#native scholars

Raising awareness is a cousin theory of change to documenting change—both often rely on circulating narratives and tropes of the mutilated body, the broken spirit, the flooded neighborhood. Images of destruction compete for dollars on Facebook, to wrench the most sympathy for donations, for charity, for compassion, for hashtag solidarity, for newsworthiness, for value, for mattering. There is no relationship between the evocativeness of the photograph and the amount of the donation that goes to those in need. There is no relationship between the story of loss and the supplies that come.

So much of what we do to compel change relies on raising awareness. But what if we—as communities, as collectives—were to disbelieve awareness as change? What if we, as Indigenous peoples, as people of colour, as disenfranchised peoples, believed that our own awareness, our own knowing, is enough to make change? What if we did not wait for others to also know but are inspired by our own knowing? What if we hold true that we are the ones who need to know, and not others? What if we believe that we are the ones who can make change, and that others are not more powerful than us to effect change? These are radical questions that throb at the heart of what gets taken for granted as the work of social justice, of organizing, of public scholarship. [...]

In this neoliberal, settler colonial moment, it can be so difficult to imagine other theories of change. It requires a sort of mental yoga to even remember other theories of change. In our book, Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change, Wayne Yang and I created a list of other popular theories of change and I can never remember what was on the list. I have to look at the list to remember, because raising awareness and documenting damage figure so prominently in my imagination.”

As a part of the Catawba Indian Nation, DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren was taught early on the value of cultural preservation. “I came into a community that deeply felt the need for language revitalization,” he tells indige•zine.

In 1989, the Nation surveyed tribal members and found that the they almost unanimously voiced language as a top priorities for their community. Though the last fluent Catawba speaker walked on in the early 1960s, his tribe has worked hard to keep the tongue alive. “I grew up learning some basic Catawba greetings, blessings, thank-yous, and numbers,” Roo explains. Still, he wished for more opportunities to practice his language.

Along with support from Running Strong for American Indian Youth’s Dreamstarter grant, Roo has embarked on a continuation of the revitalization effort championed by many before him. He launched the Catawba Language Project, which utilizes classes, an online app, and even memes to engage and educate.

As a leader in his community, Roo spends most of his time teaching Catawba, creating learning materials, and training educators with the project’s curriculum. If that wasn’t badass enough, Roo—who identifies as Two Spirit—is also an artist. He’s currently performing “Indigenous Corps of Discovery,” a piece where he discusses the unfiltered relationship between the U.S. and indigenous peoples. He also stages performance-lectures called “Histories” where he shares personal and community narratives.

Despite his busy schedule, indige•zine got the chance to catch-up with Roo. Read our chat below—he’s definitely one to watch.

You received the 2017 Dreamstarter grant for your work with the Catawba Language Project. What does the project look like and what are the goals?

The Catawba Language Project was started as part of my Dreamstarter project and the goal is to bolster and progress existing language revitalization efforts. This includes classes, creation of an online app so that Catawbas around the globe can learn their language, and the creation of material culture like memes, t-shirts, posters, toys, etc. I recognize that this is the work of many lifetimes, but I’m happy to play my part so that more Catawbas and our future generations will be in a good place to begin their own language revitalization work.

In short, what was the process of creating the program and securing funding for it? Were there projects you were looking towards for inspiration, or people along the way who influenced it?

The project was a response to both my community’s wishes of language revitalization, as well as the challenge put forth by Dreamstarter: “What is your dream for your community?” The application process was relatively easy. Many grants ask you for lots of seemingly superfluous information, but Running Strong’s application was concise and really got to the heart of why this Dream is necessary and important for the community.

Of course, since this is a multi-generational project, we are keenly aware of the need for more funding sources in the near future. Until the United States upholds its obligation to indigenous peoples by adequately funding language revitalization, we are hoping that the work done during this year of Dreamstarter will put us in a good place to acquire more funding. However, even without funding we will find a way to keep doing this work.

I am deeply inspired by the language revitalization efforts of other communities. In my class of Dreamstarters alone, there are several incredible young people doing innovative language work. The way that communities are integrating language revitalization into gardens, grocery stores, meetings, and more—that’s how we’re going to revitalize our languages. I’m particularly interested in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation project, which faced a similar linguistic situation to ours and have been able to develop speakers!

Your work is such an amazing example of technology and tradition working together for future generations. Do you see other positive things happening in Indian Country with technology and culture colliding?

Oh, absolutely! There are Native coders who are teaching young people how to program. There are visionary indigenous artists who are integrating their experiences into cutting edge media and technology. Just this week, my mentor Amelia Winger-Bearskin was at Sundance to talk about New Media!

There are formidable intellectuals who are taking on important theoretical and practical questions around emerging technologies, such as Kim Tallbear’s work on the impacts of the DNA testing industry on tribes and Marisa Duarte’s work on sovereignty as it relates to internet technology. This theoretical work is so important because the trait that has been able to steer us through over 500 years of colonization is our ability to adapt to the ever-changing present using our traditions and stories (our “theories”) to make sense of what is happening and find paths forward.

However, there are still huge barriers to access. Many Native folks still can’t access the internet and computers if they need to. Those that can physically access them might not possess the knowledge to make use of them. Digital literacy particularly effects our elders and is symptomatic of a society that doesn’t value the ongoing education of adults. Education for our youth often completely leaves out coding and computer science from curricula, which can no longer be accepted.

Once our people do enter technology fields, they often face workplace discriminations, including off-hand racist comments and sexual harassment, particularly for women and Two Spirit folks. Our knowledge and access to technologies is crucial, so we need to take these barriers very seriously.

Why is language revitalization so important for our communities?

In a very practical sense, our languages are knowledge. They are knowledge about animals and plants and how to navigate the world we find ourselves in. They contain ideas about gender, property, sharing, relationships, and responsibility that directly challenge some terrible morals that many of us growing up in the U.S. were raised with.

In another sense, I believe we have a duty to our past and future relations to revitalize our languages. Our ancestors recognized the importance of our languages and worked to preserve them, so we also have a duty to honor that commitment and ensure that our future generations can also honor that duty.

What advice do you have for young indigenous scholars trying to build infrastructures for their communities? It can seem like a very daunting thing to take on.

First thing is to meet with community members and locate mentors/elders/guides to help you answer questions about your project. Many times in my project, I’ve been stuck on a question of implementation and just discussing it with community members has made the answer clear.

Second is to ensure that the community has a way to access and oversee the project. Communities should be engaged in seeing the outcomes of such a project, as well as feel that they have some way to hold the project accountable.

Thirdly, think creatively about solutions. We often talk about the downsides of reservation and tribal community life (e.g. health statistics), but we also have the unique opportunity to find solutions very specific to our situations.

In a damage-centered framework, pain and loss are documented in order to obtain particular political or material gains. [...] This theory of change, testifying to damage so that persecutors will be forced to be accountable, is extremely popular in social science research—so popular that it serves as a default theory of change, so ubiquitous that folks might think that it is entirely what social science is about. In educational research this is especially true: it is not difficult to recall scores of studies that portray schools and communities primarily as broken, emptied, or flattened. It’s also prevalent in community organizing and youth organizing where a group illustrates, for example, the harms caused by environmental racism and systematic isolation and neglect. [...]

Native communities, poor communities, communities of color, and disenfranchised communities tolerate this kind of data gathering because there is an implicit and sometimes explicit assurance that stories of damage pay off in material, sovereign, and political wins. Many communities engage, allow, and participate in damage-centered research and in the construction of damage narratives as a strategy for correcting oppression. However, I worry that the theory of change itself may be unreliable and ineffective. It is a powerful idea to think of us all as litigators, putting the world on trial, but does it actually work? Do the material and political wins come through? And most importantly, are the wins worth the long-term costs of thinking of ourselves as damaged?

[...] Contemporary damage-centered narratives (of abuse, addiction, poverty, illness) in the United States can be directly tied to 400-plus years of occupation of Native lands, genocide, and colonization. Like [my friend and Indigenous scholar] Sandy, I can’t help but hear these stories within the context of this history, but I suspect that for many people, Native and non-Native, this context has been made invisible and naturalized. As in African American communities that have been coarsely expected to have ‘gotten over slavery by now,’ Native American and First Alaskan communities are expected to have gotten over the past, which is reduced to the unfortunate birth pangs of a new nation, thus dismissing the very real and ongoing colonization of these communities to the corners of our imagination (Tuck & Fine, 2007).

Although, as I have noted, damage-centered research involves social and historical contexts at the outset, the significance of these contexts is regularly submerged. Without the context of racism and colonization, all we’re left with is the damage, and this makes our stories vulnerable to pathologizing analyses (Kelley, 1997). Our evidence of ongoing colonization by research—absent a context in which we acknowledge that colonization—is relegated to our own bodies, our own families, our own social networks, our own leadership. After the research team leaves, after the town meeting, after the news cameras have gone away, all we are left with is the damage.”