The convergences of Native American Heritage Month, GLBTQ Awareness Week, and the upcoming release for 'Thanksgiving' at WSU is a perfect opportunity for those residing in our community to examine the inter-locking histories of colonization, racism, sexuality, punishment, hatred, and fictions re-spun every year for mass consumption, literally, as an 'economic opportunity' for the nation.
Native American Heritage Month, for many residents in the U.S., culminates in a quasi-robotic rush to the grocery store to fulfill the myth, fantasy, and imperial mandate of Wall Street. What is that mandate? "Buy turkeys!, Buy pumpkin pie! Be American! Act Like A Hypocrite!
These acts often go unexamined because they are ingrained so thoroughly into the American Origin Myth of Plymouth Rock, 'peace' between 'Indians and Quaker Pilgrims', and the Promised Land. Unfortunately, the myth continues to perpetuate that Indians are something from the U.S.' past, and has no relevance to certain troubling reailties of the present.
And, so the mechanism flows.
At the same time, the WSU campus community (including Pullman at large)in the last few weeks has just experienced a shattering new all-time 'record' of hate crimes, this time singling out GLBTQ community and leaving multiple communities whose lives intersect through social relations outraged, in fear, disgusted, damaged, traumatized, and above all, further marginalized. This comes along with the unsurprising reality of mediocracy deeply embedded within WSU administrative culture, coupled with apathy which resulted in the inadequate and dehumanizing failures of administrative bungling regarding the students' demands for justice on WSU campuses.
We have a new President-Elect Obama, who, during his acceptance speech, may be the first president to both acknowledge and claim all in one sentence both 'Native Americans' and 'Gay' communities in his vision of 'America' -- and his Transition Team. All the while, the Associated Press investigative journalism determined that less than 24 hours after Obama's election more than 100 directly related hate crimes against Blacks and Moslems were committed across the nation.
Yet, in the background of this violence. which the mainstream U.S. media fails to make connections to, is the long-term cultural commitments to violence within the U.S. origin myth of benevolent and harmonious relations with 'natives.' I would ask my students this semester to evaluate these convergences and to examine the ironies and untruths in order to tell the nation's more truthful origin story, related to the Indigenous First People and Settler Societies.
The connection between the past and the current human rights abuses occuring in against Native Americans, American Indians, Indigenous people was taken up recently at the 133rd Session of the Inter-American Commission/Organization of American States (of which the U.S. is a signatory member). Not surprisingly to Indigenous people and GLBTQ communities which are multiply-marginalized, the Commission took up the human rights abuses against indigenous people at the Texas-Mexico border and their struggle against state violence and the border wall--a symbol globally of fascism and totalitarian and authoritarian government, and the human rights violations against GLBT communities throughout the continent as two major concerns in the United States as well as other nationstates, such as Canada, Mexico, and numerous others.
This is really critical for U.S. residents to grapple with in a much more complex and volatile and globalized world in which we all live and in which we are participants in the circle, the web, the intricate relations which impact many traumatized and extremely valuable communities. Native American Heritage month should be not only a celebration of relationships that are working for the few, but should be a continental self-interrogation and purging of what is not working at all and needs major reform.
Rather, why not a commitment to Truth and Honor Commissions? These should be widely adopted from villages, towns, cities, regions, and beyond across the U.S., Canada and Mexico--which are countries where the "pilgrim" mythology are widely desseminated. This would help numerous communities of fractured, dispossessed, disabled, oppressed but resilient and resisting First Peoples; what new forums and havens can we invent and create for injured and healing communities of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to get over the discomforting 'hump' of "Thanksgiving" and "Native American Heritage" month?
If we started really grappling with the truth, and honor the truth as a vehicle for mass change across our societies, that might be something truly worth striving for each November.
The past and the present shows us that violence against non European, non Christian, non heterosexual (performing) groups is not changing. Today, Indigenous First People communities are undergoing one of the most destructive epochs of the 515 years since this project in colonization began.
Our lands are hyperexploited and overharvested by the Department of Defense, and subsequently, a no brainer, Native bodies have some of the highest level of environmentally born pollutants specific to uranium, DDT, Toxaphene, Dioxin, and POPs, and at the same time are de-capitalized and in the highest level of poverty per capita due to the hyper-corruption and hyper-theft by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations (and the U.S. taxpayer who votes) of our communities' vital resources for self-developed sustainability.
Our foods upon which our Indigenous DNA depends upon for survival are being hyper developed by petro-chemical agriculture research projects and turned into monster-GMO foods, which are dangerous for human consumption. Our people, under intense forced assimilation by the State, go hungry and starve to death, or over consume terrible foods which are 'killer foods' for Indigneous bodies and cause mass levels of diabetes. Our people have some of the highest levels of crimes such as rape and assault committed against us by non-Indigneous people, and by the State.
At the intersections of mythology, violence, hatred, hypocrisy, and arrogance, Native American scholarship and Native American researchers provide alternative answers and paths to many truths, many complex understandings, and truly productive methods which can provide the university/college level learner to explore and research meaningful answers.
I teach my students, the majority of whom are non-Indigneous Anglos, that they are crucial to the sustainable futures of Indigneous communities and that they have a critical stake in ensuring that Indigenous knowledges, truth and priorities are taken seriously by them--future voters, policy makers, institutional actors, politicians, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, parents, teachers, and residents of places that are vital to Indigenous communities.
I teach my students that they must engage with intersectional thinking to be truly "critical" and "engaged." At the crossroads of 'Native American' and 'sexuality' is a critical space where we can have a more honest conversation about Euro-residents' history as colonizers, developers, settlers, and oppressors, and we can have a conversation about making change that is meaningful and productive for the 21st century, in terms that my students really 'get' and are desperate for in their tool kits, but which the system rarely provides to them, and in that way, really down-sizes their potential as engaged community members.
The opportunity to hear and speak with a scholar-activist such as LaFortune who brings a great deal of knowledge, engagement and real-life experience to a great number of WSU students, who are dissatisfied with inadequate curriculum that does not prepare them to grapple with real world challenges as social beings, and to see themselves (not someone else) as the stimulators of real world solutions, is a huge gift.
Our students here at WSU who study with Native American and Indigneous scholars, and learn the challenges of multiple methodologies that disrupt Western Legal Thought and Western Religious Thought, are seriously engaging the very tired stories that get repeated and institutionalized and they are often outraged to learn how much those stories downplay the enormous level of violence, injustice, abuse, exploitation and destruction that went (and goes) hand-in-hand with the hetero-normative version of 'America.' This kind of programming is way overdue, and I have high hopes that this is the beginning of a whole new era for Indigneous First Peoples and the GLBTQ community at WSU, and Pullman.
--Margo Tamez (Nde' Ha'da'didla)
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