Chris, you might be the most intelligent and insightful person I've ever had the privilege of reading. I've had six different (and ongoing) conversations about the question of identity since reading Cyca's amazing interview yesterday, some of them general and some very personal. What you've articulated here is the first that really gets to the heart of it all. Thank you 🧡
It wasn't a confusing mess- it was rich, deep, meandering and beautiful. I so appreciate how so much of your writing mirrors a walk alongside a stream: at times burbling merrily, at other times rushing over rocks and around bends, and still at other times, content to swirl in eddies.
Thank you for writing this and sharing the books I will look into. I will speak on the broad issue of us being divided... We are seeing division sowed everywhere, when we need to band together against fascism and white supremacy. No one should have to suffer indignity to join and fight hatred. But if we fight each other instead, we will all suffer.
Thank you so much for this. It's extremely relatable. I too have an extensive family tree of French ancestors with the occasional grandmother on the line who has a Francophoned name next to 'nee. Cree/Indian'. The system has worked as it was meant to—I cannot tell anyone the specific Nation, band or tribe any of those women belonged to. I can only assume my own family lore is correct because there are so few records about these women, and their children were gifted with whiteness because of patriarchy.
In short, it's a classic case of "You cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools." As long as there is a focus on proof, it's all still gatekeeping the ins and outs of whiteness and nothing at all to do with Indigeneity, Landback, and human identity beyond the binaries insisted on by oppressive systems.
I value your blog so much for your nuanced understanding of what is is to be mixed and how we might imagine ourselves beyond the constructs built to suppress the majority for the benefit of the few.
Thank you for the Audre Lorde quote. She so perfectly sums up the conundrum of dismantling oppressive systems while trying to stay in the system.
Chris, as always when I read your work my brain kind of explodes in 10 different ways.
I like this quote especially, "I am that...They don’t subtract from me, they enrich me." Collaboration at a molecular level. And collaborative we must be, because to be selfless, to put our egos aside in order to work towards a different sort of future, is exhausting on our own. A vision helps me, and a New People is a good one -- how can we be anything but new, in a world that is nowhere untouched by the effects of capitalism (greed/Whiteness/colonizers)?
Your essay also reminded me of a book I read as I was preparing to work with a Navajo church, A Dine History of Navajoland by Klara Kelley & Harris Francis. In it, they attempt an historical lens that denies colonizers' forms of story- and time-telling. It's amazing and challenging and wonderful. I'm not Dine, and I can't say that the authors succeeded in telling a "true" history. I can say that it was extremely helpful to me, to witness to the many, many times the People's own story was subverted to that of the White storytellers'.
There's this: "And collaborative we must be, because to be selfless, to put our egos aside in order to work towards a different sort of future, is exhausting on our own."
Which is a perfect illumination of my struggles, because the simple idea of a "Navajo church" makes my skin crawl and elicits an immediate and fervent kneejerk reaction. I have a piece coming out in Sojourners this month or next where I literally wrote, I think, that Christian Indians feel like the ultimate betrayers of our people, a point I fervently believe while also struggling to come to terms with and move into a totally different mindset. Gah! I don't know that I'm cut out for this.
Well, yes. That's why I felt I needed to ground myself in the Dine story from the Dine perspective.
It's so incredibly hard! It's not my job to tell a group of people that they can't believe the belief system that the colonizers handed over to them!! And so I do my best to say, as a White person who works in that system, "Hey! You can do things the way *you* want them done!! Episcopal Church says you need to hold an election for bishop? Why does it have to be their way and not your way??" I ask a lot of questions, make space for listening, and try to slow down the outsider timetable as much as I can. I guess I try to create good friction.
And every day I am grateful I was asked to do this work. I have grown so much.
Have been thinking about all of this after reading AHP's interview, and how maddening the concept of race as identity is, let alone as somehow something that can ever be described as pure--how it diminishes so much of what makes us all human in so many obvious and not obvious ways. I love how you wrote about belonging more than identity, about community and culture and tradition, not blood. So grateful to have your words be part of my day.
Thank you, Freya. I love that so many people are thinking of this thanks to folks with broad reaches like AHP and Michelle Cyca. This is how we move it forward. I appreciate your words.
"It demands sacrifice from everyone involved and we must be selfless in the approach if we have any hope of overcoming the tremendous obstacles we’ve allowed to be created in all of our names."
It is your honesty and clarity, among other things, including your irritability, that prompted me to keep reading your posts and then to subscribe.
This whole post could be seen as a tribute to your father and your ancestors. So many reasons to keep hope alive.
And thank you for sending the copy of Tony Burfield's book.
I echo your advocacy for oneness Chis, we all are more similar than we dare to admit. For example, around the last week of October here in India we offer prayers over 14 oil dia (lamps) for the 14 generation of ancestors who guide us from the other side, different yet similar to the picture of offering ceremony you shared. Why should we hesitate to support each other’s identities and communities with total solidarity even if we are products of different geographies and culture? You should not have to prove to anyone what you know is true about your ancestry. I have hardly seen a human being capable of deeper empathy, with such ravenous hunger for justice than yourself. You are who you say you are and that itself surpasses the identity politics. I have nothing but respect and awe for your authenticity and work.
Reading AHP’s interview and Cyca’s piece I found myself really wanting to hear your thoughts, Chris, and this post did not disappoint. Thank you for your personal and nuanced analysis, and beautiful writing, as always.
You have reminded me of one of the most beautiful days of my life. A gorgeous day in May of 2006 when my niece and her husband were married in Midlothian, VA. The guests who attended the wedding hailed from almost every nook and cranny of the earth. It was all there. Every skin tone, many nationalities, representation from numerous religions, descendants of paupers and of kings. Everyone congenial. Everyone there to celebrate the union of two luminous individuals. A testament to the fact that we can. We can all get along and respect one another. A day of JOY.
My sympathy to you and your family as regards the loss of your father, Sid La Tray. I know that he continues to reside within you and among you.
WOW, Chris, I just finally got the time this piece deserved to read it. I read AHP's interview with Michelle Cyca and I wanted to read your take on it all. You delivered beyond expectation. If it meandered, isn't that the way of nature and water and us. Your story is so rich and so poignant. I think we may have enough young blood to nudge us to the right path-fingers crossed. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Incredible post Chris. I love how your writing mimics the issues of identity itself -- not trying to come to a definitive (and impossible) conclusion, but instead probing, opening up, exploring, pulling from a variety of sources, reaching deep inside yourself, then deciding that’s enough. I learn so much from you.
“Could we make the two roads that today represent two clashing world views come together to form that mighty nation? Could a nation be formed that is guided by respect for all living things?” 🙌🏽
Great, great piece! Sometimes it's hard to realize how the language of identity and the conceptualization of what terms mean (like "tribes" and even "nations" for example) are constructed by the needs of "Western" capitalism and therefore serve those ends. Thanks to you and other histories I've read, my understanding of indigeneity has really broadened in the last couple of years. It changes how you see things when those terms are contested. Thank you!
One of the questions the CNN person asked me is what do I think counts as being Indigenous. I didn't really have a good answer, and to even suggest one seems out of line for me. But I've been thinking of it ever since and it is so complicated. Does it mean connected to the land? The most "connected to the land" people I know are all white people, aka settlers. So I want to broaden the definition even as I want to make sure my people receive equal access to opportunity. It's confusing, and I'm confused.
I appreciate anyone who can say "It's confusing and I'm confused" when they don't have the answer or a response to something. Thanks for being the kind of person who is willing to "not know" in public. And thank you for all of the other thinking and listening and leading you do in this space, Chris.
I love the Where I Come From piece -- I have a poem of the same title in my next book, and I'm thinking about inviting some folks (in advance) to write from that prompt and share at the TBD launch event next year. (Want to come to Minnesota and read that for me? lol. but seriously.....open invitation if you happen to be in the area, in say, February.)
Whew.... here for it...stayed up way too late reading this, AHP's interview with Cyca, then the Maclean piece, and then one on Liz Hoover. Thanks for writing and weaving all those pieces together. I'm thinking of Dr. Kim TallBear's work on DNA and blood quantum; she too has written about these complexities of being "indian" enough, yet another form of colonialism in quantifying blood.
This theme too about claiming native roots being, I dunno, this badge of some kind of currency, of legitimacy, is worrying for sure, but some how stings more seeing it at this "hallowed" level of academia. (but really why am I surprised?) I'm used to it coming from white hippies; having lived in western WA now for over 15 years, local tribal influence is alive and well, and so is the hippie cultural appropriation, yet none of the want to do the heavy lifting of their own ancestral traditions- As if claiming our Lithuanian or French or in my case Scottish Gaelic and Irish ancestors isn't fascinating enough?
Around here there's a whole host of white folks who do all sorts of practices they say they got from someone who told them it was ok from the Native American Church. I've yet to do any kind of in depth reading on Native American Church, but it kind of gives me the shudders these days when any white person burns tobacco or sings a so called 'native' song, and yet my questioning or pushing back is never met by any sort of reflection, just emphatic, "this native man told so and so and passed this on, so it's ok." Like it's still hard to link the harm that's being done b/c what's wrong with a song? This is the place that I think on one level I understand years of reading, listening, wondering, tracking, yet I am still not able to translate this felt sense I have of the harm being done, into the physical realm to address say when a bunch of white people are gathered and they sing some supposedly "native" song in the sauna.
Sigh... thanks for bearing witness to my ramblings, which is further evidence I don't have enough people in my day to day life to grapple with about such things.
I hear the words "Native American Church" and my brain shuts off. And more and more, whenever I see Indians waving around their academic credentials that same brain motor starts to blow gaskets. I just don't care about that kind of stuff. It's all such a nightmare conflict at every turn that I am getting very, very tired of even participating in it.
Chris, you might be the most intelligent and insightful person I've ever had the privilege of reading. I've had six different (and ongoing) conversations about the question of identity since reading Cyca's amazing interview yesterday, some of them general and some very personal. What you've articulated here is the first that really gets to the heart of it all. Thank you 🧡
Thank you so much, Nia. These are very kind words and I appreciate them, and you, very much.
It wasn't a confusing mess- it was rich, deep, meandering and beautiful. I so appreciate how so much of your writing mirrors a walk alongside a stream: at times burbling merrily, at other times rushing over rocks and around bends, and still at other times, content to swirl in eddies.
Thank you so much for the kind words. This is the highest compliment I can imagine!
Thank you for writing this and sharing the books I will look into. I will speak on the broad issue of us being divided... We are seeing division sowed everywhere, when we need to band together against fascism and white supremacy. No one should have to suffer indignity to join and fight hatred. But if we fight each other instead, we will all suffer.
Agree wholeheartedly, my friend.
Thank you so much for this. It's extremely relatable. I too have an extensive family tree of French ancestors with the occasional grandmother on the line who has a Francophoned name next to 'nee. Cree/Indian'. The system has worked as it was meant to—I cannot tell anyone the specific Nation, band or tribe any of those women belonged to. I can only assume my own family lore is correct because there are so few records about these women, and their children were gifted with whiteness because of patriarchy.
In short, it's a classic case of "You cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools." As long as there is a focus on proof, it's all still gatekeeping the ins and outs of whiteness and nothing at all to do with Indigeneity, Landback, and human identity beyond the binaries insisted on by oppressive systems.
The gatekeeping absolutely sucks. And it happens at every point in the chain and it is so frustrating.
It really is.
I value your blog so much for your nuanced understanding of what is is to be mixed and how we might imagine ourselves beyond the constructs built to suppress the majority for the benefit of the few.
Thank you for the Audre Lorde quote. She so perfectly sums up the conundrum of dismantling oppressive systems while trying to stay in the system.
Chris, as always when I read your work my brain kind of explodes in 10 different ways.
I like this quote especially, "I am that...They don’t subtract from me, they enrich me." Collaboration at a molecular level. And collaborative we must be, because to be selfless, to put our egos aside in order to work towards a different sort of future, is exhausting on our own. A vision helps me, and a New People is a good one -- how can we be anything but new, in a world that is nowhere untouched by the effects of capitalism (greed/Whiteness/colonizers)?
Your essay also reminded me of a book I read as I was preparing to work with a Navajo church, A Dine History of Navajoland by Klara Kelley & Harris Francis. In it, they attempt an historical lens that denies colonizers' forms of story- and time-telling. It's amazing and challenging and wonderful. I'm not Dine, and I can't say that the authors succeeded in telling a "true" history. I can say that it was extremely helpful to me, to witness to the many, many times the People's own story was subverted to that of the White storytellers'.
Thanks again.
There's this: "And collaborative we must be, because to be selfless, to put our egos aside in order to work towards a different sort of future, is exhausting on our own."
Which is a perfect illumination of my struggles, because the simple idea of a "Navajo church" makes my skin crawl and elicits an immediate and fervent kneejerk reaction. I have a piece coming out in Sojourners this month or next where I literally wrote, I think, that Christian Indians feel like the ultimate betrayers of our people, a point I fervently believe while also struggling to come to terms with and move into a totally different mindset. Gah! I don't know that I'm cut out for this.
Well, yes. That's why I felt I needed to ground myself in the Dine story from the Dine perspective.
It's so incredibly hard! It's not my job to tell a group of people that they can't believe the belief system that the colonizers handed over to them!! And so I do my best to say, as a White person who works in that system, "Hey! You can do things the way *you* want them done!! Episcopal Church says you need to hold an election for bishop? Why does it have to be their way and not your way??" I ask a lot of questions, make space for listening, and try to slow down the outsider timetable as much as I can. I guess I try to create good friction.
And every day I am grateful I was asked to do this work. I have grown so much.
Have been thinking about all of this after reading AHP's interview, and how maddening the concept of race as identity is, let alone as somehow something that can ever be described as pure--how it diminishes so much of what makes us all human in so many obvious and not obvious ways. I love how you wrote about belonging more than identity, about community and culture and tradition, not blood. So grateful to have your words be part of my day.
Thank you, Freya. I love that so many people are thinking of this thanks to folks with broad reaches like AHP and Michelle Cyca. This is how we move it forward. I appreciate your words.
"It demands sacrifice from everyone involved and we must be selfless in the approach if we have any hope of overcoming the tremendous obstacles we’ve allowed to be created in all of our names."
It is your honesty and clarity, among other things, including your irritability, that prompted me to keep reading your posts and then to subscribe.
This whole post could be seen as a tribute to your father and your ancestors. So many reasons to keep hope alive.
And thank you for sending the copy of Tony Burfield's book.
Thank you for donating to the cause of a friend in need!
I echo your advocacy for oneness Chis, we all are more similar than we dare to admit. For example, around the last week of October here in India we offer prayers over 14 oil dia (lamps) for the 14 generation of ancestors who guide us from the other side, different yet similar to the picture of offering ceremony you shared. Why should we hesitate to support each other’s identities and communities with total solidarity even if we are products of different geographies and culture? You should not have to prove to anyone what you know is true about your ancestry. I have hardly seen a human being capable of deeper empathy, with such ravenous hunger for justice than yourself. You are who you say you are and that itself surpasses the identity politics. I have nothing but respect and awe for your authenticity and work.
What kind words, Swarnali. Thank you. 🙏🏽
Reading AHP’s interview and Cyca’s piece I found myself really wanting to hear your thoughts, Chris, and this post did not disappoint. Thank you for your personal and nuanced analysis, and beautiful writing, as always.
Thank you, Amy. And thanks for reading those other two pieces as well!
Hi Chris,
You have reminded me of one of the most beautiful days of my life. A gorgeous day in May of 2006 when my niece and her husband were married in Midlothian, VA. The guests who attended the wedding hailed from almost every nook and cranny of the earth. It was all there. Every skin tone, many nationalities, representation from numerous religions, descendants of paupers and of kings. Everyone congenial. Everyone there to celebrate the union of two luminous individuals. A testament to the fact that we can. We can all get along and respect one another. A day of JOY.
My sympathy to you and your family as regards the loss of your father, Sid La Tray. I know that he continues to reside within you and among you.
Sincerely,
Melissa
Thank you, Melissa. 💚
WOW, Chris, I just finally got the time this piece deserved to read it. I read AHP's interview with Michelle Cyca and I wanted to read your take on it all. You delivered beyond expectation. If it meandered, isn't that the way of nature and water and us. Your story is so rich and so poignant. I think we may have enough young blood to nudge us to the right path-fingers crossed. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, Barbra. 💚
Incredible post Chris. I love how your writing mimics the issues of identity itself -- not trying to come to a definitive (and impossible) conclusion, but instead probing, opening up, exploring, pulling from a variety of sources, reaching deep inside yourself, then deciding that’s enough. I learn so much from you.
Thank you, Hannah.
“Could we make the two roads that today represent two clashing world views come together to form that mighty nation? Could a nation be formed that is guided by respect for all living things?” 🙌🏽
Great, great piece! Sometimes it's hard to realize how the language of identity and the conceptualization of what terms mean (like "tribes" and even "nations" for example) are constructed by the needs of "Western" capitalism and therefore serve those ends. Thanks to you and other histories I've read, my understanding of indigeneity has really broadened in the last couple of years. It changes how you see things when those terms are contested. Thank you!
One of the questions the CNN person asked me is what do I think counts as being Indigenous. I didn't really have a good answer, and to even suggest one seems out of line for me. But I've been thinking of it ever since and it is so complicated. Does it mean connected to the land? The most "connected to the land" people I know are all white people, aka settlers. So I want to broaden the definition even as I want to make sure my people receive equal access to opportunity. It's confusing, and I'm confused.
I appreciate anyone who can say "It's confusing and I'm confused" when they don't have the answer or a response to something. Thanks for being the kind of person who is willing to "not know" in public. And thank you for all of the other thinking and listening and leading you do in this space, Chris.
There is a zen Koan I adore. It says : Not knowing is most intimate.
I love this koan! Thanks for sharing it with me here, Xanda. It's so elegant.
Very welcome Holly.
Thank you, Holly!
I love the Where I Come From piece -- I have a poem of the same title in my next book, and I'm thinking about inviting some folks (in advance) to write from that prompt and share at the TBD launch event next year. (Want to come to Minnesota and read that for me? lol. but seriously.....open invitation if you happen to be in the area, in say, February.)
Thank you, Heidi. February in Minnesota? It sounds just the place for me. We should discuss more....
We should indeed! I'll keep mulling my event idea. Stay tuned.
Thank you Chris for the excellent summation. The interview and article of Michelle Cyca’s work is amazing and eye-opening.
I think Michelle Cyca's piece is one for the ages.
Whew.... here for it...stayed up way too late reading this, AHP's interview with Cyca, then the Maclean piece, and then one on Liz Hoover. Thanks for writing and weaving all those pieces together. I'm thinking of Dr. Kim TallBear's work on DNA and blood quantum; she too has written about these complexities of being "indian" enough, yet another form of colonialism in quantifying blood.
This theme too about claiming native roots being, I dunno, this badge of some kind of currency, of legitimacy, is worrying for sure, but some how stings more seeing it at this "hallowed" level of academia. (but really why am I surprised?) I'm used to it coming from white hippies; having lived in western WA now for over 15 years, local tribal influence is alive and well, and so is the hippie cultural appropriation, yet none of the want to do the heavy lifting of their own ancestral traditions- As if claiming our Lithuanian or French or in my case Scottish Gaelic and Irish ancestors isn't fascinating enough?
Around here there's a whole host of white folks who do all sorts of practices they say they got from someone who told them it was ok from the Native American Church. I've yet to do any kind of in depth reading on Native American Church, but it kind of gives me the shudders these days when any white person burns tobacco or sings a so called 'native' song, and yet my questioning or pushing back is never met by any sort of reflection, just emphatic, "this native man told so and so and passed this on, so it's ok." Like it's still hard to link the harm that's being done b/c what's wrong with a song? This is the place that I think on one level I understand years of reading, listening, wondering, tracking, yet I am still not able to translate this felt sense I have of the harm being done, into the physical realm to address say when a bunch of white people are gathered and they sing some supposedly "native" song in the sauna.
Sigh... thanks for bearing witness to my ramblings, which is further evidence I don't have enough people in my day to day life to grapple with about such things.
I hear the words "Native American Church" and my brain shuts off. And more and more, whenever I see Indians waving around their academic credentials that same brain motor starts to blow gaskets. I just don't care about that kind of stuff. It's all such a nightmare conflict at every turn that I am getting very, very tired of even participating in it.