This article is part of an ongoing series of stories by ICT examining the complicated issues of Indigenous identity.
Suzan Shown Harjo
Special to ICT
Most of the foundational personhood identity is deeply etched in human beings before we are born. Our features are defined, even if they cannot be seen at birth as our lifelong looks and whether or not they reveal to medical experts our outside chances of reaching adulthood or old age.
Our cellular imprints are from our mothers and fathers and all their parents, back to the beginning times of our families and the starlight creation shared by all living beings.
The size and capacity of our brains and other vital body parts are determined before we have baby cords or can feel mom’s heartbeats.
The colors of our eyes, lips, hair and skin, and how they will change naturally over a lifetime, are fixed at the moment of conception. Geneticists describe this as 46 chromosomes inside each cell — pairs of autosomes, one-half from each parent, plus the 23rd split set of chromosomes (female XX’s and male XY’s), whose presence and arrangement determine gendering.
Scientists illustrate this with the double helix, the spiral staircase structure of genomic steps of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.
But the picture in my mind is from the “Indian DNA Series” on Indigeneity, natural rights and commodification by the brilliant multidimensional artist, activist and actor, Richard Ray Whitman who is Yuchi and a Muscogee Nation citizen. In one mixed media work, the artist imaged corn and human DNA in black and white photographic blowups and computer graphics on 4-foot high vertical plexiglass “slides.”
While corn has 20 chromosomes, as compared with the human 46, they are identically structured and appear the same, which made the artist’s points about connectedness, relatedness and the facts that corn and humans figure together in Native origin histories, ceremonies and everyday foods.
Blossoming of personhood identity
The blossoming of personhood identity is related to its incised foundations, but it’s different, not pre-ordained. Here’s where our identity shaping takes on broader parentage.
Imagine soft materials surrounding the hard twisty structure and uniform number of identity-building concrete steps that undergird our personae, our basic selves. Myriad other beings and experiences layer and overlayer us with what may be imaged as small strips and patches of satin, chiffon, silk, cotton, wool, denim, lace, tissue or gauze affixed with a simple flour and water paste, in a process much like constructing a papier-mâché life mask or a piñata.
As we mature and progress through life, some of these strips and patches fall off, wash off or are deliberately removed. In some cases they are repurposed, perhaps into a quilt or small renditions of what we once thought or looked like. A quilt or a likeness can be kept as a memory, scrapbook or keepsake, and remains accessible, but does not have to be a permanent part of your body or personality.
What we carry with us and what we hold close but maintain distance from have everything to do with our interests, passions, achievements and will. When it comes to our ability to win the national spelling bee or to become champion swimmers, goalies or pitchers or top-notch architects, actors, singers or surgeons, so much depends on what individuals make of what they are born with, options they are exposed to and resources they inherit.
The blossoming and possible withering of identity result from the respect, love, care, treatment, injuries, pain, trauma, strengthening and empowerment received at home, school and work, and during activities, travels and leisure time. They depend on the caliber of lessons and values taught by and learned from role models, healers, teachers, tutors, mentors, guides, friends, pets and strangers, as well as on their very character and actions.
Personal and group blossoming and withering also are affected beyond our knowledge or ability to measure by the well-being or suffering of Mother Earth and her children and by the movement of sky beings and temperatures at the core of our planet.
Collective and individual identity
Our collective identities are composed of the same relational and situational interactions as are our individual identities. They are molded by the same layering and shedding processes. Each encounter and experience has its own unique set of characteristics, preferences, attractions and ways, and leaves its own markings.
There is no clear demarcation between individual and collective identities — only the equivalent of a territorial expanse with meandering border lines, where identities may be both, either or neither individual and/or collective.
Using music and musicianship as examples, our DNA determines if we can hear, vocalize and keep time, meaning whether or not we have the capacity to make music. DNA does not determine if we are any good at it or if we ever can improve, but it does determine our physicality to become a mezzo-soprano or contralto, a tenor or baritone.
Such factors as training, influences, opportunities, time and competing duties may decide if you are a music lover, a record collector, a music critic, a conductor, a clarinet virtuoso, a DJ, a sound engineer, a composer, an arranger, a parent singing lullabies or just a diva on and off stage.
Whether you’ll be a member of a church choir, chorus line, garage band, symphony orchestra or powwow drum has as much to do with collective identities as with individual ones. It’s an even guess between collective judgment and individual self-esteem as the dominant force behind a person being and remaining a lounge singer, a singing waiter or a song leader in a summer camp.
This is where we depart from science, at least the state of science at this time, but need additional, ongoing research to further knowledge and understanding of what is knowable and what may always be unknown. Geneticists and medical experts have made tremendous strides in isolating and replicating genes that cause and treat or cure specific individuals’ specific diseases, but they have not and perhaps cannot isolate the music gene. At least not now.
When identical twins with the same upbringing veer from their usual mirroring pattern, experts from the collective identity are enlisted to find out why one is a successful professional musician and the other remains a rank amateur. This may be of deep concern to the twins and the family and friends, but it does not create the urgency for action as it would if one twin confessed to committing a murder and the other honestly claimed innocence, but was being treated as a suspect and co-conspirator.
The glare of the spotlight on that kind of situation would create its own demand for increased legal penalties, legal services and mental health care, and even for mind-readers. Once into nature versus nurture brambles of collective judgment and individual worth, it’s often those asserting their tenets, laws, rules and protocols the loudest who are heard over the lone, small voice of the individual.
Until more is known and something is certain about origins and cause and effect, many Native Peoples are content to rely on traditional instructions and ways: If you feel like singing and you don’t sing, it will make you sick. And, if you are ill, singing and a song can heal you.
That doesn’t just go for music. Other cultures have similar notions and sterner warnings — if you don’t do what you are meant to do or are compelled to do, you will die.
Stolen identities
The Native identities that are stolen are both individual and collective. It’s important to examine and trace origins because doing so unlocks thinking about relatedness and establishes or re-establishes order.
Native identities are tribal, family, clan, moiety and place and personal names, descriptions, biographies and histories, as well as individual professional work and credits and collective cultural patrimony — stories, songs, dances, art and places of power. When stolen, they can shatter relationships and create disorder.
In past decades, identity thieves were called culture vultures, profit prophets, con artists and plastic medicine men and women. It seemed enough to brand them and warn other Native peoples and allies about them, in order to keep them out of our territories and from harming our children and others who are vulnerable.
Today’s con artists have undergone population explosions, are far more aggressive and have learned how to divide us. They are skilled at using Native kindness and pity to falsely claim to educational, cultural and arts institutions and organizations that they have Native support and that their opponents are political throwbacks and somehow not “real Indians.”
The identity thieves’ greatest talents are the abilities to ingratiate themselves and charm those they are robbing, as well as those they are trying to convince that their marks are the bad guys. Imagine the hubris, bigotry and sense of entitlement of the person who thinks others’ personal, familial and tribal identities are theirs for the taking because 1) privilege has its privileges, 2) the marks are so simple-minded they won’t or can’t catch their robber and 3) it will be easy to impersonate them because there’s little complexity to their personalities and customs.
Another thing to know is that the identity thieves don’t just steal or lie about just one thing. Some end up stealing actual Native family assets and property, experiences that we and our families have been through in the not too distant past. And it’s only a minor jump from copping Native identity to stealing other things.
What if the reason you didn’t get that role, job or award is that someone else, an undeserving someone, an imposter, an identity thief was cast or hired or recognized?
Many are reluctant to object to that kind of unfairness, because no one wants to be or seem churlish, jealous or bitter.
Some may not ask for a recount, redo or a second interview because they don’t know how to make the case that the decision was unfair or they do not want to waste time and face negative reactions.
All too often, there is the fear that no one will do anything about the unfairness, so why try.
Why stealing identities should be a crime
It’s not victimless. Loss of income, book contracts and precious time are quite real. Once in positions of authority or influence, the identity thieves focus inordinate attention on ruining the reputation of Native peoples.
When in places that should be held by Native persons, the identity thieves make up tribal histories, ceremonies, political stances and values, and peddle their own peculiar notions as authentic cultural information, intending to erode the good names of or confidence in Native peoples (individually and collectively).
Ideally, being shunned should be enough and, yes, shunning does go on, but it’s not enough. There’s sufficient wiggle room in law and policy for the perpetrators to convince others that they are the true victims and that their opponents are just envious and mean-spirited.
It almost was made a serious crime. In the early 1930s, the Pseudo-Indian Act was introduced. A spare bill, it simply stated that it is criminal to impersonate an Indian. A watered down version was folded into the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of the same decade, making it unlawful to pass off work as Indian made when it was not made by a Native artist. In the 1990s, the act’s language and penalties were strengthened, but it received scant federal enforcement. The federal enforcement was later beefed up, but the offenders outnumbered the enforcers.
The First Nations in Canada are way ahead of Native nations in the U.S., in this identity issue area. Usually, national legislation regarding First Nations lags behind federal Indian laws by some 20 years. This has been so from education and self-determination to religious freedom and repatriation laws. First Nations leaders have made identity theft a priority, issuing calls to action to educational, governmental and religious institutions, as they have done so successfully in addressing the nightmare legacies of residential schools.
Leaders of tribal nations and organizations in the U.S. also should prioritize the eradication of identity thievery. One way to approach this is through shared tribal-federal jurisdiction to deal with the offenders, with the ability of tribal nations to cross jurisdictional lines and recover triple damages from convicted offenders and their promoters.
Recognition of the descendants of one or two parents who are enrolled tribal citizens should be considered, given the fact that so many Native peoples are updating their constitutions and citizenship/membership requirements in light of federally imposed mandates of the past.
Many Native peoples want to end exclusionary practices and to enact more culturally appropriate laws and policies. This issue area is a good place to further address this need, while taking precautions against the predatory nature and number of the identity thieves.
More than the issue of natural or acquired families or lineage or of the dreaded blood quantums or stereotypes and myths about us, our identities involve what makes us distinct as Native cultures, governments, persons and ways. We are not singly focused or unidimensional. We are not stoic. We try not to cry in public, not to maintain a stoic façade, but for fear that, once we start to cry, we may never be able to stop the deluge.
At this time when we must deal with the latest epic onslaught, we would do well to devote our strength to pooling resources and helping ourselves and our friends and neighbors, in the best of our traditions and wisdom regarding providential relationships and interconnectedness. We also might be mindful of the artist’s depiction of the corn and the human in all our oneness and in the multiplicity of elements that make us distinctive.
Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne citizen, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, and Hotvlkvlke Mvskokvlke, Nuyakv) is a writer, curator and policy advocate, who has worked with Native Peoples to achieve landmark laws and to recover over one million acres of land. Her columns, articles and poetry have appeared in all versions of this spacious channel, from the Lakota Times to the newspapers and magazines of Indian Country Today to the online presence of ICT. She is a grandmother and a recipient of a 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor.