Perspectives on ways-of-knowing focusing on science, culture & media discourse, especially Indigenous knowledges. All views are my own, with no intent to reflect my employers', my family's or my community's views.
Some Sundays we drive 90 minutes North of our Portland home, paralleling the Columbia River, headed for the Zen Monastery in Clatskanie (Oregon), where we spend the morning meditating and then listen to a dharma talk (I translate “dharma” as truth).
We then break for lunch and visit with second daughter (Wey-Wee-Nah), who is spending several weeks at the Monastery as a resident.
Meditation (Zazen) is offered during two periods Sundays with a stretching and walking break in between, ending with a talk and acknowledgments before lunch.
During the break, we stretch and then walk slowly—at first—breathing into each step, and then walk quickly around the meditation cushions on the wooden floor of the Zendo for several roundabouts.
We are instructed to walk heel-toe.
I walk toe-heel.
I walk this way to remind me that—although I formally became a Buddhist a few years ago—I am a descendent of Osage and Sioux (Kiyuska) Native American families (and French and English settlers, too), and when women walk at our traditional dances in Oklahoma, we place our toes first, followed by our heels.
I tell myself I am not disrespecting the Buddhist traditions.
Rather, I am honoring my mother’s and grandmother’s traditions.
To be Native, I tell myself, is to recognize beingness as a constant—like breathing—and not only during occasions like pow-wows or National Native American History month.
We carry our Indigeneity with us, always.
Our Ancestors are with us: Always
On my most recent visit to the Monastery I slipped into the dining room during the break for a sip of coffee, and, while gazing at the empty chairs and tables, I thought I saw my mother looking at me.
I squinted.
From across the room, I saw of photograph of my mother, Margaret Sue.
She smiles brightly for the camera in her formal Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff’s hat and jacket, which is highlighted by a shining badge on her breast pocket.
Margaret Sue was a member of the department for several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s when my father was unable to work as a result of a brain tumor, and she had four daughters in her care.
During lunch at the Monastery, second daughter explains that the table with my mother’s photo was decorated with pictures from residents to honor their memories of family members.
Daughter carries the image of my mother with her, which was used to make a colorized copy for the display.
Maybe it was my mother’s smile—or maybe just my Sunday frame of mind—when I discovered I felt welcomed by seeing her during the break, as though it was OK to be a descendant of First Peoples and a practicing Buddhist at the same time.
Her presence seemed especially salient knowing that the Monastery—the former Quincy-Mayger school—was constructed on soil rich in Indigenous history.
All along the Columbia River Valley, which stretches more than 1,000 miles from Canada to Oregon, Native peoples called the region home “from time immemorial.”
That’s about the distance from New York City to Ames, Iowa.
And 1,000 miles is the length of the forced-march of the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears ordered by President Andrew Jackson in the bleak winter of 1835.
The Columbia River Valley’s Native History
Long before Sacagawea (Lemhi Shoshone), Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traversed the West in the early 1800s, the Columbia River Valley was peopled by dozens of Indigenous communities—some cordial to one another and some more ornery.
Western historians posit that Chinookean peoples lived in the region of the lower Columbia River (where the Monastery is now located) for millennia, where they were active fishers and traders.
According to the National Parks Service, the Chinook controlled much of the fishing commerce in the region until the Clatskanie people—who had lived on what is now called the Washington side of the river—“crossed the Columbia.”
“As game became scarce and their food supply diminished, they [the Clatskanie, or—Tlatskanai, Clackstar, Klatskanai or Klaatshan—] crossed the Columbia River to occupy the hills above the Clatskanie River, driving away…the more peaceful Chinook Indians.”
Although historians disagree on when and where the Clatskanie displaced the Chinook people, it was the settler-emigrants who dispatched Native life as they trekked along the Columbia and Willamette river valleys, bringing with them typhus, cholera, smallpox and measles: death sentences for communities with little-to-no resistance from foreign diseases.
In the early 1840s, a self-appointed “provisional” government of settlers declared emigrants could “own” up to one acre of land: a decision never sanctioned by Native peoples.
Settler records note local tribal peoples either moved away from encroaching travellers or were rounded up and forcibly relocated to unfamiliar land in the Pacific Northwest.
And while the Clatskanie city website says the area “was named after the Tlatskanai tribe of American Indians,” history books report that most of the tribal folks succumbed to diseases brought by settlers.
The town’s first newspaper was founded in 1889 (three years before Clatskanie became incorporated as a City) and was called The Clatskanie Chief, a name it held until 2014, when it became, “The Chief.”
Synopsis
Back at the Monastery, the Sunday service closes with an acknowledgement of our Buddhist ancestors, beginning with the Buddha, and a listing of the names of the teachers in the lineage of the Monastery’s founders, Jan Chozen Bays and Laren Hogen Bays.
I feel joyful imagining my mother and her ancestors are watching over me while I meditate with members of my Zen Buddhist community.
And I look forward to a moment when the Monastery community finds a bridge with the region’s Indigenous ancestral community.
Four Osage sisters create the heartbeat of the new film, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), which is based on David Grann’s 2017 book about the murders of tribal members in the early 20th century. Pictured, from left, are Rita, Anna, Mollie and Minnie. (Credit: The Osage National Museum/Doubleday. Date missing).
9 October 2023
The second week of October welcomes National Indigenous Peoples Day, which President Joe Biden proclaimed in 2021.
And while the country continues to attend to Columbus Day as a federal holiday (closing banks and the Post Office) individual states ˗˗ including my home-state of Oregon ˗˗ observe Indigenous Peoples Day.
That is, the Oregon legislature agreed to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
I like to observe Indigenous Peoples Day by first honoring it, and second, by sharing stories about my family—the Osage and Sioux side—and my scholarly work on Native American communities to help increase awareness of Native ways of knowing.
October also marks the US premier of a new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which tells the story about murders of Osage citizens in the 1920s, described as “The Reign of Terror.”
My grandmother, who was born in 1904, was among my relatives in Oklahoma who lived through the trauma.
I will share my thoughts about the uprooting of people from a more global perspective, and then focus on the Osages.
I end with why I believe Truth and Acknowledgment are important first steps in reconciliation with Native peoples.
PART 1
Deracination
It takes imagination—and guts—to envision you are part of community that is overtaken by outsiders or displaced by insiders.
I think about it. A lot.
What is life like, if you or your forebears are Palestinian, African, Russian, Brazilian, Armenian, Tibetan, and (or) Indigenous North American?
Displacement carries a harsh pronouncement: it refers to “deracination,” which is Latin for uproot (not for “race,” although it sounds like it).
POLAND
With Indigenous Peoples Day inked on the calendar the second week of October, I try to imagine how residents of—for example—Poland felt in 1939 when Germany invaded.
Poles—whether Jewish or non-Jewish—were considered by the Nazis as “racially inferior.”
“Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in mass killings,” according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Nazis “sent thousands more to the newly built Auschwitz” and other prison camps in Germany, “where non-Jewish Poles constituted the majority of inmates until March 1942.
“Hitler intended to ‘Germanize’ Poland by replacing the Polish population with German colonists,” the encyclopedia says.
INDONESIA
Imagine you are Native to Indonesia when the Dutch arrive in the 1800s to claim Java as their own.
The Dutch required Indonesians to turn over profits from their crops to the new overlords.
Soon, nearly 20 percent of Holland’s national income came from Java.
Rice, corn, peanuts, sugarcane, coffee, sweet potatoes, cassava, sesame and more helped fuel the Dutch colonial appetite.
George Catlin (1796-1872) finished a painting titled “Three Osage Braves” in 1841. Unlike many painters of the time, Catlin personally encountered the Osages, whom he described as, “the tallest race of men in North America.”
PART 2
The Wah-Zha-Zhe
My Osage (Wah-Zha-Zhe) ancestors share a part of history with many Native peoples of North America who tried to ignore, reason, barter and kill invaders.
Turns out Thomas Jefferson envisioned a plan appeasing to the settlers while disastrous for Native communities.
Jefferson devised a scheme to pay Napoleon for French holdings in the United States, and he informed tribes that they (Indians) would occupy all lands west of Louisiana once the deal was brokered in 1803.
Osage ancestral homelands include parts of Louisiana and other territories, both east and west—and we sent delegations of our people to meet with Jefferson in 1804 and in 1806 in an effort to iron out details of the acquisition.
Jefferson promised that—if the Native people agreed—we would have complete ownership of territories west of Louisiana.
But the promise was never kept.
Foot by foot and mile by mile, invaders staked out lands further and further west, creeping through areas promised to—and occupied by—Native people.
By the time Missouri received statehood after the purchase, in 1821, some 5,000 Osages faced deracination.
Osages and other tribal peoples were attacked by settlers as we were prodded and pushed in myriad directions: from Missouri to Arkansas and then Oklahoma, and then to Kansas.
POST-SCRIPT: LAURA INGALLS WILDER
The beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books—Laura Ingalls Wilder—would later learn her parents were among the invaders who built homes on Osage land in Kansas.
Laura McLemore, an expert on Wilder’s books, notes that the Ingalls family was “part of an illegal rush of settlers into the Osage” reserve in the late 1860s.
“Few people today realize, and perhaps Laura herself didn’t know, that a section of Kansas was once called Indian Territory” in reference to Jefferson’s political machinations, McLemore notes.
McLemore writes that, “in the early pages [of Little House on the Prairie] Laura quotes Pa as saying that animals wandered ‘in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.’
“Pa chose to ignore the fact that the land and everything on it belonged to the Osage people.
“He freely cut logs to build a house, hunted wild game for food and furs, dug a well and broke the land for farming,” McLemore writes.
Skirmishes between the Osage and homesteaders like the Ingalls forced my ancestors to find another home.
David Grann notes in Killers of the Flower Moon that Osages decided to purchase acres of inhospitable land in Oklahoma to the South, figuring the territory so desolate they would finally be left in peace.
Map of traditional Osage lands and the current reservation. Courtesy of the Osage Nation
BACK TO OKLAHOMA
The 1871 “expulsion” to Oklahoma “was worse in terms of lives lost and hardships” according to Osage scholar Louis F. Burns.
“This move almost destroyed the Osage people. Old tombstones indicate the greatest toll was among young mothers and infants.
“Yet the old people who made the move never spoke of the deaths and sorrows,” Burns notes.
As part of their agreement with the US, the Osages negotiated to “maintain all the subsurface rights, mineral rights to our land.”
The agreement would prove serendipitous once oil was discovered at the turn of the century.
PART 3
Oil Discovered
Still, it would take several years to harness crude oil production, which required serviceable roads, vehicles, digging, drilling and rigging.
Meantime, Osages were “counted” as being enrolled by the US government until July 1907, when the tally of citizens was officially designated.
The list of more than 2,200 Osages included my grandmother (and siblings) and her mother—and each received a headright that resulted in payments from oil and other income-generating sources.
Such payments would label the Osages the richest people, per capita, in the world.
Burns writes the newly acquired wealth “attracted money-hungry outsiders” who found the means to inherit a headright [a practice now outlawed] by using grisly ways to murder Osages.
“The so-called Reign of Terror, in which a number of Osages were murdered for their petroleum wealth, ended only when the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) won a conviction in federal courts,” Burns writes.
Osage-Sioux writer Fred Grove, who has written about the murders. Uncredited photo from the Arizona Daily Star.
SCORSESE’S FILM DEBUTS
Martin Scorsese’s new film—which opens in US theatres beginning October 20—was called, “a roaring crime saga about the murders that plagued the tribal nation starting in the 1920s, as the Osage’s neighbors and family members set out to strip them, by any means necessary, of their oil rights,” according to Melena Ryzik of the New York Times.
One of the Times‘ leading critics, Manohla Dargis, attended the film’s premier in Cannes, and called it, “shocking, at times crushingly sorrowful, a true-crime mystery that in its bone-chilling details can make it feel closer to a horror movie.”
The Reign of Terror has been long buried by many families but not forgotten.
My grandmother refused to talk about “the times” because “it is too painful.”
The film exposes a contradiction, in that the stories about the murders were closely guarded at home, and yet, several writers—including two of my relatives—hoped to write their views on the Reign of Terror.
Fred Grove, an award-winning author and my grandmother’s kid brother, was a youngster when he heard a late-night blast that shook their house which turned out to be a bomb that blew up a home where Rita Smith, Mollie’s sister, lived (pictured above).
Uncle Fred told a reporter that, the next morning, his mother, “told me not to go over there, but I sneaked off, and was sorry I did…There were pieces of flesh all over, and the house was just a pile of sticks. That stuck with me.”
Fred would later write a manuscript with the FBI official who investigated the murders, Tom White.
But the book was rejected, and Fred instead published a fictionalized version of the Reign of Terror in, The Years of Fear, his favorite book.
“This is close to my beginnings as a writer….my feelings, my heart.”
An uncredited image of an oil well from the 1920s in Osage territory. Source: Website “Famous Trials.”
NOTABLE CONTRADICTIONS WOVEN TOGETHER
The stories of the Osage murders bring into focus contradictions of ethics, ways-of-knowing, and how we remember history.
As Louis F. Burns noted in writing about the Osage removal in the 1800s to Oklahoma territory, “the old people who made the move never spoke of the deaths and sorrows.”
I have felt the conflict personally and professionally.
As a writer with a doctorate in journalism, I learned that good narrators advocate for unabridged sharing of information and truth-telling.
Yet, the more I learn about Indigenous aspects of story-telling, the more I feel conflict between Native ways and journalistic ways.
In Native communities, I have learned not all stories need to be shared.
Ethics are woven through our observances and practices, some of which are cloistered.
For example, we ask permission from our elders to share stories and songs.
Visitors are forbidden from taking photographs of ceremonial events, such as the In’Lon’Schka annual dances.
We revere ceremonial clothing and are distressed when our dress is mocked (as Halloween costumes) and when customs are appropriated as part of sports teams mascots and cartoons.
PART 4
The Value of Truth and Acknowledgment
Native American Day invites us to greet the day through the lens of Indigenous peoples.
I offer two ideas to help imagine the world through the lens, which, as I noted earlier, is threaded with ethics.
The first is Truth.
While all cultures honor truthfulness, Native North Americans have suffered disproportionate harm from lies, assumptions and “alternative facts” over land swindles, forced schooling, geographical isolation, sterilizations and murder.
And that means clearing away the historical camouflage that shrouds Indigeneity.
A national project has been launched called Reclaiming Native Truth, which encourages support of narratives about American Indians from American Indians “to foster cultural, social and policy change by empowering Native Americans to counter discrimination, invisibility and the dominant narratives that limit Native opportunity, access to justice, health and self-determination.”
The project urges folks to deconstruct time-worn narratives that dominate our social fabric by bringing into view perspectives from Indigenous peoples, rather than perspectives about Indigenous peoples.
One small truth takes us full circle to the beginning of this essay—Indigenous Peoples Day—in light of seeing Columbus Day through a Native gaze.
It is worth taking time to remember that North Americans already existed before Columbus mistakenly believed he landed in Asia in a territory he later called “The Indies.”
And myths of a free, virgin, vast and uninhabited land continue to underpin much of the falsehoods about the West and Native Americans.
Which brings us to the second notion: Acknowledgement.
I have learned that truth and acknowledging truth are fundamentally ethical ways of thinking and acting.
This observation crystallized while I was finishing a book about American Indians, Western science, the environment and mass media.
During this time I was also studying Zen Buddhism with the goal of becoming—formally—a Buddhist.
The framework of Indigenous ethics (inspired by writings from scholar Vine Deloria Jr.), which is foundational to my book, connects seamlessly with Zen teachings.
For example, Buddhists embrace an ethical life by contemplating the noble Eightfold Path, which includes truth and acknowledgment, through wise (“correct” or “right”) understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration.
I put this into practice when I travel—whether for work or pleasure.
For example, we spent a few days this summer hiking and swimming while visiting the city of Mt. Shasta in Northern California, a community of about 3,200 folks.
I learned Indigenous peoples lived in the region since—as they say—“time immemorial,” meaning, no one can remember when humans first walked here.
Turns out the name “Shasta” reflects the Native name of the Shasta (or Sastice) peoples, who occupied the area along with Modoc, Ajumani-Atsuwgi, Karuk, Wintu and other Indigenous peoples.
Learning about the Indigenous inhabitants of a region is an important part of my practice of Truth.
As for Acknowledgement, I share what I learn on my journeys by writing essays for my blog, posting photographs on social media, writing letters and postcards to family and friends, and sandwiching in a bit of history about a place in everyday conversations.
If I am speaking to a group or gathering, I first acknowledge the Indigenous communities that are Native to the region before introducing myself.
For me, Truth and Acknowledgement are actions—not just words—that are crucial to living an ethical life.
###
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
In concert with the premier of the film, Killers of the Flower Moon, the Osage Nation has released a short video, “Wah-Zha-Zhe Always.”
Lewis W. Hine documented child labor conditions in the 1900s—traveling throughout the country and taking photos with his five-pound Graflex 4×5 camera. Historians credit Hine with creating the “photo story,” where images—rather than copy alone—capture a narrative. When visiting a mine in West Virginia in 1908, Hine snapped the picture (above) of a youngster who worked as a “driver” from 7 in the morning to 5:30 at night, seven days a week (Murrmann, 2015 October 3). Source: Library of Congress
Labor Day: What Does it Mean?
Labor Day gives me a chance to read up on American history and ponder what prompted policymakers to recognize workers on the first Monday of September some 129 years ago.
Declaring a special day in history, unfortunately, had no relationship with working conditions and no predictable change in the status quo.
No single event shined the political spotlight on laborers despite countless (and often needless) tragedies that struck workers in the U.S. before, during and after President Grover Cleveland declared a federal holiday called Labor Day in 1894.
One noteworthy event that focussed international attention on workers was an explosion that killed at least 362 miners—boys and men—in Monongah, West Virginia, in 1907: more than a decade after Labor Day was made official.
Some historians consider the conflagration “the worst mining disaster” in American history (Wishnia, 2021 December 3).
The Monongah Mine Disaster
Miners’ deaths worldwide were caused by a number of hazards—beginning more than a hundred years ago—and not only lung diseases and bone-breaking chiseling through rock—but a result of fires, blasts, blow-ups (caused by igniting dynamite and from gasses lit by coal dust), flame-cutting practices, and more.
In the case of the explosion at the mines in Monongah (a community named for the Native people who long lived there, and who reportedly perished once settlers arrived), a fire broke out, apparently starting when a coupling link broke on a train-load of coal cars leaving the mine (and carrying about 30 to 40 tons), sending the cars backward into the mine.
“The loose cars crashed into a wall, cutting electrical cables which then ignited the dust cloud which had been raised by the crash, it was firmly asserted, and this resulted in an explosion so vast and so powerful that it ruptured almost every ceiling and wall in the mine, instantly killing the miners working below,” according to World History.
Writer Steve Wishnia said the death toll is uncertain because the mining company—Fairmont Coal—hired many part-time workers “off the books” and rescuers (some who died during attempts to find miners) were unable to pull out all the bodies because breathing air in the mine was “too toxic.”
Wishnia noted that 1907 marks the worst year for mining deaths in the US.
Two weeks after the Monongah blast, an underground explosion at the Darr mine in Pennsylvania killed 239 boys and men—the largest mine disaster in the state’s history.
By the end of the year, more than 700 laborers died from mining accidents.
Owners balk over unions
Fairmont Coal Company was never held responsible for the Monongah mining tragedy, yet local folks started a relief fund to help families affected by the blast.
Andrew Carnegie, an industrialist with interests in—among other things, steel and coal—contributed a large sum of money through the Hero Fund, which he managed and is still in operation (in 2022 the fund awarded $40.5 million in aid.)
As the mining industry grew, workers in Appalachia formed unions to represent their interests with owners, who were notorious for paying low wages and ignoring the dangers of mining—from bone-breaking physicality required to free coal from rock—to the inevitable lung diseases arising from exposure to coal and silica dust, according to the Ohio History Central website.
Mining was considered “the most dangerous job on earth.”
At least two unions were formed in the late 19th Century, including the American Miners’ Association and the United Mine Workers of America.
Yet, the unions had little leverage in 1907—when the worst disasters occurred.
The noteworthy 1902 strike
Pennsylvania miners living about 100 miles north Monongah went on strike five years before the deadly fire.
Anthracite coal workers in Eastern Pennsylvania—who mined the most cherished of coal—asked for shorter work days and better wages.
The walk-outs started in May and June in several communities, and lasted until October, 1902.
As winter approached—and without the prospect of coal—schools, shops, transportation services and government offices across the country (and especially in the East) feared “untold misery” and “social war,” according to Scott Connelly.
President Theodore Roosevelt intervened behind the scenes: he was prevented from taking action.
Technically.
Instead, Roosevelt brokered meetings with workers, management and the government to resolve the conflict, and his actions helped end the strike.
Miners were given a 10 percent increase in wages (they asked for 20 percent) and were awarded a 9-hour workday (they asked for 8).
Political cartoons–regardless of the news’ political stance–credited President Teddy Roosevelt with intervening in the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.
Image (uncredited) from the website “ehistory” at Ohio State University
Remarks
Clearly establishing a national holiday to recognize workers offered little comfort or agency to laborers working in mines and factories in 1900s America.
Despite the Monongah mining disaster of 1907 and New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, policymakers were molasses-slow in securing—not just workers’ rights—but human rights.
It took decades to enact the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 to protect children.
Today, the US is stuck in a past riddled with ridiculous laws that unfairly thwart fair wages.
And while the federal government establishes a minimum wage, it hasn’t changed since 2009.
As of this writing, the US minimum federal wage set 14 years ago is still $7.25 per hour.
One pundit, who works in communication for the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) reported that in 2009, a Big Mac cost $3.58 in the US.
Today, a Big Mac costs $5.81: an increase of more than 63 percent (See @KalinaNewman, 2022 April 27).
Apartment rentals follow a similar trajectory, according to a national property management organization, which compared average rents, overall, in 2009, with 2021.
A typical rent in 2009 was $944 per month.
Rents rose 63% to $1491 per month in 2021, and continue to climb in 2023.
Cost of a first class stamp in 2009 was 44 cents.
Today you need 66 cents to mail a first class stamp.
It’s worth noting that industries that sell beef, mayonnaise and toilet paper blame their mounting prices on inflation.
And they successfully lobby politicians.
“Members of Congress who receive an influx of money from corporations and trade associations are less likely to discuss things like wages or income inequality,” note two political scientists writing for The Hill.
“What’s more, members of Congress equate positive economic performance with the goals of business, while ignoring the needs of the ordinary workers and consumers who make our economy work,” they add.
Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas) has argued in favor of placing business owners over workers, saying, ‘Wall Street is the foundation on which Main Street is built’ ” (Morgan & Wilco, 2021 July 20)
What a pity to see politicians’ priorities in play. ###
I acknowledge the Native peoples on whose land I live, write, and teach, including the Multnomah, the Clackamas, and other Indigenous communities in my region of the Pacific Northwest
I’ve been chewing on news about the College Board’s Advanced Placement test in African American Studies that made headlines over the past weeks, trying to sort out my sympathies.
Let me disclose that I worked on a consulting team, revising national communication exams a few years ago, for one of the agencies that administers college tests.
The team consisted of university teachers and researchers across the United States who specialize in media studies.
The group was small: just seven of us.
And while this wasn’t about Advanced Placement exams, the experience left me with admiration for the agency’s desire to create meaningful ways to measure what students should be attending to in media classes.
My first encounter with AP tests was in high school.
I attended private schools that groomed youngsters living overseas to prepare us for American colleges, so nearly all higher-level classes were geared for Advanced Placement: US history, mathematics, biology, French, English, and so on.
If you pass a test (typically a grade of at least 3 on a 5-point scale in those days) then–in college–you may skip the entry-level course and take a more advanced-level class.
In high school I took AP history, French language, and English literature and then petitioned the state college where I later attended in California to “leap forward” into more sophisticated courses because I had passed all three.
And, while I was a good student, I wasn’t exceptional: all my junior and senior colleagues passed their exams: a testament to our instructors who created the classes.
Florida Shenanigans
When I read the governor of Florida wanted to remove the AP exam course for African American Studies from the high school curricula in her/his state, I wondered: Does a governor have power over the classes a student takes?
Can a governor influence the design of a nation-wide exam, like the Advanced Placement test?
Following the threads in The New York Times I learned that, while the governor got a lot of press coverage for fighting with the College Board, state-level educational decisions are made by the home Legislature and Department of Education.
A quick hunt for news stories led me to believe the governor was solely responsible for the AP decision, as the headlines (below) show:
[Note: To avoid feeding search engines with the governor’s name, I use an (almost) anagram—“Stained” when referring to him/her. My rationale for not naming the individual is because I may stoke egos and repeat falsehoods unintentionally].
Here are recent headlines about the AP story:
“Stained” says s/he could do away with AP courses altogether (USA Today).
Essential Politics: “Stained” versus the College Board (LA Times).
“Stained” wants Florida to cut ties with College Board over African American AP test (Forbes).
“Stained” defends banning African American studies course (Politico).
In other words, news headlines imply the governor has sole authority over such decision-making.
Not so.
In addition to inflating his power to make curricular decisions, the governor apparently confuses teaching history with personal prejudices: odd for someone with a degree in history from Yale.
Down and Dirty
The New York Times dug deeply into the conflict, assigning a team of reporters to separate fact from fiction.
Much of the discussion regarding the content of the AP test occurred behind closed doors and zoom calls between the College Board and Florida “officials,” according to the Times.
The 13 February 2023 article suggests the College Board buckled under Florida’s demands (which the Board denies).
Three reporters weigh in on the investigative story, tracing the history of the College Board’s conversations with folks in Florida.
The Times reporters offer details of cause-and-effect after the Board’s revision of the test followed its meeting with Florida officials.
The College Board created a list of issues that ideally should be included in a college course about African American Studies, including historical and current scholarship on racism, identity, institutions, gender and more.
Such issues were woven into a draft AP curriculum based on recommendations from college instructors who teach African American Studies.
The curriculum was then circulated to more educators for input.
But after talking with a Florida team in November last year, the College Board vice president for the AP program discovered the state’s officials lacked knowledge about African American studies altogether, leading him to describe their expertise as politics, not education.
For example, Florida officials asked whether the Black Panther Party was taught as a historical topic, and whether the test was “trying to advance Black Panther thinking,” according to Jason Manoharan, vice president for AP program development.
Manoharan said he explained the Black Panthers were a common part of introductory courses, and “that is not something that we can change or compromise.”
“What became clear very quickly is that these were not content experts,” said Manoharan, who earned a doctorate at Harvard.
Such a revelation suggests Florida decision-makers were poorly qualified to assess the exam.
“I have interacted with many DOEs [Departments of Education],” said Manoharan of his meetings.
The Florida “DOE acts as a political apparatus,” he said, adding, “It’s not an effort to improve education,” the Times reports.
Florida had not given useful feedback about what was wrong with the course, and Manoharan is baffled and frustrated about how to respond, the story said.
Dissecting the Timeline
The Times reporters compared the AP curriculum before and after Florida officials became involved, and found the College Board dropped several substantive areas from the test, despite Manoharan’s protestations that the Board hadn’t caved to the state’s agendas.
Initially, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ and Michelle Alexander’s writings were included in the AP content.
After the meetings with officials from Florida, writings from both authors were dropped.
[Coates won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book, Between the World and Me, while Alexander–a civil rights lawyer–wrote the prize-winning, The New Jim Crow.]
The Times says, “there is a notable political valence to many of the revisions.”
For example, early African American Studies’ AP drafts (which were based on college syllabi from across the country) included “Black queer studies, womanism (a form of Black feminism), mass incarceration, reparations and Black Lives Matter.”
The draft included issues central to African American history, such as structural racism, racial formation and racial capitalism, according to the news report.
“Over the following 11 months, most of those concepts gradually dropped out of the course’s required topics,” reports the Times.
What Did We Learn?
Clearly the New York Times reporters offer a judgment that Florida decision-makers were ill-suited to make curricular suggestions due to lack of expertise and integrity.
And yet changes that suited their agendas were made in subsequent drafts.
After learning that central ideas and key authors were removed from the test, “many African American studies scholars” were “infuriated…for what they view as a stealth betrayal,” the Times reports.
Gone, too, are “groundbreaking Black female writers and leftist activists such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis and Alice Walker, who were included in the 2022 draft,” according to Times writer Dana Goldstein.
Goldstein notes the Black Lives Matter social movement was removed, as was the discussion about how social structures–such as banks, churches, schools, the military, hospitals, entertainment and news media, governments and police–impact all peoples, especially the poor and the disenfranchised.
Legal scholar Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, who posits that individual and social levels of class and gender and ethnicity intersect, was also excised, likely because Crenshaw’s ideas about such intersections (called intersectionality) threaten quotidian thinking.
Now What?
Seems to me the motivation of the “officials”—including the governor—is to ensure their fibs and fantasies driven by tainted and oblique agendas are set in motion in Florida classrooms.
As an educator I have been fortunate that I have had the freedom to develop my college courses without interference regarding the content of what I teach.
I can choose textbooks written ethically by skilled scholars, and I can avoid treatises that are driven by racist and xenophobic agendas.
And I am privileged to teach propaganda and critical thinking to help students witness everyday myth-making.
Educators, parents and thoughtful citizens living in Florida are witnessing first-hand a movement to write a history riven with lies.
We can honor our fellow humans.
We can report accurately on history.
Speak up.
Speak out.
Don’t give up.
Posted 19 February 2023
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
###
In recognition of Black History Month (February) I am posting a brief (6 minute) video about the Greensboro Four: college students who protested peacefully at their local Woolworth store in North Carolina which refused to serve Black customers at its lunch counter. The quartet—Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond—sat at the counter on 1 February 1960 and refused to move until the store closed. They returned the next day. The sit-ins were covered by the news media, word spread, and others began protesting across the American South. The video was posted on the following webpage:
Credit: Christopher Wilson of the National Museum of American History, 31 January 2020, “The Moment When Four Students Sat Down to Take a A Stand,” Smithsonian Magazine (online).
I miss the days when we made garlands with strips of colored paper folded into rings and glued together for the Christmas tree.
In winter we would crack nuts that arrived with their shells intact.
My father would split walnuts by gripping together two in one fist.
Some nuts were impossible to break—like macadamias—whose shells resist bashing and end up whole in the rubbish.
One year, four of us older girls (my youngest sister and brother were still in diapers) discovered we could shuck nuts by placing them underneath the rocking chair.
We created an assembly line Henry Ford would admire: one of us would direct traffic, another sister positioned the nut on the floor, one of us rocked, one of us would gather the remains, and we then shared the sweet meats.
Just Open a Can
As a college student I tried many times to make pie from pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes.
The father of my boyfriend at the time asked me: “Why don’t you just open a can?”
Why not?
Because I liked the sport of wrangling pumpkin flesh: of trying something new, and I wanted to feel more connected to the task.
Kitchen chores and cooking now appear so seamlessly streamlined that a food’s origins vanish.
Spinach comes washed and dried while broccoli arrives in bags with individual florettes.
Peas are stripped of their pods, carrots are skinned, cabbage is sliced and fish are gutted.
Asian Markets
When I visited Hong Kong on a writing assignment in the 1980s, I ventured out one day to explore Kowloon, and found myself at an open-air farmers’ market.
The street teemed with wildlife: frogs of all shapes jumped in grass baskets while chickens and ducks strutted between the legs of vendors.
I tripped over a six-foot eel wriggling on wet concrete.
The best thing about the market was the fish.
They were alive, swimming in tubs, awaiting their fate.
I bought a pound of shrimp that the merchant poured into a bag full of water.
My palm opened so the vendor could choose whatever coins she needed.
Then I heard my name: “Cynthia!”
Diana [a pseudonym], who worked for the CEO I was interviewing, saw me at the market and seemed incredulous I would spend the morning bargaining for fish.
Best part of travel is to wander and explore, and to be prepared for…anything.
I speak no Mandarin and no Cantonese, but found my way through the thicket of the market.
The shrimp pitched around in the bag as I walked home to the guest house, eager to cook my lunch on one of the two electric burners of the stove-top in the smallest-kitchen-in-the-world.
Revolutionary Resolutions
Today, when I want to eat fish or mollusks in Portland, I venture out to the Asian markets for crab or crayfish or mussels or cockles: anything alive.
Once home, I name the creatures, place them in the bathtub, and prepare a boiling broth or hot grille for a quick slaughter.
My treatment of the living comes from Indigenous relatives who have taken time to show me their respect for the lives they seek for sustenance.
One of my great-uncles, who was raised near Pine Ridge in South Dakota, set traps as a young lad for critters: squirrels, rabbits and the occasional bird.
Uncle John would fashion a box-trap, with twine attached to a stick that would trip when a critter entered the trap, which would then ensnare dinner.
My grandmother—raised on the Osage reserve in Oklahoma—told me squirrel was greasy.
But she liked rabbit and would send my mother to the butcher to bring home bunny for supper.
My mother said skinned rabbit looked like a dead cat, which she carried, wrapped in newspaper, with her schoolbooks.
Today’s Milieu
My husband and I buy almost all of our food at a neighborhood grocery store and our Saturday farmers’ market.
In spring and summer we grow lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, beans, squash, potatoes, peas, garlic, onions, berries and herbs that we cook with gusto.
We enjoy a marketplace of abundance.
Still, we acknowledge our separation from farm to table: a journey of weigh-stations and exchanges.
What we don’t see is where we try to place our attention.
For example, my husband now feels he should be a full-time vegetarian due—in part—to animal slaughter: something we don’t witness.
The Revolution of Resolution
I do my best to honor his resolve, which I see as revolutionary.
He revolts against the harm caused when animals are slaughtered for our pleasure.
My resolve is to become more mindful of my flesh-eating habitus and of what we cannot see.
I look around my home.
I see oranges on the kitchen table, wood in the chairs, a gas fire and woolen rugs on the floor.
Each has been built, woven, polished, grown, harvested and shipped to bring comfort to me and my family.
My resolution for 2023 embraces Buddhism: pay attention.
Start a revolution.
In that vein, I hope the new year—2023—brings you a connection to the creation and context of creature comforts, and that you feel the linkage with herbs, flowers and plants; and with the two-legged, four-legged and eight-legged critters that are part of the network that makes life meaningful.
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Photo credit: Stock image from Dreamstime.com
Sunday 15 January 2023
For my pals Jackleen and Dave, who often share their table with us, my husband, and to my families in South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, California, Illinois, Washington, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Arkansas, Arizona, New Jersey, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, North Carolina, South Carolina…other pockets of North America, and Thailand and beyond.
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
This is my kind of housework: I like to see things clean and shine.
A tiny red streak on white fabric catches my eye.
My thumb is dripping blood onto the freshly ironed cloth.
I start a new wash, spraying the bloody napkin with spot remover, find a latex glove for my right hand to prevent the blood from spreading, and then check over my stack of napkins.
The soiled linens are a result of a small gathering we held on Christmas day with friends we cherish.
The blood is fresh, emerging after I washed a newly sharpened knife with a sponge, and sliced my thumb.
Having the sharpest knives comes with caution.
Choosing the Menu
For Christmas dinner, we invited a few friends to join us to celebrate, and I spent days thinking about what I could prepare that would suit both vegetarians and omnivores, and settled on a white bean cassoulet.
Once I’d chosen cassoulet as the main course, the other dishes were easy to prepare without meats: a green salad and a spicy corn polenta-with-peppers-and-cheese to pair with the legumes.
Although I had spent my adult life making countless versions of beans–from Mexican refried pintos to Persian ash soup–this was the first time I tried a recipe for cassoulet with stringent instructions.
The French preparation calls for a long, relaxed warming of the white beans to ensure a fully cooked legume: a process that takes three days.
You don’t just bring the beans to boil: you coax them along, encouraging them to cook–ever so slowly–alternating between a simmer and a lazy stewing.
Purpose is to keep the silhouette of the bean intact, rather than feasting on shirtless beans that bare their nakedness.
Rediscovering the Humble Bean
I had no idea when I embarked on the adventure that the method would bring out the full umami in both meat and meatless dishes.
The recipe urged me to find dried beans if I had no source for fresh beans: that meant beans could be no older than one year.
I live in a hip community and yet I had no way of knowing how long beans have dried and aged.
Best I could do was find a package of beans from a grocer I trust.
Growing up in Iran, we–as children–had the job of picking out the stones from the dried beans and then washing them.
We were instructed to separate bean-from-rock and then rinse the beans three times.
After I returned to the US after graduating from high school overseas, I took my training to heart: When I bought beans, I scoured them for pebbles and washed them three times.
I discovered–over time–that American beans had almost no pebbles and required little washing, unlike those we got in the Middle East.
More recently, I found that technology overtook my vintage bean recipes: you can cook beans in a crock pot or ultra pot and reduce time by-half.
Technology beckoned me, but tradition won out: the cassoulet recipe called for French mindfulness, and I decided to cook the beans long and slow.
My honey-bear, newly vegetarian, helped me out by reading about legumes, and told me the bean-part is called a pulse.
Beans add protein and fiber, plus a host of vitamins to the diet: a recipe for a healthy meal.
Adding corn will supplement the dish with the amino acid methionine, which beans lack.
Uncredited photo from “Krrb Blog” on the website, Thrillist.
Extra Reading
I first read about creating meals without meat in Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 book, Diet for a Small Planet.
Lappé, an Oregon native, writes about the effects of farming and ranching on the environment in addition to ways to eat meatless while meeting nutritional needs.
Indigenous Americans (and other writers) talk about the Three Sisters: beans, corn and squash that, when paired, complement one another as a complete meal.
In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass (2015), Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) reminds readers that beans, corn and squash nurture each other as they grow, a metaphor reminiscent of the interconnectedness of living beings.
And while most of my diet is meatless, I have learned how to prepare delicious chicken, duck and pork, and savor Oregon’s native fish.
For two days, the beans summered on the beans on the stove top.
On the third morning, I prepared a roux of garlic, onions, carrots and thyme for the cassoulet paste.
I took half the beans for the vegetarians and placed them in a ramekin, and broke two meat-free patties I tucked under the beans, covering them with vegetable stock.
The casserole tasted rich but not too salty: my fear of using meatless creations is they pack too much salt.
I then turned to the traditional cassoulet, and lined a porcelain crock with duck breast pieces that had marinated with thyme, salt and pepper.
Although the recipe calls for pork, too, I stuck with duck alone.
I read that the signature flourish for cassoulet is a duck leg atop the beans, so I layer three legs on the meaty dish after covering the beans with stock.
While the vegetarian dish stewed in faux sausage, the meat casserole steeped in duck juice from top to bottom–and bottom to top–for hours.
Once the duck legs are nearly cooked, I placed them in a cast iron skillet and let them bake some more, after draining the liquid from the pot, and setting it aside to let the fat rise from the stock.
I figure the dish absorbed enough fat that removing the excess seemed sensible if not authentic.
The stock was then reunited with the beans–sans graisse–and melded seamlessly.
The kitchen smelled heavenly, laden with umami, and the casseroles were ready before the guests arrived.
We then made corn grits and tossed a green salad.
Everything was ready when out guests arrived, and we ate homemade bread brought by one guest, drank wine gifted from another, and dug into baked brie-en-croute.
I served both versions of the cassoulet: the vegetarian turned out sumptuous and sage-y, while the duck dish melted on your tongue, full of flavor and spice.
The feast turned out to be a delicious adventure and we talked into the long ours of the night while eating home-made jelled dessert.
As we chatted over cookies, one of the guests held up his napkin, saying, “it is too pretty to use.”
I assure him I don’t mind washing them.
##
31 December 2022
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
Blog dedicated to Alistair, Luke & Molly, and, of course, my vegetarian honey-bear.
Uncredited photo from “antique advertising” on the web
I spent Saturday afternoon at a friend’s home learning how to make tamales, a tradition in many Indigenous communities in North, South and Latin America.
She invited a few pals to snack on hors d’oeuvres (deviled eggs, chips and tinned mackerel) and prepared a host of ingredients in advance: stewed pork, cooked chicken, sliced veggies and chunked cheese.
The guests surrounded our host and daughter, watching them make the corn-flour filling, melding masa with lard.
Then we got serious.
We each grabbed a ball of dough (which feels like raw shortbread cookie-mix) and flattened it with our palms.
We then learned how to smooth one-to-two dollops of dough with our fingers–or pressed the mix with an upside-down spoon–flattening the dough onto a corn husk.
Then, we loaded our ingredients on top of the dough: shredded meat or sliced veggies, or a combination of both.
Next came the rolling of the husk around the lump; perhaps the high-point of tamale-making: what the French call le finissage.
I’m told your skill is measured by how well the filling adheres to the husk.
My first effort looked great: a plump cake surrounded by corn husk.
It went downhill from there.
Each new tamale looked skinny and scrawny.
Yet, not a soul sat in judgment.
Our host stripped pieces from an unused husk, creating ribbons to tie the cakes.
Alas: my cakes needed more padding to make a presentable meal.
A glass of sparkling rosé lifted my spirits as I placed the carnage in a plastic bag, which took me back to a dinner with family at my mother’s reservation in Oklahoma.
A relative–who has been kind to me and my family–made a scrumptious feast for us when we visited one summer.
As we munched on our last bites of the Native feast, she invited us to look under our plates, where we found plastic bags.
She explained that when the Osage share meals with others, the visitors are offered leftovers for their journey.
Traditionally the Osage packed snacks in stacking boxes, and the containers are reminiscent of a miner’s lunch pail which you might find at an antique store (a tidbit I learned from my cousin).
When I rolled tamales in Portland, I found myself back in Oklahoma–and thought about my Eeko’s (grandmother) admonition: “always remember you are Osage.”
My Eeko was comfortable in her skin, and rarely treated us kids with sternness.
But on this point—about our heritage–she ruled supreme.
Eeko breathed Indigeneity, even though she and her descendants made homes far from the Rez: a movement fueled by the US government.
Loss of that connection to your heritage gives me pause.
I have learned to look for the Indigenous linkages in everyday living.
Now that I am an elder, I find most encounters warrant a nod to my Native heritage.
For example, when I recently read a story to my grand-daughter, I translate the words from English to Osage or Lakota (at least, the few words that I know).
When I read her favorite book about animals, I tell her: here is Shonka (dog) and here is Meeka (raccoon).
As an Osage I have responsibilities to my tribe, my community, my ancestors and my children’s children.
Foremost among the responsibilities is simply being, acting, and reminding my kin that we are…Indian.
##
Today’s blog is dedicated to my relative Leaf and her family, and to George, Lori and their family
15 December 2022
A note about the photo: Native American imagery, names and customs have long been used to sell products: from butter to tobacco. The Mazola corn oil company, founded in 1911, adopted the image (pictured) early in its marketing, and continued to brand its products as authentic and “pure,” which they paired with Indigeneity, most memorably in the 1970s and 1980s with television commercials featuring Native actors.
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
Photo Credit: Painting of Wilma Mankiller by Lauren Crazybull for Time. Mankiller was featured as Woman of the Year by the magazine in 1985, and Crazybull’s rendering appears in the 5 March 2020 edition.
I was thrilled to learn the US Mint issued a 25-cent coin to recognize Wilma Mankiller.
This week I decided to track down some quarters to share with family as a holiday gift that honors an activist’s efforts to uplift American Indians.
Mankiller became deputy-chief of the Cherokee Nation (Western Band) in 1983, and was elected chief four years later, according to a press release from the Mint.
The election launched her into the national limelight as the first woman ever elected chief of the Cherokee, and she became a sought-after speaker, writer and advocate for American Indians, and for women and children.
In 1998, Mankiller was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom: the highest civilian honor endowed by the Head of State.
And in 2022, the Mint issued Wilma Mankiller coins.
Like many Native families in the 1950s, the Mankillers moved from their tribal home as part of the US Government’s relocation program aimed at mainstreaming Indians.
Mankiller described being uprooted from rural Oklahoma to California’s Bay Area as a “shock.”
She told the Washington Post that, as a youth, she had “no way to conceptualize San Francisco or even a city … We’d never been past the Muskogee State Fair.”
“She became the best kind of leader”
~ GLORIA STEINEM
As an adult, Mankiller would become embroiled in civil rights and community activism, which led to a deep commitment to Native American justice.
But she felt she should do more for her kin and decided to return to Oklahoma in the 1970s.
Mankiller worked tirelessly to win the confidence of local residents and “became the best kind of leader: one who creates independence, not dependence; who helps people go back to a collective broken place and begin to heal themselves,” according to an interview with Mankiller’s friend, Gloria Steinem.
I thought of Steinem as I searched locally for Mankiller quarters, venturing out one afternoon to a national bank’s local office.
I asked the teller if the Mankiller quarters were in circulation, and if she had any.
The teller paused, replaying my request in her brain, and–after several breaths–said she had no idea.
She opened a drawer and fished out a roll of coins wrapped in paper.
“We get them like this, so I can’t see what they look like.”
I was stunned; probably because I figured she could have asked a manager about the Mankillers before shooing me away.
I said thank you and left.
As I played the conversation over in my head, I revised the script and decided to try the local credit union office, which is tucked within a large grocery store nearby.
The teller asked how he could help.
Sweet as pie I asked whether he heard if the “brand new Native American Wilma Mankiller quarters were in circulation” and where I might find them.
Like the first teller, he paused.
Finally he said, “I don’t even know who that is,” and said he didn’t know anything about where to find the new coins.
Coins just … appear.
Clearly the US Mint’s communication efforts miss the folks who work directly with muggles like me.
I decided to change strategy and looked up the US Mint online, only to discover nothing about how to get Mankiller quarters–even though they reportedly began being circulating in June.
A link invites you to “shop now,” where you can find a gallimaufry of collections geared to devotées of all things coinage from John F. Kennedy to Sally Ride.
After a few more searches and I discovered non-governmental sources selling coins.
Amazon will sell you two freshly-minted Mankillers for $9.99 (20-times the face value).
Another vendor sells Mankillers for 75 cents each (three-times the value) or you can buy a five-dollar roll for $10.95 (just over double the face value) –not including the cost to ship to your home.
My brief escapade into the land of coins, commerce and Cherokee politics yielded a Baudrillardian moment.
Philosopher Jean Baudrillard would have described my journey as a melding of the mundane with the hyper-real, where some of the coins in your piggy bank assume a greater-than-their-true value while simultaneously linking commerce with Indigeneity, all wrapped in camouflage.
The Mankiller coin comes full of contradictions, bookended by the upheaval of the Cherokee from their ancestral homelands in the 1830s and by the meaning of cash coins.
The Cherokee territory in Georgia was long coveted by settlers, and the Native people responded by adopting settler customs—including an orthography for their spoken language—and building western-style cabins for their homes in New Echota.
The Supreme Court ruled in the tribe’s favor in 1831, acknowledging the Cherokee as a sovereign nation that is independent from the state of Georgia.
The Cherokee hoped the ruling would curb settler avarice.
But President Andrew Jackson defied the Court and sent soldiers to Georgia and other Eastern territories to forcibly remove all Native peoples.
Cherokee and other Indians were forced to walk at gun-point in bitter weather for more than 700 miles Westward.
Historians contend that some 5,000 Cherokee died on the infamous Trail of Tears.
The Mankiller quarter offers contrasting faces of cultures: one side that appeals to the persistence of Native Americans who survived expulsion, sterilization, poverty and pandemics, and one side that Baudrillard considered a “pure simulacrum.”
Currency—forged from metal or woven from cotton and linen—no longer reflects gold bullion as its nucleus.
Instead, currency “is a sort of ecstasy of value, utterly detached from production and its real conditions: a pure, empty form, the purged form of value operating on nothing but its own revolving motion,” said Baudrillard.
Will the Mankiller quarter diffuse through daily activities or will it fade away like the Sacagawea dollar?
Maybe the Mankiller quarter will invite users to imagine Native Americans in a new light: not as exotic, but as part of the fabric of American society.
Photo: Uncredited Mankiller quarter image posted on Etsy.com under “2022 New American Women Quarter.”
Post Script: Impeached former president Donald Trump drew scorn from some on mainstream and social media for insulting Native American war heroes he invited to the White House. For the publicized event, television cameras framed images of code talkers against the backdrop of an Andrew Jackson portrait. Trump added insult to injury by including in his public comments to the Native crowd a reference to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” a racist slur, according to US Senator Tom Udall.
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5 December 2022
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
My social media bubble encircles friends and acquaintances who are–for the most part–kindhearted.
I’ve grown weary of folks who shame communities online, drawing attention to someone’s weight, faith, dress and even Indian-ness.
Shaming abounds on my Twitter feed, which I’ve slimmed down so much (to avoid vulgarities) that it is emaciated.
Most of my social media friends who are tribal members and others who have Native ancestors (and those who don’t) celebrate the Thanksgiving feast, judging from the grinning selfies and sumptuous table spreads they post.
My mother and all of her family–dating back to the execution of the Pine Ridge reservation–were raised in tribal communities.
And my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother all celebrated Thanksgiving, just like our forebears, who offered thanks for the autumnal harvest.
Rather than dismissing the tradition because of its colonial overlay, I like to think of Thanksgiving from an Indigenous perspective of honoring family and our bounty.
When I see a post from a tribal person that mocks those of us who celebrate the day, I wonder how anger and fear became interwoven with “us” versus “them.”
I am truly tired of the fractures we hear that are bent on dividing communities.
Shameful how some Indigenous folk shame other Native peoples.
And I am embarrassed that I am part of a network of people who practice and study journalism and communication that often embrace–and encourage–the cleavages among the body politic.
When I become queen of the universe I will require the social and political pugilists to find common ground.
I will require that adversaries meet face-to-face across the Thanksgiving table to talk through their problems.
And they cannot leave the table until they reach a modicum of agreement.
That is all.
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Thanksgiving
24 November 2022
I honor the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather here in the Pacific Northwest.
Professor and researcher who studies science communication, particularly issues that impact American Indians. Dr. Coleman is an enrolled citizen of the Osage Nation.
Cynthia (Ištá Tȟó Tȟó) Coleman Emery's Blog 