Good evening, everybody.
My name is Ramiro Hampson-Medina.
I'm here with David, Pilli, and Tai Anthony.
We're going to do an opening
song just to welcome everybody.
We're going to be doing
the AIM theme song--
the American Indian
Movement theme song--
which is supposed to
bring everybody together,
all the indigenous people
from North America,
from the tips of Chile
to the top, past Alaska
and everything.
So this is just to bring
everybody together and welcome
everybody to this space.
Thank you.
[PERCUSSIVE MUSIC]
[SINGING]
[SINGING FADES]
[PERCUSSION INTENSIFIES]
[APPLAUSE]
Another hand, please,
for the drum song.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm Harry Elam, the Senior
Vice Provost for Education
and the Vice
President of the Arts.
And on behalf of
Stanford University,
it is my pleasure to welcome you
to the 2020 Mimi and Peter Haas
Distinguished Visitor Lecture.
We want to start today's evening 
with a university land acknowledgment
offered by Stanford student
Dahkota Kicking Bear Brown.
Oh, (LAUGHING) he's right here.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm looking for you way over
there where you were before.
[LAUGHTER]
Playing tricks on everyone.
Just a heads up, parts of
this will be in English.
Other parts will be in my
indigenous language, Northern
Sierra Miwok.
[SPEAKING NORTHERN SIERRA MIWOK]
Hello, everyone.
It's great to see
so many people here.
My name is Dahkota Brown,
and I'm a senior here
at Stanford University.
On behalf of my
Ohlone relatives,
I have the privilege
of delivering this land
acknowledgment.
We recognize that Stanford
sits on the ancestral land
of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe.
This land was and continues
to be of great importance
to the Ohlone people.
Consistent with our values
of community and diversity,
we have a responsibility
to acknowledge, honor,
and make visible
the university's
relationship to native peoples.
[SPEAKING NORTHERN SIERRA MIWOK]
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you again, Dahkota.
We are extremely honored 
to have Gerald Vizenor
as this year's Distinguished Visitor at Stanford.
Gerald is an award-winning
author, professor emeritus
of American Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley
and a citizen of the
White Earth Nation in Minnesota.
He has published more than 30
books, novels, critical theory,
cultural studies, and
poetry collections.
His many awards include
the American Book Award
and the Western Literature
Association Distinguished
Achievement Award.
Beyond his groundbreaking
work as a scholar and author,
Gerald has distinguished
himself across diverse pathways
of public service.
So here are just
three highlights
from his extraordinary career.
As a direct descendant of the
publisher of the White Earth Reservation's
first independent newspaper
Gerald's investigative
journalism
included a report about
racism and capital punishment
that saved the life of Thomas
White Hawk in South Dakota
in the late 1960s.
Gerald served with
the U.S. Army in Japan
in the aftermath of
the Korean War as part
of many generations of
family members and citizens
of the White Earth
Nation who have
engaged in military service.
And this is a source
of his latest book
that he's been
writing about as well.
Finally, Gerald
served as a delegate
to the Constitutional
Convention and is
a principal writer of the
constitution of the White Earth Nation.
So you can see the incredible
range of activities and service
that he's done.
So we are delighted to have
Gerald and his wife, Laura Jane Hall
in residence at the
Haas Center for Public Service
for the winter quarter.
And I would like to thank
Mimi Haas for her vision
and leadership in working
with us to establish the
Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished
Visitor Program that
has brought visionary,
global leaders to the campus
for over a decade.
I want to thank also the
Haas Center National Advisory
Board, including Chair Pamay
Bassey, who is visiting.
Where are you, Pamay?
Thank you.
We should have clapped
for Mimi and for you.
So we'll do a double clap.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you both.
And many thanks to the Native
American Cultural Center
and many campus
department centers,
organizations for
cosponsoring today's event.
A hand for them, too.
[APPLAUSE]
Actually, I want to
particularly thank
Karen Biestman, Associate
Dean and Director
of Stanford's Native
American Cultural Center
for your leadership.
So, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Mr. Vizenor's visit
is particularly timely
as Stanford marks the 50th
anniversaries of the Stanford
American Indian Organization
in the fall of 2020
and the Stanford Powwow
in the spring of 2021.
Today's discussion focuses on
Native American "survivance."
Gerald Vizenor has
explained it this way.
"Native American survivance
is an active sense
of historical presence,
a renunciation
of political dominance,
themes of tragedy,
and cultural victimry.
Native survivance is the
literature of engagement."
Describing the connection
between his work
and public service,
Gerald Vizenor writes,
"My sense of public service
is a common ambition
to create a communal narrative
that celebrates change
over fate and denies
the separation
of dominant
political authority."
So as you can see,
tonight's presentation
will be extremely timely.
Please join me in welcoming
our 2020 Mimi and Peter E. Haas
Distinguished Visitor,
Gerald Vizenor.
[APPLAUSE]
Mimi, Harry, Tom, Karen, the
singers, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
Thank you.
He took the screen down.
But we'll just project one
image on the wall here.
It's a composite
group of figures.
Down on the lower part here is
my grandmother, Alice Beaulieu
and her brother, my great
uncle, John Clement in uniform
at the First World War.
Dashing, he is.
A little farther up, Walter
Benjamin-- a nice photograph
just before he died of suicide.
Ted Mahto, a close friend
a native philosopher
in Minnesota.
And Clyde Kluckhohn down here in
the corner, an anthropologist,
and others.
Thank you for projecting that.
[LAUGHTER]
Actually, that started
spontaneously--
not here, but that practice--
spontaneously, when
I followed at the New
School a conference on
animals and literature.
I followed a brilliant
speaker with perfectly
masked slides of
animals and humans and art.
And he had a magnificent
voice with a Dutch accent--
a Columbia professor, thin,
blond hair, tailored suit.
And I was not this well-dressed.
[LAUGHTER]
I realized I was doomed.
So I went out on stage
not knowing what to do.
I knew no one would hear
me after that brilliant
presentation of slides.
So I said, first slide.
And that got some humor.
But when I said, here you
can see me as a child.
Clearly I'm a dog--
that broke it.
[LAUGHTER]
And then I could
actually talk about how
Native Americans wrote
about animals in literature.
The native heirs
of the fur trade
convene in my stories,
essays, and historical novels
with a sense of presence, ethos,
irony, and literary resistance
to gossip theories of
discovery, cultural separatism,
and more than a century of
deceptive federal policies.
My stories would not be
possible without the sway
of native irony and the
communal wisdom revealed
in the experiences and stories
of previous native storiers
and literary artists.
John Clement Beaulieu,
my great uncle,
served in the First
World War in France
and returned from combat
with love stories,
and scarcely mentioned
the misery of trenches,
fear of death, or the enemy.
Later, his stories
of romance came
to mind as native irony,
a sense of "survivance"
over "victimry."
Arthur Elm, a native
from Oneida, Wisconsin,
served in a machine gun company
in the American Expeditionary
Forces in France.
He was wounded and recovered
with blood transfusions.
"After this, I didn't
know who I was,"
he told the photographer,
Joseph Dixon.
"I was a mixture of
Indian, Irish, and Swede."
Elm related ironic stories
in spite of his combat wounds
in the First World War.
This was no surprise to
me or any other native
because natives seldom
created stories or dream
songs about starvation,
epidemics, massacres,
or the cruelty of slavery.
Creation stories are
in natural motion.
And trickster stories
outplayed dreadful memories
of torment and victimry.
John Clement, my great
uncle, teased everyone
with what seemed to be
common sense stories.
He once told me that when he
tried to walk up an icy hill
and slipped two steps back
with every step forward,
he turned around and walked
backwards to get over the hill.
[LAUGHTER]
I was young enough to
believe him at the time.
[LAUGHTER]
Native storiers that
reveal natural motion
and tease customary
experiences are
more memorable than the
relentless scenes of misery.
Native trickster stories were
reveals of totemic animals
and birds, creative
encounters with surly shamans,
and the reversal of
gravity on an icy hill.
Celebrated native storiers
favored chants and the wisdom
of communal experience that
revealed survivance, not
fate, tragedy, or vengeance.
Survivance is an
elusive concept,
more than the
instinct of survival.
And natives survivance stories
create a sense of presence
that counters historical
absence, dominance,
and the modern literary
cues of victimry.
The word "survivance" was used
in the 18th-century fur trade
and in more than 30 years, it's
become a decisive catchword
in my native stories
and publications.
Survivance is forever
deferred, however,
to successive native storiers
of communal experiences.
Charles Aubid, for example,
more than 50 years ago,
inadvertently counseled
federal judge Miles Lord--
great name, isn't it?
Miles Lord, a federal justice.
[LAUGHTER]
It's not even
believable as fiction.
[LAUGHTER]
Miles Lord about native
stories and survivance.
Miles Lord was a compassionate
defender of native rights.
I don't want to leave
any other impression.
Aubid was a native elder
and a sworn witness
in a dispute between the federal
government over the sovereignty
of wild rice harvests on the
Rice Lake National Wildlife
Refuge in Minnesota.
Aubid testified in the
language of the Anishinaabe
that he was present as a boy
when federal agents granted
old John Squirrel the right
to harvest "manoomin,"
or wild rice.
Federal lawyers objected
to the story as hearsay.
Aubid told several creative
versions of the same story,
a different perspective.
And this reveals the fourth
person of native stories.
Not just three, but
the fourth person.
And Justice Lord insisted
that the witness testify only
about his experiences, not
about the stories of others.
John Squirrel is dead,
declared Justice Lord.
You can't say what
a dead man said.
Aubid stood up, pointed at
the legal books on the bench,
and shouted in English--
I was there-- that
the books contained
the words of dead white men!
[LAUGHTER]
And then he said,
"Why should I believe
what a white man says when
you don't believe old John Squirrel?"
The published case law
stories were considered
precedent, of course.
But the wisdom of oral
stories in the fourth person
was ruled as hearsay.
Justice Lord paused, pushed
back in his chair, and said,
"You've got me there."
A generous man.
"Storytelling is
not only an art.
It is even more than an
honor," wrote Walter Benjamin
in The Storyteller Essays.
"A story leads to
a kind of wisdom.
Just as conversely, wisdom
often proves to be a story.
A storyteller, therefore, always
knows how to give counsel."
And by "counsel," Benjamin means
advice, guidance, and wisdom.
He continues, "The
storyteller finds his material
in experience.
He owns what he has
learned secondhand.
And the stories
he tells, in turn,
become experiences
for his audience."
Native teases were
common experiences.
And any native raised
in a native family
would attest to that.
And many natives
created ironic stories
and imagistic dream songs that
teased customary associations.
Trickster creation stories
honored totemic relations
as sources of ethos and wisdom.
And countless versions were
created at native gatherings.
The stories were erotic
and lusty, but never
gossip theory.
That's an introduction
to Clyde Kluckhohn.
Clyde Kluckhohn, the
social anthropologist,
published Navajo Witchcraft,
an obscure and crafty cluster
of folklore gossip theories
about strange beasts,
sinister spirits, and sorcery
more than 70 years ago.
But the native stories about
his peculiar research manner
may have actually reversed the
content of the book as irony.
Kluckhohn was teased in stories as
"the man who pissed too much
on the Navajo Nation."
I was expecting a
little more there.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
Kluckhohn was teased
as the man who--
on the reservation.
The eclectic anthropologist
traveled around the reservation
and asked natives
about witchcraft.
He probably reasoned that native
hitchhikers would reveal more
about the chancy
phenomenon of witchery
in a comfortable
automobile, and especially
at night in bad weather.
The stories about a weak bladder
were related to his many piddle stops.
The anthropologist actually
ducked behind a bush
about every 30 minutes only
to write down what he had just
heard about witchery.
[LAUGHTER]
And I can confirm this,
because as a journalist,
I could handle an interview
for about 30 minutes
and then, up to an hour later,
almost transcribe it fully.
One scholarly review
of Navajo Witchcraft
pointed out that Kluckhohn
had described his methods,
but he did not provide specific
references to the informants.
Most of the informants
were probably hitchhikers
because most natives
would not likely
mention sinister skin
walkers or the ghastly
practices of witchery.
The monograph on witchery and
witchcraft betrayed natives.
And the stagy stories
of hitchhikers
were illusions that
became gossip theory.
Jonathan Lear observed
in A Case for Irony
that irony is a
"disruption" of the familiar.
And this confusion
of the customary
is a more relevant theory
to discuss native trickster stories.
Lear writes, "The
experience of irony
thus seems to be a peculiar
species of uncanniness
in the sense that something
that has been familiar
returns to me as
strange and unfamiliar."
The early translators and
interpreters of native stories
commonly resolve the disruption
of cultural familiarity
with the hearsay of
marginal listeners,
and as a result, denied
the wisdom of experience.
Native storiers created
a sense of presence
with the stay of
eager listeners.
And translations were hardly
trustworthy conversions
of cultural irony, or the
wisdom of communal experiences.
"If storytelling is dying
out," observed Peter Brooks
in a recent review of
The Storyteller Essays,
"so is the art of listening--
the creation of a
community of listeners
around the storyteller.
And beyond that, the very
communicability of experience
is threatened with loss."
Not here, of course.
Ted Mahto-- you
saw his picture--
[SOFT LAUGHTER]
--the native
philosopher, invited
me to trade stories
at Hello Dolly's,
a notorious native liquor
bar in Minneapolis.
The only other patrons
that early morning--
afternoon were
three young natives
boasting about their scars from
a recent sundance ceremony.
The boasts were
truly contemptible.
Ted calmly walked over
to the three boasters,
smiled in silence, and
slowly unbuttoned his shirt.
I won't demonstrate that fully.
[LAUGHTER]
And revealed scars on his chest.
"Do you see these scars?" said Ted.
The three natives leaned
closer and pointed
at the prominent scars.
Ted shouted, "Chicken pox, 1940!"
[LAUGHTER]
He turned away.
And we continued our stories
of situational irony.
[LAUGHTER]
A University of Minnesota
history professor
kindly invited me as
a new faculty member
in the American Indian
Studies Department
to a dinner at his home.
First though, he escorted
me to a side room
and handed over a pair of
stained leather moccasins
and expected me to provide
some footsy native provenance.
[SINGLE LAUGH]
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
I love that-- "footsy
native provenance."
[LAUGHTER]
I'm sure it's happened often
in this room, hasn't it.
[SCATTERED LAUGHTER]
"The warrior walks
silently in the forest,"
was my first ironic tease.
[LAUGHTER]
But the historian
seemed to be more
interested in ethnographic
gossip theory.
After a close examination
of the moccasins,
a sniff here and there,
my second response
was even more ironic.
"Norwegian man.
[LAUGHTER]
Stinky feet.
[LAUGHTER]
And he walked with
a twisted foot."
[LAUGHTER]
We became good friends,
that historian and me.
Walter Benjamin declared,
"Every morning, news
reaches us from the globe."
And today, the impeachment
hearings were delivered.
"And yet we lack
remarkable stories.
Why is this the case?
It is because no
incidents reach
us any longer not already
permeated with explanations,"
wrote Benjamin.
"In other words," he
writes, "almost nothing
occurs to the story's
benefit anymore.
But instead, it all
serves information.
And information is valuable
only for the moment
in which it is new.
It lives only in the moment.
It must be completely
subject to it
and explain itself immediately
without losing any time.
A story is different," he said.
"It does not use itself up.
It preserves its inherent power,
which it can then deploy even
after a long period of time."
Native stories are clearly
distinct from information.
But the declaration that stories
are reduced to explanations
and particulars once
troubled me greatly
because my stories and critical
studies as a young scholar
were not related only to
the details of the moment.
The distinction
troubled me even more
as a journalist for the
Minneapolis Tribune.
Frank Premack, the city editor
of the Tribune at the time,
climbed onto his desk in
the huge newsroom at least
once a week and shouted out,
with an incredible voice,
"The second coming of
Christ is worth no more
than a page and a half
in this newspaper!"
[LAUGHTER]
"So let that be your guide
in writing news today."
[LAUGHTER]
Intimidating at first
for someone like me.
But people who had heard it a
couple of dozen times or more
weren't paying much attention.
[LAUGHTER]
Premack based his
ironic and newsy wisdom
on the communal experiences
of wordy journalists.
My first day at the
Minneapolis Tribune
was Monday, June 3, 1968.
And four days later, Robert
Kennedy died of gunshot wounds
in Los Angeles.
Premack ignored the
second-coming page limitations
and ordered me to write a
feature news story that would
counter the popular notions
of a violent nation--
an ironic assignment, it
seemed to me at the time,
because of the many
assassinations--
John F. Kennedy, Martin
Luther King, Malcolm X,
and Robert Kennedy.
[BREATHES ON MICROPHONE]
I'm breathing into
this microphone.
Is that all right?
[LAUGHTER]
It sort of like,
emphasizes certain things,
like an exclamation.
[BREATHES INTENTIONALLY ON
 MICROPHONE]
[LAUGHTER]
Premack directed me to counter
the notions of violence
and personal security.
The late 1800s was the most
violent period in the nation.
And Minneapolis in the
1930s, which surprised me,
was one of the most violent
cities in the country.
Quote, "Violence
View Challenged"
was the headline
of my first story
published in the Minneapolis
Tribune on Sunday,
June 9, 1968--
six days into my
career as a journalist.
Here is a bit of the story.
"'Acts of assassination in the
United States cannot support
the emotional contention that
American society is inherently
violent,' a University of
Minnesota anthropologist
declared last week.
'But while the assassination of
a public figure may not prove
that ours is a violent society,'
Professor Luther Gerlach argued,
'the potential for
violence nevertheless is built
into the traditional structures
of our society.'"
Regrettably, my first assignment at the
Minneapolis Tribune was not
about the massacres of
thousands of natives.
Premack assigned me
five months later
to report on the funeral
services for
Dane White, a native schoolboy
who had been held
for more than 40
days in a county
jail for the crime
of truancy, which
is not a crime in any state.
My one-and-a-half-page
story ran on the front page
of the Minneapolis Tribune on
Thursday, November 24, 1968.
"Sisseton, South Dakota.
Catholic funeral
services for Dane White
were held here
Wednesday in English
and the Dakota language at Saint
Catherine's Indian Mission.
Following the service attended
by 75 people, all but six
of whom were Dakota
Indians, Dane
was buried in Saint Peter's
Catholic Cemetery," and more
to the end of that
page and a half.
Frank Premack was right
about the page and a half
and the second
coming-- not because he
was ironic about
the return of Jesus,
but because you could
run a whole story
on a page and a half on the
front page with no jump.
When people read and have
to jump to another page,
they stop reading, usually.
I wrote three longer
stories about the family--
divorce, the county
sheriff and his wife,
and the juvenile
court judge who had
denied a native
adolescent in jail
for truancy and
without legal counsel.
Cyrus White, his father,
visited his son only once
in the county jail.
Dane White and his older brother
and three younger sisters
lived with their
father after a divorce.
Dane ran away
several times to live
with his maternal grandmother
in an unpainted house in Long
Hollow near Sisseton,
South Dakota,
across the river from the Wilkin
County Jail in Breckenridge, Minnesota.
I visited his grandmother,
Marian Starr,
and felt at ease--
actually, secure, in the
converted dining room
with a badly worn linoleum
floor and the smell of fuel oil
from a space heater.
The scene simply reminded me of
my grandmother, Alice Beaulieu Vizenor,
and my great uncle, John Clement Beaulieu
of the White Earth
Reservation and in Minneapolis.
Marian smiled and pushed
aside the laundry hanging
on the line over
the space heater.
We sat across from each
other on wooden chairs
for more than an hour and
never mentioned the weather
or the death of her grandson.
She said, Dane was a
happy-go-lucky kid, always
laughing and joked around
with the other boys.
Alice Beaulieu, my paternal
grandmother, was in her 60s
when she married a blind
man who was much younger.
They lived in a small,
murphy bed apartment
near downtown Minneapolis.
Alice and Earl walked more
than a mile once a week
to a warehouse that sold
fire-damaged goods and canned
vegetables with no labels.
[SCATTERED LAUGHTER]
They were poor,
but not desolate.
And their good humor taught
me the humanistic art
of native survivance.
Alice prepared dinner with a
sense of mystery, of course--
[LAUGHTER]
--as she selected the vegetables
from the can with no label.
[LAUGHTER]
Camembert, caviar,
truffles, never.
But rather a surprise can
of pale peas, creamed corn,
or mushy green beans.
Alice and Earl boarded
a city bus once a week
to the end of the
line in the suburbs.
They sold small brooms
and brushes door to door,
the practice at the time
of some blind people.
But the stories they told
were about lonely women who
invited them to stay for lunch.
Alice was a natural healer
with a sway of humor, teases,
and stories on the reservation.
And in the city's
suburbs, she was
the same empathetic storier--
a whole-hearted social worker.
And her stories are the
testimony of survivance.
My stories and literary
resistance in the past 50 years
were inspired by the
principles of The Progress,
the first independent newspaper
published by my relatives
in the late 1800s on the
White Earth Reservation.
My historical novels and
littérature engagée were
inspired by Romain Rolland, the
pacifist, novelist, historian,
and philosopher who died at
the end of the Second World War
in France.
His compassion and sense
of literary resistance
were not related to
the later propositions
of exotic existentialism
promoted by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Peter Brooks writes,
"The novel brings
to the solitary
individual something
of a simulacrum of the sociality
of listening to a story,
but always with a residue
of knowledge that modernity
has shattered true community."
Yet every storier, listener,
writer, and solitary reader
brings a crowd of other
storiers and authors
to the page of every book.
And together, they create an
ironic scene of modernity.
"The books have voices,"
wrote Diane Glancy
in Designs of the Night Sky.
"I hear the books," she
wrote, "not with my ears,
but in my imagination.
Maybe the voices camp in
the library with nowhere
else to go."
Rolland wrote about
peace, justice,
and duties of the spirit at
a time of the unbelievable
destruction of war, an
appeal to writers, artists,
and scientists on the
front page of the newspaper
L'Humanité on March 31, 1938.
"France has the formidable
honor of becoming,
in the eyes of the
world," he wrote,
"the last bastion of
liberty on the continent--
a liberty in all its most
vital forms, the most essential
for all human order,
for all progress--
political and social liberty,
intellectual liberty,
and religious liberty,
since, at this moment,
the stampede of barbarism
threatens to bring
disorder to free thought
and the ideal of social
justice to mature respect,
equality of men and races."
Rolland was read more widely
at the time than André Gide
and Paul Valéry clearly
because he supported the truth
and justice of the
partisans, and he encouraged
the resistance movements against
the Vichy regime and the Nazi
occupation of Paris.
Rolland was a widely honored for
his sense of ethos, idealism,
tolerance, and littérature
engagée of the human spirit.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'll get people
to ask questions.
OK.
[APPLAUSE CONTINUES]
Thank you, Gerald.
We have a few minutes
for questions.
And I'm going to open
it up for questions.
But I want to say something
before we do that.
Karen Biestman came
to the Haas Center
to introduce the
Haas staff to Gerald.
And when she did that, she said
that Gerald was a rock star.
[LAUGHS]
And what she said about that
was that Gerald's words--
Gerald can make rocks sing.
You might have been
quoting someone else.
I can't remember.
A student at Berkeley.
A student at Berkeley.
[LAUGHTER]
And I want to thank you for
the words that you just shared.
Because then I
hope that everybody
was able to grab onto some
of those rocks singing.
For me, it's just amazing
to hear you thread events
through three
centuries, lamenting
the loss of the art
of listening, the need
to create a community
of listeners,
that information is valuable
only in the moment in which it is new,
the idea of gossip theory,
sharing Dane White's
story with his family,
the notion of survivance.
And modernity has
shattered true community,
and storytelling creates
an opportunity for us
to recreate those things.
So those were just some thoughts
as I sort of heard that.
And I hope that you all
were able to sort of grasp
onto some of those
rocks singing, as well.
I will sort of play the role
of traffic control here.
But I'm sure that folks
have questions for Gerald.
Does anyone want
to start us off?
I scared everybody.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, it's funny.
I didn't think this was going
to be really a timid crowd.
We have a couple of
microphones in the room.
Come on, show some resistance.
[LAUGHTER]
Gina.
I'll defer.
Oh, sorry.
Did we have one?
Let's start with whoever
just said, "I'll defer."
[CHUCKLES]
[LAUGHTER]
I'm sorry.
There we go.
How do handle-- you shared
so many stories that I'm
grappling with.
How do you deal
with institution?
Ironically.
[LAUGHTER]
I knew it!
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
[LAUGHS]
Any stories to share?
Yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
Oh, no.
Please, I want to
hear questions.
Should I speak since I've--
Yes, go for it.
--got the microphone?
I think it's ironic that,
here we are at Stanford,
and sort of the ground zero
of this digital transformation
of the whole world.
And the idea of
storytelling, which
is so lost in the digital
world is being spoken of.
And how can
storytelling save us?
Reconsider being
afraid of the dark.
And it's easy to tell a story.
What is inhibiting is
if anybody will like it.
It's also difficult
because almost all of us
have been trained
in multiple ways
to construct stories for
writing, not for speaking.
We don't know how the
oral works, generally.
And you can get
immediate attention
if you don't start with
the traditional subject
but start with motion.
Trickster was going along, and
he was just creating the earth.
The water was rising
up to his nose.
And he had to defecate.
[LAUGHTER]
It's hard not to get attention
for a story like that.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, isn't it perfect that--
it's wisdom-- the most
important things you do in life,
you have to make sure
you evacuate first.
[LAUGHTER]
I did before I came down here.
[LAUGHTER]
(LAUGHING) OK.
Thank you for that.
Dr. Vizenor, what
advice do you have
for [INAUDIBLE] who are
just starting our journey
in and outside the academy?
Oh, boy.
Well, it's really
hard to be playful
when everything is so serious.
Well, you see how old I am.
So it isn't going to work.
But I'll try it anyway, OK?
I think what's a
good idea is to get
really comfortable on
your own and quickly
with some theoretical
ideas and try them out.
And what I mean is, try
to imagine them your way
and use them your way.
And you'll find people
listening and reading.
I hope it works.
I mean, for instance,
I did this--
actually kind of
started inadvertently
because I was reading
some French theory.
And it was really
difficult. And so I thought,
well, I'm going
to make this work.
And Baudrillard and
simulacra-- brilliant stuff.
It just worked perfectly about
the creation and simulation
of the world "Indian."
I mean, I don't
need a better theory
than to talk about
Baudrillard and simulacra.
I mean, what a great
gift from the French.
No, they were in the fur trade.
They have a right.
[LAUGHTER]
[COUGHS]
Excuse me.
[COUGHS]
And Derrida-- here's one
that has been so useful to me
as a human being.
Language isn't the end.
It isn't the conclusion.
There's no closure
with the last sentence,
even though short story writer
teachers want to tell you that.
They do.
But Derrida comes up
with "différance,"
that the word is deferred
to the next meaning.
Of course it is.
I thought, of course,
I don't own this word.
I'm using simulation.
And I said it in my
lecture that it's
deferred to the next
storiers to make use of it.
That, I found really useful.
And you can also get a lot of
attention for stuff like that.
[LAUGHTER]
We have another question
in the back row.
Thank you.
Hi.
I wonder if you have one
story to tell for us today
for this moment in time,
maybe for the youth?
Yes.
I'd love to hear it.
I like this one myself.
I'm going to do two.
My grandmother postponed
her wedding to a blind man
until I came home on
leave from basic training.
And I was on my way to
Korea, but didn't get there.
I got to Japan,
luckily, instead.
And of course, I'm 18 with
a really smart uniform.
Boy, was I something.
[LAUGHTER]
And I walked up on
the porch, really
a feeling good in uniform.
And my grandmother rushes
out, not even paying attention
to the uniform, of course.
Grabs me firmly and says, "Don't
you tell him what I look like!"
[LAUGHTER]
And I didn't get it at first.
I didn't know he was blind, see.
[LAUGHTER]
And I said, "OK."
It was pretty intense.
And then later, I
said, "Oh, I would have told him
you're the most
beautiful woman I've ever known."
She was sweet.
And when she laughed,
her belly jumped.
Boy, was she lovely.
And a teaser.
The second story I think you're
going to laugh about too.
A little riskier,
but I'll try it.
[LAUGHTER]
I have a hard time
believing this,
but I was 15 years
old when I enlisted
and lied my age in the
Minnesota National Guard--
looking for
adventure, of course.
Wanted to be a
warrior of some kind.
And learned how to march and do
all that stuff pretty quickly.
Then came summer camp where
you shoot guns and throw
hand grenades.
What a paradise
for an 18-year-old.
Even tank cannons and bazookas.
I mean, this was
out-of-this-world adventure.
I mean, you could read comic
books about superheroes.
I was one.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, this was the
most terrific thing.
And I thought they didn't
know how old I was.
Well, and I tell you, I
had to go to my records
and look up my discharge
from the National Guard
to be sure I really was 15.
And I was.
It's hard to believe, especially
when I meet 15-year-olds today.
[LAUGHTER]
So I'm in the summer camp.
And I'm doing everything right,
because I didn't want anyone
to catch on that I'm under age.
And I hear my name announced
on the loudspeaker.
Report immediately to
the first sergeant.
So I run up there
and do my stuff.
And he says to me
really firmly, crossly,
"I've been examining
your records, Vizenor.
Where the hell are your
masturbation papers?"
[LAUGHTER]
Now, he took a chance.
And he was right.
I had never heard of the word.
[LAUGHTER]
I actually did hear
about "matriculation."
And I was wondering if
he mispronounced it.
But I never heard the word.
And I don't have to repeat
the other words that are
used that I knew really well.
OK.
So he said, "Goddamn it,
Vizenor, how the hell
did you get in this man's army?"
The usual stuff, threatening me.
And he said, "I don't know
what you're going to do."
"What can I do?"
"I don't know what you can do.
You're going to have to go up
to see some Captain Somebody."
So he called ahead and got to
the assistant to the captain.
And this went to three
stages where I reported
for my masturbation papers.
Oh, god.
[LAUGHTER]
"Sir, Private Vizenor, reporting
for my masturbation papers."
[LAUGHTER]
And finally, there was
nowhere to send me,
but the post commander general.
And of course, they couldn't
call ahead on that one.
So I'm on my own now.
And I get there.
And I report to his
captain, his assistant.
And, "Sir, I'm reporting
for my masturbation papers."
He said, "You-- ?"
I said, "My masturbation papers--
I've been sent--" la da da.
That was my mistake--
I've been sent by--
oh, I learned a
real lesson there.
It wasn't about masturbation.
It was about, don't tell
people how you got here.
[LAUGHTER]
So this captain says,
I think the general's
going to enjoy talking to you.
[LAUGHTER]
So I went in and did it.
And he said, son, do you know
what "jacking off" means?
[LAUGHTER]
And I backed up.
I thought this guy was strange
talking to me like that.
And I backed up
and said, "Yes, sir."
[LAUGHTER]
And he said, "Well, you better
go back to your barracks
and figure it out."
[LAUGHTER]
[EXHALES]
[LAUGHTER]
I wrote about that actually
in an autobiography.
I couldn't resist it.
It's so stupid.
[LAUGHTER]
But so telling about missing
the meaning of a word.
I didn't make that
mistake when I
enlisted as an 18-year-old
soldier, though.
Well, thank you for
that question, I think.
[LAUGHTER]
We have a question over here.
Hi.
I'm curious whether
you're finding
that the rise in
podcasting has made
any difference in the
acceptance of storytelling?
Oh, you-- give it a little more.
Talk a little more about it.
Well, at the beginning
of your talk,
I was sort of surprised
by your not having slides.
I come from computer
science and all that.
And slides are sort of the norm.
And then I thought,
well, actually,
as I walked over
here, I was listening
to podcasts all the way.
Ah.
And so, yes, I am used
to listening to words
without seeing anything
at the same time.
Yeah.
Oh, very good.
Yeah.
And that's a change that I've
found recently in my life.
And it struck me that that
was a lot like your talk
and a lot like the history--
Oh, thank you.
--of storytelling.
Yeah.
And I just wanted you
to talk about that.
Well, I did ask you to
imagine some slides.
You did, [CHUCKLES] of course.
[LAUGHTER]
I think what it does, it puts
you into a visual possibility.
It sets you up a little
bit for, what, what?
And then oh, I get it.
So there's a little bit of
suggestion of visual imagery.
And that's part of a motion and
thinking about ideas and images
differently than descriptions.
Time for one more question.
Yeah, how about you.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
I would like to ask
on behalf of some
the native youth in
this crowd today, what's
some advice you'd give to
us on how we can promote
native survivance and resilience
to our non-native peers
in this contemporary world where
they're so inundated with so
much other information
and we're trying
to educate them about our
identities and our stories
as you've gone over?
This may appear
just too obvious.
But there's an absence, always.
And just check out
where the absence is,
and it's everywhere.
And then work to fill the
absence with creative ideas
and stories.
And it's easier to do
than anybody might think.
You can find just
enough information
to make a good story
about the absence.
And it confronts,
then, that whole idea
that natives are much
more complex because
of very complex ideas.
And I think I evaded that
pretty successfully, didn't I?
[LAUGHTER]
Let me try another one.
I think--
[LAUGHTER]
--playful language
is much better
than any kind of
serious direct discourse
unless it's an
examination of some kind.
And it really does concentrate
a thought for a moment
or a little longer than that.
And then you can work an
idea and work a reference
and, especially I
think, work something
that's imagistic and
use it as a reference.
I often like to talk
about dream songs,
because just the description
of it is like an opening.
Immediately it's interesting.
And then you can--
or I have worked on it.
And one of my favorite
kind of openings
sometimes is how dream songs
are taken so literally--
that they're translated, so
therefore, they're a text.
And then I sort of unwind
the translation and point out
that it was sung or
kind of half-chanted,
and the words don't quite mean
what ended up in translation.
For one thing, there
probably were no pronouns.
So you can use language as
the primary source of play
and then show examples.
And then what you're doing is
also what you're talking about.
That's better.
That is better.
Yeah, thanks.
All right.
Well, let me conclude this
evening with a few thank yous
and some logistical
information for everyone.
First of all, I just
want to thank Harry
for his great introduction.
And I also want to thank
Susie Brubaker-Cole also
for coming tonight, the Vice
Provost for Student Affairs.
I want to thank the drummers
for the amazing beginning
to our evening.
Dahkota, thank you for
the land acknowledgment.
As usual with our
distinguished visitor,
Gerald is about
a week and a half
into his quarter-long visit.
So this is really the
beginning of a storytelling,
playful language kind
of quarter for us.
And so I want to invite
folks, particularly if you're
a student living in a dorm
and want to bring Gerald
to your dorm, or if you're
a faculty member in a class
and you'd like to have
Gerald come to your class,
or if you have other things that
you'd like to have Gerald do,
we are encouraging you to
take advantage of the fact
that we have this tremendous
elder in our presence
for this quarter.
So there are Haas staff here.
You can talk to them.
I also want to give a shout
out to Laurence.
Laurence raise your hand.
Laurence is actually the person
who's going to be teased a
lot this quarter, I think--
[LAUGHTER]
--I'm gathering from even
his initial interactions
with Gerald.
But Laurence is
actually helping Gerald
and can be a point of
contact for folks who want
to get in touch with Gerald.
Address him as Cardinal
Laurence.
[LAUGHTER]
(LAUGHING) Cardinal
Laurence. See?
You see what I mean?
[LAUGHTER]
Poor Laurence.
[LAUGHTER]
All right.
Finally, just thank you
once again to everyone.
And thank you to Gerald
Vizenor for his lecture.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Tom.
