Native American Ways of Knowing and Transcendence

Seattle

Stacie StumpCHID 250

“This we know; The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know, all things are connected like

the blood which unites one family. All things

are connected”--Chief Si’ahl, Namesake

of the City of Seattle

Native Americans in King County, who are united by a common Lushootseed or Salish language system, believe they were created in this area at the end of an ancient "Myth Age."

They evolved complex cultural, social, and economic structures, which the invasion of Euro-American settlers in the mid-1800s almost erased, but which continue today as the tribes struggle for their survival, respect, and renewal.

We, the Haudenosaunee faced times when certain individuals

attempted to establish themselves as the rulers of the

people and land through exploitation and repression.

Colonization 1850

DOC MAYNARD: THE MAN THAT INVENTED SEATTLE?

Most stories attribute Seattle as a city to Doc Maynard a well to do white settler who supposedly “founded” Seattle. He was rich, brought capital to the region, and was educated.

But what significance does this hold? The land itself was still there and the people…

WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO WERE HERE BEFORE?

“They were big ugly people, but you tell her that she is forced to love the coarse, filthy, and debased Natives in order to do them good… Those who

speak Chinook (a combination of French and Native jargon) are more

intelligent because of their intercourse with whites…” (Morgan 38)

The water flowsThe water heals

The water drownsI like the water

It doesn’t tell me who I am

“When people have barriers to comprehending the complexity of ideas, there is a tendency to de-authenticate knowledge as “traditional”, especially

when it’s western. Control desires knowledge, thus incomprehensible knowledge must be de-authenticated and the coloniser is not alone. The

other in the mirror reflects the image.”

Native Americans were seen as savage, animalistic, and childlike…

“Maynard had work for the Indians to do, goods to buy. Many wanted Maynard around them for “the benefit a good man brings.” (24)

“The women cried, Portland had been awful but this was worse, their only neighbors were a host of bowlegged Indians, the women skirts of shredded cedar bark, and the children naked..” (26)

“They brought many things, like the idea of private property. The Indians owned some things, but not land, which belonged the people and was used by the people. When the whites took acres and miles of land and shut Indians out, they could not understand. They were slow to anger and there was much land. By the time they realized the danger it was too late. The very pattern of their life had unraveled, and the whites were on the Sound in strength. In such a situation there were two things an Indian leader could do. He could fight or he could temporize.” (Morgan 41)

INTERCONNECTEDNESSMaps are pictures, and some native pictures are stories, visual memories, the source of directions, and a virtual sense of presence; others are simulations and not a trace of the actual territory. Maps are references, not counterfeits; the memories of the actual territory are not transposed by simulations. Mappery is virtual, the creation of base line representations.

“Silence a people’s stories and you erase a culture,” said Louis Owens. “To have graphic evidence of this phenomenon, all we have to do is look at a map. Mapping is, of course, an intensely political enterprise, an essential step toward appropriation and possession. Maps write the conquerors’ stories over the stories of the conquered.”

Native memories, stories of totemic creation, shamanic visions, burial markers, medicine pictures, the hunt, love, war, and songs, are the transmotion of virtual cartography. Tricky creation stories, totemic pictures, and mental mappery are the embodiment of native transmotion and sovereignty. Native mappers are stories and visionaries. (Vizenor 170)

In circular philosophy, all things are related and involved in the broad scope of native life. As part of their life ways, the

indigenous peoples of the Americas have studied the Earth, observed the heavenly bodies and contemplated the stars of the

universe.

The Christian way of seeing the world is that within this circle there’s a man called Jesus; on the outside is the trees, the rocks, the animals’ all around the world are the different things that are on Mother Earth. In the center is man above all things. The Indian way of thinking is that there is this same circle, Mother Earth, and around her at the rocks, trees, grass, the mountains, the birds, the four-legged, and man. Man is the same as all those other things, no greater, no less. (Fixico, 42)

The oral tradition represented not simply information on ancient event but precise knowledge of birds, animals, plants, geologic features, and religious experiences of a particular group of people. Sometimes the visions of different tribes would match and describe a particular event experience, or condition and sometimes they would not. (Deloria, 51)

ORALITY

Is time linear? Seen as one starting point with one ending point? Or is it a rhizomic configuration, people linked intrinsically with ideas, thoughts, emotions, cause and/or effects?

Until the Indians ceded their land by treaty, no settlers would have legal title to his property. It was therefore decided by the men who had the power to make decisions-white men, of course-

that the Indian policy in the Northwest, as elsewhere, would be a reservation policy. It was

for the Indian’s own good, they believed. The Indians would be put on reservations, then the

reservations would be gradually reduced in size, by this means the whites would not only get legal title to the remaining land but the Indians would

be forced to give up their hunting and fishing economy. (Morgan, 41)

FIGHTING ENSUED BUT OF COURSE THE NATIVES LOST THE BATTLE.. SO WHAT NOW? WHERE DOES NATIVE AMERICAN

IDENTITY GO?

EDUCATIONII will tell you something about

stories,[he said]

They aren’t just entertainment Don’t be fooled.

They are all we have, you see,All we have to fight off illness

and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the

stories.

For many Natives, the pressure to give up old practices of educating the young to be prepared to take active roles in the perpetuation of the nation’s

traditional ways was intense enough to cause them to stop practicing their ways and speaking their

languages. (Hernandez, 3)

HOW CAN THIS BE FIXED?

PIONEERS PETITION AGAINST INDIAN RESERVATION ON THE BLACK RIVER

The Superintendent of Indian Affairs had proposed such a reservation to correct deficiencies in the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855.

A Reservation would do great injustice to this section of country, and is uncalled for, and of little value to the Indians

It would be unjust and an unnecessary action of the Government in making a Reservation for the remnant of a

band which numbers but sixteen families, and whose interests and wants have always been justly and kindly protected by the settlers of the Black River country; We therefore, most

respectfully, but earnestly protest against the injury a Reservation of these Indians would be to the quiet and

flourishing settlements upon the Black and Duwamish rivers, -- as being unnecessary to the aborigines and injurious to your

constituents of King County.

1870 there was a creation of residential schools. Assimilation begins to happen. Many

Anishinaabe children were removed from their homes and put into these schools. Once in these schools, the children were instructed that they were not allowed to speak in their native language anymore or they would be punished. Many children lost their language

at this time. Some children came back to their communities abused. At this time, the

government did nothing to protect Anishinaabe children from being abused by

adults. It was the intent to destroy the language within the indigenous people of

America.

Most of the educational literature available on the

influence of Native culture on schooling considers the

orientations, values, and philosophies that guide these

from a non-Native perspective. More attention

needs to be focused on Native ways of knowing, and the epistemologies that arise

from them. (Hernandez 3)

Native children’s mandatory attendance at

Anglo schools has historically been and

continues to be part of a conscious, deliberate, and

most importantly, systematic effort to

suppress and extinguish Native practices and

beliefs. (Hernandez 30)

Not only were native children forced to change their belief systems but the land itself was changing. The creation of the Lake Union ship canal and the demise of the Black River was continually repressing this heritage and way of life.

f a m I l yWhat is the definition of a family?

What is the difference between a nuclear family and a clanship?

What are gender roles within tribes?

“White people don’t understand us or the strength and diversity of aboriginal people, and they don’t even try. That’s why there is such racism and misunderstanding. In any kind of reconciliation movement, they expect the Indian people to reconcile with them, and not the other way around. It is almost impossible for an outsider to grasp the underlying values of the community or the culture and life ways of the people and their relationships to the natural world. Without an intellectual and spiritual frame of reference related to community and an understanding of the extended kinship system, they tend to filter everything through their own lesson of the modern nuclear family, distant from the land and often themselves.” (6)

Women have played a significant role in Cherokee society for a very long time. In the distant past, Cherokee people believed that the world existed in a precarious balance and that only right or correct actions maintained that balance. An important part of the balance was equity between men and women. Women were consulted in matters of importance to the community, the clan, the family, and the nation. When a man married a woman, he took up residence with the clan of his wife. (4)

I ’ v e b e e n p r e s e n t i n t h e s e h i l l s b e f o r e l o n g a g oI k n o w t h e p i l l a r s h o l d i n g d o w n e a c h v a l l e y

T h e y c r e a t e d t h e s h a p e a n d f o r m o fT h e s e h i l l s

T h e y l o o k o n u s ,S h a d o w s o n t h e b r i g h t e s t d a y s ,

A r e l a r g e r t h a n t h e h i g h e s t h i l l t h e y m a y s t a n d u p o nT h e y a r e t h e r e

T h e y w e r e o n c e v i s i b l e – i n t h e o l d d a y sW h e n i n s ti t u ti o n a l i z e d r e l i g i o n d i d n o t e x i s t h e r e

W h e n l a w w a s k n o w n a n d n o t w r i tt e nW h e n w e k n e w t o r e s p e c t o u r e l d e r s

E a c h o t h e r a n d o u r s e l v e sB e f o r e e n g l i s h c o u l d e v e r h a v e c o m m a n d e d t h e s e w o r d s

N o w — u n ti l w e r e s t o r e t h e i r p u r p o s eA n d r e g a i n u n d e r s t a n d i n g ,

T h e y r e m a i n i n v i s i b l eP r o t e c ti n g u s

A l l t h e w h i l e t e a c h i n g u sS o w e m a y m o u r n t h e m p r o p e r l y

H o u s e s h a v e t r i p p e d u p t h e i r p a t h sC a r s h a v e m a d e t h e m d i z z y

P l a n e s h a v e r e n d e r e d t h e m d e a fB u t t h e i r p o w e r r e m a i n s

W e o n c e l o v e d t h e m b u t t o d a y w e a r e c o n f u s e dW e k e e p s i l e n t

W e f o r g e t

W e c a l l t h e m t a b o oA n d a r e c u r i o u s i n s e c r e t .

BIBLIOGRAPHYhttp://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=1506

Akwesasne Notes (ed). 1978. Basic call to consciousness. Summertown: Book Pub. 1-18, 65-73. This is a call for change in a predominantly linear way of looking at society in which we live in. It’s a focus on the lack of respect and knowledge for all life forms on earth, besides of course humans. This is a analyzing of the world in which we live and how there should be some sort of effort to close the gap between Native knowledge's (situated knowledge) and Westernized philosophies.

Anderson, Chris and Brendan Hokowhitu. 2007. Whiteness: Naivety, Void and Control. Junctures. 8:39-49.Focuses on the void that many Native American’s are trying to fill after early colonization. Whiteness, Capital, Power hungry people are the epitome of what this land has become and this artcle focuses on the void that these Native’s are trying to fill, the connect they are trying to make, between a changed world and their own world.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=2955

http://www.anishinaabemdaa.com/timeline.htm

Deloria, Vine. 1979. The metaphysics of modern existence. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Vii-xiii. This article revolves around the life force of the earth and it’s creatures, with a closer look as to how this simply isn’t accepted in our society today. Native’s have had no choice but to conform to these know ledges and traditions that weren’t even theirs from the time settlers started arriving to their lands.

Jojola, Ted. 2004. Notes on Identity, Time, Space, and Place. In, Waters, A. American Indian thought philosophical Essays. Malden: Blackwell Pub. 87-96.Jojola focuses on the significance of a circular time frame within the world, the space that we inhabit tells us who we are as a people, not as an individual, and we can learn from the earth. Westernized tradition tells us the opposite, that meaning comes within us, but that isn’t the case. Meaning is found in all things, humans being one of them, and we must respect the earth and its inhabitants before we can understand this notion.

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (New York:Penguin Books, 1986)A first hand account of a family that is based in Mexico on a reservation struggling to determine their own identity in a changed world.

Mankiller, Wilma Pearl. 2004. Every day is a good day: reflections by contemporary indigenous women. Golden: Fulcrum Publishers. 1-9, 41-74.This article talks about Native American women and the significance within their clans they had. This speaks of gender roles between males and female, and even goes above and beyond relaying the importance of all life forms, not just “human.”

Hernandez, Nimachia. 19999. Mokakssini: a Blackfoot theory of knowledge. Thesis (Ed. D)—Harvard Graduate School of Education, 19999. v-vi, 1-35.More of the same articles based on new ways of thinking instead of conforming to the rigid western ideologies that have been imposed upon almost all Native American’s since early colonization.

Fixico, Donald Lee. 2—3. The American Indian mind in a linear world: American Indian studies and traditional knowledge. New York: Routledge. 1-61. This article focuses on seeing the world through a different lens than others. This focuses on the family, the clan, the meaning of oneself in the context of the world, and what a circular epistemology really means.

Vizenor, Gerald Robert. 1998. Fugitive poses: Native American Indian sense of absence and presence. The Abraham Lincoln lecture series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 167-199.Vizenor really talks hold of the “westernized” and “indigenous” notions of philosophy and analyzes why these two have very different meanings and they can’t coexist together.

Morgan, Murray. Skid Road. New York: Viking Press, 1951.This is the first hand story of Doc Maynard and many other settlers who came to Seattle to begin a new life filled with capital, urbanization, and no room for other ideologies that were there before they were.

Thrush, Coll. Native Seattle. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 2007.This book talks about Seattle ‘s Native American history that too often gets overlooked or even generalized within the historical timeline. He talks about the urbanization of the area and how Native’s were affected by this.

Maracle, Lee and Sandra Laronde. 2000. My home as I remember. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History. 70, 74.Memoires written from two Indigenous women recounting their viewpoints as to the way their lives used to be and the meaning and significance it held for them. They speak through prose and talk about the changing of the space they lived in, but speak of the earth itself remaining the same and fighting for its true identity and meaning.