Listening to the Native American Story With Jewish American Ears

We remember our history, and we hear within us what Native people mean when hearing words like those of Janitin, a Kamia Indian from the San Diego area said in 1878:

"I and two of my relatives went down . . . to the beach . . . to catch clams. . . . We saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives ... fled with all speed. . . . It was too late . . . they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance . . . their horses running. . . .

"When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father . . . [told] me that he would make me a Christian. . . . One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that now I was a Christian and that I was called Jesus. . . .

The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the their Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize. . . . I cut my foot and could not finish working. . . . Every day they lashed me . . . because I did not finish. . . .And thus I existed . . . until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox. . . . They lashed me until I lost consciousness. . . . For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes."

And when William Benson, a Pomo Indian from northern California, talked about his history, we hear with our own history in our ears:

"About twenty old people died during the winter from starvation. From severe whipping, four died. A nephew of an Indian lady who was living with Stone [an American who had captured hundreds of Pomo Indians and forced them to work on the cattle ranch] was shoot [sic] to death by Stone. . . . When a father or mother of young girl was asked to bring the girl to his house by Stone or Kelsey, if this order was not obeyed, he or her would be whipped or hung by the hands. . . . Many of the old men and women died from fear and starvation."

Yes, we've been there too.

Our historic ties and our Jewish commitment to justice can serve as the basis of shared dialogue. In communities as diverse as Portland, Oregon, and Oklahoma City, Tucson and northern New Jersey, Jews and Indians have begun to talk and to hear. A Reform Temple in Denver brings Mitzvah Day volunteers to an Indian center. In Tucson, Indian educators in the city's schools explore using a model for educating students about the Holocaust as a means to educate students about their history too. A day school in the San Fernando Valley of California conducts an annual exchange with an elementary school in the Navajo Nation for teachers and students alike. A synagogue in New York City sends its students to a reservation in South Dakota so that Jews and Lakota can begin to speak and to listen to each other. The Jewish Federation of Greater Albuquerque is copartnering with a local Indian tribe to produce Remembering 1492: a joint Jewish and American Indian flute concert.

Indians and Jews have fought for the right to worship openly and freely and to survive as distinct peoples; it is time we came together and began to listen to each other. Indians from Maine to Virginia to Florida to California have proclaimed that they have not disappeared, yet they have become strangers in their own land. As Jews, we remember the outsider, the stranger at Passover. It is time to begin to work with the strangers in our midst, the strangers who have always been here.