduction is Tłááschí’í Nishłi; Naahiłii Bashishchiin (born to Red Ochre on Cheeks People; born for the African Americans). Note that I am Cherokee and could not pronounce Navajo correctly to save my life. I would not even have a dialect coach like Adam Beach did when he played a Navajo in Windtalkers and drew laughter when the film was shown on the Navajo Rez. Beach is Ojibwe, a citizen of Saulteaux First Nations, and he brings up another whole complication in the tribes that are bisected by the Canadian or Mexican borders.

Radmilla Cody’s nuclear family and her clans were both split by her African-American blood and her bona fides as Navajo were hotly debated in the entire tribe. Her talent as a singer in both Navajo and English counted on her side and her side plainly won the argument.

Then she got involved with an abusive African-American drug dealer boyfriend. When he went down for dealing, she went down because she knew what he was doing and had to plead guilty to misprison of felony. She has done her time and is now an anti-domestic violence activist.

African Americans are stereotyped on reservations as involved in drugs just as they are in white communities and the Cody incident did the stereotype no good.

As I said in the original article, the Five Tribes took up chattel slavery and, like the U.S., they still are suffering the consequences. Each of the tribes has had disagreements with their freedmen. A very interesting town about 30 miles from my hometown of Bristow, OK, is Boley, which was founded by Creek freedmen.

My people just got a decision on a legal struggle that went on for 14 years to secure the citizenship rights of Cherokee freedmen. The federal court fandango was kicked off after persons with electoral advantage at stake got a constitutional amendment on the ballot to strip freedmen citizenship and contrived that it would pass by scheduling the election by itself rather than with other matters that would have raised the turnout.

So racism does not play out among Indians in a manner greatly different than among white people. However, the misunderstanding I explained among intellectuals and activists — that blacks wanted integration while Indians wanted segregation based on different assertions of right — is no longer controversial among blacks or Indians. It remains so among white folks.