Growing Up Native American Read online

  Growing Up Native American

  Edited and with an Introduction by

  Patricia Riley

  Foreword by Inés Hernandez

  This book is dedicated

  to the Native American children

  of the past, present, and future

  Contents

  Foreword: Reflections on Identity and Culture by Inés Hernandez

  Introduction

  Going Forward, Looking Back

  “The Language We Know” by Simon Ortiz

  “The Warriors” by Anna Lee Walters

  The Nineteenth Century

  From Waterlily by Ella Cara Deloria

  From Life Among the Piutes by Sara Winnemucca Hopkins

  “Ni-Bo-Wi-Se-Gwe” by Ignatia Broker

  “Wasichus in the Hills” by Black Elk as told to John G. Neihardt

  “At Last I Kill a Buffalo” by Luther Standing Bear

  Schooldays

  From The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe by Francis La Flesche

  From Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions by Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes

  From Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

  “A Day in the Life of Spanish” by Basil Johnston

  Twentieth Century

  From Sundown by John Joseph Mathews

  From Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan

  From The Names: A Memoir by N. Scott Momaday

  “Notes of a Translator’s Son” by Joseph Bruchac

  “Turbulent Childhood” by Lee Maracle

  “The Talking That Trees Does” by Geary Hobson

  “Water Witch” by Louis Owens

  “Grace” by Vickie L. Sears

  “Uncle Tony’s Goat” by Leslie Marmon Silko

  From Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris

  “The Ballad of Plastic Fred” by Eric L. Gansworth

  Acknowledgments

  Other Growing Up Titles

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  FOREWORD: REFLECTIONS ON

  IDENTITY AND CULTURE

  [My grandfather] and the grandmothers and grandfathers before him thought about us as they lived, confirmed in their belief of a continuing life…. [T]hey brought our present beings into existence by the beliefs they held (Simon Ortiz).*

  I am a Nimipu (Nez Perce) woman on my mom’s side, and a woman of Mexican Indian descent on my dad’s. As an educator, a scholar, a poet, and a human being, I identify as a native woman of this hemisphere. I am honored to write an introduction to this collection. I begin with the words of Acoma writer Simon Ortiz because the passage raises questions that I believe are addressed throughout the selections in this book. To begin with, what does Ortiz mean when he says that the grandmothers and grandfathers “thought about us”? How did they think about us? What is “a continuing life”? How did they bring us into existence by their beliefs? Is what Ortiz says common to all peoples? Maybe so, maybe not. The answer reveals itself as the selections herein shed light on the distinctiveness of Native American belief systems, and Native American cultural responses to historical experience. Given the current interest in “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” as well as the changing demographics of this nation, it may very well be that many people of many ethnicities, including recent immigrants from throughout the Americas as well as other parts of the world, will find something in this collection that will speak to them with respect to issues of identity, culture, community, and representation.

  I cannot assume, however, nor should anyone, that the readership of this book will be completely non-Indian. I would hope that this book falls into the hands of many Native American readers who will see the text as a respectful opening into the multilayered and intricate worlds from which they (we) come. I sense that they will find themselves in some selections more than others (which is not a judgment on the selections but a comment on the heterogeneity of “the” Native American experience in relation to U.S. society), depending upon what their own personal experience has been, and what they have been told, if anything, about the experience of their families and their people. There are stories told with the certainty of being brought up as an “Indian.” There are other stories where the contours and distinctions have become fuzzy, sometimes through outright denial of a heritage. As Joe Bruchac says:

  In the face of those denials I felt, at times, like one who looks into a mirror and sees a blur over part of his own face. No matter how he shifts, changes the light, cleans the glass, that area which cannot be clearly seen remains. And its very uncertainty becomes more important than that which is clear and defined in his vision.

  And yet, in Bruchac’s very writing of these lines, he provides a mirror for those who have undergone the same experience. His words, like the words of the other native people represented here, form the mirrors by which the images, of native people come into sharper focus for all of us.

  Native people know that the term “Indian” is a misnomer, but we have made it our own, just as we have made “American Indian” and more recently “Native American” our own, even though in our original languages, each of our peoples had (and have) their own name for themselves and for this part of the earth that is now known as “America.” We refer to each other by the tribe or nation that we are from—that is one of the first questions we ask each other, “Who are your people?” and “Where are you from?” I am Nimipu; in my mother’s language Nimipu means “We, the people.” It is our name for ourselves as human beings. This is so for most other native peoples, as is evidenced by the recent exhibit (August 26—October 19, 1992) of contemporary Native American art at the College of Wooster Art Museum in Wooster, Ohio, which was entitled “We, the Human Beings.” The labels “Native American” or “American Indian” are in the end simplistic generalizations, generic terms, that at best acknowledge the fact that indeed indigenous peoples in this hemisphere did and do have something in common. This book serves to demonstrate some of the ways that we come together, in variation, around themes that are central to our experience.

  What we have most in common today might be called the two major components of our identity. One is our identification with this hemisphere as our original land base, articulated through the oral tradition in the sacred stories of our beginnings, as well as in the stories (or “teachings”) about our sacred principles, our relationship to the earth and all of life. One of the beliefs that all the writers convey is the importance of memory. Ortiz says, “I can’t remember a world without memory. Memory, immediate and far away in the past, something in the sinew, blood, ageless cell.” In remembrance we find continuance; native peoples know this. And as N. Scott Momaday says, the spirit informs the memory* and the one memory is of the land.† Ortiz writes of “the ageless mother pueblo of Acoma.” Ignatia Broker tells us of the “grandfathers and grandmothers who were the dust of the forests.” My own grandfather Ukshanat (Thomas Andrews) used to say that at one time we were all one people, from the north to the south of this hemisphere, which is not to say that we all spoke the same language or practiced exactly the same “culture.” What he meant was that we were (and I would say we are still) all related in our relationship to this particular land base that has always been our homeland. Each distinct “culture” learned (and learns) its form and expression from the particular sacred places or land base that its people are from. And so we have desert peoples, mountain peoples, coastal peoples, plains peoples, lake peoples. These peoples traveled and knew each other; they had established trade routes and complex networks of communication and social relations. That is not to say they did not sometimes go to war with each other, but they also made peace with each other.

  The other common denominator is the historic
al experience of colonization that began to be imposed on us over five hundred years ago, and that is marked by the arrival on the shores of this hemisphere of a man named Columbus who was lost. Columbus, under orders of the Spanish Crown, quickly turned his “mistake” into a colossal feat of Empire, paving the way as he and his men did for what has come to be known as the “Conquest” of the Americas. Simon Ortiz’s essay properly frames this collection, because in it he reminds us to place his own and the other narratives within the context of both the colonial experience, and the resistance movements that were (and are) seeking “decolonization,” including those of “present-day Indians in Central and South America with whom we must identify.” In the main, these selections remember what the guiding principles of the original cultures were as they interrogate and oppose the “right of conquest,” genocide, colonialism, “Manifest Destiny,” the missionization campaigns, cultural genocide, imperialism, stereotyping, and the imposition on ourselves of who we are from the “conqueror’s” perspective. The infamous “Conquest” is not a fait accompli; many native peoples have designated the arrival of Europeans—call them colonizers, agents of colonial (and imperial) rule, settlers, or immigrants—as the “Invasion.” The experience of indigenous peoples at the hands of those who came and “conquered” in this hemisphere is regarded as the “continuing Invasion.” I cannot say this strongly enough. What we have in this collection, in many cases, are stories by or about “prisoners of war”—this is not a statement meant to alarm anyone, or to arouse feelings of guilt in anyone. It is simply a matter of fact.

  We were the enemy. It is one thing to read about this inter-change from the perspective of the “victors,” quite another to read about it from the perspective of those who were defeated militarily and then subjected to indoctrination programs that were meant to “defeat” them in every other way as well. The United States in its westward expansion, justified by the notion of a “Manifest Destiny,” defeated Native American peoples with its superior military technology and seemingly limitless armies. For indigenous people of the U.S. Southwest, Mexico had previously played out its own role as “conqueror” and colonizer. But as Ortiz says, “Aacquu did not die in 1598 when it was burned and razed by European conquerors, nor did the people become hopeless when their children were taken away to U.S. schools far from home and new ways were imposed upon them.” “Forced acculturation”—“brainwashing”—“reprogramming”—whatever the process is called that was imposed at Indian schools, they were, in Lame Deer’s words, “like jails and run along military lines.” But he, like many other Indian youth, refused “to cooperate in the remaking of [him]self.” I would venture to say that he and all of the rest of us who have survived have called on every ounce of our originality to give us the strength and inspiration for what Ortiz calls our “fightback.” This originality is found in the original cultural teachings that honor our humanity, our dignity, and our spirits as necessary components of our identity.

  Momaday says that “[n]otions of the past and future are esentially notions of the present. In the same way an idea of one’s ancestry and posterity is really an idea of the self.” I have heard many elders say that we that walk the earth now are the link between our ancestors and our unborn generations—the past and the future come together in us. Is this idea particularly and only Native American? Of course not, and yet perhaps its particular manifestation is. I know that I am not the only Native American person who relates to the story of Waterlily’s being given the gift of her own personal history. When I read how her memory is nurtured by the “recitals of her early doings and sayings” (Deloria), how indeed her very being in the world is of significance for others as well as for her, I am reminded of my own mother, and of how she was (and is) with me, with my sons, and with my grandchildren. I understand how “having one’s senses” means growing in awareness and responsibility for one’s self and one’s words and actions in relation to all things. For those native people who have been fortunate enough to receive some or all of their cultural understandings, I believe that we would agree that children are sacred and honored members of our communities, as are the good grandmothers and the good grandfathers. There is an intimate, special bond between the youngest and the oldest members of the community. It is common among Indian people to hear children being referred to as “little grammas and little grampas.” When you call a child a “little gramma” you give her a sense of the importance of her place over the generations, just as you acknowledge her ability to teach you right now from the wisdom of her little person’s perspective. Children learn to be attentive because we are attentive to them, as several of the selections in this collection demonstrate so beautifully.

  There are other stories, too, however, that show us the consequences of war, capture, surrender, relocation, and conversion. In Sarah Winnemucca’s story, we see the terror of the children as the whites approach. From the game of “playing buried” in Waterlily’s story, we move to the reality of being “buried alive” in Sarah’s story. And in most cases the transition was just that quick. From the family’s “planting sage bushes over [the] faces [of the children]” (Winnemucca) to hide them from the usurpers, we come to “Joe” being brutally beaten in Francis La Flesche’s story of the Omaha children in boarding school. We also see that even in the midst of their own despair, and their own infrequent but joyous reunions with their families, the young boys know when to be quiet and show respect, as when they come upon the woman who is in mourning. It is a delicate balance that they are keeping, negotiating for their lives in an alien setting that was meant to bring them into line and to destroy every shred of self-esteem that their own culture had given them. These are the stories of subversion and insubordination—what would today be praised as admirable and even heroic if any U.S. soldiers were to become prisoners of war. Boarding schools were (and are) simultaneously sites of indoctrination and resistance. As Lame Deer said, “I came out more Indian than when I went in.” There is something to be said for determination and the ability to be creative in the most repressive of situations. Lame Deer learns “some good fox songs” in the basement that is a place of solitary confinement. In the same manner, just this last year, in 1992, Paiute/Pit River artist Jean LaMarr created a piece entitled We Danced and Sang Until the Matrons Came, which is her own commentary on the subversiveness of children who are placed in boarding schools.

  What is crucial to remember regarding Native American peoples who live within the United States is that in over three hundred cases, the U.S. government entered into treaty agreements with Indian peoples on a nation-to-nation basis. The fact that all of these treaties have been broken and dishonored by the U.S. government is directly related to the fact that the “unfortunately ordinary” problems that Ortiz speaks of—poverty, battered self-esteem, alcoholism, and personal and cultural disintegration—are still with us. These problems do not constitute Native American “culture.” It is not the fault of our “culture” that our communities are suffering as they are today. Our communities are still contending with and contesting the intentional and systematic pattern of unjust treatment that is at the core of our historical relationship with the U.S. government. Worst of all, Native Americans are still denied religious freedom in this society, and for native people, spirituality and culture are inextricably interwoven, so the denial of religious freedom is a direct attack on the culture. Knowing how “to live beautifully from day to day” (Walters) and how to ensure a “continuing life” (Ortiz) have as much to do with spirituality as they have to do with culture. They both have to do with ethical understandings of how to be in the world in relation to all that lives, to all that is.

  What part does language play in the formulation of the idea of the self? Everything. We always come back to language. N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1969, for his novel House Made of Dawn demonstrating his command of the English language in all its beauty. In 1992, Rigoberta Menchú, a thirty-three-year-old Mayan woman a
nd revolutionary leader, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her dedicated work toward a peaceful ending of the repression against indigenous people in Guatemala, and for her conscious articulation of the struggle her people are waging. Menchú, in her own autobiography, states that she learned how to speak Spanish in order to defend her people. The voices in this collection come to us in English, in one of the invaders’ languages. Sometimes, the command of English has cost the very high price of the original native language. And yet, learning the system that is oppressing us, Ortiz reminds us, gives us “the motive of a fightback,” and a major aspect of the system is the language. After all, language has been used against us—the language that ridiculed our naming of the world. The language that has misrepresented us and distorted our faces so that we would not recognize ourselves—the racist language that called (and calls) us “savage,” “heathen,” “drunkard,” “squaw,” or “chief.” The duplicitous language that betrays us in the courts, and tries to keep us fighting among ourselves along bloodlines. The entitled “conquerors’” languages that even tried to erase from us the memory of our own names, replacing them with names in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In many Native American communities our languages are being resuscitated (many were never completely lost). As they are revived, we are revived. This does not mean that we will no longer speak “the invaders’ languages.” We have made them our own, too, and in that sense, we are, like Bruchac, “able to understand the language of both [or all] sides, to help them understand each other.”