Toward an Awakening: Recognizing Our Privileges, True History and Disparaging Native Mascots
The R Word is accepting tax-deductible donations to support our crew in filming the PA Human Relations Commission’s final hearing with the Neshaminy School District, and the story of Donna Fann-Boyle’s fight to remove the R — — as Neshaminy’s mascot. Make a pledge here to support this independent project and ensure that this story be told.
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Arla Patch, Doylestown, PA
Recently, I was honored to be part of a panel at The R Word fundraising launch, an important film challenging disparaging mascots that use Native American images. On the panel, I spoke about my involvement in the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC hereafter) and how from this experience, I’ve understood that the commonly accepted truth about Native American history is full of misconceptions and falsehoods.
The Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare TRC is the first of its kind in the United States. Its purpose is to document the truth of what happened to Wabanaki people in the child welfare system, begin the healing process by witnessing those stories and create change by issuing recommendations.
The current movement to awaken hearts and minds to the issues of the destructive removals of Native children in the child welfare system and our school’s racist mascots, are to me examples of an overall awakening we are undergoing as a society in the US. The time has come for Non-Native people to look soberly at our history. It is when we are honest with our past that we begin to see how it still impacts Indigenous Peoples today.
As a white Euro-American teenager, I had an awakening at my Quaker Meeting. That is where I learned some of the devastating histories Native peoples have had to endure. It broke my heart. Right then I knew that someday I would devote time to work toward healing these injustices. My opportunity came while living in Maine. I volunteered for the TRC and then became the Community Engagement Coordinator for Maine-Wabanaki REACH (reconciliation, engagement, advocacy, change and healing) a coalition of Native and Non-Native peoples working in support of the TRC.
In my role, I helped develop and give educational presentations on the history and necessity of the TRC. In these presentations it was clear that many attendees, mostly Euro-American Mainers, experienced “un-metabolized grief” when presented with this painful history. I then helped create an “Ally Workshop”, which we offered all over the state. These “Ally Workshops” gave additional education, addressed issues of white privilege and micro-aggressions, created safe space to explore reactions to what we were learning and expanded on how to be an ally to Wabanaki peoples. This process of coming to terms with our past and generating discussions that promote a different future are at the core of changing hearts and minds.
Privilege, whether it is racial, gender, or economic, can make it very hard for individuals to come to terms with America’s true history. By our definition, privilege can operate without any regard to the awareness of it. But now, a multi-generational shame is surfacing among descendants of colonizers, takers and betrayers. The shameful feeling includes those who aren’t directly related to the oppressors, but who also benefit today from our ugly history.
I learned to allow those feelings of shame and sadness to come up, and turned them into fuel for action. But the key has been to take direction and leadership from Native people on what that action should be. Some new actions Non-Native people now take in Maine include study in order to educate oneself, share what we learn with others, write letters to editors, show up to the Maine Legislature in support of Wabanaki people, participate in rallies and civil actions in support of Native rights, listen more than speak, and strive to recognize one’s own privilege.
The use of Native names, culture and imagery as sports mascots are an all too-pervasive example of appropriation and ignorance. How can Native people ever be valued as equals when they are reduced to mascots like “Redsk*ns”, which refers to a genocidal practice of killing native people and scalping them for a paid bounty? But beyond that, how is it not the final stage of the Conquest Ideology, the Manifest Destiny that says it is the God given right to come, conquer and take. After we have taken land, resources, and children from Indigenous People, now we are taking their identity.
The documentary film The R Word is extremely important in helping change the hearts and minds of Americans to understand the truth, and to shift the narrative. The film shares the story of a Native mother up against a school district of entrenched privilege. By having a personal glimpse into her struggle to be heard, valued and understood, we see it from her perspective. Empathy can begin to replace entitlement. It is a story repeated across the country. This film will help change the hearts and minds of Non-Native America, to bring us in greater integrity with what the founding fathers said we stood for — that we are all equal — when Native mascots clearly indicate we are not.
Arla Patch is an artist, teacher, writer and workshop facilitator who uses art as a tool for healing. She currently resides in Doylestown, PA. After receiving a B.F.A., Ed. in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, she earned a M.F.A. in Sculpture at Indiana University Bloomington. Arla was the Community Engagement Coordinator for Maine-Wabanaki REACH, a coalition of native and non-native people working in support of the first truth commission in the US on this issue. The Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created to address what happened to native children in Maine in the child welfare system. Arla’s involvement in this work in Maine lasted three and a half years. The TRC Commissioners presented their findings in June 2015.
