This post is part of a week of solidarity between Asian American and Pacific Islander bloggers and Native writers who have spear-headed the #NotYourMascot campaign. For a full list of posts included in the week of solidarity, please check this post.
You can find the sister post to this blog at the link below-please check it out!
A deep coversation is what followed that I want to share bits of with you. I hope after reading this you can have similar conversations with others. Being able to vocalize how we feel about our place in the world is an important topic. It can give a sense of validation and understanding between people, be it a parent to child or friend to friend.
My daughter told me that once she had watched Peter Pan without me there. "I guess you were at work or something. I don't remember,"she said. It left her confused. She didn't talk to me about it. She just didn't know what to make of it. After all, none of the "Indians" in the movie resemble us. "The pickaninnies" don't resemble the Natives we meet at pow-wows or stomp dances either. The "singing Indian's music" doesn't sound like the Cherokee children's music I play for my kids in the car. Being so immature, she was unable to describe what she felt. So, she didn't say anything to us.
Of course, I felt bad for not having prevented her watching those clips. I felt guilty that I had no idea at all about it happening. I asked her if she felt I had let her down? "No, mom. I am not confused about being Cherokee. You should see some of the Native American kids at school. Sometimes they make "Indian" jokes just to fit in. When they act like that, I just walk away."
I understood what she meant. Sometimes, when your a kid, it's easier to leave a conversation. It shouldn't be up to kids to explain that embracing Native American stereotypes for the amusement of non-Natives isn't healthy for a person's mentality. Plus, confronting a Native child in front of the peers she/he is trying to impress can embarrass a Native kid with self-esteem issues to begin with.
"Mom, do you remember when I came home with a coloring page of Pilgrims I had to do in class," my other daughter chimed in. "I told the teacher it was a lie. She made me color it anyways," she said.
I didn't remember it. I felt like a guilty mom again. How had I missed that? I thought to myself. Why didn't I go speak with the teacher? Or did I speak with the teacher? Do we, as Native parents, need to send warning letters during November to teachers about how we view the Thanksgiving myth as a lie? Who are they to teach Native American children something different than what we know to be true? I pushed forward for answers about how they felt. After all, I had wanted to talk about things they haven't shared with me before.
I asked them whether blood quantum had come up. My daughter told me she used to brag a bit that her blood quanta was higher than other Native American children she knew. Until, she realized how damaging that was to the other Native kids. She told me she wished she could go back and change that. She said, "blood quantum is confusing and then it's supposed to have Native American kids put each other down. Then it helps other kids put some of the Native kids down for "not being much Indian". It allows the other kids to tell you who you are, not letting you just be who you are." She told me that I helped her see that.
We also spoke about how it is easier to talk to other Native American people about being Native. My children noticed that Native kids will state what Tribal Nation that they are citizens of, but then quickly change the subject. However, when they go to Cherokee summer programs or Native American clubs after school, they feel free to just be themselves. The tension they have about guarding their Native American identity fades away among other Native kids and adults.
I told them I felt that way for a long time. I felt I had to keep the Native part of me-that is me-tucked safely away from the outside world. I left for a moment when they told me that what they had experienced was "nothing like what I had been through". I had to go cry, because I had felt that way about my own parents. I also cried because I wouldn't be able to shield them from the racism forever.
When I came back, we continued our conversation while I made sloppy joes. They said that they couldn't imagine what life must be like for Native children whose parents are out of touch with how damaging the negative images are. My daughter told me she is nervous about leaving home. Going out into a world that, I tell her, is full of negative stereotypical Native American imagery feels daunting to her. I have kept most Native Mascotry images and slurs away from them for so long that she can't comprehend what that will be like. "At least, I can call you mom." she said.
Our struggles with racism as Native Americans are different, but we have to work through them with our children too. Similarities between what we go through are often comparable between nationalities and races. The same racial divisions of being too light or too dark skinned to be considered truly a part of our race or ethnic group exist. People, Native and non-Native, use our skin tone as a weapon to deny our identity no matter how connected we feel inwardly. Whenever a member of our ethnicity does something socially or legally wrong, we feel all of us get blamed equally for their behavior. Other people use those instances to belittle us. They see us as just like the "wrong-doers", even though we aren't.
Often times words or object imagery that have been associated with our culture, usually stereotypical, are used in conversation to demoralize us. Once I have identified myself as Cherokee, many times, the words peace-pipe, tomahawk, scalping, tipi, "fire water" and other "stereotypical Native iconography" is used. I see similar things happen with other races as well. How many times have you seen watermelons and chicken thrown at black people? How many times have you seen chopsticks and rhyming phrases like "sing-song" hurled at Asian-Americans?
Just yesterday I was told that I was a racist because I married outside of my ethnicity. Because of that, my children aren't really Native American anymore. I have seen similar attacks lodged against other POC (people of color). Often times, it is so hard for me to get non-Natives to understand that we are in a racism crisis. They are busy combating their racism and their own similar struggles. It doesn't matter that the racism they experience is in a less institutionalized and corporatized way, because it still exists for them as well. Many times, they see our lack of progress as proof that their is a lack of racism. I often explain that our progress has been so minuscule due to our small population. Also, our unique political status is used to evade making legislation to protect us as a minority group. To top it all off, we are the first generations out of the residential school era.
They are right in finding that we're behind. We can be so much further ahead if all the people who care about abolishing racism can help pull us up.
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