Keep a Copy of Your Tribal Identification Card On You
At all times
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I know this one is right on the heels of the last one and I’m really trying to avoid issuing hot takes on the day-to-day mayhem of our current National Situation but that’s just not going to be possible all the time. Not only that, but I have a couple events I need to promote, so here we are.
As for plugging paid subscriptions while the country sinks, I’m going to do that too! Because of all the wrangling over the freezing and unfreezing of federal grants, some of my programs and associated expenses (mostly related to Little Shell presentations I give around the state, like two this weekend) are on hold for the foreseeable future until things get sorted out. I’m doing them anyway because I’m not going to let some petty tyrant stand between me and getting the good word out to the people!1 So if you’ve been thinking you need a sign that this whole Irritable Roadshow thing is anything less than some kind of mission from god before throwing in on a paid subscription, now is the time….
But First, of Particular Interest to Irritable Billings Area Readers and Intrepid and Spontaneous Event Attenders….
This might be the shortest notice ever but I’m doing a last minute event this evening on campus at MSU-Billings. This came about because I am visiting a Native American Studies course earlier in the day and so I contacted the fine folks from the Native American Achievement Center on campus to see about doing something in the evening with them since I’ll be here anyway, and this is it. It’s on campus but open to the entire community. I hope some of you who see this and can attend, do!
Also, this:
I’m doing a reading Friday night, January 31, at River Arts & Books in Roscoe, at 6:00pm. This is one of my favorite places. It’s going to be crowded and cozy and abundant with winter, which is a perfect scene for poetry. The following day, Saturday, I’m leading a workshop most of the day. That thing is full, but I know a guy who could probably get you in….
'People are scared': Fort Peck Tribal chair urges members to carry IDs to avoid deportation
The headline of this section is taken from this article written by the irrepressible Nora Mabie2, the Statewide Indigenous Communities Reporter for the Missoulian. Basically, reservation folks on the Hi-Line are afraid they are going to be scooped-up in Trump’s anti-immigrant dragnet and deported. Per Nora’s article:
Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribal Chairman Justin Gray Hawk on Friday issued a statement urging tribal members to carry their tribal IDs amid growing concern over President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders.
Gray Hawk wrote that community members feared the possibility of “(deporting) Native Americans along with Mexicans in the hope that nobody can tell the difference.”
Fort Belknap Indian Community Vice President Judy King on Friday issued a similar statement, advising members to "keep a copy of your tribal identification card on you at all times."
I bring all this up because I dipped my toe in the comments section and became outraged and teetered on the brink of responding to the copious ignorance displayed there. There is a small group of presumably old white guys (the majority of whom, in all their courage, post anonymously) who seem to spend their days issuing vile, ignorant, and barely literate commentary on just about everything the Missoulian publishes. I’ve muted most of them and added a couple yesterday.3
The bulk of the commentary was based on expressions of how dumb the article is, and how could “liberals” be so stupid as to think the government is going to haul Indians away.4 The ignorance displayed is deep, obviously, because that is exactly what the US has done many, many times throughout history. They’ve removed entire communities onto reservations, then moved them again when it suited them5; removed people and relocated them to cities; taken children from families and returned them, years later, broken … if they ever returned at all, not to mention forced adoptions and etc. And yes, even rounded up and deported people, from the very communities now expressing fear that it is going to happen again, within the living memory of families.
I write about this in Becoming Little Shell, and I’ve written about it before in this newsletter. I’m talking about the Cree Deportation Act of 1896, and I wrote about it here most recently two years ago in relation to the dedication of Beartracks Bridge in Missoula. That is where the old photograph above was taken from as well.
Cribbing from my previous post, the caption to this photograph reads:
Although long believed to be a photo of the Séliš people crossing the Clark Fork River on their departure from the Bitterroot Valley to the Flathead Indian Reservation in 1891, historians now wonder if that may be erroneous. Reports at the time noted crowds of people along the route watching Chief Charlo and his people as they hauled their belongings north.
The photograph is almost certainly from five years later when, as part of the Cree Deportation Act of 1896, the U.S. gathered any non-reservation Indians – Chippewa, Cree, Métis ("half-breeds") – and deported them to Canada. Deported us, my people, to Canada. We were considered “Canadian Indians” and refugees from the North West Rebellion of 1885. It is this policy that is largely responsible, in my opinion, for why the Métis are not recognized as a cultural group in the U.S. the way we are in Canada. As I always say: we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.
A number of us were rounded up and held at Fort Missoula that summer until we could be driven north; first by train, then, when the money ran out, on foot. It is my tribe’s version of a Trail of Tears. Many, if not most, tribes have them. This photograph then is most certainly who we would now call the ancestors of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. If one looks closely, you will see what appears to be several of the two-wheeled Red River carts. When you have Red River carts, you have Métis. And while my Salish relatives were being moved to where they would have a place to live, and still do, my people were just being moved away. We still don’t have a place to live and it is painful. But I also recognize that, in our time of greatest need, many among the Salish made a place for us and I love them for it. There are many, many Little Shell living on that reservation. There are many Chippewa who escaped those terrible years and started calling themselves Salish, and have been so ever since.
There are also many of us on the Fort Peck Reservation, and at Fort Belknap too. The memories of that terrifying time lives in those people. My Great Grandmother Tillie was born in 1896, in the middle of those tumultuous days. The story of what that must have been like still lives in me, and I’m sure the terror is even more immediate to people a generation older than me, and there are many still living. Nor is it just happening here, it is happening to our relatives to the south as well.
I’ve been thinking of these deportations, particularly when I was in Burbank and took a day to venture out toward the coast and passed many fields filled with workers. I think about it when I am in other cities and almost every service worker is a brown person speaking Spanish.
2024_0707: Eight or ten white women practice yoga around the pool while the brown man handles changing out the garbage can.
I thought about it when I was having breakfast at my hotel in Chapel Hill last week and the television was reporting a story of a fake ICE van prowling around a neighborhood terrorizing people, and of a grocery store ICE had been about to raid (it wasn’t true).
We must fight fear and hatred with solidarity, and a willingness to challenge our own assumptions about who our opponents are, and have always been, my relatives.
We point our fingers at Trump and yes this latest debacle is awful and something to be vigorously opposed, but he isn’t alone or the first to engage in it. I’ve mentioned that the same military spending bill that gained the Little Shell our federal restoration also financed the wall he wanted to build during his first four years of failure, but the sneaky bastards in the Biden administration didn’t do much to roll much, if any, of Trump’s previous efforts back. My friend Melissa Del Bosque wrote this excellent piece for The Border Chronicle detailing all of this, and is a great place to start with this essential newsletter.
As Trump wads up everything meaningful and attempts to shitcan it all, it is more and more criticial that we pay attention to outlets outside the spoon feeding of corporate media interests. I urge you to seek out folks like the Border Chronicle and throw them support. And continue to challenge your assumptions because we are going to need that when we get around to rebuilding in the aftermath of all this. We can be so much better.
And Finally….
The article Nora wrote that kicked off this newsletter is probably paywalled. However, she – along with Carly Graf – did three excellent pieces recently that are not behind a paywall. I urge you to read these, which I have conveniently linked here for you. Consider letting the Missoulian know how much you value this work as well!
About the series:
Our reporters spent nine months traveling more than 2,000 miles to visit all seven tribal colleges in Montana and the communities they serve. The two reporters conducted interviews with nearly 60 people, including past and present administrators, TCU founders, teachers and staff, current students and recent graduates. Here's what you can expect in this three-part series:
'For the sake of the nation': Tribal colleges revitalize language, culture
‘Build a better rez’: How tribal colleges in Montana bolster local workforce, economy
Vital yet undervalued: Funding shortfalls stunt growth, progress at Montana tribal colleges
*Shakes fist at sky in a generally eastward direction*
Living proof that non-Indian folks can do outstanding work in Indian Country; Nora, for my money, is one of the best in the business anywhere and is such a valuable and critical part of our community, in spite of all the challenges and gatekeeping, a majority of which comes from hand-wringing white people who think they know better but DON’T.
I bring them up at all because their willful ignorance must be countered when we encounter it, especially now. Not online though, but through our interactions in face-to-face community. I bring it up here in hopes that you will become folks countering this stuff with your voices when opportunity presents itself.
I’ve mentioned more than once that I get mistaken for being Mexican far more often than being recognized as Indian, even in predominantly Latinx, Hispanic, et al communities like Arizona and Southern California. This doesn’t bother me at all – fist raised in solidarity with my southern relatives! – and I only bring it up here because this fear living in the breasts of others is there for a reason because this kind of mis-identification happens all the time.
We had a training at work on How To Melt ICE by an immigration lawyer (we are a target). She showed us the ICE "warrants" which are NOT legal. Do not accept them unless they're from the U.S. District Court and signed by a judge. Don't let them in, don't talk to them. Period. My personal dealings with them proved them to just be bullies who want to intimidate. They have no standing for what they're doing. And yes, carry proof of citizenship or Tribal ID card at all times. Sorry if this is redundant info. I could rage on and on but will stop at this. The info's important, the rage is too, but is for another place. Thank you for your heart and all you do.
I'm keeping my passport handy. I was asked my immigration status by a stranger last week. Been here 14 years, naturalized for 9 of them, and this is the first time this has happened. I’m having a hard time convincing myself that it’s just a coincidence.
I’m not trying to draw an equivalence. Nobody gives me a second glance unless I open my mouth, and even then it’s usually to ask which soccer team I follow. In fact it was almost farcical. “No offence, but you don’t sound like you’re from these parts.” Felt like I’d stumbled onto the set of Blazing Saddles. But even though I can laugh it off, the emboldened xenophobia in unmistakable.