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The Journey to Peace and Healing: Discovering Identity Through Culture, Tradition, and Indigenous Knowledege
Abstract
An accurate account of U.S. history is that of imperialism and colonization that includes the systematic extermination of indigenous populations, development of capitalism supported by slavery, and the exploitation of labor of oppressed populations, all supported by racist ideologies and practices. These ideologies and practices have been perpetuated and continue to plague the current state of colonized peoples. History has perpetuated itself and colonized peoples remain in a state of siege in which identities have been lost and cultures, traditions, and knowledge appropriated—all contributing to the loss of peace and balance within our lives and communities. This has been my journey in discovering culture and self-determination and reclaiming my identity. In doing so, I explain identity as a process of action and self-reflection that contributes to the discovery of self-healing, peace and balance within our individual selves. This enables us to embark on the lifelong commitment to the struggle for true liberation of our oppressed communities and revolutionary change within the corrupt political, economic, and social structures that maintain our oppression. Artwork, community activism and dance reveal themselves as essential practices that contribute to the discovery of identity and healing processes which Identity(why caps) are the backbone to being able to make this commitment and “walk in beauty.”
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How are the lives of middle-class third-generation Mexican Americans both racialized and gendered? Third-generation Mexican Americans in California experience a racialization process continuum that extends from "flexible ethnicity," the ability to be considered an "insider" in different racial/ethnic communities, to racialization as nonwhite that is enforced through the deployment of negative stereotypes. Using interview data, the author finds that women are afforded more "flexible ethnicity" than men. Accordingly, men are more rigorously racialized than women. Women are racialized through exoticization, whereas men are racialized as threats to safety. Lighterskinned individuals escaped consistent racialization. These findings have consequences for the incorporation possibilities of later-generation Mexican Americans, as women and light-skinned (often multiracial) individuals are more frequently granted "flexible ethnicity" and less strongly racialized than men and dark-skinned (often monoracial) individuals. Even among the structurally assimilated, contemporary racial and gender hierarchies limit the voluntary quality of ethnicity among third-generation Mexican Americans.
The legacy of colonization breeds alienation and detachment from history and community. For Chicanos in universities, the solution for the alienation that Aguirre expresses begins with understanding how powerful ideological forces sustain structured inequality while they promote self‐hatred and identification with the master. Córdova makes the case that by embracing both our communities and the roots of Chicano and Chicana Studies, we find the passion, commitment and self‐discipline to find a voice and presence in the university that is meaningful not only personally but also to the communities that we serve.
In several cities in the Southwest and Midwest with sizable enclaves of Chicanos, there are to be found considerable numbers of images that have become leitmotifs of Chicano art. In their ubiquity, these motifs demonstrate that the Chicano phase of Mexican-American art (from 1965 to the 1980s) was nationally dispersed, shared certain common philosophies, and established a network that promoted a hitherto nonexistent cohesion. In other words, it was a movement, not just an individual assembly of Mexican-descent artists. In what follows, Chicano art is examined as statements of a conquered and oppressed people countering oppression and determining their own destiny, though not all the producers of these images necessarily saw their production in the political way they are framed below. Examples have been chosen specifically to show how, in response to exploitation, artists have taken an affirmative stance celebrating race, ethnicity, and class.
This article explores contemporary Indigenous artists', activists', and scholars' use of the Internet to reclaim Indigenous knowledge, culture, art, history, and worldview; critique the political realities of dominant discourse; and address the genocidal history and ongoing repression of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous Internet examples include discussion of Cheryl L'Hirondelle's “Treaty Cards,” which allow visitors to create or modify treaty cards to better represent their identities; Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's challenge to imposed beliefs and ideologies and reclaiming and redefining Indigenous west coast (of Canada) Aboriginal artwork; and the Natives Against Media Stereotypes' global campaign to express outrage at CBS's television program “Survivor–Guatemala,” which portrayed contestants adopting outrageously offensive stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. Conclusions challenge Western society to decolonize its own structure and systems and to find ways to construct its identities in ways other than through the control and defining of Indigenous “others.” Education is suggested as one place to start.
Latinos are choosing to become white in the same manner as Irish, Jewish, and other immigrants before them. The history of Latinos' political posturing, desegregation efforts, and “assimilation” strategies reveal a persistent, deliberate disassociation with Blacks and an insistence on whiteness. The Chicano Movement and contemporary indigenous identities have not constituted sufficient resistance to whiteness construction. Latinos have recapitulated whiteness in the form of modern anti-Black racism and violence most noticeable in Los Angeles and on the Internet. Although Black–Latino coalitions hold promise for repudiating whiteness, Latinos must critically challenge whiteness and embrace Blackness for these coalitions to succeed.
As a revolutionary organizer who sees his work in the proud tradition of Tecumseh, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Juan Cortina, Las Gorras Blancas, John Brown, Geronimo, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Emma Tenayuca, Luisa Moreno, SNCC, CORE, La Raza Unida Party, Black Berets, Black Panthers, and many other fierce warriors and revolutionary movements for democratic rights, human rights, and self-determination inside the United States, I am honored to have been asked to share some thoughts on the shared history of resistance of the Palestinian and Chicano people and the questions it raises for academics, activists, and organizers inside the United States.
In the United States, the mainstream historical narrative characterizes indigenous genocide, African enslavement, colonization, white supremacy, and racism as historical blemishes that either tarnish the master narrative of a country built on “democracy, freedom, and equality” or represent an unfortunate historical set of anomalies that had to be corrected to build a more “perfect union.”
I am part of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. The Strategy Center is a leftist institution, an experimental form that seeks to contribute to building a united front against U.S. imperialism rooted in the strategic alliance of the multiracial, multinational working class with oppressed peoples and nations both inside and outside the United States. In this alliance, the Black, Chicano, and Latino working classes have a unique, essential, pivotal, and irreplaceable role (see “Towards a Program of Resistance,” www.ahoranow.com).
Our shared historical view of the United States is that it is a white settler state. The United States was born and sustained through a virulent set of white supremacist ideologies and social arrangements that not only benefited its ruling class, but enabled virtually every white “citizen” to enjoy the spoils of empire. The United States was driven by a racist capitalist mode of development that was sustained through stolen lands, slavery, conquest, and the exploitation of working class oppressed nationalities.
Given those origins, we cannot be surprised that the United States is the dominant imperialist power in modern history. Though currently in decline, its economic muscle is still able to back its global position by furnishing the largest military forces and the deadliest and most sophisticated weaponry on the planet. This last point is important to understand: imperialism is not sustainable. It’s a system of monopoly capitalism requiring the exploitation, oppression, and subjugation of whole nations and peoples, which leads to the escalation of wars, necessitates militaristic build-up, and inevitably demands military territorial occupation to protect natural resources and strategic hemispheric positioning.
Our peoples share a common thread of being colonized for more than 500 years:
— By 1517 the Arab Palestinian people were conquered by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which dominated the area for more than four hundred years. The empire ruled over the territory of the Arab Palestinian majority, but allowed Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people to coexist in the region called Greater Syria.
— By the late 1520s a significant majority of Indigenous nations and people of Central Mexico and modern Central America were conquered by the Spanish Empire, which ruled for more than three hundred years. By the 1700s, the Spanish had made major incursions into northern regions (the modern U.S. Southwest) and as far south as modern Costa Rica, creating what was called the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The population of this territory was made up of a majority of African and Mestizo peoples and Indigenous nations.
Our peoples share a common thread for the struggle of national liberation:
— Mexico achieved independence by 1821 after ten years of fierce guerrilla fighting that was led by Indigenous people, Mestizos, and Afro-Mexicans. Just as Mexico was achieving its independence, the newly formed United States was pushing the boundaries of white settlements westward, transfering large Indigenous nations in the southern states toward the west and increasing its dependence on and extraction of wealth from African slave labor.
— Palestine would probably have achieved its independence from the Ottoman Empire, as several other Arab nations did, had not the entrance and consolidation of the British Empire...
There are radically conflicting perspectives on indigenous peoples' right to self-determination in international law. On one hand, indigenous advocates regard self-determination as a (if not the) fundamental and non-negotiable element of the international law regime concerned with indigenous rights. On the other hand, many states, including some of the states most significantly confronted with indigenous issues, are categorically opposed to granting indigenous peoples a right to self-determination.In support of their position, indigenous peoples have asserted two convincing arguments. First, they argue that denying indigenous peoples the same international law right to self-determination enjoyed by other peoples constitutes another manifestation of the racism and cultural chauvinism that has characterized international law's historical disregard for indigenous peoples.Second, they argue that limiting the application of self-determination to the decolonization movement of the post-World War H years, and excluding its application to the present indigenous rights movement, requires the illogical and a historical claim that indigenous peoples in settler states were not the victims of European colonization.For their part, States rightfully counter that self-determination can lead, and in its practice often has led, to secession. They argue that this conflicts with the post-war international legal order's emphasis on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. States contend that, above all else, the United Nations Charter stands for these principles. States urge that this foundation was reiterated, in response to ever more frequent assertions of a right to self-determination, in the preamble of the General Assembly's 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations, which declared: "any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of a State or country or at its political independence is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter."Both sides can now claim a victory. One of the first acts of the newly created United Nations Human Rights Council was to approve the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and forward it to the General Assembly for consideration at the end of 2006.10 Article 3 of the UN Declaration provides: "Indigenous peoples have the right of self-determination."By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. States, however, can point to the Proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which makes no mention of self-determination.This stalemate is facilitated, in part, by the imprecise, inconclusive and ill-defined nature of the international law right to self-determination. One scholar referred to the field as a "conceptual morass." S. James Anaya's survey of self-determination in his keynote address at this symposium was impressive, especially considering the ambiguities plaguing the right of self-determination.Anaya outlined the diverse perspectives on self-determination (including his own distinct and, arguably, minority view ). But, international lawyers understand that no one quite knows what the right to self-determination means - or worse, everyone knows what the right to self-determination means to them. The positive sources of law referencing self-determination do not provide much precision. The literature is voluminous, complex and confounding: Does self-determination have an internal or external orientation? What is a "people"? Does self-determination have democratic content? Is self-determination Wilsonian or Marxist-Leninist? Was self-determination's application limited to the decolonization of "salt water" colonies and, thus, of no relevance to the colonial experience of settler states? Does self-determination promote or defeat feminist claims and other discourses about "difference" being carried out in international law? Does self-determination promote or erode statehood? Can one distinguish self-determination law and rhetoric? However the international law right to self-determination might be defined, it is clear that its potential secessionist implications stand in tension with states' claims to sovereignty and territorial integrity. Lori Graham has suggested that this tension will be "the defining issue in international law for the 21st century." With respect to indigenous peoples' claims to self-determination, Part II of this article argues for resolving this tension by striking a compromise to the advantage of states and against an indigenous right to self-determination that includes a right to secede. It will argue that self-determination in its external/secessionistm anifestation is undemocratic. After making this claim, Part III will argue instead for internal self-determination in the indigenous peoples context, proposing an adaptation of Habermas's discourse theory of democracy for application between collectives, like indigenous peoples and the states in which they reside, as the means to protect indigenous peoples' human rights and fundamental freedoms. Part IV will close by arguing that the UN Declaration is consistent with this approach to indigenous self-determination.
In this article, we elucidate how the Navajo synthetic principle Saah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózho (SNBH) is understood, demonstrated, and elaborated in three different Navajo healing traditions. We conducted interviews with Navajo healers and their patients affiliated with Traditional Navajo religion, the Native American Church, and Pentecostal Christianity. Their narratives provide access to cultural themes of identity and healing that invoke elements of SNBH. SNBH specifies that the conditions for health and well-being are harmony within and connection to the physical/spiritual world. Specifically, each religious healing tradition encourages affective engagement, proper family relations, an understanding of one's cultural and spiritual histories, and the use of kinship terms to establish affective bonds with one's family and with the spiritual world. People's relationships within this common behavioral environment are integral to their self-orientations, to their identities as Navajos, and to the therapeutic process. The disruption and restoration of these relationships constitute an important affective dimension in Navajo distress and healing. [Navajos, identity, religion, healing, health]
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