I can't. I physically, emotionally, mentally haven't been able to write in the last few days about the Veronica Brown custody/ adoption situation. I've tried. I woke up at 3 in the morning and after I hugged my Indian baby daughter tight, kissed her on her forehead, tucked her tightly in to bed, hugged her again and smoothed her hair away from her face I went out to my porch and sat in the cold night air. The sky was filled with stars. I kept thinking I'd found new stars but they were mostly planes. I watched clouds move. I wondered why the guy across the way from me was awake with his lights on watching TV and reading a book. Maybe he was like me. Maybe he was too full to sleep. Dear Dusten Brown: I never know where to begin. The truth is that I have started, re-started and changed this letter many, many times. And after much deliberation I always seem to start the same way. Dusten, I am sorry. I am sorry for every ignorant internet comment, every misinformed and lazy reporter, every single time I ever watched Dr. Phil (before and after he did that awful, biased show about your daughter). I am sorry for reporters not wanting to tell your story, for people who believe they have all the information without doing any research outside of their one-sided view from the adoptive couple. And I am sorry that I participated in this. I am sorry that I tried to present this case as "complicated" when it is not complicated. I am sorry that I thought I had to be nice. I am sorry that I wrote that the adoptive couple were not "bad people" and that in my effort to be "reasoned" I erased their malevolent intent and continued attempts to perpetrate injustice. I am sorry that I believed in "justice" and "reason" and that I didn't immediately understand that your case was a call to action, not a call for support. I want to scream from the rooftops that people are completely misinformed about you, even though I don't know you. I have been told that I have chosen the wrong man to throw my support behind. I have been told that you are a deadbeat father who didn't want anything to do with his kid, until he did. I have been told that you were the one who made all the mistakes... four years ago. And that those mistakes created legal boundaries and now you have to live with them. What I find the most disheartening, or even, disingenuous, is how quickly they are willing to convict you of being a bad father because at some random point you signed a piece of paper, even though you immediately withdrew that piece of paper and contested the adoption. They find everything "hard to believe." That's what they say. "I find it hard to believe that..." and then they put something in there about how you must have been serious when you signed some piece of paper that you didn't want to be a father, and they "find it hard to believe" that you didn't mean it. They "find it hard to believe" that you want to be a father because other people have said you weren't "involved" in Veronica's life before she was born. (I know you tried. I believe you tried.) I don't know why you aren't allowed to change your mind, if that was the case, if any of their accusations are true. I don't know why you aren't allowed to be a father. I don't know why you have proven every second of every day from that point that you DO in fact want to be a father but it doesn't seem to matter. I don't know why the onus is on you to prove you are a father in some legal rigamaroo and not on that couple to LEGALLY adopt a child. They didn't follow a lot of rules either (we excuse them), they didn't follow the laws of Oklahoma (we excuse them), they didn't follow the Indian Child Welfare Act which is a federal law (we excuse them), they didn't follow the gag order for the case (we excuse them) and they didn't work for the best interest of your daughter (we excuse them). They should not be excused. Do not excuse them. So Dusten... fight. You may be exhausted. You may feel heavy. You may be grieving. But I say -- fight. Be the warrior. I will burn some root for you (in my tribe we burn root to bless, say prayers, offer thanks, prepare...) and I will sing for you and I will look up into the sky and I will send you my laughter, my tears, my strength and I will say "fight." Fight by telling your story. Go on every single talk show. Fight. Tell everyone your story. Talk until you cannot talk any more and when you cannot talk any more, write. Write Veronica letters every single day and post them. Compile them and publish them. She will find them. Dear Veronica, I love you. She will read them. Dear Veronica, I fought for you because I am your father. No, wait, I FIGHT (continue to) for you because I am your father. She will see you fight. Don't apologize for who you are, don't apologize for anything. Continue to fight this good fight. There are many who will stand with you. You were never in this fight alone, though you had to fight it without many of your supporters standing next to you. But we were there. We will continue to be there. And we will continue to fight. And tonight-- I will sing a song for you. In Hupa we sing the song three times- once for our K'ixinay, once for our community, and once for ourselves. Tonight I will sing it as a prayer (to our K'ixinay), as a blessing (to the community, including Veronica) and for you. With much respect and continued hope, Cutcha Risling Baldy So now what? What do we do? I felt like this would be a good place for one of my lists-- off the top of my head.
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First -- an Intro/ diatribe -- more of a diatribe... Finally. My post about the "Baby Veronica even though she isn't a baby anymore and has been living with her loving, caring father for the past two years so now she is four, which, any four year old would tell you they are not a baby" case. It's taken me a good long while to sit down and write something, anything about this complicated (not so complicated) case where a Cherokee father (Dusten Brown) contests the adoption of his daughter to a Non-Cherokee/Non-Native family. If you need a history there are plenty of places to get information. Don't go to CNN or the Dr. Phil show but try -- Indian Country Today or the National Indian Child Welfare Association. In a very long story short, Dusten Brown is the biological father of "Baby Veronica" and Melanie and Matt Capobianco are the "adoptive couple." All people in this case want to raise and love and care for Veronica. One side says that they legally obtained the right to adopt Veronica and that it's not fair that Dusten Brown changed his mind and decided he wanted his daughter and took her away under the Indian Child Welfare Act after she had been living with the prospective adoptive couple for two years (they never officially adopted her, FYI - an important distinction as pointed out to me by some savvy readers). The other side says, Dusten Brown never wanted Veronica to be adopted by anyone, and he was fighting for two years to get her back. She has since been living with Dusten Brown in his care, for the past two years. Now he's fighting to keep her. In the past few weeks the South Carolina court has ordered Veronica returned to the adoptive couple. Veronica has been assigned her own lawyer fighting for what is in her best interests. Her father has been arrested while training as part of the National Guard. The biological mother has retained an attorney who is making TV appearances with the adoptive couple. And the authorities in Oklahoma have said that they won't intervene until the Oklahoma courts tell them to. I've heard, read, listened to and tried to processes a lot of information from "both sides" of the story. I cannot say that I tried to approach it "objectively" or "from all perspectives" because, in my case, the answer here seems really super easy. Veronica belongs with her father. She belongs with her father and her extended family. Not because we have to blindly make all children stay with their biological parents all the time, not because he is Native and she is Native, not because I think non-Native or white couples who want to adopt minority children cannot be their real parents, and not because I disrespect or discount the legitimacy of the "adoptive couple"... but because why wouldn't they want her to be with her father? Writing this blog entry has been hard because this case hurts. Every time I wake up and read another news alert that something has happened in the Baby Veronica case that something tends to be disheartening, ill-informed, sad, racist, jerk-ist, craziness that makes me start shake my head and wonder, what's the point? Because the true nature of people comes out with stories like this. Suddenly, we are having to defend the right of a father to be with his daughter. Suddenly the adoptive couple is making a website called "SAVE Veronica." And my immediate thought is, save her from what? From her father? From a loving home with her father? From an extended family, grandparents, cousins, aunts and Uncles? From her Cherokee heritage? SAVE her from what? For a while it seemed like what they were trying to save her from was The Indian Child Welfare Act. The law was passed in 1978. Please, take a moment. The law was passed in 1978. We are not talking about a law passed so long ago that we cannot even remember a time when it was necessary. We are talking about a law, passed in response to the CONTINUING "alarmingly high number of Indian children being removed from their homes by both public and private agencies." ICWA was designed to "protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families" (25 U.S.C. § 1902). ICWA has a bunch of federal requirements that apply to custody proceedings involving an Indian child who is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized tribe. ICWA does not tear families apart. It does not, as was implied on Dr. Phil keep nice parents from adopting Indian babies and leave those poor Indian babies to suffer with Indian foster parents. It is not an unjust law, it is a law designed because of courts like the Supreme Court of South Carolina, or because of people like the adoptive couple in this case. They don't want to recognize the continued bias against Native people, they don't want to acknowledge their own prejudices, they don't want to believe that they are contributing to a continued exploitation of Native children, so they need a law to compel them. They need a law that acknowledges and tries to address these issues. The challenge to ICWA and to the spirit of the law, one which supports the sovereignty of Native Nations, the degradation of tribal rights in this case, it's all so very exhausting. I have struggled, truly struggled with what I want to say here, in this open space, and I have to force the words out of me, writing, deleting, writing, deleting, re-writing. Veronica Brown belongs with her father. That's the sentence I keep writing over and over again. Veronica Brown belongs with her father. To fully process where I'm going to go with this blog entry let me begin with a random conversation I had with myself in the car when I was driving back from the Rez to my apartment in Davis. PRESENTING - THE DIALOGUE THAT ACTUALLY WENT ON IN MY HEAD THE OTHER DAY THAT I WROTE DOWN FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE - or... we all talk to ourselves when we are driving in the car alone - admit it! Do you think Baby Veronica belongs with her father? Yes. I do. Because he is Native American and the adoptive couple is not? Yes, but that's not the only reason. But yes. That is one reason, but it is also not the only reason. But he gave up his parental rights and abandoned her for two years and then suddenly he wants to come back into her life and take her away? It's not fair! He actually signed a one page consent document stating he wasn't contesting the adoption, but it was presented to him in a very shady way that was essentially trying to manipulate him into giving his signature and he immediately filed to have it withdrawn. Yeah but he signed it. No take backsies! Ahh, I see we have resorted to using the three-year olds "no take backsies" defense. But he also sent text message that said he didn't want to be her dad, so there! Um once I sent a text message that said "I will never, ever eat Mexican food again" after a particularly bad experience with a drive thru taco stand. I ate Mexican the day before yesterday. (PS the text messages weren't allowed as evidence in court, because they are TEXT MESSAGES, there is a process you have to go through to truly sign away any parental right what so ever... for a reason.) Mmmm, Mexican Food. Still he signed the agreement, he did sign it, he doesn't dispute it. He signed it. Even if he did sign it (and then immediately try to with draw it) Veronica is a person. She is a child. In my humble opinion, people should be allowed a certain amount of understanding when it comes to signing away their parental rights. Did the adoptive couple try to work with him and give him all the freedom to have an "open" adoption the way they did with Veronica's mother? Did they say to him "look, maybe you want to withdraw, but we would be happy to work with you, father, the way we have worked with (ahem given a bunch of money to) the bio mother?" No, he was an obstacle for them to overcome - day one. We, as a society, should err on the side of "oh, yeah, that's something people might change their mind about. Because- as a great friend (and fierce intellect) of mine once told me "I can buy a dress from Nordstrom, wear it, and then change my mind and take it back months later and they will let me." This is a CHILD. They should at least get the same amount of time to change their mind as a dress at freaking Nordstrom (by the way, I still heart your return policy Nordstrom!) Even if he signed (which by the way, come on, it was SHADY LADY, and he immediately tried to withdraw it while he was stationed in IRAQ) and then changed his mind (ten minutes later), she's a child, not a dress from Nordstroms. We should at least consider that stepping up for a child means, yes, we want her to be able to know and love and be with her father. We should give them BOTH that consideration. Yeah but, no take backsies. I get it. It feels unfair. Because when you adopt a baby you want it to be easy. I'm not an adoptive parent myself, but from the adoptive parent's I've talked to, it's hard to live in this state of limbo where maybe, just maybe something goes wrong and suddenly you just aren't a parent any more. If some court had come in right after I had my baby girl and said "oh by the way, two years from now we are just taking her away" I would have flipped out. It's hard. It feels like there should be no take backsies. But, for me, if I was an adoptive parent, I would want my child to know their biological parents. I would want my child to know where they came from. I would listen. If the case was like this case, I would buck up and do the right thing. What's the right thing? The right thing is to let Veronica live with her loving father BECAUSE everything got so messed up when it came to the adoption process in this case. The right thing is to wish her a good, safe, stable, happy life and let her go, especially considering that's how the case should have turned out in the first place. In fact, that is how the case went in the first place. Veronica was returned to her father. Veronica belongs with her father. Not because the adoptive couple are "bad people" (although, if I was in another mood I might spend a whole lot of time talking about how they are spoiled people, they are arrogant people, they are dismissive people, and they are privileged, snobby people... but I won't go there) but because he wants to be her father. He wants to raise her, and love her, and care for her and give her a good home. He wants to be a dad. He is her dad. This should be a no-brainer. I've worked a lot with foster kids. Many of them had parents. They didn't have the kind of parents that could, or would, or tried to step up and be a real parent to them. They had parents who were in throws of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, criminal activity. They were taken from their parents and they were left in limbo, waiting for some other set of adults to want to be their parents. They would have loved for their parents to step up and WANT to be their parents. Dusten Brown wants to be her father. Let him be her father. The adoptive couple knows how much people love this little girl. They know what it is like to WANT to be her parent. They should understand. Yeah, you're just saying that because they aren't Native and Dusten Brown says he's Native but he's not even that Native. Okay. And this is why I teach Native American Studies. What is a Native American? There is this fascination with "how much" these "so-called" Native people are. It's based on this thing called "Blood Quantum" which is this losing game invented by the federal government to erase Native people through pseudo-scientific bureaucracy. It's a losing game you can't win. You cannot win this game. you will eventually disappear this entire race of people - Based on "how much" blood you are. And this of course begs the obvious question. If I go to the hospital and ask for the "Native blood" and get a blood transfusion where I get all new Native blood put into my body, am I now a full blood Native American person? If I cut off my hand did I happen to cut off the 1/16 of me that is Chinese and now I am mostly Native American? It's not real. It's used to call in to question people's identity as a way of excluding them so that eventually, there are no more Indian people left. Also, it doesn't pertain to the Cherokee tribe. The Supreme Court (though they might not know this NOW- cause heaven forbid they have to actually learn about Federal Indian Law before becoming a Supreme Court Justice) has long upheld the right of tribe's to decide "What Makes a (insert tribal name here)". This means tribe's get to decide, how are we going to determine our membership? Is it by "blood," is it by "matrilineal descent", is it by "any ancestral descent?" As Native people we are sovereign nations and nations get the right to decide who their citizens are, and what that means. Dusten Brown and Veronica are citizens of the Cherokee Nation. Try going to France and saying: um, I'm sorry, you're not French enough to be a citizen because you don't wear a beret and smoke cigarettes while eating a baguette. We refuse to recognize your French status because we don't feel like it. Also, we can prove you are more Swedish than French. See how that works for ya.Sacrebleu! Dusten Brown is a member of the Cherokee Nation. And (even though it's not really relevant to this case) he is an active member of the nation, proud of his heritage, and looking to pass it on to his daughter. So what you are saying is that no Non-Native couple could ever adopt a Native baby because they aren't Native. You're doing reverse racism! *Sigh* I'm not saying that. I think that's what people hear sometimes when you start talking about ICWA. They just hear "you can't have this child because you aren't from a certain race-- so there!" It's much more complicated than that, but people hear what they are most afraid of, or what they think is challenging to their identity and existence. I don't want to negate that parents are parents, no matter how that child came to them. In many Indigenous cultures people called many people their "Grandmothers" or "Aunties." We believed that there were many people who came together to raise a child. I think parents come in all shapes and sizes. I think parents happen in many ways. But. In this case - she has a father. She has a father that wants to raise her. As the adoptive parents, as the "parents" don't you look at what is the facts of the case and wonder "maybe our role, as parents who also love her, is to understand why she should be with her father? Maybe we are ALSO her parents, but not in the exact way we thought?" Aside from this case -- people do need to ask themselves why they don't want to acknowledge how important culture is to the children they adopt? You can't ignore it or rationalize it away. Or you can, but you know what, there is something much bigger than your selective ignorance that you are taking from your child - and is that what a "parent" should do? Should a parent take from their child their identity? Should a parent take from a child their history? Should a parent take from a child their family? Still though. It feels so hard to explain. I flip on the television, I see one-or-two minute reports about the case, they are ill-informed and they highlight continued colonization. I wonder why it affects me so much... Why does it affect you so much? <------- That's why. That's my daughter. A few months ago the National Indian Child Welfare Association was looking for people to submit photos for their "Culture Matters" campaign -- to, in one way, call attention to one aspect of this case - culture. I submitted a picture and this was posted on their Facebook. I keep thinking about my Baby Girl. She's six now but I think of her as four. In this picture she was four. She thinks of herself as four a lot too. Sometimes we'll be talking about putting her clothes away, or getting up early to take a shower, or brushing her hair and I'll say "why don't you just brush your hair and then put your dress on?" And she'll respond "I have to put my dress on and then brush my hair, I've been doing that since I was four!" I keep thinking about her and what I would do if someone, through legal rigamaroo and mumbo-jumbo was trying to take her away from me. I keep thinking about what that would mean, that they could argue that she could live with them and be their daughter and that her culture wouldn't matter. I keep thinking about how, at four, she had already gone to many ceremonies, and she could sing along with every song, how in a few instances she would start songs for me when I forgot them because (at mmmm-something years old) sometimes I forget. I keep thinking about the notes she would write to me. "Dear Mommy, I miss you when you are gone." "Dear Mommy, I like your red dress but not your red shoes." "Dear Mommy, stop trying to make polka dot high waist pants happen." One time- AT FOUR- we were trying to tell her that she couldn't wear high heeled shoes to the dances. And she came back with a book full of Princesses wearing high heeled shoes to go dancing. She provided us with a clear, reasoned argument and even entered in exhibit A - a book. I was floored. I am floored by her every single day. She is an Indian child. Her father is white and she is an Indian child. She could probably pass for a non-Indian child if she wanted to. Maybe someone could take her far away from all of this and pretend like it doesn't mean anything, but the truth is, when she's the most upset, I will sing Flower Dance songs to her and she will stop to sing along. When we talk about her future, she tells me about being in ceremony and making dresses. When I sit to weave, she sits next to me and moves her hands along. When I ask her where she is from, though she has never lived there, she says "Hoopa." When I say "how long has our family been in Hoopa." She says "Forever. Since the very start." Culture matters. It's just one reason. It's one reason that Veronica belongs with her father and her family. It's that pull toward something much bigger than signed legal papers and rigamaroo. And the Indian Child Welfare Act matters. What's the most upsetting. What stings the most is that almost every Native person I know has a story about somebody their life (or even their own story) who was taken. An Indian child who was taken. With a family who loved them. A child who would have been protected under ICWA. A child who grew up, came back, and said "I always thought maybe I was missing something." OR "This feels right." OR "I don't have the same connection because I was taken but I am working on it." "I am glad to be home." We all have someone in our lives with this story because this, this taking of Indian children as "the greater good", this has happened to lots of Indian people. And this case - this case is a repeat. The fact that the Supreme Court forgets, and the public forgets, it all just makes the struggle of those people we know, those who were taken, sting again and again. Indian people have to fight to keep their children with their families. Society errs on the side of taking them away. They believe that is in the best interest of the child, to be away. In 2013, they believe that it is in the best interest of a daughter to be away from her father or that it doesn't matter that he is able to give her a fundamental tie to her culture and her people. In 2013 they believe that they can raise her better, because they have more money, because they have a nicer house, because they DESERVE her. In 2013, you can negate her Indian status because you feel like it. In 2013 you can tear a child away from her people. In 2013 you can rationalize and legalize the seizure of an Indian child from her Indian parent. In 2013 you can ignore her deep, personal, ancestral ties to her tribe, her family, her home. That's really hard for non-native people to understand. "Ancestry" isn't really the right word, it's your core. It's always there. I have had people come up to me after presentations and say "I just found out my Grandma or my Great Grandma or my Great Grandpa was some kind of Indian. And I don't know if I'm supposed to say that. I don't know, it feels weird to say. I don't want to be someone who just claims that I have an Indian ancestor. What do I do?" I try to give them some tips about finding out for sure, or learning more about their heritage. But I often say this. "My Grandma used to tell me, Hoopa has a way of calling people home. That's where I'm from. It's a valley we've been in since the beginning of time. Some say we are made of the earth from there. I would say 'people tell me I can't move far away or I'll forget who I am.' They say 'real Hupa people live in Hoopa.' And she said 'We have many children who were taken. Many people who were moved or left. Maybe they say they are not Hupa. But maybe their children, or their grandchildren they feel something. They might think 'Maybe I am Hupa.' And they can find their way home. Because Hoopa has a way of calling people home." And then I often pause and say "Maybe, you are being called home. What are you going to do with that? That's what you have to decide." This is something that, even though the adoptive couple want to, they cannot prevent, ignore or stomp out. Maybe they can try, for now. And even if they win, (Please sign this petition, please like this page on Facebook, please write a letter to your Congressperson, write a letter to the New York Times) even if they tear her away, she will come back. That's how strong this is. She will say all the things that our cousins and aunts, mothers and uncles who were taken have told us. "I always thought maybe I was missing something." "This feels right." "I don't have the same connection because I was taken but I'm working on it." "I am glad to be home." They will welcome her home. But if there is justice. She will already know her home. #VeronicaBelongsWithHerFather I don't know if I would call my mother a "fanatical feminist" though (I don't even REALLY know what that means) but I'll get to that. I would call her an icon, although not in the "international celebrity" kind of way but mostly that I often go places and tell people who my mother is and they go all twee on me and start telling me how she is the most amazing woman they have ever met - oh "PS, what do you do?" Today I read an article by Rebecca Walker - writer, mother and also daughter of Alice Walker (famed author of The Color Purple and many other awesome feminist works). The article is called: How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart in which she says things like: Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families. And My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her. And the saddest part (at least to me) is this part: I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology. She goes on to say a lot about her childhood and her strained relationship with her very famous mother. Read the article if you want to know more. I'm not going to take apart her words or (what seems to me) like her agenda. I feel for her, in that she does not have a relationship with her Mother that she seems to want - somewhat. I'm not even going to spend a lot of time defending or offering a counterpoint to the sort of anti-feminist rhetoric that becomes "you must hate motherhood and children and I yearn for a 'traditional mother' where for some reason I believe a 'traditional mother' is someone who cooks and does dishes." Let's all think about what a "traditional mother" really is, and how our "traditional mother" idealization has been influenced by - key feminist word here - patriarchy (and of course, as a Native Studies scholar lets add in a whole mess of colonialism into that influence as well). Instead, I'm going to offer my own "growing up as a child of the feminist revolution with a feminist mother" perspective. First of all, I love my mother. I love her in an entirely admiring she's my hero I can't believe I got so lucky even though she likes to call me on the phone to tell me things that I haven't done yet that she told me to do a long time ago and she can't believe I'm out of my twenties and I still wait until the last minute to do EVERYTHING kind of way. Growing up it's not so much that I ever hated her (even as a teenager), it was that I thought we had nothing in common and I would be destined to spend the rest of my life being annoyed every time I had to go home to visit. I was so different than her (in my own head). I liked Barbies, she liked to read. I liked boys, she liked to tell me how boys would only get me pregnant. I liked makeup and she liked makeup but she wouldn't let me wear make up or do anything until I was sixteen and sixteen was SO OLD. I someday wanted to have a big wedding with a big white dress and really good cake and she thought that I was basically a pawn of the patriarchy destined to fall in to the overplayed, desolate female trope of "good wife and mother." Growing up I called her a "part feminist." I would whisper it actually to my friends "My mom is a feminist, but she is only part feminist." In my youth, being a feminist was a lot like being Native. If both your parents weren't feminist then you were just a darn half breed feminist, which made me a 1/4 feminist if even. (Although, I would argue, my dad is a feminist, which means I may be as much as 1/2 feminist, depending... we have to see what the old census or Bureau of Feminist Affairs has to say about that). All in all in my life I had both my mother and my auntie who I would argue are two feminist icons, one a take no prisoners lawyer and the other (my mom) a take no prisoners educator. Both of them speak up, both of them fight, both of them got married and had babies and are really good at being grandmothers. Hence - part feminists. (This whole what makes a feminist conversation is an interesting one because you get a lot of people doing the same thing they try to do with Native people, rely on stereotypes to decide what a feminist is. "Oh well you wear make up and shave your legs, you're not a feminist." - that sort of thing. I would never claim to be the idealized feminist - although I'm quite sure "she" doesn't exist. Just like the idealized Native feminine doesn't really exist.) I wouldn't have called these women in my life radicals, although I remember them telling me a lot about how I didn't "need a man" to complete me and how "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." I don't know what people really mean when they start using words like "radical" and "fanaticial" though I have a feeling it mostly has to do with putting up a sort of barrier between THOSE PEOPLES feminism and the much nicer, tell your friends you're a feminist because you believe women should be able to work outside of the home if they want. (To me, that is not feminism, that is just how it should be-ism.) Radical and fanatical feminists become people who make other people uncomfortable because they start asking really important questions and because what they question is the presumed "normalization" of a patriarchal society that centralizes men and sidelines women. (We could even queer this whole conversation and say "centralizes heterosexual men and sidelines women and queer identified peoples.) Somewhere between whispering to people "My mom isn't like a real feminist" and today, I became a feminist. I focus a lot of my research on feminist theory, I have taken feminist theory classes and read a lot of feminist writings. I have gone to the rallies and signed the petitions. I have had grown men say to me in classes and even meetings "well you're just a feminist" which makes me laugh like I'm supposed to deny it. I love being ACCUSED of being a feminist. Growing up a "child of the feminist revolution" with a feminist for a mom sometimes sucked. It's true. And sometimes it was just plain old awesome. But what it really was - educational. I learned to ask questions. I learned that I could ask questions. I learned that I didn't have to look toward my mother to give me all the answers, that we could have differences of opinion AND that you can be a feminist and shave your legs, or not, it's up to you. So here goes -- Five things I remember about growing up as a "child of the feminist revolution" with a feminist mother. 1. She never told me I was pretty. A little while ago I read this article. It basically says that we should stop telling little girls how pretty they are. This is because, as Lisa Bloom writes: Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What's missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments. I enjoyed the article. I think it may be a novel idea for some people to focus on talking to little girls about something else other than how perfect their skin is. (Do you ever notice how adults say that "wow, you have perfect skin" in a slightly off putting way, like they would suck the life out of the child if it meant they could get that perfect skin? Hello Evil Queen from Snow White...) But I also have been there. My mother, lovingly, and admirably actually, focused very little on looks when it came to women and young girls. This was her feminist standard. Instead she would talk about women being leaders, smart, funny, talented. She never said "Look at how nice Hilary looks with that new haircut." She always said "Hilary Clinton needs to leave her philandering husband and vote for universal health care!" Mom has always been about helping girls and women to dance and sing and do it loud and proud. She focused on giving girls words to speak about what they believe in. She encouraged girls to be proud of who they are and to not care what anyone thinks. She did the same with me. And in turn I grew up thinking: "Man, I must be the ugliest little girl ever." Logic. Because in my head when I would get all dressed up, fix my hair into three million pony tails, pick out the perfect pair of tights to go with the perfect pair of shoes and walk out into my living room only to be faced with some conversation about if I was ready for my test, or how I did on my math homework, or if I was excited about my softball game I thought "but what about my outfit?! Don't I look pretty?!" I would notice that other mothers would tell their daughters how gorgeous their hair was, how nice their smile was, how beautiful their eyes were and my mother would pat me on my head and tell me to do good in school. It felt (at the time) like a very awkward silence as we were headed in to the classroom. All the mom's would join in to a chorus of: "You're so beautiful." "You're so beautiful." "You're so beautiful." AWKWARD PAUSE. And then my mom would say: "Well, Cutcha. Do good in school." Many years later when I confronted her with the fact that I was ugly and I knew it she just smiled and said "why would you think that? You're a very beautiful person." And I said "Whatever you have to say that you're my Mom!" And then she said "Actually, I don't have to say anything, even if I am your mother. And what's beauty anyway? Beautiful because you are smart, because you are funny, because you care about people and want to help them?" "No! Because I have nice hair!" This is not to say that I think we should spend a lot of time telling girls how pretty they are or they will just become convinced that they are ugly. I'm just saying I've been there. On the day I had my daughter random nurses would come by my room to tell my how beautiful my baby was. They said she was the most beautiful baby they'd seen in the ward for quite some time. She had dark, large, round eyes and a full face and such a gorgeous face. And my mom came in, picked her up and held her for a minute before she said "She's looks so smart. Look at her looking all around and seeing the world. She must be the smartest baby ever." Exactly. 2. She tried to make me wear a tuxedo to my prom. Every time. Pants. She was all about trying to make me wear pants. PANTS. Later on Janelle Monae would put me in my place on the great pants debate. And looking back I would have rocked the crap out of some suspenders. To my Junior Prom we compromised and I let her pick out my dress and she picked something that looked like this. Which my BFF still maintains was my most fashion forward moment of high school. 10 points for feminism! (and my Mom) 3. Nothing was ever just "cute" to her, it was always a tool of the patriarchy to continue the oppression of women. (something something hegemony) There was this kid in my pre-school class who was in love with me-IN LOVE WITH ME. I mean the boy drew me pictures and brought me lunches and insisted that one day we would be married. I think he made me a card that was like "this is a picture of us one day when we get married." We were four and he was planning our wedding and everyone was going "how cute, look at how much he loves her." And my mother was rolling her eyes and telling me how awful it was that all people expected of me in my life was to get married to some boy. Why didn't he draw a picture of me as the freaking President of the United States and say "one day I will be your Secretary of State because you are such an awesome leader." One time we were playing some game at school where him and all of his friends were mercenary soldiers rescuing some really important thing from some really bad guys -- and I was the wife. That meant I stayed in the sandbox and waited for him to get back. I knew right away I shouldn't be flattered by this whole trope, which is why I mostly tried to ignore all the other freaking Moms at school who thought it was so cute how attentive this boy was to me. I mostly played the role of disinterested third party in the whole situation. Although I remember spending a lot of time listening to my Mom lecture me about how I should want more in life, I should want to be a Doctor, I should want to travel the world, I should want to go to Graduate School and get a PhD. And me being like "nobody WANTS to go to Graduate School Mom, they just end up there." Kidding, I was four. I remember mostly being like "yeah, I get it Mom. But it's also kind of nice having someone who will bring me a fruit roll-up or trade for my yucky cheese sandwich just because he likes me." Ask me how this story ends. No really - ask me. One day she takes me to his house to drop me off for his birthday party. He lived in this huge house cause his Dad was some important person or something. All the kids are there running around. My mom, all heavy sighs and eye rolling, pulls up in the driveway to drop me off and I start crying and refuse to get out of the car. I thought she was dropping me off to marry him and that I would have to live with him forever. "I don't want to marry him Mom I want to live with you!" This eerily would kind of be a repeat of the day my Mom married my Dad so in the end we may have had more in common than I thought. *End Scene* 4. She hated the first boy I ever loved on principle - even though she had never talked to him. She never would talk to him either. At least that I know of. I've never asked him. I'm friends with him on Facebook now, maybe I should see if he ever actually said anything at all to my mother. He was afraid of her. Everyone was afraid of her. One time I snuck into his house when I was home alone. (ooooo - I may just be in trouble after this blog entry is over) He wanted to show me his bird (a real bird people, get your mind out of the gutter). I'd never been in his house before. Not that we didn't have many, many opportunities when I was home alone for me to go into his house, but I wouldn't do it, because I knew, I just knew that would be the day that my mom would come home early for some reason and spot me coming out of his house. I don't know what she would have done, in my head it somehow involved flames coming out of her ears and lightening bolts flashing out of her fingers and the total and utter destruction of our entire neighborhood. But what it would probably be is her just saying how disappointed she was that I was once again spending most of my day trying to impress, follow and entertain some boy. She would say "you are so male identified" and it took me a long time to look at my life and think "no, really, I'm more Mom identified." Mom and Grandma (and my auntie, though she probably doesn't know that about me. But it's true.) They just seemed so untouchable. To me they had the perfect lives. They had really good educations, which they were really good at while they were also really good at finding really good jobs while they were really good at finding really good men who really truly loved them and wanted to give them babies and be with them forever. Because to me - when a man could love you - that meant everything else in your life would just work out. The rest felt easy. I could be smart. I could do good work. I could succeed at the things I put my mind to. But getting someone to actually LOVE me was hard. The only way to do that was to work at it like a job. And yet for my feminist female family icons it was SOOOO easy. And my mom would say "Getting a man to love you is easy. Getting a man to respect you and support you is harder. They won't unless you respect and support yourself first." Which I would usually end with "yeah, okay Mom, uh huh, whatever" because I was fifteen and knew EVERYTHING already. 5. She did not say congratulations on the day I got married or the day I told her I was pregnant. This I probably share with Rebecca Walker. Although mine seems a little less traumatic. Walker writes about the day she called her "Mum" to tell her she was pregnant: Instead, when I called her one morning in the spring of 2004, while I was at one of her homes housesitting, and told her my news and that I'd never been happier, she went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden. I put the phone down and sobbed - she had deliberately withheld her approval with the intention of hurting me. What loving mother would do that? I don't know if that' s a feminist thing. I guess your feminist self and all the other parts of your self (the part that worries about your child, the part that was raised by crazy parents, the part that remembers babies being hard etc.) can come together to create a reaction that isn't the kind you normally see on TV where everyone starts yelling about how happy they are. My mom never thought she would get married and she also thought she would never have kids. (Ha ha! Surprise!) This was not only the "feminist" part of her that thought this, it was all the parts of her.
The day I told my mom I was getting married she said "why?" And then "are you sure this is what you want to do?" And the day I told her I was pregnant she paused and finally said "you know, that baby is going to need braces some day, how are you going to pay for the braces? Babies are expensive." It was many, many weeks later that she came to visit and took me shopping for maternity clothes. When we were trying on maternity jeans (oh my goodness do I love me some maternity jeans) she said to me "You know babies change your life." I just nodded. "Everything is going to be different now. I didn't have any idea what I was in for with you or your brother." "But then you figured out we were freaking awesome sauce and you couldn't imagine your life without us." And she said "Actually I can imagine it. I have imagined it. Of course, I also knew that your Dad and I would make excellent Grandparents." It's true. Excellent feminist Grandparents. Last week I went with my daughter to her Kindergarten class so she could talk about her Native American Culture. She's been trying to explain to the kids in the class that she is an "Indian" person who is not from India. She tells them that she is Hupa Indian and that she does ceremonies, and sings, and makes baskets and sometimes she has to go places, stand for a long time, and not play in the dirt. (That is one true thing about being an Indian kid, sometimes you have to go places and stand for a long time and not play in the dirt.) People think I'm a card carrying member of the cultural appropriation police. Sometimes people come up to me when I give presentations at different places and they say "is this okay?" and show me some picture from the internet, or their phone, or their tumblr. It's usually of some girl wearing some kind of tribal headdress at some kind of festival. And I say "Okay? As in - does it make me want to buy what that girl is selling? Or okay like it represents Indian people and supports our continued fight for decolonization?" I don't know what it means for cultural appropriation to be okay? Although - as I said before - I think it has something to do with the Cheesecake Factory serving Indian Tacos on their menu. There's a lot of reasons why cultural appropriation is a whole lot of different things...problematic - degrading - disappointing - sad - infuriating - exhausting - icky - off putting - annoying - rage inducing -funny. Yes, sometimes cultural appropriation is funny. Actually, most of the time it's kind of funny. It would be like if Preppy McPrepperson (let's call him Justin Bieber) all of a sudden started dressing up in pseudo hood-gangsta style clothing and yelling things at random Black people on the street like "my brother! Wassup! You wanna go? How about a dance off? I'm bad! You bad! Fo shizzle!" All while standing behind big, ethnic body guards. And then he wondered why people didn't take him seriously. That's funny. Justin Bieber (I mean, Preppy McPrepperson) you are a tiny white boy from Canada. I'm not saying you can't be "bad" in your own way. But why you gotta be "bad" in someone else's way? At it's absolute best (if we are trying to draw some paradigm between best and worst where best is still bad, but better than Peter Pan singing what makes a red man red), cultural appropriation is hilarious. At it's worst it's red-face and t's just another demonstration of how Native people are still considered relics of the past, how genocide is erased and how privilege is paramount. But then all you do is go around being offended all the time! That's true. That's mostly what we talk about at our big meeting of all the Indian people. We mostly talk about what we want to be offended about that month. If we don't have anything new on the agenda, we just go with the Redskins. Because, you know, we hate sports. It's not like Indians are good at sports. It's not like they haven't been good at sports for-oh-ever. And it's not like "Redskin" doesn't recall a time when this term was utilized to degrade Indian people in a manner that would dehumanize them so that it would be easier to massacre them. But I digress. I'm not offended all the time. I could see how that happens. Someone (or me) doesn't really feel the need to write long blog entries about how not offended I am about some tshirt and/or movie and/or music video. I haven't written, say, about how I have a Pendleton jacket that I wear and how Pendleton was founded by an English weaver named Thomas Kay in 1863 in Oregon and it wasn't until 1895 that they started weaving what they called "Indian trade blankets." But man, I have me some Pendleton - even though I'm allergic to it, sort of. It's itchy. I also sell jewelry to non-Native people with Native designs on them and I feel proud that they want to wear them. I like that I sold this one pair of earrings to a lady who has shared with me what luck they have brought her and that she wants to know more about them so she can tell people when they stop her on the street to love on her earrings. I appreciate that people are curious. I'm more of someone who (though while I am occasionally flippant about the subject) likes to use "cultural appropriation" and "Indian dress up" to start a conversation. I think there is what I can best describe as "wiggle room" in the whole "redface" versus "look at those feather earrings" versus "I wear abalone because I'm from the Northcoast and I want to support Native artists." Wiggle room - a spectrum - what not. And I think that it's more complicated then just "everything is offensive" or "nothing is offensive." Which brings me to my most recent Target shopping expedition where I found a tank top featuring a Native design that we use in our area, posted it on Facebook and then tried it on. After the post I had both Native and Non-Native people asking me "Is it okay that I wanted to buy the t-shirt and wear it?" So here goes... Is this okay? (A totally biased opinion by a totally biased Native woman who thinks too much and who hasn't brought any of the following as agenda items at our "Meeting of all the Native people so we can decide on how we feel about something"... yet)YES! But why? Because I said so. (No, but really, it's mostly because I said so.) This design is what we (up in Northwest California) call "Sturgeon Back" or "Sturgeon" or "Sturgeon's Backbone." It's pretty cool. Look at it again and think about the grand Sturgeon swimming past you. This design is strong. I know a lot of strong women with this design tattooed on them. I know a lot of strong women who weave this design into their baskets. The design reminds me of the strength of culture because millenniums later we have this design and it is passed on - generation to generation. So Target bedazzled it and put it on a tank top. This doesn't bug me much. Cause it's a nice design. The whole "copyright" and "Who Owns Native Culture" thing is a very long conversation that scholars and tribal peoples have been talking about for a while now. It's complicated. In many Native cultures there were clear ideas about ownership or "copyright" and they often ran through families, if not villages, if not tribes. However, there were also concepts of "gifting" or "borrowing" or even "loaning" some of these copyrights. In some cases, there were other things that weren't really "owned" by anyone, instead they were owned by themselves, or by the land, or by the First People. And still in other cases, people made the same types of designs just with slightly different flair. Some of these designs could probably be found in other parts of the world, made totally independently of two cultures coming in to contact with one another. So, it might be a little fuzzy who "owns" this design or even if it's entirely just a "Native American" design. For me, I could see one person wearing it and feeling very geometrically stylish. Another person could wear it because - hey, it's got sparkles. And I could wear it because it reminds me of Sturgeon Back and all the strength that comes from that design. This does not feel "costume" to me. It doesn't feel like we are all trying to dress up like an Indian because that's possible - or even necessary. It feels mostly like we can appreciate a good Sturgeon Back... NOW - if Target goes and starts suing Native people (especially those in, say, Northwest California) saying that THEY are taking TARGET's design and how dare they? Oooooooo-weee will that be a fight that I will get in on. That's part of the problem when you get big, nameless, faceless, but apparently "personhood" corporations involved in "copyright" and Native culture. They start wanting to make claim. That, to me, is the danger here of not acknowledging that these designs are "Native inspired" and knowing where they come from, or what kind of history they have. It's dangerous and it once again uses current culture to erase Native culture and Native people. But it hasn't happened... yet. Let's hope it doesn't. PS: All that being said - I'm not going to buy it because I tried it on and it's unflattering. The design isn't unflattering - the shirt is. It's the weird lines on the side of the shirt that make it unflattering. If they weren't there, if it was just the design, I would buy it and wear another tank top under it because I was blessed with a long torso and short legs. Therefore - most target shirts are a little too short for me. And that is my "really important information about me" PS of the day. I hope the NSA is enjoying this and adding it to my file. "And she has a long torso, so her weakness is - SHORT SHIRTS!" Is this okay? (In which I now must remind people that while the above example was my one personal opinion about one particular shirt that in no way makes everything else okay.)No. Just -- No. But why? In the video Gwen Stefani is dressed up as an Indian woman and tied up to a wall by cowboys, who just massacred her tribal group for no reason, and she is being threatened with weapons and she looks over at them and she says "Do you think I'm looking hot? Do you think this hits the spot? How is this looking at me - looking at me?" How is it looking at you? It's terrifying Gwen Stefani. During the whole "expansion of the west" thing while the Lone Ranger was apparently coming back to life and blowing up railroads, Native people were being forced off their lands, murdered in the hopes of exterminating them, and kidnapped and put into slavery. Women and children were often taken. If they weren't raped and left for dead, they were sometimes forced into marriages, other times forced into concubinage or slavery. Cowboys tied Indian women up to make an example of them. And if a woman fought back and won - she was then punished by the "law" with prison or death. Gwen Stefani is tied to a wall dressed as an Indian woman. That really should have been the first part of the storyboard/ proposal for this video that stopped No Doubt in their tracks. "I'm sorry, did you just say Gwen is tied up to a wall dressed as an Indian woman? No- just - No." (Want to read more - I wrote about it here) NO! But why? Cause it's too obvious? Cause it's disrespectful? Cause it doesn't look as good as you think it looks? Cause it's hot? (As in physically hot - young people- not HAWT like "dang baby you look HAWT today!") Hipsters - it is the summer time. This will make your head sweat. It will also make you break out in pimples all over your forehead. It will also make people stop in their tracks, look at you and think "really? did you just straight up go full on "red face" here at this random music festival? Are you hooting and hollering? Are you drinking and throwing up and dancing way off beat? And now you want to tell me how you are just showing Native people how much respect you have for them?" Wanna know more? Read - "But why can't I wear a hipster headdress?" on Native Appropriations. NO! Wait what? I thought you said stuff at Target is okay? Isn't that what this post is about? Sort of. I do most of my shopping at Target because it's quick, easy and I can get cleaning supplies and cute summer dresses all at the same time. I took this picture at Target last season. So now - all of these things are SOOO last season (point number 1). Also, they are ugly and they look, as Nina Garcia might say "so catalog." (point number 2). And finally, they are trying too hard. They border on costume. That is the delicate balance to consider, IMHO. The idea that we are "dressing up as Indian" rather than paying homage to Native design. Also despite what you may think it is possible to have TOO much fringe. NO! But whY? I could spend a lot of time telling you why or you could just read this other thing I wrote about why. NO! (In poetic form) Johnny Depp likes to play it weird. He thinks it's super cool. That's why he had scissors on his hands. And never went to school. Johnny says he is probably a Native Cherokee, Creek or something That's why he wants his Tonto to be different Although he's mostly just mumbling Just because Johnny got to put a bird on it doesn't mean you get to - dear. You also don't get to blow up railroads and come back from the dead Just to make that clear. copyright 2013 :) That's right Target. copyright 2013!
Yesterday for a class we read this book. Most people hated it. I hated it. I didn’t hate it as much as I hate Steven Hackel’s book about the Missions in California (more on that later). I actually found the Mexican Dream (mostly) hilarious. I wrote a few times in the margin “LOL” next to statements like: “Therefore, it is not by chance that our Western civilization today rediscovers the philosophical and religious themes of the Indians of America. Because has put himself in a position of disequilibrium, because he has let himself be carried away by his own violence, Western man must reinvent all that once made up the beauty and harmony of the civilizations he has destroyed.” And I wrote: “LOL!” I also wrote “White guilt? Western intellectuals as saviors of Native culture? Why thank you random dude. A-Thank-You.” And then I wrote “oh man, LOL.” Seriously- read this paragraph again: “Therefore, it is not by chance that our Western civilization today rediscovers the philosophical and religious themes of the Indians of America. Because has put himself in a position of disequilibrium, because he has let himself be carried away by his own violence, Western man must reinvent all that once made up the beauty and harmony of the civilizations he has destroyed.” As a dear, sweet friend of mine said “This is the greatest justification for appropriation of Native culture ever written.” (Citation- Stephanie Lumsden) We talked about the book yesterday in class and many (if not most, if not all) of us agreed that the book was, to say the least, “problematic.” Then I read the reviews. People loved it. Nobody I knew loved it, but we are apparently too busy to write reviews on Amazon. As Grad Students we pay big money to come together and hate on books. We also pay big money so that we can read a lot of books that we don’t necessarily hate and that we use in our classrooms. Sometimes we use books that we hate in our classes. (See, for example, anything written by Sherman Alexie except for Indian Killer and/or The Sin Eaters. See, for another example, any novel written by Ernest Hemingway, although I am quite partial to his short stories. The shorter, the better. In his brevity Hemingway is tolerable. I also quite enjoy the fictional version of Hemingway as he is portrayed in the movie Midnight in Paris where he is potentially my best friend and/or somebody I would have hooked up with in college. "Who wants to fight!" As Graduate Students we must also, however, learn to critically approach books and to offer a well thought out, scholarly response to the many problematic books that continue to be published as part and parcel to how we learn about Native peoples. Our history, our narratives and our stories have often been co-opted and presented in ways that have caused major problems for our people. Take for instance history books that for a long time suggested that Indian peoples were primitive stone age type people who lived in a vast “wilderness” and had no agriculture. And then realize that Indian people must continue to fight against this “knowledge” in order to acknowledge and claim their rightful stewardship of their Indigenous land spaces. There are tribes who are denied the rightful access and use of their sacred areas for ceremony because of this “knowledge” or “historical record.” And these ceremonies are intimately tied to the continued healing our communities must do from colonization. There are major and minor court cases that hinge on what Judges know about Native peoples and their history, and what they “know” is that we were a bunch of primitive peoples who were camped out in a vast wilderness who really had no “concept” of ownership over the land and who signed away our rights and became “wards” of the United States because they gave us some blankets and some beads. Not True. Vastly more complicated. Want to know more? Take a Native American Studies Course! Sign up today! So books – matter. Like movies matter. Like plays matter. Like mascots matter. Like t-shirts matter. I have for a while now been offering to post my review of a book by Steven Hackel called: Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850. But then I never posted it. I did, however, give the book 1 star on Good Reads because I couldn’t give it 0 stars. After that I started getting emails. True story. That’s the internet. Lately I’ve been meeting people IRL (for my Mom, I will translate, IRL meals “in real life.”) who know me from the Internet. They are very sweet, very nice people who tell me that they are “fans” and they really enjoy the blog. I often feel awkward and flattered. They will usually say to me “you are very funny.” And I will usually say back “thanks.” (awkward pause) “I hope you aren’t expecting me to be funny now.” And I also get emails and Facebook messages. People ask me a lot of questions about books to read, or movies to watch. Sometimes they want me to send them more information about some subject. They ask me about where I am from. They want to know if we can be friends in real life (maybe, if you enjoy watching the just posted lost episodes of Don’t Trust The B In Apt. 23 then PM me!) Sometimes they just want to know when the next blog is coming out. And (funnily enough) I have also been asked why I rated Steven Hackel’s book with only one tiny little star on Good Reads. This has actually mostly been from people who want to use the book in their work, or in their classes, or one time a person who was assigned the book for a class and also hated it but couldn’t quite figure out WHY. I kept saying “one day I will write something about why I hate this book” and that one day – is today! YAY for today. This is what happens when people don’t schedule meetings with me apparently. If you have never read the book *spoiler alert* lots of Indian people die in the missions. Oh and *spoiler, spoiler (is that a thing?) alert* Hackel uses lots of charts and graphs and footnotes. Lots of footnotes. This will become important later. Foreshadowing. Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (Book Review) In Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian – Spanish Relations in Colonial California author Steven Hackel attempts to present the complicated history of Indian-Spanish Relations between 1769 and 1850. While I (like many of the reviewers) was impressed with the sheer volume of information presented (via both narrative, footnotes and statistical tables) and while I was also, on occasion, struck by some of the more personal stories included in the text about the struggles of Indian people to reconcile the horrors and oppression of California mission exploitation, the book was most effective in inspiring me to re-explore and further study the “collisions” and “intersections of Indian and Spanish worlds” in order to provide some additional counterpoints for consideration. To start off, I’d like to break the ice by using the word genocide without so much as cringing or backing away from the word (by say referring to it as “a great upheaval”, “a demographic decline”, “challenges”, “restrictions” or “such behavior”, as in “The Franciscans were known to practice such behavior.”) I know it might cause some concern, as the author seems to have actively avoided this word throughout the book. Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. In their 1987 book The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide, editors Rupert and Jeannette Henry Costo examine the consequences of and the controversy concerning the mission system. Costo and Costo attempted to solidify what many Indian scholars have known for centuries, that even though the missions in California were systematic attempts to destroy Indian people, Indians should be recognized for their continued strength, ability and power to maintain and protect their culture in the face of numerous genocidal attempts on their very existence. This book seems to be attempting to bridge the troubled waters between the promoters of Spanish colonial methods who portray Franciscans as saving child like Indians from their savage natures; and the detractors who depict missions as brutal labor camps, committed to cultural genocide. Positive reviews of the book focused on the “reasoned tone.”[1] In reality, the “reasoned tone” only illustrates the disquieting nature of the book. The book attempts to pursue and support the idea of “dual revolutions” as causing the massive demographic collapse of Native peoples in California during the mission period. The sometimes flat, mostly distant tone of the book seemingly serves as confirmation that these dual revolutions are simply part of the colonization business. Demographic collapse (Revolution 1) and ecological change (Revolution 2) become go to reasoning behind the migration, deaths and suffering that Indian people survived. The book therefore completely ignores the third probable reasoning for the horrific outcomes of this period of time: the systematic genocide (there’s that word again) of Indian people at the hands of the Franciscans. Sadly, this historical rewriting to one of “traces of coexistence of Indian and Spanish cultures” where there were “Indians living in their own dwellings, electing their own leaders and practicing elements of their spiritual beliefs and subsistence economies” becomes, in a way, a systematic attack on modern day Indian people by devaluing the lasting effects of this horrific colonization on the modern Indian world.[2] When this history is reduced to “missions as institutions” that were “more porous than scholars have realized” the book implies that Indians were simply dealing with Franciscans who prescribed for them “regular attendance at work and at mass, marital fidelity and monogamy” and misrepresents the true nature of the missionaries methods (including starvation, beatings, rape, humiliation etc.). This demeans the continued effects of historical trauma on the Indian community. The sources used in the book are of particular concern to me as a reader, considering that many of them were written by the Spanish yet there is little to no discussion about the obvious and inherent bias of these works. In fact there is little to no discussion of any extenuating or external forces that could corrupt the resources used in the text. Especially troubling is the continued use of Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuén’s Refutation of Charges without considering the context in which this document was written. As Jackson and Castillo write: Since it was a defense, Lasuen began with a minor confession followed by the beginnings of a vigorous offense. “At the outset I admit that defects exist, and inevitably so,” he wrote, “but not one is in the category of a crime, not one is beyond the normal, not one remains uncorrected once it is recognized, and if any are permitted it is but to avoid greater evils.”[3] Nor is there any discussion of the obvious bias that Lasuen illustrates in this written document. Not only does he display prejudicial and racist views of Indians, he is also quick to blame the Indians for their savage natures and imply that the corporal punishment they did receive was less than they deserved. I would not deny that Lasuen (as any human being) was a complicated man and probably had at least some moments of humanity in addition to his deeply rooted prejudicial view of the savages he came to save. And it is not necessary to discount everything he wrote in his documents simply because of his obvious bias. Here would have been a perfect time for discussion about the complications of Mission research. Instead, the opportunity for true discourse about the meanings of Lasuen’s writings is passed over for a quick and easy use as a reference for the way things must have been, because Lasuen said they were so. One recurring question that does occur in the book is trying to find reasons why Indians came to the missions. Ostensibly, we are lead to believe that most Indian people were lead to the missions by the outcome of the “dual revolutions.” Without options or ability to properly combat against the demographic collapse and ecological changes, Indians saw the missions as their only recourse. Again this is a gross oversimplification of Indian motivations and it also ignores the key role that the violence and brutality of the missionaries played in recruitment of Indian peoples into the mission system. Perhaps the dual revolutions played some role in Indians coming to the mission. However, historical accounts of the mission system also point out the tendency of the missionaries to round up Indian people and bring them to the missions through force. Since Alta California came at the end of the mission era, Franciscans were well versed in the challenges and issues that would face them when confronting Indian peoples. By the time Alta California was reached, missionaries had a long history of dealing with Indian peoples. They were also well versed in the violent and underhanded techniques they would have to use in order to validate their presence and maintain their power within the Spanish social structure of the New World. I also find the language and writing problematic and passive aggressive throughout the text. Readers often get very little discussion as to the truly horrendous things enacted by Missionaries on Indian people during their “interactions.” Instead there is usually a blanket statement about some bad things the missionaries may have done followed by an illustration of how the Indian people were actually worse than the missionaries. Case in point, one section begins “through exhortations, interrogations and actual physical confinement, Franciscans sought to restrict Indians to a heterosexual, procreative, married model. When these efforts failed, as they often did, missionaries forced adherence to the model through assaults on Indians bodies.”[4] But there is no discussion as to what “assaults on Indians bodies” actually means, and the ambiguity of this statement is laced with disregard for the impact that these assaults could have on Indian people. This happens again two pages later where you state “It is no surprise that most Indians – either willfully or out of ignorance of the padres’ teachings – did not adhere to the Catholic model of sexuality and marriage and that missionaries subsequently went to great lengths to prohibit and punish their rebelliousness.”[5] But then, again, there is no discussion of what that even means. How did they prohibit and punish rebelliousness? Instead, the immediately following paragraphs focus on Indians who assaulted and killed their wives. It is incredibly problematic how the writing is organized in this instance, considering that it seems to be presenting instances of the brutal treatment of Indian peoples, though it does not explain or expand on those instances, and instead focuses on detailed statements and stories meant to show that the Indians themselves also had violent tendencies, thereby deflecting the abhorrence of the missionaries actions. This bias is additionally present in the way that Indian violence is presented as compared to the violence of Missionaries. While, as discussed above, there is no discussion of what “harsh punishments” by the missionaries entails, there is a lot of detail and telling words used when describing Indian on Indian violence, or Indian against missionary violence. Here we see words like “mutilated” and “killed” and not the nondescript language used to describe the violence perpetrated by missionaries. I also would like to address the use of “illicit sex” when referring to relationships between soldiers and Indian women. In particular the book highlights two reasons why Indian women married or had sex with soldiers namely “to create advantageous kinship ties and to improve their family’s economic lives.”[6] There is, of course, no mention of rape (another very plausible reason) or how coercion, fear, violence, threats or even pressure by soldiers could play a significant role in Indian women having relationships with soldiers. Instead there is an inordinate focus on Indian women who have sex for “payment” which is described as “watermelon, meat and corn flour.” These basic staples of living would of course be more attractive to people who were starving and could not amply provide for their families (but since that part of mission living has not been discussed in the text at this point, I could see how this would also go unmentioned). This inordinate focus on women accepting payment for sex continues with the story of Maria Cecilia, whose relationship with a soldier is referred to as “casual and illicit” when it is anything but. It is not until several paragraphs later that we learn Maria Cecilia was actually attempting to prevent the abuse of her husband in exchange for sex. Should this action be classified as “casual and illicit” or is it a method of survival and protection for her family? Maria Cecilia is referred to again on page 225 as “some women, like Marie Cecilia” who “extracted payment from soldiers and settlers in return for sexual favors.” Once again these types of statements reduce her true motives and completely ignore the outside factors weighing upon her in making this decision. In the text, “Indian labor” is classified as “neither enslaved or indentured servants, in essence, [Indians] were a semi captive labor force, held in place by both their own needs for food and community life and by the Spaniards’ willingness to make them work and remain at the missions.”[7] Expansion on this concept includes the detail that “Neophytes did not earn a daily wage” and that Franciscans believed they were “compensated albeit indirectly, for their labor since they gained food, housing and an occasional change of clothing…”[8] Attempting to distinguish between “semi captive labor force” and “slavery or indentured servants” is quite challenging especially when considering that children were part of this “labor force” (and can we classify children as simply labor?). In essence the book seems to be arguing that Indians cannot be considered slaves to Missionaries simply because the Missionaries themselves never classified them in this way. History continuously changes based on those who are reviewing it. And I have a feeling that the author of this text is an admirer of Native cultural survival in spite of the “challenges” faced by Indian peoples throughout history. I must also reason that he knows and understands that this culture, able to survive during this bleak period in history, exists to this day. It is in this existence that history and historians have a responsibility to understand the role their theories and practice play in the everyday lives of a people still rebuilding and recovering from their past. The words we write, the way we conceptualize history still matters to a people trying to heal from that history. I hope the author will take a moment to consider this lasting legacy himself. [1] For a positive review see: http://hahr.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/86/4/827.pdf . Other discussions of your book focused on your constant speculating about aspects of Indian life with a prose “rich in ‘perhaps,’ ‘no doubt’, ‘would have,’ ‘must have,’ ‘might have,’ ‘it seems,’ ‘surely,’ ‘probably,’ ‘one imagines,’ ‘doubtless,’ ‘it is easy to imagine,’ and the like.”
[2] (Hackel; Preface). For a varying opinion on this notion see Jackson, Robert H., and Edward D. Castillo. Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. 2st ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Jackson and Castillo note that living in traditional dwellings was part of the “early stage” of mission development and that “Once the missionaries had constructed the basic buildings, which included a church, a residence for the missionaries, granaries, workshops, housing for the soldiers stationed at the mission and their families, and mills, they directed the construction of adobe houses for Indian families” (49). Therefore, it is slightly misleading to note that Indians lived in their own dwellings as if this was the norm and did not change once the Franciscans deemed it so. [3] Jackson & Castillo; 88 [4] Hackel; 203. [5] Hackel; 205. [6] Hackel; 222. [7] Hackel; 281. [8] Ibid I get asked a lot of random questions when I teach Native American Studies classes. People are curious. I also make them ask me questions - for points. #MuWaHaHa I've been keeping track in my head of some of the more popular things that people assume or ask me about. Mostly because I think it's interesting to see what endures in generations. And also because I think it is important that we address these things head on. So, here is my list where I look at the stereotypes and ideas about Native Americans that come up when I teach. --The top 3 stereotypes or beliefs that people have when they walk in to my Native American Studies courses-- #3: Native Americans are poor because they want to be poor because that’s how they get all the free stuff from the government that the government gives them. If I over analyze this I think “this is the argument of most billionaires about everybody else in the world who are not billionaires.” There is some kind of deep analytical scholarly statement to be made here about capitalism and development and the American Dream and picking yourself up by your bootstraps and people who are poor are poor because they just don’t work hard enough and this is why affirmative action is wrong and don’t we feel bad for the little rich girls who don’t get in to college because they aren’t some kind of poor minority even though those minorities are only poor because they want to be poor so they can get free stuff from the government? I sometimes feel overwhelmed by where to begin with stuff like this. So usually I like to begin with treaties. What’s a treaty? (A treaty, they will sometimes say, is like a binding document.) Is a treaty more serious than a cell phone contract? (Yes, we hope.) Who do we make treaties with? (Other countries.) Why? (To show that we are serious about them.) What happens if another country makes a treaty with us and then they break that treaty because they could care less what we think? (We talk crap about them, won’t let people travel there, embargo them, maybe we declare war on them). How much is the United States worth? (Excuse me?) How much is the United States worth? What do you think some other country would have to pay us for the United States? (It’s like priceless. It’s like so many people are here you could never just sell all their land and stuff. They could never pay enough.) They could never pay enough. What kind of CAR-AZY deal would you have to make to even attempt to pay enough? What kind of forever and ever TRUST OBLIGATION would you have to set up to even get the United States to consider on any level granting our land to another country? And what kind of battles would United States citizens wage, what kind of wars would US Citizens fight, what kind of resistance would there be in attempts to prevent that other country from negotiating for the land? How many of us would never stop fighting? Because, they could never pay enough. But what does that have to do with being poor so you can get free stuff from the government? Well, first, it’s not free stuff. It’s not. The United States Government made a trust agreement because the United States Government could never pay enough to Native people for the land and resources. Not ever. And there is a long (very long) and complicated (very complicated) history as to why these agreements came about, and what they were originally intended for, and how they should be interpreted but the fact of the matter is, it is not FREE stuff. One day, I promise, I will tell you about the whole “why you stay so poor Native Americans” but I’m already getting pretty lengthy in my blog so that one will have to leave you in suspense. HINT – it has a lot to do with history, historical trauma, present day issues of education and healing, and disingenuous government to government relations. Also PS- what’s “poor?” Poor in money? Poor in laughter? Poor in humor? Poor in family? Poor in resources? Many of us are rich in lots of really amazing ways… #2.5 Native Americans who are not poor have casinos. Those casinos make them so rich that they buy the government off to give them things. There are 566 federally recognized tribes. 246 of them have a casino. Many of those casinos are very small and make some profit, though not Vegas style profits. Tribes use their money for lots of things. It’s their money. If you want to talk more about Casinos message me. I’ll start on that blog entry and post it one day… #2 If you go to a reservation you will get shot. Or beat. Or shot and beat. Or somebody will be mean to you. They will probably be mean to you and then shoot you. Do you know why Indians were put on reservations? Sometimes students write that it was because Native peoples were so violent and so savage that they had to be corralled somewhere to be kept away from all those nice people just trying to settle the United States. Seriously, think about it, they rob covered wagons, they scalp people, they scream at them with war whoops, they put hexes on them, they throw tomahawks at their heads and steal white women and they don’t even speak English. This of course is mostly what John Wayne’s Indians do. This is what a lot of those western Indians do. Many students lament that they haven’t really seen a Western except at their Grandparent’s house. Their Grandparents usually love John Wayne. He was “The Boss” after all. Wait, no, Bruce Springsteen is “The Boss,” John Wayne was something else. He was “The Duke”, I think. I don’t know. One time I tried to watch a John Wayne movie where he gets off his horse and shoots some Indian in the face because, he’s John Wayne! And I thought “that’s okay. I don’t need to watch Indians get shot in the face.” These stereotypes, however, endure. Scalping endures, even though it was introduced by the Dutch. Native people are like violent savages has endured, and is built into Supreme Court Case Law as a reason why Native Peoples are not “nations” they are “domestic dependent nations.” There is a lot of violence in many Native communities. But you know what the perpetration of that violence is often a result of historical trauma. Violence became a tool of an aggressive colonizing society who wanted the land in the United States as their very own. Violence became a way to subdue, exterminate, and subordinate Native peoples. Violence was consistent. Violence eats at people from the inside. Violence became a reaction to and was as a result of colonization. And colonization was violent. That’s John Wayne. So people watch the movie and they go “hey, Indians are so violent, check out this John Wayne movie where they are attacking people who are innocently taking their wagons through the country side in hopes of settling all that ‘vast empty land’ that doesn’t belong to them .” And I say “John Wayne just shot an Indian guy in the face at point blank range because he felt like it.” #Who’sViolent? #1 Everything you need to know about Native peoples you can learn by watching Disney’s Pocahontas No seriously. Pocahontas. This comes up so much. So many students write about Pocahontas. Okay, well, Disney’s Pocahontas. Because I’ve never had a student write about the 10 year old girl who knew John Smith, married John Rolfe, travelled to England and died at the age of 22. For me, Disney’s Pocahontas was a blip on my memory. She wasn’t my Disney Princess. I went and saw Aladdin in the theatre TWICE. I went and saw The Lion King and cried, just like any human being with a SOUL would cry when *Spoiler Alert 15 years later* Mufasa died. I can sing you just about every word, note for note, of Part of Your World in what I think (in my head) sounds exactly like Ariel sounded when she was protesting why her father wouldn’t let her go off with some strange guy she saw once on a boat who she just HAD to be with. She’s 16! She can do what she wants! I like the part where she sings “I bet they don’t reprimand their daughters…” I remember people (adults) in the theatre laughing. And I turned around and hissed and went “quiet you, Ariel is singing about how unfair it is that she can’t go do whatever she wants. But Daddy, I LOOOOOOOOOOVE HIM!” Pocahontas though- meh. Sure she had hair that danced around in the wind and little animal friends, and a teeny tiny buckskin dress with fringe that allowed her to paint with all the colors of the wind, but she just wasn’t my bag. I mostly thought of her as like a pity Princess. Like Disney got all their people together and said “Oh, so we need an Indian princess now, besides that crab-apple Tiger Lily who is mean to other girls because girls be mean yo! So I GUESS we can do Pocahontas. Didn’t she like save some white guy from being killed and then fall in love with him and then help build a colony and then get married and go to England? Wasn’t she ACTUALLY an Indian Princess already? We should just do her. We’ve got to make our Princesses more diverse because, diversity is really IN right now.” *End Scene* She was a pity Princess that Pocahontas. Also the songs in that movie sucked. But there were actual Indian people involved. Which just goes to show you, we don’t all agree. And obviously I missed the meeting of all Indian people that month to decide how we felt about Disney’s Pocahontas, or they missed the meeting, either way, there were Indian people involved. What’s my problem with Pocahontas? I’m about to get to that. Because you see many think Native people were like Pocahontas. Apparently, this is the generation who remembers that movie. This movie is their Little Mermaid (poor them). I read about how teachers in their schools use Pocahontas to TEACH them about who Native people were. I say were, because I highly doubt there was much concern to teach them who Native people ARE. And that’s my problem. Because people are always telling me that these movies, these portrayals, these representations of Native people in the mass media are not that serious. That we, as Native people, should focus on the “real” stuff, like diabetes, or alcoholism, or drug abuse. And we take these other things too seriously. It’s just a mascot. It’s just a play. It’s just a music video. It’s just a movie. It’s just Johnny Depp literally in white face (okay striped face) pretending to be an Indian. (with a bird on his head) Maybe it is just a movie. So I’ll say this. If you want to watch it- go for it. And then sign up for a Native American Studies class. Or read some books. Or attend some workshops on lectures about decolonizing Native American History. You’ll quickly come to realize, there are many better movies that could have and should have been made. Many more stories to tell… #FileThisUnderReasonsITeachNativeAmericanStudies Been busy. Finished big huge exam that almost melted my brain, though it's mostly in tact now. I started to forget words like "Jello" and "dustpan." No, really, one day I had to describe "that thing you use to put stuff in after you are done sweeping, the sweeping shovel, that thing" to my Husband. My brain was full. Full of information you may someday hear me go on and on about like the gendered aspects of the Spanish missionization process in California, or why Allotment can suck it. But I'm coming out of the woods slightly, enough that I'm finally posting blogs that I started a while ago. In this episode we finally learn about my penchant for hashtagging and why I'm going to never use my PhD (because when I become a famous t-shirt designer I will say so long academic craziness! Hello hashtag empire!) A few weeks ago I got a phone call. In case you didn't know I am the Executive Director for a nonprofit organization called The Native Women's Collective. We are an entirely volunteer organization (for now, but we are working on becoming a fully fledged awesome sauce nonprofit- donate if you can!) dedicated to arts and culture. "Art" is a funny thing if you think about it because a lot of what we call "art" now was tied to Indigenous ways of life, where we didn't separate "art" from health, well-being, spirituality, politics and community. There were anthropologists who when they came to California said (and I am paraphrasing) "Man, these California Indians live such a life of leisure! All they do is make beautiful things that we want to buy and put in a museum. Where are their banks? Or their office buildings? How come they don't have posters that complain about Mondays? When do they work?" The "work" was a part of life and "balance" was the name of the game. And balance took time, energy, forethought, organization and -- "art." Anywho- the phone call. I'm not going to provide a summary of the whole thing (actually two things, it was two phone calls) but I will say, buried deep within what I think could have been some interesting constructive feedback was precisely the attitude that persists about how Native peoples are "supposed" to be. Within this one phone call the identity or "blood quantum" of people on our website was questioned, as if these people were somehow not "real" Indians simply because of the color of their skin. That is most likely what this assertion was based off of, because the caller would really have no idea "how much" Native any of these people are. (And really, it's none of their business.) The truth is, these continued misinformed ideas about who Native people are "supposed" to be are really based in the continued attempts to de-legitimize Indian people and their continued existence. They are challenges to our identity because, in reality, many people (Native and non-Native) have been taught that one day all Indians will cease to exist, that the further you get away from some romanticized version of a Native person created by Western history, the less Indian you are. And people tie this loss of identity to things like eating at The Olive Garden or getting an education or using Facebook. Like any non-Native pioneer person was already using Facebook. Like "real" Native people are stuck in the past somewhere. We learned this about Native people, because there has always been a desire for Native people to just disappear. When this couldn't be accomplished through genocide. When it couldn't be accomplished through allotment, termination and relocation, they redesigned it as a "scientific" system and they called it "blood quantum." Blood quantum is an issue that continues to be debated and referenced in many Native communities. It was not a value built in Indigenous societies where being "Native" was based on kinship and marriage and spirituality and culture and where you lived and many other systems utilized by each tribe. But once the federal government got involved somehow Native people had a quantifiable amount of "blood" that could be tracked through generations. Suddenly, we were 1/2 breeds and 1/4 bloods and "mixed bloods." This should have led to the ever important question of "what part of me is the Native part?" (And the answer is always, my super fantastic good looking cheekbones). Another important question would have to be "Can I get a blood transfusion from a full blooded Indian person and become a full blood myself?" (That would be fun to watch, some small, non-Native hipster in a headdress goes in to the blood bank, requests a full blooded Indian donor, and proceeds to get a blood transfusion where you slowly watch them morph into a beautiful Indian. Ta da - I'm an Indian too!) Blood quantum is complicated. Also within this one phone call, the legitimacy of our ties to our culture was challenged. How could we claim to be doing anything "Native" when our website was so "bouji." (Spelling? I have no idea - I guess cause I ain't all that bouji...) And finally, the caller seemed irked that we were content to ignore the "real" issues of Native people and instead talk about how cool and awesome and talented Native people are. Because - as the caller pointed out - Native people have many more problems than positives. And if we, as an organization, don't reflect that, we are ignoring it. And that, the caller asserted, would contribute to these problems. The caller was also personally aware that many of our people are in rehab. (I believe the caller said half, half of our people are in rehab.) The caller ended with "because there are so many other problems besides I'm so busy and cute and Native." That stuck with me. I thought - but I am #BusyCuteAndNative (I hashtag in my mind all the time BTW. I'm one of those annoying people who will, in real conversation, actually say the words "OMG hashtag #YouAreAwesome hashtag #ICan'tBelieveYouSaidThat". Sue me, I watch Happy Endings. #Save Happy Endings!) I am #BusyCuteAndNative. I also have a lot of people I know or have known who are alcoholics. I am also the good friend of Native women who have been in abusive relationships. I have also been in an abusive relationship. I know lots of people with diabetes. I know many people in rehab. I have family who are addicted to drugs. I know that many Indian people struggle. I know that many Indian people continue to fight for basic necessities in life. I also know that we laugh a lot. That we tell some pretty great jokes and have twisted senses of humor. That some of us have #FirstWorldProblems and many of us #AreReallyGoodAtBasketball. Maybe half of us are in rehab. But guess what - half of us are in rehab! We are trying to heal. We are lots of other things besides --tragic.-- We are funny. We are smart. We are activists. We are artists. We are dancers. We are poets. We are movie makers. We are funny (part II). We are designers. We are wearing headdresses and dancing to FUN at festivals in really hot climates that are exceptionally dusty with a limited supply of bathrooms. Wait. No, that's not us. We are busy. We are cute. We are Native. I guess I want to think of it as a good thing. #BusyCuteAndNative can represent that (Woo Hoo!) we are #BusyCuteAndNative because despite the systematic attempts to keep us from maintaining our connection to the landscape where we came into being, we are still here and many of us are busy. We are busy helping our communities. We are busy supporting each other. We have a lot of issues facing our communities and to this day our statistics continually demonstrate that our community healing is a process that we must prioritize. And we are busy working on this healing process. I don't want to focus only on the "deficits" in our communities. I don't just want to talk about what we "lack" or how we "struggle." Those things are real. But we are also so much more than that. The things I do are because I want to support Native people to do the things that they love, to believe in themselves, to ground themselves in our culture and our ideologies, and to revitalize our communities. So - I made a t-shirt. Proceeds from the t-shirt help to support the Collective to do things like our upcoming basket weaving retreat, or our demonstrations at various events. I don't make any money off the tshirt myself. I made it because I am #BusyCuteAndNative. I I made it because it's true. Also because I think we should all wear our Hashtags loud and proud. Plus - I like hashtagging stuff. Once I went to this workshop for "women in the academy" where we had to write down on this huge poster thing something about ourselves that we were really proud of and I wrote #MyMadHashtaggingSkills #TrueStory #BusyCuteAndNative #AndHashTagging #NotJustPaintingWithAllTheColorsOfTheWind P.S. Our next limited edition t-shirt will be coming out soon. It will be for sale through the NWC with the hashtag: #ActivelyDecolonizing #NotEvenKiddingLookForItInJustAFewWeeks! #InspiredByStephanieLumsden Wanna Buy A Tshirt?! I have this very clear memory of my Dad coming up to the pitchers mound at one of my softball games and telling me "It's not that we need to have a time out, it's that we want to make them think I'm telling you something really important so they get scared. After this you're going to strike this girl out because I'm going to lean in and whisper to you and make it seem like I'm giving you all the secrets to the greatest play in the world." I wouldn't normally post on my vote for Tribal political positions, mostly because I grew up with that whole "oooo you better not tell people who you vote for" and "You never talk about politics and whether or not you like or hate the grumpy cat. You obviously like the grumpy cat. EVERYBODY DOES." (No pressure) But this year my Dad is running for Tribal Chair. And I'm voting for him. Of course people will say "well you have to vote for him because he's your Dad" and also "well you obviously have a little bit of a biased opinion in this case." Although I would respond, I know a lot of people that would not actually vote for their own parents and I think my long association with my Dad actually provides me with some insight into just why I think he's the person to be Chair. (Take it as you will though, there are other candidates for the Chair position as well, research will probably help you make the best decision. I offer here my two cents and my fully thought out, whole hearted endorsement for your consideration). First, random people have walked up to me on the street to tell me how much they like my Dad. They like to tell me about how hard he works. He's a worker. He likes to work. He probably got this from his Dad, who also liked to work. Sometimes in high school this would make me crazy because mostly in high school all I wanted to do was sleep. People respect him because he's always going to do a good job. I once went to a conference and this guy asked me if I was related to Steve Baldy and I said yes, and he said "congratulations." And I said "thanks. I would highly recommend being related to him." I don't want to say "he's the best person for the job" because I don't just think of the Tribal Chair position as a job. It shouldn't just be a job. Part of it is the day to day work that it takes to be the Chair of a multi-million dollar tribal nation and the other part of it has to be something else. It has to be the thing that makes a person be conscious of the many issues facing our tribe who still believes that they can make a difference. It has to be about more than the bureaucracy of a government position. It has to be about knowing that Hoopa is a place of incredible importance that deserves a good Chairperson who listens, is thoughtful, is respectful, and who believes in our valley. It has to be a person that doesn't just want a job. And it also has to be somebody who doesn't just want to feel important, but somebody who has always wanted to see Hoopa doing well and being balanced. I love that word balance and it makes me think of my Dad. My Dad taught me a lot of things. He taught me how to catch a fly ball. He taught me how to gut a fish and filet and smoke it. He taught me how to clean a net (not the hardest thing to teach someone, but I can remember spending what felt like hours and hours picking moss off of the net with him.). He taught me how to write a grant. He taught me how to over cook chicken, how to order pizza after over cooking the chicken, and how to make really good abalone. And he taught me about Hoopa. He taught me that Hoopa was the center. That no matter how far away I went or how far away I might feel sometimes from my family or my home, that Hoopa was there and that when I came back, my center would know it. I respect our valley. I respect the river that runs through and nourishes us. There was a reason that we fought a war to keep our center. And sometimes it might feel like we're still fighting. There are drugs and there is violence. Sometimes there are bad things that happen. But we are still here. For many years, many BIA agents, and superintendents, soldiers and settlers, they thought one day we would all be gone. They thought they could break us apart. But here we are. We dance. We sing. We love. We are. When my Dad told me he was running for Chair I thought about the time we went down to the river together to check out the place where he used to go fishing below his house. I asked him what he thought about Hoopa and he said "Hoopa is home." He told me about how important it was to understand that. It's the reason why we did ceremonies and sang for the fish and danced. It's also the reason why we voted in the elections. I'm voting for my Dad because he does things in a good way. Because when I listen to him he doesn't talk about what he wants for the tribe, he talks about finding ways to help our tribal members be more involved. He talks about listening. He talks about building a nation and finding ways for all of us to work together. He doesn't talk about himself, he asks questions and he listens. And then he tries to find solutions that will work, that he can implement, that will make a difference. He's practical. He's smart. But he's also creative. He's open, he's honest, he's accountable, and he's also funny. He also has the experience. He's built institutions from the ground up and he did it because he wanted to help Indian people. I love him because he's my Dad. But I'm voting for him because I have watched him work on a grant to help rehab houses for Indian families. I'm voting for him because he works hard for Indian country. I'm voting for him because he will work hard for Hoopa -- because Hoopa is home. http://www.facebook.com/VoteSteveBaldy Vote-- April 30, 2013 (or like me, via absentee) I wasn’t going to weigh in, because I’m busy, but also because many of my fellow Native community members were doing an awesome job offering reasoned responses to yet another example of cultural appropriation gone wrong. (This implies, of course, that there is cultural appropriation gone right, somewhere, out there, in the land of cultural appropriation. It probably has something to do with the Cheesecake Factory making Navajo Tacos, though I hear their frybread leaves something to be desired…) First – a quick and dirty run down history. There is a company. This company wants to make a tshirt. The artist at the company designs one. It’s has an Indian looking guy on it with some feather headdress and earrings and whole bunches of generic “Indian” looking designs in the background. And underneath it says “Chief Life.” A bunch of people respond. Some like it, some don’t, some are concerned, some are concerned about people being too concerned. Friends of mine get involved. The artist asks for honest feedback about the design. People give it to him. He says some people are rude, some people aren’t, but mostly he thinks they are rude. He is surprised by the response so he “redesigns” it to be an Aztec guy, and not some generic Indian guy. (This seems to mean from the pictures I’ve seen that he changes the generic designs in the background to Aztec writing symbols and also adds some Aztec design looking earrings and an Aztec shield to the guys forehead. Everything is the same. It’s like, Mr. Potato-Head Indian Style. Exchange your cultural appropriation parts for others, make an entirely new Indian Mr. Potato-Head.) Again he asks for feedback. People still aren’t happy. And suddenly he’s writing on Facebook that: “I think it kind of comes down to what happened to Native Americans in the past That makes this so sensitive… The thing is I wasn’t here for that and neither was my genetics.. And what happened to the Native Americans was simply a byproduct of war that happens in every culture and region that has war…” And “Native Americans are not the only ones that have gone through genocide… Many many cultures go through it… Like I said before sometimes it’s a byproduct of war… So when I’m having fun with art I’m not trying to read bring up bad memories of genocide that did not happen when I was alive.. And “And I also think it’s unfair of you to say that the Aztec people are the same as Native Americans when they are by far completely too different cultures…” And of course “I think this is just a really sensitive topic for you…” With a little “I know other Native Americans that I can enjoy the art piece that I did…” And finally “The past will always be the past and I say never forget the past but always look for brighter future… I think optimistically…” Okay – so I write this as an open letter, not trying to be “rude” so as to make him believe that he is a victim of all these rude Native people calling him and being rude but to provide him some of my own insight into this issue. Dear Guy On Facebook: To be fair, I’d never heard of your company before this, and I probably wouldn’t have had this not been passed around Facebook. Also, I was born and raised in Humboldt County. I get how it kind of works there. I know we have this big, fantastic, emerald triangle, legendary existence that makes people give me high fives or nods or thumbs up when I’m wearing a sweatshirt that says Humboldt on it. We cool. I get it. I lived there my whole life, though I was never really that cool. Now, as a Native American person I don’t like the shirt. You can put me in that category. I don’t know if you’re adding it up and waiting to take a poll to democratically decide on using your artwork, but if you are, I’m firmly in the no, don’t do it, it’s not a good idea, yes it’s problematic, yes it’s sad, and no it’s never going to work, no matter how many different sets of earrings you stick on the poor man, it’s not going to ever be an image that portrays “respect”, “dignity” or even “honor.” It’s just going to be a stereotypical, Native image that you are using to make money, glorify stereotypes and continue to ignore why these problematic images are damaging, destructive and ignorant. Also, truth be told I had no idea what “Chief Life” was. According to my younger, cooler friends (and Urban Dictionary) to “chief” is to smoke marijuana. Me, as an old person, I want to over analyze it. I’m assuming it has something to do with the old stereotype of “smoking the peace pipe” and how Chiefs were supposed to have been big smokers who smoked the peace pipe and did all that smoking (all, completely distorted by the way and in many ways totally wrong, but that’s an entirely DIFFERENT letter). Blah blah blah, it’s “chief” dude. I’m probably using it wrong. I haven’t seen you at all address that side of this issue. So far it seems like you’ve been focusing on the image. To paraphrase (quickly): Oh you don’t like the feather earrings? I’ll replace them with Aztec earrings? Oh you don’t like the weird generic designs, I’ll replace them with Aztec writings. The image is too “Plains Indian” and not “Humboldt”, why don’t you look at some Humboldt stuff? Etc. etc. It looks like a mascot, mascots are honorable, no they’re not, yes they are, why aren’t Buccaneers offended? Pretty soon Vikings will start complaining. Something about how anybody can be offended by any image but Chief is an honorable image, etc. etc. Except, we’re talking about “Chief Life.” Which, for your company, I’m assuming has something to do with marijuana, and drug culture, and drugs. I ain’t mad atcha dude. I know that this whole “weed” thing sort of lives where we live. I get it. I’m not trying to play super narc-y innocent girl who “oh my word” “I declare” I can’t believe you’re talking about drug stuff. But, Chief Life – it’s just sad. It doesn’t make me angry, it makes me sad. Drugs are a huge issue for Native communities. Huge. They aren’t just an issue because people like to do drugs. They aren’t just an issue because Native people can’t handle their business and they turn to drugs. They aren’t just an issue because of the rampant poverty of Native populations. All of those reasons are important. But they are also an issue because of history. They are an issue because of trauma. They are an issue because of what happened at the founding of this very county that you love so much you want to make a tshirt for it and sell it to people. Did you know that it used to be policy in Humboldt County that you could hunt Indian people? There were Indian hunting days. Did you know that it used to be policy in Humboldt County, that it was easier to exterminate Indian people then to have to deal with them? Did you know that on the very places you walk, or live, very near where your business is located, there were massacres of Indian women and children. There were rapes of young Indian girls. And after all that, there were continued attempts to erase a people from the land. And then after that, there were reservations, there was poverty, there was trauma, and there were drugs. It’s health thing. It’s hard to separate sometimes from what we think of as “recreational” but lots of our “recreational” habits, are ways of coping with trauma that passed itself along through generations. This is the part of our people that is overwhelmed when we stand at the edge of the bay, look out and realize that one night, as a tribe was holding a world renewal ceremony, a group of people showed up and tried to kill every single one of them. Now, you weren’t there. I know that. This doesn’t mean it isn’t written on the landscape where you live. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel it every single day. It doesn’t mean that it never resonates in our waking lives. Because it does. In policies, in ignorance, in forgetfulness, in the way we talk about ourselves, and each other. Maybe your “genetics” weren’t here, but you are here – now. It’s time to know. It’s time to know where you are. And to “know” this place, is to listen. And to “listen” is to realize that we aren’t talking about an ancient history, we are talking about a recent history. And maybe, just maybe, what you consider “simply a byproduct of war” is, surprisingly, not. Genocide is not a byproduct of war - Genocide is tool of an aggressor. Genocide is a choice. It doesn't just happen because war is hell. Genocide is systematic. Genocide is deliberate. It is not a "byproduct" of aggression, there is intent- an intent to annihilate a group of people. We should not tie genocide to just another "byproduct of war" and erase this intent. Systematic murdering of a people, enslavement of children, raping of women, massacres, these are not byproducts of war, these are tools of genocide. The "byproduct of war", is the trauma. The byproduct war, is the destruction. The byproduct of war is the loss of life, land, resources, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters. And for many, many Indigenous peoples the byproduct of war has been survivance. It’s been strength, it’s been coming together, it’s been healing. The byproduct of war has been a culture that refused to die. You can go to two museums right now in Humboldt County and see the “byproduct of war.” You’ll see that this “imagery” of Indian people it’s not about what’s “cool.” It’s not about a “Chief Life.” You can see that, and you can draw that, and you can learn – you can read Genocide in Northwestern California or The Tule Rivers Struggle for Sovereignty, or Custer Died for your Sins. You can sit with a Native Elder, or a group of young artists and you can talk, and you can learn. And you can draw and create, and you can still put sunglasses on it. But you still have to answer that one hanging out there, waiting for a response question… Is the image tied to drug culture? Are you trying to get Native people to tell you it’s okay to use an image of a Native person tied with drug culture? Are you trying to get Native people to say that there is some “image” that they could give you, that you could tie with drug culture that would be “respectful?” Are you trying to get Native people to find some compromise, of semi stereotypical, easy to access, generic images that will somehow be tied to drug culture and then allow you to use that image to tie to drug culture and make money off of that image? Let’s say, no. Let’s say “Chief Life” is just like the “Good Life.” It probably is, if you consider responsibility, respect, reciprocity and consciousness to be the “Good Life.” Let’s talk a little about that then, you’re just telling me to live the good life. Chief Life, Aztec Life, whatevs. So then let’s take it another step – Sambo Life. (If you don’t know much about Sambo, you should check out here, or here, or watch this.) If you want Sambo can wear sunglasses. Of course he should have big red lips. Super dark black skin. Maybe a backwards cap, some gold/ diamond teeth. How about some watermelon earrings? How about some chicken and waffle earrings? How about he just looks like Kanye West. Although Kanye’s gone all Kardashian so he may not be stereotypical enough for your more discerning audiences who expect to recognize right away what image they are trying to appropriate. Ooo, Jew life. Let’s put a dude in a Holocaust outfit, complete with tattooed number on his forehead. Some star of David earrings. If you want you put menorah’s as your background. Genocide is a byproduct of war after all. A lot of other cultures go through it. You’re just trying to have fun with your art, so Jewish people should understand. You’re not trying to “bring up bad memories of genocide that did not happen when [you] were alive.” And we all know that the “Jewish Life” is the good life too – like a Chief Life – because Jewish people have money and own Hollywood. Asian Life. They’re all the same anyway right? We wouldn’t want to get too specific with the whole Japanese life or Chinese Life or any other number of “Asian” cultures. So let’s go generic. Slanted eyes. Big straw hat. Maybe some buck teeth. If you want they can be kung-fu-ing something. The background can just be “ching, chong, chang” written over and over again. If somebody doesn’t like it you can just change the earrings and make it “Bangkok” life, cause that’s different right? Mexican Life – sombrero, something to do with gardening, maybe a taco. No matter how many compromises you make – these images won’t work. These images – don’t work. You have a right to draw whatever you want. You have every right to put it on Facebook and ask for feedback. You have a right to put out 1,000 of them if you want to. You will be making the wrong decision if you do that. Because images, no matter who you are, come with responsibility, and that is the difference in how many Indigenous people see the world. We live in a world of responsibilities, not rights. What are you responsible to? If you choose to use a certain image, you are responsible to understand what repercussions that image has. I know people have shared with you the studies which have found that these types of images have negative effects on Native children. I know people have told you about the history that informs on why they are so “sensitive” to these issues and portrayals. But I want to tell you something very clearly, if you want to put this image out as part of your company, then you should also be very clear about the kind of responsibility you have to it. And you should learn about that responsibility. And should listen. And then maybe, just maybe, you can start to understand. And when you understand, you're going to make a different decision, I just know it. It takes work and time, but it's worth it, because what you will create from this, if you choose to do it in a "good way" will be much more then this generic shirt you've been so intent to defend. Am looking forward to the possibility as I too - am an optimist. PS – Aztecs are Native Americans. And most every Native nation in the Americas had completely different cultures from each other. But the Aztecs are in the Americas. Much like Mayans, the Oneidas, the Iroquois and the Hupa, Yurok and Karuk. It’s still offensive.
*Spelling issues are directly from what is written on Facebook. I’d blame auto-correct myself, but I haven’t actually talked to the guy to see if auto-correct wasn’t really doing him any justice in this case. First off: I <3 Adrienne Keene. If you don't know, she's a blogger and she writes Native Appropriations, a blog that I use in my class, that I refer people to if they want more information and that I regularly check. One time she shared something I wrote on Facebook and I told people about it for days. I was like "Native Appropriations shared my blog on Facebook. I'm on Native Appropriations!" You should go to there. Second off: I found this video because I was looking for videos about "appropriation" and "playing Indian" for my class that I'm teaching. In class that day we watched No Doubt's, well one can't call it a music video so much as a "WTF Was That?" video. If you don't know - you can read my blog about it here. This blog wasn't shared on Native Appropriations. :( Poor that blog entry. But, I used the WTF video as a jumping off point to discuss appropriation and portrayals of Indian women. We talked and read this poem and this poem about Indian Princesses and "Squaws." In finding this video (I've included it above) I was struck by what Adrienne (Ms. Keene? I don't know her, I don't call her at home. One time I liked a few things on her Facebook, but that's about it. If I was going all academic I would call her "Keene", except that feels a little like I'm a drill sergeant ordering her to drop and give me 20) was saying in the video. It's a short clip. I haven't watched the entire interview (apparently available somewhere). I haven't looked up if she's written anything more about it. In essence, I was simply inspired by one particular quote from the clip: "So I feel like Native people sometimes feel in order to be recognized and be seen and to not be invisible you have to play in to these stereotypes and you have to give the people what they want. And whether that is in native roles and film, whether that is in the way that people dress, the way that they speak, it happens all the time. And I don't think it's something we really talk about as a community. And I know I even fall into the trap too. I wear my Indian jewelry. I got a Pendleton purse. These are like these markers that we associate with Indianess and so I feel the need to do it because then otherwise people wouldn't recognize me as Indian a lot of the time so it's a way for me to assert my identity but it's playing in to a lot of stereotypes of what an Indian person is." -From an Interview for Well Red 12/06/12 My interest was peeked by this idea - "why do I wear Indian jewelry?" I get the sentiment of what she is trying to say, so I'm going to offer my two cents, because I have two cents to offer, and because I think we need to have multiple people talking about the same issues because we want people to understand that "Indian" people aren't just one or two people who got interviewed for a movie, they are all different kinds of people from all different kinds of places. We want more than once voice, more than one view. The complexity of what it means to "be an Indian" is a far more interesting and important conversation then "what do all the Indians think about (insert random subject here)?" I like to tell people "Well, at our last meeting of all the Indians we decided THIS is what we think about whatever issue or idea you are asking me about." Those meetings are pretty top secret. Often times I'll even localize it for people, when they are asking me "What do Hupa's think about...?" I'll say "Well, next week we're having another meeting of every single Hupa person and I can ask them what our official feeling is about that..." I have always been taught in my family, and I notice a lot of people do it now, to say "I have been taught" or "I believe" or "What I know" or "What I heard." This is an oral history thing to me, a long tradition of "Tell me where you're coming from" and "understand that might be different for someone else." It's all about relativity, which Vine Deloria, Jr. wrote a lot about. The problem is that people just aren't used to seeing Indians debating with each other if they like Battlestar Gallactica. They aren't used to seeing Indians debate how they feel about universal health care, or even all the different reasons why they wear Indian jewelry. They are used to Indians coming in to the movie, saying something Indian, smoking a peace pipe, and wandering off, or dying, or falling in love with a white girl.... and dying. Or teaching some white guy to know what all the Indians think or know, or would say, or would do so that white guy can go off and tell everyone what all Indians think. The point is, it got me thinking. This is just one reason why, in this interview, at this time, that Adrienne had for wearing her Indian jewelry. I'm sure it's not the only reason. I'm sure it's not HER only reason. I'm sure the "reasons" change by the day, or the hour. I'm sure sometimes she's wearing Indian jewelry because... it matches the rest of her outfit, or it's what she needed to hold her hair back... etc. etc. But I also think about how people respond to videos, or things that are written down. Suddenly that becomes the reason why all Indians wear jewelry. We wear jewelry so that people will recognize us as Indian. We wear jewelry, because we are "playing" Indian, or playing in to what it means to be Indian. And someone watches it, writes it down, and maybe puts it in a paper or book, or busts it out at some conference, or brings it up on the tee-vee. That's when I started my list. Because I thought, what would I say? What's my list? Like to hear it-- here it go. 5 Reasons I Wear Indian Jewelry#5: Because it's awesome. Need I explain this more? Or will pictorial evidence suffice? I like Indian jewelry. It's nice looking. We had a long history before contact with colonizers and settlers and for that long history we not only made things, we made beautiful things. They were aesthetically pleasing, they were also engineered like nobody's business. We have been making awesome jewelry for a long time. I like to remind people of that a lot, how many of these ideas, these designs, they come from a very old, very sound, very advanced culture. We were not "pre-historic" peoples just sitting in America camping out, being surprised at fire and wishing someone would come a long and teach us how to take a shower, or build a big building, or make a wheel. We were civilizations of people who had developed a way of life that included the artistic expression of sheer awesomeness. Whether it be through our architecture, our ideas, our ways of life, our ceremonies or our jewelry. Now-a-days, the handmade, handcrafted effort that goes in to a piece of jewelry is frigging amazing. It's also a gorgeous way of expressing how to use natural materials and make something, you guessed it, awesome. This is not just my Indian-girl opinion, by the way. I have had many non-Indian people tell me how awesome something is that I am wearing. "That is an awesome necklace." "That is an awesome hair clip." "That is an awesome bracelet." Yes, I know. I agree with you. #4: Because that's what people give me. If I'm lucky. Some of the greatest things I own are from people and they come with a story. Now some people (ahem, my brother) could probably give me more (ahem, my brother) because being somebody's ONLY sister should mean they are the first go to person for you know (ahem) putting new stuff out there in the world. But I digress. I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by generous people who have given me jewelry. Jewelry they made. Jewelry they have. Jewelry that they just thought looked like me, so they bought it. To me it's sort of a beautiful expression of how this continuing culture has gotten so comfortable with the availability of these types of pieces that we are okay with just giving them away. We don't have to worry about "salvaging" what little we have and "preserving" it for the future because our "dying" or "vanishing" culture will mean that we won't be able to make any more, or have any more, or even know what it looks like. We are still here. We are still here making beautiful jewelry. We are giving it to you (or to me). For my college graduation from Stanford my Auntie gave me a dentalium necklace with garnet beads. For my MFA graduation from San Diego my Dad made me a carved dentalium* necklace that matches the one he wears. For my anniversary my husband bought me a pair of elkhorn earrings that my brother made. I say bought, because we once again come full circle to the part where my brother makes stuff that is awesome (see reason 1) but doesn't give me enough of his awesome stuff for free. *Dentalium shells are what the people from our area traditionally used as money. They are long, thin, mollusk shells that you can find in the ocean. We had many protocols around dentalium and money and types of dentalium and even color of dentalium. So there's another reason I may wear Indian jewelry, cause then I can be like *bling, bling-ing* for real. *Bling Bling is an 00's hip hip-hop saying popularized by Juvenile, which is probably considered "what old people say to be cool" now. Apparently it was created by Lil' Wayne to represent the sound that is made by one bright, shiny, "blinging" diamond. *Hupas been bling bling-ing since the year 1. #3: Because I like to have something that I can show people to talk to them about contemporary Indian culture that they can see, touch, and that is still being worn to this day. I made these earrings by the way. The light braided things, those are bear grass braids. The Hupa call bear grass "tl'oh-tehl." We gather it by picking pieces of the long, green grass from the bushes that grow, usually after the area has been burned. We then sort and dry them. Then we can weave them into braids. This leads into a whole conversation sometimes about how California Indians (and many other Indians) used burning as a means to "tend" to the earth - that wilderness is a concept created by Western colonizers as a means to erase the presence of Indian people from their very own land. And in many cases this thought process was used as a way to justify the seizing of land from Indian people, who didn't know how to use it any way. It's all wilderness right? In other cases, this leads to a discussion about where I learned to braid bear grass. I learned from my Auntie. I like to tell people about how she is a very particular weaver. She taught me about gathering in a way that forced me to think about the intent of what I do. What am I gathering for? What do I need to leave behind to make sure that the plant isn't harmed after I gather? She also taught me a lot about intent of the types of braids I would be making. She taught me to pick pieces that match from end to tip, so that my braids would be even. She taught me and now I teach other people. Sometimes I lead workshops for people. It's one way for people to feel the materials in their hands and it also sort of demystifies this whole weaving thing, because for a lot of people I have discovered it is mostly about them feeling like they aren't quite the Indian person they need to be to do it, or that it's such a far away Indian thing, or that it's sooo hard. And in even other cases, it gives me something that I can hand to people and tell them to hold it, touch it and interact with it. I do this because I think it's important for them to see that this "material culture" is not just something you have to view behind glass. It's not just something that has to be "preserved." I like to let them "demystify" their own sort of belief which seems to teeter somewhere around "that's such a beautiful thing for a museum, shhh don't talk too loud, oh my god don't touch it, oh crap now they are arresting us for touching it because you don't touch stuff in a museum." #2: Because it is a physical testament to and way to assert my Indian identity. And this is where I'm going to have to agree with Adrienne, in a way. You see I understand the sentiment, that identity can be tied to the kind of jewelry we wear or the way we physically represent ourselves. And there are also certain expectations that come from "looking like an Indian." Wearing your hair in braids and putting on your Pendleton jacket -- people respond in certain ways. I have (shhh, don't tell) on occasion referred to my Indian jewelry as my Superman Costume. By day I am a type of nerdy, unclassifiable Clark Kent, but by night when I put on my basket hat, or wear my abalone earrings and my beaded bracelet I am, super Indian. I have come to your meeting to throw down my Indian knowledge. You will believe me, in fact you will probably let me speak for most Indians in the entire universe. You will think everything I say is something meaningful. My Indian garb will give me the strength to speak up (sometimes) and it will also remind people that "Hey, there is an Indian in the room." And it will also, in some cases, show other Indians that yes, I am an Indian too. Maybe I don't look like you, but I am one too. There are lots of different ways that my jewelry expresses, attracts and states (or over-states) my identity. And yes, sometimes I don't wear jewelry, on purpose, as a strategic move, because I want to be able to blend in to the crowd and see what people really think. Sometimes I want to make comments without people thinking "oh that's what the Indians think" or even blowing off what I have to say because "she's just talking like that cause she's a mystical/spiritual Indian." Identity politics are everywhere, and they are salient to my life because I am an Indian person. We were slapped with defining what it meant to be Indian as a way to categorize, quantify, and ultimately break us down or break us apart. We are still healing and moving on from these things. I do not, however, think that I wear jewelry as a way of playing into stereotypes or "giving people what they want." I've thought about it though. I had this grand plan once that I would "dress up" like a militant Indian one day (red bandana, tshirt with the "Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492" picture on it) and then a poetic super-Indian (lots of turquoise, cowboy hat with beaded bandana, pendleton jacket) and all those sort of random stereotypes that people have about what an "Indian" walking into a room would look like just because I wondered what that would be like and how people would react to me. I haven't, yet - but maybe some day. I can blog about it. Five days as a super Indian... #1: Because we should wear Indian jewelry. I was listening (eaves dropping) on a conversation just the other day between my sister from another mister and my great Aunt about wearing hats. In Northwest California we wear basket hats. They are amazing and they can make even the most tired, up for 48 hours girl look cute that morning after the dance when it's early and everything is funny. For a long time it felt to me like not everyone could have a hat. Hats were expensive, they were hard to come by, they were hard to take care of, and not a lot of people were making them. They mostly came out for ceremony. They also became associated with ceremony. Seeing a person just wearing a hat at a reception, or for a family gathering, or walking around a farmers market, that wasn't going to happen. But I also feel like in my lifetime, people have started to reclaim and revitalize this kind of regalia and hat wearing. It's now more common for people to own a hat. It's now more common to see them when people are gathering together. It's a beautiful thing that we, a group of people who were supposed to be on our way out, are still here, we're still wearing hats, and they still look dang good on us. Anyway, my eavesdropping conversation consisted of me listening to my great aunt and friend talk about wearing hats, and in some ways feeling like it's "showing off" or, trying to call attention to your Indianess or your super Hupa-ness. And my aunt said, "You should wear your hat. We all should wear our hats. It's important to wear them." It made me think of this picture (<--------) for some reason. I took it this past summer at a women's coming of age ceremony. I was struck by the number of women there (all wearing Indian jewelry and hats). This ceremony was revitalized just a little over 10 years ago now, and when it first started there weren't as many women coming to stand and welcome the girl, or as many women singing or dancing. But now, this. This line of beautiful Indian women, who stayed up all night singing, laughing and dancing, came out and greeted this young girl to show her the community that stands with her. All wearing hats. Maybe not their own hats, but some of them yes, their own hats. Some were also wearing Pendleton jackets. Some were wearing dentalium or abalone necklaces or earrings or bracelets. Some were wearing crocs or Nike sandals. All of them were proud, beautiful, amazing, tired, strong women. We should wear our Indian jewelry. We should do it because we are proud of the way we survived, thrived, grew, revitalized, and remained. We should wear our Indian jewelry because it was made to be worn, to sing, to dance, to go to conferences, to be in meetings, to go to brunch...to bling - bling. Bonus Reason: Because... it is awesome. Check it...
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AuthorCutcha Risling Baldy is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. She received her PhD in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis. She is also a writer, mother, volunteer Executive Director for the Native Women's Collective and is currently re-watching My Name is Earl... (5) Top PostsOn telling Native people to just "get over it" or why I teach about the Walking Dead in my Native Studies classes... *Spoiler Alert!*
Hokay -- In which I lead a presentation on what happens when you Google "Native American Women" and critically analyze the images or "Hupas be like dang where'd you get that dentalium cape girl? Showing off all your money! PS: Suck it Victorias Secret"
In which we establish that there was a genocide against Native Americans, yes there was, it was genocide, yes or this is why I teach Native Studies part 3 million
5 Reasons I Wear "Indian" Jewelry or Hupas...we been bling-blingin' since Year 1
Pope Francis decides to make Father Junipero Serra a saint or In Which I Tell Pope Francis he needs to take a Native Studies class like stat
I need to read more Native blogs!A few that I read...
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