Thriving Indigenous Futures
When I consider and evaluate the theme, "Thriving Indigenous Futures,” I think about other cultures and their futures, mostly, how many of them don’t have to work towards their futures at all. Their futures are clearly laid out in front of them because their past is still there to guide them forward. Their culture, ancestors, and history are so present in their lives that there is little left for them to rebuild. The Indigenous past has been stripped away and painted over not only by the physical colonization but also by years of western and colonial stories and narratives that skews the damage that was done.
The [film], “The Sixth World,” was one that connected with various other discussions that we have had in class and in past readings. Firstly, we have a reference to dreams and their significance in Indigenous cultures. We also see how dreams often symbolize a greater meaning and deeper understanding which is overlooked in many western beliefs. [Redhouse] dreamt that the mission would fail because the corn would die. This dream impacts her deeply and makes her want to take steps towards ensuring it does not come true. When she expresses this, she is faced with the words, “you can’t let dreams spook you.” Immediately, the dream is discredited and deemed unimportant. Ultimately, the dream holds true. I believe that her ancestors were trying to warn her about what is to come and that the science behind the new genetically modified corn won’t be as powerful as corn in its pure form, the corn from her people. In many cultures, particularly the Indigenous cultures, dreams are often more rational than the “real” world.
While watching the video, I was reminded of something that happened to me recently. I live on a mountain in Issaquah that is surrounded by dense forest with only a few neighbors. We have a lot of wildlife around us including coyotes, black bears, deer (who enjoy sleeping on our lawn), owls and the list goes on. Recently, I’ve been having dreams of howling and wolves. I'd dream that I wake up in my bed to howling and I look out my window to see a wolf on [our] lawn looking at the house. When I would wake up in the morning I'd remind myself that there aren’t wolves in [our] area and if there was howling it was simply the coyotes. A few days ago, a neighbor’s CCTV footage revealed a wolf [wandering] around in his garden. Turns out, wolves are beginning to move into the area due to lack of food supplies. They are “teaming up” with the coyotes and have even started breeding with the coyotes to create a mixed breed. We had no idea. But when I found out I wondered whether my consistent dreams were connected in any way.
Another recurring theme in this film is the relation to ancestors and learning from the past to create a better future. [Redhouse] states that she wished she had taken more time to learn from her ancestors and healers in her bloodline. This links to the second part of the reading in that it too speaks of building a better future by learning from the past. Speaking to the past to guide the future, “To be a native north American is to exist in a space where the past and the future mix in a delicate swirl of the here-and-now.”- Rebecca Roanhorse. This statement stood out to me as it so clearly and graphically explains what it feels like to be stuck in between two worlds. The world that was taken from you along with your culture, and a world you will now have to hope for in the future.
In the film, when things seem to be hopeless, we see and hear [Redhouse] singing and chanting songs from her culture as a way to connect to her ancestors. I decided to explore this a little more and found pieces of the book “the power of song.” In this book, the author discusses how music and song is used in Indigenous cultures and what it means to sing. A quote that I found interesting here was, “song maintains the spirits of oppressed Indigenous peoples by building hope that a more peaceful society can be created through the practice of nonviolence” (Chakars, 2014). This made it easier for me to understand why [Redhouse] sang in that moment and how it brought her a sense of peace and trust in the knowledge that passed down from her ancestors to her.
Perhaps the simplest yet most impactful parts or lines in “Postcards from the Apocalypse” is, “It is all a lie.” Here, she referred to what we know today and what we are told. As history has been written and re-written, people within the United States and even beyond, have been given a lens through which to view Americans and this country, a lens that excludes the fact that the country was built on the backs of slaves. That before there was an “America,” there were generations of people already living and thriving on, from and with the land.
In a strange way, I was reminded of Tommy Pico’s “Nature Poem” while moving through these pieces. There is a sense of breaking boundaries and challenging what is expected from society. As we have discussed in past classes, there is an unspoken (sometimes spoken) expectation that Indigenous people must be completely in tune with nature and have little knowledge of science, chemistry, and physics. In the video or short film, an Indigenous woman is depicted as the lead scientist who can combine knowledge from her ancestors and the present sophisticated and technological world. I put those two words in italics because I find it difficult to classify our society today as either of those things because to me it just reeks of exclusion and gives particular groups a sense [of] undeserved pride and superiority. Another part of this article that connected to past discussions was the acknowledgment that oftentimes, when referring to Indigenous people, one tends to speak in the past tense. As if to say that Indigenous people and cultures do not and cannot exist anymore. It is true that many lives were lost in the colonization, but the people and the culture are still very much alive. What I have mentioned above and what was discussed in class was very well put in the article “Being Indigenous in the 21st century.” As the author Wilma Mankiller puts it, Indigenous people have been either stereotyped as savage or romanticized. Though, as Indigenous people begin to prosper as filmmakers, museum curators, journalists, historians, and other forms of cultural representation, they will begin to take control of their own narratives and hopefully preserve their past for future generations (Mankiller, 2009).
Citations:
Chakars, Janis. “Guntis Šmidchens. The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2014.” Peace & Change, vol. 42, no. 3, 2017, pp. 471–473., doi:10.1111/pech.12252.
Mankiller, Wilma. “Being Indigenous in the 21st Century.” Cultural Survival, 1 Mar. 2009, www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/being-indigenous-21st-century.
References:
Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2018.
Erdrich, Heid E. New Poets of Native Nations. Graywolf Press, 2018.
Washuta, Elissa, and Theresa Warburton. Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. University of Washington Press, 2019.
Becker's, Nanobah, director. The Sixth World. Snagfilms.com, 2012, www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_sixth_world.
Rebeccaroanhorse. “Postcards from the Apocalypse.” Rebecca Roanhorse, 27 Feb. 2018, rebeccaroanhorse.com/2018/02/06/postcards-from-the-apocalypse/.
© Copyright Marion Richter, 2019