As is typical of the so-called progressives, people are categories, not individuals. Just the same as White people can span the range from die-hard Redneck gun-owning Trumpers to citified man-bun wearing Marxists, so can Indians, Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Gays and Lesbians. In my world view it is racist and bigoted to expect all people of any one race or religion to feel, act and vote exactly the same.
I prefer to treat and accept people as individuals in their own right, not try to peg them with some sort of group identity.
Jun 2, 2023·edited Jun 2, 2023Liked by Sherman Alexie
This just in: Navajos in New Mexico are pissed off with Biden's plan to put a 20 year ban on oil and gas drilling near their lands, from which they would economically benefit.
And let's not forget how many tribes own the most capitalist businesses of all: casinos. I think that Indian casinos are expressions of hard-won tribal sovereignty and cultural assimilation.
"It has created a national and international illusion that the only proper way to be an Indian, or to be an Indian at all, is to be an Indian who is a leftist political activist."
I think that project is, if not exactly intentional, at the very least useful. Your typical progressive *wants* to pretend that all "*true* <fill in minority here>" would be on their side, and that any such minority who is not has been somehow bamboozled.
Yes, we can belong to tribes of whatever kind but that doesn't mean that we have to agree wholesale with our tribes. I'm far more liberal than the average person on my reservation.
My most conservative relatives (Canadian) are all either First Nations or married into First Nations families. They’d be Trump fans if they lived in the US. I keep trying to tell my very liberal friends this, but I don’t think they can wrap their heads around it.
When I reached, "the periodic obsession with indigenous culture and politics largely depends on the capricious attention and affection of white leftists," I knew I had to read on. This essay made me smile, frown, laugh and come away hoping that Alexie's words reach a large audience.
Such an important perspective! Thank you. Just today, The Seattle Times has three articles relating to local tribes (a woke person recently said we shouldn’t use the word “tribe” anymore, but I can’t remember the preferred alternative, and don’t really care anyway). Anyway, the three articles: front page news about a deteriorating jetty that imperils salmon migration in the Skagit watershed; on page 9, the governor is irked with tribes complaining about the state’s new carbon cap system; and an editorial suggesting that the state and federal governments should intervene in a Nooksack tribal membership dispute that could result in several evictions.
All of these issues involve treaty rights and laws pertaining to tribal governance. I’ll confess that even though I’ve read some actual treaties, and I’ve tried to learn how tribes as “sovereign nations” can fit into our American scheme of things, I truly don’t understand it all. I agree with Alexie that Indians are, “ya know, human.” And therefore they are not one giant Indian mind with just one Indian opinion. But it seems we need to be told that by an actual Indian, and many of us still won’t grasp that important concept. Tribal issues are just plain complex. I’d love to look back on all of this with a few hundred years of hindsight.
I think that woke person likely meant that we're not supposed to refer to any group of non-Indians as a "tribe," which is hilarious considering the word "tribe" derives from the Middle English word that derives from Latin. "Damn it, white people, the only people who deserve that really white word are Native Americans."
I think that "tribe" is the right word in this meaning: "a social group composed chiefly of numerous families, clans, or generations having a shared ancestry and language". This meaning carries the powerful image of family connection; one does not just join such a tribe. The general use of the word tribe to describe other groupings indicates a much more fluid connection, a connection best described by other words.
The word tribe has multiple definitions as given by time and circumstance. The effort to limit its meaning is doomed, of course, because language doesn't obey us.
"There are people who identify as primarily or only indigenous even though they’ve never lived in a tribal community, don’t have a formal connection with their tribe, and only have one Indian grandparent or even just one Indian great-grandparent. "
In general, I think the standard that you can only claim the people who claim you, or however it is phrased, makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, I wonder what people are supposed to do in situations where they didn't grow up with any tribal connection but are also very obviously not white.
There's a massive difference between have an Indian ancestor and being Indian. I have a mid-19th Century Scottish ancestor from Orkney. It would be utterly ludicrous of me to claim to be Scottish in any form whatsoever except for distant biology.
Sure, but ethnic identity is one thing and racial identity is another. A distant ancestor is one thing. When something is a significant portion of one's racial mix that is something else.
There were so many Native children forcefully and unfairly removed from Native families in the 19th Century and continuing long into the 20th Century that it necessitated the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. There are still many Indians who live with the legacy and trauma of their forced removals. In the Native world, those who are adopted out are referred to as "lost birds" and it's extremely difficult for them to make their way back to their specific tribes. So I think they often adopt a general sort of Native American cultural and political practices that help them find community with some urban Indians who themselves might not be connected with their tribes. Life can be very painful and confusing for lost birds.
That is still only biology. Native American tribal identity is biological, yes, but it's also about a contemporary cultural, geographic, political, and economic connection to a specific tribe.
Jun 2, 2023·edited Jun 2, 2023Liked by Sherman Alexie
Right, but to illustrate my point I'll use a hypothetical. Let's say someone was entirely of indigenous background biologically. But adopted and not raised by any tribe. Doesn't even know what tribe their ancestors belonged to. By the "no one claims you standard" they are not an Indian. But they also aren't white, and the world doesn't relate to them as a white person. And they still have to put something on all the racial checkboxes everyone has to fill out constantly. Where does that leave them?
There are groups of people, predominately in the South and Appalachia with different names such as Brass Ankles, Redbones, and Melungeons. These people are generally mixes of European, Native American and Black. Many have intermarried through the years, others have married into more "White" families. One branch of my father's family was mixed race, my third Great grandfather fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Most of my great aunts look White in photos, but my great grandmother and one of her sisters appears very mixed race. The family lore was that they were "Indian" because that was more acceptable than being part Black in the South in those days, but the family was recognized as "White" the censuses from the 1860s onward where previously they were listed as "colored" or "mulatto". My DNA testing shows mostly African with a very small amount of Native American. Of course, it's anyone's guess what tribal affiliation the family would have had, and many of those early tribes no longer exist as such.
There is a ton of family mythology in the USA about having Indian ancestry. Elizabeth Warren is perhaps the most famous example of a white person claiming to be Indian because of a very distant Indian ancestor.
They can acknowledge their ancestry while also acknowledging that they aren't really that connected to it personally? I'm English and Scottish by descent, but I don't claim to speak for either!
I don't think it is as simple as that. You don't have to tell people that you are English and Scottish because you have an obvious and easily understandable racial identity, which is "white." Whereas if they say they are "Indian" that doesn't fly. But they aren't white either.
Jun 2, 2023·edited Jun 2, 2023Liked by Sherman Alexie
Seems pretty artificial to me- “white” and “Indian” are both races and not cultural identities, whereas “Scottish” and “Cherokee” are cultural identities. We just tend to lump non-white identities in with cultural identities, as though skin colour or heritage provides some kind of intrinsic cultural insight. But it doesn’t *have* to be that way. We are entirely capable of realising that Indians aren’t all alike and their cultural experiences depends in their particular circumstances just like we already realise that not all white people are alike and that me as an American of Scottish heritage getting up in arms over Scottish independence and dictating terms for the life of a country I’ve never been to would be ridiculous.
Which isn’t to say that they can’t have any connection to their heritage, I should clarify. I like Scotland and try to appreciate its culture and customs, and I would like to visit it someday, and I’m much more distantly connected to Scotland than most Indians would be to tribal life; they would very probably be more connected to it than I am to my European heritage. Really all I’m arguing is for allowing this kind of nuance, the recognition that one can have cultural distance of varying amounts from one’s heritage.
I think non-Indians, especially liberals, tend to apply the notion of "inclusivity" to tribal identity. But, by definition and by a millenia of cultural practice, Indian tribes and Indian identity are exclusive.
And realistically, Lowland Scots are traditionally different from Highland Scots, much in the same way Southerners were traditionally different from Northerners in this country.
And there are rather more kinds of American Indians than Scots, yet they all tend to get lumped together, an unfortunate tendency that probably makes impossible much of the cultural appreciation that could be had for the various traditions were they respected on their own terms and less as a stand-in for left-wing political consciousness
I'm not arguing any particular "ought" - just pointing out an "is." People attract ire when they claim any sort of "Indian" identity when they are not connected to a tribe - even if they are claiming a racial identity only.
I cannot even get myself to use the BIPOC acronym. What you described as non-monolithic politics and more amongst Indians is also true of the other folks lumped into BIPOC. I have a question unrelated to your essay if you can entertain it. That is, what do you make of the effect of tribal members not being able to own land on the reservations because it's "held in trust" by BLM? Some argue that it's the reason for so much poverty and addiction. Just curious what you think. Thanks.
Oh, gosh, the reality of "trust land" on Indian reservations can't be addressed in an effective way in this format. And I don't possess the legal or economic expertise to adequately explore the issue in those terms. I can speak anecdotally. My siblings and I own reservation trust farm land that we inherited from our father. He inherited it from his parents and grandparents, The various laws around trust land prevented my father from selling the land when he might've done so during his more dysfunctional moments. These days, many tribes are buying tribal land from members of their own tribes (and from non-Indians). I'm curious about that process. Are the tribes exploiting their own members who might be selling because of economic duress? It's also clear that in its earlier incarnation, trust land law enabled non-Indians to buy up tribal land, a situation that has long lasting consequences. On the Flathead Indian Reservation, there are towns that are almost entirely white and one of those white towns is located on the most valuable lakeside land on the reservation.
I now remember that the person who said we shouldn’t use tribe for Indians said we should say “nation” instead. That might be OK in some instances, perhaps for federally recognized tribes, but I’m not sure if it would work for other tribes. In any event, I think Indian law is the most complicated aspect of law there is.
Mr Alexie, I’m curious what you think of land acknowledgment statements. In my ear they ring as insulting. Something more meaningful to the non-Indian speaker as a way of trying to cleanse one’s sense of guilt while simultaneously insulting the people you feel guilty about by essentially saying “we took your land, we know we should admire you, but you’re not getting your land back.” It feels like a passive aggressive way of rubbing it in. It rings insincere and pointless if not, as I said, downright insulting. Anyone else have thoughts?
As is typical of the so-called progressives, people are categories, not individuals. Just the same as White people can span the range from die-hard Redneck gun-owning Trumpers to citified man-bun wearing Marxists, so can Indians, Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Gays and Lesbians. In my world view it is racist and bigoted to expect all people of any one race or religion to feel, act and vote exactly the same.
I prefer to treat and accept people as individuals in their own right, not try to peg them with some sort of group identity.
We all have multiple identities. Some of my identities argue with my other identities. I can have extended debates when I'm alone in a silent room.
This just in: Navajos in New Mexico are pissed off with Biden's plan to put a 20 year ban on oil and gas drilling near their lands, from which they would economically benefit.
And let's not forget how many tribes own the most capitalist businesses of all: casinos. I think that Indian casinos are expressions of hard-won tribal sovereignty and cultural assimilation.
"It has created a national and international illusion that the only proper way to be an Indian, or to be an Indian at all, is to be an Indian who is a leftist political activist."
I think that project is, if not exactly intentional, at the very least useful. Your typical progressive *wants* to pretend that all "*true* <fill in minority here>" would be on their side, and that any such minority who is not has been somehow bamboozled.
Yes, we can belong to tribes of whatever kind but that doesn't mean that we have to agree wholesale with our tribes. I'm far more liberal than the average person on my reservation.
My most conservative relatives (Canadian) are all either First Nations or married into First Nations families. They’d be Trump fans if they lived in the US. I keep trying to tell my very liberal friends this, but I don’t think they can wrap their heads around it.
That is true of my relatives, as well.
When I reached, "the periodic obsession with indigenous culture and politics largely depends on the capricious attention and affection of white leftists," I knew I had to read on. This essay made me smile, frown, laugh and come away hoping that Alexie's words reach a large audience.
Away from Substack, I sell a lot of books! I have an audience! Here's short fiction of mine that was published in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/war-dances
I saw “Smoke Stacks”. Great movie.
Signals
Looking forward to reading it.
Such an important perspective! Thank you. Just today, The Seattle Times has three articles relating to local tribes (a woke person recently said we shouldn’t use the word “tribe” anymore, but I can’t remember the preferred alternative, and don’t really care anyway). Anyway, the three articles: front page news about a deteriorating jetty that imperils salmon migration in the Skagit watershed; on page 9, the governor is irked with tribes complaining about the state’s new carbon cap system; and an editorial suggesting that the state and federal governments should intervene in a Nooksack tribal membership dispute that could result in several evictions.
All of these issues involve treaty rights and laws pertaining to tribal governance. I’ll confess that even though I’ve read some actual treaties, and I’ve tried to learn how tribes as “sovereign nations” can fit into our American scheme of things, I truly don’t understand it all. I agree with Alexie that Indians are, “ya know, human.” And therefore they are not one giant Indian mind with just one Indian opinion. But it seems we need to be told that by an actual Indian, and many of us still won’t grasp that important concept. Tribal issues are just plain complex. I’d love to look back on all of this with a few hundred years of hindsight.
I think that woke person likely meant that we're not supposed to refer to any group of non-Indians as a "tribe," which is hilarious considering the word "tribe" derives from the Middle English word that derives from Latin. "Damn it, white people, the only people who deserve that really white word are Native Americans."
I think that "tribe" is the right word in this meaning: "a social group composed chiefly of numerous families, clans, or generations having a shared ancestry and language". This meaning carries the powerful image of family connection; one does not just join such a tribe. The general use of the word tribe to describe other groupings indicates a much more fluid connection, a connection best described by other words.
The word tribe has multiple definitions as given by time and circumstance. The effort to limit its meaning is doomed, of course, because language doesn't obey us.
"There are people who identify as primarily or only indigenous even though they’ve never lived in a tribal community, don’t have a formal connection with their tribe, and only have one Indian grandparent or even just one Indian great-grandparent. "
In general, I think the standard that you can only claim the people who claim you, or however it is phrased, makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, I wonder what people are supposed to do in situations where they didn't grow up with any tribal connection but are also very obviously not white.
There's a massive difference between have an Indian ancestor and being Indian. I have a mid-19th Century Scottish ancestor from Orkney. It would be utterly ludicrous of me to claim to be Scottish in any form whatsoever except for distant biology.
Sure, but ethnic identity is one thing and racial identity is another. A distant ancestor is one thing. When something is a significant portion of one's racial mix that is something else.
There were so many Native children forcefully and unfairly removed from Native families in the 19th Century and continuing long into the 20th Century that it necessitated the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. There are still many Indians who live with the legacy and trauma of their forced removals. In the Native world, those who are adopted out are referred to as "lost birds" and it's extremely difficult for them to make their way back to their specific tribes. So I think they often adopt a general sort of Native American cultural and political practices that help them find community with some urban Indians who themselves might not be connected with their tribes. Life can be very painful and confusing for lost birds.
That is still only biology. Native American tribal identity is biological, yes, but it's also about a contemporary cultural, geographic, political, and economic connection to a specific tribe.
Right, but to illustrate my point I'll use a hypothetical. Let's say someone was entirely of indigenous background biologically. But adopted and not raised by any tribe. Doesn't even know what tribe their ancestors belonged to. By the "no one claims you standard" they are not an Indian. But they also aren't white, and the world doesn't relate to them as a white person. And they still have to put something on all the racial checkboxes everyone has to fill out constantly. Where does that leave them?
There are groups of people, predominately in the South and Appalachia with different names such as Brass Ankles, Redbones, and Melungeons. These people are generally mixes of European, Native American and Black. Many have intermarried through the years, others have married into more "White" families. One branch of my father's family was mixed race, my third Great grandfather fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Most of my great aunts look White in photos, but my great grandmother and one of her sisters appears very mixed race. The family lore was that they were "Indian" because that was more acceptable than being part Black in the South in those days, but the family was recognized as "White" the censuses from the 1860s onward where previously they were listed as "colored" or "mulatto". My DNA testing shows mostly African with a very small amount of Native American. Of course, it's anyone's guess what tribal affiliation the family would have had, and many of those early tribes no longer exist as such.
There is a ton of family mythology in the USA about having Indian ancestry. Elizabeth Warren is perhaps the most famous example of a white person claiming to be Indian because of a very distant Indian ancestor.
They can acknowledge their ancestry while also acknowledging that they aren't really that connected to it personally? I'm English and Scottish by descent, but I don't claim to speak for either!
I don't think it is as simple as that. You don't have to tell people that you are English and Scottish because you have an obvious and easily understandable racial identity, which is "white." Whereas if they say they are "Indian" that doesn't fly. But they aren't white either.
Seems pretty artificial to me- “white” and “Indian” are both races and not cultural identities, whereas “Scottish” and “Cherokee” are cultural identities. We just tend to lump non-white identities in with cultural identities, as though skin colour or heritage provides some kind of intrinsic cultural insight. But it doesn’t *have* to be that way. We are entirely capable of realising that Indians aren’t all alike and their cultural experiences depends in their particular circumstances just like we already realise that not all white people are alike and that me as an American of Scottish heritage getting up in arms over Scottish independence and dictating terms for the life of a country I’ve never been to would be ridiculous.
Which isn’t to say that they can’t have any connection to their heritage, I should clarify. I like Scotland and try to appreciate its culture and customs, and I would like to visit it someday, and I’m much more distantly connected to Scotland than most Indians would be to tribal life; they would very probably be more connected to it than I am to my European heritage. Really all I’m arguing is for allowing this kind of nuance, the recognition that one can have cultural distance of varying amounts from one’s heritage.
I think non-Indians, especially liberals, tend to apply the notion of "inclusivity" to tribal identity. But, by definition and by a millenia of cultural practice, Indian tribes and Indian identity are exclusive.
And realistically, Lowland Scots are traditionally different from Highland Scots, much in the same way Southerners were traditionally different from Northerners in this country.
And there are rather more kinds of American Indians than Scots, yet they all tend to get lumped together, an unfortunate tendency that probably makes impossible much of the cultural appreciation that could be had for the various traditions were they respected on their own terms and less as a stand-in for left-wing political consciousness
I'm not arguing any particular "ought" - just pointing out an "is." People attract ire when they claim any sort of "Indian" identity when they are not connected to a tribe - even if they are claiming a racial identity only.
I cannot even get myself to use the BIPOC acronym. What you described as non-monolithic politics and more amongst Indians is also true of the other folks lumped into BIPOC. I have a question unrelated to your essay if you can entertain it. That is, what do you make of the effect of tribal members not being able to own land on the reservations because it's "held in trust" by BLM? Some argue that it's the reason for so much poverty and addiction. Just curious what you think. Thanks.
Oh, gosh, the reality of "trust land" on Indian reservations can't be addressed in an effective way in this format. And I don't possess the legal or economic expertise to adequately explore the issue in those terms. I can speak anecdotally. My siblings and I own reservation trust farm land that we inherited from our father. He inherited it from his parents and grandparents, The various laws around trust land prevented my father from selling the land when he might've done so during his more dysfunctional moments. These days, many tribes are buying tribal land from members of their own tribes (and from non-Indians). I'm curious about that process. Are the tribes exploiting their own members who might be selling because of economic duress? It's also clear that in its earlier incarnation, trust land law enabled non-Indians to buy up tribal land, a situation that has long lasting consequences. On the Flathead Indian Reservation, there are towns that are almost entirely white and one of those white towns is located on the most valuable lakeside land on the reservation.
"We are, ya know, human."
We know. They know too... but apparently do not care that you are anything but a vote for them.
I now remember that the person who said we shouldn’t use tribe for Indians said we should say “nation” instead. That might be OK in some instances, perhaps for federally recognized tribes, but I’m not sure if it would work for other tribes. In any event, I think Indian law is the most complicated aspect of law there is.
Lol‼️
Mr Alexie, I’m curious what you think of land acknowledgment statements. In my ear they ring as insulting. Something more meaningful to the non-Indian speaker as a way of trying to cleanse one’s sense of guilt while simultaneously insulting the people you feel guilty about by essentially saying “we took your land, we know we should admire you, but you’re not getting your land back.” It feels like a passive aggressive way of rubbing it in. It rings insincere and pointless if not, as I said, downright insulting. Anyone else have thoughts?