Page 20 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • December 14, 2011 ent. He described talking some Lakota and Cheyenne friends to the Custer Battlefield Monument, as it was then called, and watching their faces when the guide described how General Custer had been ambushed and massacred by “savages.” His Indian guests were not amused. Neither was Josephy. The Lakota and the Cheyenne know a lot more about the Little Bighorn than the average white American, and they all know that Custer’s defeat started with a surprise attack that backfired and the Indians involved were defending their wives and daughters with – from the Army’s point of view – a deplorable degree of success. Josephy’s article got the guide he quoted fired. Soon Russell Means – another friend of the family – got the name of the battlefield changed to Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial. “Since when do you name a battlefield after the guy who lost?” he reasoned. One thing about Russ: He isn’t politically correct in any context. Having been called a communist for his role in the Wounded Knee Uprising of 1973, he recovered from several gunshot and stab wounds and some jail time, joined the Miskito Indians in Central America in their fight against the real communists of the Soviet Union and Castro’s Cuba. As at the Little Bighorn, the Indians won. It remained for Park Historian John Doerner, still another friend and one who agreed with me that Sergeant Frank Finckle survived Custer’s Last Stand, to go the whole distance and see that the individual Indians who died at the Little Bighorn also received monuments to their valor. The whole battlefield became a monument, not to Manifest Destiny, but to the mutual sacrifice of those who fought on both sides. Doerner took some flak from people who still hate Indians – you would be surprised how many people use the flag as a cloak for anachronistic racism and a total ignorance of the wider context of history – but his work in commemorating fallen fighters on both sides was epochal. I recently saw an outtake from the PBS series “The National Parks” by Ken Burns, in which American Indians working for the National Park Service were the hosts at Mount Rushmore. Two men lectured on the history and culture of the tribes, and one of them got his audience so involved that the spectators could actually tell the Siouan dialects apart by key letter changes. A pretty teenaged Indian girl in costume did a highhopping “hoop dance” that defied imitation. She finished up surrounded by more rings than the Olympic logo – and this was appropriate, though the dance was not traditional as much as imaginative. She got a resounding round of applause, and the two Indian men got people to think about – dare we say it – why it took so long for the rest of us to appreciate these people. The Black Hills and the Little Bighorn Battlefield, and the whole National Park System, represent not only the best of what America was, but the best of what America is in the process of becoming – the actual land of the free and the home of the brave. Without being crass, the Little Bighorn, the Black Hills, Gettysburg, Antietam, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Muir Woods, to list only a few National Parks, draw tourists whose money is important to our economy and whose favorable opinions represent one hope for our future. The United States of today had a better record on human rights than most of our economic competitors had for the 20th century, but trying to turn the American 19th century into a white-makes-right hero myth will only harden the resolve of most of our economic competitors to shrug their shoulders if we sink. World opinion doesn’t support alibis for African slavery or the destruction of the Indian tribes, with millions of dead in both cases, and world opinion is suddenly important. Germany and France are now the economic fulcrum of Europe, and people in both countries love Indians, love Lincoln, and love to argue about Custer. So do most other Europeans and most Asians. The U.S. National Parks are the heart of America, and need to be saved. How would you rate a surgeon who opened someone up to take out an infected appendix, but took out the heart instead? That is what we are looking at in terms of the frantic attempts to balance the federal budget by making cuts in all the wrong places. Swinging the ax in an uninformed manner will undoubtedly do the nation more harm than good – and it will happen if we all roll over and go back to sleep instead of telling the feds how we feel. This could be a very perilous slumber. People used to say the man in the White House knew best. Most people have not said that for the last two decades. They have mostly been right. The most recent cut we have all heard about is the U.S. Postal Service. If plans are carried out, the expected speedy delivery by first class mail may become history along with the Pony Express. This is a sad thing, but it is also a dangerous thing – really and truly dangerous. The fact is that local newspapers are often delivered by local U.S. Mail and that curtailing this delivery by jacking up the price is a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” Sound familiar? Check the Web if you can’t live without the latest gossip about Kim and Snookie and who is dating whom in Hollywood. Check your local paper if you want to find out what is happening in your own town hall, the schools, and the library. This is the heart, not the appendix. Don’t cut it. Subsidizing the post office as an employer of U.S. veterans also has a certain moral cachet and makes good economic sense. My best friend’s father was a combatwounded World War II veteran: D-Day, Silver Star, Purple Heart. He sent three kids through college working for the U.S. Post Office. He deserved a useful job that did some good. People deserve to read print news if they want to. All our mailboxes would breathe easier, however, if fewer and fewer catalogues for stuff we can’t afford cease to stop off on their way to the recycling center. What if we drove that particular postage up? That’s the appendix: junk mail nobody requests that is neither charitable nor journalistic in nature. Cut there! Speaking of forests, another bad place to save federal money could be the funding of the National Parks. These aren’t water parks, folks. The National Parks are the real thing. This was not always the case. I remember about 40 years ago when the late Alvin Josephy broke the Time-Life Barrier. Josephy, who once had dinner at my house in Glen Rock, finally told the world that Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life, absolutely vetoed any stories about American Indians that didn’t make the Indians look ridiculous. Josephy had been a combat correspondent with the U.S. Marines in the Pacific in World War II, and he was a strong supporter of the concept of Indians as human beings, but he bit his tongue and did his Indian stories for American Heritage and various book publishers. Finally, at the end of the 1960s, he was able to convince Life magazine to devote a cover issue to American Indians of the past and the pres- Take the appendix, just spare the heart Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: The recent Ho-Ho-Kus election snafu has been well chronicled by several newspapers. The errors, oversight, and missteps over this involve a cast of characters, but unfortunately only the borough clerk, Laura Borchers, is being held responsible. As stated by Mayor Randall, it is the borough clerk’s job to track the terms and vacancies of elected officials, and the governing body has nothing to do with governmental elections. While this is factual insofar as it identifies the municipal building as a non-political entity, thus prohibiting all forms of political enterprising under its roof, it is simply not true as it relates to politicking by our elected officials outside the borough hall. Are we to believe that no one on the council--including Republican committee representative Phil Rorty and Mayor Randall, a seasoned politician, thought to give Councilwoman Kimberly Weiss, a political novice, any advice or ask her if she had any questions or concerns? Did Weiss never inquire? Was she not made aware of the county-issued Manual for Candidates that is available online, and which clearly outlines the procedures and deadlines for filing a petition for election? In the midst of all this, Borough Attorney David Bole, an election law expert, outlined the borough’s options: appoint someone to the seat; leave it vacant; or hold a special election, leaving the seat vacant until Dec. 1, 2012. When Rorty was asked if Weiss would be one of the names brought forward to fill the vacant seat, his response was that she “might be.” As things go in Ho-Ho-Kus, Weiss was reappointed at the council meeting on Nov. 22. So there you have it: Another appointee with no fanfare and with no one the wiser. Apparently the option to hold a special election was quickly dismissed. After all, why take the chance of having someone challenge the position of an unfilled seat when you can just reappoint Weiss? I do not in any way mean to disparage Kim Weiss or her abilities as a council member. I am sure she will be more than competent. I am, however, concerned, though certainly not surprised, about the way this inadvertent oversight was rectified by our governing body by excluding the residents as usual. Herein lies the real problem: Having to appoint someone due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control is one thing, but to do so only to foster succession in the government, circumventing the will of the people in the process, Citizen expresses concerns is a subversion of democracy. It is a slippery slope, and one down which the Ho-Ho-Kus governing body has gone before. While it is true that the borough’s election candidates were partisan and uncontested, this does not give our local government the right to hijack our right to choose the candidates for whom we wish to cast our votes, however predictable the outcome may be. It is unsettling to see the desperate lengths to which the Ho-Ho-Kus government will go in order to maintain control and preserve the status quo. They have long since outlived what is reasonable and right for the residents of Ho-Ho-Kus. The adage may be true that you get the government you deserve, but for the residents of Ho-Ho-Kus, at least, it seems you get the government that the government wants you to have. Donna Cioffi Ho-Ho-Kus