Pages

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Reinventing the Enemy's Language (Anthology, Part 1)

 

Source of book: I own this.

 

A few years ago, I decided to add Native American Heritage Month to my themed reading. As part of that, I started looking for authors and books by Native authors. One of those is this anthology from 25 years ago of writings by Native women, edited by Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird - two of the best known female Native authors. Finding a used copy wasn’t difficult, so I added it to my library collection. 

 

The book spans a range of genres: poetry, autobiography, and fiction mostly. Because of when it was compiled, most of the writers are of my parents’ generation or older. This makes sense, as I would have been all of 22 when it came out, so we Gen Xers were not necessarily established writers.

 

I would also say that the writing styles vary quite a bit, as do the emphases. Everyone’s story is different. In fact, I should mention here that each author gives a bit of an introduction to herself. Some of these are very brief, others are longer. All give an insight into the work presented. 

 

As with my poetry anthologies, I chose to read this book in sections. There are four in this book, with the themes of “origins and births,” “challenge,” “transformation,” and “return.” These track closely to the way the “monomyth” works, and I wonder if the editors consciously correlated them. I started with the first one. 

 

The title also should be explained. The uncomfortable truth is that white people in North America have waged a sustained war against indigenous peoples for the last 500 years. Since Colombus arrived with his violence and enslavement and rape and all kinds of other horribles, this has been the constant reality. 

 

From Cotton Mather’s celebration that in killing Native Americans he could also send their souls to Hell, to the long and sordid history of removing Indian children from their families, to the “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” to the destruction of culture and language, the story is the same. The Native American Genocide is the greatest genocide in the history of the planet by just about any measurement, and it, along with Slavery, is our national sin. (Which is just another way of saying White Supremacy.)

 

For Harjo and Bird, English is indeed the language of those who have tried - and often continue to try - to exterminate Indigenous culture and language. The Enemy’s Language. 

 

But, because English is now more than ever the first language of Native Americans, it is also the most useful means of expression. Likewise, in our present time, the written word is easier to transmit than oral traditions, particularly if the intent is to spread the word beyond immediate family and community groups. 

 

As a white man, I grew up in the literary rather than oral tradition. I’m not saying it is better or worse - there are arguments to be made both ways - it is just what I am most comfortable with. In particular, since I have no known Native American heritage, I would be unlikely to have the opportunity to learn from the Native American oral traditions. So I appreciate the chance to do so via the written word. 

 

For obvious reasons, the most I can do is pick a few works to feature. There are quite a lot of them, and I do not mean to imply that only a few are worth reading. Rather, it is a strong collection that I enjoyed very much. 

 

First up is a vignette by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel (Cherokee) about eavesdropping on her parents talking to friends and relatives. She comes to understand their wisdom through what she hears. I liked this line:

 

The story I overheard burned into my mind but I couldn’t share it and give myself away. I was beginning to feel that it shouldn’t be shared anyway. What other silly kid would hide in the barn to overhear grownups talk? Maybe other kids didn’t really care what grown-ups talked about. I cared.

 

That is totally me, by the way. As a kid, I didn’t just eavesdrop, but actively inserted myself into adult conversations. It probably drove my parents crazy, and it certainly set the tone for my later insistence on being treated as an equal despite my youth. 

 

Next up is a fascinating poem by June McGlashan (Aleut). It is a long narrative poem entitled “The Island of Women,” and tells of a sort of utopia, where women are honored alongside men. We tend to forget that many Native American cultures had female leaders, and were in certain ways more egalitarian than the Europeans who conquered. In fact, plenty of mistakes were made by white people who insisted on talking to a man, when a woman was in fact in charge. Anyway, this stanza stood out.

 

Our culture honors women as 

well as men.

A survival technique.

For a woman can be a shaman,

as well as a man.

 

This is a litmus test for me these days - if your religion does not permit women to lead, then it is shit. Straight up shit. And I want nothing to do with it. McGlashan is spot on too: this is a survival technique. Any culture that relegates half the population to a menial role is working with a hand tied behind the back. It is choosing not to utilize a crucial resource. 

 

One of the most thought-provoking pieces was by Scott Kayla Morrison (Choctaw). It is all about names and nicknames. For her culture, names are variable, and change throughout a person’s life and circumstance. Nobody goes by their legal given name, and people often change names as they feel a new name better reflects who they are. Given my own family circumstances, this is a refreshing perspective. 

 

Morrison also notes that the general rule is that anyone without a nickname given by the community is considered suspect. But the exception is that sometimes having no nickname is a sign of respect, as in the case of the author’s Irish mother. It all depends, essentially. 

 

Also amusing in this story is the discussion of how the two competing origin stories of the Choctaw were misinterpreted by “experts.” The author’s aunt tells her, “White people are so funny. You can’t expect too much from them.” 

 

The irony here is that the first two chapters of the Hebrew scriptures - “Genesis” as we call it - are literally two competing and contradictory creation stories. It is a modern (and white) affectation to expect myths to form some consistent and coherent “reality” or narrative, rather than be held together as equally valuable. (As my wife put it, Fundies are just terrible at interpreting the Bible, and this holds true for any ancient form of story as well.) 

 

Later in the story, the author goes to law school, and comes to understand the fundamental absurdity of how white people view minorities. 

 

My “peers” were clairvoyant: they could tell by my skin color how smart I was. They were right, my skin color does show how smart I am. I am smart enough to live in two worlds, two unrelated, unreconciled, and unreconcilable worlds. I had to learn their world, but they would never, ever have to learn mine. 

 

This is one reason I aim to read outside of my own “world” - the white European-American world - and work to learn the worlds of others.

 

Related to this is a line in another autobiographical work, by Janet Campbell Hale (Coeur d’Alene). She is a descendent of John McLoughlin, considered the founder of the state of Oregon. (He married a Native woman, and that story is told in the book.) Her family history is complicated, to put it mildly, with various family members able to “pass” as white, and others not. Here is the bit that really stood out:

 

[My mother] would often instruct me on being a good Indian, the kind white people approve of (and sometimes, when I was a little older, on being the kind of woman men respect). I would feel the resentment rise in my blood. Why should I care? Why don’t they worry about being the sort of person I respect? 

 

Another emotion that I very much feel myself. Because, oh god, my parents and their generation. So much expectation that we would and will continue to “be the sort of person they respect,” all the while having zero interest in being the sort of people their children and grandchildren can respect. It’s one direction only. 

 

The next one is a poem by Jennifer Pierce Eyen (Shawnee). It is presented both in Shawnee and English. I’ll give the English one here. 

 

A New Dream (Wuski A-Baw-Tan)

 

I have seen the rain speak

and the wind dance

 

I have seen the lightning knife

cut the sky

 

I have seen the hills

at the first light of day

whispering secrets

to the Southwind People’s ear

 

I am happy now

I am no longer thirsty

I dance a warrior dance

I am not sick, I am free!

 

This night I dream a new dream!

Now, I come to drink the stars!

 

I’ll end with the introduction to an autobiographical vignette by Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Sioux). I quote it because it is a better expression of why I write than I could come up with myself. It is, perhaps, why many of us write. 

 

I write for the same reason that mountain climbers do what they do: because it’s there. As a younger woman I remember a few dreadful weeks when I wept and raged because all I did was write when there were so many ills to correct, so much to be done. Eventually, I came to understand that the pen is mightier than the lawbooks, and that the image is where the action is begotten. 

 

This is the hope of many of us who stand against the forces of hate, hierarchy, and exclusion which are having a moment here in the Trump Era. Sure, we protest, we vote, and all the rest. But also, since words are a tool that I feel am proficient in using, I do what I can to create those images, those stories that can help change the world for the better. That, and letting others know that I stand with them against the evil that others would do them. 

 

This book is a good read, and worth adding to any library. 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment