I’m walking a little slower today

Dusten Brown holding his daughter, Veronica.

Monday, the battle for Baby Veronica came to an end. With guns in tow, US Marshals took the screaming child from her biological father—from her Nation—and placed her with the adoptive couple in South Carolina. “The Court of the Great White Father” never allowed a “best interest” hearing, and by doing so, disregarded Native sovereignty and condoned intergenerational -cultural genocide.  Therefore, “The Court of the Great White Father” asserts that Baby Veronica’s best interest is to be placed in a world that is better for her—a world only an affluent, white family can give her. Native communities came together to fight for Veronica, to no avail. When the Great White Father wants something to happen—by God, no one can stop it.

This case is all sorts of racism, sexism, and classism being fueled by a Right-wing narrative that the Puritans themselves couldn’t have created. Change the variables of race, gender, and class and you can really see how messed up this case is: Would a mother have to fight this hard and long to have her biological daughter back? Would a white-military man have to fight like this at a chance to have his daughter? Would an affluent biological parent have these issues?  The answer is. Hell No!

The funny thing, if you could call it funny, was the lack of outcry from anyone other than Native folks. The Native activists discourse has been a good one, a strong one but–compared to the amount of crap mainstream media has produced—it hasn’t even made a dent. Obviously, this case has marginalization of the classes/races/genders written all over it. So where was the outrage from mainstream activists?

Where were the civil right allies, pissed that a Native man—a soldier even—was fighting for his daughter? Where were the Feminists, pissed that an unwed father had no rights to his biological daughter, pissed of the blatant patriarchy of the case and pissed of the dismissive media who saw the father as a lazy, no-good Indian? Where were our liberal-lefties who saw an Evangelical adoption agency circumvent all laws and ethical protocol in placing Baby Veronica up for adoption?

Where were they? Where are they? I’m not saying that Natives need white Saviors, I’m saying that allies are the greatest invention in history. The more voices, the louder we can be.

This case is the fulfilling of a systematic venture to kill the American Indians. We have been defeated. Without our children—we have nothing left. Laws, like the Indian Child Welfare Act, have been gutted before our very eyes. How does an Indian trust the government? The laws that were enacted to protect us were disregarded and trampled upon. Treaties continue to go unchecked.

Can you imagine how this case has made me feel? Everything I do, my school work, my hope for my people’s brighter future—is futile. I have to come to terms that things like this most likely will happen again. I’m terrified to have children of my own—what if they are taken from me? All I can do is to continue to walk the Red Road, being the best I can be and more importantly, making it possible for my people to reach their goals. I need to come to terms with what has transpired.

I will—hopefully.

I will—just give me  time.

I want to thank the countless lawyers, activists, tribal members, and allies for their support over the past 2 years. I also want to say a prayer for the Brown family during this difficult time. I pray for Veronica, that she will grow up healthy and strong. Our hearts go with you. Be safe.

The Absolutely True Diary & Sherman Alexie

Mid-August was a fun time for me. I was asked by my favoritest, most awesome professor to collaborate on a lecture for The Summit County Library One Book, One Community Program in Park City, Utah. Our topic would be Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-TIme Indian and The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven. It was smashing! I really could talk about literature all day. So…

Sherman Alexie and Native Literature, in general:

Native Authors whose work has created a  renaissance for the genre include M. Scott Mamaday, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon  Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. I call them the Furious Five.  Others may call them that too but I called them that first! Sherman Alexie is a pretty cool dude. If you haven’t heard of him, you should look him up. At least follow his twitter feed. It’s hilarious! He is hilarious, irreverent, and creative. Alexie is a poet, screenwriter, teacher, and father. He’s known for his in-your-face rhetoric of contemporary Indian life. Native American/American Indian not Indian from India. Alexie is Spokane Indian born to a very hard-working mother and an absent-tee father. He studied at Gonzaga University and majored in American Studies. Random. Since then he has published a butt-load of novels, collections, and poetry. Most notably is his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven which was adapted by Alexie into the movie, Smoke Signals directed by Cheyenne-Arapaho director, Chris Eyre. (Look him up too!)

Sherman Alexie

This book turned 20 this year!

Here is a clip from Smoke Signals: 

I lectured on Alexie’s YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. If you haven’t read it. Go out to your local bookstore and buy it. DO IT NOW!  

Buy it, or die!

The lecture was quite an experience. My parents, sister, and I made the trek from Kearns to Kimball Junction. It’s about a 45-minute drive up the canyon but it’s like leaving/entering 2 different worlds. A lower-income, diverse community to an affluent, upper-class, hoity-toity, white community. Interesting enough, I was living the book I would be discussing.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  let’s call it Part-Time Indian, is a coming of age YA novel set in Alexie’s hometown of Wellpinit, Washington. The protagonist is Arnold/Junior Spirit.

My name is Junior,” I said. “And my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold. I’m both. I felt like two different people inside of one body(60).

Junior/Arnold decides to leave his reservation, the physical epicenter of his cultural identity, for the more affluent, white school at Reardan. As Junior/Arnold leaves for school each day he is metaphorically and literally crossing from one world into the other. On the Rez, Junior sees himself as a nerd who can’t play basketball, who loves his family despite living with the trauma of  alcoholism and poverty, and as someone without hope or a future. Off the Rez,  Arnold, identifies himself with the antiquated and racist stereotypes of Indians, a basketball star, and a person who has hope and a future. As Arnold or Junior, the kid is as funny as hell and has the insight of a 55 year old medicine man.

My lecture included the idea of Reservation Realism, ( a literary genre specific to Native American authors who implement literary techniques to create realistic elements of reservation life) that Alexie is known, and often criticized for. In response to the criticism Alexie has said, “I got a lot of criticism because alcoholism is such a loaded topic for Indians. People thought I was writing about stereotypes, but more than anything I was writing about my own life”.  Alexie does have a penchant for deconstructing Native American stereotypes. He wrote a poem, How to Write the Great American Indian Novel about it. Hilarious! 

The themes within the text are pretty deep. I’ve narrowed it down to three: Identity, Poverty, and Hope.

I’ve touched on Arnold’s identity. Half of himself is tied to the Rez, half of it off the Rez. He’s a Part-Time Indian. He comes to realize that he is more than his race and his culture:

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that’s when I knew that I was going to be okay (217).

Poverty is so prevalent.  Reservations across the United States are overwhelmingly impoverished. Why is that? Well, let’s look at the history. The US government was all, We don’t want your kind here so we’re gonna put you on shitty pieces of land, without assistance. EVEN THOUGH WE PROMISED IT TO YOU. and you can live there until you die, or we decide to kill you. And then they were forgotten. Not just for a few months. For decades. For generations. We’re still trying to overcome the problems from 200 years ago. Arnold has a heartbreaking experience with poverty. His dog, Oscar, is sick. No money for the vet. Can’t let him suffer. The dog is shot because “a bullet only costs two cents”. It’s sad because it’s true,  Indian kids learn about life this harshly. Poverty is a vicious cycle and sooner or later it will affect how you perceive yourself:

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it (13).

Hope is the element that ignites Arnold/Junior’s life.  The book takes slow turns, dips and dives, all the while elevating our protagonist to a higher level of hope. Doing well in school, on the basketball team, and with his girlfriend confirm what Arnold/Junior had been so afraid to ask, Am I worth the effort to get out of this place and make something of myself? To convey the hope Arnold/Junior has for his future, Alexie juxtaposes Arnold/Junior’s plight with that of the immigrants who come to America. I know right? Indians and the colonizers in the same boat? But Alexie pulls it off.  Arnold says:

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream (217).

How interesting it is to have the comparison of immigrants and Indians. It drives home the themes of finding oneself in a strange land, and through self-determination create a future that was never before available. This is the plight that so many Native youth are experiencing today. It warms my soul to the core to hear of all of the wonderful and innovative ideas Native youth are creating. We never do find out if Arnold will continue to call himself Arnold or go with Junior.

Part-Time Indian and other Native Literature is pretty cool. Craig S. Womack, Creek-Cherokee scholar has said,  “A key component of nationhood is a people’s idea of themselves, their imaginings of who they are. The ongoing expression of a tribal voice, through imagination, language, and literature, contribute to keeping sovereignty alive in the citizens of a nation and gives sovereignty a meaning that is defined within the tribe rather than external sources”(Red on Red). The political component of sovereignty infuses itself within Native Literature empowering Native communities to fight colonization and break those vicious cycles of alcoholism, poverty, and hopelessness.

I was invited back to the One Book, One Community Program. This time it will be with the teens whom I will speak to. I will let you know how that goes!

How to Write the Great American Indian Novel

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.

If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man

then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white

that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps

at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.

If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.

Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives

of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust

at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.

Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian men
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.

There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.

Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian

then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed

and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.

If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside a white woman.
Sometimes there are complications.

An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,

everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.

For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.

In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

Sherman Alexie, “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” from The Summer of Black Widows. Copyright ©  by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press. Source: The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996)

Baby Veronica: Rambling on Something Important

June was a fun month for the Supreme Court. ‘The fellowship’ voted on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, an both  were slammed down to oblivion. Yipee! While I am ecstatic and overwhelmed with pride that the Supreme Court made two awesome rulings to support Americans and equality, I have a sour taste in my mouth from the Supreme Court’s ruling of the Baby Veronica case known officially as Adopted Couple v. Baby Girl. (For a full overview please read: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V.) Baby Veronica has raised a lot of issues… like, a butt-load. Indian sovereignty, colonialism, the adoption community, and  the systematic problems the Native community is facing, & I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…

Therefore, I will use my skills of levity and humor to express my thoughts ramblings. ** I am not a speaker for Natives, only myself. Mmmmkay?**

5. Custody is the PC term for property

As you know, Baby Veronica’s biological parents were not married and her adoptive parents are. That was a point reiterated by the media, no less by the SC, as a factor to where the child should be, Put the child with an affluent, married couple or Put the child with the father who didn’t even know she was born. Natives and non-Natives alike need to be worried about the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision especially for any parent who has children with someone who they didn’t marry, and are no longer together. If Dusten Brown, the father of Baby Veronica, was married to the biological mother then by law, his biological daughter would be his property & in his custody. If the parents wanted a divorce and in this case, the biological mother did not want her, then the Family Courts would have given Dusten Brown his property daughter to look after. Marriage, crazy institution that it is, has a lot of important legal perks. So that’s why everyone should have the right to enter into it.

4. Don’t be a man, just, don’t be one.

Let me tell you 2 stories about some men I know.

Chris, good guy, funny as hell, knocked up his girlfriend, and tried his hardest to be part of his child’s life after he broke up with the mother. The Ex decided to use the kid as a pawn to manipulate him for money. Chris was smart and went through the courts to set up child support payments, but the Ex blackmailed him and made him pay by the hour to see his kid. After a tumultuous few years inside and outside the courts, Chris decided that it was better if he signed his rights away. His greatest hope is that he will get a visit from his kid on their 18^th birthday and they can repair the damage.

Isaak, great guy, really cool, knocked up his girlfriend, and tried his hardest to be part of his child’s life. When he heard that his Ex was arrested for possession of heroine and spent more than a month in jail, he quit school, got a full-time job, hired a lawyer and sued for custody of his son. The courts were on the verge of ruling in Isaak’s favor and then the Ex did the unthinkable and accused Isaak of rape, molesting the kid, neglect and abuse. The accusations were baseless but still needed to be investigated which meant more time Isaak was away from his son. This cycle repeated and repeated. A ruling was close, the Ex made accusations, the accusations were investigated and dismissed, and Isaak was becoming less financially stable as the years of fighting went on and on, and on and on, and he still was not given custody of his son. It’s been a few years and Isaak is still fighting for his child, who will be celebrating his 10th birthday this year.

These stories illustrate the bias that men are experiencing within the Family Courts. Bias from patriarchy and antiquated social norms. Our courts can be a huge disadvantage for fathers. In the Baby Veronica case that is ever so evident. The father’s rights were completely unaccounted and would only be addressed as part of a federal law. Just imagine if the roles were reversed and the biological mother was fighting for the child. I know that’s kind of hard to imagine in this case since the child was placed for adoption before the dad met her, but you get the idea. Gender equality is leveling all aspects of society for development, especially in situations when one gender has traditionally domineered over another.

3. If you’re Cherokee, Make sure everyone knows your Grandma was an Indian Princess.

The Indian Child Welfare Act is an anti-colonial weapon that emphasizes a tribal nationhood and promotes nation-to-nation government. Sovereignty is a pretty interesting thing and it is so heartbreaking clear that people still don’t get what it is. The Cherokee Nation traced Dusten Brown’s heritage revealing that he is a tribal member and therefore receives all the perks of being a Cherokee citizen. Funny, for the media and the Supreme Court, that wasn’t enough. People still wanted to know how much of an ‘Indian’ he was and speculated accordingly. Is he full-blood? Is he half? NPR said he was 2%, other media outlets reported one-fourth.  So, here is a quick lesson in Sovereignty 101 and lets get some perspective here: If I was born in Germany, was a citizen of Germany, and identified myself as German, I would, in fact be German. Would my nationality be questioned if I didn’t wear lederhosen, eat sauerkraut, or whether my ringtone was set to Ride of the Valkyrie? Of course not! So why is Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, who identifies himself as Cherokee, and has social and cultural ties to the community being questioned? The Supreme Court’s decision equated ‘Indianness’ to antiquated appropriations of culture.

2. Nomadic is the way to go

The Supremes Court said that the ICWA wasn’t applicable because Baby Veronica was not physically taken from her Indian home and placed in a non-Indian home because she had never physically lived with her Indian father. Do you follow the logic? You see, Native people’s introductory lesson with the white man was that they were an undignified, subhuman race that should be controlled and manipulated to become civilized. So the U.S. Government executed a mass intergenerational assimilation project spanning across the United States and targeted every tribe. The goal was to ‘kill the Indian and save the man.” Indian children were ripped from their homes placed in boarding schools to experience what it meant to be white. Children experienced PTSD, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, self-doubt and anger. Stories are slowly surfacing to document the effects of the Federal government’s sanctioned cultural genocide. Some accounts tell of infants, hours after birth, that were taken from their mothers. Those children never physically lived in an Indian home, but they still had one. We’re not talking about this happening 100 years ago, The Indian Adoption Project, and government and church controlled residential/boarding schools were used as the colonizer’s weapon of choice and continued to be until 1978. Let that sink in…1978. Can you guess what also happened that year? The Indian Child Welfare came to fruition. It’s no wonder why the Native community is up in arms about Baby Veronica, it happened, like, yesterday.

1. Get the peace-pipe out and wield it like a Game of Thrones character would against the media.

At the end of the day and no matter what side you are on, one thing is crystal clear: The system is broken.  I am still reeling with the media’s coverage of the case. Pinning the biological father and adoptive parents against each other was the lowest blow and was not journalism. I wish this case could have been used to shine the racket that is the adoption system and the ludicrous amount of money that prospective parents have to cough up to make a family. There are so many reasons why we need to continue raging against the machine. We need to raise the discourse within our circles and discuss issues of race, legislation and civil rights. So…let’s go!