WHEN IT COMES TO INDIANS, YOU SEE WHAT YOU EXPECT

Today there are a lot more “aboriginals” ( what Canadians call their Native Americans) than there were a few days ago -- not because of birth or immigration, but because of court-ordered redefinition.  When the first laws about who was an aboriginal and therefore entitled to government food, education, grants, and so on, the rule was that a child could only inherit that status from an aboriginal father, regardless of the status of the mother.  The feminists addressed that and the highest court agreed: today status can be inherited from an aboriginal mother, regardless of the status of the father.  Checks are going out soon.

Native American literature is sort of like that.  It is a phenomenon of definition rather than anything you could look at and identify “with the naked eye.”  But it is powerful and it means money, partly because of the fantasies (some say guilt-driven) about Indians and partly because of “pity prizes” given to authors who have suffered and then written about it and partly because of the conviction that Indians are somehow “spiritual.”

General opinion about Indians is split.  Consider a few aspects.  A story in Indian Country Today (http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ ) describes a James Bay Cree man constructing a traditional sweat lodge in his yard for prayer and cleansing.  His Christian Cree neighbors have demanded that he take it down and that no more such stuff be allowed.  What’s remarkable is not the phenomemon, but rather the fact that Indian Country Today, once a local Sioux newspaper, is now a national media network.  Probably an app on iPad.

On Feb 8 Mary Lynn Lukin and her mother Nora will present a slide show at the Blackfeet Community College that will describe the original development of the town of Browning, which is the headquarters of the Blackfeet Tribe.  (Well, the Amskapi Pikuni branch, anyway -- the only wing that’s on the US side.)  Mary Lynn, who has guided programs for Native American students at Montana State University for decades, is very particular and conscientious about facts.  Her mother is aging and they felt it would be a good time to share what they know by witnessing.  

Mary Lynn was one of a group of enrolled women who confronted “Happy Jack” Feder about his version of the 1904 Fort Shaw female basketball team, “Shoot Minnie Shoot.”  He touched up the story here and there, which the women, descendants of the team, did not appreciate.  Happy Jack got his name from his original line of work: clowning and books about it.  (Clowns are considered one of the scariest figures in dreams -- in spite of Red Skelton.  Or maybe because of him.)  Now he has gone to making movies.  “Moonhair” is his first “bow and arrow” effort.  (Google for yourself -- I don’t want to link.)  A white haired woman warrior saves her tribe from evil Indians.  He’s touting this as “a happy version of Indians.”  For children, you know.  NA educators sigh, as they go back to the endless task of convincing people that Indians are real people, not myths, and therefore need funding.

“Happy Jack” had an Indian in his pocket, a self-appointed medicine man who has ripped off a lot of people.  He was enrolled, all right.  At one point he even approached me with one of his schemes -- I would write a book and he would authenticate it for a share of the profits.  There would be no way to know these things if you came in from the outside instead of having been here since 1961.  I’m not naming him because he’s dead.  Maybe that’s a mistake.  He even ripped off the Jesuits.

Neither of these guys made it big on the national media scene.  Aaron Huey, a white man, did:  http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html   People take the pity thing more seriously than they do the mythic thing, but they still don’t see the people involved as real.  Huey is a white man using video to record what he could find walking around: kids, dogs, drunks, wrecked cars.  That's what some people expect.

What is “real” Native American literature?   Consider some of the variables.

1. TIME

1. writing about pre-Columbian Indians
2. writing about pre-contact Indians after whites have come to the continent
3. writing about contact at the time of contact
4. writing about post-contact in pre-contemporary times
5. writing about contemporary Indians
6. writing about only one dimension of a previous time, i.e. a history of boarding schools, a history of the prairie clearances, a history of migrations, a history of pandemics, a history of participants in World War.

1. PLACE

1. ecological shaping:  SW, NW, midwest, east coast, fish-based, buffalo-based, nomadic, gardening, early cities
2. contemporary reservations  (traditional lands, arbitrary forced movement, newly created reservations, kinds of governance, variations in treaty status)
3.  contemporary cities (ghettoes, assimilated people, creation of movements like AIM)
4.  migrations: to the war industries of the Pacific Coast, early flight from east to west to escape disease or just settlers, the ancient migration of cliff-dwellers to escape drought, the migration of Athabascans from north Canada to the prairies east of the Rockies
5. The original arrival of humans, whether coming in over the polar glacier or by boat-hopping along the Pacific coast

1. DISCIPLINE

1.   Paleo-sciences
2.   Psychological and sociological “sciences”
3.   Military history
4.   Epidemiology
5.   Ethnic botany, medicine, science

4.  GENRE

1.   Melodrama
2.   Fictionalized history
3.   Sci-fi fantasy
4.   Novels
5.   Poetry  (Do we count poetry slams?)
6.   Captive narratives
7.   Journals and letters

5.  VENUE

1.   As told to or taped by a white person from someone print-illiterate
2.   Written by a native person in history
3.   Written by a contemporary native academic
4.   Written by a local “naive” native person
5.   Written by a white person pretending to be a native person
6.   Written by a native person pretending to be far more informed than he or she is
7.   Written by an assimilated Indian of either high or low blood quantum.
8.   Written by a person of one-tribe-rez-raised as opposed to a generic Indian.
9.   Journalism by Native people for Native readers, or for white readers.

This is meant to be a suggestive list rather than exhaustive.  There are probably genres and kinds of writers that haven’t even been imagined yet.  What about videographers, who abound and who are often high school kids?  They don’t wait for publishers but insta-pub on the Internet.  No filters.   On YouTube enormously skillful pow-wow dancing as coordinated teams in time to Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Do the Twist.”  What genre is that?

What about blogs?  I’ll only say that PRINT can be an obstacle, because rural and ghetto people don’t have access to enough appropriate reading to internalize the medium.  They DO have the Internet and when they begin to leave YouTube behind, they WILL take to print.  Brace yourself.