- Well, welcome to the
invited round table here.
The lights are rather bright, but...
The Familiar and Strange
in Remaining Native
and Becoming an Anthropologist:
Celebrating Dr. Beatrice Medicine's
Contributions to Anthropology.
Today we're going to have a very informal
discussion-based
remembrance of Bea Medicine,
and it will be moderated by
myself and my colleague here,
and I suppose I should introduce myself.
My name is Richard Meyers.
I am an Oglala Lakota from
Pine Ridge Reservation.
I teach at South Dakota State University
up on the other side of the
state on the eastern part
of South Dakota, and...
the memories of Bea are
not as long or as...
in a sense, the inspiration for a lot
of anthropological work did come from her,
but I think our panelists
will be providing
a lot more information.
I have my colleague here, and
both of us will proceed to
play back and forth with
some questions and prompts
in addition to simply having conversations
with our panelists.
- Well, thanks, Richie.
I'm David Posthumus.
I am non-native.
I teach at the University of South Dakota
in anthropology and
Native American studies.
I work with the Lakota people
at Pine Ridge Reservation,
and I'm interested in all things Lakota,
basically culture, history, language,
and I'm really honored
to have been invited
to participate in this session.
I think that this kind of
dialogue is incredibly important,
and so thank you so much to
Scott and Richie and Jason
for organizing this,
and I hope that we all
get a lot out of it, so thanks.
- Now that you know who the two of us are,
we figured we would begin things off
with some words from
Dr. JoAllyn Archambault
who, in Lakota culture,
as opposed to just simply
the broad blanket notion
of being an American Indian,
there are still tribally
specific identities,
and that is one of the characteristics
of what Bea brought to the
table as a language speaker
and as a woman from
Standing Rock Reservation.
Dr. Archambault had a
tremendous impact upon my life
as a mentor in many ways
when I was finishing my research.
But, in addition to that,
she was Bea's Hunka daughter,
and that is a ceremony that still exists
and is very strong and
still persists today.
It is one where you adopt a relative,
the making of a relative, and in that way
Bea had made Dr. Archambault her daughter.
It's a thing that isn't
just the Kevin Costner
Dances with Wolves, you're
now a member of our tribe,
or Barack Obama's now
Crow, we need your money.
In a traditional way, there are protocols
and ceremonial things that have to happen
to be done in the right way.
Those things are still in place,
and they consist for Lakota people
of doing that at Sun Dance
as well as furthering an
obligation to your relative.
And that being said, I guess
we're gonna kick things off
with some words from JoAllyn,
and we'll begin everything from there.
- Okay, I'm JoAllyn Archambault.
I'm enrolled at the
Standing Rock Reservation.
Standing Rock has a
number of different bands
of Lakota people, and I'm a member of the
Huntawana band which
most people in English
refer to as Yankton or Yanktonai.
My mother's Creek but
I'm not enrolled there
and I was raised to be a Lakota.
So I always forget that I'm part Creek.
I've known Bea for 50 years.
I first met her when I
was probably about 23, 24
and there was some
Indian something or other
happening on the UC Davis campus.
And I went up there and I
didn't really know she was
going to be there.
And she was there was
another adult Indian female
friend of hers and so I was just
kind of tagging along and
I didn't know until much
later that she hated
when people tagged along
after her, so I was doing
all the wrong things.
But she tolerated me because I was
from Standing Rock.
So many years passed and I
go through graduate school,
and I didn't see her again for
another five to seven years.
And slowly over time,
I became friendly with her.
And Bea became friendly with me.
And then she started
talking to me, telling me
things about her family.
And then she moved, this
is after she retired,
and she moved to a little hut house
up at Standing Rock.
And there it was in her own community,
and there she decided
she was going to live
until she died.
And that's exactly what happened.
And she was very happy
in her little two bedroom
hut house, and she hired a young boy
in the neighbourhood to cut the grass,
'cause she couldn't do that.
And she had an eye problem,
molecular degeneration,
and they didn't have the surgery back then
because this is at least 20 years ago.
But she found a doctor
from India somewhere
in the midwest and he was an experimenter
with the surgery and so
he experimented on her,
and she could see again enough to read
and she had a little
computer with great big type.
And so she would type out her articles
'cause she was always getting
asked to submit things.
And she would type out her
articles and I watched her
and all these big letters
went across the screen
and I thought oh my god,
how can you do that?
But she managed.
And since she was in her own community
on the reservation of
course she knew everybody.
She knew their bloodlines,
she knew who was related
to who, and at that point
that little community
was fairly poor, there
was three, no four rows
of hut houses and then other people lived
in ramshackle housing,
which is pretty poor
as most of you know.
But she was safe.
Nobody bothered her.
And when she first got there she decided
that she would participate
in the women's society
that was in that locality.
And so she did.
And she very quickly got
very disappointed with them
because she said all
they want is more money.
They don't want to do anything for it.
They just want more money.
So she stopped participating
in the women's society
and instead she got very
involved in the drive
to build a new school building.
And the old school
building had to be at least
50 to 70 years old.
It wasn't absolutely derelict,
but any school building
that's 50 years old is going
to have a lot of elements
that shouldn't be there.
And so there was a small
committee and Bea was doing
all of the writing because
nobody else on the committee
could really write.
And she was writing the proposals.
And she and other
committee members met with
the state officials and
the federal officials
and all together they got
several million dollars.
And then they got support from the tribe
and more support from
the state, and there was
enough to make a brand
new school, grades one
through eight, and even
some high school students,
and it was brand new with new furniture,
a new auditorium with hardwood floors
so that they could play basketball in it,
and basketball is a big deal up there.
And she was very, very happy.
That was the last thing she said to me
that she wanted to do and she was able
to help in doing it and
she felt very content.
She didn't write very
much in the old days,
in the last days, and she
was writing poetry actually.
For the most part.
And she had a couple of little boxes
that she said were her field notes
and when she showed them
to me they were hardly
field notes so I don't know
where her field notes went.
There was a bit of, after she died,
there was just a bit of
chaos, so things disappeared.
But, you know.
She had always had health problems
with iron deficiency, she'd had that since
she was very young.
And she was always taking vitamins
to supplement her iron
deficiency, and one of the
problems with that kind of
condition is that it creates
clots, very hard clots in your...
I don't know what
you call it, yeah, in the digestive system
and then it goes into...
colon, it goes into the colon.
And she knew the symptoms, and she had had
to go to a local hospital
several times before
and they cleaned her out
and the big hard lump
was gone.
And this time I think she waited too long.
And she called the ambulance
herself and the ambulance came
and picked her up and took
her to the local hospital.
In the local farming
town, and they x-rayed her
and they say that she had
a great big lump or two
in her colon and they didn't
have sufficient quality
doctors there to operate
on her so they sent her
not by air ambulance but by
just an old fashioned
ambulance and it takes about three hours
to get from that community up to Bismarck.
And Bismarck is the closest big hospital.
And that's where she
went and where she died.
But before that as long as
Bea was in good physical
condition she loved going to pow wows.
Once a colleague of her and
her had decided to write
a great big opus on intertribal pow wows
and she spent the entire
summer, the two of them,
in a decent car going from
big pow wow to the next,
so they were at Crow
and you know, they were
every place.
And the two of them would ask questions
about well, who organizes
this because big pow wows
usually take months in
advance to organize things.
And she would find out who organized it,
da-da-da-da, and she
told me later she loved
that summer because never
before had she been able
to go to as many pow wows
as she could that summer
and ask questions about
things she really didn't know.
And found it so pleasing
a summer that she wanted
to schedule more summers doing that.
And of course that never happened either.
And she published a little
bit of that literature
but not terribly much,
it was largely written by
her colleague.
And Bea lived the true Lakota
old fashioned lifestyle.
As much as is practiced nowadays.
And one time she had a little giveaway
and a little feast at the
local pow wow grounds,
and I went up to help
and I brought things for
the little giveaway and
she was doing the breakfast
meal and I didn't ask
why are you doing the breakfast meal?
I didn't dare ask but
later on I figured out
that at breakfast time
there really aren't that
many people in the stands
and you have to feed
everybody who's there.
And the local people basically,
they feed themselves
breakfast in their own houses,
so there weren't many
people to feed and on
her limited income that was important.
So we made breakfast in her house
and then we carried it
over as fast as we could
so it stayed warm and
then we passed it out
to everybody who was in the
stands for the first event
of the annual pow wow.
And then she had some
stuff that she gathered
in a blanket, pots,
things that Indian people
would like and she had them
spread out on the ground
and then we carried
them around and we just
passed them out to anybody.
And there was some local white people,
there was a white couple
there, they looked to me
to be a farming couple.
And they appreciated, I think
I gave them a big coffee pot.
And they loved the
coffee pot because it was
one of those old fashioned coffee pots
and rural people like
those kids of things.
And then she was very happy,
she had done her thing
that summer and she was
getting on in years.
And so she knew that, she
really couldn't do a lot
for herself, she was
hiring a local Indian guy
who was also a relative
and she was hiring him
to do things that she couldn't do herself
and then I built her a
whole series of shelves
in her garage because she
didn't have enough storage
space in the little house, and that meant
she could store everything in her garage.
And of course she always
locked her garage so it was
never broken into.
And then she just started going down.
Even though she could read...
I could tell it wasn't going
to be that much longer.
And I spent as much
time as I could up there
although I didn't have money
to travel and therefore
I couldn't spent that much money on travel
but I went and...
then the day she died I couldn't be there.
She knew something was
wrong with her colon
and it was the same old
thing, that clot that was
brought on by the medicine she was taking.
And she ended up in the
big hospital in Mobridge.
And that was that.
So her son was given custody of her body.
He took the lock of hair
from the top of her head
so that he could do the
spirit release ceremony
which is when, in the old
tradition this is one of
the major ceremonies, hardly
anybody does it anymore.
But in the old tradition
you cut a lock of hair
from the swirl at the top of your head,
you know when your hair
grows around like that,
and you cut a lock of
that hair and you put it
in a nice little bundle and
you keep it in the house.
And you feed it, you talk to it,
it's just like a real person.
And so I did that for six months.
And when I went to Chicago
I always took her with me.
She loved to travel.
And sometimes I thought
god, if a car drove slowly
by her house she would jump in and go
wherever they wanted to go.
I mean, she really loved to travel.
And so I kept her in the rental
house that I was living in
and I fed her three times
a day and I talked to her
all the time and when I
had errands in Milwaukee
I took her with me because
she just loved driving
around and I talked to
her and I know she had
a good time.
And then at very end, at six months,
it was early summer by that
time and Arthur Yagemeout
was having a sun dance camp.
And Arthur has learned how to do a whole
bunch of ceremonies.
So I went to his camp and they had set up
a little teepee for me, and her bundle was
put on a tripod, you
know how in the old days,
a warrior's shield and his medicine bundle
if he had a medicine bundle
would be put on the tripod
which would be put
outside and then the wife
had the responsibility
of shifting the bundle
so it was always in the sunshine.
And so Arthur had made a little bundle,
I mean a tripod, for her little bundle.
And a whole bunch of sage, and so I was
burning sage all night
long and talking to her.
And then the next day they
brought out the bundle
and the little tripod and they
put it outside the teepee.
And then Arthur did the
spirit release ceremony.
And at the end of that
ceremony they open up
the bundle and the hair, the little lock
of hair is still there but
very often the wind will
carry that hair away and I
knew that was gonna happen.
What I did not expect
was that once that bundle
was open, it was like a little
light, like a real small
light but it was bright, you
could see it in the sunshine,
and it rose up and it
went into the horizon.
So all of that stuff is real.
And I was sobbing at that
point 'cause I didn't
want her to go away, but
that was the right thing
to do.
So that was Bea.
Lots of other people
have personal reminisces
of her when she was
teaching in California,
she was teaching in
South Dakota, her trips
to Germany, she loved to
travel overseas and one
time there was an Indian,
well they did pow wows.
You know how hobbyists are
a big thing in Germany.
And also in, I think she
was in Czechoslovakia
they even had hobbyists
in Czechoslovakia which
surprised me.
And they would pay her plane ticket over
and she would go
travelling around with them
and they treated her very
nicely, and because German
hobbyists have learned how
to do old time Indian stuff
they would give her
beaded stuff and porcupine
quill stuff and she came
home with all of these
little beaded bags and
(mumbles) and you know,
little pins, and she loved
it because they treated her
so well.
So that's the history of
Bea that I know about.
So, not very many people know about that.
So I was really sad to see her go,
and I was really really
sad when her bundle was
opened up and I could see the little light
go away.
Went to the west which is
where it's supposed to go.
So there are many other
stories about Bea I'm sure.
Okay.
- Well thank you so much JoAllyn,
for sharing those
beautiful memories with us.
Now I think George Abrams has a couple
of things to say about Bea as well.
- My name is George Abrams,
I'm an enrolled member
of the Seneca nation in New York State.
I don't quite recall the
first time that I met Bea
but it must have been some
time in the mid sixties.
I attended my first
triple A meeting in '64
I believe and I don't know
as I met her at that
point but it was some time
in the mid sixties.
Perhaps it was at the triple A meetings
in Toronto or Chicago, I
don't really remember either
but in those days there
were very few Indian
recognized Indian
anthropologists at the meetings.
There was Al Ortiz, Ed Doger, Bea,
and then there was me.
(laughing)
Any rate, at least it seemed that way
because we sort of networked at some point
or another.
It seems as thought I have known Bea
forever, certainly I have heard of her
before actually meeting her.
Back in those days there
only these few identifiable
Indians at the meetings in the first place
and it was unusual in
the fact that I was going
into anthropology during that period.
Later we began to hang out together
at the annual meetings
and back in those days
when the triple A sponsored
a Saturday night dance
she was my dancing partner even after her
arthritis in her knee became a problem,
and our dinners also together were...
with JoAllyn Archambault
as a matter of fact
and others who are
always occasions to look
forward to.
JoAllyn and I incidentally
as an aside have known
each other literally
since we were children.
Any rate, Bea had her
wide ranging interests
as reflected in her bibliography
of her published works.
Bea's published work
began in 1968 with four
articles on the topics of
northern plains pow wows
ceremonialism, stoney magic
and the Dakota giveaway.
The following year she
published an additional
four publications, her
extensive bibliography
she gave to me at one point
and I have shared that
with JoAllyn.
It was lost for a while
in my personal papers
because of many moves.
Ultimately Bea's
publications numbered some 54
up to 1989 and there were
more after that however.
I may have missed some since she continued
her research interests
well past her retirement
in August 1988.
Unfortunately Bea appears to have disposed
of most of her personal papers
following her retirement.
Her poetry and other aspects
of her interests have
not surfaced.
Some years ago Bea's
son Ted gave a reading
of her poetry.
Her initial BS degree was in education
and art history,
at the end of which, at
the World War II in 1954
in sociology and anthropology
from Michigan State University
and was awarded her PhD in
cultural anthropology from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bea's intellectual
curiosity was evident from
her early childhood since her family home
on the Standing Rock
reservation did not have
electricity, Bea, a constant
reader, read by moonlight
sitting on the stoop in front of her home.
Certainly her quest for
formal education is evidenced
in her tenacity,
intellectual curiosity and perseverance
in the face of many obstacles.
Her family was always
supportive of her educational
goals and stressed that
she always remain Lakota.
She became a true...
sorry.
Warrior woman.
(sniffling)
Her brother Earl also
graduated from Harvard.
Bea was always interested in students,
and provided her time and assistance
in advancing their careers.
Her academic involvement
with students as advisor,
student organizations and
educational committees always
always provided valuable direction
in achieving their educational goals.
I believed that her role
as advocate for students
in part derived from the fact
that her faith in academia
as student and faculty
was not always the best route for her.
Bea was always interested in organizing
a formal group of Indian anthropologists
within the triple A.
Initially in the early
1970's social groups met
in Bea's hotel room where discussions
a possibility began to take form.
Her network of other
anthropologists both Indian
and non-Indian including Tony began
to be...
to enlist their support.
Eventually the association
of Indigenous anthropologists
was formally recognized by the triple A.
On Bea's retirement
she returned to Wakpala
and became involved in community service
like many educated middle class Indians
returning to their various
reservations, Bea was
somewhat marginalized.
Nevertheless, Bea served
on the school board
of the Wakpala school
district and other...
capacities, making a continued
contribution to her reservation community.
One of her greatest achievements
was being designated
sacred pipe woman at Sitting
Bull's camp sun dance
in 1977.
Bea died during emergency
surgery in Bismark,
North Dakota at the age of 82
on September 19, 2006.
- Thank you George.
I think a few things that
are worthy of mentioning
and necessary to mention
are that the panel today is
sponsored by the Association
of Indigenous Anthropologists
which obviously is important
and somewhat of an inspired
group that there are members
here on the panel who
are part of that as well
as the inspiration for its
kind of formal recognition
in genesis do originate and hail from Bea.
There is an interesting
aspect to the title
of probably her most well-known book
so to speak that was a
compilation of her writings
which is similar to the
title of the panel but it was
learning to be an anthropologist
and remain Native.
And that idea of being an
anthropologist and being
at a huge anthropology
conference, it's a strange
predicament to find
yourself in if you come from
a different language
background and a different
tribal sense where writing
papers, analyzing people's
words and formally being
somewhat academically
oriented has nothing
to do with who you are
as a native person and
what community you live in
and what (mumbles) you're
from and all of your
cousins and uncles and
aunties, those are what
define you at a certain level.
As that erodes to nuclear family models
that's an interesting process to witness
that I would say is somewhat sad.
But nonetheless it happens in many cases
but today's panel is
somewhat of a remembrance
to acknowledge the idea of
the continuity that still
exists and the persistence
of Native identity
has many different guises,
that idea of the impact
of someone as profound
as Bea to the discipline
of anthropology which in American society
was obviously built off of
the backs of Native people
and Native tribal cultures.
So the notion of being an
Indian and then somewhat
stepping out of that to analyze it,
that's an interesting
predicament and from the times
of when she was going through school
and her experience and
that textual example
to now and today and the impact,
that is the panel in essence.
With that said I guess we're
going to go down the line
and it's just easiest to go, we'll start
from left and go to right
and the panellists can give
a word or two about
themselves, who they are.
And just introduce yourselves.
- Thank you, Richie.
Hello, my name is Jessica Blanchard.
I am faculty at the University of Oklahoma
in the department of anthropology.
I am a non-native anthropologist
and as such I'm honored
to be here on this panel
with these people and
hearing these great stories.
And because of that
position and being invited
to sit on this panel I started
thinking and re-reading
Bea Medicine's work in
sort of a different way
and one of the things that
happened when I did that
and I'll just say a few
words and then pass it on,
was that she wrote something
that was pretty profound
in my re-reading and that was
that being an anthropologist
has been my undoing and
my rebirth in a very
personal way, and I think
all of us can probably
relate to that in one way or another.
And this statement
encouraged me to think about
anthropology as both a
personal and a professional
endeavour which it is I'm sure
for all of us at some level,
and how this process of doing
anthropology can at once
undo and regenerate us over and over again
over time.
We hope that the process
of doing anthropology
becomes better over time
as we live and reflect
on some of the same complicated
dualities that shape
so much of Medicine's work whether it is
woman and anthropologist, or
native and anthropologist,
insider and outsider and
so many other dualities
that she wrote and spoke about.
The most basic duality
that perhaps we can all
relate to here is the tendency
as Medicine herself said,
for anthropology as I said
to undo and to redo us
over time.
The things that Medicine
wrote and spoke about during
her career that speak most
to me now are the dynamics
of native and non-native
collaborations, native perspectives
of and particularly about
anthropology, challenging
the position and ease with
which non-natives such
as myself have written
and spoken authoritatively
about native peoples and
their quote unquote issues
and problems over time, that
was something that Medicine
that troubled her was
this idea of Native people
always having quote issues.
And the potential to ask
more meaningful questions
through the lens of anthropology.
And those areas of
reflection that she urged
the discipline to think
about for 30, 40 years
have become as much
personal endeavours for me
as much as they are professional.
Particularly as my own
positionality in relation to the
Native communities with whom I've worked
over the years, continues to change.
Medicine said that the
segmentation of dual lives
was a survival strategy
for her and as my own
dualities have become
muddled from time to time,
especially that of insider and outsider,
I look forward to hearing
here about how others
view the necessity of
segmentation for separating
these dual lives.
Or perhaps how your
unique dualities have come
to compliment each other
and foster a more powerful
and meaningful practice in anthropology.
So I look forward to hearing
the conversations today.
Thank you very much.
- Hello.
I'm Sean Gantt.
I am of Choctaw decent but
I grew up in North Carolina.
And so I have some
interesting kind of history
in terms of coming to my own understanding
of my own identity.
I think that's partly what
drew me towards anthropology
actually to begin with,
as somebody growing up in
the Charlotte area and
trying to figure out
how I fit in to the larger Choctaw world.
And that's part what led
to my dissertation research
in Mississippi with the
Mississippi Choctaw as well.
And although I really didn't have a chance
to know Dr. Medicine really
well, I am really honored
to be here and to hear the
stories from those of you
who knew her more intimately.
I certainly am humbled to
reap the benefits of all
the work that many of you on the panel
as well as her did to set up
the section that we have now
and the opportunities that
we find ourselves having
within the triple A so I think hopefully
this will be an interesting conversation,
I look to see how it goes.
- Hello, I'm Valerie Lambert.
I'm enrolled in the Choctaw
nation and I'm going
to talk about three dimensions of how Bea
significantly impacted my life.
The first one I'm going to
talk about is mentoring.
This was so important to
her and she really took us
young anthropologists when
I was young (laughing)
I entered anthropology in the 1980's
and shortly thereafter
I met Bea and she took
me under her wing and
I really do not think
that I would have stayed in
anthropology had it not been
for Bea and JoAllyn.
So I'm going to talk a little
bit about that and then
talk about her impact on my writing
how I chose to and still
choose to write about Indians.
And then finally I want
to talk about the really
significant importance
she placed on applied
anthropology and how that
impacted me because there's
so much value in
anthropology that's placed on
publishing and I like
Scott, how you pointed
that out in the abstract
because that was, she made sure
that we prioritized applied
work and just didn't
sort of succumb to sort
of a larger imperative
to put publishing above all else.
So with the mentoring,
I grew up in Oklahoma
in the 1960's and 1970's
and I was introduced
to anthropology there in Oklahoma.
The first thing that I
noticed as a young child
and then as a teenager is
that anthropologists had
by and large abandoned
Oklahoma and particularly
eastern Oklahoma because
they felt that we were
not authentic, that we
were not real Indians.
And so that was a little bit confusing
and disturbing to me.
The second thing I found
before I left Oklahoma to
go to school is, to
college, is that my father
befriended an anthropologist
by the name of
Mars Opler, who did research among Indians
particularly in the southwest
but also among the Creeks.
And Mars Opler ended up,
my father would often
do this, bring people home
and then we'd feed them
and they'd stay for a while
and so this actually happened
quite a bit with Mars Opler
and it really struck me
because he was the only
non-Indian I had ever
encountered who had positive things to say
about American Indians.
The only one.
He actually thought
positively about Indians.
And at the time non-Indians,
even my own mother
who is a non-Indian, she's
from nearby Missouri,
non-Indian people felt
perfectly comfortable airing
negative views about
American Indians even right
there with Indian people in
the room right next to them
and it was very commonplace
at the time in Oklahoma
and elsewhere for teachers
and other authority figures
to blame a lateness to
school or a failure on a test
or forgotten lunch money
or any kind of failures
on the Indian blood of children.
And this wasn't really something that,
I mean, this was so
widespread and very disturbing
so it really struck me that
they first anthropologist
I met had a positive
view of American Indians.
He actually thought it was
a good thing to be an Indian
and I just really marvelled
at that and when I went off
to college in the northeast,
then I enrolled in
an anthropology course
because I thought oh, well
here's a place where
non-Indians think positively
about Indians.
But then I encountered
and was deeply disturbed
to encounter these so-called
positive stereotypes
about Indians that romanticized
Indians that removed
us from history, so these sort of timeless
portrayals of Indians
and sort of crowned us
as the consummate environmentalists
and spiritualists and this
was all framed as positive.
So it was very confusing
for me to try to assimilate
and come to terms with
these sort of conflicting
and very disturbing sets of
understandings of Indians
and certainly Bea called
anthropologists Indians
image makers.
And when I met Bea I was so, and JoAllyn,
I was so struck by how
strong their faith was
and in JoAllyn's case still
is, how strong the faith
is in anthropology.
Bea spent much of her
life trying to salvage
the reputation of
anthropology among Indians
and this kept me in anthropology
because I thought well, if
they can keep going despite
all of this stuff that's out there
then maybe there is really
something in anthropology
that is a value to me as an Indian.
Another thing that I found
very important is that Bea
and JoAllyn who are
always joined at the hip,
two strong women, strong
Indian women who were
successful, and that
had a huge impact on me.
I thought wow, you know,
well, this inspires me.
Maybe, these are my role models,
maybe I should stay stay in
anthropology, maybe I could,
too, be successful.
And the mentoring that she did,
going out of her way to try to encourage
young Indians and to
encourage young Indians
in anthropology and in every
endeavour was so important
to her I know and it was
certainly the inspiration for
me setting up with others
a mentoring program
that the association of
Indigenous anthropologist has
and it's been really
important for us to continue
that legacy of Bea's of
mentoring young Indian people
into anthropology
focusing on those who are
in sort of doctoral programs particularly
and then in the assistant professor phase.
And I just have a few other
things, I want to talk
about how she, the model she provided for
representing Indians, she was not
afraid to be critical
of non-Indian representations of Indians.
She talked about how
anthropological accounts
lacked sufficient fullness,
subtlety and complexity.
She talked about how
there existed too many
oversimplified depictions
which indicated a lack
of respect for Indians and the dignity,
and lack of respect for the
dignity and humanity of Indians.
So Bea was not someone who,
you know, she spoke out
against this and that
was very helpful for me
in affirming my understanding
of these anthropological
representations.
She described much research
about Indians as research
that quote caricatures
Indians and does so in a very
unflattering way, that's
also a quote from her.
And then I appreciated
that she pointed out that
one thing that compounds the problem
is the fact that non-Indian
anthropologists quote
are sometimes inclined
to think that they know
more about Indians than the
Indians themselves know.
End quote.
She described the many different rules,
conventions, conditions
and innovations that helped
construct contemporary
Lakota social roles,
particularly gender
roles while attending to
as she put it, the critical
quote interplay of images,
perceptions, beliefs and
result in actions, end quote,
that also informed Lakota choices.
And at every pass she
resisted the flattening
and distortion of Indian realities.
And pointed out that there was
an important Sioux value
of integrity that informed
and focused her convictions
and this was the imperative
to tell the truth about
our lives even when
what others and particular
non-Indian anthropologists
often want us to do is
to exoticize Indians.
So this was very,
incredibly formative to me
to have that role model,
how to negotiate non-Indian
images of Indians and
writings about Indians
and then the way forward, the solution.
And then the last thing,
I've spoken for too long
but just her focus on
applied anthropology,
how she would go out of her way
to take on things that would not advance
her career in anthropology,
so she made sure that
helping Indian people
responding to the numerous
requests that she received,
testifying in court
on cases including big court cases,
all the countless hours she put into
that kind of work
has had a huge impact on
me when I decided where to
put my time in anthropology.
I often think about where
she chose to put her
attention and time and
effort and how that...
shouldn't be entirely
about publishing which
is just such an important message for me.
And I guess I'll end
there but it's really sad
but very gratifying to be
here and I really appreciate
Scott and Richie and
you also, the organizers
of this panel because it is such,
and triple A too for recording
this so that this legacy
can be documented and can continue because
who knows how many young
Indian anthropologists
there will be 100 years
from now who can go back
and gain inspiration from Bea.
- Hello, my name is Christina Leza.
I am Yomay, more popularly known as Yaqui
and also Chicana.
And I'm an assistant
professor at Colorado College
within the department
of anthropology there.
My subfield within anthropology
is linguistic anthropology
and the way I came to be a
linguistic anthropologist
was with my...
my ongoing and very strong love for story
and trying to understand
who we are as a people
through story and through language.
I started off an English
major because that seemed
to be the field of study when
I became a college student
where I could explore that interest
and more and more as I
began to explore a story
as a way of understanding
ourselves and understanding
other people, looking
at Yomay stories and how
that created a certain
world for Yomay people
and the ways in which that
connected to the thought
worlds of other peoples,
I was told as I was moving
into graduate study that that was the work
of linguistic anthropology.
So that's where I ended
up and now I find myself
an anthropologist and at the
time I didn't really know
what that meant because
I didn't really know
what anthropology was but
then I was trained then
in this field and I think as we all know,
it is a field of study with a
very troubled colonial history
and a very troubled history
in terms of as we've all
been talking about, it's
representations of Native thought,
Native peoples, and so I do, I think
probably like any Native
scholar, live with this sort
of double consciousness and
that's not to say that I
don't see myself as an
anthropologist because I do
and I see it especially when
I communicate with people
from other fields of study.
I find myself thinking and
talking in very anthropological
terms and I can't extricate
my identity as a Native person
from my identity an an anthropologist.
But I do find myself constantly
shifting back and forth
and having to negotiate and make decisions
and I think this is something
that every Native scholar
has to do and certainly
something that every
Native anthropologist has
to, sort of negotiating
the ways in which we see
ourselves and represent
ourselves as Native people,
but also communicate
that in an anthropological
voice that other
anthropologists can understand.
And one of the things,
one of many things that
I admired about Bea
Medicine was with the grace
with which she handled
that double consciousness
and shifting between that
voice of I am an anthropologist
talking about Native people
but then also being able
to very gracefully shift into
that I voice of I am a Lakota
woman and being able to talk about that
in a way that was
understandable to both Native
people who identified with
her from a more personal
life experience perspective
and then also that enabled
those outside of that
perspective to also connect
with her voice as well.
And so that's something
that I certainly strive for
in my own work, I find
myself grappling with it
always, how much can I reveal about myself
as a Native woman when I
am trying to present myself
as a social scientist.
And how much is it necessary
for me to sometimes
because I bare great
responsibility to represent
that voice to make it clear
that I am not just talking
in general terms as an anthropologist,
I am talking as a Native person.
So that's something that
I do appreciate about
Bea Medicine's work and
something that I strive
for as an ideal.
Also something that I
very much appreciated
about Medicine's work is her
thoughtfulness with which
she thought about the way
that we make change.
I think she put a lot of faith.
It wasn't blind faith, it
was a very calculated faith
but she put a lot of faith in anthropology
as a field of study that not
only had great responsibility
to decolonize itself but
also had the potential
for that, that because
of our strongest features
in terms of our desire to really
understand other cultures,
that we did have the
ability to look beyond
our own worldviews in
order to really change
our discipline and better represent Native
peoples and also to undo
the damage that we've
done as a discipline.
And I think that that's something that
we need to remember, that we have a lot
of potential as a
discipline and I think that
was something that she worked her whole
life to remind other anthropologists of,
other Native anthropologists
in particular.
And also in terms of making change,
something that I
appreciated in talking about
the history of Native rights
movement, the position
that we now find
ourselves in as being able
to actively participate
in the ivory tower culture
and be able to potential make change
within that culture, is that social
movement and change needs to happen
in its own time and in
certain circumstances
that it's an ongoing process.
That we need to be deliberate and careful,
we need to establish a
foundation through the types
of relationships that we build with people
within our own communities, but then also
outside of those communities, that you can
push for change right away but that no one
is necessarily going to respond to that.
I remember one work where Bea talks about
the first occupation of Alcatraz.
It was three Native activists
sitting by themselves
but no one cared what they were doing
because it just wasn't
the right time and so it
had absolutely no effect
and we just have to
remember that so sometimes we may feel
like we just have to charge
in there and demand change
but it's not going to have
the effect that we want it
to have because we haven't
built that foundation
for change yet through
thoughtful and deliberate
types of communications
and relationship building.
So that's something I
also really admire about
Bea Medicine that I also
strive for in my own work.
And I hope that we have
some time to perhaps touch
on some of those things
in our conversation.
- Good afternoon everybody, welcome.
Thank you for being here.
My name is Christopher Basaldu.
And I'm currently an
assistant professor in
Native American studies at
the University of Oklahoma.
And I did not know Dr. Medicine personally
but she certainly was a very
influential in my thought
in anthropology and
very much inspirational.
And also sort of through reading her work
I can turn to her as a guide, as one of my
sort of intellectual forbearers to sort of
keep me going in academia
and in anthropology.
I'm sort of a double,
triple, quadruple outsider
sometimes, that's how I feel.
I'm Chicano, Mexican American, came from
the border of Texas and Mexico.
Lower economic class, working class.
So the whole world of higher education,
you know, my parents
always said well you're
going to go to college
but it's, they had gone to
community college and local college.
So that was always a part of what to do.
As for why, who can tell you why?
It's just what you're
supposed to do to fit into
American society.
I'm also gay, I'm queer,
and that made my life
at some points, hell.
And thinking that college might have been
a refuge from that pain was wrong.
That was something that
I learned very quickly
that being poor, going
to college doesn't help.
Being queer doesn't help.
Being some color other
than the dominant color
doesn't help.
So that leaves multiple levels
of feeling like an outsider
that I needed to overcome.
And when I got to college I thought well
what is it that I really like and enjoy?
And so I studied religion.
You can study religion here, I don't have
to become a physician or a lawyer, okay.
This will be fun.
And went to an elite
institution on the east coast
and there was nothing for
studying Native American anything
but we did have a guest lecturer once.
Her name was Ines Talamantez
from the University of
California Santa Barbara
who was inspirational and
offered introduction to
Native American religious traditions.
And it's like this is wonderful.
And she was my first
mentor in this direction
because she was the first
person that ever told me
or believed that I could possibly go on
to be a professor.
At that time in college
I couldn't even dream
about that, it's like no,
you have to be a physician,
doctor or lawyer, that sort of thing.
And so with that, a fire was lit inside me
that had not been lit before.
Long story short, go on to get a master's
in American Indian studies
at the University of Arizona
and that was first when
I came into contact with
Doctor Beatrice Medicine's work.
And it was how inspirational,
this is wonderful work
that she can navigate
between all of the different
communities that she's committed to,
that's she built
relationships with, that she
maintains relationships with her people.
And I thought this is wonderful.
But other than that I really don't like
anthropology and then
I tried to go on to get
higher degrees in religion
because that's where I wanted
to go and I was told
well, you weren't accepted
to the program because
you know, if you're going
to study Native religion
that's anthropology,
that's not religion or religious studies.
Sure enough I applied to anthropology
and I got in and I thought, how?
How did I get in?
So I've had this tension with anthropology
this whole time because it was never where
I thought I wanted to
be in the first place.
But it was the only place
that would take me in.
So again, the theme of
outsider just kept going on.
So continuing to read
Doctor Medicine's work
and incorporating it into
my own thinking and research
kept me more sane than anthropology would
have wanted me to be (laughing)
as a graduate student or working on a PhD
in anthropology.
And what I really appreciated
her work the most about
is her focus and importance
on relationships.
I was sick and tired at
looking at identity from
a notion even through social theory
that identity had anything
to do with categories
and labels and that who
we are fundamentally
is exactly who we are related to.
And that's part of Doctor Medicine's work
about identify as well it
it's not just your label,
it's not who you think you are, it is
who you are related to.
Who are your people?
And that allowed me to think about
social theory, think about
anthropology from this
perspective that what if
we can radically transform
the social theory that we're
trying to use in anthropology
away from categories, away from binaries,
and actually focus on
that identity is that
relationship which is
shared in between us.
And that brings me to the second thing
about Doctor Medicine's work
and how important it was
to me is all of those
relationships will live through
respect and live through reciprocity.
And it was that, coupled
with other thinkers
that I contacted in
anthropology to use in my own
thinking and in my own
work, Robert K. Thomas,
(mumbles), Tom Holm, working with Emercey
(mumbles) at the University
of Arizona as well,
that putting all of
that together, it's like
I could continue, I could
actually make myself
finish a dissertation
because I was going to take
all of those elders and look at okay,
let's transform social theory
to look even more Indigenous
by focusing on relationships and locate
our questions there and
not try to fight over
categories or fight over
who gets to define them.
And so I am extraordinarily grateful
that I can attend them,
extraordinarily grateful
that I can be included
on this stage and I'm
very honored and grateful
that I was invited to
at least say a few words.
Thank you.
- Thank you everyone.
What a great group we have up here.
So the organizers have
prepared a few questions.
So I'm going to start
with one and hopefully
we'll just get some
organic conversation going.
I wanted to preface
that by talking a little
bit about Doctor Medicine
and her special relationship
with Ella Deloria, the
Yankton ethnographer
and linguist.
They had a very special relationship,
both lived in Vermillion, South Dakota
in the late 1960's and early 1970's before
Ella Delorea's death in 1971.
And they were related, it was Aunt Ella,
that's how Bea would refer to Ella
and I think in many ways
Ella was a model for Bea
in terms of being a Native
female anthropologist.
And so at some point in,
I think it's in Bea's
article on Ella Delorea
and the (mumbles) voice,
Doctor Medicine says, a
lot of scholars have made
a career basically off of
Ella Delorea's manuscripts
and field notes and her
incredible linguistic data,
she was a very prolific
scholar in her own right.
But anyways so this brings
up kind of a broader question
and all these questions
are related to Bea's work
and Bea's writing.
So the question is has
there been a problem
in anthropology with
the acknowledgement of
co-authors in the
production of ethnography.
So if anyone would like to sort of try
that one out.
- To tell you the truth I've never even
thought about that.
(laughing)
- Okay.
Next question.
- I'll talk about it a little bit.
Yes, I think there is a problem with,
or there has been historically a problem
with the acknowledgement of co-authors.
I think that there
certainly has been a lot
of discussion within
anthropology about the importance
of collaboration and
collaborative ethnography but
I still feel that there are
certain institutional limits
on the way in which we
can go about working
with our, that the people that do inform
our work.
I don't think that
recognition always has to come
in the form of co-publication
but if that's something
that we strive for being away
from our home communities
or being away from whatever
Native community we're
working with makes it very
difficult to maintain working
communication I think.
It's very difficult to, I
mean there are all sorts of
technologies now that enable us certainly
to communicate better but
there's something about
face to face interaction
that is really significant,
important for true collaboration.
I think for a lot of us when we, we can be
in the field and we do our work but then
when we go back to our
institutions and sort
of get wrapped up in that world again
it becomes very, very
difficult for us to, even with
the best efforts to really
work on the continued
collaborations that are
necessary in order to produce
co-authored work but I
do believe that there
is more attention
however, to acknowledging
the contributions so if we do now have
field notes that have been
provided we are better
at least at referencing
that and acknowledging that.
But I think in terms of co-authorship,
I think that just basically
the way that institutions
are structured, institutional
life, the way that
we have to do our work
within institutions makes
it very, very difficult
to always shoot for that
as something that will
happen regularly in our work.
- I would agree absolutely
that there are institutional
barriers to this and yes
there has been a problem
with this historically,
and some of it does go back
to these institutional
barriers and one of the things
that Doctor Medicine said
about working with Native
collaborators as anthropologists
is that Native people
really should have their
voices present in the research
design not at the end product,
just at the end product.
But from the research
design, that implies from the
beginning that they should
shape it, they should
inform the methodology,
they should be active in the
data collection every step,
every process of the research
process and in my own
experience in working with
Native collaborators
especially in terms of research
and working with research
agencies and funding
institutions is that
there are very discernible
institutional barriers.
So for example, over the past
few years I've been working
on a project funded by the
National Institutes of Health
who are very keen to
have the idea of a Native
collaborator, and yet
because of her quote lack of
credentials, was not
able to be listed as PI,
or co-PI or whatever
status sort of allows you
to have that sort of
authority of authorship.
And so from the very
beginning it really sort of
hampered our ability to
have a truly collaborative
research process simply
because the institutional
agency that was sort of
overseeing and dictating
how we spent our money and
how we utilized our time
didn't allow for that and
so there's been challenges
in that particular project
all the way through the
research process to ensure
that our Native collaborators
have the kind of voice and
the kind of impact on the
research design itself
that leads to productive
and useful and meaningful written products
to which they want to lay their claim to.
So, yes. (laughing)
- So, some of the questions,
the idea of giving
credit to where credit
is due, Scott Ketchum
had really been at the
forefront of really organizing
the panel and then we
all kind of chimed in
and the idea of questions,
we have some scripted
questions but we've
been trying to just see
where things are going in
terms of chronotopically.
The second question was
oddly enough what you were
just answering, Jessica,
but the idea of taking
that a little bit different
and perhaps moving
it in a different direction,
furthering the thought
process of being used as
an informant slash being
the Indian and being an
informant while not being
given credit to be the
analyst, you know, the part
of the academic canon and machine that we
have to jump into, it begs
the question tying back
to that, and I'll probably
pronounce the name wrong,
but that Rachel Dolezal
and other such stuff
where integrity as a
Lakota virtue and value,
the idea of being honest
and being an ally versus
becoming something, at
what point does somebody
cross the line from
just saying "hi, my name
"is Jessica and I research Native people,"
or "my name is David
and I work with Lakota
"culture as an anthropologist."
"I'm David and I'm
Cherokee because my great
"great great great..."
I'm being facetious but the
idea of what it was like
for Bea to go through
school, I wanted to know that
when I saw her and I cornered her in 2004
because as a graduate
student there was kind of a,
the being a token as a
minority across the board
in school is often difficult
but the idea of what is it
like when you're bombarded
at every grad student
conference with people
saying, when did you find out?
I said, what do you mean?
When did you find out?
And I said, what?
About your Nativeness? (laughing)
And I was like, what
do you mean about that?
Well I learned I've got ancestry.
And it was interesting because
it becomes an interesting
phenomenon that Bea referred
to as woodwork Indians
and I thought that that
was an interesting thing
and I gravitated towards
her book really looking
for guidance to deal with the kind of,
I think the word endemic seems
to fit in my brain right now
but this notion of dealing
with people always coming up
and obviously to be a
Lakota is to be connected
to that person, the idea of the corniness
but it's not corny if you
come from that culture
to say we are all related
(speaks in a foreign language).
That word is to say we are all related.
Well, after you go
through school and you go
really far in school that
notion of dealing with the
- emic, the -edic, and
insider and outsider,
community becomes different.
Ceremony becomes different.
If you've never been in a family where you
do ceremony and you don't need to go to
somebody else because that's your grandpa,
that identify is vastly
different than me going to
Thailand to find someone
to cure my alcoholism.
It's a very different detachment.
A lot of Native people
come to South Dakota
for sun dance, they come
for different things.
Then at my grandpa's there's people there,
I don't know where they're
from but they've started
coming and that's a good
thing that they seek
the sharing of culture,
but it gets to a level
where it becomes very difficult
and somewhat dangerous
taboo to talk about and
when I bring and invoke
the notion of this Rachel
Dolezal, if you're not familiar
with that, it's a Google thing,
but she was claiming to be
an African American professor at
Eastern Washington
University and had headed
up I believe the NAACP
there, and on top of that
had slowly transformed from her time
at Howard University into becoming that.
What was awkward about
the way that American
dealt with it is no one
called out the fact that she
said she was born in a teepee in Montana,
which oddly, you always
get the Indian stuff
and it's strange.
And again, that idea of
how do you understand
when Bea was talking
about woodwork Indians
in your guys experiences,
does anybody have something
that touches upon that phenomena and does
that exist now or is it
something that we don't
want to talk about
because it risks the idea
of hurting people's feelings?
So, that's my question.
- I just love woodwork Indians.
(laughing)
I've had to deal with them all my life.
To me woodwork Indians are by and large
fantasy people, they want to be Indian,
they have no connection to Indian culture,
Indian people, or most,
almost certainly Indian
biological ancestry.
But they like to pretend they're Indian
and when I was young I
didn't know any difference
and then my mother said, well, you know,
those people, they're not really Indian.
They're not from Oklahoma
I know that much.
And so I by and large don't
think they're malevolent,
but they're looking for
some kind of romantic
community that they can be part of.
The problem with some of them is that,
I mean, they're white, they're
probably better educated
than most Indian people and they claim
to be Indian in order to
get into school, in order to
get fellowships, in order to get jobs,
and I remember once, this
was just before I started
graduate school so it was
about '68, '69 at Berkeley.
And I was the educational
recruitment officer
for the EOP program,
Educational Opportunity Program.
And so I was having to
recruit Indians into Berkeley
and I did, I recruited
almost 30 Bay-area Indians
into Berkeley and almost
all of them finished,
got their degrees, and
there's one Indian lawyer
who finished like that.
And so, and I knew enough
even then how to figure
out who's Indian and who's not Indian.
And then somebody walks into my office,
she's blonde, she's pretty, she's thin,
she's wearing fashionable clothes.
And she says she Cherokee.
Well, I pity the poor Cherokee
people because almost all
of these woodwork Indians
say they're Cherokee,
and they're almost certainly not.
And the ones that try to
profit from Indian identity,
they're the real woodwork Indians.
They come out of nowhere,
they claim to be ethnic,
they try to profit from
this fake ethnicity.
Sometimes they get into
positions of power based
on their claim to be Indian.
And so I really dislike people like that.
Sometimes they're just
tumorous but otherwise
I see them as manipulators.
- At the triple A meetings, Bea and I
and JoAllyn used to always
talk about the international
American Indian identity police.
It's tongue in cheek obviously but...
we had all experienced I
guess for all of our lives,
this whole issue of faux Indians.
And it pervaded all the way
in to academia which we were all aware of
instances of individuals
who had faculty positions
or administrative positions
or positions in cultural and...
American Indian organizations
even who's identity
as Indians are highly suspect.
And also when the whole
issue of Ward Churchill
and others in the previous
life, and Jamaci Highwater
and all of these people,
it goes back all the way
into the 1800's of individuals
who have been exposed
because of one factor or another
but most Indian people
do not want to challenge
individuals like this.
There's only a few who really
take the bit in the mouth as it were
and really pursue uncovering
these individuals.
- Yeah, I really got involved
in that and one of the
things back in those days that I could do
was I called up the tribal
enrolment officer of whatever
tribe this person was
claiming to be, and this is
before the privacy act.
So the enrolment officer,
and usually it was
a middle aged woman.
She knew everything.
She knew all the families,
she knew all the kids,
she knew several generations
back, and at that time
it was not illegal to
pass on that information.
So we'd chat and she'd say who is this?
Oh no, he's not Indian.
And I just loved doing
this, it was a lot of fun.
Now you can't do it.
(laughing)
- I think one of the
questions that we also were
presented with as roundtable
participants was the
issue of the discussions
about identity and sort of the
complexities of identity
and how that's entered into
our thinking and how
that's added complications.
I think it has relevance to
this conversation as well.
I think we do need to
think in more complex ways
about how we identify
as Indigenous people.
I think sometimes we have a tendency to
fall back on very easy
categories like do you
have a tribal enrolment
card, which of course,
it has a sort of colonial
mentality attached to it
that we need to have a
documentation that's been
certified by the U.S.
government to prove that we
are Indigenous, and I think that allows us
sometimes to hurt each other
or sometimes feel pressure
to make claims about ourselves
that we really shouldn't
be making, so I think that if we can have
some more honest conversations
about our Indigenaeity
and the very complex ways in which we hold
Indigenaeity, I think that
this is something that will
help us to avoid these types of problems
of woodwork Indians, and that comes from,
I mean there are different
motivations for it
and I think certainly
people have already said
speak to it but I think there's also,
and this is something I talk
to my students a lot about
as well is there is also a lot of
historical conflict that
we haven't really addressed
in the United States and
there's a lot of historical
guilt that non-Native people
experience and that they
are trying to find a way to rid themselves
of that guilt.
And I think as human beings in general
we always orient to what's easy.
And the easiest way to rid
yourself of historical guilt
tied to your people's
persecution of Native peoples
is to say well maybe there's
some Native genealogy
in there somewhere so maybe
I'm not so much to blame
historically.
And we also have a
tendency to think too much
in terms of blood and
what that's supposed to
say about ourselves rather than you know,
what we experience from a much more,
a little much more in
terms of experience and how
that's tied to our
genealogies as opposed to just
what we inherit supposedly
according just to blood.
And so I think those
are also conversations
that we need to have not
only amongst ourselves
but also with our students,
with our colleagues,
to say you know, you're
not, because you are
making this claim I'm not
going to instantly say that
you are, you're the bad
guy, I'm not going to paint
you as the bad guy but
clearly you are working
under some assumptions
that you need to rid
yourself of and you need to
think through more carefully.
- I want to talk a little, is this on?
I want to talk a little bit
about the tribal enrolment
cards that you started off saying.
Those are not issued by
the federal government.
Those are issued by our tribes.
- [Christina] Oh, I understand that.
- No, I'm trying to talk, okay?
- [Christina] Oh, I'm sorry, oh.
- And the tribal enrolment
cards are very important
tools for our tribes to try to affirm
our sovereign right to determine who is
a member of our tribe.
We have exclusive
jurisdiction by tribal law
and federal law to
determine who is for example
a Choctaw and when someone comes forward
and says they are a
Choctaw and they are not
enrolled in one of those
Choctaw federally recognized
tribes, then that's an
assault on sovereignty.
That person is disrespecting
tribal sovereignty.
So, and one thing we've done because the
phenomenon is really
widespread in and around
my university for example
is that all of the Indian
faculty have gotten
together and all of us are
enrolled members of
federally recognized tribes
or state-recognized tribe Lumbee.
We have a Lumbee faculty,
and we have gotten together
and we have made a
resolution that we presented
to the university that anyone who is...
going to be hired as an American
Indian faculty needs to be
enrolled in a federally
recognized tribe or a state
recognized tribe and that is,
sort of a last desperate
way to try to hold on to
our sovereign right to
determine who is an Indian.
- I honestly didn't mean to interrupt,
I was trying to say that
I didn't want to discount
the importance of that and I am going to,
and because I have had a lot
of conversations with people
about this both tribally
enrolled and people who are
not tribally enrolled, I
work with a lot of activists
who don't have a lot of
faith in their tribal
governments and so that's
perspective I'm coming from.
They don't think their
tribal governments represent
their world views, they
think that they have moved
to that their model is essentially
a US governmental model
and so that's a perspective
that I, I work with activists
who say I have a tribal
enrolment card because it's easy
but I don't think it represents
who I am as a person,
so that's also the perspective
that I am speaking from.
I am also speaking from the perspective of
I am a descendant, and
I'm not going to claim
to be a Yonkai and I never say that.
I say I am Yomai, I am
a descendant of Yomai
people who originated
in Mexico but there is
a Yakee people who have tribal
status in the United States.
And I always try to be
very straightforward
about it in every
conversation that I have with
my Native students, in my
writing, that this is who
I am as an Indigenous person, I am not an
tribally enrolled member and
I'm never going to say that.
But I do know that there
have been severe limits
placed on my people in
the United States in terms
of their enrolment and that
has happened historically
everywhere.
When my people gained tribal
status in the United States,
they were specifically
told these are the limits
that you need to work with,
and this just happened two
years ago, they had to
go back to US Congress
and say can we have
permission to make decisions
about who gets to be enrolled
and they were still limited
in terms of only working
from descendants who were
recognized as being a part
of this community when they
came into the US.
They can't say because my
grandmother is from Mexico,
can she count as Yakee?
And the US government says
no, because it wasn't part of
the constitution that was
approved by the US government.
Because our constitutions
have to be approved.
That's the way it works,
we work through the BIA.
So we are restricted,
tribal sovereignty is not
full sovereignty and I
will stick by that because
that's my perspective.
- Well, we're all done.
No, just kidding.
We have about 15 minutes, 16 minutes.
But not too truncate the
very intense and necessary
discussion but I want to open things up
to the audience, I think those microphones
should work but I also just want to insert
a few comments which are
there are very distinctive
differences between tribal people.
It's not a kumbaya, happy
let's all be American Indians
together but that phenomena happens.
You know it happens that's
what white people are,
right, they're the culmination
of all sort of people
who should be culturally
distinct, but they gave
it up to just say they're
white, or the same would
go as an analog for black people.
To be black and say you're (mumbles),
if you have no idea and
you go back to Africa
and try to say I'm home
people would probably giggle.
But the idea of a tribal
identity is something
that it's safe to say Bea Medicine had.
She didn't have to question that.
If you come from a tribal community,
I don't want to say
it's good, I don't want
to say it's bad but it is
what it is and you know
what that's like if you
come from one and you
know those who don't.
Those who don't come from one,
they might be descent or
they might be diaspora.
Now those are interesting
terms to deploy because
what does that then mean?
So for my cousins and family in Wanblee,
South Dakota, that's where
my identity stems from
and at the time I got an Irish side.
I don't know which county,
county mayo and county cork
I think are my dad's side in the relatives
who are Irish, but if I pop
up there and say I'm home,
I think they're going to giggle at me.
Now, in that regard to
a lot of things about
communities, identity, legalities.
It does all tie back to
colonialism, and that is the
kind of common denominator
that we're all dealing with
and the range of emergent
identities that have
transpired due to colonialism
has set people into
frictional positions from
the get go on resources.
The Denver Native community,
there are folks here
who are Lakota people,
look at Indian as a nickle
Indian guy but hope, they
can't enrol with the tribe.
Why?
There are rules and stipulations
and that negates them.
But at the same time, they're
not from the community.
Which community are they from?
They're descended from, they're diaspora.
So it complicates things when we have
to talk about it and it becomes dangerous
because we try to
exclude people sometimes.
Being inclusive and exclusive
or mutually inclusive
and exclusive, those
words always get me when I
read people's papers I have to slow down,
that idea is very tough to
deal with and it requires
the kind of precision
involved in knowing through
the integrity of what
someone is and how they are
and who they are fully in order
to assess their experience
as a Native person.
Those things are at the
core to what Bea was,
is she didn't have to question who she was
because when you come
from a tribal community,
it's kind of like, your
left hand or your right hand
if you have both of your
hands, they're always
with you, they don't go anywhere.
So it's an interesting
thing, I want to thank all
of our panelists and
allow the audience now to,
I want to say these two microphones work,
but you know I think it would be a welcome
time for questions.
- Actually, I have to catch
a flight to the airport so
I'm going to yield my
seat to Scott who has been
so patiently sitting in
the audience, and I'm
going to head off to airport, thank you.
- Thanks so much guys, for
that wonderful roundtable.
My name's Patrick Staib
and I teach at a small
residential community
college on the western slope
of Colorado and we're
trying to be deliberate
in reinvigorating programs
for Native students,
particularly from Fort Dushane,
students whose ancestors
where our college sits, used
to be their ancestral land.
I identify as a Latino scholar,
I work with a lot of Hispano
youth in my school already
and see a lot of challenges
even with the Hispano
population we're working with.
I'm looking for any pointers,
any tips, any suggestions
as far as this sort of, the
shifting identity of going
to school, going to college
and still being true
to oneself in the model of
Doctor Medicine but also
like really just like
broad-based tips here.
We're trying to recruit Natives
in but it's a really hard
residential situation, a
lot of times we're just
not very well equipped on our faculty.
So, any suggestion would be great.
- I'll speak to that a little bit.
My name's Scott Ketchum,
I was also the organizer
of this panel so I guess I
should throw that in there
for a little bit so I know
probably all the scholars up
here are really staring
at me with beady eyes
hoping this ends quickly.
Just anyway, I work at the
University of Oklahoma State
and right now I'm working
with Epscore and one
of the things that we're
doing is a tribal college
initiative to really look
at the stem and some of
the issues that some of
the tribal colleges have
and I think what we're
really trying to do and what
universities can try to do
first off is to understand
the circumstances are
going to be different.
I think one of the things
that all the universities
and I think a conversation
that anthropology needs to have
is that if we're going to
do something about working
with our co-producers,
I don't really know if
that's the right word to
use, I don't know when we
would call them producers, but you know,
our co-collaborators, I don't
know what the right word is.
But these individuals
that are also part of this
process we need to find
a way to talk about how
can the University system
and it's something that
I think that Jessica spoke
to is how can we change
the system?
How can we change what we're looking at
in the accreditation?
In the university we have the peer review.
But outside of the
university the community
has their own ways of
validating cultural genealogies,
cultural knowledges, those
things are out there.
And what we need to do is really look at
how can the triple A
pressure universities across
the United States to start
putting in sovereignty officers
to protect the tribal
communities when creating
research?
I mean, tribes are doing
that themselves right now
and we need to have
people that can work with
university structure to
negotiate and navigate
those relationships.
And that's the first step
is having someone there
who understands the
complexity that we have
a tri-federal system,
federal, state and tribal.
That they're equal partners
in this relationship.
So we have to recognize
both their sovereignty
and I don't really like the
word cultural sovereignty
but we have to recognize
their cultural patrimony
or we have to recognize these things.
And that is changes the
way students may come
to school in that there's
high, high, high levels
in the dropout rates for
college Native students,
and a lot of those issues
are tied to things that
people don't really recognize.
A lot of the tribal students
are non-traditional like myself
coming back to school
after ten years, so you've
got a different type of
person, a lot of us have
children and so one of the recent studies
I saw that's not published
yet but that's been
going on shows that for
Native students that most of
them work 40 hours, a
higher percentage of them
work 40 hours than any
other student on a lot of
campuses.
That right there is very problematic.
Not understanding that
tribe, the idea that we all
get free educational money,
this is that perception
that's out there but any of
us who actually have gotten
funding from our tribal
communities know that we
turn in that money, like for
this semester you would turn
it in October 1st, then the
federal government funds it
and you get the money in
the middle of November.
So anyone who has a Native student
if you're teaching a Native
student, if you wonder
why they're not able to do the things that
are happening or why they
stop showing up at times,
it's because you can't buy
any books or pay tuition
when you're not getting
the money until the end
of the year.
The triple A needs to really
pressure the U.S. government
to change that method, to change the way
that this money goes.
And any of you who have worked on a grant,
you know that you don't
get that money a lot
of times, you do the
preliminary research ahead
of time.
Imagine as a young student
struggling in a community
that you're not included
and trying to make that.
And then to try to
communicate that to someone
who doesn't understand your culture.
That's all about this academic model.
So that academic model's got
to change first and foremost.
It's got to be more
symmetrical to different ways
of people living to come
into the community space.
First and foremost, all
of the universities in
the United States are on former grounds
that belong to Native people.
We've got to change that perception.
If we're looking at it from
a sovereign perspective,
anyone who has a doctorate
and you're from a tribe,
I could say wait a second,
why do I have to accept
your legal document from
your government telling me
or your state institution
that says you're an authority?
In my community you're not an authority.
You have nothing to prove to that,
and you're not gonna look at my government
to government relationship
with your document
and structure, why should I look at you?
You've devalued my, this
government to government
relationship.
So you've got to create a
space that is accommodating
to those students and then
look into your student base
and creating a network
with those students,
and creating a pipeline
for them so going out
into the community and
finding out the needs of
the community.
I think the biggest thing right
now that's very problematic
is that we can't barely get money to find
tribal language programs
'cause the NSF and places
like that are cutting grants
but yet the NSF is willing
to fund $40 million
towards tribal knowledges
for climate change.
So why are the sciences,
once again, the sciences
are leveraging Native
images for all this money
but not thinking about
what these knowledge
systems are and what create them
and what cultural things
that we need to do
to preserve those things,
so, you've got to start
looking at things in a
different way and thinking
about how, what do they
need, what are their needs?
Creating a structure so
having a very active community
that's where that networking
so when the Native,
one reason why we're all
here and I think Valerie
talked about it is that
finding someone like Bea
that kept you here, and for me
it wasn't just Native people.
David for instance, you
know, when I first came
to the triple A four years
ago I felt like an outsider.
Nobody talked to me.
It was because of people
like David and really the
Native community that kept
me into this discipline
because I felt like such an outsider.
It's not a very welcoming committee,
especially when you've
been the one being studied.
And unfortunately, even
though we have done
ethnographic turn and
we come back and looked
at these problems in the past, the public
isn't aware of that.
They're not aware of these changes,
to the public it's still ongoing.
Basically when Columbus got off the boat
and anthropologists
followed him, you know.
That's the way it still seems
to a lot of the communities.
So we've got to think about those things
differently and that's
what we're trying to do now
is create a space, work
with the tribal colleges,
create a bridge with
those, get to your programs
and make sure though that
your programs understand
this kind of sensitivity.
And when we're doing diversity
inclusivity training,
you can't just focus on
race and gender lines,
it's gotta focus on these
government to government
and sovereignty lines and
understanding the Indigenous
body in the social and
political construct.
And so those are the
ways that you can start
to do it, I know that's
a lot to think about
but creating that safe
space, and then creating
those relationships and
understanding the importance
of those relationships,
and then understanding that
for instance, my father
passed away just recently
and understanding that
for some communities,
that mourning process is
going to be a lot different
than other people.
I had a colleague of mine
that because of the way
her community works,
she had to leave college
for a year because they really
don't engage in anything
and they have to stop and
think about you don't want
to put yourself out there
when you're mourning.
The way you can speak
about things is sentiments
that you could come across,
you may sign something
that you don't really want me.
So staying withdrawn for
a community, that's a very
great way to keep
balance in the community.
Keep balance within your
family, your community
stays balanced so you've got to understand
that familial and the importance
of that familial line.
And also knowing this
complexity of representations
that have been leveraged
for Native people too,
that there are a lot
of people out there who
may be or may not be, you know,
and I can understand the
complexities particularly
for Choctaw people.
I'm from what's called a
Mississippi Choctaw in Oklahoma.
We came a little bit later
so we're kind of diasporic
in a way that we're not
part of the Oklahoma Choctaw
community directly so there's
a lot more complexities
where I'm saying it's out
there and so you never know,
you could leverage one
faction against another.
So you know, do a lot of
research and assessment,
that's very important.
- One very good example
of a university that
has created a very successful
program for recruiting
and keeping Indian
students in til graduation
is Stanford University.
Now, there's lots of differences between
Stanford University and
most other colleges.
They are extremely wealthy.
And this was about 1960,
and Indians began getting
a lot of popular journalistic attention.
And the Berkeley campus
had already established
or maybe a few years
later, they had established
the ethnic studies program
which also then had departments
for Hispanics, Oriental
and Native American.
And the black community
had their total different
department.
Well Stanford, and I don't
really know the details of
how they came up with it but
it's been very successful
and I don't know how many
universities have the money
to do this but they built a
dorm, all freshmen students
at Stanford live in a freshmen dorm.
So they built a dorm specifically
for all of the Indian
students, they started
organizing Native American
studies classes, they had
Native counsellors who were
specifically attached
and responsible for the
Native American studies students.
If a Native student was
getting into academic problems
in the freshmen year, and
there's all kinds of things
that hit you when you're
a freshmen in college,
all sorts of things, then they
would have the counsellors
pay special attention to that student.
And so they had money, they
threw money at recruiting
and keeping Native American students,
and the retention rate
and the graduation rate
of the Stanford students is really high.
It's probably as high or higher
than any other universities
I could think of in this country.
So if you have money, you can do anything.
- I think we're going to
have one more question
here that was patiently waiting.
And I don't know time wise,
we started a little late
and being a little loose
with things if people
have to go they have to go,
but we're going to remain
for a few more minutes so please ask away.
- [Voiceover] Tonshee, Rob Hancock
(speaking in a foreign
language) for the good words,
it was a very moving
tribute to Doctor Medicine
who I was fortunate to
meet a couple times.
And the mention of Bob
Thomas brought to mind
a conversation that was published between
Doctor Medicine and Bob
Thomas in about 1971
where they were talking
about Indian study programs.
And I'm wondering,
there's an interesting mix
of people here, some are in
anthropology departments,
some are in Native American
studies departments.
I was wondering if
anybody could reflect on
sort of the legacy of her
work and what it means
to be doing anthropology
in Native American studies,
or what Native American studies
can bring to anthropology.
- I'll take a stab at that.
As being someone who came
through a PdD program
at the University of New
Mexico where I basically
kind of did a hybrid program where three
of my four committee members
were really Native studies
or Native studies and
anthropology, which is part
of the reason that I went
to UNM to begin with,
I think that there's a lot of
scholarship being developed
outside of anthropology
within, like NESA and other
organizations and I think
one thing I'm concerned
about and I have been
concerned about is that a lot
of times anthropology is
pretty insular and is not
necessarily open to
theoretical perspectives
and scholarship that's being
done outside of anthropology
so something I've always
been kind of focused on
and interested in is also
being open to bringing in
some of that scholarship and bringing it
and making it a part of
anthropology as well.
I also think that's an
important part of why it's
necessary for Native and Indigenous people
to remain within anthropology
and not necessarily
always leave and go to other disciplines.
I think following the model
of Bea and Alfonso Ortiz
and many of these other
Native anthropologists
who stuck it out and
worked within anthropology,
I think there's something
to be said for that,
I think that's really important
that we stand our ground
and try to make our presence known within
anthropology but then
also be open to bringing
in Native scholarship coming
from potentially outside
of the discipline.
- And also, as somebody
who also is a blend
with American Indian
studies and anthropology...
what is the purpose of creating
the knowledge, if we want
to call it that, creating
knowledge in anthropology
or vice versa.
One of the things I've had to see and it's
something that I almost
have knee jerk reactions
to in when I hear about certain faculties
or courses offered or at universities is
Native American studies, if
it's lucky enough to exist
as a particular campus,
needs to exist as such.
And that's something
of course that through
Vine, through Bob, through Tom,
I really strongly feel.
So I'm always on the lookout to make sure
that at certain institutions,
anthropology doesn't
try to colonize the
Native studies program.
And then I have to look over and make sure
that literature doesn't try to colonize
the Native studies program,
I need to look over
and make sure that
history is not colonizing
the Native studies program.
And you get university
administrations always invoking
the bottom line, who would
very much advocate for that.
The sad thing is is also
you have to keep an eye on
when scholars come into
Native American studies
and they are trained in other fields,
which is not wrong, it's
not bad, but if you bring
sort of an anthro supremacist position,
a literature supremacist
position, a history supremacist
position, all of these are
colonial models of knowledge
and knowledge production.
And the value of having Native
studies as Native studies
in the academy is to allow
Native and Indigenous voices
room and space.
That does not mean that every professional
involved has to be Native
American but it does mean
that if you're not Native
and you're in Native studies,
don't be an anthro supremacist,
don't be a re-colonizer.
It means if you are a Native
person in Native studies
and you've been trained in another field
like literature or history
or anthropology for example,
don't impose the colonial
values uncritically
of anthropology or literature or history.
And that's something that I do value
about the conversation between Bob
and Doctor Medicine, between Bob and Bea.
And also when you're
reading Delorea and taking
his work into your own,
that voice is just going
to be strongly there and knowing that even
Bob and Vine didn't agree on how to make
Native studies separate from you know,
I remember hearing a
story really by Tom Holme
watching a fight ensue
between Bob and Vine
because Vine had published
a recent article and Bob
was pissed off about it, Bob
storms into Vine's office,
throws the copy of the
article down on the desk
and says you're trying
to save western culture,
let it burn!
Let it fall, let it go down.
Don't try to save it.
And storms right out of the office.
And of course they laugh
about it the next day,
thanks Tom for that story.
And I think that kind
of encapsulates what we
as scholars and professionals need
to keep in mind is just those dynamics.
The university is...
to speak to one of the
previous questions before,
the university is a very
deracinating experience.
Another thing I want to
say for students who may
be identifying as Latino,
that word in and of itself
will erase the possibility
of them knowing any
Indigenous heritage.
It's the mythical border
that does not exist
that wants to erase all Indigenaeity south
of the border when using
the English language
and say that these are just Mexicans,
or these or just wetbacks,
or these are just
some other derogatory category of person.
Generally if you are part
of the euro-centric elite
in these other countries
you are not going to be
migrating across the American border.
These are Indigenous people and college
is so deracinating and it's so...
heartbreaking for Native
students and a lot of Chicano
students and Indigenous students.
The stronger we can
build those communities
to really, you're not just
paying attention to somebody's
writing skills or research
skills, our kinds of students
like that need to be
reaffirmed that they are
human and that their roots are here,
not London.
Not Berlin.
And if somebody could have taught me that
before I went to college I
might have gotten through
a little better.
- [Voiceover] Okay for another question?
So nice to be here.
I'm Dennis Weedman, I'm from
Florida International University in Miami.
And often I'd meet with Bea Medicine
at these meetings and the
Society for Applied Anthropology.
Had very kind words for
the kinds of work that we
were doing, anthropologists and myself.
So following up on this
issue of Indigenous students
wanting to be there at
the anthropology meetings,
I was two days ago we had
the Indigenous students
in a forum discussing some of these issues
and also yesterday right
in the same room we had
Indigenous faculty talking about this.
And so, and I said that Native American
and Indigenous studies
association is growing
in great numbers and
so when I attend those
meetings and I hear the
discourse for Indigenous
students actually
villainizing anthropology,
almost an evil kind of
tone about anthropology,
so that is happening and
a lot of the discussion
today is getting at that
and what Bea's work was
was trying to cross those boundaries
and yesterday the word was shapeshifting,
how does that happen in a person's life.
But the question I want
to get to is that a lot
of that discourse in
Indigenous methodologies,
decolonization is that
Indigenous epistemologies,
the theories of Indigenous
communities, world views
are just as valuable as
any of the anthropology
theories or the colonial theories.
And so if the students
in this next generation,
if that's the dominant discourse
which it is at the moment,
they want to revalue their
community, go back to their
community and that informed
their research going
through this being
trained and that's a lot
of the discourse right here
was how to get students
through the training to
be PhD's in whichever
field they want so how
do we get that to be
accommodated in the graduate programs with
the Indigenous
epistemologies are recognized
on those committees which
will make that happen
to where more of those
students will be here?
- Well, I might hog this
one and pretend I'm on
the panel for a moment.
So, operating in the
English language, right.
Whether you're dealing with the kind of
polemicist notion of third
world scholars need to operate
in English because English is everything.
That's a touchy situation,
and apparently that's
how (mumbles) ticked off a
lot of people when he said
English is the only language of a scholar.
There's all sorts of directions.
The word epistemology, I
don't know it in Lakota.
Hermaneutics, don't know it.
Don't know paradigmatic
shifts, don't know a word
for neologism.
Concept metaphors and
epistemology and the notion
of language ideology is
a fascinating engagement
and I think sometimes all too
often it becomes interesting
in the now when people
are romantically trying
to reassert an Indigenous epistemology.
Not saying it can't
exist or it doesn't while
people of a different kind of
cultural linkage come about,
but I guess I'll end it
with a story that may be
doesn't answer but
furthers it into the future
and I think all of the people
on the panel are probably
open to receiving emails
to further discussions
on anything but I remember
when I was an undergraduate
there's a relative of
mine who wrote a book
called (speaking in a foreign language).
I read it, really excited to
think I'm reading an elder
guy's book on how I should be a Lakota.
I read it and I was like
holy, this guy's on drugs
while he's writing, I don't
know about this Atlantis theory
and some other stuff that I
had academic qualms about.
I was troubled because of this idea of you
don't confront one of
your elders, you don't
say "hey, you're wrong."
Although I was raised a
lot by my grandmothers,
the idea of being an
elder is all too often
gets hokey and people
go they are my elder.
You have to earn that spot,
you might just be an old dummy.
Now, this idea of hm, my
mom said Lakota people
don't write books to tell
us how we're supposed
to behave.
We be, we are who we are,
ceremony is what it is.
So to write a Lakota
epistemological triestes
by that very virtue is already
an interesting phenomena
that I'm not going to say is
an Indigenous epistemology
because it would be the
engagement of hybridity.
And that complicates things.
So I was troubled and my mom said
"do what you do, son."
We don't write books.
So I thought about that
and I still do and I think
that was preeminent on Bea's mind as well
which was, I always why I pause at that.
Maybe that's why she got
rid of her field notes.
She didn't keep stuff and I know a lot
of things I don't do I have my iPhone
and that keeps a heck
of a lot of junk in it
from 2010 and I use it as my modern nerdy
anthro notebook.
But there are things to say about being,
and to be somebody is
oftentimes different than to
objectify analytically and deconstruct.
So I get troubled when people
all too often throw around
the word I want an
Indigenous epistemological
knowledge foundation.
You just said a whole bunch of big words,
why don't you go live with your grandma?
Oh, and if you don't have that reality,
then you're in modernity
like all of us and you
struggle with speaking a
language that you communicate
things to people things
about and you write about
that and you create arguments.
So being has to come from
a community and that word
community is where take
that apart and that's where
a lot of the answers are.
But, I want to thank everybody and I think
they'll kick us out 'cause
we have other folks coming
in probably now but I appreciate
everybody's questions,
I appreciate everybody on the panel,
the idea of Bea as a community
person, she was honoured
through traditional ways,
JoAllyn was involved in that,
this is an academic way
which is somewhat hybrid
again to this Indigenous
epistemological stuff,
this is an interesting
engagement, the IAI engages
with the triple A's now
and we're moving forward
with seeing how things
will continue to evolve
for all of us but thank
you and have a great
rest of your meetings for the day.
(applauding)
