Monday, January 18, 2021

Between the Dream and Me

The following post was the introduction given before a screening of “Between the World and Me”, the screenplay based on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book by the same title. Native Roots Network shared this video January 18, 2021, Martin Luther King Day, just 12 days after white supremacists broke into the United States Capitol.

Welcome everyone - we are beaming out from the Traditional lands of the Wintu People. We are specifically coming from an area known as Elpom. We would like to acknowledge the ancestral caretakers of this land and of the surrounding areas, including the other 8 bands of the Northern Wintu people, as well as the Yana and the Pit River to the East.

Today is MLK Day. A day that many in this Nation recognize, take pause and remember one of the heroes of this country. We wanted to add to that remembrance. We feel we NEED to add to that remembrance, because remembering is not enough.

So, Why Native Roots? Why are we doing this. Isn’t the MLK celebration a Black thing? Well, we are doing this for a couple different reasons.

First, let me claim my part in bridging this Black hero’s work to Native Roots. To know me is to know that I am Indigenous to this land mass called North America, Chichimec, Purepecha, I am also of Northern European ancestry, primarily an Anglo-Celtic blend, with an ancestor who was one of the 102 people who came over on the Mayflower.

And, I am also part of the African Diaspora, descendant of those who were brought here to be enslaved. To know all my family is to know the full range of the color and features and cultures that are often and incompletely used to define and confine people to categories of race. But if we are to use the constructed category of race, while I present light and maybe racially ambiguous, my father presented Black. My brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, Black.

A large portion of my family and my experiences have been shaped by our Blackness. So if MLK belongs to the Black Community, then know, that I do too.

And so we as Native Roots have an opportunity to bridge.

Martin Luther King Day is a dangerous day. Each year we roll out a particular memory of the man. Usually, this memory is centered in a section of a speech he gave in 1963, where he talked about a Dream. This Dream was a beautiful Dream. And then we may get a little further along in his story and talk about 1964 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act. 1965 and the Voting Rights Act.

We celebrate. We praise his stance on non-violence. We are enthralled by his charismatic and powerful speaking ability. We hold the image of little white girls and little black girls holding hands and being judged by their character, and not their skin color. We see these black and white images. Historic and historical.

We might just get to 1968 and see that glimpse of color, and hear him say that he has seen the “promised land”, though he might not get there with us.

Our community gathers, we Dream, we mourn, we disassociate and are disassociated from the man that has been canonized, now that he is safely dead.

So often we get to the story of the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, but then we shut the box. And we lock it. Where it is safe. Where it is safely in the past. Where it is only connected to the gains that were made through those historic, yet very basic Acts. And we then we reduce it to a Black thing. The day Black People got to vote. Success. We won. We are all equal now. Welcome to the status quo. And the whisper is “Let’s move on”.

So safe is this narrative, that in our own community, we often invite local elected officials, many of whom do little, to nothing, to advance equity or racial or social justice, to come and speak and give their perfunctory speeches praising King.

This year, it was such a breath of fresh air. I really appreciated the strength. Because the old way…. Hmm. We just have to do better.

Two years in a row we had representation from our Board of Supervisors deliver muddled, meandering streams of pale platitudes towards King, praising the realization of a color-blind society. Their words gaslighting the experiences of those who continue to see racism in very real ways. Two years in a row. The first, the man who penned our County’s Anti-Sanctuary Resolution. The next year, the man who introduced it to be adopted.

So safe is it that we have listened to our highest, elected law enforcement officer, now recently retired, read to us, cherry picked snippets of the “I have a Dream” Speech, while wearing his uniform, gun on hip. This same man who’s public social media page now advances narratives of stolen elections, BLM terrorists and impeaching Vice President elect Kamala Harris. Look him up.

These types of commemorations are dangerous. They are dangerous to the memory of MLK and they are dangerous to our Movements today. Where we have shackled King is safe for the status quo. But, make no mistake. King was not safe for the status quo. And he absolutely was not liked by the status quo. And maybe we should not be worried about it either. By shackling King, we as a community have perhaps participated in our own shackling.

We feel that the work to protect the Black body is NOW. It is current, as is the work to protect the Native body, the Brown body, the female body, the trans, the gay, the Poor and so on. Systems of supremacy, are within the very threads of the fabric of our society. They remain, and are woven and tied into nooses. These choke the familiar victims and strangle the dreams of a peaceful society where our wealth is not measured only in our material possessions and our strengths are not only measured by the capacity of our military to wreak death and destruction upon the earth. Supremacy takes many forms, and King continued his own evolution as time went on.

We know that many of those who are flocking to the fires of hate and anger, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and anti Semitic notions, have been harmed by the same systems that manipulate and benefit from the delivery of racism. We know that these people are actually more similar to us than they are different. Yet their suffering, their unfulfilled dreams have been harvested and weaponized to enlist them as foot soldiers and canon fodder, to feed the dreams of the ultra rich and powerful. Racism is often the gateway drug.

We have seen the heavy handed responses, often dealt out with great force and violence to Indigenous people protecting sacred lands, Standing Rock and Mauna Kea and Oak Flat, and we will see what happens here when folks lay down their bodies to stop the raising of the dam or the sprawl of industrial Wind on our eastern mountains. We have seen it at the marches to protect our immigrant families and of course we have seen it in the responses to BLM and other marches against police-caused deaths.

MLK offers us an opportunity to have a conversation. But we must take the conversation out of the confines of a historical moment. Ta-Nehisi Coates helps us contemporize the conversation. Published in 2015, the book “ Between the World and Me” was written as a letter to Coates’ then 15 year old son. It was his way to talk to his son about life in America as a Black person. It talks about the experience from within the Black body.

While King’s work, vision and inspiration remains in many forms, we must never forget that four years after the Civil Rights victory, his body, his Black body, was destroyed by the bullet of a racist. And while we must never forget that racism took King’s Black Body, we also must consider that the man who pulled the trigger had been shaped by systems of oppression; a frustrated and failed Dreamer who needed someone to blame.

So we offer this film. Coates’ writing, edited to fit a screen version. It was shot in the summer of 2020, after and during so much that we have experienced. After Ahmaud Arbery, after George Floyd, after Breonna Taylor, and so many more. Coates looks at race and racism beyond the frame of an individual’s prejudice, beyond the name calling by a few angry ignorant men stuck in the past.

Instead he shows it to us as a current thing that makes up the Dream. The atoms and particles that hold the Dream together.

This is not the Dream that King talked about in that speech. But this perhaps was the Dream that he saw beyond the veil of integration when in 1968, just a short time before he is killed, he says to Harry Belafonte, “I fear that I integrated my people into a burning house”. He understood then that integration is not enough. Instead we must understand that transformation is what we must do.

This film is not the end of the conversation on transformation. But, in order to transform we need to deal with racism, in all its contemporary forms. And make no mistake, we need to deal with other ism’s as well. But that will be another discussion at a different time.

In order to combat the growing numbers of those who would subscribe to hate, we must find ways to bring them closer to our fire of love. To ignite like a sun and emit light and heat, and with our gravity, pull them into our orbit, to work together to build a better solar system. We must work to make MLK dangerous again. A dangerous force to ideas of supremacy, hate and violence.

And as Ella Baker said, “the movement made Martin, rather than Martin making the movement.” And so, as the Movement lives on, we too are made and remade.

Sunday, November 1, 2020

What is your plan for November 4th, 2020?

Yeah, we know the election is taking place on Tuesday, November 3. Hopefully you have voted already, or are making a plan to vote. But what is your plan for after?

Recently, in a conversation on the “New Black Politics”, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton Professor and contributing writer for the New Yorker, was asked about the upcoming election. While she absolutely agreed that it is vital that everyone vote, she also commented that it was the bare minimum. She referenced how many folks are getting the message to make a plan for Tuesday so that they can be sure to be able to vote, and she flipped that a little and asked, rhetorically, “What is your plan for November 4th?” She was not asking about what folks will do Wednesday in particular, or any particular day after that. She was reminding us that we have work to do. No matter who wins the election, from November 4th and into the future.

2020 and the spread of the COVID-19 virus provided the world an opportunity to pause,  evaluate, and rethink our collective path of materialism, militarism, and ecological destruction. Many folks who had to face lockdown got busy reflecting, learning and reimagining. Others still had to work and figure out ways to navigate the dangers of this new time. Others yet doubled down on the old ways, feeling the threats and pursued dangerous pathways to keep it on life-support. Citizen militias showing up armed at protests, while several corporate entities recorded mass profits.  Amidst the spring COVID response, video recorded the killing of George Floyd by police and launched a massive public response. People across the country marched in the streets, calling for justice and change. Time marched on and demands to reopen grew stronger, the unemployments assistance and stimulus checks ran out.  The Virus remained, and the largest wildfires ever recorded burned in the west, a haunting reminder that our climate is changing, and for the worse.

So here we are, reaching the threshold of the 2020 election; the country in a great state of horrible tension. The stakes are high, and many feel that some sort of civil war is possible if the powder keg is lit, purposely or accidentally.

There are some interesting parallels with the division in our current time and with the country in November 1860 and its impact on Native Peoples. In 1860, even though the Union Army won, slavery was ended and the country remained as one, many Natives were still about to face their darkest days after the closing of the Civil War. The focus and military power was shifted to the West and the “Indian Wars”. Remember Kevin Costner, Dances with Wolves?

We are in the same position today. No matter who wins, the fight to save the earth, the sacred places, the watersheds, the places of our origins, the climate, the animals, and the very future of our ancestors who are yet to come are ever present.  There are differences between the candidates and the types of struggles we may face ahead may also be different depending on who wins, and we must navigate the course with our creativity and perseverance.

One candidate is like a 1994 Ford Taurus and the other like a 2002 Hummer H2. The Taurus, a boring, run-of-the mill Neo-liberal American sedan that lacks imagination, foresight and sustainability - perpetuating the business-as-usual American gasoline dependent society. The other candidate is like an H2, a sham job with its hulk of a body placed on a slightly modified standard truck frame. It is loud, wasteful and was built for show, not performance. In its creation there was never any thought of sustainability, just consumption. Both vehicles are still on the highway toward our potential societal and planetary collapse. One just might get us there a little quicker.

So where does that leave us? What are the “Indian Wars” of our time? The damning of rivers? The construction of industrial scale wind projects or geothermal power plants on sacred sites? The mining of ancestral homelands or the logging of ancient forest? Is it the in the form of rising hate and racism? Or is in the shifting biomes, the burning landscapes and flooded communities? Or is it all of the above?

We have doing our best to picture moving forward. The election will impact us one way or another and will inform our response. 

We know that we must find ways to build community in this time of physical distancing. We know that we must continue to put political pressure on our elected officials to create policies that protect and preserve. We know that we must continue to work hard to reach out to our brothers and sisters in other communities who face oppression, discrimination, intimidation, displacement and or violence. We know we must build solidarity. 

We must look to our old ways, our stories, our songs, our cultures for information and inspiration to better survive these times. We must reimagine our participation in the economies that are killing the planet and find ways to develop cooperative, local and resilient models where we take care of each other and the earth. 

These are the things that many and we are doing. And on Wednesday, while the world waits to see how things unfold, we will be planning, preparing and. moving forward. That is our plan for the November 4th. What is yours?

Sunday, December 16, 2018

RUnning inward and Toward the Winter Solstice

It is early in the morning. Too early. We start to wake up as we hear the call. Dust covered toes are slipped into socks and then into gritty, dusty shoes. This place is always dusty in August and when we circled around the fire the night before, the dust rose like a smoke cloud carrying our prayer offers to the fire. And the dances went on until it was late. Too late for such an early morning. And by the time we were done, the stars shone brilliantly, and the Flowery Trail, AKA the Milky Way, had rotated a quarter of the way through its nightly path across the sky. And now in the darkness of the morning, before the sunrise, camp is taken down, we circle, we pray and then we run.

Running is a strand that has carried our communities through, from past to present, from present to future. When we run, we run in a different way. We run for our lives and for your lives too. We are waking up our relationship with the earth, with the ancestors and the Creator’s many forms. The running is an act of sacrifice, which means it is a personal act of love for something greater than one’s self, even while the self ultimately benefits.

Native Roots Network has parts of its origins in running. There are past capsules of time and of place that stay perpetually activated, memories that live with us in the present moment. Particular conversations, perfect interactions and distinguishable connections that shape our journey today. There could be no way to anticipate or plan out how those connections would play a role in our futures, while it is quite clear when looking back, how all the dots connect and lead us to now.

It is in this darkest time of year, that we are called to slow down, and remember, to seek introspection, to reflect deeply on our lives and what we value most. We are invited to remember those people who have shaped us, those experiences that direct us and what visions have guided our journey. Sometimes, it is not all positive and we can identify those things that we need to learn from as we heal or practice new ways of being. The upcoming Winter Solstice invites us, it beckons our participation in the planet’s cycle of light and darkness. None of us are beyond the length of the day, length of the night. We are reminded of the Earth’s very living ebb and flow, her cycles, her marking of time as she has long before us and will long after us.

And so with the prayer staff in my hand, I am running in the crisp morning mountain air, appreciating the cold for now, for it will be hot by lunch time. The Great Mountain just to the west of me. The pines and firs reach toward the blue of the sky and my footsteps strike dusty ground, previously imprinted by fox, deer, squirrel and the mountain lion and bear. This moment, played over and over in my body, becomes moments, becomes pathways, becomes our work. It is December. It is dark and cold and wet. I reflect, I remember. I wait until light, it is raining. I run on wet pavement in the cold air, it is mostly exercise today. But I reconnect, as I dive deeper into my core, I am reminded of running in our summer ceremonial runs. I remember how it directly impacts me, how it changed others and brought us together in ways that surprise us all. Pit River Ancestral Run, Peace and Dignity Journeys, Aha Pule Aina Holo, Hopi2GIla, Medicine Lake Run, Run4Salmon, Tasuki Run, Sacred Run for Healing, Modoc Ancestral Run to name some of the past. And as the winter light wanes, we await the new solar year for the runs of our futures.

Happy Solstice - Jonathon

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Stepping Stones in our Journey to Build a Better Community

We all need pathways and roadmaps as we wayfind our route through this new world of healing, community building and action. Our Ancestors navigated challenges and traumas in different times and in different ways. We are here now and need to forward our vision and our efforts for the generations to come. Here are some of our steps and process. Please feel free to use, change, adapt and implement your own. There is power in sharing seeds and there is power in growing and sharing the fruit. Like a handful of acorns, here are our ideas for you to grow into your own.

Step 1. Foundations Our work must always reflect the place where we are doing our work. We recognize the earth, we recognize the ancestors, and we recognize the spirits of the land. We take time to follow the lead of the traditional caretakers of the land on which we are working.

Step 2. Pathways We use the medicine wheel as our model. What does it mean to you? For us here today, it represents the wisdom of the four directions and it represents our journey in building stronger leadership in our community.

Healing is the Pathway. We will acknowledge traumatic histories. And we will not stay there. We are survivors and many carry trauma. We must integrate intentional healing justice work within ourselves, our organizing and within the ways we develop leaders. We can not allow our own liberalism to prevent us from striving and expecting the best from all. Our trauma cannot be left unaddressed and allowed to run rampant in our work. If we do not intentionally work on our healing, we have a high chance that we will be our own biggest obstacle.

Step 3. Multipliers Build Many Strong Leaders. We will work to deepen our understanding of traditional leaderships structures. We will develop our understanding of the personal sovereignty and networks of leadership that existed in our traditional communities. We will develop all of the forms of leadership throughout our community. Through our practices of fasting and questing we will support community members in connecting with their roles in the community, in this way fulfilling their leadership roles. We will understand this network of leaders, and steer away from old expectations of a single charismatic leader, a messiah figure.

Step 4. Perspectives Lead, but Never Walk Alone. There’s a story about crabs in a bucket. When one starts to climb out the other crabs pull him back into the bucket. We can flip that to represent a system of leadership that represents traditional models of leadership when our ways were more intact. In this way, a leader once out of the bucket would not leave the bucket without turning back and pulling the next crab out with her. Being a leader means that you will have to do things that may be unpopular, and you may criticized, heavily, and by your own community. You have to do what is right and what needs to be done. And you need to be sure that you stay rooted and connected in your community. “Do the right thing Mookie”.

Step 5. Healings Self-care is activism. We have too many of our people dying early. As we have said before, they are not dying from cavalry swords but Pepsi cans, stress and inactivity. You hear every time in our sweat lodge that you must first pray for yourself because the rest of the prayers you give throughout the ceremony will only be as strong as you are. We must take care of our spirits, our minds and our bodies. Constantly staying up late and eating junk food and never ending stress over too many projects is going to shorten your life. And in shortening your life, you are going to shorten your ability to help. And we all know that we really don’t give our best to the movement when we have been tapped-out for too long. Take time to walk, to pray - if that is your way, eat your healthy - traditional, if possible - food. Love on your family by being with them and being present. This is how the movement will continue. It is one of the biggest and most important tasks you can take on-your own self care.

Cycles As we know the wheel continues. And we travel the wheel and as we repeat, we reach out and do what we can to recruit, develop and celebrate new leaders.

“We are nothing if we walk alone; we are everything when we walk together in step with other dignified feet.”
- Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos -

Peace out, Jonathon

Wednesday, November 28, 2018
WE ARE THE WARRIORS WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR (if we’re not, then we better start faking it)

As the days shorten and we come nearer to the darkest day and the Winter Solstice, we wait for the light to return. We wait out the darkness. And for many, the darkness will continue even when the sun returns. And still, many will continue to try to wait out the darkness.

It is often hard to see ourselves in the present moment. We look back in our histories to the heroes of the old past, the warriors who gave their lives to defend the people, who died to defend the land. We look back to the recent history and we see the movement leaders as celebrities and larger than life figures who must have had a special gift or divine calling. And then we look to the future and wonder who will be that next leader. We live our lives today saddened by the destruction of the land, the poverty of the people and the dissolving of community cohesion and connection to one another. And we look to the future and wonder when our movement will begin. And for now we wait. Hoping to wait out the darkness.

When do the warriors arrive? When will the battle call go out to summon all those who smoke their cigarettes and take a hand off the game controller only to take drag of their Red Bull, and say between puffs, “Shit, I would die for my people.” And when will the warriors arrive, who know the land, who can run the mountain lengths, who can speak the language of clouds and whisper loving wisdom to nieces, nephews, sons and daughters? When do the warriors arrive to drive out the industry from paving over acorn and salmon, deer and root? When do the warriors arrive to defeat the monsters of meth and heroin, of alcohol and pills? When will the warriors arrive to free us from our bodies heavy with diabetes and hypertension and artificial color and fat and sugar and chemical. When will the warriors arrive so we can rise up and die for a cause, because maybe now we are dying for nothing, except our own suffering and captivity and our waiting.

If we listen hard, turn down the tunes blasting through headphones designed to isolate, we may just hear the hum, the mummer and whisper of the battle call that never ceased, and has been sounding all along. We may hear the call that the old ones put out on the wind.

That call is there. The movement leaders of the 60’s and 70’s heard it. And they answered, and somewhere along the way, the battles shifted and external and internal struggles blotted out the clear signal with blended, blotted frequencies of neglect, abuse and a slow calming effect of increased comfort and complacency. And now 999 cable tv channels, netflix, fortnite and car payments, drown out the remaining notes of that battle call. We no longer can decipher the language to understand. And so we wait. Waiting for the warriors to bring the light as we try to wait out the darkness, even as the darkness increases.

And what if we heard the call? What if we could translate and understand the call now encoded in the ancient language of earth, and sky and ancestral breath? What would we hear?

“Rise, rise. Woman, Man, rise and live. You are the warriors you have been waiting for. There is no other time than now and you are needed.

Fear is appropriate, uncertainty is real, victory is never promised. You may not know the path, the destination, but the important thing is to start walking. Move. Pretend, fake it at first if you have to. Let your heart be true and love be your guide and you will learn. The young ones are watching you.

You may have to give your life to the cause. We know you are willing to die for the struggle, but that is easy. Instead we need you to live for the struggle. Live through the challenge, live through the defeat, live through the survivance. Live to join and uplift the battle call that had been smothered and lost to bring others to fight for life.”

There is no waiting. The time is now. We are the warriors we have been waiting for.

Peace out, Jonathon