28 August 2002
Ethnic identity, ranging in definition from nationalism, steeped in an often inaccurate, programmed, mythologized past, to racism, cursed by the interplay of cultural chauvinism and post-enlightenment pseudo-scientific ethnology, has repeatedly played a role on the political stage of Human history. Apartheid, Segregation, Colonialism, Lebensraum, Zionism, and Manifest Destiny are terms, familiar for their historical significance, which are associated with the political implementation of an ethnically infused ideology. The consequences of such actions range from the seemingly benign, as is the case with cultural exchange and technological distribution, to the malignant horrors of genocide, as was the case in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and the Holocaust. A truly poignant example of the interplay between ethnicities, having spawned some of the most brutally tragic events in Human history, is the clash between Native Americans and Europeans. In his memoir entitled The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams, writer Nasdijj discusses his experiences as a self-described "mongrel" (33 et al.), being of mixed Caucasian and Navajo descent, living at the cusp of "white" and Native American societies. In describing his life experiences, Nasdijj documents the continued consequences, faced by the Native Americans, of a systematically implemented racial ideology imposed upon them by Western cultures.
The underlying thesis of Nasdijj's book is that ethnicity, be it defined by race, cultural identity, or even social class, continues to form a chasm between groups of people in America. Primarily, this chasm exists between white America and those defined as "other." This theme is illustrated throughout the book in Nasdijj’s repeated reference to any nearby town as "White People Town" (12 et al.). The use of this term is accompanied by more than a hint of bitterness, as is evident when Nasdijj points out that Native Americans "...dance in White People Town at the Indian Cultural Center (which is the Amtrak station), where the white tourists applaud and throw their dimes" (77). The divide that is White People Town consists of isolated communities which represent a world of foreign customs, values, and practices from which the "other" is excluded. Sometimes that "other" can be homeless white children, with whom "Other white children will not play..." (113), or the union of outsiders in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco (62-71, esp. 63-64) The gulf between people that Nasdijj has witnessed expresses itself in other ways, as well, especially in regards to Native Americans. White stereotypes of Native Americans (and vice versa) take the place of true cultural understanding, as is evident when Nasdijj observes that "White people regard much of what Indians create as primitive..." (137), and that they "...think of the reservation as a place of rodeos and powwows..." (176). These stereotypes bespeak a cultural distinction, still made by many white Americans, the origins of which lie in a more deliberately brutal form of implemented political action.
In Nasdij's frank depiction of his Native American identity, one recurring theme rises above all others in relation to political ideology: Native Americans continue to bear the scars of genocide, imposed by ideologically racialist foreign governments. Nasdijj recounts a pilgrimage that he and a friend made to the Bosque Redondo, following in the footsteps that Navajo were forced to make by the United States military in 1863 (48-61). The trek had been designed, ostensibly, to relocate the Navajo to a more isolated area of the continent. In truth, between the inhospitable climate and the bayonets of the army, the Navajo were not expected to survive the trek (52-53). Nasdijj is clear to connect this act of ethnically inspired political action - the death march of the Navajo to Fort Sumner - to similar acts of racially inspired violence by referencing "ethnic cleansing," a term associated with the similar events of genocide in Yugoslavia in the post-Communist Milosovic era (49 and 60), and Auschwitz, the location of the most infamous implementation of Nazi racialist policy in Eastern Europe (60). The symbol of the Holocaust is also evoked in reference to a more ancient memory for the Native people of the American Southwest. In his account of the defacing of a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Onate, who raped, murdered, and pillaged the Acoma people of New Mexico in the late 16th century, Nasdijj testifies to the durability of cultural memory among Native American peoples (140-56 esp. 147). Not only does the cultural memory survive the absence of the teaching of the event in the public schools (154-55), it also remains a lens through which Native Americans view their political interaction with the people around them. As the White New Mexicans prepare to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Onate's conquest, Nasdijj questions the erection of a statue to such an individual, considering such an act to be the celebration of the cultural experiment of genocide (148), "...[serving] to make something like the Holocaust okay" (150).
Tying these two themes together, that substantial voids continue to exist between various cultures in America, and that cultural identity among Native Americans is heavily influenced by past, ethnically-driven injustices, Nasdijj suggests a solution to the current dilemma. "If [Native Americans and White people] are ever to change anything about the reality we live in, we have to start seeing where that reality came from, how it evolved, and we have to stop seeing it within the glorious confines of an illusion that never was" (149). The "glorious confines," to which Nasdijj refers, are the mythologized, nationalistic histories of the American continent in which butchers are hailed as heroes and genocidal practices are omitted. In essence, Nasdijj suggests a new ideology of truth and reconciliation to replace the remnants of the racialized, genocidal ideologies of the past, whose scars still mar the face of America.
Nasdijj. The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
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