The Happy Poem

I thought for once I could write a happy poem

absent burning rage and righteous anger;

happy rocks and cheerful water,

the colors of the desert reflected

In my own skin – I am

an Indian on Indian land and maybe

not my Indian land, but

better than nothing,

right?

 

I may not be brown enough or poor enough

For everyone around me

To choke and remember

whose land this is

but my soul had the grit of

patience that makes

injustice digestible,

allows you to live

or at least coexist with

the same thing you fight.

 

And for a moment being here

on this Indian land is like

reading Sherman Alexie, like

slicing though root vegetables with a sharp knife,

the smell of hand parched manoomin

listening to Buffy St. Marie or

smoked salmon.

 

I simply felt complete until

you ask me, do I suppose these trees

were around

when the Indians

lived here.

I wish a thousand things.

I wish I was Lenelle Moise,

I wish I has

steel-spiked ovaries and combat boots.

I wish I had erupted,

matched your ignorance pound for pound with

outrage, spewed truth all over your

self-indulgent smile.

 

I wish that when you looked at me,

the very image

seared your retinas like the sun

with the image of Crazy Horse;

that my appearance gave you nightmares

about boarding schools;

that my very presence made

your teeth ache and your

feet itch.

 

I wish I looked brown enough

for you to see me as Indian

even though I know

if you saw me

as Indian

you wouldn’t see me

at all.

 

Geronimo E-KIA

A brilliant and moving piece by the 1491′s:

 

I tried to talk to some of my students in my Intro to Native American Studies about this (mis)use of Geronimo’s name and their responses ranged from “it doesn’t mean anything” to “maybe Geronimo was a terrorist.” I showed them this film on the last day of class and it got the point across much better than I ever could have.

 

My students are awesome

I just got an email from one of my students. This is why I love TA’ing:

Hey Lindsey,

I hope I didn’t offend [that other student] in class last Thursday. I was just trying to shed light on the fact that a capitalist society would not care that a football team’s mascot is offensive to a minority group of people. I think the best that could happen is that their team name might get a nickname. For example, in the NBA, the New York Knicks, as they are known now, were the New York Knickerbockers in the 1960′s. It was changed for its resemblance to the derogatory word “Nigger”-bocker. So now it’s just the Knicks. I feel that the only reason that was even possible is because of power in numbers. There was the entire civil rights movement taking place at the time and they demanded change. The best they got was a nickname.
The other solution would be an outright purchase of the team and a name change. You could imagine how costly that would be; it’s just not feasible.
To be completely honest, every culture could cry a river about the persecutions and inequalities about how they were treated. No offense, while Natives are arguing about the name “Redskins” (amongst other problems), my people, the Copts in Egypt have to worry about bombings outside of churches, Muslims kidnapping young girls, raping them and forcing them to convert to Islam, and while the world was celebrating New Year’s Day, my people had to bury a priest that had his throat slit the day before, along with all the bodies from the explosion. All of this got about 15 seconds of news coverage on a local channel. There is not much that can be done but to try to enlighten the minds of ignorant people.
Earlier today, I felt [that other student] took it to the next level saying that white America was trying to be like the Indians in that “culture sharing” video. The way I see it today, all religion is being defaced and on the decline in the eyes of the public. I was watching the LMFAO video “Party Rock Anthem” and it had “Jesus” dancing in the middle of a circle. It’s so easy to take offense to every little thing, but you cannot live life like that.
Anyway, I’m done babbling. Just thought I would share some thoughts. I didn’t want to offend anyone else during class. Sorry for long email, but this class brought up some intriguing topics and touchy subjects I would have never thought about.

My response:

I don’t think Robert was offended… It’s a frustrating subject to talk about, especially when some people in the room have dealt personally with the things you mention, and other have never even had to be aware of them. I think you’re right in some ways – there are “bigger” problems for most People of Color groups than mascots and
cultural appropriation. There was this big study published recently that found that Native women are more likely than any other group to be stalked/assaulted/raped/molested or otherwise attacked, and that
one in four Native women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime (and almost always, the perpetrator is a white man). It’s hard to make a fuss about hipsters in headdresses given those staggering numbers, but for me, I see them as connected.
Every time a white person wears a headdress, or does a fake sweatlodge ceremony, or gets a dreamcatcher tattoo, “real” Native culture becomes a little more invisible, and so do “real” Native people. And when Native people are made invisible this way, it’s a lot easier for the BIA and the federal government as a whole to ignore statistics about
sexual violence against Native women (and other issues faced by Native communities). I also think there’s a link between culture being made “consumable” as a commodity this way, and actual people being made “consumable”… when people are commodified, they don’t matter, and then they sort of become inherently rape-able. And, as you point out, people who “don’t matter” to the dominant society don’t get much coverage in the media, even when there are hugely tragic events going on.
As far as religion being in decline, I think you’re right in all cases except Christianity. It’s hard for me to believe the power of the church is in decline when they still have so much money and they still do so much harm in Native communities. Was your section the one where we talked about how for most of the 1900′s, when there were rumors
about a Catholic priest abusing kids they would just send him to a parish on an Indian reservation, especially in Alaska? I mean, I was raised Christian and majored in Religious Studies as an undergrad and still didn’t find out about how bad this crap was until I started taking Ethnic Studies classes.
Anyway, there’s my rambly answer to your rambly question …. I’m so glad class has got you thinking!!

See you Thursday,
Lindsey

 

Yikes

From dailykos.com‘s post on class war:

This is what class war looks like

 

Here’s the polemic I can’t put in my final papers

I’ve spent the last 2 ½ days at the Critical Ethnic Studies conference hosted by my department at UCR. It’s intimidating and inspiring to be surrounded by so many amazing, brilliant people, and a little overwhelming to be exposed to so many theories/problems/strategies/ideas. In general, I have mixed feelings about academic conferences because I love the concept of having a place for people in this profession to develop new ideas with each other, but in practice they tend to involve a lot of networking and bottled water, which I don’t love. I also don’t love the conflict between theory and practice that always seems to happen. Sometimes it’s in the panels themselves, sometimes it’s in the discussion afterward, and sometimes it’s just conversations at the end of the day with other conference attendees; eventually someone says something along the lines of, “We need to quit talking and DO something about it.” And then someone else says, “But talking about it IS doing something; you can’t just start doing without some discussion about what is the best way to do it.”

“It” being revolution/social change/ending racism or world hunger/etc…

I’ve been on both sides of the conversation many times, but the last few days I’ve begun to think both positions are actually wrong. Saying that we need to start doing something ignores and erases the many “somethings” people are already doing and have been doing. Saying we need to talk about it first can let people off the hook and make it really comfortable to stay seated in our cushy chairs in academia and forget physical cost (in terms of lives, land, etc) of every minute we spend talking. Theory vs. practice can’t be an either/or. We have to talk about our strategies, because poorly planned revolutions tend to get people killed. And we have to implement our strategies, because we could waste lifetimes arguing about where is the best place to “start.”

This last bit, about where to start, is one of the most critical. Lots of conversations eventually come back to this. Should we support Palestinian liberation groups if their stance on gender isn’t 100% perfect? Is starvation or sexual violence more pressing? What good will treaty fishing rights do us if there are no fish left in the rivers? Should we organize for union rights for teachers when the school to prison pipeline is shuffling black and brown children straight from the educational system into the Prison Industrial Complex?

Dakota scholar and activist Waziyatawin was one of the opening plenary speakers at the conference, and she began her talk with some alarming statistics about how our world is falling apart: we’re losing rainforests, polar ice and coral reefs by the minute. People are dying of hunger while we turn corn into ethanol to power our cars. Children are suffering from diseases we have the ability to cure. Another endangered species disappears every day. Birds are falling out of the sky en masse for reasons we can’t explain. Prisons are planned based on students’ grade school test scores. Oil reserves are dwindling and we’re no longer discovering new sources. Mothers in Alaska can’t breastfeed their babies because industrial pollutants produced in the rest of the world have made their breastmilk toxic.  And then she pointed out the absurdity of our attempts to fix these problems as if they were isolated issues. What good will a cure for cancer do us, if we continue to put the chemicals that cause it into canned food and baby bottles? Or a cure for AIDS, if no one can afford it? Will solar power or “clean” coal fix anything if we don’t change our insane demands for energy consumption? Is Monsanto really  going to solve hunger by donating GMO corn seed to devastated farmers in Haiti and then charging them licensing fees next year when they have to buy new seed?

This isn’t alarmist propaganda. These are the facts. If you don’t think we’re living in end times, you’re not paying attention. Our world is quite literally coming apart at the seams. But what Waziyatawin pointed out is that this isn’t an act of god or nature, somehow out of our control. It’s not happening TO us. What all these problems have in common, at their root, is the human idea of progress. We brought the apocalypse on ourselves, by marching into the future screaming about advancing civilization without considering what we were headed towards. “Progress,” on a macro scale, is inherently unsustainable. I want to be clear here that while most people are complicit, some people are more responsible than others. And some people are complicit because their situation leaves them no other choice.

But the systems we’ve created that demand more, more, and more; the institutions that dehumanize people and implicate them in their own destruction; the structures that privilege the few at the expense of the many; they are not the only way to do things. And new/better/more efficient technology will not save us – the demand for more/newer/better is what got us into this mess. The old ways, Waz said, will become the new ways because they will be the only ways that can keep us alive. Lots of people here have pointed out, in many different ways, that to ask whether we should tackle problems of race or gender first is a set-up. It’s a false choice, because the “man behind the curtain” has created both of them. Unless we see how they’re linked, and how they’re linked to all the other crises, we can’t actually dismantle the system. And if we don’t dismantle the WHOLE system, we’re screwed.

 

 

There’s just something about roasted vegetables

My favorite way to eat vegetables is chopped, doused in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and roasted. Last night I tried the perhaps-unlikely combination of delicata squash, yellow potatoes, onion, and chestnuts, topped with croutons, a little sage, and romano cheese. It was perfect.

I just got back from 3 weeks at home in Oregon. Three wonderful, busy weeks full of family, completed knitting projects, card games, Powells Books, Stumptown Coffee, cross country skiing, hanging out with friends I haven’t seen in a while, walking my mom’s adorable dog, yardwork, fires in the wood stove, sushi with my favorite people, and dinners at some really awesome restaurants. It fantastic, and I am now in a deep, dark funk about being back in Southern California. It’s a good thing I love school as much as I do.

Copious amounts of family time is, of course, a mixed bag. For me, going three weeks and having only one argument with my sister end in a wrestling match and one argument with my dad end in tears is pretty dang good. I was (re)watching a few episodes of 30 Rock while unpacking yesterday and there’s this great scene in one where Jack (Alec Baldwin) is upset because his long-lost father turns out to be a flaming Liberal and Liz (Tina Fey) says, “So you had a few drinks, argued about politics and got your feelings hurt because you took it personally when he didn’t agree with you? That’s called HAVING A DAD, Jack, everyone does it.”

And I was like, oh, right. Thank you Tina Fey for reminding me I’m normal. Family (and close friends or roommates or partners or really anyone you spend a whole lot of time with) can make you think you’re crazy. But it’s being without them can make you actually crazy. Who was it that said hell is other people? Sometimes true, but they’re also what makes us human. Going from a pretty intensely close community in the LVC, to spending most of my time alone as a grad student, and then back to intense family time makes it easier to see that other people, with their inconvenient opinions and annoying habits, are what keeps you grounded.

I talked a lot about diversity with my dad while I was home, and shared my firm belief that differences make communities (of any kind) stronger. The ragged edges where we bump up against each other are where we grow the most. I have “known” this for a long time, but after living through some of those ragged edges in the LVC, I feel like I know it now on a much deeper level.  To my surprise (although not after lots of debate and the leaving-the-room-crying-incident), my dad agreed with me. He’s told me for a long time that people naturally seek out other people like them, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Maybe that’s true, but it meant a lot to me that we could both settle on the idea that strength and growth are the products of difference, not sameness.

I think of it this way: if you are roasting vegetables, they come out a lot better if you do it all in the same pan. You could keep them separate, but it’s not as efficient and they won’t taste as good. Even if they don’t all have exactly the same cooking times, they compromise and the flavors meld together and harmonize to make the final concert far more delicious than it would have been had you eaten them separately.*

* You’re welcome for not subjecting you to a hokey comparison between the heat of the oven and some kind of community trial that makes us all stronger. I do my best to keep my food metaphors reasonable.

 

On being a picky eater

I was in Denver this weekend at the National Women Studies Association Conference, which was inspiring and enlightening in so many ways. Maybe more about that later. I had never been to Denver before, which was fun (it’s flatter than you’d think) and I hadn’t been on a trip that involved staying in a hotel and eating at lots of restaurants in quite a long time. I was lucky to get to go to some delicious places (Denver has Jimmy Johns!) but after 3 days of eating out for all three meals, my digestive system was staging a full blown mutiny the likes of which I have rarely seen.

I grew up in one of those “this is what’s for dinner and if you don’t like it you can go to bed hungry” homes, which consequently meant that I never did actually go to bed hungry because I learned to like most everything. Well, that and my mom is an amazing cook. Other than the occasional dill pickle or green olive, I have yet to come across any food that I can’t eventually convince myself to tolerate, if not enjoy. I can even choke down the occasional raw bivalve if the occasion demands it.

But a weekend full of refined sugar, hydrogenated fats and white bread made me realize how finicky my eating habits have become over the last few years. just about everything I eat starts with a chopped onion sizzling in a few glugs of olive oil, waiting for the arrival of some seasonal vegetable, paired with brown rice, lentils, or beans. I’ve learned to appreciate the consistency of oatmeal with fruit almost every single morning (thanks to the good example of my housemates in LVC) and “junk food” is mostly popcorn or grilled cheese sandwiches. My body knows was only too happy to let me know that this fare has little in common with the kind of food I was putting in it this weekend – it felt like taking my old Volvo station wagon to Arco to fill up the tank – I had trouble getting started in the morning, I couldn’t focus and I had no energy. Not an experience I would choose for myself.

At the same time, it made me profoundly aware of how lucky I am to have access to the wonderful nutritious food that I do. Not everyone has a farmers market a few blocks from their house, bulk stores that are easy to get to, functional kitchens to cook in, or access to multiple sources of recipes. Food-wise, I’m very privileged. But a conversation I had with my adviser, who was also at the conference, put this finicky eating in context for me. I was telling her how I don’t like to identify as vegetarian even though I rarely eat meat – on the one hand, I don’t identify with a lot of the moral trappings of vegetarianism, but on the other I feel super snobby when I say that I do eat meat but usually only if it’s free-range, vegetarian fed, antibiotic-free, etc., because it’s basically saying I’ll only eat very expensive meat… even if the expense is why I almost never eat it. She pointed out that, besides what I listed, there’s a problem with the individualizing ethics of vegetarianism.

Basically the vegetarian (not to pick on them alone, you could insert vegan, or organic, or “health food” here just as well) ideology is that we can buy our way out of unhealthy (or immoral or unjust) food systems, as individual consumers. This is problematic because it limits who is able to participate based on who can afford and has access to that type of food, and it assumes we all want to “buy in” to this global project of capitalism. At the risk of sounding too radical, individual consumer practices will never reform our food system… they are how our food system got so screwed up in the first place, with corporations setting all the rules. It’s good to make the best choices are you able to about what you eat and it’s great if you are in a position to eat lots of whole grains and vegetables. But we need collective action if we are to actually change the systems that dictate who is able to do that. We need to work together as activists, not consumers, to make sure that everyone has access to healthy food – and that means thinking about everything from farming methods, farm labor, distribution and transportation, sales, cooking, to the actual act of eating. How is our food grown? Who picks it? Where is grown and how far does it travel to the store? Where are the stores? What are their prices? What type of neighborhoods are they in and are they accessible by public transportation? Who cooks our food and how? Do we eat it together,in community, or alone in front of the TV? These are the kinds of questions we need to ask and answer together, not just “What’s for dinner?”.

 

Here comes the fun part

Disclaimer: As my life has changed, so will this blog. I took a little hiatus to adjust to my new role as an excavator/incubator of ideas, and quickly realized that it would be really to spend the next 5 years thinking and writing in hightheoryspeak, which would result in the production of a thesis that no one but my adviser will read. Not the future I want for me or my writing. So I’m hoping future posts can be a place for me to work out the ideas, theories, and concepts I’m learning about in a way that has some relevance for the world outside the academy. Because you can’t transform it if you’re not in it, right?
The fun part about grad school is the little moments here and there where I can feel myself getting smarter. Newly discovered brain muscles kick in without warning, and suddenly the intellectual load feels lighter. I was doing some “fun” reading the other day in an anthology on indigenizing the academy, and came across a piece on ethnic fraud in universities. Basically, the gist of the argument was that any professors who are claiming indigenous identities  but aren’t “card carrying” Indians (i.e. who aren’t enrolled in a tribe) are “ethnic frauds” who have no right to call themselves Indians. The author also had some choice phrases about “narcissistic” biracial people who use poetry to work out their identity issues. Um… ouch.

So how is this about fun? Well the thing is, had I read this article a year or two ago, it would have sent me into a tailspin of self doubt about my “biracial indigenous-identity-claiming-professor” aspirations. And sure, I had to check the mirror to make sure I didn’t have “fraud” tattooed on my forehead or anything after I read it, but it made me more angry than anxious. My “what am I doing here” train of thought was derailed by the recognition that this guy’s argument is… weak. Brain muscles engage and hold me stable, allow me to recognize the holes in his logic, and criticize the limitations of his vision.

Limiting “legitimate Indians” to enrolled tribal members is shortsighted. I appreciate the value of protecting institutional resources that are earmarked for Native people by making sure that the funds are actually helping Native communities, but I don’t think policing identities this way is the answer. It has to be possible to support Native sovereignty and tribes’ rights to define their membership AND at the same time, recognize that historically, the process of developing tribal rolls and citizenship has been embedded in processes of colonialism and genocide. The highly controversial rolls that the Cherokee used to disenfranchise the freedmen a few years ago? Determined by BIA agents. If you “looked Indian” to the BIA agent, you went on the list as Indian. If you “looked Black” you went down as a freedman. Canada has used it’s laws about who “counts” as First Nations to reduce First Nations populations (and thus reduce treaty rights and Canada’s obligations to FN people) for years.

There’s no denying that there are plenty of people out there who love to claim their “Cherokee princess grandmother” when it’s convenient and forget about her when it’s not. But there are also lots of us out there who are not masquerading as anything but what we are: Indian and white. Both/and. And neither, because “Indian” and “white” are both (invented) categories whose history has been created and shaped by laws and society over time. I’m anishinaabekwe. And I’m a hodgepodge of European immigrants. Some of my ancestors raped/stole from/missionized/colonized my other ancestors. To deny the reality of that history would be to erase myself from it. Do I have “identity issues” because of it? Definitely. Is it narcissistic to work them out through poetry (and assume anyone else give a crap enough to read it)? Maybe. But I think Indian people get written out of history often enough (see upcoming holidays for more info)… we don’t need to do it to ourselves by pretending a bunch of us aren’t “legitimate” and therefore aren’t “real” Indians.

I think Indian nations absolutely should be able to define their own citizenship. I think faculty who benefit from positions/programs set aside for indigenous people have a responsibility to make sure their work benefits their community. Hell, I think ALL faculty have an obligation to make sure their work is doing some good in the world for their community, no matter who they are or who is signing their checks. And I think everyone, white, Indian, mixed, and otherwise, has a duty to understand and confront the ways that our past affects our present and do our best to help create a world we really want to live in.

 

After the storm

Today is my first “official” post-LVC day. I’m still not sure what that means.

I’ve had weeks, months… a year, really, to prepare for today, but I just don’t feel post-anything. Part of it is that this trip home to Oregon feels like another vacation, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll be back to our house in Oakland in a few weeks, that there’s a pile of crumbs on the counter and some housemate drama waiting for me there. But it’s no longer “our” house and “us” now exists only exists in terms of what we make of it.

I’m simultaneously relieved, excited, and terrified about the prospect of a life without 6 other people who are contractually obligated to care about my shit. It’s not as if my house functioned like the Brady Bunch – there’s plenty of things I won’t miss. But I can’t pretend I just didn’t bust out of the happy little lets-talk-about-your-feelings cocoon that is communal life in an LVC house. I will now have to beg, borrow or earn the privilege of leaning on other people when I falter. I will only have one other person’s worth of dishes and detritus to make a stink about, and that person will be perfectly able to tell me to hit the road if I turn out to be a complete pain in the ass.

I’m not exactly mourning the loss of something I’ll never have again… I’m moving on to some pretty exciting things. And I’m confident that I’m moving forward with some solid, friends-for-life-even-when-I-secretly-am-so-annoyed-at-you-I-could-scream kinds of relationships. There will be lots of visits back to the Bay Area, I’ve got long letters to write to a certain Fulbright Fellow in Indonesia, coffee dates to have with a deeply gracious and spiritual seminary student, skype chats with a sister sojourner and fellow outdoor enthusiast, and I know there will be texts and calls exchanged with St. Louis, Boston, San Francisco, and D.C. Even if we are never all in the same room again, we changed each other this year, and that’s just not something you forget easily.

Maria made us all a playlist, and I think one of the songs she picks is perhaps the best way to process this transition. It’s been stuck in my head for a week now.

There’s no such thing as perfect,
and if there is we’ll find it when we’re good and dead
Trust me I’ve been looking
but tonight I think I’ll go and take a bath instead
And then maybe I’ll walk a while
and feel the earth beneath me
They say if you stop looking
it doesn’t matter if you find it
And whose to say that even if I did
it’s what I’m really looking for

It’s a long and rugged road
and we don’t now where it’s headed
But we know it’s going to get us where we’re going
And when we find what we’re looking for
we’ll drop these bags and search no more
‘Cuz it’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home
It’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home

 

Contaminated drinking water in Missouri

Residents of Drexel, Missouri, got to taste the effects of corporate influence on chemical regulation firsthand last week when a spike in atrazine levels made their water undrinkable. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources told residents not to drink, cook with, or wash dishes with the local water after finding atrazine at ten times the “acceptable” exposure level set by U.S. EPA. Atrazine, a broadleaf triazine herbicide used primarily on corn, is the second most heavily used pesticide in the U.S. (after glyphosate-”Roundup”), and the most-frequently detected pesticide contaminant in ground and surface water. (Approximately 94% of U.S. drinking water samples tested recently contained atrazine, according to WhatsOnMyFood.org). The EPA estimates that 76.4 million pounds of atrazine are used in the United States every year. The chemical is currently under re-review by the agency. During the previous review in 2003, the chemical’s manufacturer, Syngenta, held over 50 private, closed-door meetings with regulators.

Drexel officials blame the spike on recent heavy rains in the Midwest, but a study released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) earlier this year found that the problem is systemic: “of the 153 water systems that were sampled between 2005 and 2008, 100 … had spikes of atrazine in their untreated water that exceeded [the federal standard] of 3 ppb. Two-thirds of these 100 systems had spikes of atrazine greater than 3 ppb in the treated water.” Drexel’s water was declared “safe” again last Friday -  the state health department said it’s unlikely that the brief exposure will have any negative health effects, despite the fact that atrazine’s toxicity at extremely low levels has been well documented. NRDC’s Andrew Wetzler points to several studies that link atrazine with female sex characteristics in male frogs, impaired reproductive systems in fish, and low sperm count and motility in farmworkers exposed to the chemical. Prenatal exposure to atrazine may increase the risk of birth defects, and Syngenta recently revealed that it had been tracking cases of prostate cancer in workers involved in manufacturing the pesticide. The company admitted it found rates more than three times the regional average. In March, PAN delivered a petition to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees in support of Midwest farm organizations who have been urging transparency and independent public science in the current review.