Plausible Deniability
Over the last three years, I have found it astonishing that after dozens of meetings with congressional staff and aids, we have only ever spoken to two Representatives and neither of them were in a position to assist us with meeting the House or Senate Committees on Indian Affairs or discussing our plight with the Secretary of Interior.
I grew up watching School House Rock. Heck, I can still sing most of the songs. The ones that inspired me to love politics was, “I am a Bill,” “We the People,” “Three Ring Government,” and “The Great American Melting Pot.” Those ideals not only inspired me, they pushed me to love the United States. I believed the Constitution brought us all together to “form a more perfect union.” I had a naivete and innocence of the imagined purity for our country that made it easy for me to have a love and passion that would eventually lead me into political science as my first major in college. That fueled another passion I have as well, teaching. I have taught social studies to 7th – 12th graders including their parents both formally and informally since 1988.
In July of 2019, at the ripe old age of 54, that naivete and innocence was shattered into a trillion pieces. The National Chiefs of The Chickamauga Nation were invited to come to Washington, DC for a meeting with Senators to discuss the placement of the Tribe on the List of Federally Recognized Tribes determined to receive benefits and services from the BIA. I just knew a few hours later our Tribe would be recognized and the world would be a better place for the people of our Tribe.
On Wednesday July 17, as we crossed over the river into the capital, I began seeing the buildings I had only ever envisioned as the temples of the republic, where wrongs were righted and the union perfected. As I drove over the bridge, I began to weep out of pride, I was visiting the pantheon of the greatest thinkers ever assembled at one place and at one time in the history of mankind who created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, The Capital, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, they all left me in awe with an astonishing sense of pride.
On Thursday, July 18, we woke up and made our trek into the inner sanctum of America’s greatest marble temple dedicated to perfecting the union. It was already hot and humid as we walked past the Capital on our way to the Hart Senate Office Building for our meeting. We arrived early enough to eat lunch in the very restaurants where all of the staffers and aides ate, we were in the city and ready to change the world. After lunch, we headed back to the Hart Building for our meeting. I was under the impression that we were meeting with Senator David Perdue who invited us and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs under the leadership of Chairman, Senator Hoeven.
This was not a School House Rock “I am a Bill” kind of meeting. We met with a couple of staffers from the committee on Indian Affairs, and Senator Perdue’s staffer, but not one Senator was present. When the meeting began, I thought maybe we will spend a little bit prepping them on our request and our information and then we would go in to meet the Committee. No, it was not that type of meeting. This was a plausible deniability meeting run by staffers and aides to give cover to the Senators so they would have plausible deniability in knowing who we are and our documentation.
For me, I began getting angry. I was discussing the research we had brought with us and what it represented. I informed them I had just completed my second Master of Arts degree and specialized in research and had compiled the research for them to have. They then informed me it did not matter to the Senate because it was not academically verified and that our research had to be academically verified. I informed him I was an academic and that I can verify the veracity of the research. He then told me I was biased and my research is biased and not acceptable. A staffer of a Senator had questioned my integrity and that was not a good time for me personally, I became angry and had to later apologize for not being polite at that point during the meeting.
It took me a few months of retrospective analysis but I finally understood that the great plausible deniability game had been played on us and that the Senate would never hear our requests. Even though we are signatories on a Treaty from 1785 which grants us the right and authority to go to Congress we were never going to get past their staffers and aides because that is how the game is played. What was the most angering part of the meeting was the symbolic patting us on our “little red heads” and ceremoniously dismissing us to go back and have our research academically verified. This was noting more than kicking the red man out of his land again and then gloating over denying him access to his treaty rights because this country does not honor treaty rights with Indians.
That was not a School House Rock meeting or result. In a matter of about one hour, over 54 years of beliefs that this is the greatness of this country were shattered. As I walked out of the Hart Building, I began noticing things about DC I did not notice as I went into the building. The honed and polished marble was dingy and dirty. The sidewalks were old and tired. The exterior facades of the buildings were filthy, much like the experience I had with the government. My experience went from the grandeur and admiration of innocence, to the shattered naivete that the United States I so loved was a myth. The daily social studies lesson I had taught incarcerated juveniles about the greatness of America was actually what they were telling me was their reality.
Never in my life had I experienced racial discrimination until that day. I had experienced social and economic discrimination, but never the racial discrimination of being an Indian until that day. A staffer for a Senator patted my head like a little puppy dog under the table begging for scraps. I know I grew up poor and at-risk, but never allowed that to define me or who I was to become. When I was growing up I abhorred racism because I saw what it did to my friends. As a minister for over 25 years, I decried racism because of what it does to the soul of the man who is the racist and the victim. I felt the sting of being poor and at risk when I went to college and the admissions councilor told me I would flunk out and never make anything of myself because I grew up poor, at-risk, and had a questionable high school GPA. I overcame that stigma by earning a BA in 1990, a MA(RE) in 1993, and a MA(T) in 2011. The last MA I earned in 16 months with a 4.0 GPA. Most recently I received a D(Div) 2022.
Those staffers and those Representative and Senators who play their plausible deniability games are reprehensible. I will never forget the day the Senate staffers for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs destroyed my innocence and love for my country. They put on their discriminatory kabuki play of plausible deniability in front of highly educated National Chiefs of The Chickamauga Nation who were not fooled. Their elitist attitudes toward the red children of this country is beyond the pale. How dare they treat the first inhabitants of this country as trash to be disposed of like when their servants beautify the yards of their gated communities.
What Congress has done against the Citizens of The Chickamauga Nation for the last three years is to stoke a fire in the people which is leading us back to learning about our ancestors. This game of the government is leading the Chickamauga to ask our ancestors for their wisdom and guidance. Our Citizens are again learning to rely on our ancestors’ ways of life to sustain us when this government continues a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing against us. We will gather together soon. We will bring our prayers before the Creator of all and then we will ask our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers who come from other Tribes and Nations to join us as we STAND. We will return in love what has been taken from us in hatred.
Dr. Chief Jimmie W. Kersh, Honorary D(Div) 2022, MA 2011, MA 1993, BA 1990