Dressing Like an Indian
When I was in elementary school, the teacher told me I had to come to school “dressed like an Indian” for Thanksgiving or he would put on a fake Indian headband on me if I did not comply. So I complained to my mother. The teacher then punished me by withdrawing me from the free lunch program. My teacher messed with the wrong person because the Department of Justice ended up intervening in the situation, and I was placed in a new school.
Then when I was in high school, the Indian club was told to give a presentation on Native culture. I wanted to talk about the Trail of Tears, but the school wanted us all to dance in regalia and dance.
Marguerite Waller discusses how feminist theory only includes “different” theories from marginalized women by always situating them as add-ons to white feminist theory. The feminist theory of women of color should either be described in the same high theory framework as white feminist theory or it is included as “experimental” rather than paradigm shifting.
But as my experience reflects, it is not just that Native theories have different cosmologies are not recognized as “theory,” but that Native peoples are only accepted to the extent that they appear absolutely different. If Native peoples want to be Marxist theorists, then they are not really Native. If they would rather write about video games instead of ceremony then they are disappointing to non-Native peoples.
I think one of the problems is that when Native peoples talk about decolonization, this presumes that there is a pure Native culture completely impacted by any other cultures. This does not make sense because even before 1492 Native peoples learned from each other. If a white person eats Chinese food, no one thinks they are now Chinese. But if a Native person does anything non-Native, they are accused of being less Native as a result. It creates a burden to act like we don’t live in contemporary society within everyone else. Trinh T. Minh-Ha summarizes this problem well when she says: “We came to listen to that voice of difference likely to bring us what we can’t have and to divert us from the monotony of sameness.” She elaborates: “Now, i am not only given the permission to open up and talk, i am also encouraged to express my difference. My audience expects and demands it;
otherwise people would feel as if they have been cheated: We did not come
to hear a Third World member speak about the First (?) World.” Essentially, white people always want to hear about the ancient ways of Native peoples, but they do not want Native peoples to weigh in on contemporary issues that impact everyone. That is for white people to do.
To give an example, I was taking a class at UC Riverside where we read a book written by a white man on education. The author wrote about all the ancient ways of Native peoples and how these ancient ways can inform education policy today. So I asked the professor in class, why does this professor always talk about “ancient” Native peoples but never cites any Native scholars today who work in the area of education and who have a lot to say about this topic. She said that Native peoples today are so assimilated now that they don’t have anything to teach “us” anymore. Essentially Native peoples from the past are “special,” but Native peoples today have no value because they are no longer special enough. She then got so mad at me for asking this question that she told me I could no longer attend class. So while she wanted to hear all about ancient Native peoples, she could literally not stand to have a Native person alive today in her class.
Audre Lorde wrote that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. I disagree with that because I think all of our tools have been impacted by the master. No one goes through 500 years of white supremacy and colonialism unscathed. So I think we will by necessity have to dismantle capitalism while being inside capitalism. But to quote theologian Emmanuel Martey: “Thus, unlike Audre Lorde, who might be wondering whether the master’s tools could indeed be used to dismantle the master’s house, African theologians are fully convinced that the gun, in efficient hands, could well kill its owner.” Along the same lines, Cherokee scholar Betty Bell once wrote: “I am your worst nightmare. I am an Indian with a pen.” These sentiments speak to the manner in which the dominant society attempts to keep us away from using the master’s tools to our benefit. I think the master is trying to keep us from his tools, but I think we should take these tools as well as any other tools we can find to make the world a better place and not let western society restrict the strategies we may engage in to resist the current system.
