Healing, violence, and Native American women.

• Date: 22 December 2004
• Author: Ramirez, Renya
• Published date: 22 December 2004
• Author: Ramirez, Renya

COLONIAL IMAGES AND TALES SUPPORT A CULTURE IN OUR SOCIETY THAT sanctions violence against Native American women. (1) To decolonize our culture, ritual affirmations of Indian women that offer alternatives to debasing and stereotypical representations need to be woven into everyday life. This essay will examine an American Indian Holocaust exhibit that translated colonial representations of Indian women, discussed their history and roles, and used tribal spiritual practices as a means for Native women and others to heal themselves from the debilitating effects of colonialism. These cultural approaches emphasize the importance of translation and transculturation as powerful tools to heal from the American Indian Holocaust. They also underscore the need to use Native rather than Eurocentric philosophy and viewpoints to begin to move beyond colonial hierarchies that have supported a culture that condones violence against Indian women.

What Is Translation?

When Europeans set foot in the Americas, they began a process of translating the world from their own point of view as integral to imperialism and taking over the land, resources, and Indians' labor for their own uses (Pratt, 1992). They used travelers' tales and images to support colonial hierarchies, placing men above women, and whites above Indians (Pratt, 1992; Mignolo and Schiwy, 2000). Consider, for instance, the famous image drawn by Jan van der Straet, in which he portrays the "discovery of America" as a sexual encounter between a European man and a Native woman (McClintock, 1995). In the image, the explorer, Vespucci, stands erect before a naked, erotically alluring woman who lounges in a hammock. She leans toward him with an outreached hand, communicating sexual desire and surrender. Caught in his gaze, the Native woman is vulnerable and his sexual advances are assumed to be welcome. Vespucci will, of course, inseminate her and the land that she represents with European ideas. In this way, he will civilize the wilderness (Ibid.). By exuding his power as a white male over the savage Indian woman, this representation supports racial as well as gender hierarchies, encouraging domination and its related potential for violence.

Furthermore, Eurocentric tales described Native Americans in racialized terms as polluted and dirty, which encouraged violence against Indian women. In California, for example, Indians were viewed as remarkably dirty, ugly, and dark-complexioned. Hilton Rowan Helper's 1855 novel, The Land of Gold." Reality, Versus Fiction, describes Indians as disgusting and dirty. He writes, "partially wrapped in filthy rags, with their persons unwashed, hair uncombed and swarming with vermin, they may be seen loitering about the kitchens and slaughter-houses waiting to seize upon and devour like hungry wolves such offal or garbage as may be thrown to them" (Almaguer, 1994:112). These Eurocentric imaginings contributed to the extermination of California Indians, who evoked such strong expressions of repulsion and contempt (Almaguer, 1994: Hurtado, 1988; Rawls, 1984). Whites saw them as so primitive that they were more like animals than human beings. William Perkins, a white miner, described California Indian women as naked, dwarfish creatures around four feet tall. with heavy thighs, skinny, long arms, and pendant breasts. This description of these women, similar to early travelers' narratives, is more mythic in character than one of flesh-and-blood human beings. Dame Shirley, a female observer of mining camp life, for example, compared Indian women to witches. She described them as very ugly and haggard (Hurtado, 1988: 174-175). This loss of humanity made Indian extinction and extermination very desirable.

For example, in 1851 the California governor, Peter H. Burnett, assured the legislature that "... a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct" (Almaguer, 1994: 121). Whites thought Indian peoples' extinction would purify and cleanse California of a group of very repulsive creatures (Hurtado, 1988; Rawls, 1984). They felt they must rid themselves of Indian people, an abominable contamination. Genocidal violence, therefore, became justified (Hurtado, 1988; Rawls, 1984; Smith, 1999).

In contrast, the exhibit organizers' notion of translation is to disrupt these damaging colonial representations (Ramirez, 1998; 2001). Transculturation, argue Mignolo and Schiwy (2000), must be used to remove translation from its linguistic conception and begin to move beyond colonial hierarchies or dichotomies. (2) Transculturation assumes that cultures are porous and that there are no zones of cultural purity, because there is a constant sharing between groups (Rosaldo, 2002; Pratt. 1992; Mignolo and Schiwy, 2000). Similarly, the recoding process of activists in an American Indian Holocaust exhibit was not based so much on language translation, but on the assumption of transculturation that Indians and non-Indians need to share their cultures and perspectives. For instance, they taught the public to view dominant images and history from Native perspectives and to learn tribal philosophies of respect to heal from the American Indian Holocaust (Ramirez, 1998; 2001).

The American Indian Alliance in San Jose, California, created this exhibit as a community intervention. It opened for a week or so each year starting in 1995 and ended in 1997. Al Cross, a Mandan-Hidatsa, led a group of Indian and non-Indian activists who organized the exhibit. (3) They ultimately challenged the silencing of violence against Indian women by confronting its colonial roots. Their challenge is crucial, since violence against Indian women continues today throughout the Americas. There is a high incidence of such violence in Indian communities throughout the United States and in countries such as Guatemala. In a 1982 massacre of Mayan people in Guatemala, 177 Indian women and children were killed and the young women were raped in front of their mothers (Smith, 1999). Since colonization, Indian women and their children have suffered far too much at the hands of their attackers. Thus, this exhibit on Indian women is an important initiative that needs to continue and be organized in other places and communities to begin to change our violent culture. The next section describes the 1996 Holocaust Exhibit, using an excerpt from my field notes.

American Indian Holocaust Exhibit (4)

Beams of yellowish light illuminated large representations of genocide in the otherwise darkened community center. Fifty or so woodcuts showed soldiers hanging Indians alive, dogs tearing apart their bodies, soldiers cutting off their hands, and Natives battling the invaders with spears. In the middle of these pictures of terror and brutality was an exhibit on Indian women. The words of strength and resistance of Owanah Anderson, a Choctaw, constituted the first display. Next was Alfred Jacob Miller's painting, The Trapper's Bride. After this were sepiatoned photographs of Indian women from the U.S. Southeast. One photo was of Mrs. Sampson, a Catawba craftswoman, taken in 1920. Holding a clay mug, she stares into the camera with determined eyes. Another was of Margaret Brown, another Catawba, also photographed in 1920. Wearing a gingham dress, she sits on a wooden rocking chair and her arms dangle limply at her sides. The next was of Winona Williams, a Caddo, photographed in 1978. She stands in a dance arena, dressed in ceremonial clothes. The following 1919 photo was of a Seminole mother and daughter, both wearing traditional Seminole clothing. These two had no names. The next was of two women, weaving baskets, both Mississippi Band of the Choctaw. There were no names or dates identifying these two. The 1920 photo of Je, a Cherokee midwife, sitting in front of a wood-framed house, was the last image. A scarf covers her head and another is wrapped around her neck. Her eyes are closed and she is dressed in a nice coat. In the rest of the exhibit, there were many maps. One had the names of the explorers, Hernando de Soto, Juan Ponce de Leon, and Christopher Columbus, next to the dates and sites of their invasion of Indian lands. A second described "De Soto's Trail of Destruction." A third illustrated the removal of Native American tribes to Oklahoma. A fourth portrayed the sites of the worst epidemic outbreaks for Indian people. A fifth chronicled the gradual depletion of Indian lands and the locations of Indian reservations. At the end of the exhibit, a huge map of the...