Beyond Tradition: Today's Native Youth Organizing

By Michael Gaworecki, October 23, 2002

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From the rez to the block, from British Columbia to Albuquerque -- hear from youth on the next wave of Native organizing.

"9 out of 10 people think that as a Native American woman, I'm supposed to look like either that Land-O-Lakes butter girl, or Disney's Pocahontas," says Charlotte Chinana, a 22-year-old, New Mexico-based Native youth activist of Dineh and Jemez Pueblo blood.

Understandably, these stereotypes don't sit well with many of today's Native youth. Images in the mass media (and mainstream culture as a whole) are just one of the challenges Native youth face however. Factor in high rates of poverty, joblessness, alcoholism, and diabetes, and one gets a sense of what's fueling the new brand of youth organizing going on in Native communities.

By 2000, less than 20% of Native Americans still lived on reservations. Though the shift to more urban and suburban areas has introduced its own challenges, it has also opened up a whole new realm of possibilities to Native youth. They are embracing urban-based cultures more than ever, and though this has introduced a kind of gap between today's Native youth and their more-traditional elders, it has not necessarily led them away from their heritage. If anything, despite identifying with a number of non-traditional cultures, today's Native youth are more aware of how important it is that they preserve and maintain personal connections with their traditional culture.

"Oh great, what are the Indians doing now?"

Seeing only the degradation of their culture reflected in the mass media has a profound impact on Native youth. But there are a growing number of them rejecting those images, and taking action to prove them wrong.

When Native youth do show up in the media, their activism is often portrayed as hostile and dangerous.

		"I don't think the indigenous youth have really seen media that reflect themselves. They're still searching for an identity."

"Here in Canada, when we're portrayed in the media it's just as a pain in the ass. Like, 'Oh great, what are the Indians doing now?' Whether we're fighting for our natural watersheds, or to stop the logging and mining of our mountains," says Simon Reece, a staff writer for "Redwire," a Vancouver, British Columbia-based magazine for Native youth. "It's different from down in the States, because I don't think down in the States they're portrayed at all in the mass media, ya know? Or when they are, it's the cheesy guy with braids, or the whole casino thing. But you know, whether they're portraying us as the typical Hollywood Indian, or the militant Indian, we're all being portrayed as uncultured scum. I don't think the indigenous youth have really seen media that reflect themselves. They're still trying to search for an identity."

Empowered Native young people have been reclaiming the right to define themselves in the public eye. For instance, most Navajo no longer call themselves such (except for the benefit of non-Natives), instead using the traditional term Dineh, which literally translates to "the people." Other tribes are shedding the names given them by European colonists as well: Chippewa people are more likely to call themselves Annishinaabeg. Sioux prefer Lakota/Oglala, Dakota, or Nakota. At schools where "Indians" are still used as mascots, there are student groups organized to change that. According to a resolution passed earlier this year by the Student Senate of Minnesota State University, Mankato, Indian mascots foster "a discriminatory environment which promotes racist stereotypes and dehumanizes and disrespects Native peoples and cultures." And there are precedents for success: an Indian mascot was challenged, and deposed, by students at Stanford University in 1972.

Even the word "Indian" is being appropriated and redefined. In his famous speech given in July 1980 at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Russell Means defends the use of the term, which is European in origin. He says there is "some confusion about the word Indian, a mistaken belief that it refers somehow to the country India. When Columbus washed up on the beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans were calling that country Hindustan in 1492. Look it up on the old maps. Columbus called the tribal people he met "Indio," from the Italian in dio, meaning "in God.""

Yet there is no highly visible, contemporary Indian icon. Artists like John Trudell command a lot of respect, but seem too traditional for most Native youth, who have been raised in cities and find much appeal in urban cultures and lifestyles. Not surprising because of its roots in decrying oppression, hiphop is one of the urban cultures Native youth identify with most.

Other youth-led movements, such as the hiphop political movement, have a unifying culture. Though born out of the African American community, hiphop has been embraced by African Americans, whites, latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans alike. Like the different groups coming together to create the hiphop political movement, the 561 Native tribes recognized by the U.S. government (and several other the government doesn't recognize) all have seperate cultural values and traditions.

But there are some major differences between Native and hiphop culture as well. For one thing, Native youth aren't necessarily seeing themselves as "Native" first. Hiphop, on the other hand, can often define every aspect of its followers' lives. Bineshi Albert, campaign director for Albuquerque, New Mexico's SAGE Council, says, "When I was in high school, all the Native youth went to three different camps: there was the hiphop crew, the cholo crew, and the headbanger/heavy metal crew. And all the Indians went to one of these three cliques. I think it's still generally the same."

This certainly makes the task of unifying Native youth into a single movement that much more difficult. As Bineshi says, because most of the distinctly Native artists and musicians are older, there is a need for more youth to create their own music and art. She notes that there are more young native rappers coming out. Acts like Manik and Os-12 -- both members of the indigenous hiphop collective Tribal Wizdom -- are discussing political issues relevant to Native communities in their music, and are drawing an ever-larger audience. One native rapper, Litefoot, even has his own record label, called Red Vinyl Records.

"But it's still borrowing," Bineshi says. "It's not our own."

There could, however, be much potential in this borrowing. In cities and on reservations alike, hiphop is resonating deeply with Native youth. Charlotte has been working with New Mexico youth, using Rock the Vote materials to encourage civic participation, and has attended concerts by groups like Public Enemy to register her peers to vote.

Technology is quickly becoming a major tool in the Native organizing arsenal. For instance, many tribal nations now have a web presence. Native filmmaker Chris Eyre exemplifies this trend. He recently told the "New York Times" that he has made it his mission to do "what non-Indian filmmakers can't do, which is portray contemporary Indians." So far Mr. Eyre has made two popular movies, "Smoke Signals" and "Skins," which could help open doors for a new generation of Native artists.

Groups like the NDN Rights Project, an American Indian civil rights organization, are using the Internet as an outreach and informational tool. According to their website, the Project seeks "to unite often isolated student organizations in cooperation, with the hope of supplying them with information and support that will allow them to be more effective both on their campus and in the local and national Indian community." They also offer free email to all indigenous youth at their Redpride.com site.

A similar tact has been adopted by "Redwire," which produces both an online and print magazine to reach its audience, and uses subscription fees from non-Native subscribers to provide free copies to indigenous youth.

The Generation Gap

Tools like these have given rise to a split between the urbanized youth and more traditional Natives. For one thing, many people on reservations don't have electricity or a phone, so hiphop and the Internet are inaccessible to them. In the past, most Native children were raised in boarding schools created by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and run by Christian missionaries. This practice has largely been abandoned, meaning many of today's Native American youth have had a fundamentally different education than their parents.

Simon says that in British Columbia, this generation gap is especially pronounced. When Native youth activists try to organize around social issues like the environment at dances or powwows, the people running the events don't allow them to. "They say 'This is a traditional event, we're not political, we don't believe that we should have people coming around here talking about political issues, because that's not what we're about.' And yet they can dance and march under a flag that's not even theirs, the Canadian flag."

Simon speculates that these traditionalists may simply be "afraid to rock the boat," despite the environmental destruction of their traditional lands at the hands of local ski resorts. These resorts already account for a large portion of Native peoples' land, and are trying to take more. According to Simon, around sixty Native protesters have been arrested, and are being prosecuted on criminal charges in Canadian courts, for attempting to re-claim those lands through acts of civil disobedience. He also says that Canadian officials have gone so far as to compare those Native youth to Palestinian terrorists.

Simon says that he and other activists in the B.C. area organize their own rallies and conferences, sometimes in conjunction with groups fighting for other causes. The Philippino Youth Alliance, for instance, a group that organizes opposition to the U.S.' militarization of the Philippines, often shares time at rallies with Native speakers.