This is Her Way

In Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times by Guest Contributer3 Comments

Wi’áaşal, the Great Oak, on the Pechanga homelands

Welcome to “Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times,” an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I’m donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.

By Stacy Roberts

Stacy Roberts is Pecháangayam Payómkawichum, The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Granddaughter of Lucille Garbani Leake. She is a Momma of two, and Auntie to five, but happy to Auntie anyone who comes along.  You can find her work at StacyNRoberts.com and on Twitter @StacyNRo.

When we first started to quarantine, I called my Grams. She answered the phone, but I am pretty sure she didn’t want to because she knew I wouldn’t approve of her shenanigans. She was out buying dried beans–because God forbid the family is in lockdown without fresh beans and tortillas. She says she is getting pizza and that she will head home after. I am not sure what it is about “pizza” that does it, but I feel fear rising in my throat like bile, hot tears rolling down my face, and I shriek, “I can’t lose you…I can’t…I don’t know how…I…I am…I am not okay.” She knows. She knows just like she always does. She assures me that everything is okay, but I know it is not. I mean, it is right now, but how can we be sure that it will remain okay? My anxiety has overcome my knowing and it is speaking loudly; it is all I can hear.

Anxiety is something we talk about a lot in my family, like a drunk cousin who is always there, but never invited. It sometimes feels like a superpower–sharpening my senses, making me hypervigilant. Because of it, I am fantastic under pressure, a problem solver. I give myself permission to fall apart in the aftermath, but not in the moment. Never in the moment. My superpower can also be my undoing–shrinking me, telling me lies, making me forget what is real and good. It is the trauma–current, collective, generational—that brings on the anxiety. It is the trauma that ushers it in, but I am learning how to manipulate it, using the anxiety for good.

Every now and then I have my fill, and this time it is pizza that sends me over the fucking edge. I try to hold it together, but I can’t. My Grams is out of the house and the thought of losing her is more than I can bear. I try not to think of it, ever. She is strong and measured and kind, but she can verbally eviscerate you with a smile on her face, and you don’t even realize what happened until you walk away. She orders Jack and Coke at the bar, can still a room just by walking in, and her voice can send me into a fit of tears. She isn’t sick and still I am afraid.

My Grams can sense my anxiety. When it is out of control, she treats me like I need to be shielded from all the bad in this world. She is the only person who has ever protected me in this way. I did not realize what was happening until recently. “Slow down, little girl,” she always tells me in a voice that sounds more like a threat than a suggestion. But it is movement that manipulates my anxiety, work that quiets the shrill voice. My Grams knows that; she invites me to slowness, to be present, to feel.

My Grams, in all her wisdom, sends me text messages joking about toilet paper, while teaching my sister how to pick medicine, how to pray, how to protect us from the virus, from the fear, from the bad medicine. My sister then distills the information, sends me medicine, and tells me what to pray. I was jealous, but my sister is further along; she knows how to listen, to slow herself, to see what is in between this world and the next. Our grandmother teaches us. This is her way.

Since the pandemic started, I find myself with this visceral need to be back on the Rez, to be with my Grams and surrounded by my people. I never lived there, but I want to be there now. I grew up on my grandpa’s Rez. I dream of him and that place almost every night–his living room exactly how I remember it, but his house devoid of walls, floor, and roof. The burnt orange, threadbare area rug laying ridiculously on hard dirt and rock. My grandpa is there. He is wearing a white undershirt, blue pants, gray Velcro shoes–the same thing he always wore. He invites me to sit next to him on the worn sofa I don’t ever remember him sitting on, preferring instead the armchair closest to the TV. He smells like soap and Black and Mild Cigars.

He was gruff and fit almost every stereotype of Native grandpas. He worked hard and could fix damn near anything. His hands should have been worn, calloused, and rough, but they weren’t. He had the softest hands, like little pillows of clouds for fingerprints. He was like that. Most people knew him as a hard man, but I never saw him that way. He loved us and made sure we knew it. In my dreams, I lay in his lap as the stars shine where the roof should be. He caresses my hair with those gentle cloud fingers. There is a peace in this dream place that I do not experience in my waking hours. This world makes sense to me.

My grandpa was claustrophobic. When we would go camping, he would haul his bedframe, box springs, and mattress all the way up the mountain. He set up his bed just on the edge of the tree line so he could see the stars. He slept under his blankets, in his own bed, and woke every morning to make that bed with the tightest hospital corners I’ve ever seen. I’ve always admired his “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want” attitude. Tents are for suckers, anyway. I miss him so much, every day, that it makes me feel like I might vomit. I do not want to miss my Grams like that. I do not want this virus to touch her. She knows that I am afraid. I wonder if she is sending me dreams of home, and him, to comfort me in the restlessness of night. 

This pandemic has awakened something old and deep within me; a thing that lives in my body, and is as resilient as my grandfather and as clever as my grandmother. My knowing is ancient and is being cultivated in prayers and silence and stillness. My knowing can get suffocated by my anxiety, sounding too much the same; my sister is better at differentiating the two. My knowing tells me that I can do hard things, that my people have always done hard things. Memories of eating commodity cheese and powdered eggs flood my mind. I feel the pang of hunger in my belly. I hear the wind whipping the thin walls of our single-wide trailer. I feel the synthetic fibers of ‘70s shag carpet on my bare feet. I smell the dust and desert rain. My body remembers; I have done hard things. The anxiety screams all the possible outcomes, the devastation, the pain. My knowing reminds me of strength in the face of fear. She does not numb, she does not shrink me, and she does not tell me lies.   

So, I do the things we have always done. I light sacred medicine, and the smell of my grandmother’s house fills mine. I watch the embers burn, and I thank our ancestors for their protection, for their resilience. I know this same resilience lives inside of me, inside of us. I put on a pot of beans and try to make tortillas like my Auntie. I suck at it, but I will get better with time. I call my Grams who tells me she has never seen anything like this in her life, and she is staying home and being safe. (I will text my Auntie and cousins to confirm this.)  I feel homesick, but these rituals make me feel better as they still the anxiety. They are ancient and a part of me, so I slow down and remember.

Stacy’s donation will be going to the NDN Collective COVID-19 Response Project. The NDN Collective’s COVID-19 Response Project is designed to provide immediate relief to some of the most underserved communities in the country. NDN’s intent is to quickly distribute resources to frontline organizations, Tribes and individuals to provide gap services during this health crisis, and to artists and entrepreneurs who have suffered the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I Am a Reluctant Gardener

In Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times by Guest Contributer1 Comment

Welcome to “Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times,” an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I’m donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.

By Patty Krawec

Patty Krawec is an Anishnaabe woman with roots in Lac Seul First Nation and the Ukraine and feet in Southern Ontario. Always looking for opportunities to talk  and write about the impact of racist policies and beliefs, Patty is a podcaster with Medicine for the Resistance which is co hosted by Kerry Goring, a Black woman and according to one reviewer, is an unapologetic dose of Black and Indigenous womanism.   You can find her at http://www.daanis.ca and on Twitter as @gindaanis.  

I am a reluctant gardener. In late winter I buy seeds and peat pellets and fill trays with little packages of misguided hope that sit in my bathroom for a few weeks. The ones that survive my inadequate and unpredictable watering get put outside on sunny days, and sometimes forgotten overnight. The hardiest of them make it to the end of May. Then I need to actually get them into a garden, by which time I’ve moved on to other interests.

My mother is a born gardener. She was mulching long before it was fashionable and my summer memories include long hours in the kitchen helping to preserve whatever was in season. This trait has skipped me and gone straight to my oldest son, but he gardens in a different way. He gardens the way our Anishnaabe ancestors did. Not the tidy lines of my German matriarchs, but the tended forests of woodland peoples. 

We live in the country, a long skinny property one acre wide and eight acres deep. It backs onto a wetland, a swamp, mshkeg.  You go through the meadow grass of our yard to the thicket and find a deer run. Follow that across a stream and over a small berm and the forest opens up to you in all its swampy beauty.  We used to call it Narnia because in the winter you can see the faint lights of our neighbours on the other side of the forest.

To most people it is a wetland, a forest filled with vernal pools and tall grasses, trees and low shrubs. To my son it is a garden. He tends the nettles and raspberry bushes, brings home ramps and the leaves from toad lilies, burdock root that he worried had been crowding out the nettles and turned out to be edible. He experiments with controlled burning of the meadow to see if it helped the wild strawberries threading their way through the grass.  It does. 

Starting in late winter and then through spring and early summer last year I went out to the swamp every week or so. My son had gone back to BC where he worked fighting forest fires, and I sent him pictures so he could watch it wake up. I harvested the nettles, eventually getting so used to them that the sting barely registered. I ate the raspberries that I could find; the birds got most of them. I remembered to bring candy and silver and small bits of leather and sinew, gifts for the little people. One day I found a small jawbone on the path, a gift maybe. Summer gave way to fall and the green gave way to gold and orange and red before getting tucked into its snowy blanket for a rest.

Europe colonized itself before it came to America. It separated peasants from land and separated people from the each other. It turned its hunger on the Americas, a wendigo so hungry that it consumes its own lips if there is nothing else for it to eat. We feed it because we don’t know how else to live, and so we live disconnected lives watching the seasons change through windows, marking the seasons by what we complain about.

The virus came to us in winter. It came hard and cruel, taking the most vulnerable instead of those responsible for the irresponsible stewardship of forests and animals. Those responsible always manage to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions. It came to us in winter, and it stayed with us while the swamp woke up. 

Many of us are at home because of the virus. Many more are not, working jobs deemed essential because they are in health care or part of a supply chain or a service that can’t be suspended. Our staying home means their work is safer and so many of us are at home, I am at home.  I’ve been at home since late July. 

I spent 15 years doing child welfare and one day I just couldn’t. The week before I went off sick I didn’t care, I didn’t care about anything. Not my workload, not the people whose homes I entered and investigated. The years of anxiety and stress had fractured me, secondary trauma wrapping my psychic wounds in a fog of apathy. I went to the doctor and two counselors and they said the same thing, I needed time to reorient myself. And it turns out that the best way to reorient is to stay home and walk dogs.

My dogs are active; they need to be walked no matter what the weather is which means walking in the early morning during summer heat, and later even when the snow is blowing sideways. So I walked the dogs every day, going around a 3 kilometer block that includes forest and fields, farms and horses. We didn’t go out to the swamp this year, but we did watch the seasons change.

This western society needs to reorient itself, and with more of us at home, walking our dogs or just ourselves if we can stay off Netflix we might see the changes that we’ve been travelling past. Facebook memes about March and April lasting for years remind us how fast life normally happens for us. Of all the ways that an apocalypse could happen, forcing so many of us to slow down and stay home is unexpected.

If we are going to transform our world we need to restore relationships, and our relationship to land is the first relationship we need to restore. Gardening is a restorative act, whether you garden like my mother in tidy rows and raised beds, or like my son who tends the forest behind our house. It connects you to land and to seasons, it creates a relationship in which we care for and are cared for in return. Garden centers noticed a spike in purchases of seeds and starter kits. We intuitively reach for this as a way to feel connected to something real.

I am a reluctant gardener. I may have some tomatoes and peppers that survived my ministrations and no garden beds yet to put them in. But I did subscribe to a CSA box. Community Shared Agriculture boxes are another kind of relationship. You invest in a small farm and get vegetables every week or two for five or six months. My hope is that in taking this small step I will begin to restore that relationship. Eating food in season instead of the same six vegetables I get from the grocery store regardless of the time of year. Taking small steps and reorienting myself.

Donation for Patty’s post will be going to her Pay Your Rent fund. The Patreon based mutual aid project called “Pay Your Rent” is a continuation of a June 2018 fundraiser on social media to bring menstrual supplies in extra luggage to Iqaluit. Since then she’s had been inviting settlers and allies living on occupied land to pay their rent. Through a partnership with Moon Time Sisters sanitary supplies continue to go to Iqaluit every quarter and many Indigenous projects supporting culture, two-spirit youth, water protectors, and families receive support.

Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times: A Series

In Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times by Adrienne K.2 Comments

Harvesting cedar gifts in my urban backyard

The world has changed in the last few months, and the world continues to change. The media has shown us plenty of footage of armed white protestors at state capitols demanding haircuts and gyms, but still largely leaves out the human stories of struggle and survival, the thoughtful, first-person perspectives and reflections that bring a face and voice to the reality that is right now. And as always, Indian Country’s stories are nearly absent. We know Native communities are being hit hard, but we also know there’s much more to the stories than what we’re shown in the news.

I’ve admittedly really struggled during these weeks of staying at home. My reality as a professor shifted dramatically overnight, and like many of you, I suddenly went from seeing my amazing students and colleagues daily to sitting in a cold basement, staring at moving squares on a laptop–a poor substitute for the relationships we all need to thrive. I felt, and feel, like my brain is working at about 1/3 capacity lately. Everything takes much longer and isn’t quite…right. I sleep so much, and am still tired. I miss my family, I worry for my friends, I haven’t gotten to meet my new baby nibling in NYC, and the uncertainty of what’s next causes endless stress.

Yet, I am safe, I am healthy, and there have been so many moments of beauty in this time. This is the longest uninterrupted stretch I’ve been in Providence since I moved here over six years ago. I’ve taken long walks through the quiet and empty city and come to appreciate it deeply. I’ve had to slow down. I’ve had to listen to my brain and my body. I’ve had to think about what matters to me, and what parts of “normal” are worth returning to, and what parts I want to leave behind. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.

I saw that last line on a pencil case on Anthropologie’s website. Or maybe it was Pinterest? Because let’s be real, while I’ve been walking and reflecting and being contemplative over loaves of sourdough, the one thing that has been overwhelmingly true of this time is that I’m spending hours scrolling things on the Internet. What is time but a chance to look at memes and read thousands of awful news stories or imagine alternate realities? For example: a new favorite is looking at Zillow listings, playing “where would I live if I moved to X?,” judging people’s interior decorating, and pretending I could make a downpayment on a $1.2 million dollar house (I can’t).

All of that is to say, there’s lots of stories of this time, especially in our Indigenous communities. Stories that are serious and real and funny and terrifying and everything in between, and I’d love to hear them. I posted this on Twitter and Instagram a few days ago:

This series will be the result. “Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times” will feature voices of Indigenous people navigating these uncertain, scary, and sometimes beautiful times. The call is open to all Indigenous folks, and I’m open to all types of writing and media–photos, videos, audio, and artwork are welcome and encouraged as well. If it can be put in a blog post, send it over. It doesn’t have to be long, and it doesn’t have to be perfect or polished. Youth submissions are encouraged, and if you want to call your grandparents or elders and record what they have to say for a submission, that would make my life complete.

As I was reading through the first submissions I decided I needed and wanted to offer some form of payment for these posts, even if largely symbolic. So I’ll be offering a small gesture of $20 per author, with an accompanying $10 donation to an organization supporting Indian Country’s COVID-19 response. I’ll start with $500 of my own money, but if you would like to sponsor a post, or give a donation to support more authors and charitable donations, my paypal is here, or my venmo is @adrienne-keene. Just put “for stories series” or something similar in the memo.

For folks who would like to submit, just send me an email at nativeappropriations@gmail.com. In your email include:

  1. A title
  2. How you would like your name and tribal or community affiliation to appear
  3. A short 1-2 sentence bio, and if you’d like, links to your work or social media accounts
  4. A way for me to pay you (paypal, venmo, zelle, cash app…etc). (If you’d like your honorarium to go toward a COVID cause of your choice, that’s totally fine too!)

I’ll plan on posting 1-2 stories a day, depending on the volume, and I’ll share out on Twitter as they go up. You also can subscribe to the blog by email here, if you’d like to receive new posts in your inbox.

So I welcome you to share with me, share with one another, and stay safe and well. I look forward to creating and sharing this space with all of you.

PS- If you would like to support Indian Country during this time, https://indigenouscovidresponse.com/  is a great resource pulling a lot of different links and sources together.

An apology to Navajo, Hopi, and Choctaw

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.2 Comments

Yesterday I tweeted something quickly during a meeting, an insensitive and misguided attempt to critique media framing around Irish support of Navajo and Hopi Nations. I immediately deleted less than 20 minutes after I posted it, once I realized how off the mark and harmful it was. But in the land of screen shots, the tweet has now circled all over social media and back again, and while I’ve apologized on Twitter, I want to make sure the apology lives here as well. Here is the text of my twitter apology, with a few edits for clarity:

I went to bed sick with anxiety and woke up to folks I deeply respect from the Navajo nation in my inbox telling me how much harm I caused. So I want to reiterate that my original tweet was awful and misguided. Navajo/Hopi are suffering deeply right now, and to imply through my words that Irish support was misdirected was harmful and wrong. The fault lies in the media framing, conflating tribal nations and erasing that this generosity is not a “payback” for any kind of debt, rather a paying forward of Choctaw kindness.

Regardless, it wasn’t necessary to tweet this opinion, especially right now, and I thank the Navajo, Irish, and Choctaw folks who jumped in my mentions immediately to tell me so and helped clarify my words and thinking. I deleted the tweet quickly once I realized how wrong it was, but I recognize I should have apologized immediately and not only later after folks called me in. I have many friends and relations in Navajo and worry constantly for them. I have been trying very hard to support from afar, but there are amazing groups on the ground doing life saving work.

For those looking for ways to support, my college friend Stefanie (@GiveIndigenous)has pulled together a site to streamline how to help: https://indigenouscovidresponse.com, with many links to resources.

So again, I apologize sincerely and deeply for my original tweet. It was hurtful and wrong. It was deleted. If you feel the need to continue to share out the screen shot, I hope you’ll also consider sharing this apology as well.

I realize as someone with white privilege and academic privilege I have to hold myself to a higher standard, and that I have a responsibility to continually unpack and dismantle that privilege. I feel like I’ve been failing on that front recently as I’ve dealt with my own personal and career challenges. But I commit to doing better. For many years I’ve been trying to figure out how to transition Native Appropriations back to what the original goal of the project, which was a forum of many voices discussing issues of representation. It was never meant to be just my voice and my perspective. So in the coming months I’m going to think about the ways to share this platform, especially on Twitter, whether through a rotating “host” like @indigenousX, @IndigenousXca, or @IndigenousBeads, or through a core group of folks willing to curate the feed on issues of representation, like @_illuminatives. I’ll keep thinking, and will make any announcements of changes both here and on Twitter.

Thank you, as always, for continuing with me on this journey as I attempt to learn publicly. I truly apologize for my insensitive tweet, and hope we can continue on together.

What happened to @NativeApprops?!

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.3 Comments

Hi Y’all,

Long time no talk. I thought I would throw up a quick post in case any of you follow me on social media and were concerned that my accounts seem to have disappeared. They did! I’ve been on Twitter and Instagram for nearly (or over?) a decade without a substantial break, and things have felt hard online lately. There’s nothing wrong, I’m all good, and have some very exciting writing projects that need my attention in the coming months. The podcast is still rolling along with season 2, and I’m hoping this social media break will mean more time for blogging–my original love, and something I haven’t made time for in nearly a year.

So in summary, yes, my social media is deactivated, I will probably go back, but my relationship to Twitter especially may fundamentally change. I hope my absence can allow folks to diversify their Native follows and find lots of other amazing Native tweeters.

More later, but just wanted to make sure everyone knew I was all good! The ten year anniversary of Native Appropriations is coming up in January, which is wild, so look for some more and new content (and maybe some merch?) then!

With love,

Adrienne

PS- If you enter your email here to subscribe to the blog, you’ll get an email every time I post, and you won’t have to come by periodically to check. 🙂

How I hope 2019 unfolds: A quick success in San Diego

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.8 Comments

Last week I was in Pacific Beach with my partner, and we stopped by a bar/restaurant called “Crushed” to grab a drink. I got up to go to the restroom, and in the hallway was confronted by a large mural of a headdress. It was painted facing a mirror, with words in reverse, so bar patrons could take mirror selfies that looked like they were wearing the warbonnet. I rolled my eyes, walked back to my table, grabbed my phone, and snapped the above photo.

While we finished our drinks I composed a quick caption on Instagram, trying to educate the bar on why the mural was inappropriate. I said:

Hey @crushedpb, this really isn’t ok. Warbonnets are sacred to several Native nations and are something that has to be earned. They are symbols of great respect and honor, and aren’t dress up or fantasy objects. When they’re used out of context in this way, it’s disrespectful to the real, living cultures that still use these headdresses in ceremony and community. Native peoples aren’t photo props, stereotypes, or IG cliches. I hope you’ll consider painting this over. ❤️

We went on with our night and I didn’t really think much of it. I’ve been doing this work for eight years at this point, and it’s rare for anyone to respond with anything but defensiveness and doubling down. Sure enough, an hour or so later, the bar responded with:

“The purpose is not to offend anyone”

I hopped back into the comments, which by this time were already numbering in the hundreds (always in awe of the power of the Native Approps community), and typed back:

“No one (or very few people) sets out to offend. Unfortunately, this is hurtful to me and other Native folks who might come in your bar. Despite the intent, it’s the impact that matters. If you need more info or would like to talk more, my contact info is on my site. I know your mantra is “you are loved,” but with this on the wall you’re saying that “you” doesn’t include the peoples whose land you’re on.”

Again, thought that was that. Then, the next morning, I woke up to this photo from Crushed in my messages:

I couldn’t believe it. They painted it over! Less than 24 hours after the initial Instagram post, someone from the restaurant was over at the store with a bucket of paint removing the headdress. I was shocked, and grateful. This is never the response to these kinds of interactions, or if it is, it usually takes hours and hours of labor to get folks to this point. They didn’t even ask me for more info, just went ahead and did the right thing. I wish everyone would react the same way to being called in. Amazing.

The artist himself is another story, and I won’t even take the time to tag him here. You can go investigate yourself if you’re interested–he has another painting called “smokeahontas” but his friends were violently defending his work in the comments. I hope he takes the time to learn, eventually.

So I just wanted to share this quick story so we can start 2019 on a high note, realizing that there are folks in the business world who want to do the right thing, and are willing to react and act when necessary. I’m going to naively and optimistically and completely unrealistically hope, but still hope, that this is setting a tone for the next year, and maybe this will be the year of actually listening to Indigenous folks, and making positive change.

Happy New Year, and huge wado to Crushed Pacific Beach for doing the right thing.

In case after all these years you still need the breakdown of why the misuse of headdresses is a problem, 3 posts/open letters that sum it up:

Sephora’s “Starter Witch Kit” and Spiritual Theft

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.15 Comments

PinroseStarterWitchKit

I start most mornings by smudging [for non-Natives: info here]*. I love how the smell lingers on me and in my home and I love that the smell reminds me of Native spaces. It makes me feel safe. The medicines I use were all gifted to me by friends or colleagues, or I have a few special ones that I gathered myself–a sweetgrass braid I made with my students while we were with Oneida tribal members on their lands, a bundle of sage gathered at Sacred Stone Camp with my friend from Standing Rock while we were participating in the movement in 2016. When I burn them, I remember where they came from or who gifted them to me, and that’s important to me and my practice as well. I also smudge when things are hard, or when something has happened and I need to cleanse or re-center. Smudging is grounding to me. It’s centering. It’s personal.

So when I see things like Sephora selling a $42 “Starter Witch Kit” from the brand Pinrose that includes a bundle of white sage, I have…thoughts.

Read More

To the man who gave me cancer

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.23 Comments

AIS

CW: Cancer, fertility, blood, surgery

I.

My cervix and I were closer friends than many. I relied on her to fight my monthly stone man, to help manage my Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. I knew what she felt like at different points of my cycle. I knew when she was lower and open versus high and closed, I knew what her varying types of mucus meant. I relied on those cues to know when it was time for me to start my cycles of monthly care, when it was time to take my meds, and when it was time to expect relief with the arrival of my monthly bleeding. I often marveled at how in sync with my body I had become. How I would notice the smallest changes. How learning to read myself was empowering and liberating. That’s gone now, because my cervix is largely gone. Some of these signs and language of my body may come back. They may not. I’ve mourned and mourn their loss. You took that from me.

II.

It started with an abnormal pap smear. After decades of regularly scheduled exams and normal results I suddenly was thrust into medical fear and uncertainty. They also tested me for HPV. It came back positive for a high risk strain. I knew it was from you, because it couldn’t have been anyone else.

I called cis female friends. Many of them have had abnormal paps. They told me what to expect, that it would be fine. That it happens all the time. But I knew in the back of my mind and from a quick google that my cells were different–they weren’t squamous cells, they were glandular, and they carried more serious risk. But it was only four months after you, and I figured that wasn’t enough time for anything to develop into something serious.Read More

An Apology

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.11 Comments

Dear Readers,
I need to apologize, and genuinely. A few days ago I wrote an entire post about Black Panther that talked about Indigenous Futurisms without talking about Afrofuturism, or, for the most part, acknowledging the characters’ blackness. That was wrong, it was unacceptable, and I know better and should have done better. I’m truly sorry. As a scholar who cares deeply about citation practices, I not only have a desire to cite and give proper credit to sources of knowledge, I have an ethical responsibility to do so, and I clearly failed deeply in this post. As someone who thinks often about my position as a white passing Native person, I recognize that the post was particularly harmful in its erasure of Black indigenous people.
I received valid critiques of the post, and rather than carefully considering these critiques I rushed to try and fix things quickly. I added a sloppy addendum and a half hearted “sorry you were offended” apology (the kind I am so quick to condemn from others), and didn’t pause to really listen or reflect on what folks were saying to me. I checked the boxes on what I thought I was supposed to do to make it right, rather than what I genuinely understood I had done wrong.
Then yesterday I put up a post, which acknowledged harm, but in a way that centered my own story and didn’t even offer an apology. It also referred to the critics in flippant and dismissive ways, and used tone policing language to do so. I then made quick late night edits to acknowledge that flippant language, while still not offering an adequate apology or pausing to reflect further on my actions.That post was part of prior conversations I’ve had for years on the blog, but putting it in conversation with the Black Panther post diminished any standing I might have had on the idea of consenting to learn in public—because clearly I hadn’t actually learned, I only managed to deflect my discomfort at being rightfully critiqued by centering myself.

I am so sorry for both the posts, and my reactions to them. In particular, I am sorry for the antiblack erasure of the original post. I also apologize to the people who had to perform extra labor to help me get to this point of understanding, particularly my friend Eve Ewing and twitter users/readers @brujacontumbao, @Lyddlemami, @, and others I may have missed, whom I don’t know personally but who took the time to offer criticism.

I hope to do better and appreciate your support in holding me accountable.

Wado,
Adrienne

On Consenting to Learn in Public

In Uncategorized by Adrienne K.10 Comments

adrienne-brittannytaylor-w09

In 2010 when I started Native Appropriations, the internet was a very different place. Twitter was still emerging, blogspot blogs were a robust thing and everyone had one, and I literally had no idea what I was talking about. When I started the blog I knew that cultural appropriation was a thing, I knew that stereotypes were bad, I knew that racism existed, and I knew that there were big challenges in Indian Country, but I had no idea how those things were connected, or if they even were. I knew that I saw stereotypical imagery and representations everywhere, and that they made me feel bad, and honestly that’s where I started.

The blog came out of a time of struggle for me–I was a first year doctoral student, I was 23, I was the youngest in my program by around 5 years, and was the only student in my cohort who hadn’t ever been in grad school before. Not to mention, I was the only Native student in all the cohorts of doctoral students in my program, and one of only two or three Native doc students at all 13 schools of the university. I had just moved to the East Coast from California, where I had been surrounded by a large, supportive, and diverse Native community. On my undergrad campus (where I continued to work after graduation) there were enough of us, and we had enough support from the university faculty and staff, that I never felt like I had to be the lone representative for all of Indian Country, I hardly ever was the only Native student in a class, and I somehow managed to take an entire major’s worth of Native studies classes from only Native faculty. I was hella spoiled.

Then I arrived at grad school, and suddenly not only was I very far away from my family and community in California, I was faced with an entire schedule of classes that not only had no Native faculty, but not even one reading about Native peoples or by a Native scholar on any of my syllabi. I also was faced with overwhelming ignorance on Native peoples like nothing I had ever experienced before. My classmates told me to my face they thought Indians didn’t exist anymore, especially on the East Coast, or that they had never met a Native person in their lives. They didn’t have any knowledge or understanding of the issues or communities I cared about, and didn’t care to learn.

One day in Urban Outfitters, surrounded by the worst culturally appropriative BS I’d ever seen, something clicked. I realized that the reason my classmates didn’t know contemporary Native peoples existed, or care about our modern struggles and triumphs was partially because the only images they ever saw were things like this crud in Urban Outfitters, or any of the other awful stereotypes we see on a daily basis. To them, Native Peoples were these decontextualized stereotypes without any relation to the reality of Indian Country, and that, I decided, was a problem. So I put up a Facebook note, back when people did that, and asked my friends to start sending me things for a “project.” I honestly never thought anyone was going to read the blog. I thought it would be a place for me to catalog, mostly. A repository of images and products and things that I found hurtful, and place for me to find the words to say why. But obviously I was wrong, in the best ways, and it’s grown into something I never could have dreamed.

A few years into my grad program I was hanging out at a gathering at a friend’s apartment in Cambridge, we were talking about colorblind racism (as you do) and he had just finished a dramatic reading from a passage of Bonilla-Silva Racism without Racists (again, as you do at any social gathering), and we got to talking about my blog and the ways I was learning to recognize and deal with colorblind racism, putting into practice the theory I was learning in my Critical Race Theory in Education course. My colleague Liz turned to me and said that what she appreciated about the blog was that she had always seen Native Approps as a process of “consenting to learn in public.”

That phrase has stuck with me, and I now use it often. It perfectly fits what my experience has been on the blog, and it’s something I’ve tried to embody and model with every interaction both online and in my classrooms since then.

Early posts were a lot of questions—what do we think about this? Is this ok? Why is this acceptable? I didn’t have the answers, and I didn’t have the vocabulary or language to effectively discuss these issues. So there was a lot of linking to and quoting other people who were saying it better than me. Because I wasn’t ever explicitly taught why these images are wrong. Though I do have friends with fierce activist mamas and aunties and dads who were. But many of our fellow community members or relatives maybe don’t even see anything wrong with these images. Then for some of us, we arrive on high school, college, and grad school campuses, in off reservation spaces, and in some cases are confronted with these issues for the first time. But the expectation is that we have perfectly formulated, well-reasoned, non-emotional responses to these misrepresentations and instances of racism. And I sure as heck didn’t. So I consented to learn publicly, on the blog. Which has meant a lot of growth, and a lot of mistakes. But I found my voice, and in the process learned how to apologize the right way, how to admit I was wrong, and how to move forward without feeling like a total failure. Which are life skills that go beyond blogging.

Once I entered the mindset that writing the blog was an exercise of consenting to learn in public, I became braver. I realized as long as I was genuine, and I was honest, and I was authentic to my own experiences, readers would join the journey with me. They would learn along side me. I didn’t have to have all the answers. I had plenty of questions, and that was ok. On the blog I’ve also never masked who I am. I talk often about my appearance, about my upbringing in white suburbia, about my ongoing process of reconnecting to my own community, and that I do not and cannot speak for all of Indian Country. I can only speak to my experiences, but my experiences are valid as one Native perspective among millions. But by opening up and being vulnerable about these pieces of my identity, it allows readers to trust me. And through that trust comes a willingness to listen and learn. There will never be a big “reveal” that Adrienne K is a white-coding Cherokee from suburbia who never lived on a rez, because I’ve been open about that from the beginning.

In the early days of the blog and twitter folks approached me with so much love and generosity. I did and said some super problematic ish in the early days before I knew better. Some of those posts still live on the blog way way back in the archives, because I like that a record of my growth exists, and I want others to see that too. But when I would misstep, sometimes I would get angry messages, but most of the time my online community would simply say, “Hey, did you know that’s not the preferred term for that?” or “AK, you might want to be careful when making those comparisons, it’s harmful to other marginalized communities.” Activists who have been in this fight for a long time helped me along the way, gently nudged me back on the right path, sent me readings and resources, and didn’t let those missteps define me or my work. It meant I felt comfortable taking those risks and putting myself out there, because I could correct and readjust. It was really powerful.

The audience for my work was small then. It was a somewhat protected community where I knew the commenters and they knew me. I also know I’m idealizing it right now, because I also got hate mail then, and plenty of it, but it felt…different.

Things have changed. It’s gone from a few people reading each post to thousands. I’ve gone from being a lonely grad student to a tenure track professor, from giving guest lectures down the hall to speaking in front of thousands of people. I am so incredibly grateful for that journey, and so grateful that so many of you have come along with me for all these years. I’ve expanded my knowledge, but also realized how little I know in the grand scheme of things. This also still isn’t my academic work. It’s part of it now, but I still am an education researcher working on issues of Native higher education, so these ideas still remain outside my comfort zone in some ways. I’ve learned hard lessons, and learned how to talk and be more explicit about my own privileges. I work super hard behind the scenes to support fellow Native students and academics, work as a media connector so my voice isn’t seen as a sole authority on anything, share opportunities, and promote the work of others. I’m deeply and truly proud of the work we do together through our online networks and community and the progress we’ve made on issues of representations in the last decade.

But recently the tone of things online has changed. It often feels like there is a circle of folks who are anxiously and excitedly waiting for me to misstep so they can tear me down as publicly as possible (though if I’ve seriously effed up I don’t need you to hold my hand about it–not advocating tone policing here). There are many folks who accuse me of speaking with authority for Indian Country when I don’t or can’t represent them. There are folks that say that because of my experiences and my appearance I shouldn’t have a say on any of these issues. I sometimes search my name on twitter (ill advised, I know) and see folks talking about me in gossipy and hurtful ways. There are many, many people who think they know all of me and know all of my story simply because of what they’ve read on the internet. And that’s hard.

I realize that Native Appropriations is not and cannot just my personal reflection space anymore. I realize that, no matter how many times I say I only speak for myself, folks are going to take my voice as a de facto Native representative because there are so few other voices. I realize that there will always be folks who are looking to tear apart anything I write. But I also still realize I have an opportunity and responsibility to continue to consent to learn in public, because there will always be ways I can do better.

Because in the spirit of that last post, I have to be able to imagine an otherwise. None of us are perfect. All your faves are problematic, including me. Some people are awful humans who don’t deserve generosity or a gentle nudge in the right direction, and I’ll stand by that too. But if I want to live in an academic and online world where we can be public about our growth and learning, be open about our blindspots and knowledge gaps, be willing to change our opinion based on new knowledge, be willing to revisit and update old work, be willing to be vulnerable, be willing to acknowledge when we screwed up, and to talk with each other with generosity–I have an opportunity here to model that beautifully imperfect world.

So when I say that I’m consenting to learn in public on Native Appropriations, this is what I mean. It’s probably utopic, definitely not easy, and it hurts my feelings a lot of the time, because I think and care deeply about what I do on here, but I believe fighting for representations matters, and I’ll fight until the end. I’m fighting for an intellectual and cultural space where we can all be represented in our true and flawed and multitudinous ways, where one Native voice isn’t made to stand in for millions, and where we are all allowed to learn, together.

 

 

ETA: I removed a paragraph from the post that was extremely poorly worded and sounded flippant and insensitive to recent, valid critiques I received. I tried to edit it to save it, but thought it better to just take it out completely. I apologize for being hurtful, and thank those who pointed it out.

Additional ETA: Here is my full apology for my behavior and words.