Playing Indian

My last post talked about ways in which identity and culture were commodities and how they were exchanged through a global market that often put ethnic identities up for sale. In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Linda Tuhiwai Smith adds:

Whilst imperialism if often thought of as a system which drew everything back into the centre, it was also a system which distributed materials and ideas outwards. Said’s notion of ‘positional superiority’ is useful here for conceptualizing the ways in which knowledge and culture were as much a part of imperialism as raw materials and military strength. Knowledge was also there to be discovered, extracted, appropriated and distributed. (58)

This is part of the problem that Smith has with Western research: rather than acknowledging that knowledge and culture existed within indigenous communities before the dominant Western culture (namely, Europeans) “discovered” them, researchers have historically turned knowledge and culture into commodities to be interpreted and appropriated. According to Smith, “The production of knowledge, new knowledge transformed ‘old’ knowledge, ideas about the nature of knowledge and the validity of specific forms of knowledge, become as much commodities of colonial exploitation as other natural resources” (59).

Similarly, visual authenticity acts as a commodity as well. Smith tells a story about an international conference held in New Zealand “to discuss issues related to indigenous intellectual and cultural property rights” and how the reporters wanted to get a picture of the Natives together to publish with the story. They changed their minds, however, when they saw that the indigenous people they wanted to photograph looked pretty much like everyone else. Signs of visual authenticity are still something people look for in identifying Natives—romanticism and stereotype are still very much problems that face indigenous people throughout the world. In the following passage, Smith suggests a reason for this categorization:

Questions of who is a ‘real indigenous’ person, what counts as a ‘real indigenous leader’, which person displays ‘real cultural values’ and the criteria used to assess the characteristics of authenticity are frequently the topic of conversation and debate. These debates are designed to fragment and marginalize those who speak for, or in support of, indigenous issues. They frequently have the effect also of silencing and making invisible the presence of other groups within the indigenous society like women, the urban non-status tribal person and those whose ancestry or ‘blood quantum’ is ‘too white’. (72)

This sounds very much like the cases that Scott Richard Lyons referred to in X-Marks: these visual markers and authenticity tests because tools of exclusion, usually for the other’s profit. Think again of disenrollment and loss of federal benefits.

There’s a flip side, too, for those who do “look Indian”: they are judged as being only Indians, and are expected to conform to the stereotypes. In Chrystos’ poem “The Old Indian Granny,” the narrator shares some of the deplorable conditions of poor Indians, those who society has forgotten.

               

                Sometimes I don’t want to be an Indian either

                but I’ve never said so out loud before

                since I’m so proud & political

                I have to deny it now

                Far more than being hungry

                having no place to live or dance

                no decent job    no home to offer a Granny

                It’s knowing with each invisible breath

                that if you don’t make something pretty

                they can hang on their walls or wear around their necks

                you might as well be dead

This poem from Reinventing the Enemy’s Language serves as a perfect example of the expectations of Indians to perform Indianness. If Indians can’t emulate public expectations of them, they are invisible. Those Indians who are neglected and abused by society are the ones who are apt to live in poverty or succumb to addiction.  Too much social injustice is racialized, and for no good reason (as we’ve seen through many arguments about “touchstones” of ethnic or racial identity).

 The quality of life on many Indian reservations suffers as well; I’ve read of many accounts of Indians being unable to prosper in reservation communities, which often force members of the community to live in squalor and poverty. This is something I don’t really understand, though. I’ve never lived on a reservation, and my nation’s reservation in Shawnee, Oklahoma is a wonderful place to live, stay, and work. Sometimes I wish that I lived on the reservation just so I could be closer to great tribal resources and culture.  I remember reading somewhere once that reservations were poor because the Indians that lived there felt that they needed to represent public opinion of Indian living conditions and culture, so if that meant squandering money and neglecting to pay bills, that was just a part of being Indian. I don’t know if I really believe this, though. What can explain the impoverished conditions of certain Indian reservations?