Diana Whittaker

Aisha Sidibe-Leyva

English 110

November 9th, 2018

                                                                              Blood and Water

In highschool, I had a friend, named “Pat” for the sake of this writing, who claimed to be Cherokee. This came from a talk about his race – he mentioned being Irish and German (which is to say white) but he insisted on letting me know that he was “part Native American”, specifically Cherokee. Dismissing the conflation of race and nationality, I noticed that Pat defined his race based on his genealogical background. While not the same in his case, this is, to some degree, a reality for real Native Americans in the United States. The amount of  native blood a person has, the blood quantum, was (and in some cases, still is) used by the United States government and by tribes to define who is and who isn’t Native. This idea dismisses a significant portion of being any race: the connection to the culture. In both “Custer Died For Your Sins” and “Superman and me”, Deloria and Alexie express this connection to their culture that cannot be found simply because of their family history. As such, there’s also a largely prevailing need in both to protect and continue their culture. While both the United States and tribal government use of blood quantum and family history to gauge Nativeness, both are flawed perceptions and are only marginally important. The truest validation of Native identity is in the practice and preservation of their own culture.

The history of the blood quantum began as way for the United States to define who was a “real Native” through family lines. Beginning in the 19th century, the Department of the Interior, which was part of the federal government, created it under previously understood ideas of race being a biological fact, and that phenotypes were viable to identify Natives – “at the time, anthropologists used feet and hair width as a ‘scientific’ test of blood degree in indigenous tribes” (Jarvis), yet still, “government agents compiling base rolls in the 1800s sometimes simply guessed at the percentage of Indian blood” (Jarvis).  It already created a slippery slope: Natives and non-Natives could be misidentified and be respectively barred or accepted as Native. This is not mentioning people who were mixed race, like black and Native, and were classified as black, while at the same time accepting certain “mixed Natives” because of their proximity to assimilation. It also did not include people who distrusted the federal government and refused to enroll in the system, relinquishing the ability of their descendants to do so as well. On top of being a highly unstable system, its implementation based was for purely racial use, in the hopes that “Indians would literally breed themselves out and rid the federal government of their legal duties to uphold treaty obligations” (Chow). The blood quantum, therefore, was solely colonizing construct that attempted to erase the existence of Natives identity.

The United States stood to gain from such erasure too. Deloria’s writing gives insight on the violent erasure and suppression of Native identity in the form of forced assimilation. He states that “indian children were kidnapped and forced into boarding schools thousands of miles of home to learn the white man’s ways.” The goal was to make Natives “conform to white institutions” in the hopes that they would behave and think like white people and thereby be willing to give away their lands for profit the way white people wanted. Uncoincidentally, the blood quantum aligned with this idea – “‘Mixed blood’ Indians, for example, were added to rolls in hopes that assimilated Indians would be more likely to cede their land” (Jarvis). The definitions became stricter only after the U.S. government was able to lay claim to land.

Given that the blood quantum has, over time, become a large part of tribal citizenship – family lineage determines the “math” that dictates “Indianness” – it can be the thing that makes or breaks the ability to be identified as a Native, no matter the circumstances. In a case from 2013, after a member of the Nooksack Indian tribe was unable to enroll his children in the tribe due to a discrepancy involving his family line, the tribal council of tribe investigated the lineage of his other family members, one of which was a member of the council. This spread to other members of the tribe, leading to the tribal disenrollment of over 300 members because of an ancestor who had no record of existing. In one account, an 80 year-old, who had even faced discrimination for speaking “Indian”, was disenrolled, along with people who had been members for over 30 years. It seems unjust, then, to have something like this happen when Nooksacks, like many tribes, had their history “complicated by government efforts to extinguish, assimilate and relocate the tribe, and by a dearth of historical documents” (Jarvis).  And despite the fact that those 306 Nooksack members became so involved with the tribe, some already being grandparents, they were completely cut out.

Can Native identity, then, be stripped so easily? Before the existence of this system, Natives already had their own history. They had confederacies, politics, even practices of democracy. Once things like task forcing started, these people banded further together to create inter-tribal councils in order to have autonomy against the federal government that was suddenly attempting to impose structure on them. Having such autonomy allowed the continuing of their own traditions, which had worked – in Deloria’s words, “ Tribes that can handle their reservation conflicts in traditional Indian fashion generally make more progress…than do tribes that continually make adaptations to the white value system.” We can see a smaller model of this in Alexie’s essay, the resounding strength of  culture in the face of erasure. Children who did not try understand the materials presented to them in school were otherwise freely expressive outside of it – they “struggled with basic reading inside the classroom but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs”, told stories outside when they would barely speak in class, and stood up to bullies where they were less able to stand up to non-Natives. The lack of mention of blood quantum in Alexie’s essay in particular, in spite of the fact that modern Natives are pressed by “the need to “prove” their identities” (Jarvis) seems to be more focused on the preservation of his culture and his history through writing rather than through his family ties. Deloria’s act of listing out the history of Native politics, tribal affairs and the injustices that have made tribes stand together goes hand in hand with Alexie’s obviously fervent desire to write and encourage the writing of Native experiences in an effort to “save our (Indian) lives” – or in other words, save their continued existence.

However, returning to the case of Pat and his proclaimed Cherokee roots, one could say that the blood quantum system (especially its use within tribal councils) is only an effort to keep people like him – people who claim to that part of the race without being in the cultural circle – from claiming that nativity for gain. There are incentives in being part of a tribe, and “some of those incentives would be financial gain if the tribe, for example, has gaming revenue or other industries” (Chow). There also lies the risk that people may  “claim an identity for affirmative-action purposes.” The instances in which this actually occurs, though, are rare. Not to mention, the system is still a government run effort to erase Native Americans. The system has barred an entire generation of Nooksack peoples from being able to be what they’ve always been; all because of one singular ancestor that could not be proven inside an already unreliable historical telling. While there’s no way to discern what degree of “Indianness” is present in Pat, there’s doubt that the system would even work for him in the first place when it cannot function for people who have been culturally native from the time of their grandparents.

The history of the blood quantum is one that was inherently meant to shut down Native voices. The truth of the identity lies in the awareness of their own culture and the way it is passed down from generation to generation. While the dilemma presented by the Nooksacks has an unclear ending, what is clear is that the 306 who were disenrolled are fighting not just for their right to citizenship but their right to cultural identification in a country that has been trying to strip it away by the same means for centuries. Shockingly, Sherman Alexie himself tweeted about the issue, saying (as quoted in Jarvis’s article), “Dear Indian tribes who disenroll members, you should be ashamed of your colonial and capitalistic [bs].” Even with the complexity of blood quantums and the way they are used now, there’s something to be said about the origins, and whether or not it is right to use what has been a vehicle for oppression.

Works Cited

Jarvis, Brooke. “Who Decides Who Counts as Native American?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/magazine/who-decides-who-counts-as-native-american.html.

Chow, Kat. “So What Exactly Is ‘Blood Quantum’?” NPR, NPR, 9 Feb. 2018, www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum.

Diana Whittaker

Aisha Sidibe-Leyva

English 110

October 24th, 2018

As human beings, we tend to make the mistake of creating generalized perceptions on what we see on a superficial level. Getting cut off on a highway, for example – most people blame the driver for being rude and speeding, but don’t consider the circumstances that driver was under to do such a thing. In a situation like that, its relatively harmless, which is what makes the circumstances relevant. But this is not the case for a broader scale like race, and is especially not the case for Deloria, Alexie, and the Native Americans. White people have created narratives for what a Native American is like and used it to blanket over the reality of the Native themselves. Thus Natives are forced to cope with this misrepresentation of their culture by outsiders and understand what they become while inside of their circles. Alexie’s writing gives insight to how Natives react: in retaliation to the damaging and incorrect assumptions made on them, native school children mockingly – and sometimes, resignedly  align with stereotypes, all while inversely strengthening their bond with their culture in order to preserve their identity as Native Americans. While this reaction may come off as perpetuating these stereotypes towards the same people who created, Deloria’s “Custer Died For Your Sins” demonstrates that it is deliberate because there is no way to stop the stereotypes from being formed and pushed onto Natives, and that Naives, in their own right, create and strengthen their unity as people who face this discrimination.

When it comes to discrimination, however, it is not executed in a way that, at face value, seems harmful. Alexie mentions this through the non-native teachers who taught on the reservation. Teaching, in and of itself, is meant to be helpful, but through Deloria we note that the teaching was meant to assimilate Natives with white people by force. “Indian children were kidnapped and forced into boarding schools thousands of miles from their home to learn the white man’s ways” – there is the underlying assumption, by the “white man” that the Natives are somehow less educated or civilized as opposed to the non-Natives. Alexie’s writing reflect this as well when as he says, “As Indian children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian World.” While the so-called altruism exhibited by whites to help natives doesn’t seem done in malice, it creates a false idea that Natives need help and are seemingly wrong in their ways just because the ways are different. Thus, it becomes malicious in the way only the Natives can feel, and only Natives can learn to cope with.

For the school children in Alexie’s essay, it seems they mock these stereotypes by appropriately conforming to them in the right setting. Alexie retells how they were openly resistant to Alexie’s efforts to teach reading and writing because they were more accepted (by Natives and non-Natives alike)  if they conformed to the expectation of the lack of intelligence imposed on them. It is to the point where they are “sullen, and already defeated”. In the same ways, then, Deloria also seems to be defeated in trying to disprove. His sarcastic way of assigning blame, claiming Indians “transparency” and that they have a “secret osmosis” to them that makes their knowledge and culture known to anyone else. It’s in this way that he also resigns himself to these assumptions because his sarcasm doesn’t outright disprove them, much like the school children in Alexie’s essay that did not try to disprove them by going against the status of ineptitude held against them.

However, when focused outside of the context of white people, we find that there’s a resounding strength in cultural identity and cultural intelligence within Native circles. Alexie describes this through the children who did not understand the materials presented to them in school but were otherwise freely expressive outside of it – they “struggled with basic reading inside the classroom but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs”, told stories outsidewhen they would barely speak in class, and stood up to bullies where they were less able to stand up to non-Natives.  In addition, the Native children who did not manage to make success for themselves in the white man’s world were accepted by other Natives, and would shun those who tried to conform to it, like Alexie himself. Through Deloria, we see something like this on a much larger scale. The solidarity between the Native tribes in order to make progress needs to be done in “traditional Indian fashion”, which is to say needs to be held to the standard of Indians, not whites. The outpouring of knowledge on Native tribal politics exemplifies the same intelligence Alexie’s classmates show; their unification and togetherness under their culture is intelligence in and of itself. It stands directly against the imposition of stereotypes on them.

However, Deloria’s stance on what Natives needs is at odds with what Alexie’s actions. Seeing as his efforts to be acknowledged as intelligent were shunned by his peers, and that Deloria believes that natives should be left alone, Alexie’s attempts to teach Native children to read and write in order to “save their lives” can be seen as both good and harmful. There is this lingering idea that the education received by Native children is based on what the white man sees as truth, which the children reject by having purposely disengaging themselves form learning it. This represents a smaller version of Deloria’s argument, and as such, Alexie attempting to use his learning seem like he is trying to assimilate with some parts of the white man’s way. On the other hand, Alexie seems to realize he represents success where it is not expected – in a Native person. Being able to teach native children to engage in literature and poetry seems in an effort to spread knowledge of their existence and success outside of the reservation.

Through Deloria and Alexie, we see that the attitudes of Natives towards themselves and towards the stereotypes given to them reflect one another. Deloria represents a broader version of this notion, while Alexie provides a smaller, more personal retelling of struggle Natives face and their reactions to it.

Diana Whittaker

Aisha Sidibe-Leyva

English 110

October 1st, 2018

                                                                   Between Here and There

        The United States, since its inception, has been a place where people from different ethnicities, religions, and nationalities have sought out for their own expressions, freedoms, and relief. There’s a certain irony to this same country also being a place in which people who feel they own the land (due to their naturalization or race) wish to see these “outsiders” controlled,  barred from entering, or see that they assimilate wholly to what they believe is the proper way of being an “American”. Thus, for people like Gloria Anzaldúa, who were born on American soil yet are faced with the attack and erasure of their identity and language on two fronts, there lies the questions of what, to them, makes their own language and culture? What defines the Americanness that they are expected to adopt, while stifling any culture that did not conform to said Americanness? In her essay “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” Anzaldúa uses her life experiences to give understanding to what she knows as Americanness, and in turn, her language and culture as a Chicana living at the border. Her use of compartmentalizing definitions, personal history, and metaphors shed light on her understanding of herself and life around her between the American and Mexican worldviews.

        From the very beginning, Anzaldúa makes it clear that identity and language go hand in hand – the languages she uses are a facet of her that is just as much a part of her as the next. She describes Chicano Spanish as a language born from a need to be identified as “distinct people”, using comparisons to standard Spanish and retelling the way Latinos and Latinas have expressed disdain for the “ruining” of the language. Going so far as to give examples of its conventions, she legitimizes the way in which Chicano Spanish came about as naturally as any other language – to communicate under the shared identity with others who would understand the way of living. This, however, is not the only language she speaks: Tex-Mex, or Spanglish, represents how people on the border create a language that is an amalgamation of Spanish and English and representative of the intersection of languages (and thereby identities) at the border.

        Anzaldúa’s home was, as stated before, at the border of Texas and Mexico. She describes the Chicanos as people who “straddle the borderlands”, being “constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans” and hearing the “Anglos’ incessant clamoring”. Her choice of words like “exposure” and “clamor” to describe the Mexicans and Anglos’ puts in perspective the way both cultures interact with hers and where her culture stands in theirs. Chicano, as a culture, is not quite identifiable with Mexican, but is not at all Anglo-American. Anzaldúa comes to realize her culture through its definition: once given a name, she writes that Chicanos become “aware of [their] reality”, which means to say they’ve realized a common ground for the culture to be an identity. However, through her memories of cantina music and corridos, her culture existed long before it had any name. Thus, she understands culture to be linked to experiences that tie people in the same place together; the way the smell of her family’s cooking returns her to the place she grew up in in a vivid image of watching her mother season meat. It is a culture that began long before it had a name and still lingers in her memories.

        Despite living in America on a technical level, Anzaldúa rarely mentions Americanness aside from negative experiences with it. In fact, her lack of mention, in itself, speaks of how removed she is from Americanness and how she sees it as something she neither is, nor wants to become. In this, Americanness is built up to be a punishment or a relegation to her. She speaks of the treatment she received when she was young, being told to “speak American” or “go back to Mexico”, and the way she was forced to take more speech classes to drop her native accent. She describes American using the word “Anglo”, as if to take Americanness the same way the word “Hispanic” takes from Chicano origin. It’s especially prevalent in the line, “We call ourselves Mexican American to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the noun ‘American’ than the adjective ‘Mexican’ (and when copping out),” that she feels Americanness is becoming less of what she really is; it reads as though Mexican is something that’s only descriptive, and American is a personhood. It’s only further shown by using the phase “copping out”, bearing a negative connotation, and later when she comes to know she is, “more than nothing: when she is not “copping out”.

        Throughout her essay, there’s a prevalence of conflicting thoughts that takes away from how Anzaldúa sees her language and culture. The way she feels her Mexicanness and Angloness standing at odds with each other to the point of cancelling each other out – thereby making her nothing – goes against the way she describes Chicano as a distinct identity rather than a mix between two other identities. However, this could point towards her later note that the “struggle of identities continues”, as she herself seems caught in a space where she is a mix of both, while simultaneously being not enough for either one.

        Anzaldúa compares the Chicano people to bandits in their own home: people who are seen as robbers of what is already theirs. The intersection of Mexican and Anglo culture and language to bring about the distinct Chicano tells a story of people who do not fit into either identities but hold influences from both. Much like a puzzle, the pieces belong to a whole but do not fit in every place. She sees a day where her culture and her language survive long after the reach of her oppressors, and avers that her people are unbreakable and persisting. Chicanos are well aware what it is like to remain under the punishment of Americanness, and have maintained with a clear culture and language that continues to evolve in spite of the people who try to tear it away.

Diana Whittaker

Aisha Sidibe-Leyva

English 110

September 23, 2018

                                                            Between Here and There

        The United States, since its inception, has been a place where people from different ethnicities, religions, and nationalities have sought out for their own expressions, freedoms, and relief. There’s a certain irony to this same country also being a place in which people who feel they own the land (due to their naturalization or race) wish to see these “outsiders” controlled or barred from entering, or see that they assimilate wholly to what they believe is the proper way of being an “American”. Thus, for people like Gloria Anzaldúa, who were born on American soil but are faced with the attack and erasure of their identity and language on two fronts, there lies the questions of what, to them, makes their own language and culture? What defines the Americanness that they are expected to adopt, while stifling any culture that did not conform to said Americanness. In her essay “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” Anzaldúa uses her life experiences to give understanding to what she knows as Americanness, and in turn, her language and culture as a Chicana living at the border. Her use of compartmentalizing definitions, personal history, and metaphors shed light on her understanding of herself and life around her between two different worldviews.

        From the very beginning, Anzaldúa makes it clear that identity and language go hand in hand – the languages she uses are a facet of her that is just as much a part of her as the next. She describes Chicano Spanish as a language born from a need to be identified as “distinct people”, bring in comparisons to standard Spanish and retelling the way Latinos and Latinas have expressed disdain for the “ruining” the language. Going so far as the give examples of its conventions, she legitimatizes the way in which Chicano Spanish came about as naturally as any other language – to communicate under the shared identity with others who would understand the way of living. This, however, is not the only language she speaks: Tex-Mex Spanglish represents how people on the border create a language that is an amalgamation of Spanish and English and representative of the intersection of languages (and thereby identities) at the border.

        Anzaldúa home was, as stated before, at the border of Texas and Mexico. She describes the Chicanos as people who “straddle the borderlands”, being “constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans” and hearing the “Anglos’ incessant clamoring”. Her choice of words like “exposure” and “clamor” to describe the Mexicans and Anglos’ puts in perspective the way both cultures interact with hers and where her culture stands in theirs: Chicano, as a culture, is not quite identifiable with Mexican, but is not at all Anglo-American. Anzaldúa comes to realize her culture through its definition: once given a name, she writes that Chicanos become “aware of [their] reality”, meaning they had realized a common ground for the culture to be an identity. However, through her memories of cantina music and corridos, her culture existed long before it had any name. Thus, she understands culture to be linked to experiences that tie people in the same place together, the way the smell of her family’s cooking returns her to the place she grew up in in a vivid image of watching her mother season meat. It is a culture that began long before it had a name and still lingers in her memories.

        Despite living in America on a technical level, Anzaldúa rarely mentions Americanness aside from negative experiences with it – her lack of mention, in itself, speaks of how removed she is from Americanness and how she sees it as something she neither is nor wants to become. In this, Americanness is built up to be a punishment or a relegation to her. She speaks of the treatment she received when she was young, being told to “speak American” or “go back to Mexico”, and the way she was forced to take more speech classes to drop her native accent. She describes American using the word “Anglo”, as if to take Americanness the same way the word “Hispanic” takes from Chicano origin. It’s especially prevalent in the line “We call ourselves Mexican American to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the noun ‘American’ than the adjective ‘Mexican’ (and when copping out)” that she feels Americanness is becoming less of what she really is; it reads as though Mexican is something that’s only descriptive, and American is a personhood. It’s only further shown by using the phase “copping out”, bearing negative context, and later when she comes to know she is “more than nothing: when she is not “copping out”.

        Throughout her essay, there’s a prevalence of conflicting thoughts that takes away from how Anzaldúa sees her language and culture. The way she feels her Mexicanness and Angloness standing at odds with each other to the point of cancelling each other out and making nothing goes against the way she describes Chicano as a distinct identity rather than a mix between two other identities. However, this could point towards her later note that the “struggle of identities continues”, as she herself seems caught in a space where she is a mix of both while simultaneously being not enough for either one.

        Anzaldúa compares the Chicano people to bandits in their own home – people who are seen as robbers of what it already theirs. The intersection of Mexican and Anglo culture and language to bring about the distinct Chicano tells a story of people who do not fit into either identities but hold influences from both. Much like a puzzle, the pieces belong to a whole but do not fit in every place. She sees a day where her culture and her language survive long after the reach of her oppressors, and avers that her people are unbreakable and persisting knowing what it is like to remain under the punishment of Americanness with a clear culture and language that continues to evolve.

Dear Professor Sidibe-Leyva,

As stated on my birth certificate, my name is Diana Whittaker. I was born June 17th, 1998, in Brooklyn, though I have lived in between Brooklyn and Queens my whole life. For all intents and purposes, the name that truly belongs to me is Ray, and as such, my name is Ray Whittaker. I’m twenty years old and currently living in Newark, New Jersey, while going to school and work in New York.

As mentioned before, I have lived between Brooklyn and Queens my entire life – whether I was living in my grandmother’s house with my mom, or in the same tiny apartment for 9 years, I have lived in or around an area called Ridgewood, which is quite literally the border of the two boroughs. I was raised by my single mother until I was 16 years old, at which point, due to some emotional turmoil with her, I moved in with my father and have been living with him since. My mother is a Dominican immigrant (my father is a Panamanian immigrant), so while I was born in the United States, I find I am most closely associated with Dominican culture, dialect, and values, though I want to learn more about my own Panamanian culture including going to Panama and understanding what it means to be an Afro-Latin person.

As you already know, I don’t identify with the gender I was assigned at birth; I am nonbinary, which means I am neither a woman nor a man. I go by they/them pronouns and introduce myself as Ray to everyone I meet with the intent of straying away from the gender associated with my birth name. It’s more comfortable for me as a trans person to have a name that better suits who I am and how I feel about myself, even if the name I take is not a nickname that has any relation to my birth name. I only discovered this part of my personality after moving from my mother’s house – the Dominican values, especially in femininity, were rooted a lot more in being effeminate physically and submissive emotionally, which made it hard for me to realize my identity because of expectations I thought I was supposed to fulfill. My father, however, was more open to me exploring myself, and as such I was able to realize who I was. While I may not know too much about the Panamanian side of my culture, I have noted, from my other family members, that they are less rigid about what role a person is meant to meet.

Through all of this, I, as a writer, want nothing more than to see myself in media and in writing – media portrayals of people who are nonbinary typically create this unchanging archetype: a thin (typically white) person who looks androgynous. I fit none of these boxes, and I want other people who don’t fit these boxes to know that I understand how hard it is to be nonbinary, where the prevailing assumption is that if you don’t look androgynous (which mostly means vaguely masculine) then you are not nonbinary enough. I want this to especially be true for people who are hispanic because of how gendered the Spanish language and culture can be.

My goal as a writer in this class is to learn how to really articulate how I experience being nonbinary, black, and hispanic in the hopes of reaching out to others who feel similar to I do. It’s difficult being marginalized, and falling into multiple marginalized groups is something like being put into smaller and smaller boxes with less people who you can relate to on that front. Of course, people need individuality above all else, but it’s my sincere belief that even in suffering, it’s easier to bear when others can go further and empathize with each other’s plights. Most of all, I want to help people be themselves to their fullest extent.

Sincerely,

Diana (Ray) Whittaker