Showing Thanks

When I began looking for pictures for this collage, I googled “thanksgiving.” The first pictures that came up were cartoon turkeys and white “American” families sitting down to a table laden with food. Deeper into the results, I found the first depictions of Native Americans. However, these were all cartoon “Europeanized Indians” with white faces, little cubby cheeks, and black hair adorned with feathers.

I also found pictures of animals in head dresses
and pilgrim hats, which I found offensive.

I also searched “first thanksgiving,” which gave me a few more results containing native Americans. However, there were four paintings which could have come out of a middle school history text book repeated over and over again. While presenting a more realistic depiction of the first thanksgiving in appearances, I am sure that they were painted by white artists who were rendering pictures of how they thought it would look like.

These collections of images gave me an idea how the American public views the Thanksgiving holiday. I was already aware of this perception, so I decided to approach this project from a different angle.

In elementary school, when I was taught about Thanksgiving, I understood that the Pilgrims would not have survived that first winter if it wasn’t for the Indians. In my mind, this translated to ‘white people would not be here if the Indians had not helped the pilgrims.’ Of course, now I know that not to be true, as there were waves of colonists that arrived from different countries in Europe. But about the first time I learned to story of the Indians and the Pilgrims, my parents also introduced me to the history of oppression that the Native Americans have endured since the Europeans arrived. As a child I thought that it was a horrible way for people to treat the people that had saved them in the first place. This is the idea I used to create this collage, how Euro-Americans have “shown thanks” all these years while still celebrating the kindness shown to the pilgrims by the Native Americans their first winter in North America.

Strong Women Stories: Introduction and Chapter 1

Chapter 1 tells the story of Gertie Mai Muise, a Mi’kmaq women from western Newfoundland. She left her community to find gain an education and discovered that she had lost a part of herself by leaving. This story tells of her returning to her home to help her people both by building support for themselves from within the community and by teaching them to recognize offenses against the community from outsiders. Some of the themes of this chapter I found were quite similar to the themes present in the Zapatista movement. These are women working together to rebuild and protect the communities from the inside; working to get better health care for women and children, creating an environment where women can be safe in their own homes with support for the community for those who aren’t, and also the restrictions of an outside government on the ecological systems which support this communities. In Newfoundland this community is dependent on the salmon, but the government has placed restrictions on how many fish can be caught for “environmental protection” reasons, which in the long run just benefit the commercial industry who over fished them in the first place causing the concern. I was surprised to learn that the government has just decided that a certain race of people are ‘extinct’ when they are still living among them.

Anderson, Kim, and Bonita Lawrence, eds. Strong Women Stories : Native Vision and Activism. New York: Sumach P, 2004. 11-36.

Strong Women Stories: Chapter 2

This chapter is about Laura Schwager and her personal search for her Native identity. The key points of her story emphasize the way the Canadian government used forced assimilation to try and exterminate the native communities. She also shows how personal strength and a strong heart can help over come this oppression and how an individual can regain their heritage even without the recognition of the government. After her great grandmother lost her Indian status by marrying a non-native man, she did not celebrate her heritage and pass it on to her children. Therefore Laura’s grandfather grew up in a house hold that denied his mother’s culture and was ‘ashamed’ of their maternal lineage. Her father was raised in a similar environment. One thing that I thought was particularly interesting was the support of the non-native women in her family who encouraged her to explore her culture. Also, her grandmother supported her grandfather and helped him regain his Indian status. Another interesting fact that I learned from this reading is that even after her grandfather regained his status, he could not pass it on to his children, and though this, his grandchildren. By denying him, and other natives who have regained status, this right the Canadian government is further oppressing and assimilating these people.

Anderson, Kim, and Bonita Lawrence, eds. Strong Women Stories : Native Vision and Activism. New York: Sumach P, 2004. 37-54.

Don't Let the Sun Step Over You: Chapters 3 & 4

These two chapters tell the stories of Eva Tulene’s life while her family was working on the Apache Trail around the Roosevelt Dam to the Mormon Flat Dam. During this time period, her family moved around as they built the road. These chapters also include the stories of her mother and brother’s illnesses and the death of her father and sister. In another important story in these chapters tells of a census in which the family lost their name “Tulene” and became know to the state as “Case.”

It is important to note that through these stories, you can see the evidence of government pressure to assimilate into the white Euro-American culture. There are three cases of this. The first is when the census man records them as “Case” instead of their preferred family name, Tulene. This shows blatant disregard for their personal history. With out a constant last name, in the current patriarchal society it is hard to trace your lineage and find your ancestral roots. In the story of her sister’s death Eva gives two more examples of her forced assimilation. The first is the fact that her mother gets hauled away to jail, basically just because of a power trip by a local cop, who was demanding that her children go to one of the assimilation schools even though they were already attending the St. John’s school. The second example in this story is at the end when she doesn’t realize that her sister is dead, because the only way they explained her death to her was that she had gone to heaven.

American Indian Women's Activism in the 1960s and 1970s

The article “American Indian Women's Activism in the 1960s and 1970s” started by defining the idea of red power and giving a brief overview of its origins. It also described three events which occurred in the sixties and seventies and were the beginning of red power movements. These were the occupation of Alcatraz, the Fish-In movement, and the occupation at Wounded Knee. This article focuses on the roles that women took during these movements, even though men were the most recognized by the media. The end of the article looks at how white feminist movements during this time period differed from the American Indian women’s movements.

There were many key points in this article. One of the first was pointing out the differences between these movements and other civil rights movements at the time. The Native Americans were fighting assimilation and pushing towards rights to maintain their cultural identity instead of fighting for equal rights. Also, one of their main goals was to get the government to recognize rights that they should have been granted according to various treaties. Also, the women in these movements had different priorities then the feminist movement such as sterilization abuse and assimilation of their children by adoptions outside of their culture. Another key point in this article was colonization through urbanization and disbanding of the tribes. In 1953, the Termination Act was passed which encouraged tribes to give up their status as tribes and move the educated youth to the city. I feel it is important to look at the consequences of this Act in how if affected women. With kinship being a huge part of this culture, staying close to your family helps perpetuate it. By moving individuals into urban areas, they lose ties to their families and therefore lose a bit of their culture and identity as Native Americans. This was the purpose of the Termination Act. However, one of the unforeseen side effects was also a renewed interest in tribal values. Still some problems arose amongst the Indians as to who was “Indian enough.” This dissention was encouraged by members of the FBI, because when they were divided they were not as powerful as they could be when they collectively concentrated themselves toward their goals.

The occupation of Alcatraz was the first movement to receive widespread media attention. It was a peaceful movement characterized by gestures which mocked the way the Native Americans have been treated by the government, such as offering forty cents an acre to buy the land, and staking claims on it, with claim stakes. While the men received most of the media coverage for this movement, it was the women who supported them and held down their day to day lives at the same time who really made it possible. Also it reminded the men in the community how supportive and important the women were to keeping Native culture alive and in organizing and caring for a family. The Fish-In in Washington state was a movement to keep fishing rights guaranteed by treaties which the population was dependent on for sustenance. This became violent and it was women on the front line with guns in hand, protecting the fishing nets. There were also women leaders in this movement who had a hard time being recognized as leaders by their male peers. I feel that this is evidence of the colonization influence because before the European dominance of the region, gender was not an aspect of becoming a recognized leader. At Wounded Knee, it was also a very violent. The idea for this occupation came from the elder women in the community who did not like what was happening in their community and the fact that the white violence against natives was not being recognized as crime.

Some themes from this article include ‘colonization’, ‘native women’s rights versus feminism’, and ‘women as unseen yet important leaders within the Native American community.’ Here are some quotes to back each of these themes:

“Tribes were refused building permits for hospitals and schools since this might encourage some to remain on their land rather than relocate (Burnett 1972, 567). Congress would only consider compensation for stolen land and resources to those tribes who were willing to develop a termination plan (Olson 1984, 158). The termination policy occurred in a time period of widespread fear that American values were under threat from outside the country and from within (Sinclair 1996, 89). Indians who had not assimilated into dominant culture were viewed as un-American by some.” (116)

“A great deal of paternalism, and very little awareness of Indian women's priorities, were exhibited by most white women. Communication problems were common, as white women assumed superiority in their way of thinking and doing things. As Bea Medicine (Lakota) has noted, "Indian women do not need liberation, they have always been liberated within their tribal structure" (Daly 1994, 238). White women expected that Indian women with a gender consciousness would automatically lend their support to issues which white women prioritized, but they seldom expressed an interest in a reciprocal relationship. As Laura Waterman Wittstock (Seneca) noted, "Tribalism, not feminism, is the correct route: (Medicine 1978, 334). Few white feminists were able to grasp the nationalist content of Indian women's activism.” (128)

“The work of women was essential in the daily running of the island, including running the community kitchen, school, and health center. Yet male figures such as Richard Oakes (Mohawk), head of San Francisco State Native American Student group, and bartender and twenty-three-year-old John Trudell (Santee Lakota), who ran the radio broadcast from Alcatraz, received more media attention at the time and remain better known to this day.” (119)

Some questions that I have after reading this article: During the Fish-In and the occupation of Wounded Knee, how did it come to violence? Also, I would like to learn more about Dick Wilson and his various transgressions and why he was not persecuted for them.

The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough

“The Five Sexes” explained hermaphrodites and pseudohermaphrodites, fernms and merms. It then went on to talk about how pre-Victorian era, more culture may have recognized a third gender, but since then Western society has forced everyone into a binary system based on gender roles, either male or female. There was one part on this article that I did not agree with. When the author was speaking of how the world would be if there were a lot of varying degrees of gender and the binary system was disbanded he says, “Patient and physician, parent and child, male and female, heterosexual and homosexual-- all those oppositions and others would have to be dissolved as sources of division.” That is taking it a little too far. Sources of division would still come about as it is human nature, they would just base themselves on something other than sex, such as wealth. She also brought up how parents of intersexed children were forcing them at birth into one gender through surgery. To me, picking someone’s sex for them after they have been born seems like the wrong thing to do, especially because you do not know how they are going to feel or how they will indentify at least until they start developing hormonally during puberty, if not later, if ever. However, I also could not imagine the difficulties of a child growing up as a hermaphrodite. Right at the end of the article the author states that a study was done of “substantial body of case histories” of adults who had grown up a hermaphrodite, and claims that there “is not a psychotic or a suicide in the lot.” The author does not site the study, and it would be interesting to see some actual figures from a study of that type.

Dissident Women: “Key Women’s Documents” & Introduction

This reading began with a few key women;s documents; Women’s Revolutionary Law, Women’s Rights in Our Traditions and Customs, and Comandanta Esther: Speech Before the Mexican Congress. After these, the introduction to the book presented the material that would follow in later chapters as well as some history on indigenous and gender related struggles in Mexico. In the Zapatista movement, women are including their rights in the indigenous struggle for autonomy. Before the 1994, the Mexican government had people’s rights based on the idea of mestizaje, which only allows the recognition of one mixed culture. This made the Indians seem like a race that was only located in the past, and modern Indians were somewhat erased. The Zapatistas are fighting for recognition and support of their culture and traditions, while also fighting for women’s rights within them. This is an interesting idea because, in protecting their rights, they will be altering some of their traditions, such as forcing a daughter into marriage. This is because they recognize that some of the ‘traditions’ are harmful and detrimental to women, and by protecting and educating the women, their communities will prosper. When women become better off, their children benefit, and as the children grow, they become the community, and therefore, the community is better off. Also, it makes no sense to think that to be a culturally native person, you have to live and behave the same as your people did hundreds of years before. Cultures change and grow over time, just as anything else. In this way the women are trying to be recognized. They want their rights and the rights of their people so that they can hold on to their way of life and their history in today’s world.