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Wednesday, Jan 7, 2009
Bush-hating Germans might not sing "Hail to the Chief," but they're infatuated with the first Americans.
Nov 27, 2002 | Alex Biber's day job is designing semiconductor technology. Away from work, he becomes Beaver, a Cheyenne warrior.
Biber the engineer drives on the autobahn and wears blue jeans. Beaver the brave wears hand-tanned buckskin and rides a horse, commanding the steed in an ancient language once used by Plains Indians. Biber, his wife and two daughters live in a 91-year-old farmhouse, but the family vacations in tepee villages in humid Central European forests.
While Germans may scoff at George Bush, they have an abiding fascination with the first Americans. In fact, if beadwork, horsemanship, tepee building and traditional dancing were Olympic sports, the German team would be medal contenders. Biber would likely be one of the team captains. The soft-spoken, blue-eyed man is one of Germany's weekend warriors, a tribe that numbers some 40,000 strong, according to hobbyist organizations.
By dressing up and living like an Indian, Biber and his compatriots are able to travel to a simpler time, far away from Germany, where 80 million people are crammed into a space the size of Montana. During summertime Indian camps, men wearing breechcloths have contests of strength, women prepare meals from dried meat, and bonfires crackle long into the damp night.
"I feel at home there," Biber said. "It is exactly the way it once was."
German Indian enthusiasts, known as "hobbyists," are so dedicated to authenticity that some real American Indians have approached them seeking information about their own culture. In fact, some dying Indian languages may end up being preserved by German hobbyists. But not everything is peaceful under the ersatz tepees. Some hobbyists have gone beyond the mere trappings of Indian life and have copied sacred ceremonies, angering Indians. And in a ludicrous twist, some literal-minded hobbyists have criticized actual Indians for not living up to their idealized image as ecologically aware noble savages.
At a recent powwow in Germany, for example, make-believe Indians shouted complaints about the visiting American Indian dancers' use of microphones and brightly colored feathers. The hobbyists were also annoyed that the dancers wore underwear beneath their breechcloths. The dumbfounded guest dancers protested the protests. The hobbyists lost the battle. They were kicked out and told not to return without open minds and underwear, said Carmen Kwasny, a full-blooded German and the press secretary for the Native American Association of Germany, which hosts dance gatherings near a large U.S. military base in Kaiserslautern.
"As long as [the hobbyists] stay in their little camps, we don't worry about them, but the problem is, they go into schools and get interviewed on television and they show up at our powwows and create trouble," Kwasny said.
The Native American Association's Web site now includes a list of powwow protocol. "Native Americans do not appreciate you or your children showing up in fake Indian outfits," state the guidelines. "Toy guns, plastic spears, and tomahawks should also be left at home."
"During a powwow, you will have opportunities to participate in the dancing. Please watch out for the other dancers. Do not touch their regalia."
If hobbyists insist on appearing in breechcloths, they are asked to wear shorts or cycling pants underneath.
The sizable German new-age movement has adopted aspects from traditional Lakota spirituality, Kwasny said. There are weekend vision quests with people searching for their power animals. When the animal is revealed, its image is drawn on a drum or a rattle for use in meditation. "Of course, the power animals are always wolves, buffalos, eagles, which are not very common here. They never use an ant or something like that," Kwasny said.
The Native American Association of Germany was started nearly 10 years ago to provide fellowship for American Indian soldiers stationed in Germany and to facilitate cultural exchanges. The group is spending more and more time, however, trying to help hobbyists separate fact from fiction, Kwasny said.
"People are overdoing it," she said. "They are acting like Native American people have solutions for all our problems. They need to learn to accept Indians as human beings."
Many Germans dream of traveling to the American frontier to see "real Indians," but their romantic notions are often far from the reality of life on a modern reservation, Kwasny said, recalling her first encounter with an American Indian. The free-flowing humor and jokes were especially uncomfortable for her, she said. "They were teasing me and they had a big party with plastic forks and knives. I was so shocked. I thought they were all so environmentally conscious."
American Indians can be equally surprised when they encounter blue-eyed Germans wearing war bonnets.
Ben Cloud, a Crow sun-dance leader and a member of the Montana-based tribal legislature, was skeptical the first time he was invited to visit hobbyists in Germany. He was particularly concerned when he spotted a sweat lodge in one member's yard. Sweat lodges are central places of worship for many in the Crow Nation and their construction and maintenance are guided by sacred tradition. Though Cloud was dismayed at first, he learned the lodge had been properly built by another American Indian and was being used in a manner Cloud considered acceptable.
"It was unbelievable," he said. "I was so impressed by them, the way they took care of the lodge. It was good to see that. They really respect the Native way."
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