Independent project
Jonathan Sanchez
Puzzle Pieces (An
investigation of Yavapai history the lessons one tribe can teach us
about the importance of place, identity, cultural and political
resistance, and above all survival.)
Its a brisk day I enter a tiny
cafeteria on the edge of a bingo hall. An elderly chain smoking woman
drags an oxygen tank as she enters the hall pondering the illuminated
menu in front of her like a deer in headlights. I order green chili
and fry bread and receive it placed in a to go box. A subtle thing
happens between receiving the only Native food on the menu and
placing the order. I am sized up judged and it is assumed I must work
at the resort or bingo hall. Everyone around orders Anglo food Kosher
dogs, club sandwiches, and hamburgers. If I'm an Indian employee, am
I not supposed to eat in the hall with everyone I would go to break a
area. Everyone gets their meager portions on bright orange trays but
certainly normal picnic style plates. I am given neither. Am I being
asked to leave? Is it the Native food that causes all of this? It may
seem silly but it is a good example of the way so many little
cultural moments are exchanged on all reservations. I am given a
righteous heaping portion of the finest green chili and hubcap size
fry I have ever encountered so this isn't racial mistreatment this is
a subtle favor. So I am mestizo or somewhere back there I am Indian.
I'll take it prejudice or not as I wipe the sweat from my forehead
and devour the molten material.
Racial ambiguity can be troubling to
some but it is something I have learned to embrace. While in Colombia
at the slave port of Cartegena and old man there once explained his Caribbean world view. „When I give from heart am kind I am African,
when I am clever I am Indian, and when I am greedy or bad I am
Spanish.“ This sort of accepting of the odd fact that most
Africans, Asians and Native Americans live on their Native soil and
the peculiar European has found the need to travel to other lands and
live there too is telling (Mann, xxiv). The old man has also made peace
with the amalgamation that many of us are. By my families account I
am Roma, Jewish, Spanish and Native American. According to a couple
of DNA tests I can only verify one of these claims. So how does one
form an identity based on percentages, family folk tales, and half
truths? Yes north African folks are present in Spain but they aren't
really European so am I truly Spanish (in the Latin sense stemming
from Roman origins) no. But neither are the Basque or Galetian folks
that live on the land mass named Spain. On both sides of the family
there is evidence that I am in fact Native American but it didn't
show up in the DNA (in truth there was a region marked unknown a
deeper clade test might show Indian genes, then again maybe not).
I too have been addressed as a black
person often, culturally share plenty with African Americans. I will
play music and have someone after give me a soul hand shake and a
knowing that was a good show my brother address. I then pass into the
nether world of the African diaspora of all kinds of shades of black,
brown and high yellow.
Now back to the reservation they were
not wrong to assume I am Indian because supposedly I am. And what of
the fact that I have sought out black history African culture, Native
American history and archaeology for my whole life as if somewhere
inside of me I always knew the truth of these things.
On a surface level purely my father
looks a bit like James Earl Jones. We bare a Hispanic family name but
as is the case of many Caribbean folks we show some Africa in our
features.People the world over despise the implication that they are
of mixed origins as my grandfather was once classified on a census
record as mulatto, literally a mule or non-viable offspring. I have
been called this often either jokingly or with a mean spirit (while
living Europe I was called much worse).
Now here is where it gets really
sticky, my father would never settle for being called black
considered black or in anyway identify with African American culture.
A friend of mine could be my fathers lost twin, and he teaches
African folk tales at ASU. Here you have two folks that to all the
world could be twins. Yet one raised in an African American community
identifies with that culture. The other the son of Puerto Rican
immigrants strives to get out of Brooklyn and to be as white as
possible. Ashamed of relatives that speak with a Spanish accent,
enamored with Hollywood movies and the Beatles, he grows up creating
his own unique identity. In the process mulatto is never again seen
in a census record, and the subsequent children he produces with a
much whiter appearing woman are even further away from their African
origins.
All of this is very personal and
brought up in the wrong way if at all could be troubling at best
fightin' words at worst. Looking into other peoples cultures is even
more dangerous, which finally brings us to the Yavapai.
A Brief History of the Yavapai
The Pai people
are a group that includes the Hualapai, Havasupai, and Yavapai. The
estimates are that the Pai people once inhabitated some ten million
acres (Heard Museum). The Yavapai once mistaken for Apache were
deemed hostile and warlike and subsequently hunted and killed. They
do share much linguistically with Apaches and are of the Athabascan
language family (Basso, xiv).
In 1857 when gold
was discovered in Arizona the Yavapai were suddenly in the way of
gold fever. Eventually they would be removed from their lands forced
to endure long marches laden with rape, murder and starvation (River
of Time Museum).
Various nearly eradicated groups were ingested by larger groups while they lived in
exile for twenty-five years and again when returned to their
ancestral homes in 1900. Placed on three separate reservations by
executive order they found themselves on hundreds of acres and
numbering in the hundreds and for rest of time known as the Fort
McDowell Indians.
1934 saw the
establishment of a self-governing tribal system for each of the three
groups under the Indian Reorganization Act, which most importantly
preserved a few rights including legal claim to water (Murphy, 12).
In the 1970's the
Phoenix area became one of the fastest growing in the nation a new
type of gold was being mined, sunlight. Promising year round warm
weather and cheap land developers were on the march, all of their
efforts dependent upon water (River of Time Museum).
In the 1980's
about 600 hundred Fort McDowell Indians lived at the long abandoned
fort and surrounding land (Weber, 6).
A spirit of
activism existed within the tribe having produced the first male
Native American doctor, having participated in code activities in the
second world war, returning soldiers pushed to gain the right to
vote for Arizona tribes, they had fought legal battles in the past
(Heard Museum). As the specter of the Orme dam project materialized in
the early 80's put forward to provide water and power for bustling
Phoenix and countless prefab communities surrounding, the Yavapai
once again marched to Washington (Weber, 6).
Hiawatha Hood
returned from Chicago to spend the rest of his days on his ancestral
land only to hear that it would soon be flooded and the few remaining
on it would be paid some to relocate. Remembering past Yavapai legal
fights he rallied the elders and took the case to Washington. Local
newspapers championed the small tribe and its struggle presenting
their perspective and keeping the story alive for several years
(Weber, 6). Despite the Bush administrations coming down on the side
of the dam developers the dam was stopped making Hiawatha an elderly
hero.
The victory has
allowed the Ft. Mcdowell Yavapai to remain in the area first of all,
develop businesses the above mentioned bingo hall, but also
construction companies, a resort and golf course and other small
businesses. Along the way they host several festivals a rodeo (to
commemorate the dam victory) and other cultural events. The population
of the tribe has grown steadily and now is mostly young people
(Yavapai Nation Website).
Puzzle Pieces (Joining the Puzzle
Pieces of Culture History and Identity)
The project I
have begun with the Gangplank community center and the Yavapai Youth
Council entitled Puzzle Pieces will be a small exhibit, with talk,
blog, press, and illustrations that provide the broad outline and
intent of the exhibit and project. A short video summing up the
project with slide images of the making of the events, the
participants and their work. Several text panels with illustrations
of museum quality along with illustrations also mounted by museum
standards, will intiate locals into the rich history of the Yavapai.
Working with Yavapai youth and the Youth Council several students
will become involved and add their voices, ideas, and images to the
project. As more students present their work and add it profiles will
be created on a blog, where their ideas and images will be shared.
Ideally a sort of yin and yang approach will be achieved the museum
style items will be balanced by the current additions, as if to say
here is the past and now lets journey into the present and future.
The most exciting
thing about it is that I have no idea what they will bring to the
project maybe they will want to take it in an entirely different
direction which I am open to. Further, I know the history from the
Heard Museum and newspaper articles but how do these figures and
events resonate in the youth of the tribe?
I recently wrote
a song entitled Puzzle Pieces, which addresses the idea that we kind
of are trying to fit in a place, fit in our family, fit within our
society and now as we become increasingly global citizens, in the
larger global village. Some times you are searching for the pieces
other times they fall in place. Looking at one society that has
endured near genocide, still faces misunderstanding, bigotry, and
health problems, I hope we can all learn something about ourselves. I
will use the song as a sort of theme for the exhibit and short film I
will produce inconjunction with the project.
As an added
experiment of the theories of visual culture I am trying to avoid the
use of the words art and artists as much as possible. I sincerely
want to avoid steering the participants toward work that they think
will meet with my approval but is honest and documentary. My larger
hope is that the participants will notice (if they haven't already)
that they have tremendous history and therefore power through that
history and they need only learn to wield it through our current
technology. Community centers such as the Gangplank but also webbased
forums can give anyone a voice a platform or a chance to express
themselves. It is my goal to help facilitate the process.
In this way I hope
to bring the many ideas and concepts I have been exposed to in this
class into the project.
Hiawatha Hood in
an article entitled Hiawatha Comes Home, as an old man staring down
Washington and Arizona developers when asked was most concerned about
the state of Yavapai youth. „the young people ..It seems they don't
care.“ Hopefully we can honor Hiawatha's memory, bravery, tenacity
and prove him wrong by encouraging a few Yavapai youth to care
(Weber, 8).
Bibliograghy
The Heard
Museum Phoenix Arizona (archives and displays)
The River of
Time Museum, Fountain Hills Arizona.
The Arizona
Republic-several articles related to recent Yavapai history.
Hawley
C. (1990, Nov. 2nd
) Newspaper article, The Arizona Republic-a history of Yavapai water
disputes and the final settlement in favor of the tribe. (call #
ZP2A: E78.A7 075 1998 Library Use)
Johnson,
A. (1986, April, 11th)
Newspaper article, The Arizona Republic-a brief history of Yavapai
activism including the battle to stop the Orme dam. (call # ZP2A:
E78.A7 075 1998 Library Use)
Murphy,
M. ( 1990, July, 7th)
Newspaper article, Phoenix Gazette-an article related to the Orme Dam
project (call # ZP2A: E78.A7 075 1998 Library Use) Archives at the
Heard Museum Library.
Mann,
C. (2011) 1493, Vintage
Books.
Basso,
K. (1990) Western Apache Language and Culture (Essays in Linguistic
Anthropology), Universtiy
of Arizona Press Tuscon Arizona.
Yavapai Nation
Website
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