Category: Uncategorized

Reaction to Young Lakota

Watching Young Lakota was both infuriating and heartbreaking. Of all the different types of media I’ve been exposed to in my Contemporary Indigenous Rhetoric course, nothing has affected me as deeply as this documentary. I shed real tears of frustration and pain with Sunny, for Sunny, for Cecelia, for the Indigenous women of Pine Ridge, for the women of South Dakota. And I had so many questions.

Sunny Clifford touched my heart. She never gave up fighting for her beliefs, Cecelia, or other women – both Indigenous and not. To me, she represented the physical embodiment of the “we are still here” message that we’ve seen consistently in various modes of Indigenous rhetoric through her determination and resilience to do what she believed was right. Throughout the documentary, we got to see her grow into the activist she still is today. She became more outspoken, questioned people (read: men) on their (wrong) views about 6, broke up with her terrible abusive boyfriend, and was out late at night laying the physical groundwork for Cecelia Fire Thunder’s campaign all so that women in South Dakota could have the right to choose. Even her sister, who had a child young and never thought about considering abortion herself, supported other women’s right to choose, which I think speaks volumes about her character and those of some of the younger women on the reservation. 

Sunny, Cecelia, and Selena are the strong women I’ve heard about in oral narratives and seen written about in journal articles and history books. The protectors of the sacred: women and their bodies. They mixed contemporary culture and tribal/family traditions to appeal to a wide audience of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, and it worked. Yes, Cecelia still lost; but it wasn’t by much. Even the smallest victories count in the ever-lasting war for equality and against settler colonialism. Cecelia and Sunny are still going with their activism and advocation for Indigenous and women’s rights today. No matter how many times they get set back, they’ll continue to pick themselves up and become stronger and more determined. They are still here.

What angered me the most was Brandon and his, for lack of better words, betrayal. Tanya Tagaq was right – money hasspent us. It spent him too, clearly. Brandon was one of the few men from the beginning who supported Cecelia and her initiatives, wanted to vote no on 6, and seemed like he truly wanted to fight the good fight as an ally to women. I understand that having kids and wanting to provide them with a better quality of life is most likely what led him to take the job doing publicity for Alex White Plume, but is that reallyall it was? His quick changing of sides made me think that he never truly held supportive views at all, that he just waited around and said what was convenient until he could get his foot in the door. (But, retribution was swift, pink, and sticky). Considering the fact that he mentioned coming back to the reservation to “find himself” at the beginning of the documentary, I wonder if that “finding himself” wasn’t actually just finding a quick buck with his experience in media and podcasts. All things considered, yes, you should be able to do what you love in your career and simultaneously feed your family; but you shouldn’t be doing it to the detriment of thousands, maybe millions of other people. But what does he care? He’s a man, he has sons, it won’t affect him, right? Indigenous women are lowest on the totem pole, after all. * Insert heavy sarcasm and underlying fury here. *

That ignorant Indigenous rapper on tour in the documentary also infuriated me. Sunny confronted him with legitimate questions and concerns, and instead of giving her a real answer, he spewed some religious nonsense that was meant to guilt her into hating herself for not supporting 6. The best part was that he was going to keep touring reservations and continuing to spout nonsense to other Indigenous communities! What?! I kept thinking to myself, ‘mister, if you don’t get your head out of your ass and get back on that tour bus to campaign for Cecelia and vote no on 6, you’re not going to have a fan base much longer.’ The logic in his argument was poor, but it could have easily influenced other people who weren’t as set in their beliefs as Sunny. For every sentence a person like him utters, people like Sunny and Cecelia have to utter ten more.

To cap this post off, I wanted to pose a few questions. All of my above thoughts eventually culminated into: How can I help? How can I be an allyto people like Sunny without stepping on their toes? How can I supportthem without taking over their initiatives?

The answer was simple: Listen. Listen. Listen. Then, act with. Not for. Not against. Not on behalf of. With.

A Small Victory in a Large War

I am absolutely ecstatic to write about this as my first blog post – we’re making history this month, everyone!

On February 15, 2019, the Japanese Cabinet (the executive government branch) passed a bill that finally officially recognizes the Ainu people of Hokkaido as indigenous to Japan and works towards giving them the rights and support that they should have had all along.

For the first time ever, the Japanese government will legally sanctify the Ainu people as indigenous, rather than as sub-group of Japanese people, after hundreds of years of war and discrimination, followed by forced assimilation and cultural erasure. It will also create new policies to support Ainu communities, their economies, and their livelihood, as well as make obtaining legal permission for the Ainu to practice cultural traditions (like fishing, fire ceremonies, collecting timber, etc.) much easier.  

The struggle to be recognized as indigenous is a fight that has been occurring for decades, with the Ainu only beginning to gain leeway in the late 1990s. A law passed in 1997 finally guaranteed the Ainu people basic human rights and gave them the right to practice their cultural ceremonies and customs, though it did not recognize them as indigenous. Basically, it generalized and claimed that ethnic minorities in general existed within Japan. Then, in 2008, the passing of the United Nations “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People” pushed the Diet to pass a non-binding resolution (albeit a little hesitantly) that declared the Ainu as a group of indigenous peoples with their own culture; they also admitted that the Ainu people had previously been discriminated against by Japanese people and the Japanese government. But, this resolution was not a law, so it did not guarantee any policy changes or atone for historical injustices.

This official recognition is a small win in the long battle for equality; but, of course, it only comes after the Ainu language has become endangered and there has been a rapid decline of the number of Ainu people in existence (approximately 12,300, thought there are probably more). In fact, many people do not even know that they are of Ainu descent because of historical policies banning Ainu practices since the late 1800s that forced the Ainu people to hide their cultural identity or, depending on their age, never learn that they were Ainu in the first place.

What I found particularly problematic in relation to this wonderful historical event is the wording that Japanese officials and media outlets are using in their speeches and articles. In an article by The Japan Times, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga mentioned that the bill will help “protect the [Ainu people’s] honor and dignity” and “preserve the Ainu people’s pride” as if the Japanese government was not responsible for that loss during the Meiji Restoration (which begun in 1868) in the first place. His statement also implies that the Ainu people have little-to-no pride, honor, or dignity in the first place, which is untrue. 

A lot of the language in the article, to me, sounded problematic because it came off as another form of cultural exploitation. Several Ainu representatives spoke of creating scholarships for school outside of Hokkaido, among other policies and reforms, but the article put those at the bottom and mentioned increasing “tourism” within the Ainu communities first.  I understand that the Ainu Museum “Porotokotan” recently closed and that a new one is set to open in 2020 with a recreation of an Ainu village aside of it; but, unless the government is paying to build it as part of reparations and ensuring that the proceeds are going to the Ainu community, it’s just another way for the government to hide the struggles of the Ainu, who suffer from high rates of poverty and continue to battle for their cultural rights. Until I have more information about the new museum, I (sadly) won’t hold my breath. Japan is still one of the most racially homogenous societies in the world and doesn’t take well to outsiders, and now that the Ainu people have officially been declared indigenous, it could serve to further isolate them and create more problems. 

Work Cited

“Japan to recognize indigenous Ainu people for first time.” The Japan Times, 15 February 2019.