Pretendian

Something has been on my mind a lot, for a long time, forever really, and I’d like share it with you.

Pretendian.

It’s just a word—a portmanteau that combines Pretend with Indian. It was coined to describe someone who appropriates Native culture, pretends to be an Indian.

Some of the people who use the word Pretendian might be the same people who’ve “educated” me about my incorrect use of the word “Indian” to describe myself. Because they tell me “actual Native people prefer Indigenous, Native American, Native. Indian is wrong.” Thank you. I’ll let my father know.

But. I fear the word Pretendian. In my gut. Viscerally.

I fear it because I fear White people using it to describe me. I fear Native people using it to describe me. I fear it because I use it against myself sometimes in my darkest moments of doubt and grief, loss and isolation from my ancestry.

Those of us who are scrutinized have our features examined (cheekbones high enough?), skin color “quantified.” Those of us who have our NDN bona fides vetted. (NDN is a colloquialism, slang Indians use—and we call ourselves Indians. People who wonder what the correct term for us is should just ask us. We do know.)

Because of the way I look on the outside, I have reason to fear the word Pretendian. People like me hide ourselves, choose our moment to proclaim ourselves. Maybe we carry a picture of the parent who “looks” more like an Indian is supposed to look. We keep a script in our head of the things that prove we’re who we are. Because we’re just too goddamned White on the outside.

Assimilation was a keystone in the federal government’s policy: Kill the Indian, Save the Man. Assimilation worked. For all that the world can SEE, the Indian in us was killed. We are GENOCIDE WALKING. The “Kill the Indian” part worked. The “Save the Man” part—not so much.

A big part of our Indian was killed—a part that’s in our heart. Big hole gouged out there. Big shame. Big hurt. Big fear. Fear, among some of us mixed-race NDNs, of the word Pretendian.

How many people do I have to stand up to, how many times do I have to be knocked down, humiliated, denied, assessed, defined? How brave do I have to be with too-White skin, too light hair, to be who I am? To resurrect myself from the killing of my Indianness?

No one who truly knows who and what they are should be questioned. Certainly, cultural appropriation needs to be challenged, discouraged, stopped—but those of us who know who we are regardless of the shade of our skin should not have to defend it or fear being mislabeled or scorned or humiliated. When someone decides to “school” us about our identity, we shouldn’t then be reminded of the “schools” our parents were forced to attend where our culture, language and identity were erased—those Prisons-That-Were-Called-Schools where religious dogma was force-fed. The dogma of assimilation.

Assimilation = Genocide. “Assimocide.” I’ve made a new portmanteau, y’all.

Blood Quantum

“Bloodum”? I’ve made another one.

Blood quantum is a racist measurement, a still-living holdover from colonialism. The U.S. government has used our “blood quantum” to further disenfranchise us in different ways over the decades.

Too much NDN blood to:

vote

be a citizen

retain our ancestral lands

practice our own beliefs

speak our own languages

live where our people had always lived

Too much NDN to live, even. (See various massacres.)

On the other hand, not enough NDN blood to:

keep our land

retain our tribal affiliation

participate in our Native culture

But take heart because your father/mother were good NDNs, learned to be White at the Prisons-That-Were-Called-Schools, married White people, had green-eyed children. Washed themselves away through assimilation.

Blood quantum requirements eventually erase individuals and tribes.

Blood Quantum = Genocide.

The Civilization Act, 1819

Congress enacted the Indian Civilization Act to introduce the “arts of civilization” to Indians. The president was authorized to “employ capable persons of good moral character”—so White missionaries and church leaders partnered with the government to do “the great work of regenerating the Indian race.” The Indian Commissioner made it clear it was “indispensably necessary that Indians be placed in positions where they can be controlled...until such time as their general improvement and good conduct may supersede the necessity of such restrictions.”

The Prisons That Were Called Indian Boarding Schools

My father was an Indian boarding school survivor. I have one bit of solace about Daddy being sent to a Prison-That-Was-Called-Indian-Boarding-School. That’s that he was a little older than some. He wasn’t tiny. He wasn’t so young he remembered nothing else except indoctrination. He did remember the hunger. And the cruelty. He could defend himself—a little—because he had the survivor skills he inherited when his father died and left him and his mother alone when Daddy was only eight. (Still, he was young enough that, when he returned home, he could no longer talk with his mother’s mother, who lived with them. He no longer understood his grandmother’s and his mother’s language. And his grandmother never understood what was now his.)

At the Prison-That-Was-Called-Indian-Boarding-School, Daddy got himself placed in the bakery where he baked bread and could steal some bread to take back to his bunk at night. There, under a blanket after lights-out, he and his cousin shared the bread.

The Meriam Report, 1926

The Department of the Interior commissioned a report about the state of affairs of Indians called The Meriam Report: The Problem of Indian Administration. It summed up the state of affairs by stating “frankly and unequivocally, the provisions for the care of Indian children in Boarding Schools are grossly inadequate.” At the time, the recommended, recognized nutritional allowance needed to maintain a healthy child was 35 cents per child per day. At the Prisons-Called-Indian-Boarding-Schools, our federal government provided a nutrition allowance of 11 CENTS per child per day—while those children provided free labor for profit-making industries run by the schools.

My grandmother had reluctantly sent my father to the Prison-That-Was-Called-Indian-Boarding-School because she was unable to provide enough food for her growing son. But Hunger was a line-item in the budget of the Prison-That-Was-Called-Indian-Boarding-School. I can’t come up with a clever portmanteau for that shitty irony. Oh, how about “Shirony”?

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, 2021

The Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, the only Native person to be appointed to a Cabinet post, announced a comprehensive effort to recognize the troubled legacy of Indian boarding schools.

“The consequences of federal Indian boarding school policies—including the intergenerational trauma caused by the family separation and cultural eradication inflicted upon generations of children as young as four years old—are heartbreaking and undeniable. It is my priority to not only give voice to the survivors and descendants of federal Indian boarding school policies, but also to address the lasting legacies of these policies so Indigenous peoples can continue to grow and heal.”

When I read and hear oral histories from other survivors of the boarding school system, the shadow that is already on my heart becomes even darker. It is dark work. A dark subject. A dark part of our nation’s history that must be told in all its darkness for the sake of all the children who survived and all the children who did not survive. Many of those children’s bodies have been lost forever in unmarked graves, never to return home.

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Here’s a word to consider—chiaroscuro—another portmanteau. It’s a combination of Italian words for light and dark. Artists employ the technique in painting to manipulate light and shadow. Daddy’s life was painted using chiaroscuro. A portrait of good and bad times, beautiful and bitter times, tender and terrible times—painted in brushstrokes that rendered a portrait of perseverance, character, dignity and civility.

My father’s identity—his very being—was sometimes hidden in the shadows because it’s what he was taught to forget at the Prison-That-Was-Called-Indian-Boarding-School.

But Daddy forgot to remember and he remembered to forget what he was taught. He passed his memories and his identity—my identity—on to me in the best way. From his words, his voice, into my ears, heart, soul. Words that spoke of our ancestors. His feelings were deep, nuanced, complicated, bitter and sweet, so sweet.

Daddy’s dark skin combined with my mother’s milk-white skin and created a child. Me. A combination of dark and light.

Not a walking “word.” Not a portmanteau.

Not a Pretendian.

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