Pocahontas
 

An excellently-written op-ed at the liberal site, "THINKPROGRESS" blog, written by a Cherokee woman, and also a member of the LGBT community, a "two-spirit" woman.

Let me say -- I am a direct descendant of the father of Matoaka (Pocahontas), on my paternal line. This is not "family lore," but I can actually show this to you, on paper, along with other of my confirmed ancestors of Native origin directly from the Powhatan, such as "Black Davis." I have an actual family tree proven by professional genealogists, to back me up. Obviously, any of you who have read my posts are familiar with my connection to the Cherokee -- both past and present.

https://thinkprogress.org/elizabeth-...-c1ec6c91b696/

What I love about this, is that the writer makes absolutely no objections (as far as her personal, subjective, emotional reaction), based on Warren's appearance, or actual lineage, etc. She ties it all to "what has she ever DONE for us?" I love that, because it pretty much says it all, in this quote, "A real Native American hero, right? Wrong. She was not a hero to me when she failed to foster a haven of support for Native students within Harvard University’s alienating Ivy League culture. She is not a hero for spending years awkwardly avoiding Native leaders. She is not a hero because, despite claiming to be the only Native woman in the U.S. Senate, she has done nothing to advance our rights. She is not from us. She does not represent us. She is not Cherokee."

All fair points. Sadly true about almost all of Congress save a few.

Yet, the entire hunt after Warren is used as fuel for a movement of Oligarchs who would love to see all Native lands sold to the highest bidders and strip mined into oblivion. The discussion about Warren is not taking place in a room that gives a damn about indigenous peoples.

It is interesting why so many whites dream of indigenous ancestry. It is a longing for a different relation to the whole than the modern. I think some of it is silly but much of it takes root in the more clear sighted hearts of children. I like Warren's family, like many whites, incorporated a fantasy into their oral history. I doubt it was sinister. It is unlikely that she gained from it. She should have worked to pay that debt with action, honesty and real solidarity. She remains an imperfect politician standing on the side that is holding back far worse. Ambiguous stuff. White people are weird.

She never claimed it was anything other than family lore. Despite charges to the contrary, she never once sought to use her supposed ancestry to gain an advantage. Her college application had a box to check if you were seeking to be admitted as a minority or under an affirmative action program, and she checked the "No" box. When she was granted tenure at Harvard Law, according to arch-conservative Republican Charles Fried who was on the tenure committee, the subject of her supposed native American ancestry never came up at all, and no one other than Republican critics has claimed otherwise. There's no reason to think that she was making up the story about "family lore" since she never made much of it or tried to take advantage of it.

Meanwhile, I think it's naive to suppose that Trump's insistence on calling her Pocahontas is entirely free of any racist overtones. It's certainly not meant as a compliment, and the way he repeated the taunt during the Navajo talkers ceremony -- like a verbal tic on his part -- was bizarre and disrespectful.

"White people are weird." LOL, Andrew. You always make my day. Thanks. What I find weird is how nothing ever changes. This is your standard update on the "token cigar store Indian" phenomenon. We have become the little Indian pieces moved around for political purposes, and a heck of a lot of the time, it seems like NEITHER side cares, sincerely.

Natives have a term for the other thing you mention: "pretindians." As for me, I don't get it. As a little girl, when the other children were making fun of my "slanty" eyes, and funny skin color ("Jenny, Jenny, copper as a penny..."), and no doll in the world looked like me... :o

I think it is mostly romanticism.

Roger, I thought that she had also made the claim that she's got photographic evidence of her Indian forebears. I thought I read in an interview, when the reporter asked her to see them, she answered, "They're not for your eyes," or something to that effect. I could be wrong, or that could have been "fake news," so don't quote me....

J

I hadn't heard that.

I recently read that there was a Harvard Law public relations release that boasted about her being a native American, but it wasn't her decision to include that. The school was under a lot of pressure for not having minorities, and the dean was aware that Warren claimed to have some Native American ancestry so he decided to include that fact and embarrassingly pump it up. Interestingly, the degree of ancestry that she claimed -- 1/32nd, I believe -- would not have qualified her for tribal membership even if it had been documented. Having a single great-great-great grandparent, after all, is pretty remote. One could conceivably have 32 different nationalities if that really meant something.

On subjects like this, people can only go by "family lore." Marco Rubio apparently was under the wrong impression about when his parents came over from Cuba. While I despise Rubio, I never thought he was lying. He was just repeating what he'd always been told since he was a kid, and it never occurred to him to play investigative journalist on his own parents and dig up the records. Neither he nor Warren intended to or tried to defraud anyone over it. For Warren, it was just an interesting fact, not something that she ran on or used to elevate herself. Her political enemies are the ones who falsely claimed she used it to get into college and secure tenure at Harvard. She never portrayed herself as a champion for native Americans.

What Andrew said. What Roger said. What Jennifer said.

Roger, that percentage you mention is what we call "blood quantum." It is completely irrelevant to tribal membership, for more than a dozen tribes in Indian Country, many, many of which are all about lineal descent. If you can prove one single ancestor, then you're in, no matter how little actual "blood" you possess.

The Cherokee Nation is one of those. If I recall correctly, the current chief is 1/16th, but he has that proven ancestor, whose name was on the Dawes Roll -- sometimes called the "Trail of Tears" roll. If it were not for that, most of the "blood quantum" tribes might not even consider him Indian, at all. (Most of the tribes require either 1/4 or 1/8 minimum blood quantum).

To give you an idea how this might play out, in terms of truly miniscule blood quantum -- many of those on the old Dawes Roll themselves had as little as 1/64th Indian blood, but were considered Cherokee. Technically, you could be descended from one of those, with virtually no Indian blood in your veins, yet still enroll in the tribe.

Conversely, you could be pure as the driven snow, ethnically speaking -- a full-blood Cherokee, yet could not enroll in the tribe, because you did not have an ancestor recorded on those rolls.

Jennifer

Wow! This "blood quantum" system of racial determination is a bit reminiscent of the way black ancestry was determined in the Old South. I'm put in mind of Mark Twain's novel Pudd'nhead Wilson, in which two boys—one born into slavery, with 1/32 black ancestry, and the other white, born to the master of the house— are switched at infancy. Each then grows into the other's social role.

Richard

We have a detailed family tree tracing our line back to Pocahontas.
I donate fairly regularly to Native American causes, and have two Zuni rings on my two hands.
That said, I have no plans to begin describing myself as Native American. I didn't grow up on a reservation, and have no experience of the oppression and disempowerment which remains fundamental to American society today. I had a Chair to whom I once mentioned my ancestry, who wanted to list me as Native American for diversity quotas. I declined.
What my remote ancestry does, which is perhaps worth having done, is get a little money today to tribal causes, and make some conversations take an unexpected turn.
As for Elizabeth Warren. It doesn't bug me that her family legend claims descent from Pocahontas. I made a choice not to shirk that responsibility entirely, and as Jennifer details, Warren could obviously do more. People make these choices, and public figures might and should givethem more thought. But Donald Trump has chosen to put that name and person, who is by no means a Disney punchline, on a public platform - for instance, while patting a Code Talker rather condescendingly (draft dodger that he is) on the shoulder. And I do feel Native American enough to view Trump's slur - which to me it clearly is - with contempt. As remarked above, his plans for Indian land are no secret, they are there for all to see. Not only do Democrats and the GOP separate here, Trump separates from past GOP presidents. And he also likes throwing around the name of someone he never met.
My 2c.

Cheers,
John

Bless you, John. On behalf of Great Grandfather Powhatan, and Native American Indians everywhere, I thank you.

Principal Chief Baker made an official statement to the tribe and to the media that the "Pocahontas" jibe from the "Great White Father," (as our ancestors would have addressed him), is officially disrespectful.

I really don't believe this is a common topic of conversation, though, with your average Indian.

In September, I was up on the Rez, in Cherokee, North Carolina. Red Paint asked why I had brought him no Louisiana boudin. "'Si yo," the tribesman greeted me, "Si qu'un?" I nodded, "Si qu'un." ("Things are fine.") Not a word did we exchange about this.

Several months from now, I will return to the reservation, where they will feed me fry bread, elk, and bison on Tsali Boulevard. Once again, I will speak the native language with the tribesmen, and I predict not a word will be said about Elizabeth Warren.

Her name cannot be pronounced in the Cherokee tongue :o

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer,

It was a silversmith in Cherokee who sold me my first Zuni ring. We were coming in from the North, and Tennessee, over the mountain.

John

Pardon my digression here, but... I wanted to say that I've always been struck by native American expressions. My sense is that there is always a latent spiritual meaning in their simple phrasing. A blending of body and spirit shaped into words. A kind of ancient wisdom formed from long contemplation. A meditative quality that I admire and perhaps even envy.

The fallout from Trump has both desecrated and elevated conversation these days.

I think going after Warren is a ridiculous cheap shot, especially considering who's president. You've got to be kidding me.

An article on why Trump's slur is racist.

deleted. should never have been written.

Let me just extend that a bit. I had a blog head conservative student couple years ago, who believed in so many Hillary conspiracies, my god, really detailed, and all of it full of shit. Now we have a real criminal in office and Warren's credibility is in doubt. For God's sake give it up and piss off.

You are not mistaken, Jim. Native Americans are a highly poetic race, who communicate less through metaphor, than through symbol -- more difficult to interpret. Interesting, too, you should bring that up. I have just finished "forming up" a centuries-old speech delivered by an Ojibwa priest, officiating at a ceremony which was being attended, observed, and recorded by ethnologists in the employ of the federal government. These were brilliant sociologists, however, they had to request an explanation of the speech afterwards, as they simply could not grasp the symbols of the historical delivery, which the Ojibwa clearly had no problem understanding.

The priest patiently -- and with some amusement -- explained his symbolic usage to these sociologists, who were astonished by the sophistication, as well as the intact condition of what had been handed down by oral tradition, for literally hundreds of years.

Thanks.

Jennifer

Does this mean you'll cease publishing in national magazines that supported segregation and apartheid and refer to Leonard Peltier as a common criminal, or for that matter po-mags whose editors openly crow about the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from wide swathes of the U.S.?

Hey, shoot me an email anytime, Quince, and I will tell you a few things about the editors of your publications, which I bet you didn't know :o

Maybe I'm missing a joke, but if you've got information that should make us reluctant to support specific publications, it would be helpful to share it with everyone. Maybe at Eratosphericals?

Max, thank you so much. That is a most gracious invitation. Given the current news cycle, I have begun to seriously consider some things.

Jennifer

There's a strange sort of illogic in the Warren story. If she claimed (falsely, apparently) a small amount of Indian blood to strengthen her chances at tenure and promotion, couldn't others with more legitimate bloodlines use those facts to even greater advantage? From my childhood in NC, I know that there was never any stigma attached to having Native-American heritage; indeed, most who did wore it as a mark of pride. It strikes me that a poet who has Native blood would have some clear advantages in the present climate of publishing.

I appreciate that, Sam -- sincerely. It seems odd to me, and I am not entirely convinced it is true, but a nice way of looking at it :o

That's not a fair "if" in Warren's case, since everyone on the tenure committee at Harvard has said that the question of her bloodline never came up. The committee included Charles Fried, arch-conservative solictor general of the US in Republican administrations. To indulge that "if" is simply to give credence to the lie invented by her political opponents. But yes, I suppose her family lore of Indian blood was lore the family was proud of.

Roger, perhaps I should retract the "if," but there are still a lot of things about Warren's story that don't quite add up, including this story, which must have come from some kind of documentation:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/19...ing-at-hls-pa/

Still, I've never met anyone who wasn't proud to claim Indian heritage, even if there's no proof beyond family lore that it exists. My sister-in-law had a DNA test done a couple of years ago that showed that she and my wife have no Native blood despite old family claims to the contrary.

I once, long ago, met an Argentinian to whom I boasted of my Indian ancestry. He said: "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." An antipodean reaction.

John

John, you should have thrown in some German ancestry.

Yes, I could have.

Quite recently, I was at the hospital bedside of a dear family member. I had traveled long distances, to help take care of this lady.

The walloping drug doses had erased her inhibitions. At one point, I leaned in close to her face, when she began shaking her head back and forth upon the pillow, groaning faintly, You're Indian, you're Indian, you're Indian....

A family member. Yes. Really. These things are still quite present, and still quite painful.

Jennifer

I'm very sorry, Jennifer.

John

That is kind of you, John. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." I am luckier by far, than, say, my dad -- who only fifty years ago was being refused service at businesses, with "We don't serve your kind here, boy." I am grateful.

And I surely do not wish to turn this thread into a "Pity Party for the American Indian," but I would like to inject -- the "proud Indian" model just does not "jive" with my own, personal experience in life, though I am appreciative that it does, in others. And that is great.

My experience: sitting on my maternal grandmother's sofa as a child, hearing the OTHER side of the family bitterly say, "They call Claude a 'Damn Injun,' Jenny. They call your pawpaw a 'damn injun.'" It was, incidentally, the one and only time that strong, strong, brave lady ever gave in to it. Otherwise, the prevailing atmosphere was, "Shh. Shh. This is something we do not discuss, EVER. We cover this up, that identity. Not only do they hate you, girl -- they want to exterminate you, as though you were an insect."

She came from a well-to-do Virginia family, with noble lineage going all the way back to the great Lee family, extending even to the first settlements at Jamestown.

When she married the fierce, gorgeous "half-breed," my grandfather, the family essentially shunned her in shame. My grandfather moved them from Virginia, and that is how I came to be here.

Jennifer

It sounds like you go back to Jamestown on both sides. And beyond, of course.

John

Prejudice is the bane of civilizations. In all it's forms. No one deserves it yet no one escapes it. Our only hope is to rise above it. And evolution.

John, I am impressed! Yes, my English ancestors on both sides were here in this nation as early as 1612, and include both those who were instrumental in the founding (such as my great uncles who signed the Declaration), and those who were the victims of its greatest tragedies (such as my grandmother who was hanged at the Salem Witch Trials).

Likewise, my Native American ancestors on both sides -- naturally -- who have been here for thousands of years. Be well.

Jennifer

Jennifer, not long ago you said of yourself: "I am a WASP -- a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, about as British-American as they come (for all my "French" upbringing and sympathizing with the Catholic Church!)."

Did you feel then that you were unable to confront your Cherokee heritage? Were your maternal Grandmother's words still holding you to silence then, and at what point did you feel able to speak of it? Your experience is important.

Hi Ann,

No problem. I realize this is a difficult thing to understand. My husband used to have the same problem, of course, when terms like "half-breed" get bandied about. He would say, "half-white" or "half-Indian."I kept telling him it does not work that way -- that one is ALL of both.

Finally, one day he asked me to bring him a glass of water. I saw an opportunity to demonstrate. So I filled a glass half full with water. Then, I filled it the rest of the way with prune juice, and took it into the next room to him. He made a face and asked, "What is that?" I told him. "He said, 'I can't drink that. It's not water.'" I said, "Oh, no -- it is only half prune juice. Just drink the half that's water."

"Point taken," he answered, and finally understood.

Jennifer

Thanks, Jennifer. I understand the principle and it's well demonstrated. What I was wondering was why the piece I quoted failed to mention the Cherokee heritage at all. (It was in June 2014.) I wondered if you were still, at that point, finding it difficult to come to terms with.

If I am intruding please feel free to tell me so, and I hope you will forgive me.

Not in the least do I feel you are intruding, Ann. Quite to the contrary -- your participation has made my day. Thank you for joining in.

Rest assured, I was well aware of my Native blood in 2014, and I was not intentionally trying to mislead anyone, nor ashamed of who I am.

If you were to talk to my children, they might confess to you that at times, in fact, they must be thinking, "Put a cork in the Indian thing, already, Mom. We're sick of hearing about it." :o

I am an "Empty Nester" now, with a grandchild of my own. All the children are grown and gone, and I have more time and energy to devote to things like this!

Jennifer

By the way -- as I recall, my intention with that statement was in response to Siham Karami, when she referred to me as a "bridge" to Hindi, in the work of Kalpna Singh-Chitni. All I was trying to do was to dispel the notion that I had any knowledge of Hindi, or Eastern culture, underscoring my knowledge of *English*, as my primary language -- because Kalpna's book is in English. I didn't want anyone thinking I lay a claim to India.

A digression into my Native American heritage would have seemed to me irrelevant, since the focus was not me, but Kalpna, and specifically the English language in which she made her debut -- not Cherokee, or whatever.

One thing that unsettles many people (more on the Right than otherwise) is our relative freedom to choose our own identities, even if relatively late in life. Rebecca Nagle's point, it seems to me, is that those who haven't lived as a Native American should be wary that their belated adoption of an Indian identity may seem less than authentic to those who were born and reared in full knowledge of it. I would say that the same kind of backlash often is applied, perhaps unfairly, to men or women who wish to reassign their genders after having lived, say, as a man and fathering children. I don't need, I think, to point to specific examples in this regard. These days we are allowed to make such choices, and whole sections of the legal code are being revised so that people won't be discriminated against for having done so. People's opinions, however, will most likely alter only with time and familiarity, and it's hard to fault those whose acceptance is still forthcoming. In my own extended family I have seen a same-sex marriage (and a looming divorce involving four minor children) and an imminent inter-racial marriage involving two minor children. We all have to make our own adjustments as best we can.