I couldn't sleep last night. I was utterly and totally exhausted from yesterday and I couldn't get to sleep for hours.

I'm worrying about cultural appropriation again.

I'll warn you now--there's some navel gazing here, and this isn't well thought out and written clearly, per se, and there's some anthrogeeking here. But if you stick with me and have any feedback I'd love to hear it.

Here's the back story for those you who are new:

I am an American; therefore, I am a mutt. My father's ancestry is Welsh, English, Mohawk, and African American. My mother is Ojibwe and Pennsylvanian Dutch/ye olde German. We could talk about race, but where one comes from is so much more complicated than that. Because of where I was born (not on the reservation) and the culture I primarily grew up in (Southeastern Idaho Mormon Pioneer Descendant Land) I call myself Caucasian when people ask about race, though often I decline to answer. I mean, I could argue for Ojibwe Tribal Membership from the White Plains Reservation (and have a strong case), or I could claim the "One Drop Rule" and say I'm African American, but that's so simplistic, and not who I am.

Because this is the thing--this is an issue of identity and in the end a lot of what makes a person who they are is not the color of their skin but their culture--the culture of their family and their environment, particularly the culture where they grew up.

Race is a complex issue, and it's a problematic issue for anthropologists, particularly forensic anthropologists who use the concept of race as an identifying marker, knowing it's not necessarily accurate. See, the problem is this: people like to breed with other people that aren't necessarily like them, and mother nature has tried to insure that there's ways to keep the gene pool strong when people do breed with others who look like them. A lot of us are mutts, and there is actually more genetic diversity within a biological population than when we start comparing populations, statistically speaking. AND, to add even more to the fire, when forensic anthropologists study remains (particularly skeletal remains, like craniums) one often finds that the cranium has mixtures of Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid features (i.e. African descendants, Caucasian descendants, and Asian or Native American descendants). Many people often have features of all three "races"; rarely do you find someone with pure features/measurements of one race.

And this gets really funny: If someone were to find my body out in the desert after only a couple days they were probably list me as "Caucasian", though it's possible, depending on the part of the world where my body was found, that I could be listed as a possible Native American/First Nation... corpse. (I have often been asked if I'm a tribal member of a more northern tribe, which makes sense genetically speaking.) BUT, if only my bones were dug up and no skin was left, my features would be measured and I would be considered 100% Negroid. How's that for a laugh?

***

So let's talk about my mother and her mom. Grandma was Ojibwe, Mom is card carrying tribal member. Once a month the White Plains Rez out in Minnesota sends my mom a statement saying she gets no money this month for being a tribal member. Every month. My grandma got the same letter every month. Personally, I wish the tribe would save the money from the purchase of the paper and the stamp and put it towards something that the rez needs. (Anyway, there goes the myth that Native Americans get lots of bennies from their tribe or the American government.)

Anyway, Grandma's family was Ojibwe, but they spent most of their adult lives at Wounded Knee. So much time, in fact, that a lot of my family is buried out there. My great uncle and aunt ran the general store out there. Growing up, we had Sioux pottery around the house, a Native American Medicine kit, a God's Eye on the wall, a painting of the Sacred Pipe of the Lakota Sioux/White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle on the wall, a painting of Red Cloud done on red velvet hanging on the wall. (Some families have velvet Elvises, we had velvet Red Cloud.) I was given a bunch of Mari Sandoz to read. All of these bits were just part of the scenery, and still are. So are we Ojibwe or are we Sioux?

I went to Wounded Knee when I was thirteen. And it felt like home. I felt like I'd lived there forever. It's a really poor reservation, and wasn't anything like where I grew up, but still there was this sense of "rightness" that confused me. I had been there before to see family when I was very, very young, but I don't remember that visit. (And, incidentally, when I go to the Fort Hall rez near here it too feels like home. I can go just to the gas station out there and sit and feel more centered and right with the world than almost anywhere else.) When we went out to Wounded Knee in the summer of 1989 (and saw the Black Hills and so much of the country that had meant so much to family family in the early and middle part of the 20th century) some of the tribal members and the priest there asked if I would come back when I had grown up, maybe teach. I told them I'd like to. I would still like to, I really would. And maybe someday I will. And I'd like to see White Plains, too.

A lot of my family history and traditions weren't overtly talked about, but there are cultural beliefs that I picked up on and are bits of my psyche. My mother's familial culture is a syncratic combination of a skewed version of Catholocism (my grandmother was missionized)and of a tangled web of Ojibwe and Lakota beliefs. I can't even separate all of it. I don't know enough. But I wish I did; I wish I knew more.

***

So along with the Mormon pioneer heritage, and the Welsh, and the English, and the Pennsylvanian Dutch, and whatever else, this is who I am. And it played a significant role in my childhood and my development. And I find myself returning to it over and over again and wanting to write about it. I really feel this intense urge to write about it. And I have. But I worry, too. Am I taking someone else's culture and using it for my own gain? Am I doing the usual post-colonial "White man" thing and capitalizing on this belief system?

I guess part of the answer is in the motivation and the implementation. But I don't have a lot of answers there, either.

I had a friend in grad school who was Sho-Ban. He was a poet, and some of the tribal members (not all) worried about his poetry--was he letting out secrets? Was he making sacred things profane by writing his poetry? We once spoke about writing about Buhla (an ancient Shoshone woman) in the fictional sense. I had spent a lot of time studying her, and I loved her, and had great affection for her. But I wasn't hers in any sense. My friend was closer to her than I was, and I once suggested he write about her. He said he'd like to, but that certain tribal members wouldn't like it, so he wouldn't. (He said other tribal members wouldn't care, and some would probably like it.) I can complete respect and understand his decision.

***

There are some amazing Native American writers. I mean, think about Louise Erdrich for just one. She particularly speaks to me because, though we're from different reservations originally and bands, she's Ojibwe and German, and Catholocism weaves its way through her work. There's so much there that I recognize as being a part of me. I read her novels and seemingly innocuous bits aren't innocuous--they mean something, though I don't always know what. She's writing about her culture and her people, and one could often argue that there are fantastical things at work. The fantastical has to come into play here, you know, because that's what I write. It's all of a fantastical nature. (And Sherman Alexie just rocks. Do you not just love Sherman Alexie?) Anyway.

But how many Native American writers, particularly in speculative fiction, are writing the stories about their culture and doing it effectively? Not many. There are some writers who are including Native American culture and people in their fantastical work, but again there's not a lot, and so often it's cultural appropriation.

Judgmental? Yeah.

But you know, these people say, "I'm going to write a Native American story" so they pull in the trickster and whatever and there we are. It's unsatisfying.

But sometimes someone writes a fine story in this vein... I just wished it happened more often.

***

What am I doing here? This is a lot of navel-gazing.

I apologize if you're still with me. But my guess it's just me and the keyboard. That's okay. I'm getting somewhere in my head.

And while we're wishing for ponies on stars going nova, I wish someone would put together a Native American version of the Dark Matter books. I've wished this for a long time.
***

I feel that my family's stories belong to me, in a sense. They are their stories, but they are a part of me, who I am, my identity.

Recently a friend (who works at the museum where I used to work) suggested I write and explore Native American stories/myths/legends and redefining them in a post-modern age, and making their cultural beliefs accessible to a broad audience. It was funny she brought this up now--I was already pondering this.

In some respects that's some of what I have done. I don't know about making all of their cultural beliefs accessible to a broad audience--I fear we're verging on white shamanism ground there....

I don't want to culturally appropriate material inappropriately. I don't want to write about coyote or put Native American stories into my stories to be cool and make a buck. I want to write something that means something to me, and hopefully to others as well. I want to explore my past, who I am, my family's past, and who they are. And there's a lot of fascinating material there (and I'm not purely speaking autobiographically here, either), a lot of ground to search through. And I want to do it right.

And I still worry about taking advantage of the situation and the whole cultural appropriation thing.

***


And yes, I know about Coyote Road, and while good, that's not what I'm going for.