Last year I took a trip and spent nearly 3 months in Poland. After only a few weeks of staying there, I came to the realization that, despite such a large cultural and geographical gap between my home and the Slavic country, I and many others had much more in common than I first thought. What started out as a cultural exchange between me and the many Poles I met quickly turned into a rabbit hole of information I had never even known existed. A one-off conversation about Native American tribes turned into the realization that there was an entire movement about them, spanning generations, all the way across the world. Strangely, it all ties back to a 60’s Americana-based trend. . .
Cowboys and Indians – you’ve definitely heard of the concept. It’s a cliche in American pop culture, most pronounced during the heyday of the Western movie. It sparked a generation of American children’s imaginations, playing as gun-shooting, horseback-riding cowboys fighting Native Americans. However, it wasn’t just American kids during this era that were captivated by this myth. Over 5,000 miles across the world and deep behind the Iron Curtain, Poland — a Slavic Eastern European country — would play Cowboys and Indians too, except it wouldn’t be the “righteous” cowboys in the lead role, fending off Natives. Rather, it was the Natives defending their land from the greedy, destructive cowboys.
Why exactly did this role reversal occur, and how did playing Cowboys and Indians contribute to an informal movement of support for Native Americans in a distant Slavic land?
During the Cold War, Poland was a Soviet satellite state, the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), and heavily suppressed its people along with any Western media influence — except when it came to Native Americans. The Soviet Bloc had heard about the United States’ treatment of Indigenous people, actively using it as incredibly potent political propaganda to paint the capitalist U.S. as ruthless, savage, and materialistic. This view was only reinforced by the United States’ “Termination Policy,” which aimed, even well into the 20th Century, to completely eradicate Native culture, tribal governments, and reservations, while forcibly relocating Indigenous people into poverty-stricken city slums. On top of it all were the “re-education” boarding schools that sought to further assimilate Native youth into American culture by severing ties to their family and heritage.
To say all of this was relatable to the Polish struggle would be an understatement. Though once a powerful empire itself, Poland would disappear from the map in the Nineteenth Century, its population caught in violent massacres and forced Russification. Poland would regain its independence for a short time between the world wars, then would again be invaded, this time by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. After the war, the Soviet Union solidified its hold, annexing significant portions of eastern Poland and expunging millions of citizens. Polish culture also came under attack, deemed as “reactionary” by the pro-Soviet regime.
A survivor of the war, Stanisław Supłatowicz, who had escaped being imprisoned in Auschwitz II-Birkenau by jumping off the train to the camps and then surviving imprisonment under the post-war communist regime for his participation in the Home Army, would play a key role in the popularization of the Indianist Movement.
Supłatowicz, also known as Sat-Okh, was born in Canada, sometime around 1922, the third son of a Shawnee Chief. His mother, Stanislawa Okulska, had been exiled to Siberia around 1905. Later, during the Revolution of 1917, she would flee eastward with a group of other Poles exiled to Siberia and make her way to Alaska with the help of the Indigenous Chukchi people. Exhausted, starving, and weathered by the elements, Okulska would have surely died if she had not been rescued by the Shawnee Tribe. Given the name Ta-Wach, she married the son of a Shawnee Chief and raised her three children among the Shawnee in Canada. In 1939, she decided to return to Poland for six months to show her son her ancestral home. Sadly, they were just in time to have World War II erupt around them. The conflict left Sat-Okh and his mother stranded.
The formative years of his childhood, mixed with his firsthand experience as a newly-stranded Home Army partisan and witness to the brutality of the Germans and Soviets, would culminate in Sat-Okh’s literary career. In 1958 he published his first novel, Ziemia słonych skał, or The Land Of Salt Rocks, which became an instant hit. Surprisingly, the story was not censored by the pro-Soviet regime. Sat-Okh even visited the Soviet Union and collaborated with Russian writers.
The Land Of Salt Rocks follows Sat-Okh’s early childhood growing up in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the challenges of the harsh northern climate, and the richness of living with the land. It sparked a reinvigoration of interest into traditional Polish culture and reconnection to their Slavic Pagan roots. Many Polish ideas mirrored Native American ones, such as a deep connection to nature, free-spiritedness, individualism, and connection to tradition. The traditional Slavic culture of the Poles had been crushed underneath the communist regime, while other parts of it were assimilated into the Roman Catholic Church.
So what exactly does all of this information have to do with a 60’s children’s game about Cowboys and Indians?
Sat-Okh’s personal teachings have had a long-lasting influence on the Polish boy scouts, teaching survival and trapping techniques Sat-Okh learned in the Northwest Territories and during his service in the Home Army. Interestingly, games about teaching young scouts survival techniques were themed around Native Americans due to Sat-Okh and the literature he inspired, turning the Cowboys and Indians game on its head. These games often included using the land they know to their advantage, sneaking around or outsmarting the enemy. The cowboys became stand-ins for the Nazi Germans and Soviets that once plagued their home, invaders who had once tried to quell their ancestral traditions. Meanwhile, the Natives became stand-ins for Poles defending their culture and home from these foreign aggressors.
The generations who suffered for practicing their culture would take their new-found inspiration from Native Americans to spearhead dozens of programs, events, and educational activities for Poles. Teaching Polish youth not only their nearly lost traditions, but also the traditions of the Native Americans that inspired their efforts.
Several other authors, such as Arkady Fiedler, Alfred Szklarski, and Zbigniew Nienacki would join in the movement, publishing their own works detailing and inspired by Native American life. Many of these stories shared themes of reconnection to one’s traditions and culture. The impact of this movement would have long lasting effects on Polish culture. Supłatowicz would go on to create Polski Ruch Przyjaciół Indian (PRPI), the Polish Movement of Indians’ Friends in the mid-1970s. Primarily a group of hobbyists, the movement held national and local gatherings, most meetings having hundreds of participants eager to learn more about Native American culture and life. Presentations of Native culture, exhibitions of their craft, demonstrations of their dances and ceremonies were a part of most of these events.
Similar efforts to reintroduce the cultural and linguistic heritage of Native Americans would kick off in the United States at about the same time. Here in Del Norte, efforts to begin teaching the Tolowa language at Del Norte High School began in 1969, eventually leading to a credit-bearing class that met college language requirements by 1973. In 1972, the American Indian Movement (AIM) organized an en masse pilgrimage from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. to occupy the Department of the Interior, the goal being the recognition of Native Tribes, federal protection for Indigenous religions and cultures, and abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This would kick-start the formation of the International Indian Treaty Council in 1974, and lead to the passage of the Self-Determination Act of 1975.
In 1995, after the fall of the Soviet Union and its Polish puppet regime, the Native Polish Church opened in Warsaw to promote pre-christian Slavic beliefs. Directly inspired by the Native American Church that was formed in the late 19th century – which aimed to intertwine traditional Native American and Christian beliefs – the Native Polish Church fused Slavic neopaganism with hints of the dominant Catholic faith. Some of these Catholic/Native American influences within the Native Polish Church include a small shrine to the Native American patron saint Kateri Tekakwitha, which can be found near Wrocław. In 2000, Stanisław Supłatowicz opened a North American Native Museum of Culture in the town of Wymysłowo.
These efforts continue to this day, with schools in Poland teaching about Native Americans and the Indigenous community’s continued cultural revitalization work. The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation in recent years has collaborated with Cal Poly Humboldt, creating a film that explores identity, the restoration of its language, and the hope for the future, ‘A’-T’I Xwee-Ghayt-Nish: Still We Live On. Just as the Tolowa Dee-Ni’ Nation is reclaiming their language and heritage, Poland’s efforts to revive its own Indigenous traditions – after gaining inspiration from Native American tribes – demonstrates a shared commitment to safeguarding and revitalizing cultural identities. Both endeavors underscore the importance of resilience and cultural identity in the face of historical challenges, sharing hope for the future through the restoration of their endangered cultural legacies.
