Excerpt from Genocide of the Mind

[Mia Kalish]

This is a selection from Carol Snow Moon Bachnofer (pp. 141-147); she is
Abenaki, and lives in New England, where I was born. Watch what happens in
this selection in her interaction with people in the “unnamed category”. 

 

 

But I am still discriminated against at every turn. Four years ago, I was
registering at a local college for a couple of classes I needed to complete
a degree program. I dutifully and proudly checked the box “Native American
Indian” and presented the forms to the lady at the registration window. She
took and eraser and unchecked the box, checking instead “Caucasian.” I must
have checked the box in error and she had fixed that for me. I told her I
had not made an error, and she said, Well, you don’t look Indian.” No beads,
feathers, or hooked nose: obviously not Indian. I offered to go to my car
and bring her my Jay Treaty papers, to show here that the United States
government had admitted that I am Abenaki, authentic as Sitting Bull. I told
her I smoked a pipe like my great-grandmother and that I didn’t wear y
feathers around campus. My level of sarcasm was rising by the minute along
with my level of hurt. She grudgingly changed the form. 

 

Now in graduate school, I am planning to write my thesis on the Native poets
of the northeastern tribes. I want to show that they are not second-class
citizens in the world of literary accomplishment or talent. This school is
prestigious and is located in an area fairly near where the Abenaki live. It
amazed me, however, that no one there seemed aware that there are any
Indians anywhere close by. In fact, the former governor of Vermont had
recently asserted that “there are no Abenakis in Vermont today, only
Vermonters.” His weak and demeaning remarks may be interpreted by some to be
generous and inclusive. But they are the same disclaiming and wounding
remarks as ever. They are remarks that serve to wipe out a culture. 

 

Despite the proximity of this college to tribal lands and Abenaki people,
and despite my assertion that I have a responsibility to my culture,, of the
college I attend, the faculty adviser to whom I first mentioned the proposed
topic failed to see its importance or seriousness. He attempted to hold me
off from getting started on it, and referred to it as my “little Native
American project.” At one point he actually told me that I didn’t have a
proper grasp on how to write within the culture, suggesting changes that
made the poem distinctly white in outlook and style. Age fifty-six and still
the discrimination, the cultural genocide, continue. . . .

 

I can also share my person experiences. I am Eastern European Jewish and
Irish. Lots of people like to think that the Irish and Jews are “white”. I
don’t ascribe to that, because I don’t like being co-opted. Also, it was my
father’s desperate wish to be “American” that caused me not to learn my
grandmother’s Eastern European languages. The battle wasn’t won easily: At 3
and a half, I stopped speaking to my father for four months. 

 

When I came to New Mexico, I was stunned that Diné and Apache people
couldn’t create modern documents in their languages because there was no
support in terms of easily accessible fonts, or spell-checking or grammar
checking, so I started developing the technology. My department, which like
I said is famous for its Critical Pedagogy, has sent “messages” to let me
know that my moral and intellectual character are suspect because I work
with Indian tribes. New Mexico is 55.5% non-White, 10.5% Native American,
42% Hispanic, less than 2% Black, and less than 3% Asian/Pacific Islander.
In this state, with this demographic, in a land grant institution, in a
department famous for its Critical Theory, I am pressured to ascribe to the
ways and means of the dominant WHITE culture. I don’t THINK so. 

 

Does any of this help, Annie? 

 

Really going now, 

Mia

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