I was on his doorstep several hours later. He stayed in a condo that was sparsely furnished. It was not unlike his bachelor pad before we where married. I oddly felt the same way walking into it. I hadn't been to the condo before. I remember thinking that nothing looked like I imagined it. Somehow, I hadn't pictured him getting off from a long fourteen hour shift and coming home to the living situation before me. It felt very lonely. No matter how many times we talked or for how many hours we talked, it wasn't a good way to live life apart.
It was early morning and after he gave me the grand tour, we went out for breakfast. Then, we drove down a few streets outside the French Quarter. I had been there before, not everyday like him, but enough to where being there was not new to me. The air in New Orleans always buzzed. It's a distinctive buzz too. When you talk about New Orleans it is always either before or after Hurricane Katrina. Before the hurricane swept away fourteen months of work my husband and his co-workers just finished on a brand new facility. Before Katrina spread the heart and soul of the city far and wide. I haven't been back since we left Metairie, a small suburb we moved our family to after Katrina. I hope it feels more like before Katrina than it did the last time I was there.
That day, in all my hurry I had forgotten it was Saint Patrick's Day. We wove our way through the streets. Every person we came upon said, "Hello, good mornin'" with a smile. We stopped in a hole-in-the-wall cafe' and ate great-tasting hot food out of styrofoam bowls. The street started filling up. People started wheeling tall parade-chairs (basically brightly-painted folding ladders with chairs on the top and wheels on the bottom), ice chests, and expandable canopies. Some people even had grills or large pots on propane cookers.
I didn't remember the holiday until I saw the street vendor pushing a kiosk full of feather boas, hats, and beads at the far end of the street. We decided to watch the parade. It was two hours off, but there was no end of things to see. When the big event finally came, I was as green as I could be. By chance, my hoodie was already green. I added a shamrocked hat and an all green feather boa.
Proud men in a furry red, white, and green convertible drove by waving an Italian flag. The Krewes, or the float-makers and parade organizers, didn't throw beads. They threw the makings for stew. Carrots, potatoes, and onions whizzed by and instantly got prepared by parade-goers and plopped into a propane heated pot. A man I never met came and kissed my cheek. He gifted me a green paper carnation.
I have been to Ireland, but never on St Patrick's Day. I could never imagine Italians participating there. I was so curious about my experience that when I got home I looked up the history behind the parade. The history between NOLA Irish and Italian immigrants was a bloody regional one, and it wasn't only St. Patrick that they were celebrating, it was also Saint Joseph. Somehow, they came together in the 1980's based on an Irishman's vision that included his beloved Italian friends. They pulled all the community of Irish and Italian together to celebrate and include people from all walks of life in their celebration. Some people say, "only in New Orleans". While I think that is true, multiculturalism can happen anywhere two groups come together from a place of respect and love.
Many times, I'll be trying to convince someone that loves Native Mascotry that it doesn't honor us or respects us. They often refer to Notre Dame or the Vikings as an example of other ethnic groups that are mascots and it's fine by everyone. I always try to explain that the Native Mascotry didn't originate from the Indian Country community, doesn't involve our leadership, and that in fact most of them are using racial slurs against us. I also explain that Indian Country has tried for half a century to get Native Mascotry stopped. I explain to mascot-lovers how we have fought to have people see what represents us come from us, not another community or mainstream stereotypes. I try to tell them what the NCAI (National Congress of American Indians) is and that even the few Nations not part of the NCAI have taken the same stance-that the deluge of Mascotry and stereotypes in Hollywood harm our communities.
The racism that has plagued Indian Country is a direct result of over one hundred years of constant Native Mascotry and Hollywood stereotyping and exclusion. It infects American children from birth with a mentality of discrimination towards Native Americans. Recently, a friend and fellow advocate Mercedes Montgomery, called my attention to a Caucasian baby wearing a mock "Indian head dress" on Etsy (a hand-crafted marketing website) that people could buy. I'm multicultural or "Panindigenous" enough to know that is disgraceful. When those children grow up and get drunk or do nude photo shoots wearing mock sacred and honored American Indian objects it is a tragic display of ignorant racism. Some of them grow up and come to our communities and kidnap our women and children, a sick twist on Captain Hook taking Tiger Lily. Nearly one thousand Indian women are missing or murdered and the investigation into where they have gone or who murdered them has been pat-on-the-head apathetic! (See the hashtags #MMIW and #ItEndsHere)
That is only a small part of what Anti-Indian conditioning of children has contributed to. I came to a moment that all Natives must face, either you ignore it or you do something about it. I couldn't ignore it when the Oklahoma Fallins both "legally" helped a privilaged white South Carolina couple kidnap a Cherokee child to raise and "innocently" wore a mock "Indian Headdress". I can't sit and watch as Hollywood deals out Rooney Mara a Native-based role and revives something so culturally insensitive at the same time.
American Indians don't have a figurative "glass-ceiling" to break through. We have a gravestone to break. We aren't dead. America at large thinks of us as ghosts, invisible and silent. They use the fact that we may not live on a Rez and use modern technology (some of which Natives developed) to tell me that we "aren't real Indians". Our leaders and advocates speak for us and still no one hears us. This isn't one of those movements that you can think, "Oh, look somebody else has got it." Uncovering our Indian Country that has been buried under the weight of oppressive misrepresentation and hatred in America is going to take all of us. It is important that real humans are seen for who they are and leaders don't have to talk over racist notions to be heard. That is a world I want my kids to be celebrating in together-a more multicultural one.
I wanted to end with something Mercedes told EONM.org founders this Saint Patrick's Day:
"In English Standing in Solidarity with our Native Brothers and sisters in Gaelic: Buan-i ndlúthpháirtíocht leis an ár deartháireacha agus deirfiúracha dúchais"
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