Word: st
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...judgment at all? Ellsworth Oakley, tribal chief of the Mashpee Wamponoags, posed this very question: "How can a white jury decide for us? We know who we are." The sessions of the trial consistently revealed the difficulty of cross-cultural evaluation. At one point during the proceedings, James D. St. Clair, chief counsel for the town of Mashpee, asked an Indian witness to define for the jury what being an Indian witness to define for the jury what being an Indian meant. The witness replied: "If I were to sit here all day explaining it to you, you still would...
...attempt at understanding a different culture, it is vital to consciously suspend one's cultural biases. The arguments and cross-examination of St. Clair, whose previous clients include a disgraced former president, actively violated this standard throughout the trial. St. Clair deliberately and subtly appealed to the prejudices--cultural and racist--of the jury. In his opening statement, St. Clair specified cultural assimilation, especially Indian intermarriage with blacks and whites, as one example of the Indians' failure to comprise a tribe. The ploy was an insidious one--St. Clair skillfully appealed to whatever prejudices the jury may have entertained against...
...St. Clair also tried to discredit the Wamponoags' tribal government by appealing to white American notions of what constitutes a governing body. He cited the lack of an internal court system, ignoring the fact that the Indians have less institutionalized ways of enforcing community morals. In questioning one witness about the tribal meetings, St. Clair focused on the decision-making process. He asked the witness if the tribal chief made a decision or whether the meeting as a whole voted. The witness hesitated, at a loss to explain an Indian preference for consensual decision-making in the context of St...
Many Indians found St. Clair's attitude toward them and their culture condescending and demeaning. He asked witnesses questions about the number of occasions on which they wore Indian dress, the number of words of Algonquin they knew, the number of times they held certain meetings. He tried to make these factual points the standards by which to judge a group of people with a complex religion and culture...
...only was St. Clair's behavior high-handed, culturally biased, and subtly racist, his argument of cultural assimilation proved logically contradictory. In arguing that the Indians' loss of their native language, their intermarriage, their informal government, and their conversion to Christianity dissolved their tribal status, he ignored the stark fact that Indians, at least in the East, have to live in a white man's society and by white man's rules. Indians survived by undergoing cultural assimilation, and now they are being penalized for adapting to necessity...