Kawlija

Name: Kawlija
Joined On: Jun 07, 2005
Maintag: Kawlija
Age: 49
Occupation: Investigator
Location: Orlando, FL
Currently: Offline
Last seen: 11/22/08

92 Member Points

View Members Homepage

My Gamertags

Xbox 360
Kawlija

My Clans

My Bookmarks

Dybbuk
Raider30
Teufelhunden11
UnwashedMass

Who has bookmarked me?
Brad
Devonsangel
Dybbuk
Falelorn
Fetal
Guardian
thebrigade
UnwashedMass

10/13/08

It's On!

When I was younger and living on the streets, there was an expression whenever a gang fight was going to happen. It's on! (Read: Shit's on!)

Gangs, they were a part of my early life and I ran with some boys that caused a lot of trouble back in the day. Nothing really notorious, but we controlled a neighborhood and rival gangs got the shit kicked out of them when we found one on our turf. There was one night in particular in a supermarket parking lot where I witnessed one guy getting beaten with a car muffler. Ugh. I dropped out of the scene at 15 after spending a week in a cell with a murderer, but that's a blog for another time. Ha!

So what's that got to do with the here and now? Well, it's on. I've been away for a while and there's been a few things building up. I haven't had another outlet for all this so here it is. Ha! When I started this blogging thing a while back, the first 20 of them flew off the cuff pretty easily. Well, some time has passed and I'm about to drop another 20. If you bothered to check out the original line-up, you know I write essays. If you thought you were going to hear a quick note or two about how bad my day was, you better move on. If you're interested in what else is out there? We might have a conversation.

The first thing on my mind today was Columbus Day. Hate that bastard. If you're familiar with my earlier writings, you'll know that as a Native American I tend to be a militant SOB. For Native Americans in general, this is a non-holiday. We have no reason to celebrate his arrival in what he considered the New World. In fact, there are a few groups, including the National Congress of American Indians who are trying to get the federal government to change this to Native American Day. We'll piss off those boys down at the Italian-American dining hall, but hell, we've eaten that share of BS for 500 years. It's time to turn this around.

Here's one of the most recent opinions on this from Indianz.com: http://tinyurl.com/3v89xz

It's just the beginning. I think that in this modern day and age, it's time that the people of this country acknowledge that Columbus didn't discover shit. There were people here who had lived in the Americas for thousands of years before this white boy and his crew dropped anchor on what they thought was a back door to India. (I've since made friends with some guys from India and everytime they see me, I get all these questions about being "Indian" in America that they just can't seem to deal with.) Yeah, Columbus didn't know it, but when he got here, we had a name for ourselves. My tribe called ourselves Ong-we-ong-weh, but other tribes and Natives of this country all had tribal names that translated to the same thing: The People. Ask a Native you know and they'll all tell you the same thing, their tribal name for themselves translates to The People.

Being Non-Native you might think that odd, how almost 600 distinct Indian tribes in the U.S. alone (not to mention Canada, Central and South America), could come up with something that would identify ourselves as The People, but we were "the people" that lived here. It was a collective mindset that connects our people to this day. So when some guy from the Mediterranean stumbles upon someplace that has a few million people here, you can imagine how much a non-event Natives consider this.

It only it hadn't gone so badly after he got here.

But it's not about eminent domain or divine providence, whatever your opinion of what happened afterwards, it's about what do we do now. Wouldn't you agree that after 500 years it's time to recognize the fact that Columbus was wrong? That while he brought attention to what was here, that he wasn't the reason for it? That this nation (and the others of this continent) were RED from sea to shining sea before this bastard got lost?

I could go more into what Columbus tried to do after he got here and the activities that his priests recorded. You may recall Columbus as some glorius figure from third grade history class, but be assured, it was nothing of the sort. He bares the brunt of being the first to have his name recorded as being the one who brought plague and pestilence and war and holocaust to this country. There would have been others had he not gotten here when he did, but for all times, it's this guy.

And on a more pleasant note (Hahahahahaha!), Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian brethren. I'm originally from the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken, Ontario but I grew up in the U.S. I wish I could have gone home for this one. You never know what you're going to get for dinner when I go home, could be moose meat, venison, bear, who knows. You have no idea how much I miss the times when life was simple.

And yes, I was born 500 years too late and I don't know who to curse for that.

Posted by Kawlija @ 10:14 pm EDT | Permalink | 7 Comments

05/02/07

Comments, Obligation and Purpose

First of all, I have to thank everyone who’s taking the time to read my posts. That last one was a mouthful. Ha! I’ve taken the time to surf around some of the other blogs around here and they’re not usually as meaty and certainly not addressing serious topics on a regular basis. Taking the time to read mine, which are more like essays than daily notes takes a certain commitment from you and I’m grateful for it. Look at it this way, I only post every now and then. Ha!

It was suggested to me to do this because someone thought I had a lot to say. As such, I felt that if I was going to do this, it would be a forum for me to address the various issues that affect my people and their struggle to continue as a distinct people. Can you understand that I feel an obligation to do something with this? I’m a little too busy with other things to simply write about my [dull] daily life.

The purpose for writing though, especially in what has to be acknowledged as a predominantly white-anglo forum, is to have other people learn what Indians are like. Arguably, I may not be the best exemplar as I do tend to be somewhat militant when it comes to my people. For me, I’ve suffered too many indignities at the hands of others to stand there and take it anymore. So naturally, I come out swinging and that attitude tends to come out in my writing.

This approach and worldview in Indian country though, is antithetical to what Native Americans as a whole are like. Please believe me when I tell you that most people in Indian country are very soft-spoken and not the confrontational type at all. There’s still a persuasive attitude to take care of our own and keep to yourself. At times, it can be an effort to get our people to rise up and do what is necessary to bring about change.

I’m glad then, to read comments like: “You do your homework, Kawlija! I am constantly reminded of things that happened in the past…” But then this same guy went on to say, “I haven't ever said anything about Native Americans or your blog because this is such a touchy subject.”

I’m doing this to prompt discussion and trying to get people thinking about this stuff. I can only hope that those of you who bother to read my blog do not have any preconceptions about me or the subject matter that would prevent you from commenting. Whatever your opinion of the subject matter, I’m only interested in getting us all talking. Learning is usually an exchange of ideas on both our parts. And besides, I’m not always right. Ha!

Another guy had this to say, “Man, I feel for you. Firstly, because you're getting angry over things you can't control. Seriously. No one wants to listen to a person who's pretty angry over a topic that's so throdden flat, minorities started to avoid it. Secondly, because you're absolutely right, but see my first observation.”

My response to this would be to ask you if the answer would be to stop talking about the things in my blogs? What would that do? Allow me to repeat that for too long my people have been quiet, kept to themselves, and didn’t raise hell while they had suffered so many injustices. Would you make the same recommendation to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton? I don’t think I’m a crusader for my people on their level, but if you don’t hear about it, it don’t matter, right? That’s just human nature. Somebody has to do something to change what’s happening to my people out there.

This same guy went on to write, “…talking about discrimination has become a catch-22 of sorts, since the person fighting the hardest against it, is the one standing to lose the most. In the end, you might make some headway, but you have to ask yourself how high the price is you're willing to pay.” You must be psychic buddy, it’s been a career killer at work and cost me promotions and other opportunities. It hurt me professionally and my family suffered financially. That resulted in an EEO complaint at work which took me 3 ½ years to fight. I still don’t have a lot of friends in high places around here and that was 9 years ago. Ugh.

The blog that prompted the largest response was that last one about my having to document my Indianness. Let me get to the pointed comments from a fellow LEO, “If you were my employee and I [was] your supervisor and you wrote me some giant diatribe over a simple request I'd simply look at you and say "What the f*ck is this crap?" Then I would deny your request until you provided the requested documentation.”

Two things to say to this, the first of which is obvious, where do you get this documentation? Does any culture have a handbook? You can find books that would give you a reference to what you should believe in, but none of them tell you how to dress or wear your hair. It’s just silly to think that any culture would have something like this and I thought the request was B-S from the beginning.

Secondly, while I talk about filing an EEO complaint as a result of the request, it should be apparent that this was the EEO complaint. I filed one years ago. They all have the same format. The only thing missing from this lengthy diatribe was the first paragraph that said, “I have been wronged because…” and the closing paragraph that said, “…and this can be resolved by allowing me to grow out my hair.” I think it was recognized as such because it was never brought up again. I struggled for weeks how to tell these people they were full of crap and decided on a pre-emptive strike.

Then there’s some historical background behind the next comment that the writer could not have known about. “Where is your common sense? A company (or agency in this case) has a right to monitor their employees dress and presentation. When allowable exceptions can be made based on such things as religion or in your case historical custom. That’s fine and dandy, but it also makes sense that when allowing for such an exception a request and a reason is provided. Simply stating "I'm Indian and I want to wear my hair out" *shouldn't* cut it or else any Tom, Dick and Harry could make the same argument.

The background to this is that I wasn’t the first person in the office to ask for this. There was another officer here who, for the last 12 years, has worn shoulder-length hair. He’s also a traditional dancer and has performed for management during Native American heritage events hosted by our agency. Management here was equally aware of my work with the Native American community as this other officer. They’ve made arrangements for me to attend the National Native American Law Enforcement Association conference in order for me to represent our agency. For whatever reason, I got singled out for something the other officer wasn’t requested to produce 12 years ago.

I didn’t exactly feel splattered with mud when this guy went on to write, “If you want people to understand your culture and respect your culture, as I believe you do, it would be more beneficial to be less of a lecturing, antagonistic and arrogant jerk and more of an ambassador and teacher. (I'm not necessarily saying you are a jerk but frankly that’s how the above comes off.)

Fair enough. We’ll see how that advice works in future blogs.

Posted by Kawlija @ 10:23 am EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

04/23/07

Prepared to Document My "Indianness"

My federal employer, ever since the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, has allowed Native American employees to grow out their hair as is customary with the men of my culture. I already new several officers from across the country who had shoulder length hair or longer. To my utter shock, when I submitted my request for this workplace accommodation, I received the following message [through channels]: …this waiver unfortunately, must be supported by some sort of certification from a tribal official attesting to the cultural significance of the length of men’s hair for your people. That’s what I was told verbally and below is the only written guidance I was provided:

“As to documentation, if as I suspect this waiver will be based on cultural

tribal considerations, a statement should be submitted from a tribal official

about the significance of the hair style/length/adornment. Could you

emphasize to Officer Davis that to receive full consideration of his waiver

request he would need to submit a statement from a tribal official?”

WTF?! I have to have a tribal official write a note to inform them that this is a common practice among Natives?! I suspected they didn’t want to document this to me directly because they didn’t want an EEO complaint filed against them so I was informed of this secondhand. This is the government and they didn’t want a paper trail? Hmm.

As you can imagine, I had a variety of things to say upon being informed of this but thought better of it. Like a good company man, I wrote to my tribal council and asked for this [silly] letter. I knew I wouldn’t get a response and I didn’t. (This was despite having a first cousin on the tribal council. Ha! If I really wanted, I could have gotten a letter from them that said anything I wanted it to.)

I waited 30 days before submitting a second request sans the tribal certification. As you might imagine, I used those 30 days to craft the letter that follows to my agency. The manager that requested the certification apparently only speaks governmentese, so I replied in kind with some legalese he might understand. See if you can read between the lines:

Dear Sir:

It should not come as a surprise that asking for specific, detailed information on Native American religious and cultural practices would result in a somewhat lengthy dissertation on the subject. With that in mind, the material presented herein was kept to a minimum but with a concentration on several multifaceted, salient issues.

Religious freedom is an emotional and sensitive issue. Historically and constitutionally, the paths of those who worship in an unorthodox fashion have been strewn with hardship and harassment. When the complexity of a religious issue is compounded by the fact that it involves unfamiliar practices, such as are found within traditional Native American religious and traditional practices, the burden of substantiating these cultural attributes can be heavy. In attempting to accommodate Native American traditional and religious interests, the government and its employees are faced with numerous questions that have not previously arisen in conjunction with religious practices.

Perhaps the biggest complication is that tribal religions and cultural practices for the most part, do not have institutional structures comparable to Christian churches, Jewish temples and other organized religions. Religious freedom is an autonomy that most people living in the present take for granted. For most it is a right that they have never had to question. For example, if a westerner wants to practice Catholicism, study the Koran, or even master the art of Zen Buddhism he or she is free to do so without suffering any consequences. This is not true for the American Indian.

Religious freedom has become more of a gift given to the Indians from the United States government rather than a birthright. In the last two hundred years, the white mans’ desire to assimilate the Indian in to their own culture by refining them through religious persecution can be well noted from the times of the early Spanish settlements all the way through the arrival of the French, English, and ultimately the colonization of the Americans.

All four above mentioned groups, with their own religious beliefs, felt that to educate the Indians upon their “God” was an equitable rationalization for taking Indian land, leading to the absorption of the American Indian into the dominating cultures which surrounded them. As a result of the paternalistic attitudes brought with the European colonizers, the Native American religions were forced by law into partial extinction.

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 (A.I.R.F.A.) was created to protect the religious rights of American Indians living under the oppression of western society. For Indians, religious freedom can be seen as their life-blood. It is not a practice seen as a duty they must fulfill to be granted passage into a “heaven” by congregating into a sacred church on Sunday. Religion is their way of life and without it they lose their heritage and ultimately their true identity as a unique and individualistic culture.

Indigenous cultures, not only in the United States but around the world, are often perceived as remnants of primitive life that should be abandoned for assimilation in today’s modern society. The United States historical suppression upon the traditional “pagan” religious ways of the American Indian can be traced back all the way to the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Although the immigrants came to this land in search of religious freedom and base their nation upon it, they were reluctant to see the hypocrisy of their own actions. One need look no further than the Constitution itself to find this to be true. Within the First Amendment of the United States Constitution it clearly states that, “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and should have ruled out the need for the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978.

On August 12, 1978 President Jimmy Carter signed the bill into law. He recognized the bill’s vital justification by stating, “In the past Government agencies and departments have...denied Native Americans access to particular sites and interfered with religious practices and customs. It would now be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve the inherent right of American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian people to believe, express, and exercise their traditional religion.” The act, Carter continued, was “in no way intended to... override existing law, but is designed to prevent Government action that could violate... constitutional protections.”

Indians are uniquein being the only group specifically identified in the Constitution, and this has meant that they have been regarded not as a racial or ethnic group like others, but as a distinct political entity or series of entities. Each tribe has specific historical relationship to the federal government, and all efforts to obliterate that relationship have been resisted. Now that unilateral termination seems to have been discontinued as a possible course of action, the most urgent task is to define how Indian communities, whether on or off reservations, can best overcome the effects of years of maladministration from outside.

Your office has requested detailed background information from at least one authoritative source on the cultural tradition relating to the hair length of Native American men. Similar situations have arisen before.

“The contemporary problem,” says Vine Deloria, (notable Native American author and historian), “is one of defining the meaning of tribe. Is it a traditionally-organized band of Indians following customs with medicine-men and chiefs dominating the policies of the tribe, or is it a modern corporate structure attempting to compromise at least in part with modern white culture?”

The definition of tribe has also been a relevant issue in recent legal disputes. The argument in the case of the Mashpee Wampanoag Indians’ claim for land on Cape Cod in 1977-78 revolved around whether they were a tribe at key points in their history. They were required to produce a chief and medicine man, as well as expert witnesses about their past. Clearly some fuller definition than this must be found, especially for smaller or less traditional groups, a definition which offers the possibility of a new relationship with white society and government.

The contemporary issue here revolves in part around the lack of exposure of the leadership of the ruling agency in this matter to American Indians and their diverse traditional culture. Many long-term employees have not previously been evaluated in regards to their “Indianness” and how this impacts their sense of self and uniqueness while they conduct themselves in the workplace.

Given the request for accommodation under the grooming standards, how much “Indianness” is considered requisite by management to allow the accommodation to be afforded to an employee who claims Native American heritage? Initially, the employee was instructed to provide proof of tribal enrollment and simply attach it to a written request to be afforded this benefit.

Had this been the sole criteria for eligibility for this accommodation, the issue would have been considered resolved by management and the employee informed that their request was approved. Management though, at least on the face of it, is reluctant for whatever reason to grant this type of employee benefit. What management may not have considered heretofore is that Indians will define themselves to themselves rather than be defined culturally by stereotypes, economically or politically by paternalistic administrations.

Whereas white majority have tended to define Indians by specific attributes and behaviour, research into groups of Indians at apparently very different degrees of acculturation has shown that the sense of being Indian, and of identifying with a continuous culture, can be just as strong amongst those with fewer of the traits that whites identify as Indian. Identity and group-identity may thus be formed from within rather than identified from outside. The various ways of being Indian should not have to include living up, or down, to majority stereotypes, and must rest on their ability to maintain or develop independently their economic, social and cultural resources.

Cultural ties, social and civic involvement, traditional and religious practices and beliefs of the employees involved is not being questioned. In fact, in many cases, management is keenly aware of the involvement of the employee in their traditional Native life. No, what’s being questioned is what specific detailed information from the Native American cultural traditions can the request of a Native American employee asking to groom his hair in a traditional manner be based on.

For a Native American employee requesting a benefit from his employer who desires not to be confrontational in this matter, the answer to that question must be as clear and deliberate. As clear and deliberate as the anticipated claim by management that this request for detailed information is not based in culturally deprived misconceptions, a lack of understanding of the issue of self-identity, or racism.

Consider that in the wake of Native American employees across the country having attempted to avail themselves of the accommodation under the grooming standards, they have communicated among themselves, the progress of these requests. In discussing this issue, no one has come up with a single case of a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Asian, African, or Hispanic-American having to substantiate their traditional, religious or cultural background and values in order to avail themselves of any ethnic or religious accommodation in the workplace. (You’ll acknowledge that consideration is commonly provided for employees who ask for time off for religious or cultural events and celebrations, or that permission was granted to wear a yamulka in the workplace, for instance, commonly without having to establish a cultural link to obtain this benefit.)

Anthropologists suggest that there is no such thing as "race" or a "human race type." What is commonly called racism is actually cultural markings of and assumptions about "the other". Physical traits and "race," change individuals into "us" and "them". We deal with others along such divisions, and assume certain characteristics-negative or positive-about these groups.

American Indian and Alaska Native people experience racism in many of the same ways as other minority groups: prejudice and discrimination because of racial distinctions and color. But Native Americans can also experience an added prejudice unique to them: Being Indian involves not only race, but also being part of the political and governmental unit of a tribe, pueblo or village. Therefore, racism as experienced by Native Americans involves what may be called a form of "nationalism", or the failure of the dominate society to recognize the sovereign powers of Indian governments.

The National Council of Churches and others define racism as prejudice plus power. Racism is the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate and exploit others, based on the unexamined assumption of the other's inferiority. Racism may be used to impose one group's cultural heritage on others, or used by institutions to reward and penalize. Racism is enforced and maintained by social, educational, legal, cultural, political and economic standards which are defined and controlled by the dominant culture, and is used by the majority to deprive a group of people, such as Native Americans, of their rights.

This conversation could spiral ad infinitum into racial stereotyping in sports and media and it’s prominence in today’s society, but we’ll leave that aspect of this discussion to the National Coalition Against Racism In Sports and Media. See their website for the Native perspective on this issue. http://www.aimovement.org/ncrsm/

Having mentioned media though, be it movies, television, books, photography or other representations and depictions of Native Americans, wouldn’t you agree that it is widely accepted that the Indian males are always seen in long, shoulder-length hair? How can it be possible that anyone in this country would claim to not be aware that Native American males with long shoulder-length hair (or longer) is a socially accepted norm for the culture? I could offer any number of stereotypical depictions of Indians from sports and media or simply offer an Indian head nickel for you to examine.

Some exploration of the issue of traditional culture and the prominence of the long- haired Native American males that may provide some background on the current application for accommodation, are those cases where long hair became an issue at school. See below for the applicable portion of the case and this link for more.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=us/414/1097.html

There was an opinion voiced by school officials that allowing petitioners to wear their hair in an Indian manner while restricting the hair length of white students would somehow be 'disruptive,' in that an 'integrated school system cannot countenance different groups and remain one organization.' But as we noted in Tinker, this Court long ago recognized that our constitutional system repudiates the idea that a State may conduct its schools 'to foster a homogeneous people.' Id., at 511.

In Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 402 , the Court said:

'In order to submerge the individual and develop ideal citizens, Sparta assembled the males at seven into barracks and entrusted their subsequent education and training to official guardians. Although such measures have been deliberately approved by men of great genius, their ideas touching the relation between individual and State were wholly different from those upon which our institutions rest; and it hardly will be affirmed that any legislature could impose such restrictions upon the people of a State without doing violence to both letter and spirit of the Constitution.'

And in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 , we stated that:

"The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.' Shelton v. Tucker, [ 364 U.S. 479 ] at 487 [, 5 L.ed.2d 231]. The classroom is peculiarly the 'market-place of ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth 'out [414 U.S. 1097 , 1101] of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection."

The effort to impose uniformity on petitioners is especially repugnant in view of the history of white treatment of the education of the American Indian. In the late 1800's, at about the same time that the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 fragmented Indian tribal land holdings and allotted land to individual Indians with the effect of breaking up tribal structures, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) began operating a system of boarding schools with the express policy of stripping the Indian child of his cultural heritage and identity:

Such schools were run in a rigid military fashion, with heavy emphasis on rustic vocational education. They were designed to separate a child from his reservation and family, strip him of his tribal lore and mores, force the complete abandonment of his native language, and prepare him for never again returning to his people.

Again in 1944, a House Select Committee on Indian Affairs offered the same recommendation for achieving the 'final solution of the Indian problem':

'The goal of Indian education should be to make the Indian child a better American rather than to equip him simply to be a better Indian.'

A massive study by the Senate Special Subcommittee on Indian Education, 'Indian Education: A National Tragedy-A National Challenge,' S. Rep. No. 91-501, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., reviewed this policy, which it found rooted in a 'self-righteous intolerance of tribal communities and cultural [414 U.S. 1097 , 1102] differences.' Id., at 21. The Subcommittee found that many teachers in BIA schools 'still see their role as that of 'civilizing the native.' . . . One consequence of this unfortunate situation is a serious communications breakdown between student and staff and a serious lack of productive student-staff interactions. '. . . BIA administrators and teachers believe that Indians can choose only between total 'Indianness'-whatever that is-and complete assimilation into the dominant society. There seems to be little if any understanding of acculturation processes or the desirability of 'combining a firm cultural identity with occupational success and consequent self esteem."

Native Americans have always been the disappearing minority. This great continent was ‘red’ from sea to shining sea at one time but in these modern times, we have been reduced to 1% of the population of the United States. Another fact that modern day Indians have to face is that in order to make a living and to provide adequately for their families, they are required to leave the reservation or ancestral lands and progress through the modern society and workplace, wherever that may take them.

So how does one maintain their own sense of “Indianness” in this modern society and workplace? How could one be prepared to document to any degree, what they consider their own “Indianness?” If, in order to accomplish this overly burdensome task, we had to document in detail, our social, cultural and religious ties to our own families and communities, we would be glad to do so; but, it may effectively double the amount of documentation you’re reading as a result. Who could best be the “at least one authoritative source” on our cultural traditions? It is my firm belief that the authoritative source you seek is the employee in question.

"It is about respect--respect for everybody. In our understanding, the Creator made everything. That's all we're told. He made everything. And since he made everything, then you must respect everything. That's simple. And so as I look upon you, I know the Creator made you; I know that you're equal. You're equal in every way to us. And I respect you because you are a manifestation of the Creation. But, the law says that you must respect us as well. In this basic respect is peace. That's what's called community. Unfortunately, in today's time this does not occur. And so what I am talking about now is respect for our people's ways. Our land, our language, and our culture have been taken. Don't try to take our religion. We need that respect."

Oren Lyons

Onondaga Faithkeeper

Words of Power: Voices From Indian America

Fulcrum Publishing, 1994

Background material on the foregoing was obtained at the references cited below unless otherwise cited above. All are worthy reading (and require a minimum of your time to review), versus several books we could recommend (which would require some contribution of real time on your part). In short order though, they offer a glimpse of various aspects of the current socio-cultural Native American paradigm.

Respectfully submitted,

Arizona State University

Journal of American Indian Education, Vol 11, No. 1, originally published in 1971

Search For Identity Creates Problems For Indian Students

Author: Gene Leitka

Available at: http://jaie.asu.edu/v11/V11S1sea.html

California State University, Long Beach

Native Americans and Religious Freedom

The Case for a Re-Vision of the First Amendment

Authors: Karen Rasmussen and Craig Smith

Available at: http://www.csulb.edu/~crsmith/indian2.html

Nevada State Library and Archives

Department of Cultural Affairs

The People: Native American Legacy

The Weave of Deception: Why Stereotypes Have Developed With Ideas On How To Alleviate Them

Available at: http://dmla.clan.lib.nv.us/docs/nsla/lpd/srp/people/chap1.htm

British Association of American Studies

Modern Indians

Author: David Murray

BAAS Pamphlet #8, originally published in 1982

Available at: http://www.baas.ac.uk/resources/pamphlets/pamphdets.asp?id=8

The Pluralism Project

Research Report

Native American Religious and Cultural Freedom: an Introductory Essay

Native Peoples’ Traditions

Author: Michael McNally

Available at: http://www.pluralism.org/research/profiles/display.php?profile=73332

Indian Law Resource Center

Racial Justice Lawyering on Behalf of Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples

Author: Robert Coulter

Available at: http://www.indianlaw.org/Papers_Racial_Justice_Lawyering.pdf

Posted by Kawlija @ 8:14 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

04/10/07

Duality

This past November, I had the good fortune to meet a very charming and attractive young lady. Many things about her appealed to me; she was a smart, professional woman, divorced, but was well established in her life. I think we found it very comfortable in each other’s presence and candor and straightforwardness if anything, made us closer. After just a day or two though, I got caught up in some work and while she was around the whole time, I was much too busy to be able to spend as much time with her as I would have liked.

It’s hard to be delicate about this, but I was very attracted to her. Unfortunately, my feelings for her would change drastically by Wednesday night. The problem was that this woman was Indian. Normally, this would be a clinching factor (ha!), had I not found out something else about this woman: she was a traditional.

Modern life for Native Americans is tough. The biggest factor we have to deal with in our every day life is a duality that most other Americans know nothing about. This duality is the burden on Indians to try to maintain the old ways. Live according to the life-ways of our elders, practice our religion and ceremonies, and pass this and the knowledge of our culture on in perpetuity to our children. We affectionately call this following the red road.

The red road is a hard one if you’re an urban Indian like myself and grew up in the city. While my belief structure and outlook on life is very Native in context, actually living up to that is extremely difficult. For one, I’ve moved away from my reservation and the tribal groups which nurtured me. I often feel abandoned and alone in a way that being surrounded by everyone else where I live cannot placate. I am lost to my people.

I was washing dishes one night and my daughter was drying. Out of the blue, my daughter asked me, “Dad, how come you never go to church?” (My wife is a practicing catholic and our children, when they were younger, attended catholic schools.)

This one cut deep because it brought to the forefront of my mind how separated I am from everything that made me Indian. I told my daughter that since we moved away from home, there was nowhere for me to go and attend any kind of services (actually, ceremonies), in order to be with the people that practiced my religion. Since she had not seen me praying or going to church with her and her brother, she was curious about what I thought about religion.

I reminded my daughter that when we last lived home nine years ago when her and her brother were much younger, I took them along with me whenever we visited the reservation or went to pow wows. She recalled how she had seen me dance before and we went on to have a nice talk about the longhouse traditions.

The burden of this duality then, I have been unable to pass onto my children. They have grown up and come of age without any real Native-centric exposure or participation. They only know they’re Native because I told them so.

In the Iroquois culture that I grew up in, women were very much the equal to men. Their good counsel was sought on every important issue and traditionally, the elder women were the ones who picked the wives for the young men in the tribe. Women are revered as birth mothers akin to mother earth.

So this issue of duality came back to haunt me. As much as I was tempted by this other woman and found her so attractive, I found out she was a traditional when she appeared in full dress at a Native celebration held Wednesday night.

She was beautiful. I think I was actually speechless when I saw her dressed for a night of traditional dancing. I was wondering if she caught me staring at her at one point.

From that moment on though, I could not think of her in the same frame of mind I had just earlier that day. In her own way, she was doing something that I have been unable to do and that just seemed so much more important to me than any hormonal imbalance I may have been having up to this point. I found myself respecting her to an extent that I had not before.

Our conversation that night turned to dancing and her following the traditional pueblo ways. Listening to her, my thoughts turned to feelings of my own worthiness in her presence. She was living as I hoped I could live and once again, I felt lost.

About 20 years ago, I was riding the bus home from work one night when another Indian got on. As he walked past me, he said something to me in Mohawk. He was much younger than me, but when I greeted him in English, he just frowned at me and said, “You don’t speak your own language, do you?”

I still don’t. I still battle each day with duality and it’s effects on me. I try to stay true to the path. I try to preach to my children and keep the Good Mind.

The red road though, it’s hard.

"Do you know or can you believe that sometimes the idea obtrudes...whether it has been well that I have sought civilization with its bothersome concomitants and whether it would not be better even now, to return to the darkness and most sacred wilds (if any such can be found) of our country and there to vegetate and expire silently, happily and forgotten as do the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. The thought is a happy one but perhaps impracticable."

Ely S. Parker

(1828-1895)

Seneca

Iroquois Confederacy sachem, and

Brigadier General, U.S. Army

Posted by Kawlija @ 5:56 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

04/04/07

The Apple

I don’t just run my mouth in a blog, I’ve been doing this for a while. I was giving the guys at work some grief one day when one of them said, “You’re always shooting your mouth off about minorities, why don’t you become an EEO officer?” I work for the federal government as a uniformed officer and each office has people designated as Special Emphasis Program Managers. That’s governmentese for an EEO representative. SEPM’s are then chosen to represent Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and women. About two weeks after this conversation, I was sent to a weeklong training to become the Native American SEPM for my office.

Essential duties of the SEPM include recruiting and a limited amount of counseling for my co-workers who may have EEO issues. As luck would have it, no one had really tried recruiting the Indians to work for the government before so my EEO goals were relatively easy to accomplish.

At the time that I had gotten involved in the EEO program, I was actively involved in a variety of Native issues and already knew a lot of people in the surrounding community and across the state. Since no one had reached out to the Natives before, reaching quotas for obtaining contacts and soliciting of applications was too easy. Our people were hungry for work, just like everyone else.

But this story’s about the apple, not the government’s efforts to hire Native Americans. (Thank goodness, there isn’t a lot of that.)

So I go to Syracuse University for a big job fair one year. I’m working the room, grabbing people by the arm to get them to talk to me, and at the end of most job fairs, my voice is hoarse and my throat is sore from all the fast-talking I have to do. Really, these kids are walking by the table and you have like 10 seconds to get them to come over to see what you have on your table to give away. You need to talk fast.

A few college kids are standing in front of me and there’s this one young black man standing behind them, intently listening to what I have to say about working for my agency and obtaining a federal job in general. His friends picked up some of the literature I had on the table and were about to leave when he finally says something to me.

In his thick Jamaican accent, the young man said, “You’re nothing but an apple working against your own people. You’re a buffalo soldier.” He had heard me talking about hiring minorities and that I was Native and it was obvious from his impression of me that I had been turned against my own.

This kid knew some history. If you’re not familiar with the term “buffalo soldier,” this name was given to the black units of the cavalry that fought against the Indians in the settling of the west. The nickname stuck and eventually, Buffalo Soldiers were the Army’s designation for the all-black units.

It was the “Apple” thing though. That one hurt. Calling an Indian an apple is calling him red on the outside and white on the inside. This is one of those rare instances where I was at a loss for a response. Some other kids came up to the table and the Jamaican kid walked off, talking to his friends about me. I could only imagine what he told them about buffalo soldiers and apples.

This bothered me all day. Ever have some little comment you just happened to overhear or said directly to you that just sticks in your craw? I had a couple of hours to think about this one and then it was time to tear down my displays, pack the goodies I brought with me and head for the long drive home. I have to walk through the cafeteria to get out of the building and I’m lugging two big boxes when I spot my Jamaican buddy sitting at a table all by himself. He was reading and didn’t spot me coming.

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure,” he says.

“It’s one thing to demonstrate in front of the police station and wave signs and complain how your people are treated when they’re stopped driving while black or arrested or shot during an arrest. If you think that’s how you can best effect change and do right by your people, you keep waving your sign.”

I didn’t stop. I had all afternoon to think about what I wanted to say to this kid.

“Who do you think is in a better position to bring about change, you standing on the outside on some street corner or me on the inside? I get to sit in the patrol car next to my partner and explain to him what our culture is like and how they might respond or feel about what we do on the job. And it’s not just my partner, my whole department learns what Indians are like because they work with me. Hopefully, I can get to get my co-workers to respect Indians because of the example I lead so that the next time one of us is encountered, there might be some hesitation to taking some kind of strong-arm tactic and finding another solution. I think being on the inside is a better deterrent to getting my people beaten or shot than just shouting and waving some sign. People do what they can to bring about change. I am.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

From the look on his face, I think I may have won back some respect from him. I told him I had to go and we shook hands. The long drive home was easier than I thought it would be.

Posted by Kawlija @ 5:42 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

1 of 5 of 24 First | Prev | Next | Last |

Send PM Bookmark?