Category Archives: indigenous

Q4 2016 Book Review Roundup

AnIPHotUS Cover

The Indigenous experience has long been absent from colonial histories, which either dismiss or rationalize the existence of and fallout from European imperialism. With An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, activist and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz examines U.S. settler-colonial framework and gives insight into the modern reality of Indigenous peoples’ experience. In roughly 230 pages, spanning more than four hundred years, the book challenges readers to rethink the national narrative of manifest destiny and to ponder how society would be transformed if the reality of U.S. history were to be acknowledged on a wider scale.

 

El Capitan Cover

Dr. Tanis C. Thorne’s El Capitan simultaneously details the advent of the Capitan Grande Reservation while speaking on the broader issue of Southern California Indian agency in overcoming Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization.  If historical narratives are comprised of evidence fragments, El Capitan’s narrative is presented in the form of detailed maps, photographic essays, and compelling accounts from individuals, families, villages, reservations, and government officials.  El Capitan is a brief, yet well-researched and accessible reconstruction of what happened and why at Capitan Grande.

R66andAA

 

Published by the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association (AIANTA), in partnership with the National Park Service, and written, photographed, and designed by Lisa Hicks Snell (Cherokee), American Indians & Route 66 offers an untold perspective of America’s most iconic two-lane highway. The nearly 2,400-mile stretch of Americana from Chicago to the Pacific Coast (or the other way around depending on the direction one heads) was an officially commissioned highway from 1926 to 1985 and guided travelers through the lands of over 25 Native nations. Also known as America’s Highway, Will Rogers Highway, and the Mother Road, U.S. Route 66 symbolizes American innovation and freedom to some and rapacious capitalism and cultural misappropriation to others.

The book is available free and online at: http://www.americanindiansandroute66.com/

Indigenous Pop Cover

Edited by Jeff Berglund, Jan Johnson, and Kimberli Lee, Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip-Hop aims not only to discuss the historical aspect of American popular music gatekeepers, but also to contribute to the gap in scholarship on contemporary American Indian music. While not a comprehensive source for biographical detail on Native musicians, Indigenous Pop successfully accomplishes its goal of noting not only the contributions and influence of well-known and obscure Native artists in popular music, but also illustrates with each essay the importance of song in the political and apolitical lives of Indigenous people, and explores the notion that musical oral traditions are both adaptive and transformative.

The Great Xanadu of Race Politics by Super Star Agni

mixed-raceI’ve been in the practice of storytelling through art since elementary school. I didn’t begin to tell my own story, however, until graduate school, where I wrote about the adventures of a dark-skinned mixed boy and a Russian-American girl in rural Kansas. After two years of study, I managed to complete my thesis, but was well short of a finished first draft.

After spending several more years writing a mixture of what could be described as The Little Prince meets Pedro Paramo, I realized the main character’s search for identity and purpose in a world that regarded him as anomalous because of his skin color and unorthodox beliefs were, in essence, my own.

Knowing my heritage, I managed to confounded the color line and mass-mediated stereotypes as a child. “You don’t sound Black” and “You are not the usual Black” are comments I’ve heard most often, the runners up being: “I can tell you’re mixed because your hair is different” or “What country are you really from?”

I’ve developed a series of responses over the years—some of which mention I’m of African, Cherokee, and Scottish ancestry—but, no matter how I respond, I always wonder why people from seemingly all backgrounds police Black identity so zealously, especially in regard to dark-skinned people of African descent.

An ex-girlfriend was of a similar mix type, but her appearance was notably different than mine. She had pale skin, blue eyes, and straightened brown hair with natural blonde highlights. I identified as mixed because of my upbringing and knowledge of my ancestry; she identified as Black because of her upbringing, adherence to the one-drop rule, and what I assume to be disinterest in her Native and Anglo ancestries. While our inevitable split was not due solely to identity politics, the policing of Blackness played a large part in our relationship’s demise.

Until recently, I was in the occasional habit of defending my ancestries with genealogical records, DNA test results, and family photographs, but I stopped all together because the act of proving serves to trivialize my experience and existence. I also stopped because identity police are annoying. Now I tell them “I am who my ancestors are” and let their minds silently explode.

The novel I mentioned earlier has actually become a memoir in verse even though the characters and happenings are fictional. If the concept of a poetic fictional memoir seems contradictory, blame artistic license, cultural inheritance, and the subversive nature of poetry. I was brought up to know storytelling is more about getting to the underlying truth than simply relating details. Given that, I’ve come to realize the concept of being both dark skinned and mixed is difficult to convey accurately without writing about in academic detail the usual suspects of colonialism, colorism, racism, and general human cruelty. Writing my truth in essence seems more natural and meaningful beyond mere details of record, and has become an effective way to transcend identity politics.

F3b1 haplogroup

My Mother’s Haplogroup – Region: Southeastern Asia

News from Native California Winter 2015

nnc292cover_web800pxLast year, I was blessed with the opportunity to become a regular contributor to News from Native California, a quarterly magazine devoted to the Indian people of California. In volume 29, no. 2, my first contribution is a review of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States―an impassioned, well-documented telling of the history of America from an Indigenous point of view.

The theme of the issue is “Long live the cultures!” In light of resurgent efforts to quash minority voices, this sentiment is most apt.

National Native Media Conference 2014

NAJA_Icons_Color2Because I usually post about creative writing, some of you may not know about my start as a photojournalist and news writer. One of my affiliations is the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), which hosts an annual conference in a different U.S. city. This year, the conference will be in Santa Clara and will focus on traditional storytelling elements with modern, digital tools, hence the theme: Going Tra-Digital. As always, NAJA conferences are good for networking, professional development, and recognizing the best news coverage in Indian Country.

This is the first time a NAJA conference has been held in my area, so I jumped at the chance to be on the local planning committee. My duties include outreach and resource gathering. Oh, and thinking of the “Tech Wow!” or the showstopper. At first, I was thinking holograms would be cool for storytelling purposes, but who has access to holograms? And then I said to myself the Tech Wow! should be something with Google Glass because, although it’s crazy expensive at the moment, it’s so potentially the next step in digital storytelling and could significantly change how the public participates in the process.

On another tech and media note, check out my photography blog at: agnimitrakhan.com. The site remains in the beta stage for now, but will be the cat’s pyjamas once I settle on an optimal design.