Insolent NDN

Due to the flat-out stealing because I have no soul Margaret Seltzer’s memoir fakeoir, I am getting pretty steamed at the we-sha-sha Pretendian crowd. Oh, and we cannot forget Mrs. Cassie Edwards and her Cheyenne grandmother whom she cites as inspiration for her “Indian Romances” like Savage Honor [review forthcoming].

But, okay we got some white women playing at being Indian, ain’t nothing new there, that shit’s as old as the work day is long; I’ve done wrote parody on that shit. It’s a fab combination of the new White Man’s Burden (all the Indians are dead so we need to take up the knowledge and safekeep it for our white children), guilt over living on stolen land and the need to make a legitimate claim on said land (my granddad was 1/24th Chickasaw so we’ve been here a LONG time), and the noble savages being somehow different or better than other People of Color (their governments and schools were so good/they’re so spiritual/they’re so polite/clean/articulate/almost white). And since most white folks think all Indians are dead or if they do know one of us we’re not “real” because we’re light skinned, Black, Hawaiian, Rican, wear blue jeans, have short hair, use pronouns and do not speak in the third person; we’re written off right quick in order to save their fantasy that real Indians are stoic, hard-bodied warriors or demure maidens - think Dances with Wolves, everyone else seems to, right?

So what’s the big deal, it’s irritating but no real harm done, right? WRONG. Here’s my reasoning on why Pretendians are dangerous as all hell and need to be called out, revealed, drug out from behind the curtain and all that shit.

It’s a problem, fo’ real; it’s such a problem in the art world that we actually had to enact the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990. A law, people, a law?! But okay what about people not trying to get over, they just feel the spirit or use it to boost a side gig? Surely, that ain’t no crime, right? Well, not a crime, but unethical and absolutely positively contributes to the oppression of Indigenous Peoples in the Western Hemisphere. Huh? How? Well, here’s how it works in the USA (and I wish I knew more about how Canada works but I don’t) to be officially a Native American Indian one must belong to a state and/or federally recognized Nation (usually termed “tribe”). The federal government has concluded that you do have a x/y blood quantum and then one must fulfill the unique national/tribal requirements for enrollment. For most of us, this means being born and having your mama do the paperwork, but it’s not always that easy - we’re talking oppressed people with rights to a whole lot of land and the federal government’s greed. The USA government is not stupid: less Indians, more land for sale, development, parks, whatever the hell they want at that minute in time. While our Nations have always had say over who is who ain’t one of us the federal government really got their hands in it with the Dawes Act or General Allotment Act of 1887 which took land from being collectively held by Nations and allotted plots to heads of households. What’s the big deal with that? Well, think about it - heads of household meant men in the minds of the government and definitely meant a household structured as a nuclear family. So a LOT of our land was lost just due to the Dawes Act; well, lost to us and then sold to white settlers heading west to fulfill Manifest Destiny and all. So enrollment becomes really important - to the government because they have a hand in making sure there are less Indians and to individual Nations because it’s about all we have left in determining who is ours. Enrollment is an issue of sovereignty and one we all take very seriously even though we’ve seen it used and abused as of late, it’s still our right… but it’s a right that exists with a context of systemic racism and colonization within the United States. What I am meaning to say is that there are people who should be enrolled and accessing all of their rights as an Indian person to services for Indians but for one reason or another they cannot - and these legitimate claims are not white folks who just miss the blood quantum requirement for Nation X; nine times out of ten we are talking about Black and Brown people who have been disenfranchised because they are of multiple Nations and don’t have enough X blood quantum to enroll with one Nation, they have no paperwork because their ancestors were slaves (of a particular Nation or the mother was a slave), or they are a Nation that has folks on both side of the border and for some reason they can’t enroll with the federal government (USA or Canada IIRC). And this brings me to another point, somewhat off topic but important nonetheless, is that all you white folks out there who feel so disenfranchised from the Nation you supposedly belong to, well, let me tell you, get your asses to the back of the line, there are plenty of folks who are ahead of you who had their damn car stolen and not sold a few generations back, as ’s awesome analogy goes.

Back to Pretendians, they get called out, smoked out and laughed at but at the end of the day are these fools the ones that really suffer? No. It’s the aforementioned folks who are legitimately Indigenous Peoples but don’t have whatever card credentials they need to have when the rest of us tighten our belts in defense. The cycle continues, over and over, Pretendians piss us off and it goes back to who is who with what card where, and damned if we feel like we don’t have to go that route because there’s got to be a line in the sand to tell these we-sha-sha fakes that NO YOU ARE NOT. But the lumps are in the oatmeal and legit folks get plastered to the side of the bowl too as we attempt to smooth that shit out. Long winded, eh? And that’s why I detest these fake-ass, hair-dying, ain’t got a goddamn clue where they from, who their people are (but I’ll make some shit up anyway) Weekendians who flip-flop from being Cherokee to Apache to Chumash to Salish depending on what powwow they crash; not only are these assclowns appropriating the identity, culture, customs and voices of real live people trying to dig a living out of this colonial state but they are further perpetuating the oppression of unenrolled legitimate Indians.

So to all you white people who want an Indian name so bad, want a Lukumi or Vodou god/dess to watch over you, desire to learn all the kumbia and salsa out there while drinking some freshly plucked white tea out of your China teacup straight off the import boat: go back to your own damn culture, do a genealogy, do a family tree, shovel in the dirt for info on your own people and leave us alone. Oh, but I should warn you that there are some actual Irish and German people still out there in the world too, and you may have to answer to them as well. If you steal you will be caught, be prepared to deal with the consequences, preferably without the WWS histrionics.