Culture Bearers

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CULTURE BEARERS | 12.11.20

Manahu (Greetings). Tsanavi, here, taking over Indigenously for Jenni this week as she prepares to deliver what will be the last of her 2020 newsletters next Friday, Dec. 18, and returning in 2021. On a call last week with Jenni, she described COVID-19 within Indian Country, and I recall her talking about culture bearers. They represent the elders in our communities that carry our ancestral knowledge. This conversation inspired this week's newsletter about the virus’ impact on our elder populations in Indian Country.

Across the United States there are nearly 260,000 Native American elders, many of whom keep knowledge like the woman who weaved my cradleboard when I was born. That was thirty years ago, this week. Today, Charlotte, 82, is the latest knowledge keeper across Indian Country to contract the coronavirus. It’s been devastating to realize how the pandemic has affected the ones we love and cherish. Today, some of the highest cases of coronavirus are surfacing in Indian Country.

In September, I was fortunate enough to film an interview with Charlotte. She shared with me her ancestral knowledge of Paiute basket weaving, describing it as a gift passed down from her mother, and onto her children and grandchildren.

She also told me about the spiritual force that is bound by these generational ways. “We all prayed when I had basket classes. That's what we did, everybody gets to pray,” said Charlotte. “And if they got something to give, like an offering, they could.”

Before the virus, Charlotte frequently conducted classes to teach community members the intricate art of basket weaving. These classes were often funded by the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, one of two federal grant programs that resulted from Keepers of the Treasures, a 1990 Congressional report about how to sustain cultural lifeways in Indian Country.

That this year, 2020, marks thirty-years since Charlotte weaved the cradleboard for me, and this country’s intentional effort to keep these traditions alive, is significant in these times-- a heartbreaking reminder of our culture and the elders who hold it.

For us, the virus has not only impacted our communities disproportionately for a number of reasons, but we fear it will also leave us uniquely vulnerable to an untimely erasure of our very Indigeneities-- our identities deeply connected to our languages and lifeways. It’s why when I look at the cradleboard that today hangs in my room, I honor the willow thread and purple and pink colored yarn Charlotte so patiently wove together, a design that has carried me into my womanhood. Stay safe, all.

Tsanavi

THE INDIGENOUS INTERNET


	@miskwaadesigns

INDIGENOUSLY INDEX

Total tribes out of, then 298, that applied for historic preservation grants in 1990: 171

Estimated amount the Native nations collectively requested: $10.1M

Total amount the federal government authorized: $500,000

Total tribes selected as an official Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) in 1996: 12

Approximate number of tribes that have THPO status as of 2018: 180

Total amount THPO’s are funded by annual offshore oil and gas lease revenues: $150M

Exact federal funding missionaries received in 1819 to ‘remake’ Indian culture: $10K

Total Medal[s] of Honor awarded to US troops behind 1890 Ghost Dance massacre: 20

Number of times the Medal of Honor has been awarded in US history: 3,526

Total bills seeking to revoke the medals from Wounded Knee troops, posthumously: 2

Number of years ceremonial peyote use has been protected by federal regulations: 55

Total years since the ratification of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act: 42

Number of years since peaceful protests began at Mauna Kea: 6

Total number of telescopes perched on Mauna Kea, in 2020: 13

Estimated cost to build the contested “Thirty Meter Telescope” on Mauna Kea: $2.4B

ENDORSEMENT

This week, All My Relations podcast introduced For the Love of The Mauna, a three-part series about land, culture, and connections to place. It's the story to protect Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii. Kanaka Maoli people have been fighting to stop the construction of the “Thirty Meter Telescope” (TMT) since it's inception in 2009, and in the summer of 2019 a resistance camp at Pu’u huluhulu was established on the Mauna. Tune in here.

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	The story @Indigenous_ly \| The quote from Native News Online

This edition of the Indigenously newsletter is produced by Tsanavi Spoonhunter (Northern Arapaho)