WHAT'S A NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE?

When I signed up with the Montana Festival of the Book to read from my biography of Bob Scriver, “Bronze Inside and Out,” I knew I might be assigned to some other role as well, maybe on a panel. And I was, but it was a surprise. The panel is called “Writing from a Native American Perspective,” which is justified by my Lulu.com “Print On Demand” book, “Twelve Blackfeet Stories.”

The other members of the panel are Dorothy Patent and Curly Bear Wagner. Dorothy is a white woman who usually writes animal books for children. (http://www.dorothyhinshawpatent.com/) Curly Bear is the cultural representative of the Blackfeet Tribe and a former student of mine. He doesn’t write, but he talks, which is the traditional Blackfeet way. He was Dorothy’s advisor for her book.

I don’t know whether Curly Bear is aware of the political hot button that might be pushed by this panel. Not the one about “how dare white people write about Indians when Indians ought to be doing it,” but the one that says, “Look -- Indians are not playthings. Associating adults who struggle with major and often tragic dilemmas with stories about little kids and playthings like stuffed animals, toys in the cupboard, is patronizing, demeaning and oppressive.” Here’s a key website for identifying this and other issues in children’s books: http://oyate.org/aboutus.html (Pay no attention to oyate.com, which is a secondary rip-off, not the primary and enduring source of tough ideas.)

In 1989 when I was hired to teach seventh grade in Heart Butte, the assigned readers, tattered as they were, had only two stories with Indians in them. Both were 19th century and both were “cute” stories about Indian children and animals. We threw the readers out and wrote a novel about real life, “One Windy Day.” It’s got death, alcohol, drugs, and rape in it. I think I’ll put that on Lulu.com next.

When something is really VERY hard to deal with -- culturally embedded, intellectually unjustified -- it often becomes split. One half becomes children’s stories: “Uncle Remus,” “Black Beauty,” or “Bambi.” (I just read an article by David Rakoff suggesting “Bambi” was really about the Jewish Holocaust. Podcast version at nextbook.org/salten.) Disney, of course, absolutely thrives on this: “Pocahantas,” for instance. (Truth telling book, “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma,” now being remaindered at Daedalus for $6.98. Online at salebooks.com) “Dumbo.”

What is displaced/suppressed is often ugly and troubling: “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” “Skins,” “Maus,” “Strange Fruit.” Subjects hard to think about and often rationalized. Or just avoided. Or some people get addicted and can think of nothing else.

When I was a computer galley slave in Portland, Robey Clark (another former student) suggested that I monitor NA listservs for him. (NA is Native American -- see, if you use the right euphemism, your heart must be in the right place.) “When they ask you what tribe you are, just say you’re from Browning.” I did that and I was in -- like really IN where there were supposed to be no white people, though some claimed they could smell whites even over the Internet. My consciousness got raised and raised and raised again until I went over backwards and had to be propped back up. I learned a LOT of commodity cheese jokes. And made some excellent friends.

At the same time I was hitting Powell’s bookstore every evening. This was the Nineties, about the end of the Native American Literary Renaissance (Google it and you’ll find out about some great books.) Almost always I could find excellent NA-written books for about $5, so I’d buy three copies, send one to the Browning Public Library and one to the Heart Butte School library (there is no public library in Heart Butte). But first I’d read my own copy and write a review of it to enclose. The Browning librarian (Indian) put all the books I sent together on a special shelf. The Heart Butte librarian (white) hid the books in the store room. “They’ll just steal them,” she said. I taught in that school. I knew who stole books: the faculty.

About this time, Sidner Larson, Jim Welch’s cousin and then professor of Native American lit at the University of Oregon, organized a huge conference -- not quite as big as Joe Bruchac’s “Returning the Gift,” but still impressive. All the main people were there. Joy Harjo brought her sax. It was a rockin’ event! I was totally welcome and Sid has remained a friend ever since.

There is an organization called ASAIL -- Association for the Study of American Indian Literature. Very grad student, very political, very exclusive. I was a member for only weeks before I innocently started a mini-riot and backed out. There was only one politically proper way to think about “Nat lit,” I was told, THEIR way. This attitude somehow got a grip on the genre and it flickered out. Or maybe it went underground. Rolland Nadjiwon is always telling me, “Now we write for ourselves. But you could read it.” (His latest book is “Seven Deer Dancing.” It’s poetry.)

So -- I’m thinking in two directions. I really tire of solemn and sentimental little moral tales about young Indians. That why I wrote my own set of stories that come from every direction, though I sort of finked out towards the end and let them soften a bit. On the other hand, the whips and scourges and cries of “repent” really get pretty tiresome as well. It’s enough to make a person want to go dance with a wolf.

This series of short stories I wrote -- quite frankly written by a white woman -- started with a story about an old Blackfeet woman in the 1700’s when horses first came. She was aghast and thought that dogs had always been good enough before -- the people should stick to dogs. I sent to the story to one of the most vehement of the listserv people, a woman who went by the moniker “Lozen Mangas,” two intimidating names from last holdout warriors in the Southwest. One could understand why she used a pseudonym -- her real name was Patty. She was dedicated to unmasking “plastic shamans” and other white wannabes. (I’ll probably hear from her when this blog hits Google.) With a military background, she was a tough customer. And she loved this first story -- really praised me for it. If she hadn’t, I might not have gone on with the series. I’m not sure she understood I was white. She wasn’t all that Indian herself.

So I can only approach this panel with laughter, scepticism, a wish to achieve some kind of breakthrough, and a hope that Curly Bear doesn’t get a better offer that day.