Writing American Cultures: Close Reading
Vairea Houston
1/12/16
“Many native people still carry mistrust of non-native people, and that feeling can be difficult to overcome.” (Pg. 27) Virtual Reservation: NDNs in the Digital Age by Ataya Cesspooch.
When reading the first essay by Ataya Cesspooch in Writing American Cultures, this particular sentence struck out to me. In the paragraph she is talking about the stories of Native American culture and the problem of stories being carried throughout the internet. On one hand the story could be preserved forever, unchangeable once placed on the internet. Yet, it could also be changed and altered at the hands of anyone able to use the web.
She writes, “Native culture has been exploited to the point that many elders fear sharing things and keep wisdom far from strangers.” This reminded me of when I was working as a waitress just outside the town I grew up in. My senior class in High School had collaborated on a t-shirt that we would all wear to our last assemblies of school pride. I used to wear the t-shirt because it reminded me of some of my fond days of school and the classmates I grew up with. The t-shirt is of a native american headress (our school mascot was the Redskins) with the names of each member of our class forming the shape. One day (three years after having graduated high school) I decided to wear it to work. That day a native american man and his son came into order food to-go and they sat at the bar in front of me. It’s a busy day for work, so I say a polite greeting, and continue to deliver drinks to other tables. I soon notice that the man keeps staring at me as I am walking around the restaurant. I thought that by doing that he must have been ready to order his food but when I got back order to him he said abruptly,
“What gives you the right to wear that shirt?”
I simply replied, “This is my senior t-shirt.” Which I realized afterwards how dumb sounding it was. He gave me his order for food and I left to hang it up. I contemplated what I should have told him when he asked me. I should have told him that I saw this shirt as a symbol of my completion of high school with my classmates, nothing else. But that would have been foolish too because I had no idea what adorning that headdress on my t-shirt meant to the Native community and the conversation it had brought up in the community. He then said, “That shirt really offends me.” I could tell that his temper was rising as he continued to glare at my shirt.
“I’m sorry I don’t mean to offend you” I said. He continued to raise his voice at me, mostly asking me questions that he wouldn’t let me answer. This made me realize that I was wearing a shirt with a deeper meaning than I had known, one that had the power to affect people around me.
On page 28, Ataya says, “Sometimes reinventing yourself is necessary. But sometimes we stray too far into individuality and long for community and life with a meaningful worldview.” Ataya is talking about the Native community being accessible on the internet and having the ability to further culture in the right step. I also look at this quote as one that resonates for me and my senior t-shirt. It’s as if us that bought this shirt were stepping too far into our own individuality, having been so comfortable with the mascot we had had for decades. We were so used to the norm that we had lost sense of the greater community and the voices of others. We weren’t told the meaning of the headdress to the Native community when the shirt was in creation but we should have understood it before we began wearing them. I had no intention of disrespecting this man or his community but by wearing the shirt and not knowing the brevity of the situation, I already had. I had closed my mind to what was in front of me by not opening myself up to the situation. I believe that we need to teach Native culture in our schools even to non-Natives so that we can avoid situations like these, and nullify terms (like mascot names) that represent derogatory terms. Creating videos to teach people about different things will always be susceptible to the possibility of learning it the wrong way. We need to be teaching stories of other cultures so that we can respect people and their heritage.
“An Indian child without knowledge of his own cultural traditions is like a tree that, when it was young, did not have a lot of trees around to make it go straight up to the sun… [On the other hand] in a great forest, where you’ve got a lot of trees around this young tree , and that one tree grows straight up between those other trees to reach the sun , then it’s going to be strong and it’s gonna be there for two and three hundred years. And that’s the way it is with Indian children. Without that foundation or that circle of tradition, to raise that child in, it becomes weaker and weaker as its years go on (Garroutte 74).” – Page 23. This passage really spoke to me because I understand this personally. It reminds me of the quote, “It takes a village to raise a child.” A child learns from those around him and he/she need to gain wisdom from different places and different people to become who he/she wants to be. I’m constantly reminded that wisdom sits in places, we take a little bit of wisdom from each place we go and we take it and learn from it. Without other people or places we will either lose our identities or never find them at all. We all identify personally with a heritage, place, religion, etc. and with it we continue to grow. I traveled all the way to Indonesia this fall just to meet my fellow trees (family) to develop my heritage and continue my growth. Without having gone to Indonesia I probably would have thought of my Indonesian heritage as distant family history and that part of my grandmother would have died too. So here we all are, growing up to the sun.