Oblivious Upbringings — Part III
There is—and has long been—controversy over the content of human blood. To the point where legislators instituted absurdities like the “one-drop rule” wherein one drop of African American blood made a person “Negro.” It wasn’t really about blood, per se. It was an attempt to maintain a supposed superiority of the white race.
Same goes for the stealing of Native American children to raise them as white. And the determination of Native American boarding schools—run by the US government—to eliminate all student behavior representing Indian culture, including a pupil’s mother tongue.
For decades, whites were trying to obliterate Native American heritage, but recently it has become fashionable to be Native American. People want to prove they have X percent Native blood so they’ll be welcomed into a given tribe.
Sounds fishy to me. By blood, I am fully one-half Lithuanian. Both of my paternal grandparents came from Lithuania. But I was born in the United States. I live as an American. I don’t speak Lithuanian. And I wouldn’t presume to have any special rights as a citizen if I should travel to Lithuania. I know very little about my grandparents’ background. In fact, I know more about American Indian cultures than Lithuanian traditions, and that’s not saying much.
My late husband and I spent a dozen years working for the very government agency that once tried to extract “native-ness” from indigenous peoples. Thankfully, that was not the goal during our employment.
My supervisor warned me from the get-go not to take the job if I was looking to become an Indian. She’d experienced such applicants. But I had no such inclination.
However, my husband and I did have to quickly adapt to some customs—like pointing with our lips, rather than our fingers. Pointing with fingers was distinctly rude, provoking eye rolls and whispers among our Native co-workers. Protruding our lips to indicate direction or the whereabouts of something quickly became second nature (and earned my husband and me some sideways glances when we traveled east to visit family and couldn’t shake the habit).
There were many bits of culture we had to absorb and respect to do our jobs well. But in the end, even after twelve years, we were aware that we were, essentially, visitors.
I asked the Almighty Google why white people are so keen on becoming Native American. One school of thought is that it’s easier to recognize and draw attention to the horrific treatment of Native Americans if one is a Native American—rather than a member of the race that perpetrated the atrocities. It’s a way to ease one’s sense of responsibility.
That sounds plausible—and like folks are figuring out what faulty notions might have been served up as fact when they were young. They’re essentially poking around for undeserved privilege.
Yet claiming Native American identity when one actually lives as a white person, is, in itself, white privilege. Native Americans have a name for these folks: Pretendians.
It turns out looking one’s privilege in the eye is a difficult thing to do. It’s easier to accept, as fact, all the notions we grew up with. And it’s entirely possible that my desire to see all humans (and dogs) treated with respect, regardless of gender, ethnicity, blood type, sexual identity, height, weight, dietary restrictions, educational level, favorite color, shoe size, religion or lack thereof, is just another way I’ve been misled in my own oblivious upbringing. I will try to keep an open mind.