My Great-Aunt Nancy Bighorse

I posted this today on Facebook and Twitter:





And it's true. It is scary. But I am a Kinyaa'aanii and this is what we do. Kinyaa'aanii is my Navajo clan and the name means Towering House People. It is said by some to be the original clan of our people. We were created from the heart of Changing Woman (Asdzáá nádleehé) and are often called the "leadership clan." Many a time my shimá sání (my maternal grandmother from whom I get my clan) would boldly lead the charge in her community--demanding safe drinking water and schools. Her voice was strong and forthright in chapter house meetings. Coming from a matrilineal culture where women owned the land and animals (these things passed down matrilineally through the clan) there was no sense of "knowing her place" as an inferior sex. Certainly, there was a collaborative spirit to the work that needed to be done (and stories like the one about the separation of men and women emphasize how important it is that we work together) but this did not mean Diné women were nothing less than direct in how they addressed the needs of their community and fearless about speaking out. We are a people who do not live cheek by jowl with one another and so our people, basically a ranching people, were not as constrained towards each other as those who lived in village situations. There is an independence in the land and a self-confidence that comes from being the one who raises the sheep and owns them, too.  I've been told that to get a divorce all a woman had to do was put her husband's saddle outside the hogan door. He didn't own the horse--she did. He didn't own the children, they were of her clan. He did own his jewelry and his saddle, though.

Take some time and view these Youtube videos (Bitter Water Clip 3, Bitter Water Clip 4--love this one and Bitter Water Clip 7) of traditional Navajo women who resisted Relocation from their herds and their way of life. You will see women who are far more outspoken and self-possessed (and yes, proud) than perhaps white women of their generation were. These are the women who made me who I am: Ákót'éego diné asdzáán nishłį́.

I find myself reading poetry for inspiration in difficult times. I  just re-read Joy Harjo's (Muscogee Creek) about the murdered American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Aquash (Mi'kmaq). Recently, I have been thoroughly enjoying reading new Oregon Poet Laureate Elizabeth Woody (Navajo-Warm Springs-Wasco-Yakama).

Anna Mae with her daughters

I've interviewed Anna Mae Aquash's daughter, Denise Pictou Maloney and her loss of her mother is often on my mind. Her tragic death hurts my soul, I cannot forget her mother. She stood for the people and the ideals of what the movement was supposed to mean and she was killed for it. So many of our young Native people have lost their parents to pain...and to the struggle. Both to the cruelty of the colonial system we find ourselves in and to the self-hatred it has planted within ourselves. We need healing as a people and it is with that in mind I read Joy Harjo's poem about Anna Mae from In Mad Love and War.

For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live)

By Joy Harjo

Beneath a sky blurred with mist and wind,
heads of crocuses erupt from the stiff earth
after dying for a season,
as I have watched my own dark head
appear each morning after entering
the next world to come back to this one,
amazed.
It is the way in the natural world to understand the place
the ghost dancers named
after the heart breaking destruction.
Anna Mae,
everything and nothing changes.
You are the shimmering young woman
who found her voice,
when you were warned to be silent, or have your body cut away
from you like an elegant weed.
You are the one whose spirit is present in the dappled stars.
(They prance and lope like colored horses who stay with us
through the streets of these steely cities. And I have seen them
nuzzling the frozen bodies of tattered drunks
on the corner.)
This morning when the last star is dimming
and the busses grind toward
the middle of the city, I know it is ten years since they buried you
the second time in Lakota, a language that could
free you.
I heard about it in Oklahoma, or New Mexico,
how the wind howled and pulled everything down
in righteous anger.
(It was the women who told me) and we understood wordlessly
the ripe meaning of your murder.
As I understand ten years later after the slow changing
of the seasons
that we have just begun to touch
the dazzling whirlwind of our anger,
we have just begun to perceive the amazed world the ghost dancers
entered
crazily, beautifully.


And Elizabeth Woody from Luminaries of the Humble because we need to shine a light when it is needed and as her the richness of her descriptions evoke even the humble can be beautiful when revealed:

Illumination

By Elizabeth Woody

The irresistible and benevolent light
brushes through the angel-wing begonias,
the clippings of ruddy ears for the living room.
Intimate motes, debris of grounded, forlorn walks,
speckle through the vitreous quality of blush.
As fluid lulls turn like trout backs, azure-tipped fins
oscillate in the shallows, the clear floating
is dizziness.

Tender events are meeting halves and wholes of affinity,
the recurrence of whimsy and parallel streams
flush away the blockage of malaise.
Incessant gratitude, pliable kindness smolders
in the husk of these sweet accumulations:
abalone shells, the thoughtful carvings from friends,
the stone of another’s pocket, the photo of mystified
moon over water, the smiles of worn chairs.

Austere hopes find pleasure in lately cherished flowers.
The blooms are articulate deluge, hues of delicacy.
Petals parted dim renderings, the viable imprint
of the blood-hot beam of light with reformed courage.
Beveling the finish to suppression, the blade of choice
brings the flourish of dividing while adequately doubling
worth by two. Multiplying. The luminescent burning of space.
The heat is a domicile as abandoned as red roses budding
their ascension from stem.

The sun has its own drum contenting itself with the rose
heart it takes into continual rumbling. The connection
of surface and hand. The great head of dark clouds finds
its own place of unraveled repercussions and disruption,
elsewhere, over the tall, staunch mountains of indemnity.

Here is my Patreon account to support a new Native journalism for Indian Country:


Jacqueline Keeler is creating A new Native American journalism | Patreon

On Facebook I shared this photo of my dad with the following caption:



Politics, the way it's constructed, it attracts a certain type and that's across the board--all creeds, all cultures. To counteract this we should be more actively recruiting the sort of person who would not push themselves to the forefront. This was the kind that in our traditional Dakota/Lakota societies that would be chosen.

My father was once chosen this way. I remember at an election for the White Buffalo Council in Denver, my dad stood in the back of the room. His was his usual silent, introspective self, leaning against the wall, surveying the crowd deep in his own thoughts. And I suppose for our Indian people still waters run deep because the next thing we knew my dad had been elected as Vice Chair by the entire crown before us without even running.

As a child, this stayed with me. My father was in character so different than the candidate who offers himself up and glad-hands his way to power.

Indeed, politics attracts the entitled. Research shows less qualified male candidates are more likely to put themselves forward to run than more qualified female candidates. The whole process of becoming a candidate is so tied to the ego of the individual that the system elevates those that feel particularly entitled to power.

As happens on Facebook, a relative, my grandmother's cousin Sam Deloria gave me some feedback on my perhaps too romantic rendering of our Dakota culture. I thought the exchange is worth sharing:

Sam Deloria: In small social units it is easier to preserve this approach, but pretty hard in larger societies, where we don't really know the people. and where the media seem to be taking sides. 

Jacqueline Keeler: I think that's what I'm trying to figure out--a scalable approximation. 

Sam Deloria: A lot of the things I read seem to be to miss the importance of what can be done in smaller societies that can't be done in larger ones. Our constant bragging about ourselves overlook that we probably couldn't sustain those systems if we had larger, massive social units.

Jacqueline Keeler: I wonder sometimes if Cahokia was a cautionary tale. 

Sam Deloria: I suppose there is real scholarship on this issue that I am ignorant about. 

Jacqueline Keeler: That was partly said in jest. But I do think our traditional social order can provide insights that we cannot perceive otherwise. These are starting points for action not simply an end road to romanticism.

Chase Iron Eyes, political candidate

 It was reported this week that North Dakota candidate for U.S. Congress Chase Iron Eyes has a felony conviction (click her to read the conviction UNITED STATES v. IRON EYES) that he had not discussed publicly before announcing his candidacy.

Yesterday, he addressed the conviction in his acceptance speech for the Democratic-NPL Party’s endorsement for U.S. House claiming he had turned his life around saying, “I became a family man and I realized that the powers of creation were giving me a second chance.”

However, in December a colleague wrote a post alleging an affair with Iron Eyes on the Last Real Indians Tumblr account that was later deactivated. A compromising photograph was also shared. The blog and the photo have been reblogged many times on Tumblr and are still searchable as of today.

Iron Eyes has asserted over social media that his colleague was simply infatuated and is a scorned woman. I am waiting for the Democratic-NPL Party to comment on these allegations.

I have also received allegations of fundraising through IndieGogo that the community felt never reached them. A "Heating the Rez” fundraiser raised over $60,000 but elders claim they never received the promised stoves. Twenty stoves were reportedly installed, but many in the community still feel it is too few considering the amount raised. They have also complained that Iron Eyes told them to "F-off" when asked for a financial accounting and that he claimed he was not required to give them an accounting because the fundraising was done through IndieGogo.

I starting investigating the "Heating the Rez" financials in June and am waiting for the latest IRS filings by Mr. Iron Eyes' nonprofit fiscal sponsors. I will report more at that time.

UPDATE: 04/06/16

I spoke yesterday to a blogger named Rob Port who called me after he had interviewed Chase Iron Eyes about the LRI Tumblr post. Chase had brought my name up in the interview claiming I was the one who had told Port about the Tumblr. Port had no idea who I was. He said his email was full of messages from folks relaying this scandal to him. I had emailed Port about an article he had done about "Heating the Rez" to see if he had been able to get ahold of any financial information about the project. He found my email and contacted me.

Port told me that the candidate had denied ever having an affair with his colleague. I then forwarded him a screen capture of a Facebook post Iron Eyes had done in response to the Tumblr. This is from the Facebook account Chase Iron Eyes deleted before announcing his candidacy. Chase is in the Native American world a social media celebrity so his posts are followed and liked and, obviously, preserved. In the post he admits to the affair--albeit as a cyber one. But this is in direct contradiction to what he told Port. Iron Eyes had mistakenly thought that since he deleted his Facebook account he could change the narrative and not be caught doing so. Port called me back and said Chase confirmed this was his Facebook account and he admitted to the online affair.

On Monday night, I spoke to someone very close to Chase Iron Eye's colleague who also confirmed the affair. This individual said that the colleague's husband had met Chase when he came to their reservation looking for a job. The husband tried to get Iron Eyes a job as the tribal attorney but the candidate was denied the position because of his felony. They claim "Last Real Indians" was his colleague's idea and she invited Chase to help her with starting the website after his job disappointment. Given that he'd gone to their reservation and worked closely with the husband and then with the wife for years, it is quite a feat he managed to never meet this colleague in person. In 2011, the husband's father died of cancer. Then, the husband also discovered he had cancer. It was shortly after this her husband claims he found texts from Iron Eyes to his wife and divorce followed.