Discipline (13) (From The Book, Skins In Shirts) Text Only
Essay Thirteen
"The fool does what makes himself feel good. The wise man does what makes him feel good about himself."
Grandpa
It is our understanding that the Nations all had their own particular method for maintaining discipline and order within their Peoples. There were warrior societies, and bear doctors, and dog soldiers and sub chiefs, all who acted in the interests of their nation, sometimes at the direction of their Elders and Leaders. Rather than discuss the methods or processes of how these decisions came to be made, and how they were enacted, we are more concerned with the fact that they dealt specifically with the occasional exception to the rule in Indian society. What we mean by this is simple; the behavior of individuals was efficiently modified by their relationship to the Tribe.
Ben Franklin wrote, "All their Government is by Counsel of the Sages; there is no Force, there are no Prisons, no officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment."
Rules and regulations were kept to a minimum. Order was kept through social pressures, public humiliation, and embarrassment. Occasionally, in a dangerous or important situation there were forms of corporal punishment—even capital execution.
However, as Thomas Jefferson put it, "Public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere."
George Catlin observed, "...there is no law in their land to punish a man for theft, that locks and keys are not known, that no commandments have ever been divulged amongst them; nor can any human retribution fall upon the head of a thief, save the disgrace which attaches as a stigma to his character in the eyes of his people about him."
Individuals rarely considered being anything but what they were—one of the People. They cared what their relatives, friends, and neighbors thought and were inclined to go along with the consensus decisions. If they disagreed, they simply did not participate. There was little reason for the children to be disciplined. They learned by watching the example of their older peers what was to be expected of them, especially in difficult and dangerous situations. Beyond that, they learned early on that there was a time for self-restraint and a time to be free and unrestrained—a perfect environment for children.
When there was a need for discipline, many of the Peoples used fear of the unknown or superstitions to keep discipline and reasonable control. Extreme cases of disorder were dealt with by those mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay, but these were exceptions, and few and far between.
John Trudell talks about the holocaust of the influx of the three violent, patriarchal religions of the Middle East sweeping in to replace the "mother" as the center of Tribal Life. This opinion is at the center of one of the root problems of western civilization. These religions had, as a cornerstone of their faiths, a belief in a purposeful, and vengeful, God who owned everything. As a group of Jehovah's witnesses asked us the other day, "Do you believe man was given dominion over the Earth by God?"
We think Traditional Indigenous people would answer emphatically—No!" Those Middle Eastern cultures were harsh, dominating, and authoritative. No wonder their main export to the world has been violence!
Europeans, being primitive, did not have the unified social organization that Indians had, so they maintained discipline and order by threat of violence. Biblical admonitions to "use the rod" authorized corporal punishment, and however out of favor it has fallen in today's world, it was, and is, an effective method of disciplining children in the absence of commonly held social constraints.
When the social organizations of our Peoples were disrupted, and in many places dissolved, quite a few of our Grandfathers and Grandmothers adopted the European methods of punishment. Many of us grew up fearing corporal discipline. And it worked! It certainly wasn't the traditional Indian Way, but that Way required a social unit that each individual was proud to belong to, and motivated to remain a part of. It also required the old stories and fears that were part of our Traditional worldview. As the tribes began to break down into individual families, there was less of the old social structure to be responsible to, and fewer of the old perceptions to help discipline the young. Something had to take its place and our Grandparents chose a method they knew their children would understand, the fear of pain.
Don't get us wrong—any discipline is better than none. Just ask any fifth grade teacher who lives in a state where social restraint doesn’t exist, corporal punishment has been disallowed and parental guidance is non-existent, how you can reach boys who have no fear, no guidance, and no discipline in their lives. Where old-time Indians used stories of monsters, spirits or enemies to keep their children from the dangers of the night, and our grandparents used the switch or the belt, many of today's grandparents and parents have nothing. There are just too many one-parent, dysfunctional, dependent, poverty-stricken families where self-discipline or parental discipline has become an ideal of the past—and if there is one thing Indians know about, it's how easily one of us can wind up in prison through a simple lack of discipline.
Indigenous life two centuries ago required a different type of discipline based on a natural and immediately responsive world. In today's modern setting, self control, restraint, and self-discipline are necessary tools for survival. How do we re-establish discipline as a society, as individuals, as Tribes? It begins at home, but relatives and tribal members must share some responsibility for the discipline and order of our children. On the other hand—maybe we should just stay the way we are!
Lucky thirteen... when I read the title page from my copy of the book; it took me back to the sandlot days when we competed in football or basketball. Not being able to afford jerseys, we needed to identify each team member and the loser of the coin toss always became the skins.
Then I stopped dreaming about memories of faded sandlot glory; and read another good telling of truth. But... as Jethro Tull sang it was a good time “living in the past”!✌🏼❤️🙏🕉
This thinking is sound. I have similar questions about “stories, myths, religion, and law. I think that the real root of all that i have mentioned start in the cohesion of a group of humans, anywhere in the world. We only known through observation. We “known” something only until a new concept is accepted by our brains, and it is accepted only by being able to attach itself to an idea we already understand. This means that it is all too easy to be a closed “book”.
I hope I am making sense in what follows, but this is where I see commonality in your description of tribal behavior. I think that tribal behavior is part of a larger human behavior — with all the errors that have been created by poor thinking. Your tribal understanding is much more responsible than the “Christian” model that was borne out of the failure of the Greco-Roman world of it’s beginnings.
The protection of that quirk lies in the “tribe” itself — and by that I mean any group of people who determine that they are benefiting by their learned behavior. As that group grows into a tribe, then into a nation, their motivation for cohesion is still the same: do we benefit from this behavior or do we not? As you say, the Abrahamic religions of the western world developed in a similar fashion. But what happened then can be seen in the mirror of a “corporation”. That entity is created to be a “silent” (non-existing) member of a group that — should the group fail — takes all the burden of that failure on itself. Then leaving no responsibility on the men who created the failure. We now call that “Too Big to Fail”, but I submit that religions, tribes, and peoples follow a similar path. The larger they are, the more they can hide from responsibility for their actions.
What do you think?