Dreaming the World

It’s lovely out, mid 50’s F, clear skies, and little wind. From the looks of things, we shall have daffodils any day now, at which point it will be spring. As I write I can hear birdsong through the closed window; most likely the sparrows are nesting just below my office/studio.

I’m trying to find balance as I choose topics for blog posts. Given our ongoing national disaster, it would be very easy to write only about that. (If your inbox and news feed are anything like mine, you are probably already overloaded with ill tidings and urgent requests.) Yet there is a profoundly personal side to the news that receives very little air time, a lived experience that demands and deserves to be shared.

There is a well known axiom from the AIDS pandemic that has great resonance still: “Silence equals Death.” For many persons of color, LGBQTIA folks, and persons with illness or disability, it remains literally true.

I am confounded by both the administration’s blatant racism and by the sweeping lack of acknowledgement of that racism by the media and seemingly, most of our elected officials. My disappointment is not with the clearly racist (sexist, homophobic, fill in the bland) actions of all sectors of government (even the Supreme Court seems to approve), I expected no less, although I thought it might take them a while to go full bore. My disquietude arises from the puzzling silence from so many quarters.

My father’s side of the family identified as Native and I never heard a racist word from any of them, and woe to any of us kids if we used racist language. My dad was in the military for over thirty years and had, and treasured, friends from a broad range of races and nationalities. My mom’s side of the family was from Texas and was openly, and brazenly, colonial and racist, and although she tried to overcome her learned racism, she sometimes fell into the racist cauldron. Growing up there was always a tension between the two sides that could never be resolved, or even discussed.

I often think about the two worlds I internalized. Now that I am seventy-seven, the internal war between the colonists and the Natives has calmed but every now and then I clearly hear my uncle ranting about people of color, including Natives, as he would with shocking vehemence. It was impossible for me, even as a young adult, to hold both his obvious care and affection, and his complete erasure of my identity. I guess everyone wanted to play nice as no one, to my knowledge, ever challenged him.

We kids are very light skinned, not usual for Midwestern Natives. That did not protect me from racism or the vicissitudes of Native identity politics. In the summer, when my skin tone darkened, I would often be seen by others as Native or Hispanic. Perhaps not so oddly, kids who met me during the summer were often standoffish, a behavior which changed come November and white skin. I don’t know how many times I was told, “You were so dark we thought you were ______.”

Like many eastern Native families our birth certificates, for the few generations we can trace back, all read “Caucasian”. My dad was fiercely proud of his Miami and Souix heritage (he was careful not to out us) even as he actively tried to hide it while in the military; he understandably feared racism would destroy his career. We were talking about a trip to see his father’s birthplace at Pine Ridge when he died.

Like many eastern Native identified families, we have family lore about violence and erasure, some of it quite terrifying. There are no stories about my grandmother receiving help when threatened by the state or/and the KKK. She raised the family alone and largely in hiding.

For me racism is just a given, a rotting at the heart of the country. What is shocking is the silent complicity of so many liberal folk and so many law makers. I guess I should not be shocked; even here in liberal New England the anti-Native racism and the constant acts of erasure are the status quo. I guess the deafening silence just confirms the obvious.