By Guest Contributor Yvonne Yen Liu, cross-posted from Mobilizing Ideas

Marshall Ganz calls Occupy a moment, but we have a history and a future.  My generation, in North America, was birthed over 12 years ago, in the streets of Seattle, when trade unionists joined with anarchists to disrupt the workings of global capital, well, in this case, the meeting of a major player, the World Trade Organization.  We refused to accept capitalism as a natural way of ordering our social world; “Another World is Possible” was a popular slogan.  We manifested alternatives in organizing our collective refusal.  Instead of relying on institutions created under capitalism, we created our own clinics, schools, decision-making bodies, and media outlets.  Some of which have formalized into counter-institutions that exist today.  The global network of independent media centers and community health centers, like the Common Ground clinic in New Orleans, started after Hurricane Katrina, are our legacy.

The Millennials may find inspiration when their peer, 26-year old Mohamed Bouazizi, educated yet unable to find a good job, self-immolated himself on the steps of the Tunisian governor’s office, sparking the uprisings of the Arab Spring.  Or, when 24-year old Bradley Manning, in a fit of frustration with military bureaucracy and the war abroad, uploaded confidential documents onto the Wikileaks website.  What is the future of the Occupy movement?  Approximately a half-year in and many camps have been violently evicted from the land on which they pitched their tents.  Many of us spent this late fall awake in an overnight vigil to defend a camp or recovering from being pepper sprayed by cops when trying to setup a new one.  At the time of writing this, only Occupy D.C. remains intact.  But, that is not the end of Occupy.

Like seeds released into the wind, we lodged into soil, to hibernate through the winter, and to unfurl new shoots in the spring.  For what Occupy has created is an opportunity for us collectively to create new subjectivities and to dream of a new world.  Social theorists have long thought about the relationship between the individual and society as a dialectical one, each informing the development of the other.  George Mead, for instance, wrote that social reality was an external thing that impressed itself upon and shaped a child during the process of socialization.  But, the self that had ideas that challenged social norms could win acceptance by the larger group, therefore changing society.

Under capitalism, Herbert Marcuse thought, the individual lost her capacity to think critically and the desire to yearn for freedom.  We lost our sense of self, subjectivity, and became objects in the process of production.  All of human life was organized for the instrumental means of achieving profit for the 1%.  We became mechanical producers, who worked to make a salary to enable us to passively consume mass culture and media.  This one-dimensional thinking dominated culture and ideology, focused only on keeping calm and carrying on.

One outcome of Occupy can be foretold by the example of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST).  Today, 350,000 families occupy 20 million acres of land, a challenge to global capital, which has setup white picket fences around the world, cordoning off what was once the commons.  MST’s flag celebrates the industry of the landless worker, represented by a couple holding aloft a machete, and their willingness to fight for land reform, with blood if necessary.   This flag accompanied MST leader Janaina Stronzake, when she visited the Occupy Wall Street encampment, before it was evicted from Zuccotti Park.  “Occupation was a time to grow,” she told the assembly, “To grow education, empowerment, and food community.”  The crowd echoed after her, amplifying Janaina’s words using the human microphone, “Occupy, Resist, and Grow!”

Janaina grew up in a MST occupation.  Her family lost their land to banks in the late 1970s because, like many family farmers in the global south at the time, they borrowed money in order to adopt industrial agricultural techniques.  Indebted and unable to pay back what they owed, the bank seized their land, displacing newborn Janaina, her eight older brothers, and parents to the city, where they survived precariously as field laborers.  But, in 1985, her family joined the MST and they moved into a camp, with 225 other families, for two years, where they studied and prepared to occupy land in the western part of the Parana state.

The MST uses a two-step method to expropriate land lying fallow, owned by corporations or latifundios, for collective use.  First, families are moved in rural camps, typically dwelling in shacks alongside highways, until land is identified for settlement.  This can take anywhere from six months to five years, but camp living has proved to be important preparation in transforming atomized individuals into collectively minded occupiers.  Camp residents receive a rigorous dose of participatory education, on politics and critical thinking as well as practical matters such as sustainable farming techniques and how to manage a cooperative.  Without this experience, families that move directly onto occupied land typically leave within a few months.  But, with this preparation, more than 90 percent stay for the long run.

The second step is occupation of the land by families, usually at dawn when security guards and police are sleeping.  Janaina remembers arriving early one morning with her family to an unused piece of land, but the police were waiting and prevented the families from entering the land.  So, they camped on the side of the road for two months, where conditions were difficult,  “hunger and cold were always stalking us,” Janaina recalled.  Brazil is unique in that, beginning in the nineteenth century, one had legal claim to land if it was serving a social function.  While petitioning through bureaucratic pathways for the title, the MST also moved the camp to occupy the plaza in front of the state capital, Curitiba.  After participating in seven occupations, Janaina’s mother finally acquired land, collectively.

Once land is occupied, the collective immediately begins to dig in and grow roots.  Peter Rossett describes how “crops are planted immediately, communal kitchens, schools, and a health clinic are set up, and defense teams trained in nonviolence secure the perimeter against the hired gunmen, thugs, and assorted police forces that the landlord usually calls down upon them.”  This is the new society that the MST is building alongside the current model of global capitalism.

Already, we are experimenting with land occupations.  A faction of Occupy Oakland tried to takeover a foreclosed homeless shelter on the day of the general strike.  They were unsuccessful, but planted a seed.  A seed that took root on December 6, the national day of action, where organizers across the country occupied foreclosed properties.  Next, come spring, as Max Rameau promises, we will emerge and bloom.

Postscript: I had the opportunity to ask Janaina: How does the MST example apply to Occupy, which does seem primarily to be urban? I found her response quite profound. She said, “It’s time to break the Cartesian dualism, step away from the rural versus urban dichotomy, and think of other ways to defend land, grow food, and distribute resources… We who are living in ‘urban’ places can create ‘rural’ spaces, to grow our own food.”

Dear Occupy San Diego,

We, the All Peoples Revolutionary Front, have been intrigued by the developments of Occupy Wall Street and the way this action has compelled many around the world to engage in public protest. While acknowledging the ways in which our struggles converge, we must articulate the ways in which our struggles diverge. We continue to observe brutality in the legacy of capitalism, a system that relied upon the enslavement of African and Caribbean peoples, the genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples, and the violent seizure of lands for colonial profit. Economic exploitation of labor and resources is only one process of continuing colonization that disproportionately impacts communities of color and third world peoples. Our struggle for self-determination in the present moment contributes to the histories of resistance that began long before us.

APRFront is a collaboration of all abilities, generations, genders, gender non-conforming, sexual orientations, indigineity, race, ethnicities, cosmologies, faith and spiritual practices, and identities. We are a constellation of collectives involving students, activists, community organizers, artists, educators, justice advocates, and all those who engage critical knowledge to inform political struggle. APRFront identifies with a diverse range of practices, including Social Justice Education Pedagogy, anti-oppressive movement building, critical consciousness development, and privilege-checking strategies. We acknowledge all levels of education in our coalition, and welcome folks with a willingness to learn, teach, and engage in the different political ideologies of revolutionary liberation such as socialism-marxism-womyn of color feminism, intersectionality, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and zapatismo. We realize these terms and ideologies may not be immediately accessible, but we will provide explanation to those who desire to learn and practice our methods. While we believe in education, we also believe that part of our self-determination is not having to fully disclose our identities and the practices we study in every public statement we make to “Occupy” movements.

We recognize the necessity and strategic importance of visible demonstrations which movements for social change rely upon, understanding that our struggle continues the legacy and knowledge of critical consciousness in direct action. We are concerned that Occupation is a romanticized and idealized form of activism, one that does not consider what must follow civil disobedience in the long-term. We envision the sustainability of organizing within our communities and collective contribution to accountable leadership, involving structured consensus-based decision making through the guiding power of the masses. Within this framework of self-determination, the colonizing language of Occupation does not translate. Because this land called “San Diego” has endured centuries of colonial conquest and domination at the expense of Indigenous Kumeyaay peoples, APRFront cannot support, endorse, or conscientiously mobilize in solidarity with the concept of Occupation. Our level of engagement with Occupy San Diego serves the purpose of claiming space for people of color and articulating the movement to decolonize on a local and global scale.

When we imagine decolonization, we do not make demands of those in power or those who are behind Occupy movements; we create power and frame the alternative. We envision our autonomy and our destinies to be liberated from government dictation, intervention, and colonization. This does not mean “inclusion” and token representation within existing systems of oppression, but an elimination of the systems themselves. It is neither our desire nor our intention to simply reform the colonizing structures of capitalism and white supremacy, but to dismantle them and create the terms of our existence. We understand why Occupy San Diego is meaningful to local activists–veterans and newcomers alike–but it is not our vision. Cherokee scholar Andrea Smith writes: “On one hand, it is necessary to engage in oppositional politics to corporate and state power by taking power. Yet if we only engage in the politics of taking power, we will have a tendency to replicate the hierarchical structures in our movements. So it is also important to ‘make power’ by creating those structures within our organizations, movements, and communities that model the world we are trying to create.” It is the uncritical nationalism of Occupy movements, often expressed in the spirit of “taking ‘our’ country back,” that indicates to us a taking of existing power and a perpetuation of oppressive systems. If we return to the “revolutionary” moment of “America,” we must also return to slavery, genocide, and the total monopoly of white male supremacy.

We have an understanding of revolution that does not conform to the US colonial model; our revolution continues in solidarity and dialogue with slave rebellions and Black Power, Indigenous resistance and zapatismo, Arab and African uprisings, queer and womyn of color organizing, Third World Liberation movements, and all peoples movements that have battled colonization and imperialism. APRFront is a people of color-lead coalition allowing white identified anti-racists and activists, who challenge internal and structural white supremacy, to play a supporting role. We find the dynamic of this model to be crucial to self-determination, revolution, and social change. We are also conscious in ensuring that our leadership is not only intentionally people of color-lead, but that gender non-conforming people, cis-gender, and queer womyn of color assume leadership roles. It is important to emphasize the radical political education and diverse identities folks bring to this coalition, rather than placing the emphasis on skin color alone. It was Critical Race scholar George Lipsitz who said “white supremacy is an equal opportunity employer,” meaning the practice of whiteness is not exclusive to folks with white skin. Further, we recognize white supremacy and racism as structures that exist and operate beyond individual violence and interpersonal conflict. We do not believe social justice has been achieved with one individual of color in a position of power, whether they are occupying the highest station of the white house or occupying the surrounding environment.

APRFront recognizes the need for leaders, but we make the distinction between leaders who are chosen, cultivated, and sustained by the people, and leaders who are upheld by oppressive governance, state regimes, and dictatorial power. We are following the journey of the Civil Rights movement, and by this we mean the interconnected and enduring struggles of Chicano Resistance, the Philippines’ People Power movements, the American-Indian movement, the Cuban Revolution, Third World Feminist movements, and others. We do not perceive the Civil Rights Movement in the US to be a temporary historical event that began and ended with the dynamic of Black vs. white, but a globally interconnected and persistent struggle for self-determination. We believe we must organize beyond the superficial language of multiculturalism and diversity into the organizing work of dismantling white supremacy. Although we respect the work that is being done by our fellow community members in Occupy, it is our position that committees and/or caucuses of color within Occupy movements reinforce structures of white supremacy. The relegating of people of color to the secondary and supporting roles of working groups, committees and/or caucuses creates a hierarchical design in which whiteness is again privileged and enforced through what is described as “leaderless” organizing.

APRFront works for collective agency in community empowerment to disrupt and subvert the focused individualism of capitalist greed, imperialism, globalization and all other forms of white supremacy. In the spirit of movements like the Third World Liberation Front and the solidarity movements built amongst the Filipino-American and Mexican-American farm workers in 1965, we were inspired to form the APRFront coalition. We visualize a radical people-of-color led movement to be organized and structured with a revolutionary leadership that directs, coordinates, and strategically develops the revolutionary process while making power and building a new vision with the consensus of the masses. Part of people power is having multiple leaders from local, national, and global movements with a selfless passion for revolution and a deep devotion to the masses, as well as a strong understanding of strategic tactics needed to work with the masses and pave the road to revolution in line with our vision. We must also have leaders who challenge the internalized colonization embedded within our educational institutions that reproduces inequity by controlling access to social mobility based on race, immigrant status, and class.

When we reflect on the “leaderless” approach of Occupation, we find no space in which to honor our leaders of movements for radical change, and the masses that made their work possible. Although iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr. inspired many Blacks, there were multiple unsung local leaders that built and sustained the movement. It was Black womyn leaders like Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson that led the bus boycott before King led the Montgomery Improvement Association. It was the work of other womyn of color leaders like Dolores Huerta who played a huge role in farm worker organizing which eventually led her to co-founding the United Farm Workers with César Chavez, Philip Vera Cruz, and Larry Itliong. Gabriela Silang is another important figure who lead an uprising in the Philippines against the Spanish imperialists, after her husband Diego Silang, who was the original leader of the movement, was killed. While there is more than one leader in mass movements for decolonization, it is important to realize that many leaders are also womyn of color who are often forgotten and unnoticed. The erasure of these herstories is one historical example of how patriarchy manifests, and a contemporary example concerns men, particularly white men, monopolizing Occupy movements and denying the voices of people and womyn of color.

As a solution and community-based effort, APRFront exercises deep organizing as an essential part of revolution and mass movement. Deep organizing can be attributed to our internal coalition practices and the everyday work folks within our communities do to mobilize and educate our people: from the service workers who maintain our public spaces to the young teens who advocate transforming their gang community-family into social action, from the elders that make us meals and ensure we are well nourished to the Pelican Bay prisoners on hunger strike. We continuously work to embody the practice of acknowledging those within our movements who are behind the scenes contributing work that is often unrecognized. It was Ella Baker, an important Civil Rights leader who said, “I would rather pass the water to people marching, than hold the picket sign in the march.”

APRFont struggles with the apparent high expectations within Occupy San Diego for communities of color to be present and consistently active with Occupation; however, this expectation fails to adequately address the reality of racial profiling, police brutality, the corrupt criminal justice system and the threat of deportation for both citizens of color and undocumented peoples. When considering issues of movement safety and participation in Occupy demonstrations, we understand the racial distinction between experiences with law enforcement in everyday situations and civil disobedience. While the theoretical purpose of law enforcement is to defend constitutional rights and humanity, this has been and continues to be untrue for communities of color. We’ve witnessed the unjust capital punishment in the legal lynching of Troy Davis which is deeply connected to the increasingly privatized prison industrial complex. Corrupt corporate greed is not exclusive to Wall Street: Corrections Corporation of America, Geo Group and Management and Training Corporation have made incarceration a profitable business, intentionally creating a system that imprisons people-of-color and specifically undocumented peoples to serve as present-day slave labor. We are not all protected equally by the police or paramilitary forces.

While we value protest as an integral part of revolution, we understand that we must also continue forth with long-term planning and deep organizing practices. It is imperative to acknowledge that many people of color will be hesitant to attend Occupy demonstrations, while others are not at the capacity to be present due to poor health, being caretakers for their families, and/or just trying to survive everyday life. We also recognize that essential activism exists behind the gaze of the media and outside the realm of public visibility. All Peoples Revolutionary Front understands and encourages deep organizing, for it is the practice of taking care of each other, our families, our communities and the lands we live upon that contributes to a sustainable movement. While affirming our own present-day skills and knowledge, we organize in honor of our ancestors as an intentional practice to remember our histories, for they are often erased by white supremacy in popular movements. We have learned from our ancestors that a true mass movement can only be led by genuine revolutionary leaders. We also acknowledge that we have multiple leaders but we will not survive or succeed without the help of the people who organize, protest, and perform the same work. APRFront understands that without the masses, leaders would be nothing. And without sincere leaders, the masses would not be able to arrive at liberation. Leadership, the masses, and the vision are inseparable. They must be accountable to each other and must work in tandem in order to create a united front for true revolution. This is the movement in which we embrace, this is the movement in which we strive to become. This is the vision we seek.

We believe that intersecting legacies of injustice must be understood and brought in to dialogue in order to inform our movement. The colonial creation of Wall Street is evidence that an occupation has been taking place long before protesters in Zucotti park arrived. In the late 1600s, the Dutch colony located in the land presently called “New York” became the site of a fortification built under the direction of the Dutch West India Company with the labor of enslaved African peoples. Settlers erected this wall on Indigenous Lenape land to specifically prevent these peoples from “attacking” the land they originally inhabited. Manna-hata, meaning “island of many hills,” was the Lenape term converted to “Manhattan” when translated into English. The stolen land surrounded by colonial borders would eventually translate into English as “Wall Street.” Through neocolonial control, occupied cities and countries terrorized through war and illegal settlements continue to exist in the contemporary moment. Whether it is the militarized occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the armed imposition of US forces in Libya, US government intervention in the affairs of the Philippines, the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the apartheid wall of the West Bank, or the violation of international law and false “statehood” voting which led to the colonizination Hawaii, these geographies endure human rights abuses within systems of imperialism and conquest.

On the eve of the renewed police violence in Oakland, it is even more apparent that we must work towards a new vision for a socially just society and continue to engage in a process of decolonization and anti-oppression practices. This entails acknowledging that our current institutions have systematized inequality, oppression, and exploitation of people of color for the benefit of capital gain, expansion, and power. We cannot afford to reproduce the same system that is the root of our oppression if our intention is revolutionary liberation. Rather, we must be critical about our potential as agents of transformation and recognize ways that we further the oppression of people of color and Third World peoples.

In the strength of “making our own power”, All Peoples Revolutionary Front has organized our own National Call to Action titled “Rise & Decolonize! Let’s Get Free” on November 18, 2011 at 5:00 pm. We invite all those who have a genuine willingness to engage and listen to attend our solidarity rally, and become an ally to people of color in continuing the work of decolonization.

We welcome other communities of color to organize in solidarity with us on November 18th to affirm the decolonization of all Occupy movements.

Isang Bagsak,
All Peoples Revolutionary Front

Dear Person that decided to dress up as an Indian for Halloween,

I was going to write you an eloquent and well-reasoned post today about all the reasons why it’s not ok to dress up as a Native person for Halloween–talk about the history of“playing Indian” in our country, point to the dangers of stereotyping and placing of Native peoples as mythical, historical creatures, give you some articles to read, hope that I could change your mind by dazzling you with my wit and reason–but I can’t. I can’t, because I know you won’t listen, and I’m getting so tired of trying to get through to you.

I just read the comments on this post at Bitch Magazine, a conversation replicated all over the internet when people of color are trying to make a plea to not dress up as racist characters on Halloween. I felt my chest tighten and tears well up in my eyes, because even with Kjerstin’s well researched and well cited post, people like you are so caught up in their own privilege, they can’t see how much this affects and hurts their classmates, neighbors and friends.

I already know how our conversation would go. I’ll ask you to please not dress up as a bastardized version of my culture for Halloween, and you’ll reply that it’s “just for fun” and I should “get over it.” You’ll tell me that you “weren’t doing it to be offensive” and that “everyone knows real Native Americans don’t dress like this.” You’ll say that you have a “right” to dress up as “whatever you damn well please.” You’ll remind me about how you’re “Irish” and the “Irish we’re oppressed too.” Or you’ll say you’re “German”, and you “don’t get offended by people in Lederhosen.”

But you don’t understand what it feels like to be me. I am a Native person. You are (most likely) a white person. You walk through life everyday never having the fear of someone mis-representing your people and your culture. You don’t have to worry about the vast majority of your people living in poverty, struggling with alcoholism, domestic violence, hunger, and unemployment caused by 500+ years of colonialism and federal policies aimed at erasing your existence. You don’t walk through life everyday feeling invisible, because the only images the public sees of you are fictionalized stereotypes that don’t represent who you are at all. You don’t know what it’s like to care about something so deeply and know at your core that it’s so wrong, and have others in positions of power dismiss you like you’re some sort of over-sensitive freak.

You are in a position of power. You might not know it, but you are. Simply because of the color of your skin, you have been afforded opportunities and privilege, because our country was built on a foundation of white supremacy. That’s probably a concept that’s too much for you to handle right now, when all you wanted to do was dress up as a PocaHottie for Halloween, but it’s true.

I am not in a position of power. Native people are not in positions of power. By dressing up as a fake Indian, you are asserting your power over us, and continuing to oppress us. That should worry you.

But don’t tell me that you’re oppressed too, or don’t you dare come back and tell me your “great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess” and that somehow makes it ok. Do you live in a system that is actively taking your children away without just cause? Do you have to look at the TV on weekends and see sports teams with mascots named after racial slurs of your people? I doubt it.

Last night I sat with a group of Native undergraduates to discuss their thoughts and ideas about the costume issue, and hearing the comments they face on a daily basis broke my heart. They take the time each year to send out an email called “We are not a costume” to the undergraduate student body–an email that has become known as the “whiny newsletter” to their entitled classmates. They take the time to educate and put themselves out there, only to be shot down by those that refuse to think critically about their choices.Your choices are adversely affecting their college experiences, and that’s hard for me to take without a fight.

The most frustrating part to me is, there are so many other things you can dress up as for Halloween. You can be a freaking sexy scrabble board for goodness sake. But why does your fun have to come at the expense of my well-being? Is your night of drunken revelry really worth subjugating an entire group of people? I just can’t understand, how after hearing, first-hand, that your choice is hurtful to another human being, you’re able to continue to celebrate with your braids and plastic tomahawk.

So I know you probably didn’t even read this letter, I know you’ve probably already bought and paid for your Indian costume, and that this weekend you’ll be sucking down jungle juice from a red solo cup as your feathers wilt and warpaint runs. I know you’re going to scoff at my over-sensitivity. But I’m telling you, from the bottom of my heart, that you’re hurting me. And I would hope that would be enough.

Wado,

Adrienne K.

PS- I wonder if you saw these posters? Because I think they illustrate my point really well.

UPDATE 10/27: Have a look at some of the costumes I’m talking about. I think it makes my arguments a lot clearer.

Earlier:
But Why Can’t I Wear a Hipster Headdress?
Nudie Neon Indians and the Sexualiztion of Indian Women
A Cowboys and Indians Party is just as bad as a Blackface Party 
Paris Hilton as a Sexy Indian: The Halloween Fallout Begins (includes lots of links about the costume issue)
Mid-Week Motivation: I am not your costume

In the midst of her excellent takedown of Urban Outfitters’ “Navajo” appparel line, Sasha Houston Brown focused on one suspiciously-named piece of underwear:

I doubt that you consulted the Navajo Nation about using their tribal name on sophisticated items such as the “Navajo Hipster Panty”. In fact, I recently became aware that the Navajo Nation Attorney General sent your company a cease and desist letter regarding this very issue. I stand in solidarity with the Navajo Nation and ask that you not only cease and desist selling products falsely using the Navajo name, but that you also stop selling faux Indian apparel that objectifies all tribes.

Wednesday, Sasha passed along an update to the story from the Indian Country Today Media Network: a few days after UO spokesman Ed Looram said the company had “no plans to modify or discontinue any of these products,” the word Navajo has been completely scrubbed from its’ website.

In a release, the Navajo Nation Justice Department told the Associated Press Wednesday the move was “more consistent with the corporation’s responsibilities than previously demonstrated.”

As of Wednesday, items with the word “Navajo” in their description are now referred to as “Printed,” like the infamous Hipster Panty, which went from this:

to this:

Of course, the name “Hipster Panty” still makes it sound like it was made out of hair from Zooey Deschanel’s unicorn PBR puppy or whatever. But regardless, congrats to the Navajo Nation on this victory, and to Sasha and everyone who posted about this issue for pushing UO into the change!

By Guest Contributor Harsha Walia

I wish I could start with the ritualistic “I love you” for the Occupy Movement. To be honest, it has been a space of turmoil for me. But also one of virulent optimism. What I outline below are not criticisms. I am inspired that the dynamic of the movement thus far has been organic, so that all those who choose to participate are collectively responsible for its evolution. To everyone – I offer my deepest respect.

I am writing today with Grace Lee Boggs in mind:

The coming struggle is a political struggle to take political power out of the hands of the few and put it into the hands of the many. But in order to get this power into the hands of the many, it will be necessary for the many not only to fight the powerful few but to fight and clash among themselves as well.

This may sound counter-productive, but I find it a poignant reminder that, in our state of elation, we cannot under-estimate the difficult terrain ahead. I look forward to the processes that will further these conversations.

Occupations on Occupied Land

One of the broad principles in a working statement of unity (yet to be formally adopted) of Occupy Vancouver thus far includes an acknowledgement of unceded Coast Salish territories. There has been opposition to this as being “divisive” and “focusing on First Nations issues”. I would argue that acknowledging Indigenous lands is a necessary and critical starting point for two primary reasons.

Firstly, the word Occupy has understandably ignited criticism from Indigenous people as having a deeply colonial implication. It erases the brutal history of genocide that settler societies have been built on. This is not simply a rhetorical or fringe point; it is a profound and indisputable matter of fact that this land is already occupied. The province of BC is largely still unceded land, which means that no treaties have been signed and the title holders of Vancouver are the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Tseilwau-tuth, and Musqueam. As my Sḵwx̱wú7mesh friend Dustin Rivers joked “Okay so the Premier and provincial government acknowledge and give thanks to the host territory, but Occupy Vancouver can’t?”

Supporting efforts towards decolonization is not only an Indigenous issue. It is also about us, as non-natives, learning the history of this land and locating ourselves and our responsibilities within the context of colonization. Occupation movements such as those in Boston and Denver and New York have taken similar steps in deepening an anti-colonial analysis.

Secondly, we must understand that the tentacles of corporate control have roots in the processes of colonization and enslavement. As written by the Owe Aku International Justice Project: “Corporate greed is the driving factor for the global oppression and suffering of Indigenous populations. It is the driving factor for the conquest and continued suffering for the Indigenous peoples on this continent. The effects of greed eventually spill over and negatively impact all peoples, everywhere.”

The Hudsons Bay Company in Canada and the East India Trading Company in India, for example, were some of the first corporate entities established on the stock market. Both companies were granted trading monopolies by the British Crown, and were able to extract resources and amass massive profits due to the subjugation of local communities through the use of the Empire’s military and police forces. The attendant processes of corporate expansion and colonization continues today, most evident in this country with the Alberta Tar Sands. In the midst of an economic crisis, corporations’ ability to accumulate wealth is dependent on discovering new frontiers from which to extract resources. This disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples and destroys the land base required to sustain their communities, while creating an ecological crisis for the planet as a whole.

Systemic Oppression Connected to Economic Inequality

In creating a unified space of opposition to the 1% who hold a concentration of power and wealth, we must simultaneously foster critical education to learn about the systemic injustices that many of us in the 99% continue to face. This should not be pejoratively dismissed as “identity politics”, which for many re-enforces the patterns of marginalization. The connection between the nature and structure of the political economy and systemic injustice is clear: the growing economic inequality being experienced in this city and across this country is nothing new for low-income racialized communities, particularly single mothers, all of whom face the double brunt of scape-goating during periods of recession.

The very idea of the multitude forces a contestation of any one lived experience binding the 99%. Embracing this plurality and having an open heart to potentially uncomfortable truths about systemic oppression beyond the ‘evil corporations and greedy banks’ will strengthen this movement. Ignoring the hierarchies of power between us does not make them magically disappear. It actually does the opposite – it entrenches those inequalities. If we learn from social movements past, we observe that the struggle to genuinely address issues of race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, age, and nationality actually did more, rather than less, to facilitate broader participation.

In order to this we need to critically examine the idea of “catering to the mainstream”. I do not disagree with reaching out to as broad a base as possible; but we should ask ourselves: who constitutes the “mainstream”? If Indigenous communities, homeless people, immigrants, LGBTQs, seniors and others are all considered “special interest groups” (although we actually constitute an overwhelming demographic majority), then by default that suggests that, as Rinku Sen argues, straight white men are the sole standard of universalism. “Addressing other systems of oppression, and the people those systems affect, isn’t about elevating one group’s suffering over that of white men. It’s about understanding how the mechanisms of control actually operate. When we understand, we can craft solutions that truly help everybody. ” This should not be misunderstood as advocating for a pecking order of issues; it is about understanding that the 99% is not a homogenous group but a web of inter-related communities in struggle.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, Tar Sands Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, wrote to me: “Our own Indigenous Rights movements are gaining momentum which means that we all must continually be educating new folks getting politicized. We can all be working towards a larger convergence that is strongly rooted in an Anti colonial, Anti Racist, Anti Oppressive framework.” In a similar vein, Syed Hussan writes, “Understand that to truly be free, to truly include the entire 99 per cent, you have to say today, and say every day: We will leave no one behind.” Just as we challenge the idea of austerity put forward by governments and corporations, we should challenge the idea of scarcity of space in our movements and instead facilitate a more nuanced discourse about inequality.

Learning from History and Building on Successes

While it is clearly too early to comment on the future of the Occupy movement, I offer a few humble preliminary thoughts based on Occupy Wall Street and the nature of the Vancouver organizing. Those who us who have been activists rightfully do not have any particular authority in this movement and as many others have cautioned, more experienced activists should not claim moral righteousness over those who are just joining the struggle. But we also cannot claim ignorance either.

It must be re-stated that Occupy Together is brilliantly transitional. As has been repeatedly noted, it is has been a moral and strategic success to not have a pre-articulated laundry list of demands within which to confine a nascent movement. Peter Marcus writes “Occupy is seen by most of its participants and supporters not as a set of pressures for individual rights, but as a powerful claim for a better world… The whole essence of the movement is to reject the game’s rules as it is being played, to produce change that includes each of these demands but goes much further to question the structures that make those demands necessary.” Similarly Vijay Prashad says that we “must breathe in the many currents of dissatisfaction, and breathe out a new radical imagination.”

The creation of encampments is in itself an act of liberation. Decentralized gatherings with democratic decision-making processes and autonomous space for people to gather and dialogue based on their interests – such as through reading circles or art zones or guerrilla gardening – create a sense of purpose, connectedness, and emancipation in a society that otherwise breeds apathy, disenchantment, and isolation. This type of pre-figurative politics – a living symbol of refusal – is a ways to come together to create and live the alternatives to this system. I am reminded of the modest (Anti) Olympic Tent Village in our own city in the Downtown Eastside last year, which was deemed ‘paradise’ and a place where ‘real freedom lives’ by many.

One issue I would stress is building awareness about police violence and police infiltration. In some cities, Occupy organizers have actively collaborated with police. While many do this on the principle of ‘we have nothing to hide‘, the police cannot be trusted. This is not a comment on individual police officers who maybe “ordinary people”, but their job is to protect the 1%. The police have a long history of repression of social movements. Plus, people who are homeless, racialized, non-status, or queer routinely experience arbitrary police abuse. We must take these concerns seriously in order to promote participation from these communities. We must also learn to rely on ourselves to keep ourselves safe and to hold ground when police are ordered to clear us out. This seems insurmountable, but it has been done before and can be done again.

In the heels of the Olympics and G20, a recurring issue is diversity of tactics. Despite a history in community-based movement-building, based on a debate about diversity of tactics with an ally whom I respect, there has been unnecessary and misinformed fear-mongering that those who support a diversity of tactics “fundamentally reject peaceful assemblies”. For me, supporting a diversity of tactics has always implied respect for a range of strategies including non-violent assembly. As G20 defendant Alex Hundert, who has written extensively about diversity of tactics told me, “It is important to recognise that a belief in supporting a diversity of tactics means not ruling out intentionally peaceful means. These gatherings have been explicitly nonviolent from the start and in hundreds of cities across the continent. Obviously this is the right tactic for this moment.”

It is noteworthy that Occupy Wall Street has not actually dogmatically rejected a diversity of tactics. It appears that the movement there has understood what diversity of tactics actually means – which is not imposing one tactic in any and every context. The Occupy Wall Street Direct Action Working Group has adopted the basic tenet of “respect diversity of tactics, but be aware of how your actions will affect others.” In my opinion, this is an encouraging development as people work together to learn how to come keep each other safe within the encampment, while effectively escalating tactics in autonomous actions.

Finally, we may want to stop articulating that this is a leaderless movement; it might be more honest to suggest that We Are All Leaders. Denying that leadership exists deflects accountability, obscures potential hierarchies, and absolves us of actively creating structures within which to build collective leadership. Many of the models being used such as the General Assembly and Consensus are rooted in the practice of anti-authoritarians and community organizers. There are many other skills to share to empower and embolden this movement. As much as we wish we can radically transform unjust economic, political, and social systems overnight, but this is a long-term struggle. And there is always the danger of co-optation. Slavoj Zizek warned Occupy Wall Street that “Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, they will try to make this into a harmless moral protest.” Which means that we will need to find ways to do the pain-staking work of making this movement sustainable and rooting it within and alongside existing grassroots movements for social and environmental justice.

“We have begun to come out of the shadows; we have begun to break with routines and oppressive customs and to discard taboos; we have commenced to carry with pride the task of thawing hearts and changing consciousness. Women, let’s not let the danger of the journey and the vastness of the territory scare us — let’s look forward and open paths in these woods. Voyager, there are no bridges; one builds them as one walks.”
- Gloria Anzaldua

A version of this article originally appeared in rabble.ca

By Arturo R. García

Not long after Adrienne Keene’s column last week, comedian Daniella Pineda sent us this spot-on mock advert subverting “Urban Infitters” and the like.

The video’s only 1:37 long, so I don’t want to spoil it, but here’s the set-up: designer DW Díaz (Pineda) walks us thru her new line, inspired by a recent viewing of Legends Of The Fall, and her realization that “Native Americans are so cute!” And from there things turn toward the fashionably horrifying. Enjoy!

The Occupy Wall Street protest has become a matter of debate in Indian Country. Some have chosen to be included under the slogan – “We Are The 99%; others, like me, have chosen to be excluded from the 99%. Many of those who support it have come up with their own slogan – DECOLONIZE WALL STREET. I simply don’t believe that the indigenous nations on Turtle Island are a part of that 99% equation, let alone that the Occupy Wall Street movement is about decolonization.

One protester, Brendan Burke, said: “Everyone has this problem. White, black. Rich or poor. Where you live. Everyone has a financial inequity oppressing them.”

I assume from his statement that Burke only sees things in white and black. Apparently he is color blind when it comes to red and the brown. As far as financial inequity is concerned, we, the red and the brown peoples of the Americas, have suffered financial inequity ever since the oppressors first invaded our shores. Financial inequity – perhaps better termed as socio-economic inequity – began with the subjugation of our lands through treaties. Annuity payments were often late and were never the amount negotiated under the treaty. Supplies and food rations that were part of annuity payments were often appropriated by Indian agents and resold for higher prices.

The tragedy at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag (Sandy Lake) exemplifies the socio-economic inequity of annuity payments. In the fall of 1850, nineteen Anishinaabeg bands from Wisconsin journeyed to Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag for annual annuity payments and supplies. The annuity payments and supplies were late and the people had to wait until early December before they received limited sums of money and available supplies. Trying to survive on spoiled and inadequate government rations while waiting for the annuities, 150 Anishinaabeg people died from dysentery and measles at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag. Two-hundred and fifty more, mostly women children and elders, died on their way back home to Wisconsin. This is but one example of the economic inequity that has been part of the indigenous experience in the United States.

One of the things that the Occupy Wall Street organizers have repeatedly stated is that the inspiration for their protest is the Arab Spring movement. If this is the case, one may ask how did the indigenous peoples of the Middle East fare from the Arab Spring?

On September, Daniel Gabriel, the SUA Human Rights and UN NGO Director, stated: “While the media focuses all its energy on the Palestinian search for Statehood and the ‘Arab Spring’, it is the reduced indigenous populations of the Middle East who continue to lose out. Time and time again, the world demands justice, democracy and freedom in the Middle East, but it fails in its obligation to demand the same for the minority groups like the Arameans. Today we barely survive in our homeland. But tomorrow we may silently vanish from existence. The SUA pleads with the global bodies such as the United Nations and the world community and media to prevent this imminent tragedy from happening.”

If the Arab Spring didn’t flourish for indigenous peoples in the Middle East, how can we expect it to flourish here?

If the indigenous peoples in the Middle East are barely surviving in their homelands, can we expect the Arab Spring inspired movement on Wall Street to lessen the oppression in our homelands? Will the actions on Wall Street abate our youth crisis, our teen suicide rate, our domestic and sexual abuse, or our alcohol and substance abuse in Indian Country? Will it heal our broken families and communities? Will Wall Street stop the rape and plunder of Mother Earth by the mining, oil and energy interests? Will it halt the ecocide, ethnocide, lingocide, and genocide of the indigenous peoples in North America? If Gabriel’s words offer any insight, then our historical trauma will not lessen but increase. It will increase in the present generation to the Seventh Generation – and beyond.

Then there is the matter of decolonization. The question is – the decolonization of what, of whom? How can decolonization be a part of the process if the occupiers are occupying occupied land?

Perhaps the most notable feature of the Occupy Wall Street movement is its lack of diversity. According to columnist Michelle Malkin: “When Occupy Wall Street activists call themselves the ‘99 percent,’ it turns out they mean 99 percent non-diverse (by their own politically correct measurements). It’s as pale out there at Camp Alinsky as MSNBC’s prime-time lineup or the New York Times editorial board. Not counting the cameos by Jesse Jackson and Cornel West, that is.”

The dominance of a white majority involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement explains why decolonization isn’t included in the proposed list of demands issued on September 3. The list of demands includes 1.) Separate Investment Banking from Commercial Banks; 2.) Use Congressional authority to prosecute the Wall Street criminals responsible for 2008 crisis; 3.) Cap the ability of corporations to contribute to political campaigns; 4.) Congress pass the Buffett Rule, i.e., fair taxation of the rich and corporations: 5.) Revamping Securities and Exchange Commission; 6.) Pass effective law to limit the influence of lobbyists; 7.) Pass law prohibiting former regulators to join corporations later.

Where in this proposed list of demands is there anything remotely connected to decolonization? At its core, Occupy Wall Street is about corporate greed, financial accountability, and economic inequity. It’s about a change in the system, although, as Gabriel points out, an Arab Spring doesn’t bring change to the voices of the indigenous. If change is the basic tenant of the Occupy Wall Street movement, then this change should not be the exclusion of indigenous populations in the United States, rather, change should in inclusive.

According to Raul Garcia “The struggle for a fundamental socio-economic change is not separate to the struggles of the Indigenous people. For if we want to have a humane and just society we need to deal with the issues that affect all people. In order to have fair and humane society it shouldn’t be just about money.”

As Garcia points out, the Occupy Wall Street movement is, at the present time, about money. The core message seems to be that corporate America and the wealthy needs to share the profits. Certainly, one can’t argue with that. But the question is – how are those profits made? The profits of the wealthy are made through the industries they own. These industries fuel and generate profits. And they create jobs and programs.

The mining, oil, and energy industries generate enormous profits. And those profits come at a cost to Indian Country, to say nothing of the environment in general. The new Indian Wars is about the opposition to ecocidal legislative policies and industries that endanger our homelands and our Mother Earth. Part of the struggle is trying to rise above the marginalization that began with colonization and continues through the corporate policies of the mining, oil, and energy industries.

According to Brenda Morris, ”Marginalization is as much a result of colonialism as it is corporatism. One is social, the other economic; I question the competence of the Occupy Wall Street movement to bring about fundamental socio-economic change – at least directly. Rebellion does not necessarily equal revolution. From the indigenous standpoint, while it is true that the struggle does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it must not allow itself to be subsumed by a movement that, to date, has shown little – if any – recognition of it, let alone respect for it.”

As evidenced by their proposed list of demands, the Occupy Wall Street movement has no intentions of recognizing indigenous concerns or demarginalizing indigenous peoples in the United States. And that’s because the mindset of the majority of occupiers is an intergenerational extension of a colonized mindset. In her Foreword to The New Resource Wars, Winona LaDuke provides insight into the colonized mindset. Regarding “Industrial society, or as some call it, ‘settler society,’” LaDuke writes:

In industrial society, ‘man’s dominion over nature,’ has preempted the perception of Natural Law as central. Linear concepts of ‘progress’ dominate this worldview. From this perception of ‘progress’ as an essential component of societal development comes the perception of the natural world as a wilderness. This, of course, is the philosophical underpinning of colonialism and ‘conquest.’”

This way of thinking is also present in scientific systems of thought like ‘Darwinism,’ as well as in social interpretations of human behavior such as ‘Manifest Destiny,’ with its belief in some god-ordained right of some humans to dominate the earth. These concepts are central to the…present state of relations between native and settler in North America and elsewhere.

The “settler society” that LaDuke refers to isn’t from the historical past. It is present in non-indigenous society today. It is the mentality of this “settler society” permeates the mindset of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Their demands aren’t about decolonization. Rather, their demands are about wanting a share of the profits, profits that come from the rape and plunder of the earth and our indigenous homelands.

This isn’t to say that the Occupy Wall Street movement lacks merit. Economic inequities, corporate greed, the mortgage crisis, the unequal distribution of wealth are legitimate concerns. But those concerns have nothing to do with neither decolonization nor environmental justice. As such, the 99% slogan is not inclusive of the myriad of environmental problems that plague both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in the United States.

Wendy Makoons Geniusz writes: “Because of the colonization process, many of us no longer see the strength of our indigenous knowledge. Our minds have been colonized along with our land, resources, people. For us Anishinaabeg, the decolonization of gikendaasowin (Anishinaabe knowledge) is also part of the decolonization of ourselves.”

Geniusz points out that biskaabiiyang means to “to return to ourselves, to decolonize ourselves.”

For many of us, biskaabiiyang is a lifelong process. It is a journey to heal our traumatized inner spirit of the historical past and the historical present. For many of us, our involvement in the struggles our communities and our homelands face is a part of that healing journey. From this prism, the Occupy movement can be viewed as recognizing the national trauma endured under Corporate America. But it isn’t about the biskaabiiyang of the American people. Rather, it’s about the collusion of corporations and the government to keep us under the yoke of economic inequity and the public’s demand for reformation of a corrupt capitalist system that has infested the world under the umbrella of globalization. And it is the reformation of this system that has led to the present movement of people on the streets of America.

However, should any kind of reformation occur, indigenous peoples will undoubtedly continue to be marginalized and their natural resources exploited. And, as before, we will continue our struggles in the shadows of democracy.

We will need to do this lest we silently vanish from existence.

This past weekend, I had the unfortunate experience of visiting a local Urban Outfitters store in Minneapolis. It appeared as though the recording “artist” Ke$ha had violently exploded in the store, leaving behind a cheap, vulgar and culturally offensive retail collection. Plastic dreamcatchers wrapped in pleather hung next to an indistinguishable mass of artificial feather jewelry and hyper sexualized clothing featuring an abundance of suede, fringe and inauthentic tribal patterns.

In all seriousness, as a Native American woman, I am deeply distressed by your company’s mass marketed collection of distasteful and racially demeaning apparel and décor. I take personal offense to the blatant racism and perverted cultural appropriation your store features this season as “fashion.”

All too often industries, sports teams and ignorant individuals legitimize racism under the guise of cultural “appreciation”. There is nothing honorable or historically appreciative in selling items such as the Navajo Print Fabric Wrapped Flask, Peace Treaty Feather Necklace, Staring at Stars Skull Native Headdress T-shirt or the Navajo Hipster Panty. These and the dozens of other tacky products you are currently selling referencing Native America make a mockery of our identity and unique cultures.

Your corporate website claims to “offer a lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual”. If this is the case, then clearly you have missed the mark on your target demographic. There is simply nothing educated about your collection, which on the contrary professes extreme ignorance and bigotry.

My primary concern with your company is the level on which you are engaging in cultural and religious appropriation. None of your products are actually made by Indigenous nations, nor were any Native peoples involved in the production or design process. On the contrary, you have created cheap knock-off trinkets made in factories overseas. Selling imported plastic and nylon dreamcatchers disrespects our history and undermines our sovereignty as Tribal Nations.

Did I mention that marketing inauthentic products using Native American tribal names is also illegal? The company’s actions violate the Federal Indian Arts and Crafts act of 1990 and the Federal Trade Commission Act. According to the Department of the Interior:

“The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-644) is a truth-in-advertising law that prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of Indian arts and crafts products within the United States. It is illegal to offer or display for sale, or sell any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian Tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization, resident within the United States. If a business violates the Act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000”.

I doubt that you consulted the Navajo Nation about using their tribal name on sophisticated items such as the “Navajo Hipster Panty”. In fact, I recently became aware that the Navajo Nation Attorney General sent your company a cease and desist letter regarding this very issue. I stand in solidarity with the Navajo Nation and ask that you not only cease and desist selling products falsely using the Navajo name, but that you also stop selling faux Indian apparel that objectifies all tribes.

Urban Outfitters Inc. has taken Indigenous life ways and artistic expressions and trivialized and sexualized them for the sake of corporate profit. It is this kind of behavior that perpetuates the stereotype of the white man’s Indian and allows for the ongoing commodification of an entire ethnic group. Just as our traditional homelands were stolen and expropriated without regard, so too has our very cultural identity. On this day that America still celebrates as Columbus Day, I ask that do what is morally right and apologize to Indigenous peoples of North America and withdraw this offensive line from retail stores.

Sincerely,

Sasha Houston Brown, Dakota
Santee Sioux Nation

A search for “Cherokee” on the Urban Outfitters website reveals 1 result. A search for “Tribal”: 15. A search for “Native”: 10. “Indian”: 2. But Navajo? 24 products have Navajo in the name alone.

This post started as a massive Urban Outfitters take-down, I spent an hour or so last week scrolling through the pages of the website, and adding anything to my cart that was “Native inspired” or had a tribal name in the description. I got through JUST the women’s clothes and accessories (no mens or apartment), and had 58 items in my cart. So, then, like any good researcher, I began to code my cart for emergent themes, and the one that jumped out far above the rest? Urban Outfitters is obsessed with Navajos.

I want to show you some examples, and then talk a little about the issues with using tribal names in products that are decidedly not-. Finally, I want to share what the Navajo Nation in particular is doing about it, and the action they’ve taken is pretty cool.

Without further ado, some of the “Navajo” products to grace the pages of Urban.

From the basic:

To the totally random:

The Antiquated:

And, finally, the totally offensive:

^{Navajo Hipster Panty}

Of course, there are many more if you head over to the site and search “Navajo”.

So what’s inherently wrong with using Navajo in product names? And what can tribal nations do about it?

First of all, these products represent a stereotype of “southwest” Native cultures. The designs are loosely based on Navajo rug designs (maybe?) or Pendleton designs, but aren’t representations that are chosen by the tribe or truly representative of Navajo culture. Associating a sovereign Nation of hundreds of thousands of people witl a flask or women’s underwear isn’t exactly honoring.

Additionally, it’s more than likely that Urban chose “Navajo” for the international recognition–to most of the world Navajo (and Cherokee)= American Indian (my Jamaican friend didn’t even know there were other tribes in the US until she met me). This conflation of Navajo with “generic Indian” contributes to the further erasure of the distinct tribes and cultures in the US and solidifies the idea that there is only one “Native” culture, represented by plains feathers and southwest designs.

Navajo has taken a bold step, and actually holds trademarks for 12 derivatives of “Navajo”, three of which I’m citing below:

2061748: NAVAJO Sportswear; namely, slacks, shorts, skirts and jeans.

2237848: NAVAJO Clothing; namely, tops, vests, shirts, sport shorts, polo shirts, golf shirts, * jackets, * T-shirts and sweat shirts.

3602907: NAVAJO Online retail store services; namely, on-line ordering services in the field of clothing—specifically, men’s and women’s sportswear, namely, jeans, tops, shirts, sport shorts, polo shirts, golf shirts, T-shirts and sweatshirts.
I’m no law expert, but it feels like the products above might be violating the trademarks?

A few months ago, they Navajo Nation Attorney General actually sent a cease and desist letter to Urban Outfitters, and there are some great quotes from the letter (I’ll try and post it in full in another post):

Your corporation’s use of Navajo will cause confusion in the market and society concerning the source or origin of your corporation’s products. Consumers will incorrectly believe that the Nation has licensed, approved, or authorized your corporation’s use of the Navajo name and trademarks for its products – when the Nation has not – or that your corporation’s use of Navajo is an extension of the Nation’s family of trademarks – which it is not. This is bound to cause confusion, mistake, or deception with respect to the source or origin of your goods. This undermines the character and uniqueness of the Nation’s long-standing distinctive Navajo name and trademarks, which—because of its false connection with the Nation—dilutes and tarnishes the name and trademarks. Accordingly, please immediately cease and desist using the Navajo name and trademark with your products.

As a Nation with a distinguished legacy and unmistakable contemporary presence, the Nation is committed to retaining this distinction and preventing inaccuracy and confusion in society and the market The Nation must maintain distinctiveness and clarity of valid association with its government, its institutions, its entities, its people, and their products in commerce.When an entity attempts to falsely associate its products with the Nation and its products, the Nation does not regard this as benign or trivial. TheNation remains firmly committed to the cancellation of all marks that attempt to falsely associate with the institution, its entities, its people or its products. Accordingly, immediately cease and desist using Navajo with your products.

I haven’t heard what the response was from Urban, if any, but I think it is a bold and positive choice for the tribe to take matters into their own hands and push back on instances of misrepresentation and cultural appropriation.

What do you think? Should tribes go the route of Navajo and trademark their tribal names? Do you think this will be an avenue for positive change or just mean tribal courts will be mired in lawsuits, taking away time from other important tribal business?

I also need to mention that New York City is Haudenosaunee territory and home to many other First Nations. Waiting to see if that’s been mentioned anywhere. (Author’s note: Manhattan “proper” is home to to the Lenape who were defrauded of the island by the Dutch in 1626 – see more from Tequila Sovereign).

Not that I’m surprised that this was a misstep in organizing against Wall Street or really any organizing that happens when the “left” decides that it’s going to “take back America for the people” (which people?!). This is part of a much larger issue, and in fact there is so much nationalistic, patriotic language of imperialism wrapped up in these types of campaigns that it’s no wonder people can’t see the erasure of existence of the First Peoples of THIS territory that happens when we get all high and mighty with the pro-America agendas, and forget our OWN complicity and accountability to the way things are today – not just the corporations and the state.

Let me be clear. I’m not against ending capitalism and I’m not against people organizing to hold big corporations accountable for the extreme damage they are causing.  Yes, we need to end globalization. What I am saying is that I have all kinds of problems when to get to “ending capitalism” we step on other people’s rights – and in this case erode Indigenous rights – to make the point. I’m not saying people did it intentionally but that doesn’t even matter – good intentions are not enough and good intentions obviously can have adverse affects. This is such a played out old record too, walking on other people’s backs to get to a mystical land of equity.  Is it really just and equitable when specific people continue to be oppressed to get there? And it doesn’t have to be done! We don’t need more occupation – we need decolonization and it’s everyone’s responsibility to participate in that because COLONIALISM AFFECTS EVERYONE. EVERYONE! Colonialism also leads to capitalism, globalization, and industrialization. How can we truly end capitalism without ending colonialism? How does doing things in the name of “America” which was created by the imposition of hierarchies of class, race, ability, gender, and sexuality help that?

I can’t get on board with the nationalism of  an “American” (or now “Canadian!”) revolution – I just can’t.  There has been too much genocide and violence for the United States and Canada to be founded and to continue to exist as nation states.  I think John Paul Montano, Anishnaabe writer captured it quite well in his “Open Letter to Occupy Wall Street Activists”:

I hope you would make mention of the fact that the very land upon which you are protesting does not belong to you – that you are guests upon that stolen indigenous land. I had hoped mention would be made of the indigenous nation whose land that is. I had hoped that you would address the centuries-long history that we indigenous peoples of this continent have endured being subject to the countless ‘-isms’ of do-gooders claiming to be building a “more just society,” a “better world,” a “land of freedom” on top of our indigenous societies, on our indigenous lands, while destroying and/or ignoring our ways of life. I had hoped that you would acknowledge that, since you are settlers on indigenous land, you need and want our indigenous consent to your building anything on our land – never mind an entire society.

I will leave you with this new art piece from Erin Konsmo (also pictured above), our fabulous intern at The Native Youth Sexual Health Network she created on “OCCUPY: THE GAME OF COLONIALISM”.  Hopefully you get the picture now.

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Near the end of my video interview with Daniel Heath Justice (above) for this special week Celebrating Queer Indigenous Voices I asked, “… anything we’ve left out?”

“There’s a lot we’ve left out,” said Justice.

True!

Although we had a table full of books we failed to mention Queer Indigenous writers from around the world. And I’m embarrassed to say that I did not mention an Indigenous, brown, queer woman who helped pave the way for a brown boy like me: Gloria Anzaldua. She was a Mestiza, Xicana who made an impact on the literature world and changed the way Indigeneity is seen, thought, read, written, and lived.

R.I.P Gloria.

Justice and I focused on Indigenous writers such as Chrystos, Paula Gunn Allen, Gregory Scofield, Beth Brant, all amazing writers who are Indigenous to Canada and the United States.  A great interview (it’s always a pleasure chatting with Daniel) and resource for people, Justice was absolutely right: we left a lot out.

In comes Yellow Medicine Review: International Queer Voices to expose readers to a more broad canon of queer Indigenous writing.

Edited by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, the cover alone lets you know you will be reading writers from Turtle Island (the Americas) and abroad. Three beautiful Polynesian women grace the cover, smiling, welcoming you to open the pages of one of the few literature journals celebrating Indigenous queerness on the page. Three shells float above their heads. I can hear the ocean just by looking at them. I feel calm, and a reassurance that this journal will teach me many things in a loving way.

The introduction is one unlike many: poetic, warm, welcoming, leaving you wanting more. Bodhran writes in English and Spanish (the two biggest colonial languages on Mother Earth) and he acknowledges his ancestors and relations and new family in the text.  Included in the intro is the actual call for submissions followed by his response:

“Our kinfolk from around the world respond, offer me fabric, offer me fiber.  Say: Weave with this.  Weave with me.  And we weave.”

The basket woven for the special issue holds stories from Canada, United States, Hawaii, Guam, Tonga, Australia, Palestine, New Zealand, Samoa, and the continent of Africa. (Yes, Africa is a continent, made up of 53 countries, inhabited by different peoples who live different cultures and speak different languages. It’s not a country with one group of people the way everyone describes it).

There are poems, short stories, plays, essays, letters, songs, and blog entries.  It’s a mix that keeps you engaged through variety and good writing.

The art of letter writing is one that is dying and one that I appreciated being featured in the journal.  Sadly, emails, texts and tweets have become the preferred way of communication.  A snail-mail letter writer myself (I’m looking for new pen pals!  Don’t be shy.), I feel there is still nothing like holding paper in your hand and reading someone’s carefully thought out words.

Aborigine Elder Noel Tovey of the land now known as Australia writes a letter to the Prime Minister: An open letter to the PM, (p. 202).  Written January 14 2009, Tovey was born in 1933 and is one of the Stolen Generations in Australia.  Wrongfully incarcerated for “The Abominable Crime of Buggery”, essentially being queer and having relations with folks, Tovey survived many hardships and wants to see those hardships end for others:

As an older Indigenous man is who is also gay, I am deeply concerned at the suffering of gay elderly people, who, like me, have experienced severe trauma in the past due to the ignorance of those around us.

I have grave concerns about the “same sex equal treatment” reforms and the way in which these compound the suffering of elderly gay, Including Indigenous people. Elderly gay people are from a generation that preceded civil rights and they were subjected to shock treatment, lobotomy, and other horrors.  They hid from view and remain mostly hidden today.  Nevertheless, they are elders of our gay community who deserve protection.

While reading the letter I was again reminded why our Elders are so important to us. The bravery, humility, and love in Tovey’s words come through with every paragraph.  A short letter, you learn something with every sentence.  Tovey shares who he is, where he is from, what he has lived, and his desires for a better future for his people.  And he is not barking like so many activists tend to do.  Tovey writes clear, calm, and with confidence.  His letter is one to be referenced, studied, and used as a spark for future letters to many so called leaders around the globe.

Tonga writer Loa Niumeitolu’s Prison Notes, an essay followed a letter to a friend in prison, gets you thinking about incarceration and those who are incarcerated.  With so many peoples who have colonial histories behind bars it’s an important piece.  For example, in Canada 25% of the prison population is made up of First Nations Peoples who are 2% of the overall population.  Some Canadian provinces see 70% of the prison population made up of First Nations, Aboriginal, and Metis peoples.

Do you see a problem here?

In My First Visit to San Quentin Prison, Niumeitolu writes of Samoans, Tongans, and Cambodians doing time in the famous prison often written about and featured in films.  She lets the reader know that it’s not only Latinos and African Americans who are incarcerated.  There are many different faces of colour with colonial histories living in these neo-colonial extensions of slavery.

It’s Niumeitolu’s questions and insights that really make an impact:

The issue of incarceration does not begin only when you’re in lockdown or, as the brothers at San Quentin know so well, it doesn’t end after you’re let out.

Where do our prisons begin?  What leads to the making of a prison?  How am I contributing to the creation of a prison and the criminalization of people—women, men, and children?

We each have to stop contributing to the building of prisons, the making of something to be so different and separate from something else, that one can be said to be good and the other bad.

Niumeitolu offers a different way of thinking.  She is out of the black and white box, no wehere near it, actually.  Her questions are important.  What is missing are suggestions for alternatives.

In many cultures names are important.  Whether it’s the name of a person, place, story, there is meaning behind a name.  Jennifer Lisa Vest (Seminole, African American, and German) takes you back in history through many names and leaves you knowing why she has the name she does.  A four page poem is all Vest needs to take you on a ride spanning hundreds of years.  Her poem Names (p. 28) is a call to action, a lesson in history, and reason for recognition.  Vest sings to you.  From start to finish you are with her; eyes opening, breath pattern changing, smiles formed, mouth open leaving you in awe.

Reading Names reminds me of why I am a poet and why poetry matters.

Although there is much more to be written of in this 300 page journal I feel it fitting to sign off with some of Vests words.  She writes of a North American experience but it is one that Indigenous peoples around the globe can identify with.  Read the knowledge in Vest’s verse, hear the power in Vest’s voice, and remember that International Queer Voices are here to stay and be read as well as heard:

But they could not defeat us

so they called us savages

Could not baptize us

so they called us heathens

Could not find us

so they called us wiped out

Could not understand us

so they called us mysterious

Could not educate us

so they called us backwards

Could not convince us

to learn their language

so they called us

hostile, shy, afraid

Vest continues her history lesson:

When they got tired of fighting us

we became a legend

They spent hundreds of years

Trying to find the

Last Unconquered Indians

Sent in the army

Government surveyors

Sports fisherman

Anthropologists

Missionaries

But we were untrackable

And intractable

When found

We cost the government

and embarrassment of riches

and white men

Vest ends with a verbal punch to the colonial throat:

We say

Before you left Spain in Search

of your splintered self

We were here

Before you realized England

Was cramped and dirty

We were here

Before you left France

For your piece of the pie

We were here

Before you tried to carve a nation

out of your expatriation

Before you defined your red-blooded

American selves

In terms of our absence

We were here

We owe many iconic images of American Indians to photographer Edward S. Curtis.  Growing up in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Curtis began photographing Indians in 1895 and, in 1906, was offered $75,000 by JP Morgan to continue documenting their lives (wikipedia).  The 1,500 resulting photographs inevitably impacted the image of Indians in the American imagination.

Later it came to light that Curtis’ photographs weren’t exactly pure representations.  In some photographs, for example, he erased signs of modernity.   The first photograph below, the un-edited version, includes a clock between the two men, whereas the edited version, following, does not.

Curtis also sometimes staged scenes and dressed paid participants in costumes, as in this photograph:

According to Wikipedia contributors:

In Curtis’ picture, Oglala War-Party, the image shows 10 Oglala men wearing feather headdresses, on horseback riding down hill. The photo caption reads, “a group of Sioux warriors as they appeared in the days of inter tribal warfare, carefully making their way down a hillside in the vicinity of the enemy’s camp.”  In truth headdresses would have only been worn during special occasions and, in some tribes, only by the chief of the tribe.  The photograph was taken in 1907 when natives had been relegated onto reservations and warring between tribes had ended. Curtis paid natives to pose as warriors at a time when they lived with little dignity, rights, and freedoms.

Curtis’ photographs, then, pushed his subjects back into a false past that non-Indian Americans would misrecognize as authentic for a hundred years.

The problem of misrepresentation of groups who have little power to control their own images is a widespread one.  Shelby Lee Adams’ work was mired in controversy, with critics suggesting that he contributed to the belief that Appalachians were backward, imbred, and unintelligent.   We might apply the same critical eye to representations of marginalized peoples today, like the representation of Arabs in video games and Italian-Americans on Jersey Shore and spin-offs.

Thanks to Dolores R. and Adrienne at Native Appropriations for the post idea.

Our multi-talented homegirl Jessica Yee just edited and published her first anthology.  Called Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism, Yee and her contributors (including myself and Andrea Plaid) keep it raw by illuminating the some of the issues people of color (particularly Indigenous people) encounter when entering feminist spaces.  In honor of International Women’s Day, we are going to share short excerpts of some of the essays in the book.

Jessica Yee: “Introduction”

[W]e’re not really equal when we’re STILL supposed to uncritically and obediently cheer when white women are praised for winning “women’s rights,” and to painfully forget the Indigenous women and women of colour who were hurt in that same process.  We are not equal when in the name of “feminism” so-called “women’s only” spaces are created and get to police and regulate who is and isn’t a woman based on their interpretation of your body parts and gender presentation, and not your own. We are not equal when initatives to support gender equality have reverted yet again to “saving” people and making decisions for them, rather than supporting their right to self-determination, whether it’s engaging in sex work or wearing a niqab.  So when feminism itself has become it’s own form of oppression, what do we have to say about it? [...]

[I']ve lost count the amount of times I’ve been asked by others and asked the question myself, what is now the main title of this book, “But what is feminism, for real?”

The responses I received when putting this very question out there to create the book demonstrated resoundingly that people did want to talk about this notion of “the academic industrial complex of feminism” – the conflicts between what feminism means at school as opposed to at homer, the frustrations of trying to relate to definitions of feminism that will never fit no matter how much you try to change yourself to fit them, and the anger and frustration of changing a system while being in the system yourself.

Krysta Williams and Erin Konsmo: “Resistance to Indigenous Feminism”

E & K: What does it mean for an individual to be considered “liberated?”  What does it mean for indigenous communities to be “liberated?”  I think the pictures we think of as Native women are very different than the end goals expressed in a lot of feminist literature.  In other words, there needs to be more space given to community-based solutions and the hard work that everyone, especially women in our communities do every day.

In academia (and in general) there’s still the problem of tokenism.    Including one article or person of colour, or Indigenous person into feminist curriculum is not enough.  This needs to be fully integrated into all women’s studies curriculum (which is still inherently racist).

E: One crucial element that non-Indigenous academia needs to accept is that no matter how much you read the journals of Columbus, a Native Chief, or through interviews of Native people, you do not have the blood memory that we have within us.   Sorry, if this ruins your PhD on Native people but you don’t have the blood memory experiences that I do and so the internal “validity” of your research will never compare!

K: Internal validity has never been so literal…It also needs to be said that including folks after the fact just doesn’t cut it.  White supremacy exists within institutions and this can’t be changed  by just putting Indigenous bodies in chairs.  There are structural changes that we have been calling for since forever!

Shaunga Tagore: “A Slam on Feminism in Academia (poem)

your ideal graduate student is
someone who doesn’t have to experience community organizing
because you’ve already assigned them five chapters to read about it

your ideal graduate student is
someone who can’t talk about positionality or privilege
without referencing some article

your ideal graduate student is
rich enough
white enough
straight enough
able-bodied and -minded enough
to be given luxury of enjoying sitting in a corner reading 900 pages a week
(with their fair trade starbucks coffee in hand and their lulu lemon track pants on ass)

your ideal graduate student
IS NOT ME

so WHY did you let me through these doors in the first place
if you were just gonna turn around and shove me out?

to fill some quote for affirmative action?
to appear like a progressive program without putting in the effort of actually being one?

Latoya Peterson: The Feminist Existential Crisis (Dark Child Remix)

(If) I think (about gender, access, and equality), therefore I am (by definition, a feminist).

It should all be so simple, right? But in the immortal words of Lauryn Hill in “Ex-Factor:”

but you had to make it hard/loving you is like a battle/and we both end up with scars 

tell me who I have to be/to get some reciprocity

To accept an identity as a “professional” feminist is to accept the layers of baggage associated with the label feminist. Added to the class and race parcels I carry, I find myself changing into Erykah Badu’s metaphorical bag lady – even while I’m trying to let it go and let love heal some of these wounds. If I make my living unpacking racism and sexism, why willingly take on more?

But one thing is clear – the culture of professional feminism is crowding my space. [...]

Now, it’s always a different world than where you come from. But this was way different. It was wealthier, whiter, full of events and fetes and conferences. It was earnest. It was aware. But not too aware, since I always felt like I wore the cloak of the outsider. I’ve made a lot of wonderful friends through feminism, and got to meet so many more amazing women, and yet I always had this feeling that I still hadn’t quite landed where I was supposed to be. It was as if I was on this path, but it was leading away from where I was trying to go. Somehow, I always ended up feeling isolated.

Louis Esme Cruz: “Medicine Bundle of Contradictions: Female-man, Mi’kmaq/Acadian/Irish Diasporas, Invisible disAbilities, masculine-Feminist”

I write this to you, making something beautiful in this shared space between us, making it difficult for invasion to take root here. When we recognize each other, it is easier for both of us to relax.  We build what Lee Maracle, recognized Sto:lo author, describes as the golden rainbow between us.  Maracle says that when we build this arch, we are actively resisting invasion because no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. [...]

Two-Spirit people are not allowed to participate in societies as our full selves and then we are shamed and blamed for the ways we are hurt by this.  When people say that a space is “women-only” they are assuming that women are always sensitive to each other’s needs, are always able to understand each other’s experiences, these experiences are always the same, and women are not violent.  Explicitly, this says all women are safe; all men are unsafe.  The inclusion of Two-Spirit people in women only space is arbitrary, shifting with who has the power to define the space.  This person in power is rarely Native.  From what I have seen, women who parade feminist ideals are the ones who decide who experiences gender-oppression.  Two-Spirit people can talk about our oppression only when it parallels women’s experiences.   When our lives get too complicated we are judged, ignored, punished, humiliated.  Whether it’s women-only or men-only space, the naming of a space as only one gender encourages invasion and conquest because they don’t allow people to be the complex creatures we are.  This pushes Two-Spirit people to the margins simply because we are not one thing or another.  We need liberation from the confines of gender baggage, too.  This parallels the larger call from Indigenous sovereignty movements asking for our Native Nations to be seen as distinct, sovereign entities.  We are necessarily unique and complex for a reason.

Ghadeer M. (of the AQSAzine Collective): “A Rant: Ya si sayed”

Insecure about your power, hungry for more, you throw a fit, feet in the air and scream out loud hoping to drown out the voices of objections, questions, and inquiries.

Listen to me – no longer will you allow yourself to tell me what to do.  What to cover or not cover, what messages my body will carry for you.

Things are going to change around here.

And I know that you are afraid, and that your violence only foster because of shame of your own mistakes.

But so you should be…

Tremble and quiver from the thought of your cold fate approaching you.

Then sit still and surrender as chaos from soles rubbing on pavements and streets turn into rubble and settle lightly on the shoulders of your pride.

Alone and desolate…like all captured kings.

Dethrones, de-powered. Ropes cut through your throat.

You’ve lost.

Because I’m woman – and I do what I want.

 

Shabiki Crane: “Pride from Behind”

[...] I was truly “done” with women’s studies after my professor announced to the class that when white women like Britney Spears presented themselves in a sexual manner it was because they were asserting their sexuality; however when black women, like Beyonce did, they were simply being puppets and degrading themselves.  I couldn’t understand the way that both images wouldn’t invoke the same reaction regardless of whether it was seen as empowerment or degradation, but why not the same? I saw two women singing, shaking, shimmying and to my horror, recognized it would never be the same.  It just reiterated the feelings of dis-empowerment I had harboured throughout the years of my life.

Feminism dictates that women deserve to be equal to men; but the truth is it’s telling us that some women are more deserving than others.

Megan Lee: “Maybe I’m Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I’m Class-Queer”

The current model of “class-mobility” reinforces separatism and a class-hierarchy because it posits that in order to escape oppression, one must become an oppressor – and universities do not merely mediate the boundary between professional and laborer, they teach the body of knowledge, the worldview, the values that mark a person as professional, as “belonging” to the middle- or upper-class.

Universities teach us to renounce our sense of identification with the poor; they teach us this by mainly ignoring the existence of poor people  and by treating us as “other” when we do become the subject of discussion.  Universities teach us not to care too much, because it will undermine our professional role.   Universities teach that we are separate from where we came from, that we are “qualified” (which suggests our families and peers are not), that we are justified in having power over people, in speaking for the subjects of our study.  Universities teach us that we are “too good” to wait tables and clean houses, with the implication that those who do those jobs are “not good enough” to deserve better.

Poor people tend to see university as a way out for their kids, but university is also a way in to the class of people whose success is premised on the oppression of the poor.  [...]For a kid to become educated meant that he or she would live an easier life that was premised on the oppression and invisibility of the very communities s/he came from.  This left a foul taste in many mouths.

I have had that foul taste in my mouth for years, and I have come to the conclusion that it is the taste of injustice – of being forced to choose between the indignity of remaining poor and the ethically repellent strategy of privilege seeking.  To a poor kid who has the chance to go to college or university, participating in an institution that she identifies as oppressive (either before attending or in the course of her education) might seem like the best choice with regards to her survival, but it is a conflicted survival.

Andrea Plaid: ” ‘No, I Would Follow the Porn Star’s Advice’: A Case Study in Educational Privilege and Kyriarchy”

I could have easily benefited from the feminist-academic complex.  I concentrated on women’s studies as part of my liberal-arts degree and my Independent Study project when I was getting my master’s degree in library science – since writing a master’s thesis was not an option at the time – was on founding and operating a sex-positive library, though I did not specifically study sex as an undergraduate or graduate student.  The fact that I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree allows me to be taken slightly more seriously because they signal that I know certain “privilege codes and signals” gotten from about seven years of beyond high school education, like knowing about or having “the right” books on my bookshelf or in my e-reader (Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, anything and just about everything by bell hooks, some Barbara Ehrenreich and Naomi Klein, etc.), having seen or heard about the “right” movies (anything Pedro Almodovar and Mira Nair, Outfoxed, Matrix, etc.) and the “right” music (usually some form of “alternative” hip-hop, rock, and country).  It also means I know the “right” places to meet other like-minded educated people offline (coffee shops, poetry readings, film screenings, panel discussions, galleries and museums, and so on.) In other words, my stating that I’m degreed lets others know that I’m the kind of “culturedness” that only a bachelor’s and master’s degree “can give” (translation: “can pay for” – which, really, is what educational privilege is welded with and signals)…and if I wasn’t exposed to these things, I can damn sure learn it quickly because I know the “right” places to go find such things, including the “right” Internet sources and from those adjunct and tenured types.

The linchpin in all of this and what I’m signaling to others by my degrees is that I’m capable of talking about complex ideas and issues, like the various schools of feminism, because I’m trained to do it, based on the “virtue” of the “right” knowledge and furthermore, take my complex notions to “the masses” who need to hear it and embrace it as part of their lives.  (This notion is one of the rawest forms of educational privilege.) Because that, from what we’re told in these social-class incubators called four-year colleges and advanced degrees, is the great responsibility that comes from the great advantage – and promise – of being an “educated person.”  The more subtle lesson passed to us in college is The Degreed are the only ones worth listening to – the more degreed, the more you’re worth listening to, because you’re an “expert” due to all those years of studying.

Robyn Maynard: Fuck the Glass Ceiling!

[L]et’s examine [the word] ‘marginalization.’ I’ve always felt wary about the community sector’s use of the word ‘marginalized populations’, but I didn’t always understand why I felt it was so dubious.  Now I do: ‘exploitation has always been a better term that ‘marginalization’, because where marginalization just means that people are pushed into, or exist already in, the margins of society, it doesn’t explain how or why.  The process of marginalization isn’t intrinsic to the meaning of the word, and ‘margins’ seem to pre-exist, as a natural location for people to inhabit in a society,  It seems like something that just accidentally happens, and needs to be fixed by pulling people into some kind of imaginary ‘centre,’ which I imagine is meant to be the middle class or something to that effect.  It is a watered down description of the extreme hardships and daily violence experienced by those living in extreme poverty and facing the harshest realities of racism in our society, and it also disguises the reasons for why it takes place. [...]

The ever-decreasing ability for the poor, racialized, and Indigenous to access the basic food and shelter needs that ‘marginalize’ people is not addressed and ‘marginalization’ seems to be a phenomenon that just is. The word ‘exploitation’ is clearer. The process of exploitation is inside of this word, it contains, in its definition, the fact that somebody is being exploited for the benefit of somebody else; it is describing a relationship.  And this makes it easier to understand what is meant in stating that the status of racialized, Indigenous, and immigrant women today is ‘structural.’

 

Interested in reading the rest of the book? You can order Feminism for Real here.

The Root: The experience of having your Miss Navajo Nation reign challenged calls to mind the debate over the Cherokee Freedmen. Is this a common issue across the Native community, of African-Native Americans having trouble finding acceptance?

Radmilla Cody: I grew up having to deal with racism and prejudices on both the Navajo and the black sides, and when I ran for Miss Navajo Nation, that especially brought out a lot of curiosity in people. It’s something that we’re still having to address as black Natives, still having to prove ourselves in some way or another, because at the end of the day, it all falls back to what people think a Native American should look like.

But there’s been many times when people have said to me, “Oh, my great-great-grandmother was an Indian.” I’ll ask them if they know what tribe, and they don’t. It’s very important because in order to be acknowledged as a tribal member, you have to be enrolled. So I can see where Native people are protective about defining who’s a tribal member, and are questioning of people claiming Native ancestry.

…

TR: Were you surprised by the backlash that you received?

RC: I wasn’t surprised. I knew it was going to happen. Right before I left to go to compete in the pageant, my grandmother sat down with me. She said to me, “My child, I just want you to know that there are going to be some people who are not going to be accepting of this.”

Growing up, I was taunted at school with racial slurs and would come home in tears. My grandmother would be there, waiting to console me. She always said, “Let ‘em talk. You are a Navajo woman. This is your land. This is how I raised you. You be proud of who you are.” Every time, that’s what she would say.

So this day before the pageant, when she cautioned me about people who wouldn’t be accepting of me participating, I turned around and told her, “Let ‘em talk, Grandma. I’m a proud Navajo woman, remember?” She had a big smile on her face. I think she felt content that I was ready for what I was going to be challenged with.

TR: Do you have any connection to African-American culture and community?

RC: I spent more time in the Navajo community growing up because my grandmother raised me. When I would come into town in Flagstaff, Ariz., to see my mom, who had black friends, and my dad’s relatives, I was in the black community more. I went to high school in Flagstaff, and one day a friend was wearing a T-shirt with a big “X” on it. I said, “That’s cool! I should get one that says ‘R’ for Radmilla!” I didn’t know anything about Malcolm X. He told me to join the black student organization. I had a lot to educate myself about and embrace, because I come from two beautiful cultures.

In the black community I also had my challenges. I was always told, “You think you’re cute because you got that long, fine hair,” and I would have to stand up for my Navajo side because of stereotypes placed upon the Navajo. When I’d go back to the Navajo community, I would have to stand up for my black side because of stereotypes.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Image credit: unieketrouwringen.nl

After getting pelted with a flurry of criticism, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason announced on Friday that it would be pulling its’ “Tibetan restaurant” Super Bowl commercial from the air.

What he didn’t do was apologize.

Instead, his statement on the company’s blog hit on some all-too-familiar talking points for non-culpa explanations, like, “We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did,” and, “To those who were offended, I feel terrible that we made you feel bad.”

The ad, the second in a series of commercials to air throughout the day Feb. 6, veered from having actor Timothy Hutton seemingly discussing the plight of the people of Tibet to boasting about getting a good deal at a Chicago restaurant thanks to Groupon. According to Mason, the ad, which cost $100,000 per second during the Super Bowl, will have stopped airing as of Feb. 12.

Meanwhile, the Pepsi Max “Love Hurts” commercial, which featured a hyper-aggressive black woman physically harassing her husband into sticking with his diet, and then hitting a white woman with a can after he ogles a white woman, has picked up at least one defender since drawing its’ own share of online criticism. In a column earlier this week, the Daily Beast’s Raina Kelly called it “classic marital humor”:

If kicking your husband under the table defines a mean, angry, emasculating shrew, than I am guilty as charged and a disgrace to black women everywhere. Allow me the slightest autobiography in explanation. Not long ago, my husband volunteered to shovel my parents’ roof. It was a lovely thing to do, but saving his in-laws’ house was no defense when he expressed doubts about my proposed safety precautions. My response? “If you take that rope off your waist, I’ll come out there and kill you myself.” Yes, I played into stereotype, but hurling threats is a lot more efficient than calming (and whitely?) saying, “Honey, darling, love of my life. I would be bereft and despairing if you fell and broke your neck. Please wear the rope. It may be pointless but it would soothe my agitated soul.” I was trying to save a life, same as the wife in the Pepsi Max commercial. Obesity related diseases run rampant in the black community. Just being black is a risk factor for these illnesses so I say she should be applauded for her efforts, not demonized.

Picture courtesy of Shanghaiist

By Arturo R. García

Nominations are now being taken for the 4th annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, scheduled to be held June 11 & 12 in Los Angeles.

In a release, festival organizers say they want to have this year’s award presentation to focus on nominees taken from the public, dealing with interracial/intercultural relationships, transracial/transcultural adoptions, and anyone who identifies as having biracial, multiracial, Hapa or Mixed identity. Categories include:

• Best film or book depicting an interracial/intercultural relationship
• Best film or book starring a person with a Mixed background
• Best reveal of a person who is “passing”
• Most historically accurate representation of the Mixed experience
• Best commercial representing the Mixed experience
• Best film or book representing the Mixed experience
• Proudest Mixed moment of 2010
• Your suggestions

Nominations may be submitted at the festival’s website thru Feb. 14, with voting to be held from Feb. 21 to March 7.

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Odel Johnson is a multidisciplinary roots reggae artist.  Known as one of the North America’s best drummers, Odel has performed with many bands all over the globe including Juno Award-winning Messenjah.

The creator of two albums, Body, Mind, and Sold, and the new album Redemption, Odel has proven to be a great songwriter as well as percussionist.

BCP: Why roots reggae?

OJ: Roots Reggae is what feels natural to me since I have been exposed to it from birth.

BCP: You are a musician mostly known for his drumming. How long have you been writing songs?  Have the two arts complimented each other?  If so, how?

OJ: I have been writing songs as long I could remember; I’ve always loved poetry and story telling and have always shared them. Drumming has always been my outlet so they are fluent.

BCP: What is your process?

OJ: None really, I go with what I feel. Songs, and or poems, come from thoughts and melodies and harmonies that seem to come through natural muses that are in the atmosphere inspired by the elements, be it human or not. Then the words form with the music. I like to record live, hence all instruments are performed live to songs.

BCP: Who are your influences?

OJ: I am influenced by good music, from Bob Marley to Bob Dylan, listen to true expressions from all over the world, somehow my soul recognizes it.

BCP: Your songs are emotional, honest, and stimulating.  What do you try to convey to your listeners?

OJ: I am connected to the songs emotionally because I believe through my experiences that they are true expressions of what I feel.

BCP: Your spirituality plays a large role in your music. Why?

OJ: Faith.  I believe that love is the ruler of the universe and we all have it. Through music we get to express it and sharing music connects us spiritually. We all survive or not through it, depending on our own interpretations of it.

BCP: Do you see song as a form of prayer?

OJ: Yes.

BCP: The songs you have shared are very socially conscious.  Where does this consciousness come from?

OJ: I guess growing up in a village where social living is the norm where everyone is “POOR” we work together to get things done, it becomes embedded in my consciousness, so my writing reflects always on my desire to live community.

BCP: You have had extensive relations with the Hopi Nation (and other Indigenous nations) over the years.  Can you talk about that a little bit?

OJ: Music has taken me many places, and I always feel a sense of purpose wherever I go and every time I have been to any indigenous places I feel like the struggle against their own kindness, yet their spirit is so strong it instantly connects and bonds and is totally familiar.

BCP: What similarities do you see between Indigenous peoples and peoples of African descent?  How can/does music help such peoples and other peoples of colour who have had it hard historically and currently?

OJ: The fact that we all faced the same demon of greed and exploitation and still have songs as to where we find solace in our spirituality and could share similar experiences in trying to preserve and maintain our cultures.

BCP: What are you working on now?

OJ: Different projects are in the mix right now, more music, tours and developing outlets for more socially conscious products and producers.

BCP: When do you expect to have your third album out?

OJ: Early 2012.

BCP: What advice do you have for other musicians out there who are having difficulties with their music, or who have yet to see their first CD out, or who are afraid to perform their music?

OJ: Believe in what you do and be true to yourself no matter what it takes, you will find a way to release what is inside. The muse has its own will to be free.

Interview by Jorge Antonio Vallejos; review by Janet Romero Leiva; cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

I am inspired to write, create, read.

To allow myself to feel…more, everything.

This, after reading Shaunga Tagore’s The Erasable Woman.

The Erasable Woman– the title alone tells you how brilliant this collection is – filled with poetry that will make you want to look at your naked body endlessly, redefine your feminism, visit your grandmother, learn the language of your ancestors, bring awareness to violence, be a better person. Yes, all this and more from a magical master’s thesis…I have never read a thesis in poetry and I am honoured for this to be my first.

For me, poetry is all about how I feel when the words on the page echo through my throat and into my body.  It’s about the images that sketch themselves into my memory and long to be translated on to paper/canvas/wood. If it was possible to do both simultaneously at this very moment (writing and drawing), it’s what I would be doing…after re-reading (for the 3^rd time) The Erasable Woman, or perhaps while re-reading it.

Tagore’s writing creates this incredibly desire to want to feel every sensation in your body, from how it feels to be touched along your collarbone to the flowing of nutrients into your bloodstream. There is nothing you want to miss about how your body is responding to her words, how her words are stirring feelings you cannot afford to dismiss because if you happen to forget to acknowledge the body part/the feeling/the sensation, you will have missed a beautiful/painful story.

Filled with loss and longing, love and laughter, strength and determination, The Erasable Woman brings me back to some of my most loved queer poets/writers…Gloria Anzaldua, Chrystos, Audre Lorde, Anna Camilleri and Quo-li Driskill. Tagore has created a place where we can once again desire…for stories and histories re-told, for justice and justified anger, for hungry love and feared satisfaction.

Two of my favourite pieces in this collection are a slam on feminism in academia and my 12 year old body in the bathtub. In the slam, which is an academic must-read, Tagore speaks to all ‘those’ well intentioned feminists who have managed to convince themselves (and sometimes us too), that letting people of colour into academia is a favour that can only be re-paid by silent acceptance of the rules they have created for us. Let’s just say she very eloquently tells them where to go! And then there is the 12 year old girl in the bathtub discovering the wonder of her own body and how water on skin feels and fills her, how a sunday ritual becomes a daily desire for that which is unnamed, unacceptable, unspoken…yet so satisfying.

And as if this is not enough, we are privileged to see how this beautiful poet translates some of her words into images because two of the pieces include photographs/drawings (bodysnatchers and postcard stories). This adds a level of intimacy to the collection that allows the reader to experience poetry from a visual lens…which is incredible!

Now comes the part I suspect you might not want to, or be prepared to hear. So remember I mentioned that this is Tagore’s master thesis? Well it’s true, which translates into it not being in book form available for purchase…yet. This means if you ever hear of her reading somewhere, you must go! It also means you/me/we need to support local poets/writers by buying their work…so put your money where your politic is!

Listen….

and you will discover that though The Erasable Woman might appear to be about one thing, as you read it you will come to realize that just when you expected a piece to continue talking about race or class or sexuality or language, the next word, next line, will take you in a direction you did not expect to go…but you’ll be so grateful you were there for the ride!

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Marilyn Dumont’s first collection, A Really Good Brown Girl, won the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award presented by the League of Canadian Poets. This collection is now in its twelfth printing, selections from it are widely anthologized in secondary and post-secondary literary texts, and it is a course text in twenty-three post-secondary institutions in Canada and the U.S.

Her second collection, green girl dreams Mountains, won the 2001 Stephan G. Stephansson Award from the Writer’s Guild of Alberta. Her third collection, that tongued belonging, was awarded the 2007 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Poetry Book of the Year and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year.

Marilyn has been the Writer-in-Residence at the Edmonton Public Library, the University of Alberta, the University of Toronto-Massey College, Windsor University, and Grant MacEwan College. She has also been faculty at the Banff Centre in Literary Arts and since 2009, she has taught in the Aboriginal Emerging Writers Program at the Banff Centre.  In 2009 Marilyn published her first novella, entitled Stray Dog Moccasins.

She is on-leave from Athabasca University while fulfilling the role of Writer in Residence at Brandon University and working on her fourth poetry manuscript in which she explores Métis history, politics and identity through the life and times of her ancestor, Gabriel Dumont. Marilyn serves as a board member on the Public Lending Rights Commission of Canada.

BCP: Why did you start writing poetry?

MD: I was drawn to the honesty and courage of poets.  I was also fascinated with language since I grew up in a bilingual home: Cree and English which made me aware of the power of language.  I was curious to unlock the codes of English which seemed to always be privileged over Cree.

BCP: What is your writing process?

MD: I am struck by a phrase, a quality of light which reminds me of something, an observation of nature or human beings which provokes an impulse in me to follow the language that emerges in my mind.  I feel this compulsion to write it down as if it were a force from the universe bidding me follow it and discover something.  The desire to discover this mystery makes me write it down.

BCP: Much of your writing is political.  Do you also write about the fun stuff of life?  Why or why not?

MD: In my early writing, particularly A Really Good Brown Girl, I was working through anger, shame, hurt, disillusionment and grief about the subjugation and mistreatment of Aboriginal peoples and traditions in Canada,  so I vented these emotions in that collection. Many of those poems were politically inspired and conveyed explicitly through charged political language which had its place then.

Experience has taught me that sometimes directness doesn’t always bring about the response in readers that I want.  So now, I try to reach my audience in different ways- through humour, through pathos, through sleight of hand, through elegance.

BCP: This week is Indigenous Sovereignty Week. What does that mean for you?

MD: I can’t say that I am very motivated by such an event.  I think it’s great that someone is initiating it, but whether it will bring about the kind of awareness it’s designed to, it will have to convince the instruments of power that it’s important: political parties, education institutions etc.

BCP: How can Indigenous literature help with Indigenous sovereignty?

MD: Indigenous literature can education and inform readers, but generally people who read Indigenous literature are the already informed.

BCP: Who are your favourite writers?

MD: There are so many, but some of them are: Sharon Olds, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz,  Louise Erdrich, Gwendolyn  Brooks, bell hooks,  Dionne Brande, Philip Levine, Stephen Dunn, Tim Siebles and more.

BCP: You have said that Sharon Olds was a big influence on you.  How?  Is there are particular collection or poem of hers that you feel influenced you the most?

MD: The Dead and the Living was a collection that gave me the courage to write about family.  It taught me that one can write about all that a family holds: love, fear, joy, hurt, terror, confusion, safety etc.  It provided a model for me to write honestly and compassionately about family.

BCP: My favorite poem of yours is “not Dick and Jane.”  Can you talk about this poem a little bit?

MD: I grew up in an alcoholic home where drinking was the major conflict between my parents.  My mother never drank and my father was a binge drinker.  The pervasive tension in the home I grew up in was one of insecurity and not knowing if my parents would stay together.  They did for 50+ years and in the end found a way to reconcile their differences and alcohol became less of an issue.  My family experience like most is fraught with love, loyalty, fear, joy, terror, compassion, jealously, tenderness; somehow we survive our families and sometimes thrive.

BCP: At the 2009 Aboriginal Writers Symposium held at University of Toronto you said, “Not enough Aboriginal writers are being published.”  Why do you think this is?  How can this change?  Do you see this changing?

MD: This is changing slowly because there has been a paradigm shift about the contributions of  Indigenous peoples, traditions and knowledge in the world and publishers have been influenced by that shift too.

Written storytelling is a new media for Aboriginal peoples even though our story tradition has existed from time immemorial, so we are learning to present our stories this way and it will take some time yet.  However, new media gives us an opportunity to tell our stories in ways other than text and that’s exciting.

BCP: How does your aboriginality influence your writing?

MD: My ancestry and the history of imperialism and colonization in Canada, place me as a witness to the untold stories of this continent.  I can either take up that role of witness or ignore it.  I choose to witness and remind Canadians of their dependence on Aboriginal people to survive and thrive here from our appropriated land and resources.

BCP: Your second collection, green girl dreams Mountains, has more prose poetry than your other two collections.  How and why did that come about?

MD: I believe it’s poetry not prose.  What’s the difference?  For me, how the text is placed on the page bears little significance to the music (poetry) of the language.

I guess it depends on one’s definition of poetry and prose.  Poetry for me is the attention to the inherent music of language.  I know that prose writers regard the music of language when they write, but poets employ it even more so.

BCP: The section City View in green girl dreams Mountains is hard hitting.  You describe poverty and its environment and its effects perfectly.  Is much of your poetry inspired by the place and time you are in?

MD: Much of it is, but this new collection I’m working on about Gabriel Dumont, Louis Riel and the Resistance Period is obviously historically informed.

BCP: Your third collection, that tongued belonging, has many poems inspired by other poets such as Simon Ortiz.  How often do you find other poets inspiring your poetry?

I’m constantly inspired by other poets.  I do believe that one of poetry’s devices is referencing the significant work of other artists and playing with the works of past forms.

If one reads poetry (unfortunately not enough beginning poets read poetry), one cannot help be inspired by their work.  Language is the medium we work with.

BCP: Your poetry touches upon hard subjects that many people do not want to talk about.  Do you see your poetry as activism?

MD: Definitely.  In some literary circles, resistance writing is not perceived as “real” literature; however, I remind those circles of  all the writers in history who have resisted:  Dostoyevsky, Akmatova, Baudelaire, Sartre, Steinbeck, Achebe, Soyinka, Lorca and the list goes on.

BCP: Small publishers and independent bookstores are dying every month.  How do you see this affecting poetry?

MD: Poetry and Prose solely in print, is dying.  New media is the next wave.  In the future, books may be considered eccentric and static  objects, while new media applications of poetry and prose will involve audio-visual, interactive forms of communication, and that might be a good thing.  In other ways it might not be because sitting with a book can be a meditative and introspective experience which is what is sought in the rush of our modern lives.

BCP: With people having much shorter attention spans these days do you see poetry having a comeback?

MD: Music such as rap and hip-hop has fueled a renewed interest in poetry, in prosody- alliteration, assonance, internal and slant rhyme, repetition etc.

BCP: Do you see the E Reader benefiting or hindering poetry?

MD: I have never read from an E Reader.   I find reading from a screen uncomfortable, but it may result in benefiting poetry because audio-visual applications may make it more accessible to more people.  If people read poetry without being told it’s poetry, they may lose their preconceptions and resistance to it.

BCP: What are you working on now?

MD: I’m working on a collection which is set historically during the Riel Resistance  1869- 1885 period and it is the most challenging poetry I’ve written because it is informed by historical accounts of the people and places which I must research and immerse myself in to write.  I’ve been working with collection for five years now and I want to finish it and start new projects.

BCP: What advice do you have for young writers?

MD: Read as much poetry and as widely as possible, don’t just read poets who write in English, find translations of work from writers all over the world.

Keep a notebook and record your sensory perceptions of the world – ordinary things which can be used in one’s work.  We all notice different things and these differences in observations distinguish poets from one another.

Janet Romero-Leiva is a queer feminist Latina visual artist and writer whose explores immigrant displacement, denied aboriginality, queer and of colour existence, living and loving in dos lenguas, and the continuous intersection of identities that shape who she is and how she moves in this world. Janet immigrated to canada at the age of 7 and has since been trying to find her footing between america of the north and america of the south. she loves smoothies, cartwheeling and can often be found reading children’s books at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore.

BCP: Why did you start writing poetry?

JR: It was by accident, I didn’t really know that is what I was doing…but I started writing because I felt a need to express and somehow release things  I was trying to make sense out of – like my queerness, my feminism, my latinidad, my indigeneity, my experience of being an immigrant child.

BCP: What is your writing process?

JR: I write a lot when I am trying to sort something out – a thought, a feeling, an experience….mostly it’s from a feeling of discomfort or confusion. I will usually sit with the feeling for a while before I write about it and will usually write down a line or two so I can put it on paper and revisit when I feel capable of going back to that discomfort. When I go back to it I usually write about the experience itself and what feelings came up for me and when I have felt this before, then I go back an edit and edit again and again until I feel I’ve managed to capture the feeling more than the actual experience.

BCP: Who are your influences?

JR: Chrystos was the first poet I read that made me think I too could write – so I obviously love her, also Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, Lee Maracle.

BCP: You used to manage the Toronto Women’s Bookstore.  Did being surrounded by books help your writing?  Did you find a lack in books written by people of colour?  What is lacking, and what do you see as problems, in the publishing world?

JR: Yes and yes! The publishing world is lacking in feminist, queer, people of colour , trans people, working class people, folks with (dis)abilities, immigrant, older peoples writing. A big problem is that the majority of people in publishing are not the people on this list – they are white, middle/upper class, mostly heterosexual men,  so they do not see a problem with this. They have a huge monopoly on the publishing industry, making it very hard for smaller/independent publishers to make it. It’s not that no one is publishing people of colour, queer people, etc. it’s that the big publishers and bookstores make it very hard for the independents (publishers and bookstores to survive) to thrive and be able to stay in business. I think another factor is that because we as queer, people of colour , trans people, working class people, folks with (dis)abilities, immigrant, older people have not seen ourselves represented in literature it  is hard to imagine that this can change, so part of it is believing that this too is possible for us.

BCP: Much of your writing is political.  Do you also write about the fun stuff of life?  Why or why not?

JR: Ha! Ha! The fun stuff can be so boring! I don’t write about fun very often because it’s not something I feel the need to process or figure out – it just is!

BCP: Non-accessible academic writing, long and boring speeches, and yelling slogans on a megaphone are given precedence over poetry in the activist world.

What role do you see poetry having in activism?  How can poetry get more than a quarter of a page in a magazine (if at all) and be used as more than an opener at events?

JR: I equate poetry with activism. We need to hear/know/understand the world from various perspectives and I think poetry allows us to express and hear things in a way that traditional methods (like speeches and academic writing ) do not because it evokes a feeling and when you leave a talk/conference/march you will forget the words you heard but the feeling will stay with you.

BCP: Some of your poems deal with Aboriginality.  Can you explain what you mean by Aboriginality?

JR: To me aboriginality is the existence of aboriginal/indigenous blood/culture in my family/ancestry.  I use it mostly in reference to the denial of aboriginal blood that many Latin American folks suffer from…as if to admit we are part indigenous is to admit we are less.

BCP: How much queer content do have in your collection of poems?

JR: Probably about 80% to 90%, I always  manage in some way to incorporate queerness because it’s how I move in the world, so it’s hard to dismiss.

BCP: Have any queer writers influenced your writing?

JR: Oh yeah! I try to read mostly queers of colour writers, so…Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, and Chrystos

BCP: Is there a book that you have read and re-read several times over?

JR: Borderlands by Anzaldua and Loving in the War Years by Moraga.

BCP: Have any Latina poets helped your activism as an Latina fighting for Latin@ rights?

JR: Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Ana Castillo.

BCP: What books by Ana Castillo did you read, like, and found that influenced you?

JR: The Mixquiahuala Letters, So Far From God: A Novel, Loverboys: Stories, I Ask the Impossible: Poems, and The Guaridans.

BCP: Writers/poets identify in so many different ways.  You are a woman of colour who is labeled as Latina and who is part Indigenous and who is queer.  How do you identify as a writer?

JR: As a writer I identify with all these identities because my writing focuses on how I live within these identities.

BCP: When can we expect to see your collection of poetry on bookstore shelves?

JR: I would definitely like to have my work published one day but it is not something I am actively persuading at the moment….but one day.

BCP: What advice do you have for young writers, women of colour writers, queer writers?

JR: Keep on writing, regardless of what people say – good or bad – continue to write what you need to write. Share your writing, if no one hears what you have to say then it is only you who will benefit from your work, which is great and important as a growing and learning tool, but it is also great for us to hear you and in this way normalize our reality and be an influence to others who may  not have the words to express the many wonderful and difficult things we live as writers of colour, queer people, etc.