In Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy’s article “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory
in Education” he underscores instances where Native teachers speak about the importance of having teachers who look, talk, and think like Native students so that the teachers are not only meeting the students’ educational needs, but their cultural needs as well. A student of the University of Utah’s American Indian Teacher Training Program (AITTP), mentioned in Brayboy’s article, mentions the salience of being able to have someone teaching the students who understands what it means to be Indian.
This disposition reminds me of something that Victor Joseph tells Thomas Builds-the-Fire in the movie Smoke Signals. When the two are on the bus traveling to retrieve Victor’s fathers’ ashes, Victor tries to teach Thomas how to act like an Indian. He speaks of being stoic and looking mean so that White people don’t try to intimidate and walk all over them and speaks to the injustices that white people enacted on Indians whenever they welcomed them in a friendly manner.
One example of many that can be found of this happening is when many Native tribes signed treaties with the U.S. government in the mid 1800s with hopes of finding peace and compromise, yet President Jackson still signed the Indian Removal Act into law. The type of Indian that Victor describes to Thomas is the stereotypical mainstream image of a Native person and is so because Native people acted that way out of necessity. This is of course horrible, as people should feel safe to be softer when they want without feeling threatened.
Brayboy further explores his own conflicts with academic colleagues in “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education” after highlighting the feelings of the students in AITTP, in which he was told that his people tell good stories, and because of that, theory was beyond his abilities. A large part of his examination of Tribal Critical Race Theory is that stories and theories are more than connected, they are one in the same. TribalCrit both recognizes that differences between Native communities and individuals and celebrates their commonality.
Brayboy argues that TribalCrit is an understanding which recognizes:
– “Colonization is endemic to society.”
o Brayboy feels that colonization has been so successful that modern day Natives are solely depicted as how they once were and that even Natives struggle at times to express themselves in a way that does not challenge colonization but is rather in line with their motives for Native peoples, in regard to behavior.
o Colonial policies serve the desires of White settlers and allow them to rationalize stealing land from Indigenous people by claiming that Indians weren’t correctly using the land and would be okay being moved to different territories.
o The idea that settlers have predominant rights over the lands of the United States is legitimized as a moral obligation by colonizers with Manifest Destiny which argues that God gives them rights over this land, completely disregarding the original inhabitants of the land they are stealing.
– “U.S. policies toward Indigenous peoples are rooted in imperialism, White supremacy, and a desire for material gain.”
o White supremacy is the idea that the European was of being is superior to any other ways of being, which in reality is psychopathic narcissism on a huge scale.
– “Indigenous peoples occupy a liminal space that accounts for both the political and racialized natures of our identities.”
o Brayboy states that Native people are political, legal, and racialized beings but do not get treated that way. This can cause a loss in a sense of belonging which is harmful to Native communities.
– “Indigenous peoples have a desire to obtain and forge tribal sovereignty, tribal autonomy, self-determination, and self-identification.”
o This means having control over their own lands, resources, and to decide what their boundaries are with other tribes, not at the will of the U.S. government.
– “The concepts of culture, knowledge, and power take on new meaning when examined through an Indigenous lens.”
– “Governmental policies and educational policies toward Indigenous peoples are intimately linked around the problematic goal of assimilation.”
– “Tribal philosophies, beliefs, customs, traditions, and visions for the future are central to understanding the lived realities of Indigenous peoples, but they also illustrate the differences and adaptability among individuals and groups.”
o Indigenous knowledge, culture, and understanding is just as important and valid as European centric culture or any other and should be treated as such. Each tribes culture is specific, individualized and unique.
o Indigenous culture should be a part of the education system rather than trying to assimilate Indigenous peoples into western culture through education. Doing so brings a sense of pride and cultivates Indigenous identity. Academic knowledge should not outweigh cultural knowledge.
– “Stories are not separate from theory; they make up theory and are, therefore, real and legitimate sources of data and ways of being.”
o Brayboy illustrates that there is a difference between listening to stories and hearing them.
– “Theory and practice are connected in deep and explicit ways such that scholars must work towards social change.”
Going back to the film Smoke Signals, the film begins with literal fiery intensity. The fire that killed Thomas’s parents symbolizes how destructive it is for Native peoples to celebrate a holiday that is for white independence and does not honor them. From the start, the dynamic between Thomas and Victor is tenuous. Their differences are clearly noticeable from a young age with Victor having a great amount of pent-up anger from seeing his father and mother be alcoholics from a young age, being hit by his father, watching his father hit his mother, and having his father leave him.
These pieces of his father colors Victors view of his father, and of the world. While each of the boys had a strong motherly figure in their lives, the lack of having a father affected them both greatly in different ways. In one scene, Victor’s dad reflects on a vision he had of the world in which white people would go back to where they came from, and the reservation and everything that came with it would disappear, including him. To me this speaks to a great sense of frustration with colonization and an attempt to cope with the loss of identity colonization caused.
We find out later in the film that his father never really wanted to leave and intended to come home one day. Unfortunately, he died before he ever got the chance. Victor’s father was the one who was responsible for killing Thomas’s parents because he accidently shot off a firework in their house on fourth of July when he was drunk. This is a very powerful symbol of the way that colonization has harmed Native people. The pain of that act and of hitting his son and wife drove him away out of shame. It was not his fault to be in the circumstances that led him to alcoholism, and he quit drinking after moving away, but that kind of pain is hard to overcome.
The central theme presents itself plainly at the very end of the movie which is “how do we forgive our fathers,” (Smoke Signals). To me, this is not just in a literal sense but also in regard to generational trauma. When people go through as much trauma as Native people have gone through due to colonizers, it leaves an imprint on the people that harms people intergenerationally. Having a loss of control over one’s own existence and having so much destruction happens to ones people can have a devastating effect on peoples psyches. This movie highlights that truth and more, and clearly expresses those effects of colonization.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/12/generational-trauma-passed-healing/
https://medicine.usask.ca/news/2018/mymd/understandings-of-colonization-on-indigenous-health.php
Ruby Cayenne 