The D.C. Series |
The following interview is part of a series The 90% ran about the experiences of Natives living in Washington, D.C. during and following the election of Donald Trump.
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Amber Richardson is from Hollister, North Carolina and is an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe. She graduated from Duke University where she was President of Duke’s Native American Student Alliance. Amber is a fancy shawl dancer on the powwow trail and currently works as Communications Associate for the Center for Native American Youth at The Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. She came to DC after working for Native youth and other underrepresented communities in North Carolina. We spoke with Amber about identity, the recent presidential election, and her experience at the Women’s March on Washington.
This interview took place in 2017.
This interview took place in 2017.
The 90%: For you and the Native folks that you hang with in DC, what was the experience that y'all had during the most recent presidential campaign and then the election?
AR: To me it just feels like a sort of collective depression. I think during the campaign we were all laughing at Trump like this is never gonna happen. And when it did, it was just devastating. I was watching coverage of election night with an Alaska Native friend at a bar and there were collective gasps all throughout the night as Trump won state after state. Just never really saw that happening. Especially after all of the tapes came out with the terrible, awful things he said about how he can grab women and touch them however he wants to. There was just no way we were going to elect a known sex offender as president, right? I remember watching the coverage of the audio leaks and just crying as I listened to the women who defended him. Some of them were mothers (I googled them) and I’m thinking — how do you explain that to your child? That it’s ok that the leader of this country feels like he has certain rights and privileges to their bodies without their consent? How does that happen? Why is he a valid candidate? So now, I’m still in awe every single time I remember he’s the president. I tried to forget for a while, but you can only stay under that rock for so long.
The 90%: How has the climate changed since the inauguration?
AR: I think it’s shifted just from disbelief to sadness to anger to action-oriented anger. A lot of my friends are participating in protests and other demonstrations or making their voices heard on social media or other online channels to express their disagreement. One of the things I keep hearing is “This kind of sucks, I’d love to have my free time to do things that I enjoy but instead I’m out here protesting because that’s just our lives now.” A friend of mine even said that she was in a cab recently and the driver said, “Where are you coming from?” She was like, “Oh, we went to this #NoDAPL rally” or something and he was like, “Yeah, that’s the thing these days. You go to a protest; you get home in time to see yourself on TV.”
We're just mad. Just hurt and mad. But also really empowered because so many people are standing up and not resting. Everything that’s happened with Standing Rock, just a tremendous display of people around the world coming together behind one cause is really inspiring. That movement makes me think that maybe this is the time. All those times we were told that we’re the Seventh Generation and that we’re going to have to protect the world and stand up and fight, maybe this is it, maybe I’m seeing it in my lifetime. I’m always thinking -- should I have children and grandchildren -- what does that story look like and where did I stand? Where am I gonna tell them I was?
The 90%: Yes! Speaking of standing up and taking action, talk to me a little bit about what happened at the Women’s March.
AR: The Women’s March was probably the first large-scale protest I participated in. I went out a day early to go out and get one of the scarves that Bethany Yellowtail designed for the Indigenous Women Rise group, which was really a beautiful, beautiful gathering. I was crying before I even got there because I knew it would be a bunch of strong, warrior women there for each other but also ready to get shit done. I needed that.
The next day, it was amazing to show up at the march and see all these other women with these turquoise scarves around their necks and to be in this circle where we had an elder smudging us and everything was done in a really good way. We prayed a lot and we sang. Every time I see somebody with their scarf, I feel so grateful for the women warrior song that we sang together. Anytime we got separated from the group, we would sing it and other people would sing it back to us and we would find each other in the crowd. It was just this beautiful, beautiful moment of solidarity with these mothers and sisters and daughters and aunties and all of that. Our bubble, our Indigenous Women’s bubble that we had, was incredible and I loved that part.
At times that I wasn’t with the group, those moments were uncomfortable. I should mention that I was wearing my regalia, or some of my regalia, during the march. I had on a dress and beaded leggings and moccasins. I remember thinking, I’m not going to put feathers in my hair because somebody might not act right and I’m not trying to get in a fight with eagle feathers in my hair! I’m also not trying to have somebody reach up and try to touch my feathers and then I’ve got to go off. I’m gonna leave that at home. Now, anytime that I’ve worn my regalia in a non-Native space, I automatically became a spectacle. People make comments. None of the comments that I got or heard as a participant were super disparaging, but they ranged from annoying to moderately offensive. For example, I got a lot of folks saying things like, “Ooh, cool boots!”, which was annoying because I wasn’t even wearing boots, they’re moccasins and leggings. Or like, “Ooh, cool dress!” And because the dress I was wearing was rainbow colored, I think they might have thought I was deliberately making a pro-LGBTQ statement, which is fine, because I’m comfortable making those statements, but that wasn’t exactly the point. I didn’t make the dress just for that reason or that march, and there just seemed to be no understanding of what was going on. So yeah, there were weird, annoying questions. There was a lot of that awkward stuff as I was on the metro or wading through the crowd and trying to meet up with Indigenous Women Rise.
And then there were other instances that just kind of blew my mind. For context, before we started marching, we gathered in a circle in front of NMAI and we were praying and singing and smudging and making sure that everybody felt good before we started — it was beautiful. A couple of times, these non-Native women, mostly white, would come up and stand behind the Natives who were holding the banner to maintain our circle, and they would just be like, “Ooh! What’s this? What’s going on?” Like it was a show. They were like, “These are the Native Americans!” And a few times they even went underneath our banners and walked up to the elder who was offering prayers and medicine for us and got in her face to take photos. And so I’m immediately freaking out on the inside thinking, What the hell are you doing? Step back, you shouldn’t be in this circle. But my understanding was that we were supposed to have “peacekeepers” in the circle, and I as a young person being taught in my culture to be deferential to your elders and just deferential and respectful period, didn't know If it was okay for me to take on that role and tell those people to get out. Even though everything inside me was screaming GET OUT. It was so disrespectful. And I was actually really surprised that no one did anything about that.
There was another incident that was probably one of the most offensive to me. We were marching and at one point a couple white women walked out in front of our group and they’re like, “Wait, hold it right there!”, telling us to stop marching so they could take pictures. I’m thinking, This is a march. No! And I want to say that the group slowed down, maybe it was a confusion thing, maybe people were just so thrown off that they didn’t react, maybe that’s what it was, I don’t know.
Then another instance was when we were marching and I hear this white woman, she comes up to me and says, “Hey are you guys gonna perform again?” I was like, “You mean, sing and pray? Probably.” And she was like, “Oh good, because we like your sound.” And everything about it just made me feel…small. And it felt like our group’s purpose was being minimized and misunderstood as entertainment for other marchers. I already felt like a spectacle and I’m used to that, I’m used to doing cultural performances, to teach people about powwow dancing and different elements of Native culture at schools and settings like that, which are mostly non-Native. So I understand to expect that sort of reaction sometimes from spectators. But for some reason I thought it would be different at the march. I just thought that this would be a crowd of people who are more conscious than the average joe and that just wasn’t the case. Part of me just wanted to rationalize it all and say, We’re all here for the same reason, Amber. We’re all standing up for women’s rights and we’re standing up for each other. I have to remember, I’m part of this bigger group, I’m part of this bigger cause, this bigger message that’s being sent. So maybe I’m being too hypersensitive to this. I questioned myself. But that can’t be the case. Why would I have such a visceral knee-jerk reaction to someone saying, “Are you going to perform again?” This was such a personal, beautiful, powerful thing -- to be taught a song together that we’re singing while marching together. We’re singing for missing and murdered Indigenous women. I’m singing for family members that I’ve lost, I’m singing for my Grammie who is one of my favorite people in the world. This is personal. It’s a prayer. To have it minimized… I know they probably don’t even know what they were doing, and that’s also infuriating, that they don’t even know or think about the fact that many things they did on that day were very offensive.
I feel like it’s always the oppressed minority that has to be the educator, that has to exhaust themselves to teach this one ignorant person so that it doesn’t happen again, so that we protect our brothers and sisters who are feeling the same thing. That shit is exhausting and it’s not my responsibility! I don’t want to do it sometimes, and I’ve had to come to terms with that and the fact that it’s ok to opt out of those situations when I want to. I can have a teachable moment when I feel up to it, but if I’ve had teachable moments multiple times in a day, it is ok for me to say, “I’m tired and I don’t want to do this, read a book. I have several books for you, my friends have several books for you, take them and read them and come back to me with notes and real questions.”
There’s a lot there, I don’t know where you want to go.
The 90%: That’s really great, and I think it’s important that people hear that. There have been the beginnings of a lot of important conversations about white feminism since the march, and I think the fact that you were reacting in such a way that you wondered if you were overreacting speaks to the dominance of white feminism.
AR: Yeah, because I fully expected someone to say, Lighten up — we’re all here for the same thing. So I was like maybe I’m supposed to check myself and remember the reason I’m here. But I shouldn’t have to choose between being a woman and being an Indigenous person.
The 90%: Do you feel like because of your position working at a Native policy institute that you run across people who need educating more than most people do? I'm imagining you get correspondence from people who are looking for answers -- they find out about this Native advocacy center and so they contact y'all because they think they can get all the answers from whatever Native they can find.
AR: We get some of that. We’ve gotten emails from people trying to figure out if they’re affiliated with a certain tribe. Our policy and protocol as an organization is to be as helpful as possible. We point them to different resources and say, why don’t you try to do some digging first and then look around at the local tribes and maybe contact an office and see if one of the people in your family tree might have a connection, but we don’t do that work here.
I also think it’s interesting to note that my situation is a bit unique because at CNAY, the staff is mostly Native. We’re this little Native bubble within the larger Aspen Institute which is not Native in the slightest. It is mostly white, and I find that I do have to do a lot of explaining to people outside of my program. I have also experienced some microaggressions and just outright weird comments, even from friends, that I’ve had to address (which kind of sucks). For my friends, I tell them straight up, you’re getting a pass right now. I need you to understand that if we were not cool, this conversation would have gone really differently, but because I’m fond of you, I’m taking the time to tell you why what you just said was reckless. That sort of stuff happens, but also when I’m just out in the world, when I’m at a bar or something, and it gets to the DC question of what do you do, as soon as I say anything about Native Americans, it’s just like, ok — are you Native? And the terrible question of “how much?” because of course you know I’m a curly-headed Indian so I don’t look like the ones they’ve seen in their books, and they’re trying to figure out if I’m legit, so I have to go through this litmus test before I can even tell them about what I do. There are all types of ignorant questions that you become used to as a Native person having to constantly explain your existence and regurgitate your history. It always feels like a pop quiz. You can’t admit you don’t know something to a non-Native person. You just can’t because then you lose all credibility. But if I were to turn it around and ask a non-Native person, like, what’s up with your family history? Where do your people come from? It’s cool for them to say, oh yea, not really sure. I’m probably a little bit of this or that, that’s acceptable. But I have to tell you all the names of my ancestors, what my tribal ID number is…? It’s crazy!
I think the older I get as a Native person, especially as a Native woman, as a Native queer woman, it’s just like, when you start to put the pieces together of who you are and all the ways that you have been oppressed, it doesn’t even matter to what extent you try to be Positive Pam, that shit really gets to you. It’s under the surface all the time, and sometimes I do feel like I’m on edge. I don’t want to live like that, but I also don’t want to forget because I feel like forgetting is a betrayal of my history and the people who suffered way worse than I’m suffering right now. I’m mad because of microaggressions, but I have ancestors that lost land, lives, and languages – things that are way more significant. Still, there’s this weird layer right beneath the surface that is constantly on guard, constantly shielded from the world because you’re expecting something shitty around every turn. That’s just how I feel sometimes.
The 90%: Within North Carolina, obviously when you’re back home, one of the most contentious issues within North Carolina Native politics is state versus federally recognized status. Does that have any bearing on your life when you’re outside of the state? Is that a thing in DC Native politics or is that something that mostly stays at home?
AR: So I have never had a showdown with anyone in DC about that, but I can tell you that when I got here and I started doing this work, most of my work involved federally recognized tribal members, so I was very self-conscious when I would say the name of my tribe. Again it was like being on edge. I just felt like someone was going to say oh, you’re state-recognized? Ok, you’re not real. You’re already having to deal with that from non-Natives and to have to deal with it also within the Native community sucks a lot, so I was really self-conscious. I’ve grown way more comfortable now because I’ve realize no one can take away from me the experiences I grew up with being in a tight-knit Native community, dancing in powwows, trying to learn my language (for like a summer until I went off to school). I grew up with these experiences that are really special to me, I went through a coming-of-age ceremony with a community leader who means a lot to me and a lot to my tribe, and I have sisters from that process. The fact that the federal government’s whole recognition system is fucked up and expensive and really time-consuming is not my fault and has no bearing on how Indian I am. That’s just it. So now I just say I’m Haliwa-Saponi from North Carolina and I answer questions to the extent that I can and that’s it. But yeah, it does come up. People want to know, are you a land-based tribe? Do you have gaming? Do you get federal services? I answer and tell them that yeah, we’re fighting to get federal recognition, we’ve been fighting for years for it, it’s just a really terrible process that’s set up for us to lose.
The 90%: That is administrative genocide, that is the point.
AR: Great term!
The 90%: Straight from the mouth of my dad. I grew up in a house where Indian law was, like, my first set of books. Feel free to use the term, it’s a household term for us.
So that’s all the questions that I had for you, so at this point I’m just gonna open up and if there’s anything you want to talk out loud about, it can be about the march or just about DC-ness or the election or anything else. The space is yours.
AR: I think you got most of the gems. I will say this, my work focuses on Native youth on the national level so I see youth from all over, but I rarely get to work with youth from my own tribe through my job. That always makes me a little sad. Any time a Champions for Change application comes around, I’m telling Haliwas all the time, or any North Carolina Indians really, to please, please, please apply because I think that my experience is so different from that of my co-workers and of most of the youth that I work with. I listen to their stories and I’m moved by them, but I’m also a little bit removed because our experiences are different on a lot of fundamental levels. Some of it does go back to recognition and the way that that is viewed both within the Native community and outside the Native community, and I would love for a North Carolina Native to have this kind of platform to tell that story because it needs to be told. I look at young people like my little brother who is studying horticulture and agricultural technology right now because he wants to bring back our traditional agricultural practices and create these bonds between elders and youth around traditional plants and foods and language. He’s trying to infuse culture in everything that he does through his drum group and by getting friends excited about being able to speak to each other in a language that’s ours. It’s a really beautiful and really unique journey and story that I don’t think has a lot of voice, and I’d really love to see that story told by someone other than me, younger than me!
AR: To me it just feels like a sort of collective depression. I think during the campaign we were all laughing at Trump like this is never gonna happen. And when it did, it was just devastating. I was watching coverage of election night with an Alaska Native friend at a bar and there were collective gasps all throughout the night as Trump won state after state. Just never really saw that happening. Especially after all of the tapes came out with the terrible, awful things he said about how he can grab women and touch them however he wants to. There was just no way we were going to elect a known sex offender as president, right? I remember watching the coverage of the audio leaks and just crying as I listened to the women who defended him. Some of them were mothers (I googled them) and I’m thinking — how do you explain that to your child? That it’s ok that the leader of this country feels like he has certain rights and privileges to their bodies without their consent? How does that happen? Why is he a valid candidate? So now, I’m still in awe every single time I remember he’s the president. I tried to forget for a while, but you can only stay under that rock for so long.
The 90%: How has the climate changed since the inauguration?
AR: I think it’s shifted just from disbelief to sadness to anger to action-oriented anger. A lot of my friends are participating in protests and other demonstrations or making their voices heard on social media or other online channels to express their disagreement. One of the things I keep hearing is “This kind of sucks, I’d love to have my free time to do things that I enjoy but instead I’m out here protesting because that’s just our lives now.” A friend of mine even said that she was in a cab recently and the driver said, “Where are you coming from?” She was like, “Oh, we went to this #NoDAPL rally” or something and he was like, “Yeah, that’s the thing these days. You go to a protest; you get home in time to see yourself on TV.”
We're just mad. Just hurt and mad. But also really empowered because so many people are standing up and not resting. Everything that’s happened with Standing Rock, just a tremendous display of people around the world coming together behind one cause is really inspiring. That movement makes me think that maybe this is the time. All those times we were told that we’re the Seventh Generation and that we’re going to have to protect the world and stand up and fight, maybe this is it, maybe I’m seeing it in my lifetime. I’m always thinking -- should I have children and grandchildren -- what does that story look like and where did I stand? Where am I gonna tell them I was?
The 90%: Yes! Speaking of standing up and taking action, talk to me a little bit about what happened at the Women’s March.
AR: The Women’s March was probably the first large-scale protest I participated in. I went out a day early to go out and get one of the scarves that Bethany Yellowtail designed for the Indigenous Women Rise group, which was really a beautiful, beautiful gathering. I was crying before I even got there because I knew it would be a bunch of strong, warrior women there for each other but also ready to get shit done. I needed that.
The next day, it was amazing to show up at the march and see all these other women with these turquoise scarves around their necks and to be in this circle where we had an elder smudging us and everything was done in a really good way. We prayed a lot and we sang. Every time I see somebody with their scarf, I feel so grateful for the women warrior song that we sang together. Anytime we got separated from the group, we would sing it and other people would sing it back to us and we would find each other in the crowd. It was just this beautiful, beautiful moment of solidarity with these mothers and sisters and daughters and aunties and all of that. Our bubble, our Indigenous Women’s bubble that we had, was incredible and I loved that part.
At times that I wasn’t with the group, those moments were uncomfortable. I should mention that I was wearing my regalia, or some of my regalia, during the march. I had on a dress and beaded leggings and moccasins. I remember thinking, I’m not going to put feathers in my hair because somebody might not act right and I’m not trying to get in a fight with eagle feathers in my hair! I’m also not trying to have somebody reach up and try to touch my feathers and then I’ve got to go off. I’m gonna leave that at home. Now, anytime that I’ve worn my regalia in a non-Native space, I automatically became a spectacle. People make comments. None of the comments that I got or heard as a participant were super disparaging, but they ranged from annoying to moderately offensive. For example, I got a lot of folks saying things like, “Ooh, cool boots!”, which was annoying because I wasn’t even wearing boots, they’re moccasins and leggings. Or like, “Ooh, cool dress!” And because the dress I was wearing was rainbow colored, I think they might have thought I was deliberately making a pro-LGBTQ statement, which is fine, because I’m comfortable making those statements, but that wasn’t exactly the point. I didn’t make the dress just for that reason or that march, and there just seemed to be no understanding of what was going on. So yeah, there were weird, annoying questions. There was a lot of that awkward stuff as I was on the metro or wading through the crowd and trying to meet up with Indigenous Women Rise.
And then there were other instances that just kind of blew my mind. For context, before we started marching, we gathered in a circle in front of NMAI and we were praying and singing and smudging and making sure that everybody felt good before we started — it was beautiful. A couple of times, these non-Native women, mostly white, would come up and stand behind the Natives who were holding the banner to maintain our circle, and they would just be like, “Ooh! What’s this? What’s going on?” Like it was a show. They were like, “These are the Native Americans!” And a few times they even went underneath our banners and walked up to the elder who was offering prayers and medicine for us and got in her face to take photos. And so I’m immediately freaking out on the inside thinking, What the hell are you doing? Step back, you shouldn’t be in this circle. But my understanding was that we were supposed to have “peacekeepers” in the circle, and I as a young person being taught in my culture to be deferential to your elders and just deferential and respectful period, didn't know If it was okay for me to take on that role and tell those people to get out. Even though everything inside me was screaming GET OUT. It was so disrespectful. And I was actually really surprised that no one did anything about that.
There was another incident that was probably one of the most offensive to me. We were marching and at one point a couple white women walked out in front of our group and they’re like, “Wait, hold it right there!”, telling us to stop marching so they could take pictures. I’m thinking, This is a march. No! And I want to say that the group slowed down, maybe it was a confusion thing, maybe people were just so thrown off that they didn’t react, maybe that’s what it was, I don’t know.
Then another instance was when we were marching and I hear this white woman, she comes up to me and says, “Hey are you guys gonna perform again?” I was like, “You mean, sing and pray? Probably.” And she was like, “Oh good, because we like your sound.” And everything about it just made me feel…small. And it felt like our group’s purpose was being minimized and misunderstood as entertainment for other marchers. I already felt like a spectacle and I’m used to that, I’m used to doing cultural performances, to teach people about powwow dancing and different elements of Native culture at schools and settings like that, which are mostly non-Native. So I understand to expect that sort of reaction sometimes from spectators. But for some reason I thought it would be different at the march. I just thought that this would be a crowd of people who are more conscious than the average joe and that just wasn’t the case. Part of me just wanted to rationalize it all and say, We’re all here for the same reason, Amber. We’re all standing up for women’s rights and we’re standing up for each other. I have to remember, I’m part of this bigger group, I’m part of this bigger cause, this bigger message that’s being sent. So maybe I’m being too hypersensitive to this. I questioned myself. But that can’t be the case. Why would I have such a visceral knee-jerk reaction to someone saying, “Are you going to perform again?” This was such a personal, beautiful, powerful thing -- to be taught a song together that we’re singing while marching together. We’re singing for missing and murdered Indigenous women. I’m singing for family members that I’ve lost, I’m singing for my Grammie who is one of my favorite people in the world. This is personal. It’s a prayer. To have it minimized… I know they probably don’t even know what they were doing, and that’s also infuriating, that they don’t even know or think about the fact that many things they did on that day were very offensive.
I feel like it’s always the oppressed minority that has to be the educator, that has to exhaust themselves to teach this one ignorant person so that it doesn’t happen again, so that we protect our brothers and sisters who are feeling the same thing. That shit is exhausting and it’s not my responsibility! I don’t want to do it sometimes, and I’ve had to come to terms with that and the fact that it’s ok to opt out of those situations when I want to. I can have a teachable moment when I feel up to it, but if I’ve had teachable moments multiple times in a day, it is ok for me to say, “I’m tired and I don’t want to do this, read a book. I have several books for you, my friends have several books for you, take them and read them and come back to me with notes and real questions.”
There’s a lot there, I don’t know where you want to go.
The 90%: That’s really great, and I think it’s important that people hear that. There have been the beginnings of a lot of important conversations about white feminism since the march, and I think the fact that you were reacting in such a way that you wondered if you were overreacting speaks to the dominance of white feminism.
AR: Yeah, because I fully expected someone to say, Lighten up — we’re all here for the same thing. So I was like maybe I’m supposed to check myself and remember the reason I’m here. But I shouldn’t have to choose between being a woman and being an Indigenous person.
The 90%: Do you feel like because of your position working at a Native policy institute that you run across people who need educating more than most people do? I'm imagining you get correspondence from people who are looking for answers -- they find out about this Native advocacy center and so they contact y'all because they think they can get all the answers from whatever Native they can find.
AR: We get some of that. We’ve gotten emails from people trying to figure out if they’re affiliated with a certain tribe. Our policy and protocol as an organization is to be as helpful as possible. We point them to different resources and say, why don’t you try to do some digging first and then look around at the local tribes and maybe contact an office and see if one of the people in your family tree might have a connection, but we don’t do that work here.
I also think it’s interesting to note that my situation is a bit unique because at CNAY, the staff is mostly Native. We’re this little Native bubble within the larger Aspen Institute which is not Native in the slightest. It is mostly white, and I find that I do have to do a lot of explaining to people outside of my program. I have also experienced some microaggressions and just outright weird comments, even from friends, that I’ve had to address (which kind of sucks). For my friends, I tell them straight up, you’re getting a pass right now. I need you to understand that if we were not cool, this conversation would have gone really differently, but because I’m fond of you, I’m taking the time to tell you why what you just said was reckless. That sort of stuff happens, but also when I’m just out in the world, when I’m at a bar or something, and it gets to the DC question of what do you do, as soon as I say anything about Native Americans, it’s just like, ok — are you Native? And the terrible question of “how much?” because of course you know I’m a curly-headed Indian so I don’t look like the ones they’ve seen in their books, and they’re trying to figure out if I’m legit, so I have to go through this litmus test before I can even tell them about what I do. There are all types of ignorant questions that you become used to as a Native person having to constantly explain your existence and regurgitate your history. It always feels like a pop quiz. You can’t admit you don’t know something to a non-Native person. You just can’t because then you lose all credibility. But if I were to turn it around and ask a non-Native person, like, what’s up with your family history? Where do your people come from? It’s cool for them to say, oh yea, not really sure. I’m probably a little bit of this or that, that’s acceptable. But I have to tell you all the names of my ancestors, what my tribal ID number is…? It’s crazy!
I think the older I get as a Native person, especially as a Native woman, as a Native queer woman, it’s just like, when you start to put the pieces together of who you are and all the ways that you have been oppressed, it doesn’t even matter to what extent you try to be Positive Pam, that shit really gets to you. It’s under the surface all the time, and sometimes I do feel like I’m on edge. I don’t want to live like that, but I also don’t want to forget because I feel like forgetting is a betrayal of my history and the people who suffered way worse than I’m suffering right now. I’m mad because of microaggressions, but I have ancestors that lost land, lives, and languages – things that are way more significant. Still, there’s this weird layer right beneath the surface that is constantly on guard, constantly shielded from the world because you’re expecting something shitty around every turn. That’s just how I feel sometimes.
The 90%: Within North Carolina, obviously when you’re back home, one of the most contentious issues within North Carolina Native politics is state versus federally recognized status. Does that have any bearing on your life when you’re outside of the state? Is that a thing in DC Native politics or is that something that mostly stays at home?
AR: So I have never had a showdown with anyone in DC about that, but I can tell you that when I got here and I started doing this work, most of my work involved federally recognized tribal members, so I was very self-conscious when I would say the name of my tribe. Again it was like being on edge. I just felt like someone was going to say oh, you’re state-recognized? Ok, you’re not real. You’re already having to deal with that from non-Natives and to have to deal with it also within the Native community sucks a lot, so I was really self-conscious. I’ve grown way more comfortable now because I’ve realize no one can take away from me the experiences I grew up with being in a tight-knit Native community, dancing in powwows, trying to learn my language (for like a summer until I went off to school). I grew up with these experiences that are really special to me, I went through a coming-of-age ceremony with a community leader who means a lot to me and a lot to my tribe, and I have sisters from that process. The fact that the federal government’s whole recognition system is fucked up and expensive and really time-consuming is not my fault and has no bearing on how Indian I am. That’s just it. So now I just say I’m Haliwa-Saponi from North Carolina and I answer questions to the extent that I can and that’s it. But yeah, it does come up. People want to know, are you a land-based tribe? Do you have gaming? Do you get federal services? I answer and tell them that yeah, we’re fighting to get federal recognition, we’ve been fighting for years for it, it’s just a really terrible process that’s set up for us to lose.
The 90%: That is administrative genocide, that is the point.
AR: Great term!
The 90%: Straight from the mouth of my dad. I grew up in a house where Indian law was, like, my first set of books. Feel free to use the term, it’s a household term for us.
So that’s all the questions that I had for you, so at this point I’m just gonna open up and if there’s anything you want to talk out loud about, it can be about the march or just about DC-ness or the election or anything else. The space is yours.
AR: I think you got most of the gems. I will say this, my work focuses on Native youth on the national level so I see youth from all over, but I rarely get to work with youth from my own tribe through my job. That always makes me a little sad. Any time a Champions for Change application comes around, I’m telling Haliwas all the time, or any North Carolina Indians really, to please, please, please apply because I think that my experience is so different from that of my co-workers and of most of the youth that I work with. I listen to their stories and I’m moved by them, but I’m also a little bit removed because our experiences are different on a lot of fundamental levels. Some of it does go back to recognition and the way that that is viewed both within the Native community and outside the Native community, and I would love for a North Carolina Native to have this kind of platform to tell that story because it needs to be told. I look at young people like my little brother who is studying horticulture and agricultural technology right now because he wants to bring back our traditional agricultural practices and create these bonds between elders and youth around traditional plants and foods and language. He’s trying to infuse culture in everything that he does through his drum group and by getting friends excited about being able to speak to each other in a language that’s ours. It’s a really beautiful and really unique journey and story that I don’t think has a lot of voice, and I’d really love to see that story told by someone other than me, younger than me!