Native American Barbies

As if Barbie wasn't a big enough blow to a girl's self esteem they made barbies that forever lock Native Americans in the past











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e-paper dolls - "going native"

A website called www.i-dressup.com allows girls to make their own paper dolls and dress them in just about any fashion imaginable to later print them off. This site offers at least three places where ANY little girl can easily become Native American with a few clicks of a mouse. Little girls can dress up for a "Traditional" Thanksgiving, compete in a Native Fashion Battle or do it up old school. Located in the comments section the closest I could see to any sort of objection to this sort of thing was a couple of sad face emoticons. I have said it time and time again but this sort of tribally generic imagery reinforces the thought that Native Americans are a part of the past and don't have a place in the present or the future. The plunging necklines and short skirts do nothing but continue to sexualize Native American women which is harmful and damaging to the self esteem and sense of identity of young women nation wide.

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"They were killing each other before we ever showed up"

Stating that Indigenous populations were engaging in war with each other and killing each other long before European arrival is not all together false but is often used by non-natives as a method from detaching themselves from any guilt they might have regarding the situation. In all reality using this kind of speech is just another form of common place racism. When someone says something like this it completely invalidates the whole of the Native American experience that many struggle with on a daily basis. Two wrongs don't make a right...ever. The colonizers, the Europeans, the French, the Spanish, the founders of this country, the Presidents, the Christians were wrong, what they did was wrong, why is that so hard to admit? Instead so many want to shirk the accountability by saying...."they did it too!".

Political/Genocidal Tool: The Land Bridge Blunder

“Native American oral traditions have long been ignored and passed off as superstitious myths” (Ehecatl).

The Bering Strait Theory or Land Bridge Theory is one that has made with great assumption and is one that has been followed up by great controversy and contention. “According to the New World migration model, a migration of humans from Eurasia to the Americas took place via Beringia, a land bridge which connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait. The most recent point at which this migration could have taken place is c. 12,000 years ago, with the earliest period remaining a matter of some unresolved contention. These early Paleo-Indians soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living there since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional creation accounts” (Horses). The most interesting fact of this theory is that it has been passed off as fact being published in numerous texts and circulated to the masses propagating the ideal that everyone is an immigrant to this land which attempts to excuse the genocide and other atrocities that Europeans have committed since the time of early contact. By claiming that everyone is immigrants would diminish the claim that Natives have to the land.

Examining NAGPRA

What would it look like if Native Americans started obsessing over the white man the way so many non-natives obsess with tacky and falsely crafted art pieces and objects they associate with Native cultures? Would stained glass cell phones hang in windows instead of dream catchers? Would paintings of the pope on velvet be stretched onto hoops with rosaries of varying colors, shapes and sizes dangle from it and be hanging on the walls next to framed prints of symmetrical and monochromatic cheaply crafted housing developments with the bordered and centered title of "dwellings"? Would they line their shelves with plastic McDonald's cups, displaying the pottery of the white man? Would they raid churches for the thurible (incense pot)), communion chalice and alter to sell them to private collectors? Would they paint their faces white on Halloween and spout words of genocide? Would they go into graveyards and cemeteries unearthing bodies at will taking wedding bands, watches, jewelry and other items and then sell the decomposing corpses to museums for display all in the name of science? Would they decapitate the body of JFK to use his rotting fragmented skull as an ashtray for an exclusive university social organization? “We Americans are fascinated by the Native Americans, those who inhabited “our” land long before we arrived. But does that make our collecting and viewing of artifacts in museums our “right”? Does it justify the desecration of the ancestors”( NAGPRA -- A Blessing or a Curse).

Home Sweet Paper Bonded Hell

Since what feels like the beginning of time, at least time as we know it for the birth of the United States Government, that same body of exacting power and control has been the commanding force behind the abuses and maltreatment that Native Americans from shore to shore have been forced to endure. The list of atrocities committed against these people by a government that boasts so many so called freedoms is plentiful and astounding in nature. It goes without saying that the lies and deceptions that are treaties are at the forefront of this list. Many treaties were at their very basis a one sided sales contract for the land. Many promises were made within these treaties and many of them over time were ultimately broken. The treaty made with the Cheyenne Arapaho tribe in 1867 also referred to as the Medicine Lodge Treaty, was no less deplorable than most others. This treaty was for the establishment of the Oklahoma reservation that was to be the permanent residence for all current and succeeding members of the tribe. The fact that this is the location that was designated for these two tribes to settle upon and start their new lives as Christian farmers seems relatively odd considering that the Cheyenne people are originally from the Great Lakes area and the Arapaho are a people from Canada and many north-western states like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and South Dakota. Neither tribe were residing in the area where the reservation was established at that time (Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes).

Capitalism: The Traditional Assassin

“As America has developed within the last 100 years, wealth has become a determining factor of one’s place in society…. free enterprise and optimistic demands that would be met at the expense of American Indians and their lands” (Fixico)  It is a well known fact that since the very beginning, from the moment of contact with Europeans, that the Indigenous people that populate what is now known as the United States have been fighting an endless battle against territorial encroachment with settlers and other Europeans who sought to profit off the land.  “During the 1500’s and 1600’s, the conquerors of the new age of European imperialism in the Western Hemisphere scarcely recognized the Native inhabitants who utilized the natural resources for their own livelihood.  Within a short time, they assaulted the Native populations and took whatever they wanted.  They were unabashed in their greed…the “laissez-faire” attitude of capitalism became the guiding force of the economy as competition intensified for natural resources such as oil, coal, uranium, and water” (Fixico).  These circumstances vary only in the slightest for Indigenous groups and individuals across the country.  The experiences were no different for the people of the White Earth reservation as they watched the logging industry tear across their lands ripping it apart from the roots or for Natives of Wisconsin simply looking to exercise their hunting and fishing rights that had been granted to them through treaty.

Tribal Status: Blood is a Definition for Identity

For most Americans of European decent or other variations of ancestry the specific amount by percentage of blood from different countries or ethnicities means absolutely nothing.  It is not uncommon for these people to claim their ancestral affiliations in the loosest and most disorganized of terms as well as often being unsure or incorrect on the details.  For most Non-Native Americans the percentages of ethnic blood or nationality don’t matter and it is not something that has any sort of impact on personal identity, social issues or issues concerning legality.  Yet Native Americans or American Indians are to this day subject to dehumanizing and animalistic classifications that early colonization has imposed upon them and that continue to be upheld within tribes because of motivating factors of greed, exclusivity and a once forced but now generally accepted European ideology.   “We must show our pedigree, much like a dog or horse” (Mitchell).  This article intends to examine what blood quantum is, the history of it, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Certificate Degree of Indian Blood, what blood quantum means today and where it stands for the future.

 “They’re just trying to see how close we are or are not to white” (Lewis)

Patrick DesJarlait - Red Lake Ojibwe Artist

Patrick DesJarlait was a true innovator in the field of modern American Indian Art and even more so for the state of Minnesota and the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe.  Though his spirit has walked on DesJarlait’s work continues to be circulated throughout communities in the forms of shirts, posters and prints as well as many of his works are on display in several public places such as hotels and casinos.  To me this artist’s work is profound and inspiring, his use of color, texture, design and movement are at a supreme level of mastery.  This work is bold and forceful yet delicate and detailed and contains a clear and critical lasting value.  I truly cherish DesJarlait’s work and only wish I could be so lucky as to hang a print of one of his many works upon my wall.

Eyes Wide Open

Being a student with the major of Native American/Indigenous Studies has been a serious journey.  This specific field yields a heavy burden, my eyes have been opened and there is no turning back to the bliss of ignorance.
          ... The more you know, the more you owe!