Bad Eagle, ancestor of David Yeagley
(Original post: My Time with the Indians, December, 16 2016)
Below is a forum discussion on the late David Yeagley's Bad Eagle website. Yeagley would write articles or commentaries and leave it up to a registered group of commentators (many of whom became friends) to "trash out" their arguments. I was part of that group. Yeagley was lenient, but he would occasionally ban hecklers. More often than not, we all came out a little wiser.
The comments section is especially entertaining - and serious - which is a good combination to keep discussions lively. Again this was thanks to Yeagley's vision. But he never convinced me of his vision of the "question of Indians," American or Canadian.
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From: The Best on Bad Eagle
By: David Yeagley
August 31 2009
BadEagle.com was recently noted by an Ethiopian artist on her website, Camera Lucinda [sic]. Her remarks about BadEagle.com are a milestone, and deserve serious consideration. Why?
Kidist Paulos Asrat, known as “She Designs,” is a highly educated and elegant woman, who expresses herself beautifully in words, as well as in textiles, graphic arts, film, and photography.
Kidist Paulos Asrat,
woman of the world.
[My reaction later in the discussion:
I am a Canadian citizen, not a “woman of the world.”]
Asrat is a native of Ethiopia, but was educated in Canada, and has lived most of her life there. She studied textile design at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and also studied drawing and painting under Toronto artist Michael Jenzen and botanical artist Leslie Staple. She studied film and photography at Ryerson University under two of Canada’s most renowned artists, Bruce Elder, an experimental filmmaker, and Don Snyder, a photographer.
Asrat’s films and photographs have been exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, Prague and Lille (France). She has served on the Board of Directors for Trinity Square Video, a non-profit video art organization.
As a young child, Asrat was trained in ballet and piano. More recently, she has been a performing member in several dance groups, including a modern dance ensemble. She has also given many public piano performances.
Kidist Asrat was attracted to BadEagle.com.
That in itself bespeaks her sense of adventure, experimentation, and creativity. Not that every conversation on BadEagle.com was something worthy of her interest, but Asrat’s view of the American Indian patriot website is most worthy of our interest.
She says, in “Indians Will Be Indians,” that BadEagle.com has failed to work the magic it professes. She admits that, in her fascination with the scope of the site, she often forgot that it was in fact an “Indian” site. When considering the purpose of BadEagle.com, American Patriotism, she reflects:
“Is there really an Indian who is at peace with America and willing to swallow the bitter pills of defeat? I thought so for a while at Bad Eagle, but I think I was asking for a superhuman feat.”
“Despite a professed love for America, I think David, naturally, loves Indians first—and best. So he has to find ways to incorporate the defeat of his people with their uncomfortable and humiliating lives in modern America. Hence, his strange and constant discussions of the subliminal effects of Indians on America, and even the world.”
Asrat, as indeed the world, sees Indians as a defeated people. However, she is not a liberal, so she doesn’t see Indians as victims. Rather, she sees in Indians the failure to respond to the modern world. She sees my attempts at reinterpreting these present circumstances as a failure to address the problem. BadEagle.com works no ‘medicine’ for Indian people, therefore.
Asrat, as indeed the world, sees Indians as a defeated people. However, she is not a liberal, so she doesn’t see Indians as victims. Rather, she sees in Indians the failure to respond to the modern world. She sees my attempts at reinterpreting these present circumstances as a failure to address the problem. BadEagle.com works no ‘medicine’ for Indian people, therefore.
“I’m afraid that David, cleverly and sincerely, is using psychological tactics to give Indians the importance they don’t have. We have some magical properties, we can heal your ills, he says.”
Yet, BadEagle.com doesn’t spend time addressing the obvious problems Indians have.
“Unfortunately, David seems more interested in giving Indians a false sense of their position in the world based on feelings and emotions rather than provide recourse for actual achievements. He is acting like any other (leftist) Indian in this case, who professes magical, spiritual qualities, which unfortunately have not been proven yet.”
Unfortunately, perhaps, Asrat does not understand the value of being Indian, to an Indian. Indians chose to be Indian, rather than adapt to a new culture they did not value. In a sense, Indians are the one people whom America has never and will never defeat, psychologically. To make this Indian mind set applicable to the modern world is the point of BadEagle.com. Ethnicity and nationhood are one, in the Indian. Indians cherish our nationhood. The problem in much of the world today is the fact that ethnicities do not value their nations.
The leftist craze for immigration, integration, and intermarriage is precisely what Indians eschewed, historically, and why Indians still exist as Indians today—beleaguered as we are by white leftists and leftist-trained Indians. I am ever the opposite of a leftist.
Now, the issue of the treaties is related, but only as the historical foundation of the blood-bought right to be separate, or, to be Indian, forever.
But I can’t really expect any non-Indian to understand this. The only thing that really singes me about Kidist is the fact that she trashes Ilana Mercer! Ilana was the first noted writer to take the Bad Eagle Interview. But Kidist sees things I don’t see. Therefore, I take note when she “sees” BadEagle.com.
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The comments, lively and insightful, start here.
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