A Ridiculed Ancestry

Roach describes a funeral hat he has made. He adds a feather whenever a close family member dies, and so his ancestry becomes tangible. He uses it at funerals and during certain seasons, and once he teaches his oldest son how to use it, the hat will eventually belong to his son.

“Every feather has a story, and every story has a person,” he says, adding that those people made him who he is.

To explain this, Roach pulls out from under his shirt a leather necklace attached to a medicine pouch his father made. He doesn’t leave the house without it. Inside are herbs, soil, ashes and feathers.

Lauren Yates burns sage in an abalone shell for purification. {larger}

“I live with my ancestry and future around my neck every day,” he says. “I am not me. I am us.”

In the 1950s, practicing Indians couldn’t be open about who they were, Roach says.

“Just 20 years earlier, even, kids were beaten for speaking their native language.”

But starting in the 1960s, and now even more than ever, Native Americans are rediscovering their traditions.

The Navajo, Zuni and Apache, for example, have been able to maintain their traditions because of their relative isolation. But most Native Americans not on reservations—and even some on reservations—live life like normal people. One of the biggest frustrations is being seen as a figure of history, Roach says, and the Cleveland Indians logo is an example of that. He says Native Americans are the only race who still can be ridiculed with no consequences.

“Until we’re no longer seen as mascots or historical figures, we won’t be seen as legitimate people with needs,” he says. “The rest of the issues won’t matter.

“I don’t want anybody to get the impression that we wear feathers in our hair on a daily basis or wear buckskin on a daily basis."

People think Native Americans will look like the old pictures in history books, but “the chief got on his war bonnet because he was getting his picture taken,” Roach says.

“I live with my ancestry and future around my neck every day. I am not me. I am us.”

Most people don’t care about Native Americans as a living culture, Yates says.

“We’re only important when we’re dead and buried.”

Yates once had an instructor who said it was “cool” to dig up the graves of Native Americans and collect all the items they were buried with. He said it was no problem because there weren’t any Native Americans around anymore.

Yates raised her hand and asked the instructor where his grandmother was buried.

The instructor, confused by her question, asked her why.

“I’m going to dig her up,” Yates said. “It’ll be really cool.”

Grace Dobush (gdobush@kent.edu)

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