Indigenous Colonization & Resistance.

This week's session was formatted very differently. Catalyst arranged a panel of 4 speakers, representing various indigenous movements & issues, including: indigenous women's movements, the Longest Walk, native health care, gay & lesbian Indians, and youth media. The session was in a large hall, with anyone from the public invited for the speaker panel, then after two hours, the public left us Bradeners to Catalyst’s devices: a powerful hip hop theatre/theater of the oppressed workshop.

The readings had been rather intense for me. I had done the core of them on my flights to and from Florida that weekend. How fitting it is to be reading the history of the violent sweep of Manifest Destiny while flying over its path; how eerie it is to spend several hours suspended from the present, suspended of all sense of place, delving into the history of colonization, then land and emerge in a faraway place and temporarily push all those thoughts aside to deal with the realities awaiting me at home. Some thoughts they were, too.

Feminists, Native Sovereignty, and Decolonization

What struck me the most was one author speaking about “feminists” attempts to draw native women into feminism. First, she asserted, her most pressing struggle is that of an indigenous woman whose ancestors were decimated by genocide, whose lands continue to be stolen, and whose cultures are forced to resist at every moment just to survive. “I am a Native American woman…..NA comes first.” Here she lays out the challenge: Until you, white feminist (and yes, she was speaking directly to me!), are ready to recognize that YOU are colonizing my land, and are ready to do everything you can to STOP COLONIZING my land, and have helped us win the fight for native sovereignty, I don’t want you to talk to me about “activism” or “feminism.” This is a paraphrase, I should really look up the real quote, but it conveys the gravity and seriousness of her tone. Wow! Some thoughts for me: Am I ready to come to terms with the fact that I, not just my ancestors, but I, am a colonizer still? Am I ready to fight for native sovereignty, which may mean that I need to give up the benefits gained as a colonizer? What does this really look like in places where native populations are so decimated or so long gone that the claim to land is not obvious TO ME? What does it look like at all? I really, really, really would like to see exactly what native activists are envisioning for sovereignty. Is it a shame that I don’t know?

I have often felt very uncomfortable with people who go to live in (or really, even visit) Hawa’ii. It feels so fresh, the colonization there. But just because it doesn’t feel fresh where I live doesn’t mean its still not real.

Also, as someone who really came to being under feminism, who still tries to rally the feminist troops – this really made me question my identification with feminism. I have known for some time that feminism, as politically created by white, often middle class, feminists, has long been under the critique of women of color. But is there a good, inclusive, powerful feminism that women of all colors can be proud of? How do I redefine my feminism, or is it possible, as a white woman, to use that term without falling into the divisive and racist history of feminism?

Indoctrinated Sexism

The AUTHOR’S second point was, oh and by the way, this sexism shit didn’t exist before y’all got here, the COLONIZERS deliberately created sexism within native cultures to break apart native communities. It makes so much sense.

During this session, here were some things that came out for me, that I hadn’t exactly put together before:

Domestic Energy Resources

That when people in this country are talking about developing “domestic” energy sources (of the fossil fuel or nuclear varieties), to get away from “foreign dependence”, the sources they are referring to are on native lands. Any push to develop/extract these resources involves: Major violation of treaties, major violation of international law protecting indigenous rights, removal of Indian peoples from their land, and massive destruction of native lands.

Sacred Sites & National Parks

That many of our national parks that we are so proud of are long time sacred sites of Indian peoples. That the creation of national parks was yet another way to steal native lands, restrict native access to and use of, and claim those places for white settlers.

Blood Degree

That Native people today get official tribal Ids that include federal designation of blood degree. Like “how native” they are. That once your blood degree drops below a certain level, you’re no longer eligible to be considered native. I’m not sure of all the specifics of this, or how it may be different in different tribes.

Giving up Culture to gain Privilege

That European people in the US, that we were forced (or chose) to give up our connections to our cultures in order to gain the privileges of being “white.” That the resulting holes in our humanity, where spiritual and cultural traditions would go, is what leads us to inappropriately appropriate other cultures, other spiritualities, others’ artistic developments. We gave up our own in order to become white, and now we are empty and hollow and grasping for some sense of connection and wholeness. Does that explain it well? I feel it myself, and how I wish I had deeper roots, dances and songs and rituals that I could feel comfortable using because they represent the stories of my people.

Family Connections

One major thing that has been happening is that other participants in the program have been learning their family histories, and getting to see how their families have participated in the processes that we’ve been learning about. Such as remembering that their grandfathers developed their families wealth from a ranch in Wyoming that they owned. How did they come to own that – Homestead Acts and other federal giveaways of native lands. One project set upon us is to investigate our own family histories. I am dubious I am going to find a connection so direct, and fear that the project won’t really have much meaning for me, but really, I bet there’s a lot to uncover.

The performer, Ariel Luckey, did a powerful piece of a similar family discovery, and had a picture of his grandfather as a young boy out on new land out west. The reality of how people were systematically used to settle “new land” (and by definition, kill or push off the Indian peoples living there). How these were taught to think that it was the only chance for their own survival. (People were actually paid by the government to murder Indians, paid up upon delivery of the ears or whole head.) The relation to Jewish settlers on Palestinian land is so obvious, made all the more undeniable by one of the panelists presentations that put pictures of US colonization side by side with Palestinian colonization. And we can’t just blame the settlers on the frontlines; they end up their via indoctrination and economic oppression.

This is what makes this learning so hard: to see the depth and breadth of these insanely powerful oppressive strategies & their success over time and space. Why is it that oppressive forces of inhumane domination have been so historically successful? What does that mean – is this the true way of nature? Does good really win over evil? Why doesn’t that seem to happen more naturally?

The Total Sum of Oppression

Just like last week, I came into the room and instantly felt emotional. I won't spend time investigating that here, but our trainers had alerted us that the week would hit into some heavy material. So far we had been getting into a lot of stuff about visioning and organizing strategies, but he hadn't look at white supremacy so dead in the face as this Sunday.

The readings were chock full of history of both racist laws and events (and resistance too) and lists of specific ways in which whites benefit from white supremacy, and also, how those benefits come at a cost to our own humanity and experience of joy. I can't tell you how important and illuminating it was to have all this tangible, detailed information that really drew the picture of white supremacy. I have long struggled with how to convincingly explain to people the way that racism is institutional, often vaguely referencing uneven drug laws or historical things like redlining districts that mortgages used to keep blacks out, and some of the articles really laid bare the step by step process of building this country on oppression.

One thing I hadn't known about before was the Chinese Exclusion Act - that Chinese men were allowed to come to the US but they couldn't bring wives or families, nor marry non-Chinese women. So how could they survive as a people in the US? They weren't mean to; they were meant to labor and die.

Add that to the picture of how when the American Indian Movement tried to reclaim even a miniscule portion of their homelands, the fury of the federal government was unleashed, resulting in a pile of bodies and prison sentences.

Or how World War II was used as an excuse to force Japanese to abandon their homes and businesses and enter forced internment. Where did those homes and businesses, the accumulated wealth of decades of toil, end up? In the hands of whites. After more than 60 years of struggling, some families were able to win reparation awards, that really in no way measures up to the loss of assets after all these years, but it is exciting that some reparations were won. If I try to add up the value of the wealth and labor stolen from African slaves over all those hundreds of years, I can't even fathom the amount of reparations due.

Going through the history of all those measures, I kept coming back to something that was put out during our first reading session: that underneath all the oppression lies the root of economic injustice. So all those events, which were individually so violent and when seen collectively are devastatingly decimating, were ALL DONE BECAUSE OF GREED. I know people talk about that at all the time, and that's why we must fight capitalism, but I never really laid out in a line all the victims of the greed of one small segment of population. Is this human nature? How did this way come to dominate? Does it have nature on its side? How else? How can we fight something like that? Don't get me wrong, I'm not out of hope, I'm just startled by the depth of this system.

Rolling Rocks

I went into this session feeling on the brink of tears, not totally sure why – some combination of physical pain from my wrist, the unfolding sad conflict at my new house, and some feeling about how so many of my hopes and desires were wrapped up in the room, swimming somewhere among the 50 people sitting around me - and to have my needs exposed to be so vulnerably dependent felt heavy. For lots of different reasons, as I found out later, many people had trouble being present that day. Maybe that’s just the rhythm of this type of program – as we ease (or not) out of the brimming excitement about coming here and beginning this long awaited and settle into the real work/journey of it.

ROLLING ROCKS ROLE PLAY
Well the trainers threw us into a really dynamic role play called Rolling Rocks. This was not the awkward two person skits ad libbing things they’d never do in real life – but 40 people in 5 groups with missions, running around unraveling a complicated scenario, trying to think what would they really do, and facing the constant interruption of politicians, reporters, and cops, in addition to the other groups. I was assigned to be a social service agency in this town where for some reason falling rocks were killing/injuring more and more people everyday. Other groups were: a group dedicated to figuring out the root cause of why the rocks were falling, a student group from the nearby town, and then unbeknownst to these three groups were a group of workers from the town at the top of the mountain, and then a fifth group made up of a corporation called Richy Rich.

I don’t know how useful it is to go into all of the details, but the main point was that we each had our way of tackling the program, and only over time and through connecting with each other did we realize that there was a corporation that was actually paying workers to roll rocks off the mountain and onto our town because the corporation wanted to run us out and build a resort. This may all sound cheesy and oversimplified, but in the moment it felt like real life put in fast forward. There was the tension or suspected tension between the social service agency (called a band-aid) and the social change organization, there were the privileged outsider college kids who had resources but no direct connection to the town, there were the workers in another town, oppressed by the company, desperately needing jobs, and unaware of the effects of their work, and the company trying to divide and conquer by tossing around funding through their disguised foundation offering grants to keep agencies quiet. There was the mayor, who always offered vague support but never came through, and called a town meeting that tried to take up time from groups strategizing. There were arrests of leading activists and threats to shut down our alternative community meeting.

Putting things into these simplified caricatures really emphasized how all these forces are going on in real life and its hard to see them when you’re in it. Information on the real causes only came out when we talked to the other, unfamiliar groups. The college kids, put in the place of privilege, really needed to come meet the groups in the affected town (or affected population), and figure out what was going on internally before they could figure out how to support. And we all know about corporations that create foundations to fund local non-profits, which I’m always conflicted about. For my social service clinic, we somehow didn’t get the grant, and because we lacked resources we were forced to reach out to other groups for help. That was how we learned of the deeper situation at hand and were able to work together to defeat it.

REFLECTING ON EFFECTIVENESS
Really, everything after the role play was something of a blur. One salient exercise asked us to reflect upon the time in our lives where our organizing work felt most effective, and what were the elements that pushed it toward success. This wasn’t the freshest for me, as I have often reflected privately and personally about being part of Umoja, which was by far the action that made me feel empowered consistently for 6 months and had me truly believing that we could win. Well I’ll be real, I don’t really think things like “we can win,” but I really did feel empowered and like I was part of something powerful and it’s good to figure out why that was. I have tended to attribute a lot to the expose on housing money corruption that came out in the main media, which was true and circumstantial. And the model that I found so powerful of white anarchists following the lead of a powerful black movement , but when I’ve given workshops talking about Take Back the Land, I’ve always fallen short on how to tell people to replicate it . Like, you just gotta have the luck of media exposes and a strong POC movement. But theres gotta be more, an analysis that’s more replicable.

Because I had already done some analysis on why it was so powerful, this gave me a chance to really think about what others were saying. Things like: the people organizing together were truly friends or at least expressly appreciated each other, the work provided tools to other groups that had a better sense of what they wanted to do, using creative images, being willing to take risks – meaning not becoming paralyzed when you’re not sure what’s the best or “most anti-racist” thing to do, but giving it some thought and then trying something.

THE READINGS
This session’s readings focused a lot on organizing strategies, in a way more general than what I expected. In that it wasn’t solely focused on racism, but was built on a foundation of anti-racism. I had a quick blast of several feelings – disappointment that it wasn’t being addressed more directly, lucky that we were getting this extra education about organizing skills, then epiphany that anti-racist organizing isn’t just sussing out demons but unlearning and then relearning a new way of being that is totally infused with justice.

The coaster ride begins

Months of almost unbearable excitement have finally materialized into the present - a new home, new city, and 12 hours of fun and lesson-filled program orientation, not to mention about 40 new best friends. It's like I've been standing in line for some awesome, gigantic roller coaster, bubbling over with eagerness, and this weekend was getting on the coaster car and making that initial climb - the anticipation and thrill was buzzing.

These 2 days were orientation, meaning we spent a lot of time hearing about the background of our trainers and the Catalyst project, going over program logistics, setting up small groups and partners, and delving into material enough to pique our appetites and set the tone of the coming months. Catalyst's approach is certainly fresh, as even going over program logistics meant really talking about the ways we do things and how that is influenced by white supremacy or our visions for a new world. They needed to set up both a small working group and separate support buddies; but instead of just doing that, they would have us play games and then somewhere during the game announce that the person/people we were with would be our buddy/group for the rest of the program. With the buddies, who were meant to be political and emotional support, the trainers encouraged us to get deep instantly, calling on us to identify our needs for support and even how we may resist support.

We were asked to map out the path that brought us to the program today, and it was honestly clarifying for me to identify the journey of my anti-racist and activist development. Even though I think I've told "my story" before, many new things came to light about how it has all contributed to my current perspective. I had almost kinda forgotten how much race analysis was a part of the human rights work I did in Guatemala: During the training to become accompaniers, we were reminded that we needed to be clear that we were there because we were white (and/or US citizens) and our lives were valued more than indigenous Guatemalans - so we needed to take that birth privilege and torque it and allow it to be used NOT to further world domination, but fight it; that we needed to surrender that privilege to the needs of the indigenous Guatemalans who were asking us to come protect them so that they may continue their self-determined struggle; that we there to watch and observe, but never participate, because it was NOT our struggle, and we needed to learn to be silent support instead of always dominating actors. There were more key stages in my development, of course, but this one was maybe my first huge growth experience that was losing its freshness.

In another exercise, one trainer led us through a long closed-eye visioning section, asking us to actually picture the world we are hoping to create, from what our houses and neighborhoods looked like, what institutions were around, what jobs people had, and all the way up to how people interacted globally (if it all). So often activists know what we are fighting against, and have an inkling of what we are fighting for, but don't actually spend a lot of time being concrete and specific about what our post-revolution world would consist of. Then we identified one element of our vision and brainstormed on how to organize towards that goal.

The second day opened up with the volunteer placements. A major component of the program is volunteering with a designated racial justice organization, and we talked about the purposes behind that, and how we should view our role and our behavior within that organization. Although this was directed at the specific element of this structured program, the analysis we created together is applicable to how we interact with organizations and activists of color for the rest of our lives. The way this practical, logistical discussion melded into learning and analysis of interracial relations seems to be the powerful model Catalyst will be using in the curriculum - let's look at the specifics and figure out the larger implications.

A small-group role play required us to be managers in a fruit packing company whose workers were threatening to strike. We needed to prevent the strike, but could not acquiesce to any of their demands. Instantly it seemed, most people turned to brewing up a lot of the evil schemes that bosses have historically used to break people's unity. A few of us, though, were inclined to come up with creative and loving solutions, that we all realized were most likely totally unrealistic. When it came time to report some of our strategies, the small groups began pouring out their ideas on how to poison the workers with fear, sexism, homophobia, and racism. My group playfully interjected, calling them out on their nasty attitudes and presenting our totally dreamy solution of the managers sacrificing their own salaries to provide on-site healthcare and childcare. The company CEO said we must be from the the "San Francisco branch." This exercise so easily illustrated how the different "-isms" were created and to keep people economically oppressed.

Lastly, two longtime movement activists, in their 60s and 70s, came to share their stories, their continued belief in the struggle, and some lessons and advice for us all. What stood out for me was that things happen that can either totally catalyze a movement or pass us by - and we need to sit down and study what determines that outcome. Are there things we can do to turn an awful event, such as a killing by the police, or expose on government corruption, into a powerful movement for revolutionary change? I think about the scandal around Miami city commissioners misusing affordable housing funds, and how that spawned Take Back the Land's incredibly powerful land occupation and totally boosted the leverage of organizations like Power U and the Miami Workers Center. Then how there's so much government corruption coming to light in Palm Beach County, but I've yet to see that (or help that) develop into a movement.

So, those are the major elements in my experience of Anne Braden orientation weekend. I'm certainly thrilled about the other people in the program, as new friends, crushes, and teachers. People often say that they are inspired by the people the meet, but I want to find a way to help you understand how genuine that was for me. Somehow I was worried that people in the program would be younger, less experienced, and less politically developed than me. Yes, many people are younger, even 19 years old, but they all had elaborate histories of involvement in awesome struggles that I was impressed by. It was relieving and inspiring to know that lots of people from all over the country are so deeply involved in working towards justice and that I truly will be able to learn from each person in the room. I expected I'd have 4-5 teachers during this program, but it looks more like 40-50! Heck, yeah!