Luana Ross
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO –– Stories passed down through families and tribes help young people find their way, said Luana Ross, Flathead tribal member, the keynote speaker at the recent Indigenous Book Festival. She was one of many scholars, professors, poets, writers and museum curators who gathered for the festival at the University of New Mexico. They talked about the intellectual tradition within tribes and about Native American studies and critical indigenous studies – which looks at Native American history and thought before and in spite of colonization. Ross left her Montana reservation to attend the University of Montana in Missoula, and the University of Oregon in Eugene, where she received a Ph.D. in sociology. She taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Davis and Seattle’s University of Washington. She has published essays and the book “Inventing the Savage.” But she returned to her tribe to teach and write and is now president of Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Mont., where she began to research her tribe’s traditions. She and her five sisters noticed that many of the Flathead stories were about men. One sister set out to record women’s stories. Her mother told her traditional stories about everything from cooking to religion to living and dying. “They told me who I was, what I was to become and passed it on. My mother is a natural intellectual, strong and wise,” Ross said. Tribes have origin stories, she noted. “Origin stories are about everything. Our stories tell us how to stay alive. When we tell our stories, something very powerful happens. They tell us who we are, about our families. They have had their place in my life when faced with personal difficulties. My mother’s stories carried us through adolescence.” “Young people are struggling. It’s up to us to pass those stories down to them,” she added. “The colonizers said Indians were lost causes and sent them to boarding schools and said Indians’ place is not in the university. They put them in noble dressing. My great- grandmother lived during hard times, dispossessed of home, knowing grief, sorrow and homesickness, which affected her, her family and the whole tribe. Native people came to feel inferior for the first time. They were taught they were inferior and told to change the way they dressed. They cut their hair. They were not allowed to leave the reservation without a pass. Children were sent to boarding school. Most (schools) were bad, although some were good. Boys were to be educated in the proper manner. Yet, warrior women were strong and capable. Salish women were strong on the battlefield.” Amanda Cobb-Greetham of Oklahoma’s Chickasaw Nation also returned to her reservation after years away in academia, including time spent serving as an associate professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma and taught at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and again at the University of New Mexico. But her tribal chairman asked her to return home to establish a cultural center and to start the Chickasaw Press, which publishes books about Chickasaw history, traditions and literature. The Chickasaws established their own boarding school, she said. “After our removal and return, we wanted to make sure it did not happen again.” She published “Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females.” There is a long history of indigenous writers, scholars and philosophers, said Cobb-Greetham. “Early indigenous writers had no Ph.D.s, yet they were intellectuals," she said. The Chickasaws built these enterprises because of economic development including casinos, she said. Their tribal government has used the money to build medical centers, a cultural center and a museum. David Martinez, a Pima from Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community, is an associate professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University and has written several books about Native American philosophers including “Dakota Philosopher Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought.” Charles Eastman was a writer, doctor and philosopher who lived from 1858 to 1939. Martinez also edited “American Indian Intellectual Tradition from 1772 to 1972.” He majored in philosophy in college and was reading works by Western philosophers when he decided to take a look at Native American philosophers. “Indian people have answers, too, about big questions like ‘Why are we here?’ Native thinkers are medicine men (and) writers (as well as) thinkers. Authors came forward. More and more Native thinkers began to appear. It was happening long ago. It was an old story,” Martinez said. He looked at Native American writers who wrote English and talked to medicine men and other tribal thinkers who helped him adjust to life when he left home in Minnesota. Often, these early thinkers had not attended college. “They used what they had to serve the people. They were not getting tenure. When there was a crisis, they were using the written word on behalf of Indian people. I discovered that Native people are capable of deep thinking. They had creative dynamic thinking going on. Tremendous intellect kept us alive,” said Martinez. “I’m trying to figure out how white people think, why people maintain a relationship between themselves and nature and the spirit world. Native philosophy has nothing to do with Western thought. You don’t have to assimilate yourself into the dominant culture. You can take what you want into your own culture,” he added. Martinez gathered philosophers from many sources to teach his students. “I told Pima stories along with Emanuel Kant and others. I tell my students that they already have a body of tradition around them.” He encourages tribes to write their histories and get them published. Martinez said he looks everywhere for philosophers. “Artists are intellectuals, too, so are storytellers, even skateboarders who have their own unique culture. I enjoy the culture, the people, the ideas coming out of this subculture. It’s an uninhibited culture. There are intelligent young people expressing themselves in this media.” Too often young people are stereotyped, he added. “Indian studies is not only about social ills, teen pregnancy and drugs. We must go beyond the stereotype of Native kids. (Non-Native society needs) a reminder that our kids have a lot of heart and soul. There are good kids making a difference in the world. They are Native intellectuals, too.” Many of the speakers at the conference talked about critical indigenous studies, which looks at the effects of colonization on tribes. They urged people to look at Native Americans as they were without colonization and to look at how the dominant culture has characterized Native Americans. Michael Yellowbird, Sahnish (Arikara) and Hidatsa, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught at the University of British Columbia, Arizona State University and the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He edited “For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook.” “Contemplative practices were common before colonization. They filter out distractions,” said Yellowbird. “They stabilize the brain.” “With colonization came oppression and discrimination, which have affected mental health and led to diabetes, anxiety and depression. Settler colonialism tried to destroy our culture. It affected our health, mentally and emotionally.” It’s important to reconnect to tribal traditions, he said. “Let’s go back to the contemplative lifestyle.” Values of the dominant culture have changed the way tribal people think, Yellowbird continued. For example, in North Dakota, fracking (using chemicals, water and sand to extract oil and gas) may be adversely affecting land and water. “We don’t feel close to nature, we feel close to materialism,” Yellowbird said. And, he added, “colonization wiped out indigenous religion and meditation. The concept of heaven and hell put fear in the brain. A fearful God replaced a loving God.” Santa Clara Pueblo Greg Cajete, who is director of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico, discussed the importance of his field. “We look at science, art and history from cultural perspectives and look at how Native people are affected by contemporary issues. We’re building the next generation of Native leaders who understand what it is to be Native,” said Cajete. “It’s giving a bedrock of understanding. It’s a way to reduce the brainwashing we’ve received. Through indigenous studies, we see what we can do for ourselves through education.” (Contact Kate Saltzstein at salty223@aol.com)
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