President Black Eagle

Last May, while campaigning in the hotly contested Democratic primaries for the presidential nomination, Barack Obama was granted honorary membership in the Crow Nation, a tribe that numbers about 12,000 people in southern Montana. Because tribe members Hartford and Mary Black Eagle symbolically adopted him, he was accordingly bestowed a new name: Barack Black Eagle.

“Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans – the first Americans,” Obama told his Crow hosts last spring. “I understand the tragic history. Our government has not always been honest or truthful in our deals.”

Cree Grand Chief Matthew Mukash met the president’s adoptive parents during the American Indian Inaugural Ball last Tuesday in Washington, DC, after the new president took power amid much pomp, ceremony and emotion. Obama had personally invited the Black Eagles and he evidently takes their gesture with the gravity it deserves.

The ceremonial adoption is customary for honoured guests among many First Nations across North America. Judging by the hopes that indigenous peoples the world over have in this new president, who finally took power January 20, it carries special significance.

There are four to eight years left in the Obama era, but suffice it to say that this man has raised expectations to incredible heights. “There was a message: that change really is coming as a result of this election,” Mukash said the day after the inauguration.

What change that may be is no doubt in the eye of the beholder. But the new president delivered a number of clear messages in his inaugural speech that are worth remembering and with which we all might judge the progress of the great hopes that have been laid across his slender shoulders.

Let’s go over a selection of phrases from Obama’s address from the steps of the Capitol last Tuesday:

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories

This very specific commitment to green energy quite possibly carries an equally specific impact on Eeyou Istchee. As Mukash emphasized during our conversation about his experience in DC, the untapped wind resources of the James Bay region are a huge potential source of clean energy for the hungry markets of our southern neighbours – and carries great potential for Cree economic development. Beyond those very specific interests, the solutions we find to lowering the production of greenhouse gases are the key to the long-term survival of our planet. The rapidly changing climate of the North testifies to the urgency of these efforts.

All are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their measure of happiness

Obama recently invoked the “Four Freedoms” of President Franklin Roosevelt as a guide to his exercise of power: there are the customary freedoms of speech and of religion, but Roosevelt also added the freedom from want and from fear in his celebrated State of the Union address in 1941. The tragedy of the last eight years is that both fear and want have grown in scale and ferocity. Obama will need to move quickly and forcefully to restore the opportunity for all to achieve “their measure of happiness” and thereby restore the freedom from want and from fear. In so doing, economic growth in the United States will help the global economy recover from the abyss into which it is currently descending.

We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals

The disaster of the Bush years was characterized, above all, by the oxymoron that the only way to protect freedom is to destroy it. The suspension of habeas corpus and basic civil liberties; Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the archipelago of secret prisons around the world; torture; illegal wire-tapping; systematic secrecy; the utter refusal to respect the constitution – all these are the hallmarks of dictatorship, not democracy. And all are a greater threat to Americans and their way of life than any terrorist group. If he achieves nothing else, Obama’s insistence on restoring law and order to American government will render him a great president.

The spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves

The basic measure of a community is that we work to support each other; we are not simply a collection of individuals. In helping each other, we may all succeed to a much greater degree. The bankruptcy of right-wing ideology has nowhere been clearer than on Wall Street, where greed and self-interest trumped all other concerns to the extent that all have been hurt, rich or poor. Obama brings a new call for self-sacrifice and responsibility; that we look to our neighbour’s needs as well as our own. Perhaps only in crisis could this message resonate in the United States, where the market is king and, for so long, greed was good. But one can only hope the message penetrates the northern border and influences our own right-wing national government that seems so intent on following in the discredited footsteps of Obama’s predecessor in the White House.

These are great goals, perhaps too lofty to be fully realized in one term as president, or even two. But they are worthwhile and necessary for our survival as a civilization or species.

Finally, Hartford and Mary Black Eagle are wise: in the Crow language, the name they chose for their newly adopted son means, “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land.”

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This is my first of what I hope will be many columns I write for the Nation and its readers. As the name “Borderlines” may suggest, the focus will be on national and international affairs, but I will always strive to make the subject relevant to Eeyou Istchee and its people. Feedback is always welcome, whether it be critical, complimentary or even airborne.