Native Youth

As I was perusing the Indian Media Network I came across this article:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/04/26/columbia-native-students-demand-recognition-original-inhabitants-149050

 

If it is one thing I know about cultural movements is that youth is responsible for the survivance of a people.

You could imagine how I felt, when I read about a group of Youths petitioning for recognition that their ancestors were the first inhabitants of Manhattan.  According to this article, The Native Youth Council at Columbia University was going to hold a pow wow in honor of reclaiming their own history.  Instead, they decided to petition the University to create a plaque that would honor Native history.

A plaque won’t give back to Natives all that they have lost, but the very fact that Native youth are becoming heard is a major step in the right direction.  It would seem that Native youth is starting to find its voice—even though this plaque is more of a separatist movement I think Lyons would call it an act of making an X mark. 

I think it is extremely important for Youth to be involved in promoting cultural history because they represent the future of all people in any nation, culture, or body of people. 

 

Power be to the youth!!!!

Language and Nation: The Human Ethnie

Excerpt from “Right of Way” by Simon Ortiz:

There is silence.

There is silence.

You don’t like to thing

The fall into a bottomless despair

Is too near and to easy and meaningless.

You don’t want silence to grow

Deeper and deeper into you

Because that growth inward stunts you,

And that is no way to continue,

And you want to continue.

And so you tell stories.

You tell stories about your People’s birth

And their growing

You tell stories about your children’s birth

And their growing.

You tell stories of their struggles.

You tell that kind of history,

And you pray and be humble.

With strength, it will continue that way.

That is the only way.

That is the only way.

This poem by Ortiz was perhaps my favorite reading from the ENTIRE semester—plus I think it works so perfectly with Lyons’ chapter “Nations and Nationalism since 1942.”

What do I mean?

A Nation MUST have a voice to exist—think about that I will come back to it later in the post.

I sort of feel the same way about the concept of nation in terms of Ortiz and Lyons. A nation is something of a conundrum for me as a post-colonial scholar, I both love it and detest it at the same time—perhaps for the same reasons Lyons’ dislikes the concept.

Personally I think the concept of a “Nation” creates problems:

1)      I think it is impossible to clearly define what a nation is.

2)      It creates divisions between people.

3)      It creates oppositions in terms of binaries—such as civilized and uncivilized.

4)      It creates fear and promotes distrust.

5)      It makes it impossible to separate culture and politics.

I’ve outlined all the problems I have with the concept of a nation, and I think defining what a nation is somewhat problematic.  However, Lyons does a great job of unpacking this problematic term.

First off, Lyons says that “nations as we recognize them today are an essentially modern development whose logic cannot be discovered prior to the modern era” (115).  This means that a nation is a modern concept which can be linked to the logic of such a term whereas before there was not logical or rational need for a concept such as a nation

So what does it mean to be this concept of a modern nation?

According to Lyons it means modernizing one’s own ethnie and “Nationalism is the political movement that makes the transformation happen” (120). 

Lyons creates a vital connection between these two:

Ethnie is connected to culture and Nation is the Political transformation of a culture which is done through the physical act of promoting nationalism; modernizing of a people’s ethnie (120-121).  Effective nationalism, is “the [sentiment] that [the] national and the political out to be congruent” (136).

In the process of creating Nationalistic thought Lyons outlines two different types of Nationalist:

those who are “Cultural Revivalist” and those who are “Realist Nationalist.”

Lyons says that “Cultural Revivalist” are radical because they practice “conceptual separatism” which is “the assertion of radical conceptual differences that are deemed incommensurable with other concepts and systems” (136).   Conceptual separatism creates problems and reinforces imperial and colonial binaries. 

A realist nationalist—which according to Lyons is what all Natives should be who practice the creation of Native Nation through nationalism—would create a “claim to nationhood and nationality based on an indigenous groups historical descent from an ethnie” and would be “careful not to accentuate our [human] differences to the point of incommensurability lest we drop out of political conversations all together” (Lyon 136).

It would seem that Lyons thinks separatism creates chaos and that relativism—or in this case realism—is the key to unlocking the structure and creation of a modern Native Nation.

HOW is a Nation created?

Simple it creates a voice for itself—through the modernization of Ethnie.

Ortiz states that

Language, when it is regarded not only as expression but is realized as experience as well, works in and is of that manner. Language is perception of experience as well as expression….We forget that language beyond its mechanics is a spiritual force. When you regard the sacred nature of language, you realize that you are part of it and it is part of you. You are not necessarily in control of it, and if you do control some of it, it is not in your exclusive control. Upon this realization, I think there are all possibilities of expression and perception which become available. (Genocide 107-112)

Lyons doesn’t state it but he most definitely hints at the idea that the ethnie that connects all human life is the concept of Language—language is that spiritual force that creates a nation.  Look at the language Ortiz uses to define what language is: part of, perception of experience.

Is not a nation, a group of people who share a common perception of the experiences accorded to one’s own history—one’s ethnie?

Culture and politics are united through language, and according to Lyons a nation asserts its nationalism through creating great works within the spaces of literary cannons (see subsection Literary Nationalisms for further info).  Cannons represent traditions, traditions which “define people by what they do, not by what they are” (143)

Language conveys the human experience through narrative from—an act of historical nationalism in itself.  The modernization of Native language leads to the modernization of Native ethnie.

Lyons states that:

Historically Natives have been realists; nationalist should be to…Literary nationalism is the making of a “high” national culture in the literary sphere, one that is clearly distinguished in certain ways from other “national literatures”…it has recently motivated the work of Native literary critics who see it as the best way to organize, interpret, and teach Native literature and culture. (147)

Language is the voice of a nation, and finding one’s voice is the job of all Natives who seek to create a Nation of Indigenous thought.  They must create a unique cannon of indigenous rhetoric that both sets apart and relates to all the other cultures of the world.

 According to both Ortiz and Lyons, Silence is NOT the answer, and in order for Natives to preserve their own history, live in the present and future, and for non-native and Natives to listen to each other—we must all remember that a certain ethnie unites us all into one human nation.

Language.

The Nature of Culture

As a much as I love post-colonial theory and literature I often find myself hung up on a specific dilemma:

What is culture and how do we define it? Why should we define it? AND is culture responsible for the discord that is prevalent in our increasingly global world? Who gets to says what culture is superior?

These questions are similar to the ones Lyons asks:

What is Native culture? Is it a coherent body of specific beliefs and practices owned by a given group of pole? Who has the authority to determine what counts as culture, and how are such determinations put to use? (77).

In the face of this challenging predicament, I want to start off this post by saying I love learning about other cultures.  Cultural diversity is something I champion on a daily basis, and I can’t tell you how many I people I put in their place for being ignorant about people that are culturally different.  I don’t like when people put down other people because of cultural differences.  In fact I can get really angry over it. But I’d like to point out, I’m as guilty as a “culture cop” because according to Lyon’s culture isn’t something that is visible in terms of representation. Yes, I see myself as promoting good, but by seeing culturally different people as victims I am promoting the whole concept of “reactive self perception” that is a major problem when it comes to policing culture and behaviors.  I am just voicing injustices in a different way, but by seeing people as constant victims I am also promoting the oppositions that constantly define our existence. After all culture, isn’t just about nature it’s also about the politics of interaction between different types of people.

As much as I love culture, I find myself constantly trying to define it.  It’s just as challenging to define as the word nation. 

I really have no clear definition of what culture is. 

It’s a tricky space to tread being a post-colonial theorist because you must constantly be aware of the boundaries that refuse to go away.  Who and what are you doing when you analyze the implicit meanings of cultural differences?

After reading Lyon’s second chapter “Culture and Its Cops” I felt a little better about this cultural dilemma, and I realized that I must look at culture in a different light if I am ever to overcome this obstacle of reactive self perception that understands “difference” as the only way to understand other people.   In this case—taking a cue from Saussure—IN CULTURE THERE IS ONLY DIFFERENCES.

Lyon’s does a great job of unpacking the meaning of culture—and answering the questions he asks about Native culture and its revival—specifically within the context of Native life.  Reading his work helped me reconcile my own cultural conflicts and gave me a definition to work with.

On the subject of culture and its origin Lyons states:

Before there was culture there was nature. Both culture and nature are human ideas, and both started out as verbs becoming nouns. Nature originated in the Latin natura, signifying the process of birth; it has referred ever since to that which is “innate,” the word being one of natura’s etymological descendants (along with “natality” and “native”).   Nature was that quality or force that existed inside something and revealed its essential character; simultaneously it referred to the material world, with or without people, which was likewise filled with certain qualities or forces.  By contrast, “culture” comes from the Latin colere, signifying the activities of nurturing, caring for something, tending to it, and subsequently bettering it. Colere additionally meant “honor with worship” (which is why culture gave us “cults”) and “inhabit” (colere also gives us “colonies”). But the dominant meaning of colere was to nurture, what was nurtured was nature itself: in fact, the nurture of nature was culture.  (77)

WOW this passage completely changed my mind about culture and its meaning.  In fact, I have never read a better historical analysis of the origin of the word culture.  AND I had no idea that the word colony comes from the root word Colere.

When understood in the context of its original meaning, culture isn’t so bad.   Culture birthed life through its interaction with the nurturing of nature and vice versa.  BEAUTIFUL!!!

However, according to Lyons, modernity forced culture away from its meaning as a verb and into a noun (80-83).  Somewhere along the lines we lost touch of what culture actually was—an act of birth/life.  Now we’re “caught in a minor culture war over the meaning of culture itself” (83).

According to Lyons in Ojbwe there is no word for culture—it is an act all of itself—and “Objwe is a language of verbs rather than nouns, describing actions over objects, process over things” (88). I find Ojbwe speakers exhilarating because “Ojbwe speakers do not have a culture at all. Rather, it may be more accurate to say that they spend their time culturing…More life is the goal of Ojibwe culturing…For anishinaabeg, what we now call culture was always geared toward the production of more life, not political theology, and it was not defined by a discernible content that we can abstract…but experienced through a wide and constantly evolving array of practices performed in concert with the rhythms of the natural world” (88-89).

What type of world would we live in, if we set aside the modern definition of culture—which promotes the concept of difference—for the Ojbwe notion of culture?

 We’d favor life over destruction. We wouldn’t have people blowing each other up, poisoning each other with the chemicals of warfare, and or raping and pillaging innocents.  If we’d give up this notion of cultural superiority and cultural purity we could live in a world where difference wasn’t the only defining factor in the way we interact. 

I don’t mind difference, because no one person is the same. However, we are all human.

 Culture when it moves from a verb to a noun become destructive and harbors thoughts of fundamentalism and authenticity—it breeds fear and hate.

I know there will never be one universal Culture, with a capital C, but if we can set aside this notion of Culture as difference, we can overcome the violence that is associated when culture becomes a noun.

I think we can all learn something from Native culture in the process of Native revival.

I’d like to end this post with a quote from Cesaire that I have used before—“A culture that keeps to itself atrophies.”

 

A Sick Profit

If you haven’t seen this recent headline in the news here’s a link to the news about a Paris museum who decided to sell stolen American Native artifacts:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/12/paris-court-rules-to-allow-auction-native-american-artifacts-despite-us-call/

THIS MAKES ME SICK!!

First off, I have a few select words I’d like to say: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD!!!!!  Where does a museum, or 

person for that matter, get off selling “artifacts” that hold significant meaning to a culture that wants them back because they were stolen?

I mean seriously….Let’s look at it this way. 

A foreign army comes into Rome, sacks St. Peter’s Church and makes off with extremely valuable artifacts  that the Vatican holds dear some of which relate back to the time Jesus walked the Earth.  As a Christian, I would be furious, and I’m sure the millions of Catholics and Christians of the world would do anything in their power to get those artifacts back.  

The sad truth of the matter is that those artifacts would be handed over immediately. 

When something like this happens to people in power it doesn’t go unchecked.  Instead it’s taken care of the second it’s talked about.

So let me ask again….WHY did a court even approve the selling of these sacred masks in the first place? When is the world going to wake up and smell the shit storm that is brewing between all the cultures of the world!!!! Isn’t it bad enough that everything has been stolen from the indigenous Natives of America?

Why add more pain to a wound that doesn’t seem like it’s going to heal anytime soon?

I say give the masks back NOW.  They were never artifacts to begin with, they were stolen property. I’m sick of the way Natives are being treated in this country and others.

Let the spirits rest in peace and return the sacred items back to the Hopi natives before I get out there and whoop some serious ass. 

The Native Writes Back: Stories, Theory, and Oral Rhetorics

Recently, I’ve been facinated with reading the memoirs of some of my favorite writers—in fact there seems to be a recent movement to record one’s personal life.  Salman Rushdie just released his memoirs—Joseph Anton—in September, and Chinua Achebe just before he died wrote his memoirs—There Was a Country. (I just started his memoirs because I needed something to relieve the pain I felt at his death.)  I also read Reinaldo Arenas’ Before Night Falls when I was working on my senior colloquium paper—I must admit, if it weren’t for his life stories I wouldn’t have been able to fully understand the oppression homosexuals in Cuba faced because of the  heterosexism instilled by the Castro regime.

I have to wonder, though, because in each I’ve found moments that I thought could be considered critical theory. I stepped back and thought to myself, “Isn’t this a life story? Why am I reading moments of post-colonial theory, within something as personal as a memoir?”  All of these questions run through my mind because the reason I read memoirs is to get a better understanding for how a person become the person who wrote a great work of literature.  Never in my mind did I think that a life memoir could function as a work of theory—until now that is!

Which brings me to the readings for class this week which sought to answer a specific question: where is the line supposed to be drawn between personal stories which convey some sense of realism, and the line in which theory is applied to explain phenomena which seem almost surreal? 

Can a memoir function as a work of theory, and can it inform schools of theoretical thought?? Where does the Native belong in theory? If things like theory and philosophy are products of European Nations, HOW then do Natives express theory in terms of Western thought? How do Natives enter the elite group of theorists that says what goes and what doesn’t?

Simple, they defy typical theory, through the use of narrative structures through blending theory and stories they create memoirs that function as works of theory which free and decolonize the mind.

Before I point out passages from the readings—Stories Through Theories, Theories Through Stories—that I thought were important I want to make a comparison between stories and theory by defining each.

Theory: theory is the basis of any scholarly work—you can’t escape it as an undergrad or graduate. Theory is the search for truth. It helps explain the essence of things, how certain things function, and the phenomena of the ways in which things exist. It also helps us better understand the way humans operate within certain cultural discourses of contact. (Of course this is a biased definition because I am queer/phenomenologist/poco theorist)

Stories:  Stories, according to Thomas King, are all that we are.  Natives use stories to talk about the way their world was created, to convey life lessons, and above all to entertain. 

Stories and theory ARE not so different!

They both explain the phenomena about the world in which we live. Yet, the difference is that stories can be used to convey false truths, confuse people, and to hid that which we truly desire—stories can function as fiction.

But here’s the caveat, isn’t theory just a bunch of bull shit? I mean don’t get me wrong I am an English major.  Stories are product of human intellect, and so is theory. So… Doesn’t that mean theory is nothing but fictitious things we tell ourselves to make us feel better? It’s kind of like a story right? NO story conveys the complete and utter truth about life, JUST like theory.

So why is there such a big beef about creative writers not being literary critics and vice versa?

This is why I love Native writers like Vizneor and King, they are literary anarchist set to change the world. They understand that theory is no different than telling a story and they blend Western narrative structures with Native oral traditions.   The hybridity of their genetics, is conveyed in the conceptual mode of their “autocritical auto/biographies.”

Vizneor sees single theories and individual stories as limited, and this interferes when it comes to “the self and the way it is expressed through communal stories [his work] goes beyond literary tropes and restrictive categories” (Pulitano 84).

Theory and stories, individually, do not encapsulate self in relation to community.  NOR does a single story represent a complete whole. It’s pretty neat what Pulitano is saying Vizneor does when it comes to theory and stories.

However, Vizneor, according to Pulitano does more than just combine theory and story. He makes the written a vehicle for the oral because “oral cultures have never been without a critical condition and that the act of telling stories is essentially a theoretical gesture” (87). This is exactly the comparison I made up between stories and theory in their definition is it not?  Except the only we can understand theory in relation to stories is through the way they are combined—orally. 

Natives use the oral to combine theory and story.  Think about it, when a story is written down, and discussed orally it is often done through a fierce debate about its theoretical implications.  Which then makes “writing [according to Vizneor] [a] primary role of langue, which in oral discourse; should set people free” ( Pulitano87).

Theory on its own imprisons people within certain conceptual frame works.  Stories on their own do much of the same.  I’m sure Vizneor would agree.  In order to undo these dangerous actions, which function as the basis of academia because they place Natives on the marginal end of the conversation, Natives write back by blending the rhetorical abilities of oral communication to set people free from theories and stories that do not allow us to see the whole truth but single truths.

Decolonize your mind, decolonize language, make your voice heard through the spoken word. 

Indigenous Feminism: A Celebration of New and Old

 

Whenever I get the chance to read about women taking a stand for the equality and remembrance of other women, I get chills.  Maybe it’s because as a gay man I face issues of gender and sex all the time.  

So you can only imagine how I felt when it came to this articlehttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/29/new-native-american-women-warriors-official-honor-song-watch-listen-here-148451

I WAS ESTACTIC because it coincides so perfectly with this week’s readings! Anderson, in her essay “Affirmations of an Indigenous Feminist” says that:

For [me], Indigenous feminism is about creating a new world out of the best of the old. Indigenous feminism is about honoring creation in all its forms, while also fostering the kind of critical thinking that will allow us to stay true to our traditional reverence for life.  (89)

An all Native American Woman color guard who celebrate Women warriors!

I couldn’t think of anything possibly more empowering then women celebrating women warriors.  Although they are in service to the United States of America, Native women have still taken the stand to fight.  The Native American Woman color guard celebrating their fellow Native women is an excellent representation of making something new out of the old.  After all Native Tribes were traditionally matriarchal—what better way to return to the past then to celebrate women who have sought independence through war.

A matriarchy is based on celebrating the empowerment of Women as leaders.
So I want to extend a thank you to both groups of Native women—the ones who celebrate and the ones who serve—because it shows that feminism isn’t uniculural. Instead it’s multicultural. 

Through Space and Time: Bodies Disorientated

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with bodies in space, bodies acting on objects within spaces, and above all the way bodies are orientated to inhabit certain types of space.  As a poco theorist I keep imagining the ways bodies transcend space and time, and the ways in which bodies migrate and come into contact with other bodies.  Bodies and their orientations are VERY important because it defines the very nature of colonization. If you haven’t read Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, and Others by Sarah Ahmed, I strongly recommend it.  It really makes you think about the world around you, they way you perceive yourself, and the way you perceive others. Orientation can refer to many things, but it is certainly for most involved, in the ways in which we orientate our bodies within the spaces we inhabit.

This is a concept I learned from Sarah Ahmed.

I want to use a certain model, from Ahmed’s work, because I think it really fits nicely into the ways in which Lyons imagines the way his body—and the body of modern indigenous peoples—inhabits a certain space.

According to Ahmed, we can think of our bodies along the lines of two lines which form a vertical and horizontal line in terms of the way our bodies are situated—the “social” and the “straight line.”  

I want to touch briefly on her model of sexual orientation, because we can also understand it in terms of colonization. 

A “body at home,” is a body whose orientation is centered between these two lines of “social” and “straight.”  The social line represents all that society says is correct—think of it in terms of the cultural values that are placed as restrictions upon your body.  The straight line is the line that represents your family’s cultural values—these are also placed as restrictions upon one’s body.  So a normal body is a body at home centered between what’s considered normal between the straight and the social line.  A queer body is a body whose orientation doesn’t fall within the social and straight lines.  Thus, they inhabit an oblique space of the social and straight line.  Their bodies have been disoriented.

This is a picture I created. It is based on Ahmed’s model and I think it will help you understand it better:

 

 

So in terms of this model a body with the correct orientation—in terms of the social and straight—is a body that is correctly orientated.

LET’S think of this model in terms of colonization.  A “body at home” is a body that has not yet been colonized.  It falls within the social line and the straight line. BUT when colonization happens a body is forced off center and then becomes disorientated—it becomes queer in its relation to the colonial force governing its body.

Scott Richard Lyons occupies a space, and a body, that is disoriented within a queer space. We can understand his body and the space he inhabits in terms of Ahmed’s model of sexual orientation.  BUT because it is his ancestors that have been colonized his disorientation is passed down through his genetic lineage—his body is a physical product of colonization.

 Lyons says “But wholeness has never been my experience, at least not where identity is concerned. Liminality has always best defined me on the inside and perhaps the outside, too, and I say that without trying to privilege the condition of in-betweenness even one little bit…Most of the contradictory discourse that constitute “me” I have inherited…at any rate, there is nothing “pure” about me…” (IX-XI). 

Lyons is a product of disorientation and his body must inhabit a space of inbetweenness off centered within a space of impurity. 

Therefore, Lyons knows that to re-orientate his body he must define and understand the queer spaces that Native people have come to inhabit in correlation to the ways in which their bodies have been colonized. I am in no way saying that Natives are sexually queer, I AM saying however their experience comes from a queering effect that makes their body strange because of the space it inhabits.

Lyons starts with the colonization of his people through his explication of the “x-mark.” He says:

An x-mark is a treaty signature…Many an Indian’s signature was recorded by the phrase “his x mark,” and what the x-mark meant was consent. An x-mark also signified coercion…The x-mark is a contaminated and coerced sign of consent made under conditions that are not of one’s making. It signifies power and a lack of power, agency and a lack of agency. It is a decision one makes when something has already been decided for you. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And yet there is always the prospect of slippage, indeterminacy, unforeseen consequences, or unintended results; is is always possible, that is, that an x-mark could result in something good.  Why else, must we ask, would someone bother to make it? I use the x-mark to symbolize Native assent to things…that, while not necessarily traditional in origin, can sometimes turn out all right and occasionally good.  (1-3)

The x represents the body—and when written it represents the consent of the body. The Native X mark represented treaties, consent to give up lands, and consent to give up the spaces in which their bodies inhabit.  I think what Lyon’s is trying to get across is that many Native’s see the x mark as the death of Native culture and life.  YET, Lyons sees an opportunity of re-orientation—or re-appropriation for that matter—within the x mark.  The x mark is the signifier of disorientation in space.  BUT it can also serve as a signifier for reorientation.  Lyons states that Natives are not unused to this idea of migration in have he posits the concept that Natives “have the right to move in modern time” which can only take place by “acknowledging the differences that already exist in the Fourth world” (32).   

Lyons uses the X mark to return to the Native body.  After all one can learn to live within a queer space, as long as one reorientates the body.  What better way than the thing which disorientates it in the first place?

The x mark serves as a removal, but according to Lyons “Sometimes a removal can become a migration” (33).

 Natives must make new X marks in order to become New Natives.  A body can never fully return home after colonization—instead it must reorientate itself in the present to create new lines within the future. New x marks are signs of reorientation.  They can be used as a beacon, a guiding light for all Native who have been disorientated.  If Natives were to rethink the idea of tradition within the space of a modern identity, I’d imagine these new lines for Native people would look something along the lines of an X.

Legislation 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a)

In recent news I came across an article that I thought all of you would find remarkable! The article can be found here and is definitely worth the read because a few weeks ago we watched a symposium on thse use of Native Mascots:

<http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/26/native-american-rights-fund-applauds-sponsors-proposed-offensive-redskins-trademark>

It turns out that The Non-Disparagement of Native American Persons or Peoples in Trademark Registration Act of 2013 was recently introduced on March 21.  This is a major step in promoting awareness of racism and discrimination through the use of racialized stereotypes. 

HOW AWESOME IS THIS LEGISLATION!!!!

It's even cooler after watching the symposium and knowing all the oppression Natives have faced.

It would bar all professional and nonprofessional sports teams from using mascots such as Natives.  BUT on top of that it prevents schools from engaging in acts such as pretending to kill natives at pep rallies and such. 

My mind is blown.  This is the first step in creating a new visual history for Natives, and I hope it gives inspiration for todays Native Youths.  It ultimately shows that Natives have made major progress in freeing their minds and bodies from the stereotypes that refuse to relinquish their hold on Native culture and life. 

Sorry fans, but say goodbye to images like these because they are offensive and racist and do not belong in Pop or sport culture:

One major step in the fight against Racism!!!

Indians of All Tribes: Searching for a Contemporary Meaning of Native Life

“They were anxious and bored, for all the right reasons.  Nothing was happening anywhere, and most days it seemed likely that nothing ever would. Indian kids of North America—anst-ridden, their moods swinging in a heartbeat from dreamy to despairing—waited with dramatic impatience, wondering if time had actually stopped, or if it just seemed that way. They weren’t even sure exactly what they were waiting for, or how they would recognize if it ever showed up.” (Smith 123)

The 1960’s, as we all know, was a significant time for social movements and subcultures of all kinds.  From the Vietnam protests to the Black Civil Rights Movement, many changes were made in the name of equality and justice.   Both the Vietnam protests and Black Rights movement were significant historical movements, and I remember learning about them in every history class since the 7^th grade.  The protests were enough to end a war, and create major changes to our own constitution.  But why is it that these are the only two movements that are accorded an honored place in our country’s great history.   

 Why is it I have never heard about Indians of All Tribes or any of the events that took place surrounding this group?  It happened in the 1960’s right?  How is it that the history of this movement got swallowed up in the other moments that defined this decade and the subsequent years that followed?  Whatever happened to NIYC and its followers?  Where have all the great nations and tribes gone? 

Paul Chaat Smith talks about the Indians of All Tribes as a group that didn’t gather enough momentum, but he still values the ideals and concepts that were raised through the movement they provoked.  So what was it about and what do Native’s do following a movement that failed its own people?

What happens when a magazine that misrepresents Indian interests gives Natives a purpose?

These are all questions that got me thinking as I was reading through Paul Chaat Smith’s essays Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong.  I got the feeling that this book was more along the lines of What You Don’t Know about Indians, because after I finished it I felt all the heartache and longing of a culture trying to reclaim what was lost—I understood the meaning to the lines I used as an opening for this post.   I’ll be honest I have never heard of AIM, and I’m pretty sure it’s because American culture does everything to erase the meaning of Native culture.

 I’d like to focus on the chapter “Meaning of Life” because I think it provides the best answers to the ways in which Indians can take up the mantle of AIM and continue to resist the oppression and destruction of their culture. 

I took the liberty to look up the cover for Life: Return of the Red Man because I wanted to see it in color and because it played in a big role in influencing the Indian youth at the time according to Smith.

  Here is the image in all of its glory (UGH):

 

The Indian stereotypes are prevalent.  The stoic face is empty of feeling, staring straight in the eyes so why was it so important?  Because it started something…and it gave meaning all be it in the wrong direction.

I opened this post with the beginning sentences from Smith’s chapter because in the 1960’s the Indian youth were waiting for something.   The Life magazine that was printed at the time was supposed to provide a purpose and Smith says “The stories and pictures electrified Indian kids in Oklahoma and Montana and Los Angeles because Indians in 1967 were invisible and boring” (128).  

How could a magazine that propagated misrepresentations “electrify” Indian youth?   Simple, because it gave them false hope and made being Indian stylish, popular,and mainstream.

But it wasn’t the magazine that gave Native life meaning.  It was a movement that I have, and I’m sure many of my peers, have never heard of.  It’s a movement that deserves recognition for the thought and challenges that were made.

According to Smith in “Novemeber 1969, two years post-Life: boatloads of Indian college students staged a daring nighttime invasion of the abandoned federal prison on Alcatraz Island in California…The students bravely defeated a naval blockade, managed the intense press attention, and suddenly, realized that the media and even the federal government were taking them more seriously than they could ever have dreamed” (130).

Defeated a naval blockade, managed the media, and got the attention of the federal government? FUCK YEAH, these are the Natives I have known nothing about. 

But there’s more to what this movement did because as Smith says:

Alcatraz merits designation as the first Reservation X of the contemporary era.  It was Indian initiated and directed; it was pan-Indian and intertribal; it was democratic and unexpected. For the outside world, it was understood as protest, a demand for recognition, a stand for respect and justice and acknowledgement.  But it was also a place where Indians came for answers, to learn from people of different backgrounds, from different regions of North America of different spiritual beliefs….I believe the spirit that moved so many Indians during that time comes from the recognition that rebuilding our shattered communities requires extraordinary intervention, daring, and risk. (133).

This movement gave meaning to Native life and it was the first time since colonization that Indians made a movement for and of their selves.  Ultimately it raised “the question…[of] how we will live. It isn’t about battling dead icons like John Wayne but rising to the challenge of creating our own visual history” (Smith 136). 

I love this, but I wonder at the success of the visual history so far.  The success of the Alcatraz movement was that it proved Indians were a force to be reckoned with and it made them visual.  But seeing as this is the first time I have ever heard of any movement I wonder what it will take to raise the tribes again, to once again give meaning to Native life. 

How do Natives get over misrepresentations,  like this:

 

To true representations like this:

 

 

This is the Visual history Natives need to survive in contemporary Native America.

Rape and Native Women

It breaks my heart each day I see another headline that reads "Girl Raped." It blows my mind, and how can such a headline even convey the horrors that take place during such a horrific act.

When I was browsing the internet for a current topic I was watching TV, and the case of the Steubenville football players who raped an unconscious teenage girl.  I wondered to myself….How many Native women suffer such fates? How often? How much? By whom?  BUT then I thought to myself if Non-Natives are not subject to tribal law, how much do they get away with such sexually depraved acts?

I came across this article( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/opinion/native-americans-and-the-violence-against-women-act.html?_r=0) by one of my favorite Native authors--Louise Erdrich.  There is some light being shed on the abuse against native women and I know that the new VAWA that was passed in court has in it an inclusive clause that protects Native Women from Non-Native abusers—as if justice can come in the form of a court trial.  Either way, it’s still a move forward in the protection of Native women, and women in general.

However, rape was and still is a major issue facing Native women.

The following paragraph really upset me:

The Justice Department reports that one in three Native women is raped over her lifetime, while other sources report that many Native women are too demoralized to report rape. Perhaps this is because federal prosecutors decline to prosecute 67 percent of sexual abuse cases, according to the Government Accountability Office. Further tearing at the social fabric of communities, a Native woman battered by her non-Native husband has no recourse for justice in tribal courts, even if both live on reservation ground. More than 80 percent of sex crimes on reservations are committed by non-Indian men, who are immune from prosecution by tribal courts. (Louise Erdrich)

1 in every 3 Native women is raped over and over again through her life time…..80% of the rapes take place by Non-Native men.  HOLY SHIT!! What the fuck is wrong with a society that can let this type of thing take place? It blows my mind, and truly breaks my heart.  NO woman should be raped, and given the small population of Native women left 1/3 is WAY to much of a margin to let go unnoticed. 

I hope in the years to come that the VAWA will help bring down that 80% of Rape by non-Native men.  Even though I know justice in the form of a trial can never help a woman heal from such abuse. 

So I leave you with a proposal.  Help raise recognition, so Native women will no longer feel demoralized for the abuse against their bodies they suffer from.

No woman, specifically in this case No Native woman, should go unheard.  

Nation or Tribe?

Is it possible to promote a tribal awareness through the creation of a website?  I mean isn’t the internet a product of capitalism? Vizneor talks a lot about how the Native is often unheard through simulations of dominance, but it would seem that the two websites we were asked to look at this week were created for the purpose of overturning simulations of dominance.   

So the first website I looked at was the Osage Nation.  Upon first glance I thought it was rather modernized, influenced by colonial contact.  Yet, when one digs further and clinks on more links you get a better sense of what the website is for. It seems to me it is aimed at building a community through online networking and talking.  Talk about using the Master’s tool against him.   

There are plenty of links that help Navigate the many aspects of the Osage Nation.  If you click on the Culture link, it takes you to a page where there is a little blurb on the Osage Nation.  However, I am kind of taken aback by the use of Nation instead of Tribe.  Nation denotes independence, but doesn’t sovereignty represent tribe?  Can a tribe be independent but not sovereign?  When I think of Nation I think of Land titles and governing, but when I think of Tribe I think solely of a people. It is sort of ironic that the Osage people call themselves a nation and not a tribe. 

What’s interesting is that The Osage website has links to employment, the casinos, and above all a page dedicated to understanding the type of culture that surrounds both tribes.  Personally I got a better sense of tribal awareness from the Oneido website.  There are a lot more links that help building a community and it is more user friendly—inviting.  Not as tricky, maybe that’s what the Osage nation was trying to do. 

I found one more website that was completely different than the modernized Oneido and Osage nations. http://www.muckleshoot.nsn.us/default.aspx This link takes you to the Muckleshoot tribal page.  Whereas the other two websites were named after Nations, this website acknowledges the Muckleshoot is a tribe.  What a distinction, and the thing that states out the most is that I really don’t get any sense of what the Muckleshoot nation is or their culture.  Not too many links, but I was somewhat skeptical because the first picture on the homepage is a black and white picture of an Indian similar to Edward Curtis’s photographs.

What I wonder though about these websites is if they are put together by Natives or representatives of Natives?

Are these websites created for the purpose of subduing any inquires as to the real presence of tribal awareness? And which denotes tribal awareness the title of Tribe or the title of Nation?

Capital and Tribal Sovereignty

We have all faced, at one time or another, the system of capitalism that consumes individuals through the process of conformism.  I side on that of Marxists when it comes to capitalism in the fact that it reduces to nothing but a faceless worker—yet we’re fooled into thinking that everything we do is for our own possible gain.  The more we put into the system, the more we lose of ourselves.  The more money we get, the greedier we become.  Our fellow humans are nothing but mere competitors in this weird exchange of soul and capital. 

Money…Money…MORE money….God is Money. 

In the face of Capitalism Sovereignty is exchanged for slavery.  WE are all enslaved to something which we are conditioned from the time we are young to the time we draw our last breath, even if it is not our inheritance

 Let’s face it; if you work for corporate American you know what I’m talking about.  I work for a large corporate bank.  I have the lowest position in the company—I’m a bank teller.  Needless to say, the bank couldn’t function without workers like me.  THEY need us. Yet we can be fired, replaced, and interchanged by those above us.  I have to laugh because upper management says it has “our” best interest at heart.  BUT the moment you stop doing work that is profitable, that’s the moment you can kiss your job goodbye.  Therefore, I work as hard as I have to just to survive ignoring all my human qualities.

The moment you realize capitalism is a form of slavery is the moment your soul and body are liberated. But at the expense of what, because doesn’t freedom always come with a price?  Once you learn the rhetoric of Capital it is impossible to go back.

The bottom line is that NO one escapes recognition from capitalism, once you’re in its thrall it’s hard to let go or even escape its ability to make the individual conform to a certain social structure.

How does the concept of enslavement to capital apply to this week’s readings? How does capital undermine the concept of tribal sovereignty?

Vizneor recounts Luther Standing Bear’s narrative upon his arrival at the Carlisle Indian School where a strange event takes place.  According to Luther’s account, White people threw money at the Native Children who in turn threw it back (Luther Qtd in Vizneor 139).  Luther Standing Bear’s first experience with capital shows the naivety when first introduced to capital.  For one Bear, did not have the understanding of the rhetoric of Capitalism.  If he did he would have held the money tight in hand and realized that he would need it if he were to survive in the White man’s world. Nor Did Luther Standing Bear understand that the money in his hand was and would be the eventual destruction of tribal unity.  He cast the money back not out of fear of it but naivety of it.  In all theory he should have destroyed!  Sadly it didn’t work that way.

Ah the irony. Fast forward several generations, and we get what Vizneor calls a “weird contradiction” to Luther Standing Bear’s first naivety of the rhetoric of capital. 

Vizneor states that:

Five generations later many of the tribes that endured colonial cruelties, the miseries of hunger, disease, coercive assimilation, and manifest manners are now moneyed casino patrons and impresarios on reservations. The white people are throwing money at the tribes once more, but not to tribal children at the train stations; millions of dollars are lost each month at bingo, blackjack, electronic slot machines, and other mundane games of chance at casinos located on reservation land. The riches, for some, are new wampum, or the curious coup count of lost coins. The weird contradiction is that the enemies of tribalism have now become the sources of conditional salvation. (139)

 Several ideas stand and demand explication within this passage. 

First that Wampum was replaced with money (Capital).  According to Oxford Reference:

For many centuries, Native North Americans made beads from whelk and clam shells, which were strung together to make broad, patterned belts; both the beads and the belts are called wampum. The beads were held to symbolize inner qualities (e.g. harmony, contentment) and the belts had ceremonial importance. In societies without written language, they also had textual qualities; wampum belts, through the use of patterns and multicolored beads, conveyed stories, embodied treaties, and acted as a method of record-keeping to be passed down generations. (Oxford Dictionary Online, KU Lib)

This definition shows that Wampum didn’t represent money it represented a form of cultural, textual, and tribal history.  It also held a deeper meaning of spiritual harmony as well. 

Capital reduces humans to nothing.  Thus, it comes as no surprise that it destroys cultures. Let’s look at a simple formula.

 Wampum=CultureàCulture=SovereigntyàMoney=Capital

àCapital=CultureàCapital=Sovereignty

Therefore, Enslavement ≠ Sovereignty

Second thing that stands out within this passage is the sentence “Enemies of tribalism have now become the sources of conditional salvation” (emphasis added Vizneor 139).  Enemies become saviors.  Since, we know it’s not just the White man himself that is the enemy of Natives—it’s subversion through capitalism that is the enemy.  Yet, it is the Whiteman—enemy of tribalism—that conditions Natives to forsake Tribalism.  Conditioned for salvation through Capitalism, which I have already established, is a threat to tribal consciousness.  The Whiteman becomes the Capital that has enslaved his very own essence.

Europeans first introduced capitalism and enslaved Indian culture.  But once the American Government realized that Indian’s were surviving on their own, the Indian Regulatory Gaming Act was instituted.  This regulation took power out of tribal hands and forced a division of power among tribes (Vizneor 145).  Isn’t it bad enough that the Whiteman destroyed Native culture? Now it took back the very tool—capital—that the Indian was unconstrained by forcing Government regulation which in turn creates problems between tribes. 

The only way Natives can regain any tribal conscious is to reject the capitalist practices that were used as a form to control and appropriate Native culture.

I said it was impossible to decolonize one’s mind from the enslavement of Capital.  Maybe what I meant to say it’s impossible to be the same as one was before because of exterior physical circumstances.

It is possible to reject the enslavement of colonization.  Tribal consciousness just needs to remember itself through the process of decolonization.  We have to picture what Capital has done.

I leave you with a statment that echos Thomas King: Take this picture and do with it what you will, but don't say you would have lived your life differently if you hadn't seen it.