[ VOLTAR ]

Experiencing the new indianness in a non-indian culture
Jane Thompson Brodbeck (ULBRA)

I have provable identity in case

Clan membership expires annually

Or my traditional but urban story

Requires I reinvent my ancestors

(Marie Annharte Baker)

The literature, which has been lately produced by the so-called First Nations writers, presents a compelling trend to discuss identity issues matters. What has been at stake in those poems, tales, novels refers to the concept of Indianness in our times. In most new/younger Indian authors' work we can actually observe how this issue constitutes essential material for their writing. The attempt to define the status of being an Indian seems to be more relevant nowadays than actually exercising the role of an Indian. For that reason, we can observe a thick body of articles, essays, poetry and fictional prose by First Nations writers who are producing theory circumscribed to the field of indigenous studies.

In Looking at The Words of our People : First Nations Analysis of Literature (1993) 1, a collection of Native academic essays on First Nations literature, we can have a clearer idea about Indian identity when Kateri Damm (p.11) states that:

Definitions of who we are affect not only First Nations peoples in North America but Indigenous peoples around the world who have been subjected to "the White Man's Burden" of authority and control through the domination and assimilationist tactics of colonizing governments. "Who we are" has been constructed and defined by Others to the extent that at times we too no longer know who we are (italics mine).

Although the first representations of Indians referred to white man's text, the argument about Indian identity is not constrained any longer to the white world scenario. In recent times Indian identity has been object of passionate discussion on the part of Indian writers about the right of authorship, more specifically about who is entitled to speak about or for the Indians. Some of the Indian authors believe that much of Indian tradition and culture has been traded for mainstream culture and a non-Indian way of life as well considering that many Indians have left their original reservations and live presently in urban centers. One of those critics is Elizabeth Cook-Lynn 2 (1996, p. 85) who complains the change of themes in American Indian fiction from "nationalistic myths, legends, metaphors, symbols, historical persons and events" to subject matters that deal with "violence, self-hate, romanticism, blame, mournfulness, loss, or anger" putting aside "the meaningfulness of indigenous or tribal sovereignty in the twentieth-first century".

Through criticism like that we can infer an inner conflict among First Nations writers related to many fields like the language used in writing, selection of themes, and the political stand of the writer. Concerning the language, Basil Johnston (p. 99) 3 states that:

There is cause to lament but it is the native peoples who have the most cause to lament the passing of their language. They lose not only the ability to express the simplest of daily sentiments and needs but they can no longer understand the ideas, concepts, insights, attitudes, rituals, ceremonies, institutions brought into being by their ancestors; and, having lost the power to understand, cannot sustain, enrich, or pass their heritage. No longer will they think Indian or feel Indian. And though they may wear 'Indian' jewellery and take part in pow-wows, they can never capture the kinship with and reverence for the sun and the moon, the sky and the water, or feel the lifebeat of Mother Earth or sense the change in her moods; no longer are the wolf, the bear, and the caribou elder brothers but beasts, resources to be killed and sold. Only language and literature can restore the 'Indian-ness'.

Based on the assumption that contemporary Indian writers are missing their target, or better, missing the appropriate authority of writing as Indians and for Indian readerships, I chose poems by a Canadian First Nation writer named Marie Annharte Baker born in 1942 to an Anishnabe mother and an Irish father, raised in Winnipeg that focus on the issue of Indian identity in an urban atmosphere.

According to the notes on authors included in Moses' and Goldie's An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (1998), Marie Baker's publications include two books of poetry, Being On The Moon (1990) and Coyotte Columbus Café (1994), and a play. It is pointed out that "Her writing shows her concern with 'smallest stories; stories in our everyday conversations, stories of how we survived and resisted, and, of course, the 'lost stories' (stories of men, women, and children who are lost or outcast to their own people, the ones who have 'no voice' but speak to us in dreams or haunt our every waking moment with their shocking statistics". In 2003 she published another collection of poems called Exercises In Lip Pointing 4whose poems constitute the corpus of this paper.

In the first poem of that collection called "Auntie I Dream", Baker tells us about the "dilemma [of] feeling out of place"(p.3) for not having any longer her relatives nearby. By highlighting the rabbit which makes part of the potluck, the poet gives a hint at a traditional dish among Indians. In the second stanza the persona also refers to one of the most important ingredients on Indian's diet -- the frybread. However, one should remark that the frybread in this case is eaten with jam (an ingredient that makes part of the white people's breakfast). She also mentions the vision she had of her aunt's spirit standing on a road and waving goodbye (p.3). In the last stanza the poet makes reference to the childhood in the cabin where she sees "a rainbow arcs over busy aunties, grandchildren tumble on blanket [.] sticky fingers reach for hands, touch face, lips, hair, ears and nose" (p. 4). Those scenes seem far away from her present life and the auntie's death symbolizes the end of a time from which there is no possibility of return. It is possible to trace a parallel between the fading of traditions and the death of the Auntie whose remaining objects spread on the bed such as photographs taken in the bush, are the only possibilities of treasuring childhood memories. It is deeply emphasized in the poem how the past is replaced by a present, which triggers a process of irreversible change.

In the poem " In the Picture I Don't See", the persona mocks the identity issue by saying that she has "provable identity in case/ clan membership expires annually/ or my traditional but urban story/requires I reinvent my ancestors" (p. 15). Through these lines she cries out her uneasiness for the fact that being an urban Indian requires a constant proof of clan membership. Furthermore, she satirizes the concept of identity linked to a traditional Indian family.

In "An Account of Tourist Terrorism", the persona criticizes the way historic traditions are being desecrated only for the sake of collecting money. History in this case becomes a prosaic commodity that is compared to "used Pampers"(p. 29). The irony contains a warning for all of those visitors that show extreme ignorance towards everything that is related to Indian culture. Visiting the grave of Sitting Bull simply constitutes part of the tour, and the relevance of the site is traded by the " dumping dollars in an empty memorial"(p. 29).

In "Saskatchewan Indians Were Dancing", the poet expresses her lack of knowledge concerning Indian customs. Compared to the "antiquated Indians in Saskatchewans " who danced for rain, all she knows refers to "a 50s rock'n'roll step to copy from" (p.57). In this poem she also exposes the grief for the good times when " Saskatchewan Indians danced free"(p.57). The lines reveal the erasure of customs due to the evolving contact of Indians with mainstream culture to such an extent that the poet only knows the music created by pop culture.

Another example of the influence of pop culture and advertisement on different ethnic groups can be seen in the poem "Squaw Pussy". The noun "pussy" becomes ambiguous considering that its collocation in the phrase can infer more than one meaning. It could be read as the informal name for a cat, or the female organ. The first stanza of the poem starts with the following subtitle:"Jaguar women in black Jaguar car", which obviously refers to a commercial of the famous Jaguar car model. The subsequent lines say that the Jaguar women chase away the "typical 'squaw' image [of the] Hollywood Indian princesses with braids & dowdy looks" (p. 72). By contrasting the Jaguar (one of the most prestigious symbols of power) to Hollywood Indian princesses, the poet cunningly implies that in the white capitalist society there is no room for groups who have "dowdy" looks.

In another section of this same poem, the poet compares the famous character of fairy tales -- Cinderella -- to the Indian one. Instead of wearing glass slippers, the Cinderella born native had moccasins which seem to be the only adequate outfit to traverse a "cement prairie". Here, contrary to the previous poem, the Indian Cinderella personifies a heroic character with features that characterize Indian courage.

In "I want To Dance Wild Indian Black Face" the poet profits from the carnival parade in New Orleans to display Indian garments. It seems that for urban Indians the only chance to express the old traditional concept of Indianness refers to the popular feast where all kinds of costumes are allowed. As she states, she wants to "mask Indian, adopt the Indian spirit figure once a year"(p. 85). So, again we can detach in the persona's voice the effects of mainstream culture in Indians' life, how the old rituals and customs became relegated to a museum or carnival parade.

From this short analysis of Baker's poetry, one can arrive to some conclusions. The first thing that comes to our mind as readers is that contemporary Indian writers are entitled as any other ancient Indian writer to talk about their culture. In the specific case of Marie Annharte Baker, although her poems are written in English (which would not be the ideal language to express her Indianness), she demonstrates a sound and serious commitment to everything that relates to Indian culture, and we could add that it is exactly that mixture from tradition and mainstream that provides the reading of her poetry with a spirit of renewal.

Moreover, Baker uses poetic resources to speak out her personal and tribal history, and through metaphors and comparisons between white and Indian cultures, she ends up by revealing not only ambiguity in modern Indian life but also the impossibility of establishing a pure concept of Indianness.

It would be adequate at this point to transcribe an excerpt of Marilyn Dumont's essay (p. 47) 5, when she says that:

[.] what I am arguing, is that there is a continuum of exposure to traditional experience in native culture, some of us have been more exposed to it than others, but this does not mean that those who have been more exposed to it are somehow more Indian, as if we are searching for the last surviving Indian. Because this notion of Indians vanishing is the effect of 19 th Century ideas about culture as static, this notion old culture as something immutable compounded by the Indian Act affects images of ourselves as either too Indian or not Indian enough . You're too Indian if you are not articulate in the english[sic] language (if a native language is your first language) and you're not native enough if by way of growing up in an urban center you became articulate in english instead of your own native language. Because if you are articulate in english, then you may be seen as coming from a privileged class and are scrutinized to determine how native you really are, scrutinized for your authenticity (by both Indian and white sides)".

In the case of Baker, it sounds a very colonialist speech to say that she would not be Indian enough for writing in English or about themes which ignore "the meaningfulness of indigenous or tribal sovereignty". As a closing remark we can observe that the literature being produced by Indian writers independent of how they are called -- First Nations, Native Americans, aboriginal ones, instead of desecrating the concept of Indian, offers a new space for discussing new ways of seeing Indianness. And it is not the fact of living in big cities that makes Baker "almost Indian, but not quite".

ARMSTRONG, Jeannette (Ed.). Looking at the Words of Our People : First Nations Analysis of Literature.Theytus Books Ltd., British Columbia , 1993.

COOK-LYNN, Elizabeth. Why I Can't Stand Wallace Stegner and Other Essays . The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison , 1996.

MOSES, Daniel David; GOLDIE, Terry. (Eds .). An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English . 2.ed. Oxford University Press, Toronto , 1998.

BAKER, Marie Annharte. Exercises in Lip Pointing . New Star Books Ltd., Vancouver, 2003.

ARMSTRONG, Jeannette (Ed.). Looking at the Words of Our People : First Nations Analysis of Literature.Theytus Books Ltd., British Columbia , 1993.