This blog is a collaborative effort of the participants in an Indigenous Theory seminar focusing on sovereignty at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. We are from various fields of study and from different backgrounds--Indigenous and settler, or both. Each week, every seminar participant shares a draft blog post with the group. After talking about our shared readings and posts in class, we decide together on one or more to post publicly.
By Raju Desai David Treuer’s book, Rez Life, is a portrait of
multiple American Indian lives, communities, histories, and struggles woven
through multiple stories of people that he has come across. Through anecdotes,
he weaves the long, convoluted history of treaties, policies, and legislation
between Indian nations and the United States and how they have affected Indian
lives today. What stands out the most to me in his work are the multiple forms
of sovereignty and how they function with each other.
As a non-native, my conceptions of sovereignty are usually
around the ability to make/enforce laws and control resources. However, in his
book, Treuer shows that there are multiple overlapping forms of sovereignty
such as: treaty-making, education, familial sovereignty, spiritual sovereignty
that, in addition to legislative sovereignty and control of resources, actually
make up the inherent tribal rights of American Indian groups. His book shows
that these rights have historically been violated and transformed with serious
affects on tribal life. Treuer shows that, through all this, tribal identities
remain, but it is a constant battle that is based on changing forms of
sovereignty.
Rez Life depicts
Indian life on the reservation as a constant negotiation of these multiple
sovereignties in order to maintain a strong Indian identity. He humanizes the
harsh realities of life on the reservation, by showing that through it all,
despite the issues within these communities, these communities are home. While
he tells stories of immense poverty, crime, and social toxins, Treuer also
tells stories of resilience, dignity, and hope. It’s like how Shaye Tibbetts, one
of the women in the book, says: “Don’t pity me. We got it good. We got it
good. We got it better than most people. Don’t feel bad for me. Feel bad for
somebody else because, well, I don’t need pity” (Treuer 175). His argument
is that Indians don’t need pity, but rather, they need to the freedom to
exercise their multiple sovereignties so that they can reclaim/practice their
inherent tribal rights and create more stories of hope and resilience within
the reservations.
This diagram illustrating the multiple sovereignties, or forms of sovereignty,
explored in Treuer’s Rez Life, was created by Raju Desai and Keali'i Mackenzie.
As a scholar activist that
is deeply committed to the betterment of my Chamorro people, Taiaiake Alfred’s Peace,
Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto speaks to me on a personal
level because of the hopes I have for Guam’s (and the Northern Mariana
Islands’) political future. Alfred lays out different strategies for indigenous
groups to use when thinking about the realities of their own self-government.
Alfred’s book is an informative source about what self-governance could and
should look like for us.
Within the next two years,
Chamorros of Guam will finally have the opportunity to vote on our political
future. Rather than being an unincorporated territory (aka colony), Chamorros
can now decide on independence, statehood, or free association. Even with the
plebiscite approaching, decolonization is not given enough attention within the
media or within mundane conversation amongst Chamorros. For many it is hard to
image any type of political status that does not have some kind of ties to the
United States. I believe the difficulty is within the reality that many
Chamorros have lost their imagination. Our colonial ties have robbed many of us
the ability to see ourselves outside of the US. Many people, including my own
family, have this idea that independence and self-governance means that our
electricity stops working and our lights go out. Our own politicians work to
secure a military buildup and growth in tourism, pushing the notion that dependency
is the only way we can survive as an island. Chamorros have become extremely
invested ideologically (“The United States saves us”) and physically (we have
the highest rates of military enlistment per capita) in our uneven relationship
with the US.
With Chamorros having the
longest legacy of colonialism in Oceania, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An
Indigenous Manifesto can be used as a tool to envision a new political
future without fear. Rather than dreading a turn to ancient ways, Alfred shows
how traditional ways of knowing can help build a solid foundation for
indigenous governance. For my own people, I think finding value in our
culture and traditions can only help move us forward independent of the US.
Once we can do that, Chamorros will find that we don’t have to live exactly
like our ancestors. As Alfred suggests, you need to, “know your basic
principles in the first place and then blend the contemporary and traditional
together- but you have to have the principles right” (35). Chamorros and other
indigenous groups must find a means of self-government that is meaningful to
their specific history and context.
As Chamorros build our
political voice during the plebiscite, there will be many questions that will
have to be addressed. Many of these questions are specific to Guam’s history as
a territory. When looking at settler colonialism, how do you incorporate local
groups (non-natives) in decolonization when many are there because of Guam’s
ties to the US? With our northern islands already a commonwealth, how do we
begin to think about reunification as an extension of our decolonization
efforts? As Alfred says, “honour the fact that indigenous peoples have
survived: The frameworks of their values systems remain intact and vital” (29).
Even with the uncertainty of Guam’s political status, I find hope in the
strength of my ancestors who have been fighting colonization since the 1500s.
The strength of Taiaiake
Alfred’s Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto lies in
its ability to effectively argue that indigenous peoples across the world need
to once again place government and governance in their list of priorities.
Spending time with my Chamoru community, I have seen how this deep-seated
cynicism of the government is very potent in the current political landscape. I
have been to many barbeques where the conversation turns into: “I have given up
on the local government” or “I really do not care who wins this election
because they are all the same.” As one of my mentors back home in Guam said: “But
so many of the things that people say they lament, they don’t actually care
about. Look at the way people complain about the government and how it is so
corrupt, in order to feel that they are getting involved with the governing of
the island when in fact they are not doing anything to contribute to the
governing of the island.”
While I completely understand a lot of the cynicism, hopelessness and isolation
are not the proper avenues for expressing this cynicism. Instead of simply giving
up and deciding to separate ourselves from anything dealing with the
government, we should seek to see how we can make the government work for us.
Taiaiake Alfred suggests that “recovery” must include government, culture and
land. We might see these as points of a triangle. As indigenous peoples, we
cannot truly recover if we ignore one of the three points because if one point
is not respected, the triangle will never truly stand. I would further add
language as a fourth point, creating a square upon which we can stand.
Alfred rightfully cautions us about the limitations and boundaries of traditional
cultural revival, when what can be revived and practiced in colonized,
indigenous societies is still dictated by the colonizer. For instance, dances
and chants may be easily funded by the settler-state government producing a
false image that this ti magåhet (non-authentic) government supports the
indigenous people. (To clarify, I am not saying that ti magåhet governments are comprised only of settlers; I am rather
referring to the form of government
as settling on our indigenous forms.) We, indigenous peoples, need to see
through this smokescreen of false support and realize that the ti magåhet
government will only support indigenous revival as long as it does not threaten
the power/domination status quo. Giving money to host a concert of traditional
dances does not directly affect the status quo, and may actually help with the
tourist appeal of that particular place and settler-government.
I want to further address
this specific point about Chamoru cultural revival and the catholic church. (I
purposely do not capitalize the catholic church because they will be treated
like a “proper” noun when they start acting proper). Back home in Guam, we have
seen the revival and re-creation of our dances, jewelry, cooking methods, etc.,
and the church seems to be supporting these things. Many times the church will
have a mass in the Chamoru language or be a co-sponsor for Chamoru activities,
giving it the appearance of an amicable, indigenous-friendly institution.
However, I bet that talks of reviving Chamoru traditions of taking the skulls
of our ancestors into our homes and worshipping them or of re-establishing our
guma’ ulitao (bachelor house) where boys learned adult skills including sexual
acts would be absolutely opposed by the church. Reviving these particular
aspects of our culture would threaten their hold over the people of the island.
At this point, the smokescreen of support would come down, and we would see how
these colonial institutions do not actually support indigenous values! This
point serves to illustrate Alfred’s point that the limits of our cultural
revitalization seem to still be in the hands of the colonizer.
Thus,
we cannot sit there and concentrate on nurturing only one point of the triangle
(or square) of indigenous recovery, because we can see how it creates a false
belief that recovery will occur without anything additional being done. In
order to experience a complete revamping of our current situations, we need to
take the cynicism of government that dwells within us and realize that the form
of government we despise so much is NOT OURS! This government model is a
foreign one that is inconsistent with indigenous values, and thus we should
yearn for something new. This is a call to action. Our cynicism should be an
opportunity to imagine better systems and to realize that we had a form of
government drastically different from what we have today. Governance is not
something that should be ignored because we will just concentrate on “the
culture”! The Chamoru people have existed since we walked out of the rock that
our mother creator, Fu’una, became to give life to us, so we have ways of
knowing that drastically differ from most imported, colonial governance values.
As Taiaiake Alfred writes: “Just as we must respect and honour our songs,
ceremonies, and dances, so, too, we must honour the institutions that in the
past governed social and political relations among our people, because they are
equally part of the sacred core of our nations.”
Governance has not always been a bad thing, and we need to be able to realize
that. It is about time we as indigenous peoples give governance a new face that
does not make our communities cringe with a bad taste in their mouths.
MANA's platform of unity.
MANA is a movement-building organization that works for Hawaiian independence
in various forms, grounded in the Hawaiian political value of aloha ʻāina.
“Towards
a New Oceania” by Sāmoan writer, poet, and teacher Albert Wendt in MANA
Review vol. 1, no. 1, 1976.
Manifesto
Antropofago (Cannibal Manifesto) written
in 1928 by Oswald de Andrade, a Brazilian poet. While controversial, it is an
early attempt at indigenous writing that engages multiple disciplines through
satirical interplays and bicultural languaging. It appeared as a post-colonial
response to trends in psychology (Freudian totemism and taboo) and anthropology
(cannibalism debate) and the identity politics of nationalist movements.
Andrade is a member of the Tupi tribe and is known for cannibalizing
Shakespeare in his manifesto, quoting Hamlet: tupi or not tupi, that is the
question.
This week, we read and talked about Indigenous
manifestos. What is a manifesto? A systematic declaration of purpose. A call to action. A critical analysis of systems of power. A declaration of resistance. A call for recovery and renewal. An expression of what is important to a particular community, spoken from a particular positionality. A commentary on crucial, pressing issues in accessible language. These are a few of ways we are understanding manifestos as a form of Indigenous theory and action.
To kick off our posts on this topic, we share two songs that we can be seen
as manifestos. The first is a musical piece by a hardcore band from Guam called,
Minatatnga (bravery, fearlessness, valorous), with vocals by our own seminar
participant, Kenneth Gofigan Kuper. He writes: “I like to think that the song
is a strong declaration of our views and also fits our band name because we
attack the taking of our youth into the united states military. We may consider
it as one song in album that will become the Minatatnga manifesto. A musical
form of resistance.”
Chamoru, We will stand, We will stand for this land”
We
also share a Hawaiian song known by several names, “Mele ʻAi Pohaku”
(Stone-eating Song), “Mele Aloha ʻĀina (the Patriot's Song), or “Kaulana Nā
Pua” (Famous are the flowers/descendants). Like Kenneth, our seminar participant, Kuʻulei
Bezilla, urges to see this song as a sort of manifesto. Written January 1893
and published in 1895, this song opposes the annexation of Hawaiʻi to the
United States. Moreover, some of our seminar participants have pointed out the
ways the manifesto, as a genre and an enunciatory practice, is often gendered
masculine. Thus it is important to underscore that this song was written by Ellen
Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright
Prendergast, a wahine (woman) loyal to the Hawaiian Kingdom and to Queen
Liliʻuokalani. As Kuʻulei puts it, “Many people (and I have been subject to
this) do not recognize the story and manaʻo to this mele, and therefore do not
sing, or proclaim this song with the intentions of what it’s purpose was. It is
our duty to perpetuate the ʻike of our kūpuna so that others may share in their
experience.” More information on this mele can be found in a short, online essay
by Kīhei and Mapuana DeSilva, who argue that this song should not only be
sung but also danced with a fierce understanding of its historical context and
message.
In his recent book, Trans-Indigenous:
Methodologies for Global Literary Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Allen asks us to move
away from a comparative frame in which one simply looks at what is the same or
different about multiple Indigenous texts and contexts. What happens when we
bring together two or more texts in “focused juxtapositions,” placing them
close together and honoring their difference? He urges us to pay attention to
the process of crossing from one context to another and to see what such
crossings tell us. We too are interested in Indigenous exchange and
collaborative production. In this week’s posts, we think about Chadwick Allen’s
recent book and pose a few of our own juxtapositions.
Juxtaposing “the
Spirit of ʻ76” with the Bicentennial of Mexican Independence
By Eréndira
Neri Aldana
In the sprit of turning ands into trans, I
would like to share one of the ways that Mexico celebrated the bicentennial
celebration of independence from Spain and the 100-year celebration of the
Mexican revolution in 2010. I feel this differing approach to bicentennial
celebrations can add to the discussion started by Allen’s chapter 2, “Unsettling the Spirit of ’76: American
Indians Anticipate the U.S. Bicentennial.” In that chapter, Allen juxtaposes
diffuse and lesser-known responses to the U.S. bicentennial with the more
well-known responses of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to the
bicentennial celebrations of the Australian settler state in 1988. In so doing,
he aims to make visible and legible the American Indian responses to the 1976
bicentennial celebrations in the US.
I was in Mexico in the months leading up to the actual
celebrations on September 16, 2010. I spent time in Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca. I was
living in the capital of Puebla and traveled around to various other rural
communities and there did not seem to be coordinated efforts to challenge the
celebrations. I spent 10 days in Oaxaca during their important agricultural
festival where all indigenous communities come together to celebrate and share.
This gathering could have served as a platform to challenge the bicentennial
because there is representation from all indigenous groups from across the
state, but I saw nothing.
Overall the feeling during the bicentennial was of
excitement and pride. The national government even created a special
“Bicentennial” travel route to encourage Mexican citizens to get to know the
“magic” and “treasures” of our country. My family and I have made similar
travels, and in my experience, Indigenous groups have welcomed me and my family
and have always been open to sharing about their cultures. However, this is
because my mother is a gifted storyteller and has an amazing ability to connect
with others. She understands the cultural scripts and social protocols necessary
to be accepted by other communities. We have even been able to witness
cultural ceremonies because of this.
The video below is an ad that premiered during the national
nightly news hour during that time leading up to the bicentennial. It is part
of a series that highlights the beauty of several states of Mexico, and the ads
were created specifically for the bicentennial. This particular video is of
Chiapas, Mexico. Similar ad campaigns were done for several states.
The
video closes with: “Esto es México. El estado de Chiapas, una estrella más del
bicentenario.” (“This is México. The state of Chiapas, one more star of the
bicentennial.”) The music in the background in sung in the dialect of
the region. The lyrics and translation are below:
Ch'ul awilal
Sacred place
Ta sk'inal yu'un ants-winik
On man's earth
Banti te ja' sok te nichim
Where water and flower
Junax yak'sbaik
Become one
Banti te choje skananta
Where the puma
protects
Te sk'ayoj yu'un te chich me'el-mamal
The chants of our past
Ja in yawil to
In this place
Banti x-a'in te ch'ulchane sok te balumilale... Where sky and earth are
born
Chiapas
Chiapas
I think that it is important to note that public schools in
Mexico play a very important role in passing on cultural values and traditions
to younger generations. It is the norm for all children to participate in end
of the year school celebrations that consist of Indigenous dances and music.
Each grade showcases a different region of the country at a ceremony that is
open to the community and family. In fact, family is expected to attend and
normally always does. From a very young age children are taught to appreciate
cultural practices that existed before the conquest. Because of this I feel
that the dialogue surrounding the bicentennial celebrations served to bring
together communities and reinforce various Mexican identities. My time in
Mexico was divided into primarily two different regions, and I attended an
important Indigenous festival in yet another. Across all this land, I felt the
sentiment to be the same. People of the community welcomed Mexican visitors (I
don’t know if they would be as open with international tourists) with open arms
and were eager to share their culture.
In his recent book, Trans-Indigenous:
Methodologies for Global Literary Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Allen asks us to move
away from a comparative frame in which one simply looks at what is the same or
different about multiple Indigenous texts and contexts. What happens when we
bring together two or more texts in “focused juxtapositions,” placing them
close together and honoring their difference? He urges us to pay attention to
the process of crossing from one context to another and to see what such
crossings tell us. We too are interested in Indigenous exchange and
collaborative production. In this week’s posts, we think about Chadwick Allen’s
recent book and pose a few of our own juxtapositions.
(Kanak)tions and Juxtapostions in Big Island Conspiracy’s “Samuela Texas”
by No'eau Peralto
For as long as our people have lived in this Paeʻāina, we ʻŌiwi have been conscious of
the fact that the rest of the world around us was occupied by other peoples.
For a people whose genealogies are derived from the most expansive “sea of
islands” on the planet, transportation through and across a transnational, trans-Indigenous,
and trans-generational universe is not only an important part of
our history, it’s an integral part of our collective identity. In this way, it
would seem fitting that, as contemporary ʻŌiwi
scholars, we should engage more critically with methodologies that were trans-Indigenous,
and perhaps more transformative in nature.
Chadwick Allen’s Trans-Indigenous
Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies proposes a pathway
(or ways) for employing such “trans-Indigenous methodologies” particularly in
the field of Native literary studies. Accordingly, Allen utilizes a number of
examples through the book to demonstrate the value and power of such
methodologies that focus on “Indigenous juxtapositions,” which “place diverse
texts close together across genre and media, aesthetic systems and worldviews,
technologies and practices, tribes and nations, the Indigenous-settler binary,
and historical periods and geographical regions” (xviii). In so doing, Allen
also argues for a “sustained attention to language, literature, and the arts”
(30) in scholarship, as a means of highlighting the vitality of our people and
our distinct modes of expression today (136).
As I read through Trans-Indigenous
Methodologies, the concept of “Indigenous juxtapositions” drew my attention
as a powerful reoccurring theme throughout the book. With each example that
Allen employed, I became more convinced that this concept of “Indigenous
juxtaposition” could prove quite useful in my own research, so I decided to
explore the concept further within the context of some of our own ‘Ōiwi literary
traditions. Coincidentally (or not), this idea came to me as Big Island
Conspiracyʻs “Samuela Texas” began playing on my
nightly “need-to-stay-awake-to-read” music playlist. “Samuela Texas call Mr.
Pharaoh. Let the original people free...”
“Samuela
Texas” was written by Uncle Skippy Ioane, a long-time ʻŌiwi
activist and musician, and was recorded by his group, Big Island Conspiracy in
1999, one year after the centennial of Americaʻs
illegitimate “annexation” of Hawaiʻi. (See lyrics below) In the first lines
(and title) of this song, Uncle Skippy employs the metaphor “Samuela Texas” to
represent “Uncle Sam,” (the USA) and juxtaposes this contemporary imperial
power with “Mr. Pharaoh,” an example of a historical imperial power, alluding
to the pharoah in the biblical story of Moses setting “the original people
free.” Here the juxtaposition draws (what I call) a direct (kanak)tion between
the oppression suffered by the Israelites at the hand of “Mr. Pharaoh” in the
story of Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea (as some of us have come to know
it in Christian versions of the bible), and the oppression suffered by ʻŌiwi, “the original people” of Hawaiʻi, at the hand of “Uncle Sam.” It is worth mentioning here that the
ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories by Isreal (learn more here)
renders this juxtaposition quite ironic, but for now, I will leave further
investigation in to this issue for another (more developed) post. The rest of the song (which deserves a much more complete
analysis than the length of this post can provide) could be characterized as, what
Allen calls “truth telling”–“an unsettling and ultimately decolonizing
strategy” (53).
What
function, thus, does the juxtaposition of “Samuela Texas” and “Mr. Pharoah”
serve in this song? I can only speculate, but as an avid and relatively
informed listener, I interpret this juxtaposition as a strategy for cultivating
political consciousness. Like many others of my generation who grew up in Hawaiʻi under US occupation, I am a product of much of the
“fairy tales that you learn in school” alluded to in this song. Characteristic
of a school founded upon American principals of education, and twisted further
by Christian doctrines, the school I attended growing up left us knowing of
oppression only as a distant thing of the past—enter Mr. Pharaoh and the Israelites
(though Iʻm sure the stories were skewed, at
best). To associate this historical oppression with the US and its
treatment of Indigenous peoples, much less ʻŌiwi,
was unheard of. “Good ʻol kanaka going do what
heʻs told.”
By
juxtaposing “Mr. Pharaoh” with “Samuela Texas” the song forces one to at least
consider the (kanak)tion between the two—namely, that they are both
representative of systems of oppression. In this way, “the activist power of
the poem,” as Allen calls it (136), is in its ability to provoke critical
thought through the use of metaphor and juxtaposition. Juxtapose a system that
we have been conditioned (through assimilationist forms of schooling and
religion) to view as oppressive (“Mr. Pharaoh”) with the system that has
blinded us from our own oppression (“Samuela Texas”), and the reality of our
situation becomes much clearer: we are the “original people” of our (currently)
illegally occupied homelands.
Interestingly
enough, other ʻŌiwi have utilized such strategies of
juxtaposition in past ʻŌiwi literature as well.
Without delving in to the subject too much in this post, one such example is a
mele (song), presumably, composed by Joseph M. Poepoe (one of the most prolific
ʻŌiwi writers and political thinkers of the
early 20th century), and published in his first installment of
“Kamehameha I: Ka Nai Aupuni” (Ka Nai Aupuni. Nov. 27, 1905). Published
twelve years after the overthrow of the Kingdom and just seven years after US
“annexation,” Poepoe reflects upon the state of the lāhui in the last lines of
the mele: Ke mau ko lakou kupaa ana
me ka lokahi (Their (ʻŌiwi) steadfastness and
unity persists) / A kuai e i ko lakou mau pono e like me Esau (And their
“rights” have been sold like Esau) / E ku! E na Hawaii! (Rise up, oh Hawaiians)
/ E Na-i no ko oukou aina me ke aupuni (Take back your ʻāina and government!). Once again we see the juxtaposition of the ʻŌiwi political situation in Hawaiʻi with that of a Christian biblical figure in Esau (who was known
in the book of Genesis for selling his “birthright” to his brother Jacob), as a
strategy for awakening the consciousness of the lāhui to kū, rise up, and
reassert our kuleana to our ʻāina and aupuni.
Surely these are not the only examples of the
use of methodologies that employ juxtaposition in ʻŌiwi literature, but they perhaps reveal an interesting
(kanak)tion between some of the literary strategies of ʻŌiwi resistance through multiple generations. Of particular
interest is the intentional juxtaposition of scenarios from hegemonic
educational and religious systems ("Mr. Pharaoh" & Esau) with
that of the ʻŌiwi, past and present. In
this way, Trans-Indigenous Methodologies has informed my
inquiry in to this matter, and I believe it could serve as a catalyst for the
development of new methodologies (or the reconceptualization of old ones) that
fit the needs of our research liberation efforts as ʻŌiwi looking to “set [ourselves] free” and "loaʻa tomorrow for the keikis eat."
Samuela Texas
Written by: Skippy Ioane
Recorded by Big Island Conspiracy on "Street Tapestry Vol. 1: Reflective But Unrepentant"
(lyrics printed in ʻŌiwi: A Native
Hawaiian Journal, Vol 2. 2002)
Samuela Texas call Mr. Pharaoh
Let the original people free
Missionary come with him and his vision
Mission him accomplish, him own me
Auwē, Auwē, Auwē
All the time before the day come
The night begins kanaka history
Sky the father and the earth is the mother
Ke kinohi loa o nā Hawaiʻi
Annexation, constipation
Kanaka cities in a stolen nation
Tell the truth Sam, you stole the loot
Him say, No way! to the vato Jose
Him say, Do as we say, not as we do
We be da church if you be da fool
Fall down from the skies
Sail through the waters
Needed the gifts from the land and sea
Mālama kakou perpetual motion
Loaʻa tomorrow for the keikis eat
Auwē, Auwē, Auwē
Lawa ka meaʻai, time for the hiamoe
Go on down, lie down our bodies to sleep
Hale warm cause ʻāina still love us
Papa remains under our feet
Fairy tales that you learn in school
Misinformation from the public education
Good ʻol kanaka going do what he’s told
Colonized down to his soul
Question not why he’s fighting the war
The pledge allegiance said him better than him been before
