Smiling Indians
March 17, 2011 1:48 PM   Subscribe

 
How can you not love smiling people, regardless of who they are?
posted by tommasz at 1:50 PM on March 17, 2011


Don't make me pull out my smiling Nazis link.
posted by found missing at 1:54 PM on March 17, 2011 [9 favorites]


Awesome.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 1:55 PM on March 17, 2011


Wait, this is a real thing? People really think that Native Americans are weirdly somber because of 110 year old photos, despite the fact that the majority of photos from that era were full of similarly-expressioned people?

i can't even.


either way, that video is awesome, so whatevs.
posted by elizardbits at 1:58 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


Did you notice that in all his films you can't actually see John Wayne's teeth?
Hey-ya hey-ya hey!
posted by ooga_booga at 1:58 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


People really think that Native Americans are weirdly somber because of 110 year old photos...?

I always thought they were understandably somber, because of the genocide.
posted by rusty at 2:02 PM on March 17, 2011 [4 favorites]


Wait, this is a real thing? People really think that Native Americans are weirdly somber because of 110 year old photos, despite the fact that the majority of photos from that era were full of similarly-expressioned people?

Oh hell yeah. I've definitely noticed this weird disconnect.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:02 PM on March 17, 2011


So many beautiful people. Thanks for that. I like the song too.
posted by defenestration at 2:03 PM on March 17, 2011


I wouldn't say it's just because of Curtis, but his photos were powerfully iconic, and then got amplified by the sombre-Indian represenations in motion pictures. So I do think there's this idea that people expect Indians to be somber people, because of the representation history, and yes, also because of the genocide and occupation.

elizardbits, in my experience Canadanianis have a better understanding of contemporary Native culture because you have more progressive government policies and cultural institutions than USians do, in general. On the East Coast of the US it is not very frequent that one gets to know any real Indians or has much interaction with Indian affairs as a matter of policy. It can seem very abstract, and there are still impressions built on representation at a distance. I was really surprised last year that one of my colleagues kids', in Kindergarten, came home with one of those construction paper feather headbands made to accompany the kind of claptrap about Thanksgiving I thought had gone the way of all things long ago. Misunderstanding is still prevalent. Daily familiarity between Native and non-Native people improves as you move Westward, but I'd say there's still lots of confusion about who Natives are and how they actually act.
posted by Miko at 2:10 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


That was a lovely video. Thanks for sharing. And yes, it's a sad thing, but old stereotypes die hard.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 2:15 PM on March 17, 2011


This is great, and it's such a teeny world that it turns out Ryan Red Corn is related to a friend of mine from college (who, as it happens, has a fantastic smile).
posted by rtha at 2:23 PM on March 17, 2011


There's a sculptor in my area who does loads of full-size bronze statues of Native Americans who always look (a) really glum and lifeless and (b) like they're suffering from an advanced wasting disease.
I've always been really bothered by their philosophical implications.
posted by dunkadunc at 2:29 PM on March 17, 2011


On the East Coast of the US it is not very frequent that one gets to know any real Indians or has much interaction with Indian affairs as a matter of policy.

Totally true, yes. Almost all the native americans I know from the NYC area are actually native south americans like me (and we are all pretty smiley), so it's not even an accurate regional point of reference for any of our peers.
posted by elizardbits at 2:46 PM on March 17, 2011


Just breaking in to say there are many Indians on the US east coast.
posted by found missing at 2:48 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


The NPR piece mentioned in the article.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:49 PM on March 17, 2011


That was really wonderful to watch. Thank you.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:56 PM on March 17, 2011


Western NY is chock-full of Native Americans.
posted by tommasz at 3:03 PM on March 17, 2011


Thank you so much for posting this. It made me smile and cry at the same time. I feel such a connection to these faces. It wasn't until until I was in my thirties that I discovered that I was one eighth part of the people. I had always felt connected in my soul, and always wished that I didn't look so damn white. My great grandmother was a Shawnee healer, the thing that I am most proud of in the little that I know of my genealogy.
posted by Yer-Ol-Pal at 3:11 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


related: John Wayne's Teeth
posted by vrogy at 3:22 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


Isn't the association of Native Americans with solemness just an extension of the "noble savage" archetype?
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:24 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


that was lovely. thank you.

... one of my favorite smiling Indians
posted by jammy at 3:52 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


I heard the NPR piece on this last week and now I'm really happy to see the video!
posted by Kangaroo at 3:53 PM on March 17, 2011


An objectively lovely video, but I couldn't watch it the whole way though. It's getting harder and harder for me to stomach this kind of superficial scrabbling for respect for the remnants of hundreds increasingly nonexistent cultures. I'm not singling this out, but it falls right in line with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the "powwows" in pretending that there are anything approaching a significant number of anything approaching pure-blooded (North of Mexico) Indians left, ignoring the ongoing oppression, alcoholism, murder and rape rates, and lack of jobs on the reservations.

Seriously, sorry to be a downer about this, but I can't watch it without thinking that it's just like putting a bandaid on the papercut on a hanged man.
posted by cmoj at 3:56 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


superficial scrabbling for respect for the remnants of hundreds increasingly nonexistent cultures

You do realize these are people you are talking about?
posted by found missing at 4:01 PM on March 17, 2011 [4 favorites]


Just breaking in to say there are many Indians on the US east coast.

Yeah, I think perhaps you're expecting them all to look somehow distinct.

No no, I am very aware of this. I have lived in areas of the East Coast with denser Native American populations and a more prominent and vocal presence, and work with Native American performers and artists as part of my job, in fact, educating others on these same points. I am definitely aware that people of Native background can have a wide variety of features.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was unaware of the idea that Natives live in all regions and that it's not possible to identify all Native people based on appearance.

Still, it remains true that along much of the East Coast, it is much more possible than in some other regions to grow up without knowing any Native individuals, or any that identify as such, and to grow up assuming that Native people are entirely gone from the region, or live far away. Yes, there are many areas in which there are cultural institutions or tribal lands or nations where Native culture is much more prominent in local life - but many areas in which that's no longer the case, or isn't right now and hasn't been for some time.
posted by Miko at 4:01 PM on March 17, 2011


cmoj, I'm not sure where you're coming from, but you are approaching the idea of contemporary Native people with a set of assumptions already. I'm not sure we can define active cultures as "increasingly nonexistent," especially in a time of cultural revival and, in recent decades, a focus on language redsicovery and preservation. Also, I'm not sure that concerns about the blood quantum of Native people should have much place in the simple question of Native identity; the whole concept is problematic and complex, but I haven't had anyone challenge my Irishness today, and I'm not "pure blood" Irish though I certainly identify as Irish American. Why apply it only to some people and not to others?

Finally, there are problems and issues associated with some reservations, but fewer than 1/3 of Native people even live on reservations, and many both on and off live lives totally free of the social troubles you mention as reasons for you to be a "downer" about.

The thing is, there are serious issues in our past and present with regard to indigenous people, but at the same time, they live lives as people today, they celebrate, they make art and music, they go to work, they raise families, they participate in pop culture and the dominant culture as well as traditional culture, in short, they likely feel - just like you - that their lives and backgrounds are meaningful and that their sense of the past and their present daily experience are theirs to make of what they will, in their own day and time.

I think assuming that Native culture in the US is all just a hollow sham of the past, that someone on the outside can determine who is a "real" Indian, and that Native communities are all rife with problems is just as shallow a set of assumptions as assuming they are all the sombre "nobele savage" mentioned above.
posted by Miko at 4:14 PM on March 17, 2011 [8 favorites]


Don't make me pull out my smiling Nazis link.
posted by found missing


I'll do it for you.
posted by marxchivist at 4:14 PM on March 17, 2011


...pretending that there are anything approaching a significant number of anything approaching pure-blooded (North of Mexico) Indians left...

cmoj, I hear where you're coming from. There is no doubt that American Indians are screwed more than any other population within the US. But I have never known one, and I know more than a few, who thought that being "pure-blood" had anything to do with it.
posted by jammy at 4:27 PM on March 17, 2011


Online communication can be hard.

It is true.
posted by Miko at 4:29 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


The kid at 1:58 cracks me up.

It can seem very abstract

One of the most interesting questions a Canadian history prof ever put to my class: "General Canadian history textbooks feature aboriginal peoples in the early chapters, 'with the trees' as one of my students put it. Then they disappear. Then, maybe, they reappear in the 1970s, agitating for their rights. How should we as educators place them front and center throughout, not just as bookends?"

My answer was, Look at the Great Events (the rise of new economic engines, wars, the Great Depression, etc.) through how they affected indigenous peoples, and how did indigenous people's lives and roles affect those events in turn (or, why didn't their efforts have more effect than they did?). But then textbook publishers say they haven't got enough space for that.

It's damned interesting reading though. eg, Sarah Carter's Lost Harvests shows how Plains Indians in the late 1880s-90s did their damnedest to make a go of agriculture like their mainstream Canadian neighbours (who, not incidentally, thought they were too primitive and stupid to make a go of it) and likely would have achieved serious economic viability, had not passive and active prejudice and discrimination on the part of their alarmed mainstream neighbours and the Canadian government fucked them over. Or, serving loyally in various wars because, like many Othered Canadians, they figured it would show how they deserved equal rights with mainstream Canadians and to be treated with respect and dignity.

But to end on a more upbeat note, here are smiles from Sherman Alexie.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 4:54 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


I grew up in area with a significant number of Natives, totally outside of the reservation system. I know many who are truly "pure blooded," some who learned their Native language as their first language (yes, older people), and younger ones who learned it in school. But, even for the kids who don't know their ancestral languages, a large amount of cultural knowledge and traditions have been passed down intact. They have a modern, living culture separate from history books.

I'm not going to go into specific details to make a point, but it's extremely disappointing to see people who have limited experience but a lot of pre-conceived ideas make pronouncements about the state of and viability of these people who I've known my whole life.
posted by D.C. at 5:17 PM on March 17, 2011


Let me mention that I'm almost half indian of various tribes and semi-active in the culture and the community. So, yes, I realize they're people. I identify as one of them more so than other aspects of my heritage, anyway.

And of course there are plenty of Indians who aren't alcoholic, murdered, on the res, or in any way troubled. And yeah there are many who identify with and participate in what the culture has become, but if you're pretending that the modern version of that culture has very much to do with what it was one, two, or three hundred years ago, then you're making the oversight that chokes me up watching this kind of thing. The vast majority of tribes are totally extinct. The modern public powwow/flea market/costume contest consisting of an amalgam of the handful of major extant tribes many of these clips appear to be from would have been heinous sacrilege to many of our great grandparents. I know there are private ceremonies that are very serious, old, and important because I've been to some of them, but the powwows I work at frequently that play the Star Spangled Banner and have non-native dance time are not that.

You're all right, though, that there has been a resurgence in interest in the languages, but shit. The genocide worked. It has been total, and it hurts me. This sort of twee solution to a problem that doesn't exist and wouldn't matter if it did makes me think about all of that.

I'm sorry my thought was unclear and apparently read offensively, but shit. It's an offensive thing. It's all gone and sometimes I feel like everyone is pretending it's all gonna be okay when there's nothing to be okay. I probably shouldn't have mentioned "pure-blood," though. It's a loaded way of saying it, but I meant to point out that Indians as ethnicities are all but diluted. I know the tribes don't really care about percentages so much as being active in the community, but you might notice that the question of your percentages and ancestry still comes up at a powwow.
posted by cmoj at 7:09 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


And I apologize again that this is a total departure from the actual video. It's just nice people smiling. Nothing could be wrong with that.
posted by cmoj at 7:11 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


if you're pretending that the modern version of that culture has very much to do with what it was one, two, or three hundred years ago, then you're making the oversight that chokes me up watching this kind of thing.

I don't think anybody is "pretending" anything. Does contemporary dominant, white culture have much to do with what it was one, two, or three hundred years ago? God, I hope not. Peoples change.

The modern public powwow/flea market/costume contest consisting of an amalgam of the handful of major extant tribes many of these clips appear to be from would have been heinous sacrilege to many of our great grandparents

I used to feel, in a way, as you do -- "Why do Eastern groups like the Narragansett dress and dance like Plains people? Makes no sense!" But since that time I've learned a lot more about what the powwow represents and how it came to be, and I no longer fault contemporary Narragansetts, or whomever, for wanting to take part in what is a rich and interesting milieu of its own, with its own resonances and meanings. It may not be the traditional observance of our great grandparents, but whatever it is, they created it -- at least in large part.

As you indicate, the history of the powwow is fascinating, but one thing that can't be said is that it has been a total negative for Native culture in the last century. Early powwow culture functioned as a banner to run under - yes, it created a sort of pan-Indian identity that worked counter to the understanding that Natives have enormous cultural diversity, but the powwow did create the opportunity for Native people to meet in conference, ironically even creating a place for more traditional and serious, less performance- and other-oriented, activities, conversations, and ceremonies to take place. In the 1890s, when it was illegal in many places for Native meetings of any size to occur, when Native dancing was illegal and when Native religions were persecuted, the powwow created a cover with a public face, behind which legitimate observances could happen, and within which new Native connections and a common purpose based on response to oppression began to emerge.

Also, that pan-Indian identity became vitally important to what cultural survivals did and do take place. Without a pan-Indian identity facilitated by powwow, would an AIM have been possible? Would there be an ability to assess, at the macro level, the acts of colonialism and oppression that decimated one people after the next? Would there be a structure for study and communication about the systemic patterns visible in things like the population of these continents in earliest times, contemporary literature and art and music of North and South American indigenous peoples, etc?

I know there are private ceremonies that are very serious, old, and important because I've been to some of them, but the powwows I work at frequently that play the Star Spangled Banner and have non-native dance time are not that.

Maybe not, but there are spinoffs, and the spinoffs can take on equal importance if that's the experience you've grown up with. As far as pledges of Allegiance and Star Spangled Banners, individually we may all take different stances on that, but I'm not sure they don't belong. Look at all the Native veterans there are of US wars, all the Native people who are US voters and politicians and representatives of communities. Unless they are in a sovereign nation, they are Americans too, and I don't see why the rituals of Americanism wouldn't be something some people might want to take part in. There are other populations who had, in past generations, been stripped of their humanity by American policy, but who still choose to serve and observe American national traditions. If they choose to do so, it's not my place, I don't think, to tell them they're wrong about that. I might choose to do differently in their shoes, but their choices are fair and legitimate.

I think I agree with what I think is your basic point - that there are things to grieve deeply over in Native history. About that there can be no doubt. The invasion and occupation of this continent by Europeans was a reprehensible and drawn-out atrocity which destroyed an untold amount of cultural fabric which can never be regained or even reimagined. But at the same time, world change was afoot, and change is constant. Even pre-contact here and in Europe and the Mediterranean and elsewhere as well, there was change and shifting, and cultures changed or died out while new cultures superseded them. What we think of as the uber-traditional ways may not have been terribly old, in some cases -- Plains people didn't have horses to ride or glass beads to decorate hides with before contact. The Wampanoag and Abenaki didn't have metal for swordfish spears or copper talismans. I don't mean to minimize any experience or suggest that genocide was inevitable - certainly it was not, there were choice points along the way - but I do think that despite the wounds of history, people who are alive today have a serious inheritance to deal with, but they are no less alive, no less real, no less Native, and no less capable of moments of human joy than anyone who came before. I think that this video is one more little thing that helps break down myths and create the human connections that will be so essential to discovering what reparations can be made, and simply humbly acknowledging that some never can be made, and working together to find goodwill to move forward. We all need to believe fully in the complete humanity of one another to get there, and whether that means meeting in a powwow dance or watching one another smile or marching and demonstrating, we need to keep working at it. History isn't over, and it doesn't end with us. We are as real as those who have gone before, and being alive today, we have the power in our hands to influence the world.
posted by Miko at 8:08 PM on March 17, 2011 [6 favorites]


Beautiful Miko.
posted by Duug at 1:25 AM on March 18, 2011


One of the most interesting questions a Canadian history prof ever put to my class: "General Canadian history textbooks feature aboriginal peoples in the early chapters, 'with the trees' as one of my students put it. Then they disappear. Then, maybe, they reappear in the 1970s, agitating for their rights. How should we as educators place them front and center throughout, not just as bookends?"

This was certainly my experience, growing up in the Boston area. There were Indians and Pilgrims, and there was King Philip's War, and then...no more Indians in New England, apparently. (Except on occasional historic markers at rest stops or by the side of the road; one I remember in particular is along Rte 2 somewhere in Western MA, and it says basically Here is where Captain White Guy snuck up on a village of Indians and killed them all.)

Then I got to college in New Hampshire, where there was an active Native student group, and suddenly I was getting to know kids from local tribes as well as Western ones. Some had grown up on reservations, many hadn't. We were on the powwow circuit, and okay the ceremonies and dances weren't exactly as they had been 300 years earlier, but they were still here. I'm part Hawaiian and we don't farm taro and fish on the reefs the way we did precontact, but our culture is still alive and changing and vibrant. I witnessed my fellow students make political, social, and cultural connections with people from far-flung tribes in ways that would have been much more difficult if not impossible without the powwows, and there's a huge value to that.

And we got fry bread. Where the hell else were we supposed to get our fry bread?!
posted by rtha at 6:19 AM on March 18, 2011 [1 favorite]


cmoj -- I'm trying to think of a way of introducing this that's not going to sound totally out of left-ass field, but I can't, so I'm just gonna go with this: you've actually reminded me of the relationship I used to have with corned beef.

Just go with me a second.

I identify as Irish-American, and I have been doing so since I was nine. My family did mention once or twice that we had some Irish ancestry, but for some reason when I was about nine I just got all-out obsessed about it. I started reading everything I could get my hands on about Ireland, I studied maps, I made plans to visit "someday," I picked up an Irish pen pal when I was twelve (and she's become one of my best friends), and I took enough college courses in NYU's Irish studies program that I could have unoffficially declared it as a minor without even trying. I even tried teaching myself some Gaelic through the use of a Berlitz tape and some conversations with my friend (she grew up with relatives in the Gaeltacht and it's actually her first language; she didn't start learning English until she was three).

And I studied up on the food. And once I did, I got really zealously and annoyingly militant about the "traditional" corned-beef-and-cabbage-on-St.-Patrick's-Day thing. Firstly, because genuine Irish cooking is way better anyway (seriously - lamb in anything is divine, there's a stew of bacon, sausage, and potato that is the second best hangover food on earth -- and the first best hangover food is an Irish breakfast), and secondly, because corned beef and cabbage is not Irish in the first place. I started getting really sneer-y about the idea of corned beef and cabbage (my mother still will gigglingly apologize if she mentions she visited our family friends the Murphys on St. Patrick's Day and had some).

But what some people finally pointed out to me was: it may not be Irish. But it is Irish-American. The history and culture of the people who emigrated from Ireland to the United States in the 19th Century, and their descendants, is inescapably different from the history and culture of the people who stayed in Ireland -- but also, those people's history is kind of inspiring in its own right. The whole reason that corned beef got to be associated with the holiday was that the Irish immigrants who wanted to celebrate St. Patrick's Day the way they ususally did -- with a big cut of meat -- could only afford corned beef in the first place. So that's what they went with. And their kids grew up eating that, and passed it on to their kids, and...but it's not the story of "food eaten by fakey people pretending to be Irish and not knowing any better," it's the story of "food eaten by people who were in a shit situation and determined to thrive despite it".

I'm still not a big corned beef fan (I just plain didn't care for it anyway), but I'm no longer all zealous about "shuuuuuun the corned beef!" It is a symbol of a group that has its own culture -- one that may be different from what it used to be, but still is pretty powerful in its own right.

Which is where I saw the similarities to this case. Yes, the peoples here in North America lost a lot. But -- the people who lived and are living and are thriving despite that have a culture that, while it is different, is no less rich and no less distinct and no less something to be proud of. My family doesn't speak Gaelic -- the Irish who came to Massachusetts during the Famine probably had it ironed out of them well before they came over -- nor do many do step dancing or read Yeats. But if you take a look at what they've been doing instead, it's pretty damn cool.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:17 AM on March 18, 2011 [3 favorites]


Miko and EmpressCallipygos, you're right, of course. I don't mean that powwows (or more especially these discussions) shouldn't happen, or that anyone is wrong for standing for the pledge of allegiance*. It all adds up to a huge irony for me, though, that gets me thinking about things far more depressing than the frybread and people having fun and dancing that got me thinking in the first place.

Now I want some frybread.

*Actually, this whole thing is a point of interest for me. On one hand my own political leanings make the whole pledge ceremony, etc. distasteful to me in their own right, which only adds to how I feel about it at powwows. On the other hand, in a way, assimilating militarily is about the most traditional thing Navajo (one of the predominant tribes where I am) can do. I mean, right up until White men showed up the Navajo were a constantly moving, shifting, splitting, warring group that did nothing but absorb and assimilate for hundreds of years.
posted by cmoj at 12:07 PM on March 18, 2011


Culture is complicated...

Frybread for all!
posted by Miko at 12:15 PM on March 18, 2011 [3 favorites]


Oh, that's it, now I'm making fry bread for dinner (Blackfeet style with the powdered milk, of course). Thanks for the smiles that remind me of home Miko.
posted by nenequesadilla at 4:47 PM on March 20, 2011


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