It's
very unusual that I post an assignment by a student but I am making an
exception for Carla Nunez. Her evocative prose describes the life and everyday circumstances of the women of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people, who along with the Nakota and Dakota, make up the Great Sioux
Nation. Note how she weaves in class readings and concepts with stories
of women that humanize what we are learning in POS 355 WOMEN POWER AND POLITICS NAU, Spring 2015. Reprinted with Ms Nunez' permission.
Today,
this morning, as the sun shines, I sit here with a very heavy heart and
flip through my mind's memory. I sit within this isolated community,
surrounded by the badlands, dry scrubs, and pines. Dead tumble weeds
blow across my path and dirt clouds blind my view. This land, the
Federal Government allocated for the Oglala Lakota Sioux to die upon,
given the name Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I think about the tragic
losses that have recently taken place on this reservation of oppression: 5
young girls not wanting to live another day on this earth, not wanting
to take another breath of air from an environment poisoned with poverty,
unemployment, alcoholism, child abuse, and neglect. How did they find
the bravery, or courage, to take their own lives? What was going through
their minds as they searched for the rope that would rob their spirit
from the physical world to the spiritual world? Why didn’t they use that
bravery and courage to fight the negativity that surrounded them like
the women that lead the First and Second Wave of Feminism, Fought in Wounded Knee, and led matrilineal societies? How can we plant that seed of bravery into our young women in this generation?
I
search my mind and observe the environment that surrounds me. I wonder
what has happened within the family unit or within the society of Native
American families that has led these young women down a tunnel of
blackness and stoned their heart with hopelessness. I think about the
book Sisters In Spirit and the article “The State of Native America Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance.” As stated in the article, “Haudenosaunee
women, for example, owned the fields which produced about two-thirds of
their people’s diet. Among the Lakota, men owned nothing but their
clothing, a horse for hunting, weapons and spiritual items: homes,
furnishing, and the like were the property of their wives.” I find it enormously comical that all a Lakota women had to do in order to divorce her husband was to set his meager personal possessions outside the door of their lodge. There is a saying around here on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, if
you see a man walking down the road with a small bag of his possessions
he may only be kicked out of his house for a few days, but when you see
a man walking down the road with a large bag of his possessions, you
know he has been kicked out of his house for good.
A few months ago I attended a conference titled Cultural Competency. The keynote speaker was a Lakota man, Wayne Weston, who discussed the dynamics of marriage within the Lakota culture, and
how the meaning of the word “marriage” has changed within the culture.
Pre-colonized word that was used by the Lakota for marriage is “mihansani” which translates in the English language as, “wife, my skin beside me” (mi-my,
han-skin, sani-beside). Wayne also discussed that the wife becomes the
husband’s closet relative. Today, the colonized word for marriage is “mitayeou” which translate to the English language as, “wife, mine to take” (mita-mine,
yeou-to take). We can draw out the differences with the concept of
marriage from the pre-colonized to the colonized meaning within in the
Lakota culture. We can also draw out the differences between the
European and the role Native women played in the marriage. In the
European culture, during the marriage ceremony the father “gave” his
daughter to her soon to be husband. The husband now owned his wife; she
was now the property of her husband. She was now a woman who could not
exercise autonomy. A life of choice, a life to earn, or a chance to
divorce weren’t an option for her. In the article, The Politics of
Liberal Feminism, Betty Friedan concurred, “For women to have full
identity and freedom, they must have economic independence…Equality and
human dignity are not possible for women if they are not able to
earn…Only economic independence can free a woman to marry for love, not
for status or financial support, or to leave a loveless, intolerable,
humiliating marriage, or to eat, dress, rest, and move if she plans not
to marry.” As a young woman, my mom worked every day in a
packing house; often she would come home with her brown steel toed boots
with black thick soles and on the tip of her boot a piece of fat from
the pork meat she had trimmed. When she walked through the door, she was
always tired from working 10 hour days and standing the majority of the
time. She raised nine kids, and bought her own home before she met my dad.
One morning, I woke up, because I felt a cold draft of air on my face,
it was winter time. I got up off the couch and walked to the back door
and noticed it hadn’t been closed all the way. Before I went to push the
door closed I noticed car head lights on. I peeked out the door and
seen my mom shoveling snow from around her car because it had been
snowed in. She had to shovel the snow so she could get out and go to
work at the packing house. One time I asked my mom, “if you had the
opportunity to go to college, what would you have studied?” She replied,
“An accountant.” I always knew she was a genius in math because she was
fast with numbers. Her dad, my grandpa was also good in math. If my
mother, a Native American woman, hadn’t had the opportunity to earn, she
wouldn’t have been able to purchase her home on her own. Growing up and
observing my mother and father’s relationship and how they interacted
with other, I knew my mother was the decision maker in the family. She
always ordered my father around; he would do what she always told him to
do. He was smart. I always wondered why it was like that in my family. I
would observe my friends parents relationship and noticed the huge
difference between her parents and my parent’s relationship. Her father
was from Mexico and her mother was a Chicana. Her mother didn’t work,
her father did, her mother never drove, and her father always did. When
she asked for permission to go somewhere she would have to ask her
father. Her mom never had any money; she would have to ask her father
for money. He would pay the bills, and she always stayed home. She was
always cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes. He was always sitting in
his chair smoking Marlboro red cigarettes and drinking beer. My mother’s
ancestors evolved from a matrilineal society and her mother’s ancestors evolved from a patrilineal society. Although matrilineal societies have been oppressed by Western culture, I can still see some of the characteristics in my mother and myself.
I think about Mary Wollstonecraft and what was published about her life in the article titled, “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman.” When she was born, “she was handed over by her mother to be breast-fed by a wet nurse.”
Mary also grew up in a home of alcoholism and experienced being beat by
her drunken father and witnessed her mother be bullied by her father. “As
a child Mary would sleep on the landing outside her mother’s door in
vain attempt to protect her from Edward Wollstonecraft’s alcohol-fuelled
anger.” Mary’s life experiences led her to publish Vindication of the Rights of Woman. I found this quote very powerful, “I am not born to tread in the beaten track.” I
found it powerful because instead of her continuing the tradition of
being owned by a man, she had the bravery inside her to make a change.
Mary had hope. It was women like Mary that championed the Liberal Political Theory.
On the other hand, there were women who fought for basic human rights only for white women. As stated in the article, Class
struggle and women’s liberation 1640 to today, “Susan B Anthony who was
one of the most prominent women and the leading organizer of the
feminist movement stated, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I
will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the
women.” Elizabeth Cady Staton, was the leading
intellectual of the movement and she too made derogatory references to
“Sambo,” and the enfranchisement of “Africans, Chinese, and all the
ignorant foreigners the moment they touch our shore.” One issue
that has really bothered me is that white woman also discriminated
against other women of color. They were all being denied basic human
rights, but somehow white women believed they deserved them more than
other women. The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) openly discriminated against others, Carrie
Chapman Catt, one of the leaders of the NAWSA arraigned against the
ignorant foreign vote and the slum dwellers vote, “Cut off the vote of
the slums, and give it to women.” The objective of this declaration was to ensure the permanency of white supremacy.
The Knights of Labor
was another organization; they believed they should have part of the
wealth they worked for. The Knights of Labor had to organize many of its
meeting in secrecy because they believed in equal rights for all as
quoted by Philip S Foner, The K of L provided a form of
organization and a common leadership for the American working class,
skilled and unskilled, men and women, North and South and white, Native
American and foreign born, of all religious and political opinions.” This group wasn’t like the suffragettes, who believed white women, and white women only should have the basic rights in life.
The American Federation of Labor founded in 1881, was a Jim Crow white supremacist organization. Samuel
Gompers, its president, who fanned race hatred against blacks,
referring to them as “darkies,” as superstitious dull, ignorant, happy
go lucky, improvident, lazy, and immoral. Some blacks managed to
become part of the AFL, but they were separated into different
branches. Women were also not wanted in the AFL. Their exclusion
was achieved through long apprenticeship requirements, high fees for
admission, and special examinations for women. Several groups noted in Tony Cliffs Class Struggle chapter demonstrated strikes against poor working conditions, unfair treatment, and public spaces.
Each group discussed in the chapter had a time in history with a
beginning, middle, when each group gained momentum with several members,
and an end. An ending that was caused by lose of interest by
participants and internal issues within the group’s administration, and
beliefs.
I
woke up at 5 am so I could finish reading my last chapter before I had
to get ready for work. My mind was filled with so much information. I
knew women in the past had to fight for Women’s equal rights,
but I didn’t know details and specific stories that had been covered in
the course content. I was numb to the sacrifice women before me had
experienced. At one time in my life before this course, I thought every
woman before me born into this world had basic human rights. I remember a
few years back, reading about the debate to make Plan B available over
the counter. Another issue woman had to face, groups wanted to use the
law to control woman’s private spaces such as sex reproduction.
Of course, abortion has been a topic debated about for centuries and
many politicians find themselves in hot water if they don’t have the
same beliefs as their constituents.
I
start my essay by shining light on the suicides that have taken place
recently, all of them young women, because of what I read in the
chapters of The State of Native American Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, Sisters in Spirit, and The Politics of Liberal Feminism. Well
I guess I could say all the articles discussed the stance woman took to
fight for the right to earn, human fulfillment, and to end
discrimination. Liberals believe in liberty, justice, freedom, freedom
of worship, a limited right of civil disobedience, and several other
freedoms. On a reservation, like the Pine Ridge Indian reservation with
an unemployment rate of 82% I find it difficult for families to obtain
or benefit from many of these civil liberties. The other day, a woman
that worked for the Oglala Sioux Tribe Educational department came over
to my house so I could sign some papers to allow them to do a screening
on my child. She came and sat down at my table. We began some small talk
and she told me she was from the Manderson community. On the
reservation the land mass is so large it takes at least two hours to
drive from the southern part of the reservation to the northern part of
the reservation. There are eight communities or districts. We started to
talk about the suicides that took place because 2 of the young woman
who took their lives are from that community. I asked her if she knew
the girls, and she said she knew the family. I asked her why she thought
they decided to end their lives, she stated, “all the people do is
drink every day.” Is life so isolated in these communities that these
individuals don’t have the opportunities to enjoy life’s gifts woman
have fought for in the past and present? If they wanted to apply for a
job, where do they apply? When they do get a job, it may be at minimum
wage or part time. There is a major shortage of housing on the
reservation, it’s not uncommon for 2 to 3 families to live in a 2 or 3
bedroom government house. On the local radio station, an elder,
grandmother “unci,” was talking about the social problems taking
place in the community, she believes the family units aren’t as strong
because women and men don’t have to opportunity to earn a decent living,
live in their own homes, and have their own privacy, and
responsibility. Like mentioned before, they live in the home with
several other relatives. As stated in the chapter The State of Native American Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance
“White
woman, most of them very middle class and for whatever they think their
personal oppression is, a group they’re obviously the material
beneficiaries of the colonial exploitation their society has imposed
upon ours…they come and they look at the deformity of our societies
produced by colonization, and then they criticize the deformity. They
tell us we have to move “beyond” our culture in order to be “liberated”
like them. It’s just amazing…They virtually demand that we give up our
own traditions in favor of what they imagine their own to be, just like
the missionaries and the government and all the rest of the colonizers.
It was being forced away from our own traditions that deformed us-that
made the men sexists and things like that-in the first place. What we
need to be is more, not less Indian. But every time we try to explain
this to our self-proclaimed “white sister,” we either get told we’re
missing the point-we’re just dumb Indians, after all-or we’re accused of
“self-hatred” as women. A few experiences with this sort of arrogance
and you start to get the idea maybe all this feminism business is just
another extension of the same old racist, colonialist mentality.
As
I typed the above quote it made me really sad because every day I work
out in each of these communities and provide dental treatment to these
kids. When a child needs major dental work done, we refer them to go
straight to surgery. I have to have the parents fill out the surgical
packets, it very difficult at times to get a hold of the parents by
phone because many of the numbers listed on the consent form are
disconnected so I usually make a trip to the child’s home. The last home
I went to was so pitiful. As Native women, are we still fighting for
liberation? Today there was another suicide, a 21 year old mother.
I took this picture “RIP SANTANA.” Shortly
after this 14 year old young woman took her life, I was scheduled to
provide dental services to the children at this school.
At
one of the schools I was at, I asked the parent if they could come to
the school to fill out his child’s surgical paperwork and he game on a
horse. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation hitchhiking is a main mode
of transportation.
