Indian Comics Irregular #123

On March 21, Jeffrey Weise shot and killed ten people on the Red Lake
Indian reservation. Some thoughts on this tragedy, and our culture's
role in causing it, from the news accounts that followed:

With his self-professed loathing of reservation life and burdened by
the psychopathologies of his parents, Weise on Monday joined the ranks
of America's schoolhouse mass murderers. The 16-year-old killed nine
people--his grandfather, his grandfather's female companion, a school
guard, a teacher and five schoolmates--before killing himself.
(Washington Post, 3/25/05)

Sixth- and ninth-graders in the Red Lake schools struggle with
thoughts of suicide and worthlessness at rates far higher than
children statewide. They also say their lives lack purpose and they
run away at rates greater than the Minnesota norm. (Pioneer Press,
3/25/05)

What will be ignored is the glaring fact that we have perpetually
pushed the original stewards of this land into holes of abject poverty
and neglect. We will overlook the fact that these natives at every
turn have been uprooted from their symbiosis with Earth and have been
forced to live like parasites, sucking their nourishment from casinos
that are in turn fed by the lower middle-classes' dreams of relieving
their own poverty by some favor from fortune. (Houston Chronicle,
3/24/05)

Weise was acutely aware of his people's Holocaust, and he explicitly
linked his rage and his urge to massacre to America's moral hypocrisy.
On one posting, Weise described America as "a country founded on the
deaths of millions of Native Americans." (New York Press, Vol. 18,
Issue 14)

In the case of Weise, his admiration of Hitler and Nazi beliefs
clearly weren't supported by those around him in Red Lake. But on the
Internet, he found endorsement from people who shared his views.
"Here was this kid who clearly couldn't have found this approval close
to home," said Medea. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 3/26/05)

Neo-Nazis have hailed him as a "hero" and claim he gave his victims'
lives "meaning" by killing them. (Pioneer Press, 4/10/05)

The genre is now sufficiently entrenched that any adolescent who guns
down his classmates aims to join a specific elect. Like Red Lake's,
the public shootings are often a cover for suicide, or for the private
settling of scores with a parent or guardian. But a school shooting
is reliably a bid for celebrity. As for murder-suicides like Jeff
Weise's, even posthumous notoriety must seem enthralling to someone
who feels sufficiently miserable and neglected. (NY Times, 3/27/05)

[W]hen violent tragedies occur as one did in Minnesota, people seem
perplexed.

They should not be surprised, however, because little in the broad
culture in which these nightmares occur is different. We are still
obsessed with guns....Violent video games and films are more
normalized in the culture than ever....The Internet makes accessible
all manner of extremist groups and ideas, providing acceptance and
identity to loners like Wiese [sic]. We insist on teaching boys to be
tough rather than empathetic. (Provo Daily Herald, 4/7/05)

I don't know why Jeffrey Weise took so many lives and his own. But
I'm certain that he felt great pain. I don't quite understand his
affinity with the politics of Adolf Hitler, who drew from the U.S.
Government's Indian extermination policies in developing his own. But
it is clear that the messages and images of a pop culture, much of it
spewing hate and obscenity, can be piped into any community or any
home. The digital divide is not so wide any longer, and all children
can be seduced by these influences. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
3/27/05)

For more on the Red Lake tragedy--much more--go to
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/redlake.htm .

Rob Schmidt
Blue Corn Comics