In my previous post about the killing of Osama bin Laden and the reaction by many Americans, I lamented how:
The jubilation over the killing of bin Laden reminded me of the grisly trophy photos of lynchings with leering faces and tortured black bodies, much like the torture photos to emerge from Abu Ghraib prison or the so-called ‘Kill Team’ photos of Afghan civilians murdered by U.S. troops.
But I forgot to mention the racist code-name assigned to bin Laden: “Geronimo”. Geronimo (or Goyathlay as he was known to his people), the great Apache warrior who resisted U.S. invasion of his peoples’ land and evaded troops for many years, has come to represent indigenous resistance to colonization, and in his surrender, the subjugation of American Indians. So potent is his symbolism that the elite secret society at Yale, “Skull and Bones” allegedly robbed Goyathlay’s tomb and still possesses his bones.
The Native American community reacted with justifiable horror to the news of Osama bin Laden’s U.S. military code name. Indian Country Today reported “Bin Laden Code-name “Geronimo” Is a Bomb in Indian Country”:
The US government may have captured and killed Osama Bin Laden with a surgical strike, but it also dropped a bombshell on Native America in the process. “We’ve ID’d Geronimo,” said the voice of the Navy SEAL who reported the hunt for Osama bin Laden was over. The President, and all those gathered in the situation room, waited on edge for the voice to return with the triumphant news, that in fact, “Geronimo” was dead.
According to multiple sources, “Geronimo-E KIA” is the message that was sent to the White House by the strike team to announce that bin Laden, the “E,” or Enemy, was Killed In Action.
As news of bin Laden’s death spread relief across America and the world, revelations that the assigned code name of Enemy Number One was “Geronimo,” a legendary Apache leader, caused shock waves in Indian communities across the country. It is being interpreted as a slap in the face of Native people, a disturbing message that equates an iconic symbol of Native American pride with the most hated evildoer since Adolf Hitler.
The death of bin Laden is arguably the most important news story of the year, and embedded within it is a message that an Indian warrior, a symbol of Native American survival in the face of racial annihilation, is associated with modern terrorism and the attacks on 9/11.
The “bin Laden is dead” news story will make thousands of impressions on the minds of people around the globe, and the name Geronimo will now be irrevocably linked with the world’s most reviled terrorist.
I share the author’s outrage at the symbolic lynching of Geronimo and all native peoples. Yet, it is an honest reflection of the ethos of the U.S. and its military culture that “Geronimo” was chosen as the code name for Osama bin Laden. As historian Richard Drinnon noted in his landmark work “Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building“, “cowboys and Indians” has been the racist mythos of U.S. imperialism. From the calvary’s genocidal Indian Wars straight across the Pacific to the savagery of the Philippines War, then on to WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s been about cowboys versus Indians. In this narrative, Indians are not real humans. So their slaughter becomes acceptable, even necessary for civilization to proceed, like the clearing of forest for development.
I found it troubling that the Indian Country Today article so readily demonized bin Laden as “the most hated evildoer since Adolf Hitler” in order to set Goyathlay apart as a heroic figure.
If we set aside the unlawful and morally repugnant tactics of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, is not his stated objective – to drive the infidels from the Muslim holy land – the same reason Goyathlay and his band of warriors waged a guerrilla war against the United States for so many years? In his time, Geronimo was called the “worst Indian who ever lived” by white settlers while he was a hero to Native Americans, all because he resisted the U.S. invasion of native lands and terrorized white folk. Many in the Muslim world hold up bin Laden and his movement as heroes because they stood up to the western imperialists.
The violence of the colonized is a mirror to the violence of the colonizer, showing us where terror must be defeated, at the heart of the imperial relations that created it. As long as the U.S. follows the road of empire, the wars will never end, people will resist, sometimes violently, and cowboys will slaughter millions and ravage whole countries over and over again to get Geronimo ‘dead or alive’.
‘Geronimo’ reminded me of the true story of Ko’olau the Leper, a Hawaiian folk hero who contracted Hansen’s Disease and rather than be imprisoned in a leper colony, hid in the Napali coast of Kaua’i. Over the weekend at the Wai’anae Library there was a reading of “The Legend of Ko’olau” by playwright Gary Kubota. I was told that the play is very powerful. Hopefully it will be produced in the near future.
Like Goyathlay (Geronimo), Ko’olau fought off the foreign militia that had overthrown the Hawaiian monarchy when they came to capture him. Living off the land, he evaded capture for many years until his death by the disease. In one encounter, Ko’olau shot and killed the sheriff and most of his posse.
So on the topic of outlaws and heroes, I close with some lyrics from Bob Marley’s immortal classic “I Shot the Sheriff”:
Oh, now, now. Oh!
(I shot the sheriff.) – the sheriff.
(But I swear it was in selfdefence.)
Oh, no! (Ooh, ooh, oo-oh) Yeah!
I say: I shot the sheriff – Oh, Lord! –
(And they say it is a capital offence.)
Yeah! (Ooh, ooh, oo-oh) Yeah!
Sheriff John Brown always hated me,
For what, I don’t know:
Every time I plant a seed,
He said kill it before it grow –
He said kill them before they grow.
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