In the wake of multicultural and democratic notions of the self as an interrelated part of society’s life, once innocent morphemes, such as : nation, nationhood, nationalism, nationalist, evoke horrific images of quasi-totalitarian voices, people, movements, governments, whose main concern is to elevate the ‘one, true self’ above ‘other, less meaningful ones.’ Why is this the unfaltering first reaction? There are a number of possible reasons. First of all, if we examine the nineteenth century as ‘the era of nationalist ideas’, we will learn of these notions as of vibrant impulses for the better understanding of cultural values, later on to be shamelessly employed by colonial empires for the creation of an even greater pool of material wealth at the expansion of the acculturation and assimilation of ‘other, less meaningful;’ (primitive) cultures. Of, if we draw the curtains of the recently departed great century of human process, we will encounter similar practices: with the rise of ‘new empires’, the ‘old colonial practices and techniques’ are once again exerted upon the once ‘heathen nations of the world’ in the creation of the latter’s market economy, thus helping it shape a compatible system of governance (one that would soothe the interests of the ‘one, true self’).
And yet, each time I think of these words, not as a linguist (to a linguist words are free of the guilt imposed upon them as a result of the (mis)interpretation of their meanings), but as a 21st century human, I am saddened rather than angered by them. Since sadness is a category of subjective representation, I will try to ‘utilize’ my laments by looking at a few readings.
In my pre-graduate school pastoral existence, any/all knowledge I possessed of Native American nations was filtered through the perspective of a dominant, mainstream culture and its products. ‘Dances with Wolves’, ‘The Indian in the Cupboard’, ‘Pocahontas’, ‘The Last of the Mohicans’, ‘Vinetu’ (the collected works of the German novelist, Carl May, centered around an Indian Warrior and his ‘white brother’, Oldshaterhand, and their joint plight in the great wilderness of man and beast). [I had also seen the critically acclaimed ‘Smoke Signals’, a comedy by Sherman Alexie about two young Native Americans and their opposing views on tradition and present-day life on/off an Indian Reservation. ]
I’d be lying if I said that the dreamy presence of Daniel Day-Lewis, in the role of Hawkeye left me void of impressions; however, these and like images (raised by the physical appeal of an actor-persona) cannot and should not be the criteria for accumulating knowledge and impressions about a certain culture’s beliefs, values, traditions, life. Let’s consider the work of writer/activist/scholar, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, in particular her work towards ‘Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya’s Earth’. Cook-Lynn’s voice is something to be reckoned with. Known for her stern, uncompromising view of Native American Studies Scholarship, she is right when pointing out to the importance of ‘pay[ing] more attention to Third World scholarship and policies that we have done in the past.’ Studying one’s one history and tradition in isolation only produces additional ethnocentric theories of the self and the nation it belongs to, something that no self-respecting scientist of the past creating in the present should engage into. It is through the use of the comparison-contrast method that a society, a tribe, a nation, may emerge as nationally liberated and tribally autonomous, able to tell its children who they were/are. These cultures are not moribund cultures whose study Cook-Lynn tries to fight off, to dismiss as one of the constraining mechanisms of anthropology (Cook-Lynn’s labeling of interdisciplinary programs as ‘weak entities’ should be taken as the result of a long struggle that NAS, as an academic discipline, has undergone, and still endures, for its autonomous status); they are very much alive and demanding as the long-standing Native American civilizations are. They are present on every continent in the world, and they are of many colors, if we are to go by the race-color association. Yet it seems that oftentimes, to conduct field research is to engage oneself in impractical costly meddling that will not always guarantee the academic scholar the desired tenure, thus we resort to the ‘help’ of already established historical and anthropological canons.
Scholar and Activist Gerald Vizenor offers a consoling answer to the anthropological and historical approach to the American Indian culture, in his essay, ‘The People Named the Chippewa’. In the part of the essay titled ‘Anthropological and Historical Inventions’ Vizenor consoles his readers by examining a distinction between the traditional tribal people’s view of social customs and that of the scientists who study them:
The differences between tribal imagination and social scientific invention are determined in world views: imagination is a state of being, a measure of personal courage; the invention of cultures is a material achievement through objective methodologies. To imagine is to be in the world; to invent the world with academic predictions is to separate human experiences from the world, a secular transcendence and denial of chance and mortalities.
The Mashpee people knew who they were, and apparently until 1977, they believed that everyone shared this with them as something undisputed, grounded in the common belief of trust, respect, oral consent. Yet, they are not to be legally called a tribe and a distinct Native American nation.
I am saddened by the necessity to even pose the next question.
Why must a people as old as time itself assert the importance of nationhood? Why can’t we understand their identity as ‘a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject’, as something more fluid, more flexible as opposed to the solidified notion of nationhood? (Clifford, ‘Mashpee’, 344) I suppose it is because the nations of today’s world, young and older, are still to come to terms with the existence of the ‘other selves’, like or unlike then, who may remind them of the disturbing past or the indifferent future, as time moves on and leaves no room for mutual (positive) acculturation. And there is no magic formula solution. Just countless attempts at cultural interchange and learning.
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