Plan B Forum

A British man who lives as an Apache Indian is fighting a court battle after being found with illegal badger paws and eagle wings in his home.



Mangas Colaradas, 60, claimed the wild animal relics are part of the Native American lifestyle he has lived for 20 years - despite being born and raised in Swansea.

But he was arrested after the body parts of the wild animals were found in his home filled with his Apache collection.

Colaradas wore ceremonial head-dress when he appeared in court today, charged under the Protection of Badgers Act and the Wildlife and Countryside Act over the badger and eagle relics.

But Colaradas pleaded not guilty - and has vowed to fight the case on the grounds that it is part of his Apache lifestyle.

He wore a ceremonial head dress, tassled jacket, suede moccasins and a snake’s head necklace to deny the charge at Swansea magistrates court.

Anne Griffiths, defending, said: 'My client Mangas is part of a native American Apache tribe.

'He has spent time living in these Apache communities and this is his belief.'

The Apache people, split over around 13 tribes, are usually found in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Apache was originally a word given to the natives' enemies, known as the Zuni.

But over time the word became adopted worldwide and is even used by the Apaches themselves.

There are thought to be about 30,000 Apaches left in America

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The Apache tribes were nearly wiped out by Europeans. They now have their own areas, or 'reservations', to live on, where they can live by their own customs and rules, but they must still obey the U.S. law.

A stereotypical Apache image might be an Indian with his horse. However horses did not exist in North American until colonists arrived - but the Apaches quickly adopted them and used them for transport.

Colaradas was released on bail and is due to stand trial in August.

Outside court, the father-of-six told of his Apache lifestyle in his three-bedroom detached house in the Townhill suburb of Swansea.

He said: 'I dress like this all the time I’m not just some weekend Indian. I don’t put it on to show off, I put it on because I want to wear it.

'I’m against modern life, nobody cares about anybody else, nobody cares about mother earth.

'The whole point of the Native American lifestyle is that everyone believes in mother earth and treats others who you want to be treated.'

Colaradas began living a Native American lifestyle after he divorced from his wife in the early 1990s.

He adopted his name in honour of a famous Apache chief and now refuses to answer to anything else.

In 1997 he travelled to United States to try and live on a Red Indian reservation but the American government would not let him

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1qYEhNU00

In 1997 he travelled to United States to try and live on a Red Indian reservation but the American government would not let him

'The whole point of the Native American lifestyle is that everyone believes in mother earth and treats others who you want to be treated.' . . . He adopted his name in honour of a famous Apache chief and now refuses to answer to anything else.

Poor old Red Sleeves . . . I knew him over several months and can say he had the highest type of that lucid Indian mind which can put the civilised logician to shame, yet whose very simplicity of wisdom has been the redskin’s downfall. He was a fine psychologist – you’ll note he had weighed me for a rascal and fugitive on short acquaintance – an astute politician, and a bloody, cruel, treacherous barbarian who’d have been a disgrace to the Stone Age. If that seems contradictory – well Indians are contrary critters, and Apaches more than most. Mangas Colorado taught me that, and gave me my first insight into the Indian mind, which is such a singular mechanism, and so at odds with ours, that I must try to tell you about it here.

Speaking of Apaches in particular, you must understand that to them deceit is a virtue, lying a fine art, theft and murder a way of life, and torture a delightful recreation. Aha, says you, here’s old Flashy airing his prejudices, repeating ancient lies. By no means – I’m tell you what I learned at first hand – and remember, I’m a villain myself, who knows the real article when he sees it, and the ‘Pash are the only folk I’ve struck who truly believe that villainy is admirable; they haven’t been brought up, you see, in a Christian religion that makes much of conscience and guilt. They reverence what we think of as evil; the bigger a rascal a man is, the more they respect him, which is why the likes of Mangas – whose duplicity and cunning were far more valued in the tribe than his fighting skill – and the Yawner, became great among them. This twisted morality is almost impossible for white folk to understand; they look for excuses and say the poor savage don’t know right from wrong. Jack Cremony had the best answer to that: if you think an Apache can’t tell right from wrong – wrong him, and see what happens. . . .

. . . . You begin to understand, perhaps, the impossibility of red man and white man ever understanding each other – not that it would have made a damned bit of difference if they had, or altered the Yankee’s Indian policy, except possibly in the direction of wiping out such intractable bastards even faster than they did. They knew they were going to have to dispossess the redskins, but being good Christian humbugs they kept trying to bully and cajole them into accepting the theft gracefully – which ain’t quite the best position from which to make treaties with unreliable savages who are accustomed to rob rather than be robber, and who don’t understand what government and responsibility and authority mean, anyway. You can’t treat sensibly with a chief whose braves don’t feel obliged to obey him; contrariwise, if you’re an Indian (worse luck) there’s no point in treating with a government which is eventually going to pinch your hunting-grounds to accommodate the white migration it can’t control. And it doesn’t help when the two sides regard each other respectively as greedy, brutal white thieves and beastly, treacherous red vermin. I’m not saying either was wrong.

The Indian’s tragedy was that being a spoiled and arrogant savage who wouldn’t lie down, and a brave and expert fighter who happened to be quite useless at war, he could only be suppressed with a brutality that often matched his own. It was the reservation or the grave; there was no other way.

My little anthropologist would say it was all the white man’s fault for intruding; no doubt, but by that logic Ur of the Chaldees would be a damned crowded place by now.

bigskygal wrote:
Word to Mr. Colaradas; real Indians don't dress like that every day, but rather, just on pow wow weekends.

bigskygal wrote:I note from this article that the general British understanding of Native Americans is quite colored by stereotype.