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by Lola Bean/PNN
“Our circle is always blessed with our ancestors.”
The words danced out of Gilbert Blacksmith’s lips, swirled with the warm sweet smoke being passed from brother to sister, carrying our struggles through the air and filling the UN Plaza.
It was the International Day of the World's Indigenous People. This day is celebrated every year during the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People. This first Decade was celebrated from 1994-2004 to promote international solutions to indigenous struggles and in 2004 the Assembly proclaimed a Second International Decade.
On August 9, 2007, I was at the UN Plaza in San Francisco to represent for my indigenous ancestors and to sup-port and re-port with POOR Magazine.
During the ceremony, I had completely separated from my body. Not an uncommon ability of abuse survivors.
My mother would physically and psychologically beat me daily for lengths of time that seemed endless. During these periods, my spirit would often find itself up in the corner of the room trying to figure out what was going on. More often than not, my ancestors were there waiting for me. More and more, I came looking for them. And in the tribal circle, we were together.
I looked around the circle. I saw my brothers and sisters in struggle.
And I saw my family members from POOR Magazine. On one side of me was Tiny, co-founder of POOR Magazine and on the other was Anna, our Office Manager and mama duck. I looked across the circle and saw my brothers Marlon and Ruyata. And soon Rommie, Bruce and Vivian were all there together in the circle.
We at POOR Magazine are familiar and comfortable with the tribal circle.
We hold Community Newsroom in a circle, we have our classes in a circle, we hold our meetings in a circle, at the US Social Forum, we even had to fight for our right to speak to each other in our tribal circle and most recently we come together to address internal struggles in a circle.
Circles are the most natural shapes in our universe. They connect us to the roundness of the earth mother. They allow us to look in each other’s eyes when we speak. A circle represents balance and shared position. It represents endlessness.
It is the endless connection that holds us together during times of crisis and struggle.
As a family, POOR Magazine is taking a revolutionary approach to addressing internal issues by resisting the kolinizers model of accountability and punitive structure. We believe that we must look to non-colonized models of care giving, art, advocacy, housing, equity, organizing and self-accountability. Models that are inside our non-colonized selves, our own indigenismo.
I feel privileged to participate in this revolutionary form of resistance. This circle.
I have never seen accountability like this – especially in a family setting. Growing up, account ability meant that everything was my fault. There was nor discussion or reflection. There was no shared understanding or mutual respect. No will to learn and grow and strengthen bonds. There was only the violent will of my broken mother.
She was a wild child with wide Cherokee cheekbones, Peruvian skin the color of brown sugar, and thick ropes of blackest brown hair that defied her European bisabuelos. The middle child in an unstable family that was suffocating under the weight of generations of physical, sexual, psychological and economic torture, they called her “Monkey” and “Whore.” My mother was scarred from fights with her parents, her siblings, and everyone else around her. My mother was violently gasping for air when a parasite began absorbing the little nourishment her body had left to give.
I was born while my mother was still in her teens. She had me well before experience might have dulled the glint in her eye that made her look always like a beast ready to pounce. I was a living embarrassment even more humiliating when my blood forced her to reveal that she didn’t know who my father was. Half my identity lost in a 15-minute court proceeding. My mother’s shotgun marriage - an instant failure. And only me to blame.
Families in struggle will often turn that struggle in on each other.
Sometimes struggle occurs at the natural intersection of two healthy boundaries. Most often it is an intentional byproduct of a destructive, violent, greedy, and dominating people and the systems that create them.
And as most communities of struggle know, one of the greatest tools of those we struggle against is separation.
“We lived on this earth 50,000 years before the Europeans came across on their little boats,” an indigenous elder reminds the crowd. When the conquerors came, they separated the people of Turtle Island, and every other island they landed on, from our land. They separated us from our water. They separated us from our cultures. They separated us from our communities and our families. They separated us from everything we needed to sustain physical and spiritual life. But separation was not enough. The end goal was eradication.
Eradication came in many forms. It came in trails of tears. It came on paper. It came in shotguns. It came in liquor bottles. It came through diseased blankets. It came in the food. It’s been here. It’s here now. And it’s still coming. For us. For our children. It has many faces and may names, but it is all the same process of separation and eradication. It has morphed with time and place and peoples, but it is the same at its core.
Sometimes it was a sock on the floor. Sometimes it was an open cereal box. Sometimes it was how I looked or the way I talked. Sometimes it was for just being there. Sometimes it was because I “talked back.” There were endless reasons my mother would beat me.
I spent years trying to do everything just right. Maybe if I was thinner. Maybe if I cleaned my room perfectly. Maybe if I wasn’t so ugly. Maybe if I wasn’t so stupid. Maybe if I didn’t talk so much. Maybe if I didn’t space out so much. Maybe if I just stayed out of her way. Maybe if I did everything she said just right. I spent years fighting all the faces of my mother’s abuse. Those struggles never set me free. In fact, they only twisted my mind and my understanding of reality more and more.
It was not enough. It would never be enough.
I was another obstacle. Just another fight. Just another thing holding her back from whatever life she thought she could have if I wasn’t there. I was an obstacle that needed to be isolated and erased. I was an unwanted child. A bastard. A stupid, fat bitch. An ugly monster no one would love. I deserved to be beaten. I deserved to be hated. I should not have eve been born.
When the conquerors, governors and settlers first landed on Turtle Island, they decided that the land was not inhabited by people, but by subhuman entities that needed to be subdued and exterminated.
In 1830, through the Indian Removal Act these enemies told the indigenous inhabitants of Turtle Island that if they all moved West of the Mississippi, they would be left alone. This “voluntary” relocation plan killing half of the Cherokee population alone. It still wasn’t enough.
In 1864, Black Kettle was told that “as long as he flew the American flag, he and his people would be safe from U.S. soldiers.” Colonel Chivington of the U.S. forces killed an upwards of 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho peace-seekers while the flag waved over the chief’s lodge. Most of the massacred were women and children. Chivington and his men decorated their hats and weapons with the body parts of the dead. Playing by the rules wasn’t enough.
In 2007, Indigenous people’s are still being asked to fight to have their basic human rights recognized. How long will we have to wait until they are actually achieved?
It’ll never be enough. There is no treaty, no agreement, no compromise, no logic, no effort that will ever make it enough.
Their goal is to isolate and destroy. We must reconnect and fight.
I looked around the circle again. Through the smoke I saw warriors standing hand in hand. Warriors from tribes all over the world. The beating drums and chants connecting our vibrations. I found myself once again outside of myself, but deeply connected.
Here in this circle were people that were supposed to be separated. Separated by gender, class, race, identity, sexual orientation, age, mental health, disability, etc. Separated by paperwork and county lines and skin tone and job description. Separated by family history, wage, location, and access.
Separated by lies and illusions.
Just hang an American flag over your door....
We are collectively forced into believing that each problem is a separate and isolated. That our brothers and sisters are the reason for our pain. That our outrage should be directed at each other. That we are our own worst enemies. And because this message is so repetitive and violent and strong and unyielding – it is very difficult to fight.
But in the circle, in that moment, with our ancestors and with each other – those illusions were torn down.
I saw felt the heat of four different energies at play. The need to destroy, the need to connect, the need to fight, and the need to turn away. I sensed these energies moving through us and around us and over us and coming up and through us and connecting us and fighting to pull us apart.
I remember my mind desperately trying to connect its neurons together. I remember the devastation and tears and blood and vomit each time logic failed to hold them together and I was under the unbearable pressure of another loss, another trauma.
She said if I cleaned my room, than I wouldn’t deserve a beating...
I remember learning to search through her meaning below her words...
But if you don’t lose 20 lbs. by this evening, I’m going to beat you anyways...
I remember turning to people that said they were there to help...
Look, just cover up your arms and let’s pretend like it never happened, OK?
I remember longing for someone to connect to....
You have pain like me. And pressure, too. I can feel it in you. Maybe we can help each other. Please don’t be scared of me. Please don’t think I’m a freak.
I remember learning to fight...
This is not our fault. We can fight this.
“There is no distinction between our fights. Our enemy is the same.”
Our only distinction is who we become when we are presented time and time again with the universal challenge to show the courage to own who we are. We can choose to destroy or choose to liberate. We can choose to turn a blind eye or choose to fight.
At POOR Magazine, it comes down to “Show Not Tell!” As I write these words I received a text message from Mari, my indigenous mixed race revolutionary sister and mentor. It reads, “Like one struggle says, i got your back, u got my back, we got SOLIDARITY!”
In that circle at the UN Plaza, we were all showing our solidarity. When our brothers and sisters called, we had their backs.
Antonio Gonzales of the American Indian Movement said, “Aug.9 is a day all the world should be celebrating together.” In that circle at the UN Plaza, we were all showing our solidarity. When our brothers and sisters called, we had their backs.
Our struggle is the same.
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