I Have Questions: Learning About Indigenous Studies, Lesson 3
This summer, I’m taking a deep dive… into Indigenous Studies. I’ve explained my reasons elsewhere, but a few have surfaced this week as more urgent than others. Now that I am attuned to the subject, I see it everywhere. However, frequency illusion, as it is called, doesn’t work quite so well when your main subject is consistently erased.
Last week, I focused on history as a way to get some clear grounding for literature. My goal was to begin understanding the past and the context for Indigenous cultures from the perspective of Indigenous cultures. This week, I had intended to begin looking at literature. But, my learning veered off course. My perfectionism manifests as rigidity so, I was certainly frustrated. But, I think this so-called detour usefully brought my attention to the importance of now.
What had happened was…. I began listening to and reading news from Indigenous people. Initially, this was supposed to be background information as a way to understand, through some degree of immersion, how Native peoples understand today’s most pressing issues and how their perspectives differ from the ones found elsewhere.
I have to cop to the fact that I borrow this learning technique from my K — 12 Spanish classes. We were assigned thirty minutes of listening to Spanish language every day. We could choose, of course, between radio, telenovelas, and news. I began with Spanish language radio in the morning and finished up my homework with telenovelas (Soñadoras and Mujeres Engañadas) and the noticias en Telemundo (then hosted by Jorge Ramos). These habits of listening provide the same opportunity now as they did then: remind me that my perspective in the world is not singularly important and people can speak for themselves. I ought to just listen.
Thanks to a few useful listicles (one on podcasts and another on news sites), I found several Indigenous News sources and podcasts. I am curious to know where you get your news and whether it includes Native perspectives and voices. My favorite podcast so far is Native Opinion, featuring Michael Kickingbear, of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, and, David GreyOwl, a member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama. In episode 299, they won my heart by calling out Oprah for fake outrage during the Harry/Meghan interview. David GreyOwl intones, “I’m going to direct this to Oprah. The way it landed with me initially is what I would describe as fake outrage What? They said that. C’mon.” He goes on to point out that the interview was a partnership between OWN and CBS, generously allowing for the fact that they were concerned with ratings. But, as he says, “in a million years, you will never convince me that [conversation about Archie’s skin color] shocked Oprah Winfrey, as a woman of color.” I deeply appreciated the incisiveness of the critique. We must trace the money. I was also pleasantly surprised by the honesty about Oprah. In other news media, critiquing Oprah Winfrey is taboo, but I appreciated the honest assessment of the dynamic, that is, what we see happening when people of color have certain conversations in front of white people.
Another episode of Native Opinion really impressed me in David GreyOwl’s honest assessment of another Native writer. In episode 319, entitled “Oppression IS Offensive,” GreyOwl pinpoints the necessity of calling out oppression where it exists, in contrast to another Native writer’s opinion that “using the word ‘oppression’ is bad because it derails the conversation.” It is hard to have intra-cultural critique in a public forum, but GreyOwl was clear in his argument, firm in his position, and generous in his interpretation.
Interestingly enough, the listening and reading began to do some work on me. While listening to other news, ahem NPR and Reuters, I was happy to hear that the Keystone XL Pipeline project was dead. Recall that there has been a ten-year fight over this project and others like it, including the Sioux and Lakota tribes protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline project. After ten years of advocacy and protest, I waited to hear how these news outlets were going to go to Indigenous folks to get their expert analyses of the situation. I was expecting to hear from Winona LaDuke (White Earth Ojibwe), the executive director of the organization Honor the Earth. But, there was nothing about Indigenous folks except a tiny mention. Instead, “climate change activists” took the bulk of attention.
This is an act of erasure. Plain and simple.
And, here’s why it matters.
First, we know that Indigenous folks in many tribes advocated blocking the Keystone XL pipeline among many others. These fights against pipelines are ongoing. The pipelines interfere with tribal sovereignty. They allow transnational corporations and two other nations — Canada and the United States — to contravene treaties and desecrate Native lands in the creation of an economy that will never benefit Indigenous communities. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say, it is tantamount to an invasion.
Since the history of the Keystone XL pipeline project has Native peoples at its center, news coverage should have also had Indigenous voices at its center. To not do so signals that they don’t believe Native voices are important. Their journalistic neglect facilitates the wholesale erasure of Indigenous people writ large. It furthers the wrong-headed idea that Indigenous people no longer exist.
Second, this cultural erasure facilitates a more dangerous kind of erasure. (I talk about how this happens in Lesson 2.) In this case, the stories about the pipelines aren’t merely human-interest stories or depressing evidence of climate change. They cohere the multiple and varied vectors of structural inequality at the heart of US-Indigenous Nations relationships. When news media erase these stories and voices, they negate the various economic, social, cultural, and environmental effects on large communities. What makes this more pernicious is that the same erasure of voices abets the cruelty of projects like the pipelines which in turn cause premature death and other forms of devastation in Indigenous communities. The result is a further erosion of tribal sovereignty, a furthering of the genocides began before. When major news outlets erase, they abet an ongoing cultural narrative of erasure which aids in legislative erasure and erodes tribal sovereignty. This is not a Chicken Little slippery slope argument either. It is a persistent logic at work.
Lesson 3 amounts to this: pay attention. So, I’ve got a few questions for you. What other news items do you think require Native voices to be more in depth?
