Re-reading Ishi’s Story: Interpreting Representation in Three Worlds 2020043669, 2020043670, 9780367687465, 9780367687472, 9781003138891

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RE-READING ISHI’S STORY

Re-Reading Ishi’s Story offers a manifesto of sorts through a critical reading of an anthropological classic, Theodora Kroeber’s 1961 book, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America. The heart of the analysis involves a five-play cycle, built around Gerald Vizenor’s trickster-survivance model. It gives Ishi a voice he never had in Kroeber’s book and imagines an Ishi who was not the happy warrior in Kroeber’s book. The author follows the story line in Kroeber’s book, focusing on key events as recounted by Alfred Kroeber and his associates Saxton Pope and Thomas Waterman. Chapter 1 tells Ishi’s story in his own words; Chapter 2 retells Ishi’s capture narrative, which includes the recording of his story of the wood ducks; Chapter 3 builds on stories told about Ishi by Zumwalt Jr.; Chapter 4 criticizes Kroeber and associates for making Ishi return to his homeland, asking him to ‘play’ Indian; and Chapter 5 takes up his death and the recovery of his brain.The concluding chapters address repatriation practices, genocide, Indigenous ethics, discourses of forgiveness, and a performance autoethnography ethic for this new century, returning to the Kroebers and their autoethnographic practices. This book continues a four-volume project on Native Americans, the postmodern Wild West shows, museums, violence, genocide, and the modern U.S. American use of the Native American in a collective search for an authentic identity (Denzin, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2008). It will be of great interest to scholars and students of qualitative inquiry, anthropology, and Native American studies. Norman K. Denzin is distinguished emeritus research professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of more than 50 books and 200 professional articles and chapters. He is the past president of the Midwest Sociological Society and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He is the founding president of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry (2005–) and director of the International Center of Qualitative Inquiry (2005–). He is the past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, founding coeditor of Qualitative Inquiry, and founding editor of Cultural Studies–Critical Methodologies, International Review of Qualitative Research, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual.

RE-READING ISHI’S STORY Interpreting Representation in Three Worlds

Norman K. Denzin

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Norman K. Denzin The right of Norman K. Denzin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Denzin, Norman K., author. Title: Re-reading Ishi's story : interpreting representation in three worlds / Norman K. Denzin. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020043669 (print) | LCCN 2020043670 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367687465 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367687472 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003138891 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Indians, Treatment of--California. | Indians of North America-California--History. | Popular culture--California. Classification: LCC E78.C15 D46 2021 (print) | LCC E78.C15 (ebook) | DDC 979.4/00497--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043669 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043670 ISBN: 978-0-367-68746-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-68747-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-13889-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by SPi Global, India

CONTENTS

List of figures Foreword Acknowledgements

vii viii xi

Dramatis personae

1

PART 1

5

1 You can call me Ishi:  The story of a trickster

7

2 Ishi and the wood ducks, part 2, or Ishi the “urban” Indian

16

3 Ishi the happy Indian and urban warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park

37

4 Ishi in the wilderness:  Anatomy of a life and a death (1861–1916)

49

5 Ishi’s brain: The trickster’s revenge

66

vi  Contents

PART 2

79

6 Ishi’s ethics

81

7 Ishi comes home

101

Appendix 107 References 113 Index 120

FIGURES

Plate 1 Alfred and Theodora Kroeber sitting on steps, 1925 (courtesy of the Bancroft Library and the Regents of the University of California) Plate 2 Ishi, full face, 1914 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5768) Plate 3 Ishi at the time of his capture, 1911 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5910) Plate 4 Ishi seated beside hut at Museum, 1914 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5891) Plate 5 Left to right: Sam Batwi, A. L. Kroeber, Ishi, 1911 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 13-944) Plate 6 Ishi making a bow, 1914 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5798)

FOREWORD

Here I offer a manifesto of sorts, a critical reading of an anthropological classic, Theodora Kroeber’s 1961 book, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian North America1 (1961, 1964, 2002). There have been multiple printings, a children’s version taught to more than one million California schoolchildren, films, videos, movies, and YouTube blogs. Ishi is everywhere. Kroeber saved Ishi for the ages. Her book is written and read against, alongside, and within its historical moment: the California extermination of 300,000 native Americans (1860–1870), the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989, the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, the American Indian movement, Red Power, Wounded Knee II, World War Two, the Nazi Holocaust, Hiroshima, the civil rights movement, tribal capitalism, indigenous mobilizations, indigenous history, sovereign rights, broken treaties, the Second Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, the 2017 Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Dakota Pipeline Resistance. The rediscovery of Ishi’s embalmed brain in 1999 reopened his narrative, creating firestorms surrounding his treatment by the Kroebers and the ethics surrounding the study of indigenous communities. The absence of a set of ethical principles guiding the study of indigenous subjects in 1911 makes Ishi’s story even more relevant today as we enter the third decade of the world’s indigenous people.This is the space my book enters—the post-repatriation Ishi. A new telling of Ishi, Gerald Vizenor’s post-Indian, a model of survivance, Ishi a trickster, a joker (2003)—an Ishi who might have been. More than 150 years have passed since Ishi (1860–1916) was born.2 He continues to engage the imagination: he was unique, the last man of his world. His experience of sudden, lonely changeover from the Stone Age to the Steel Age was profound and unique (Kroeber, 1961, p. 10, paraphrase; Clifford, 2013, p. 91). He walked out of the wilderness into a museum. He was studied as a new species of insect by the scientists. They wrote down everything he did (Kingsley, 1911, p. 102). It is time to retell Ishi’s story.

Foreword  ix

This Book Where to begin. Let’s start with Ishi of course. His is an episodic story, incomplete, and loosely strung across lacunae of time, ignorance, and events too painful for Ishi to relive in memory. My narrative follows the original outline of Kroeber’s 1961 book, a fictional version (1964), which has been read by more than one million California school children. Kroeber’s book is divided into two parts. Part One is Ishi the Yahi, which opens with Ishi’s arrest outside a slaughterhouse in Oroville and then brings him to the Hearst Museum in San Francisco. The next six chapters detail the violent history and extermination of the Yahi by white ranchers and miners. Part Two turns to Mister Ishi, his new world, life in a museum, Ishi the craftsman, the brightest year—a trip back to his homeland. It ends with an epilogue, death in a museum. The heart of my analysis involves a five-play cycle, built around Gerald Vizenor’s trickster-survivance model. I follow the story line in Kroeber’s book, focusing on key events as recounted by Alfred Kroeber and his associates Saxton Pope and Thomas Waterman. Chapter 1, “You Can Call Me Ishi: The Story of a Trickster,” tells Ishi’s story in his own words, comparing him to Ishmael, Melville’s narrator in Moby Dick, another exiled trickster. Chapter 2, “Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2, Part 2, or Ishi the ‘Urban’ Indian” retells Ishi’s capture narrative, which includes the recording of his story of the Wood Ducks. Chapter 3, “Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park,” builds on stories told about Ishi by Zumwalt Jr. (2003) who shared personal childhood memories of Ishi with Theodora Kroeber after reading her book. I suggest Ishi was not as happy as Kroeber and Zumwalt said he was. Chapter 4, “Ishi in the Wilderness: Anatomy of a Life and a Death,” criticizes Kroeber and associates for making Ishi return to his homeland where he was asked to play Indian (Deloria, 1988). Chapter 5, “Ishi’s Brain: The Trickster’s Revenge,” takes up his death and the recovery of his brain (Starn, 2005). The concluding Chapters 6, 7, and 8 address repatriation practices, genocide, indigenous ethics, discourses of forgiveness, and a performance autoethnography ethic for this new century, returning to the Kroebers and their autoethnographic practices. This book continues a four-volume project on native Americans, the postmodern west, wild shows, museums, violence, genocide, and the American use of the dark-skinned Native American in a collective search for an authentic identity (Denzin, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2008).The concept of the civilized, commodified Indian who is asked to play Indian for white audiences must continue to be challenged (Deloria, 1984, 1988).

Notes 1 This book steals from Kroeber’s title, which was a misnomer on several levels. Ishi was neither wild nor the last Native American in North America. He was the last surviving member of the small Northern California Yahi tribe, which shared territory with the larger Yani tribe. The Yana comprised four language-speaking groups: the Northern Yana, the Central Yana, the Southern Yana, and the Yahi. Ishi was a member of the Yahi/

x  Foreword

Yana group (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 6–7; Golla, 2003, pp. 208–209). The Yana of Northern California were destroyed during the California Genocide (1846–1873; Madley, 2016, p. 358). Vigilantes were paid 25 cents for each Indian scalp and $5 for an Indian’s head. In the 1871 Kingsley Cave Massacre, four cowboys kill 30 Yahi Indians. Ishi is one of a few survivors (see Kroeber, 1961, pp. 84–85). Throughout the book, I prefer to use a real tribal name or Gerald Vizenor’s term “post-Indian.” On occasion, I maintain the usage of “Indian” in a historical document, understanding that Ishi was turned into a simulation of a real wild Indian for political purposes. 2 See the appendix for Ishi’s time line.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Mitch Allen and Katherine Ryan for their support of this project, to Hannah Shakesphere and Matt Bickerton for making it happen, and to three excellent outside reviews that significantly clarified my arguments. I am grateful to the staff at the Bancroft Museum and Alexandra Lucas at the Hearst Museum for assistance in securing permission to reproduce the Ishi photographs. I am grateful to Sayrayya Carr and Mitch Allen for copyediting, to James Salvo for editorial assistance, to Ellie Broyles for assistance securing the Ishi photos, to Jon Krejci, Joseph Choi, and Ellie Broyles for rescuing me from that nightmare called Microsoft Word! I am grateful to Dr. Jeff Schroeder and the cheerful staff at the Mettler Physical Therapy Center for helping me regain full mobility after knee replacement surgery. Earlier versions of Chapters 1 and 2 appeared in Denzin, N. K. (2020).You can call me Ishi. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7), 780–781. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418786897 Denzin, N. K. (2019). Ishi and the wood ducks, part 2, or Ishi, the “urban” Indian. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 19(4), 305–319. https://doi. org/10.1177/1532708618787470

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

These characters -+ appear throughout the plays in this book. Adams, Rachel, professor Amendola, Ralph Mrs., Marcellla Healy, and her chums Bess, Dorothy Stevens, Abbey Kelsey, Gata, and a young girl known only as a mystery child. Ishi’s playmates as young children Angle, Art, (Maidu), leads efforts for repatriation and reburial of Ishi’s brain and ashes Mr. Apperson,Yahi enemy, rancher in Yahi country Batwi, Sam,Yana interpreter Boas, Franz (1858–1942), father of American anthropology, advocate of salvage anthropology Booker, Pointius, provost Boots, Old Yani woman, Ishi’s best friend Brown, Betty,Yana interpreter Christians, Cliff, Claudio, Clifford, James, Coyote, Wile E.: Ishi’s old friend from Deer Creek and before Curtius, Mary, journalist, Los Angeles Times Deloria, Philip (Yankton Dekota), author of Playing Indian Delores, Juan, Papago Indian, close friend of Ishi Dunbar-Ortiz, Rosanne, Indigenous historian, activist (2014) Elsasser, Albert, part of an archaeological survey that first discovers Ishi in the mountain foothills Foster, George, Berkeley anthropologist

2  Dramatis personae

Gifford, Edward, assistant curator University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), museum Greene, George, keeper of the more than 1,000 native bones and skills stored in the Hearst Museum Hearst, Phoebe Apperson (1842–1919), philanthropist, founded the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UCSF in 1911, mother of William Randolph Hearst Heizer, Robert, professor of anthropology, director of the archaeological survey, UCSF, close friend of Ishi Hrdlicka, Ales, physical anthropologist, head of the Physical Anthropology Department at the Smithsonian, assembled its brain collection Ishi One (T. Kroeber’s Ishi), Ishi is an artist, but he cannot prove his tribal identity under the provisions of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (Vizenor, 1995, p. 299, paraphrase) Ishi Two (real Ishi, Ishi as Vizenor’s trickster, Ishi-as-story-teller) Ishi Three, Ishi-as-Ishmael, a radicalized Ishi # Jerry and Billy, Zumwalt’s pet spaniel and chipmunk, also Ishi’s playmates Jones, Indiana, fictional archaeologist, Kroeber’s role model played by Harrison Ford Joyce, Rosemary, director, Phoebe Hearst Museum Kite, Zumwalt, family Chinese laundryman, teaches Ishi how to fly a kite Kroeber, Alfred, 1876–1960, director, Anthropology Museum, UCSF, husband of Theodora Kroeber, close friend of Ishi Kroeber, Clifton, professor, a Kroeber son Kroeber, Alfred, Big Chiep, Ishi’s name for Kroeber, Henriette Rothschild (1876–1913) Kroeber, Karl (1926–2009), son of Theodora Kroeber, professor of humanities at Columbia University, coeditor of Ishi in Three Centuries Kroeber, Theodora (1897–1979), wife of Alfred Kroeber, author of Ishi in Two Worlds Lefebvre, Robert, manager of the Mount Olivet Cemetery, where Ishi’s ashes were located in 1916 Lena, Lilly, famous London singer and dancer Loud, Llewellyn, guard, assistant preparator, Hearst Museum Madley, Benjamin, historian, author of American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (2016) Members of the Vanishing Indian Traveling Medicine Minstrel Show in Ishi costumes Meyer, Larry, director of the state Native American Heritage Commission

Dramatis personae  3

McInturf, Jeff (ten-year-old) and father Haskell, descendants of Oroville’s first white settlers Miller, Mary Ashe, the San Francisco Call Pope, Saxton, physician, member, medical faculty, UCSF, close friend of Ishi Poyser, head janitor, UCSF Museum Riffe, Jed, Oakland filmmaker (Ishi’s Brain) Rockafellar, Nancy, medical historian, UCSF Roy, Sapir, Edward, anthropologist-linguist, University of Chicago San Franciso Solar Dancers, ethnic activists, tricksters named Tulip, Cloud Burst, Bad Mouth,Token White. Fast Food, Fine Print, and Injun Time (Vizenor, 2000, p. 145) Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, anthropologist, University of California (UC), Berkeley Sackman, Douglas, C., historian, author, Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America (2011), New York Sedlacek, Lisa, trail manager, U.S. Forest Service, Ishi Wilderness, created in 1986 Serra, Junípero (1713–1784), Starn, Oron, cultural anthropologist, Duke University Vizenor, Gerald, (Anishinaabe), distinguished professor, UC Berkeley, author, Manifest Manners (1994) Warburton, head preparator, museum displays Waterman, Thomas, anthropologist, colleague of A. Kroeber, close friend of Ishi Webber, T. B., local sheriff who takes Ishi to jail Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, president UCSF Yahi Chorus: Sam Batwi, Jean Delores, Papago, friend of Ishi Zumwalt Jr., Fred H., as a child he and his friends played with Ishi in Golden Gate Park and the Presido, also called Mutt by Ishi

PART 1

1 YOU CAN CALL ME ISHI The story of a trickster

Let’s begin here: Dear reader, this is my story.You need to hear from me first. My name is Ishi, but you could call me Ishmael, for I too am an exile, a social outcast, a victim of robbery, the last surviving member of a small society (Melville, 1851; Kroeber, 1961, p. 4). The anthropologists named me Ishi. Kroeber said I was the last man of the Stone Age. I was born in 1860 and died in 1916. I came out of the Northern California mountains in an undershirt and rags. First, you put me in jail, and then you put me on a train and took me to San Francisco and put me in a museum next to a room that contained human bones. You dressed me up in Western clothes and then asked me to pose bare chested for photographers and journalists. You said I was shy at first but gentle and had a good sense of humor.You said I sometimes used pantomime to make myself understood. You said I blushed easily, was easily embarrassed, and I learned very little English (Kroeber 1961, pp. 124–25). The newspapers said I was civilization’s last wild man, a well-born Yahi. You put me behind glass. You recorded my voice and transcribed my stories. Hucksters wanted the museum to promote a two-man act of me and Kroeber. It would be for educational and edifying purposes (Kroeber, 1961, p. 129). On Sunday afternoons between two and four-thirty, Kroeber and I received visitors at the museum. Later, the museum made a movie of me entering, leaving, and working in my little museum house (Kroeber, 1961, p.132). Call me Ishi. It was never my name. I never told them my real name. Kroeber, the Big Chiep, named me Ishi, which means “man” in Yana, my language, one of the people. I am the last man. I am absence. I am Gerald Vizenor’s postIndian.You gave me a watch, but I cannot tell time.

8  You can call me Ishi

Call me Ishi. I lived in exile, a fugitive pursued by pioneers and miners bent on genocide, $0.25 a scalp, $5 for an Indian’s head. I am part of your creation story. I was there before there was a beginning—before there were Native Americans (Vizenor, 1949, p.Vii). There are no real Native Americans or Indians. The word is an invention. I am a simulation. I am trickster, coyote, a make-believe aboriginal. You put me on stage as if in a Wild West show, like one of the Fox Indians in George Catlin’s Traveling Indian Gallery (Denzin, 2013; Catlin, 1848a, 1848b). I told tricky Wood Duck stories, smiled, made bows and arrows, chipped arrowheads out of pieces of broken glass and built campfires. I said I want to grow old here. I was like Gloria Anzaldua’s New Mestiza, safely locked up in a reservationor urban ghetto, or behind glass in the museum (Anzaldua, 1987, p. 183, paraphrase). I never learned how to shake hands, I never went bare chested, wore leather clothes, or feathers. I smiled at tourists. I was more than a starvedout Yahi from the wilds of Dear Creek. Big Chiep said I had perceptive powers far keener than those of highly educated white men, a higher mentality than most aboriginals. You said I proved that a savage from the wilds can be civilized. I gained 40 pounds in two months of captivity. I was a Native hunter in a museum. I bought a certificate that said I was a Yahi, but there is nobody left from my tribe. I am a tribe of one. I am my own sovereign tribal nation. I am an artist. I am a man. I am as real as every fictional Indian: noble savage, proud warrior Tonto, Little Beaver, Squanto, Pocahontas, Chief Joseph, Geronimo, Sacajawea, Crazy Horse, Hiawatha Big Foot.Yippee ki-yay. I even went to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. And a Sioux warrior asked what tribe is this Indian? Everywhere I turned, they were taking my picture. I became an expert on matters of lighting, posing, and exposure. They sold photographs of me to tourists. They dressed me up as a civilized man in a suit, tie, and leather shoes. I died of TB in a museum. They divided my estate between the state and the hospital. The medical school got $265. You found my brain in a vat at the Smithsonian. Friends returned my brain and my ashes to a sacred site in my homeland. My name is Ishmael, or “I am Ishmael,“ but rather “Call me Ishmael” (Melville, 1851). Never call me Ishi. My name is Ishmael, or “I am Ishmael,” but rather “Call me Ishmael,” your orphan, your outcast (Melville, 1851). ***

You can call me Ishi  9

Another version of the story begins with this 1911 report in the Oroville Register: Dateline: August 29: An aboriginal Indian, clad in a rough canvas shirt which reached to his knees was taken into custody late evening by Sheriff Webber and Constable Toland at the Ward slaughter-house on the Quincy road. He had evidently been driven by hunger to the slaughter-house, and he was almost in a starving condition. Not a single word of English does he understand. Where he comes from is a mystery, the most plausible explanation seems to be that he is probably the surviving member of a little group of uncivilized Deer Creek Indians who were driven from their hiding place two years ago. The Register was no more than off the press than the Sheriff ’s office was besieged with people desiring to see the savage. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and Professor Kroeber of the University of California were informed that the Indian is in custody, and the county wishes to turn him over to the Federal Government, of which he is a proper ward (In Heizer and Kroeber, 1979, pp. 92–93, paraphrase; also Kroeber, 1961, p. 217). Dateline: September 6, 1911: I have sent T. T. Waterman to Oroville to interview and then transport the aboriginal we have decided to call Ishi to the University of California Museum of Anthropology at the affiliated college in San Francisco [NB: He will live in the Hearst Museum until he dies of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis on Christmas day, March 25, 1916.] With Ishi I can safely say we have the most uncivilized man in the world today. His capture is of vital importance. He speaks an extinct dialect. He is more of an aborigine than any of the aborigines we have been working with for the last ten years. He is the last wild Indian in North America (Kroeber, quoted in Kingsley, 1911, pp. 100, 103, paraphrase).

ALFRED KROEBER 

And so the story that will become the Ishi story begins. His life is a window through which one of the ugliest periods of California history can be viewed: the mass slaughter and displacement of more than 300,000 Native Californians—a true holocaust. All the parts are in place: the naming of Ishi, where he comes from, the fact that he is an uncivilized ward of the state who will be handed off to Professor Kroeber who will treat him as a research subject.When he dies, an autopsy is performed against his wishes. His body is cremated, and his ashes are stored in a small black pueblo jar in the columbarium of Mount Olivet Cemetery. His brain is removed, preserved, a racial artifact, and sent by Kroeber to the Smithsonian on January 5, 1917 (Starn 2004, p. 158;Vizenor, 2003, p. 365). There it sits undisturbed in a vat until it is received in May 1999 by the Butte County Native American Cultural Committee. On May 12, 2000, they oversee the secret burial of Ishi’s brain and ashes near Mount Lassen.

10  You can call me Ishi

The stories of Ishi As James Clifford notes, there are multiple Ishi stories, and many have been told many times before and need to be told again (Clifford, 2013, p. 91; see also Kroeber, 1961, p. 230; Vizenor, 2003, p. 366; Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003). Ishi’s story travels across at last three narrative moments, three discourse. There are the Ishi stories told in Kroeber’s book, the story that ends with his death in 1916. There are the Ishi stories that begin in 1995 when Art Angle (Maidu) enlists the help of tribal leaders, Nancy Rockefeller (medical historian) and Oron Starn (cultural anthropologist) to address the wrongs that were done to Ishi, his brain, and his ashes by the Berkeley anthropologists (Scheper-Hughes, 2003; tribal leaders demanded the immediate repatriation of Ishi’s brain for proper burial). The third set of Ishi stories begin in 1999 when the anthropologists at Berkeley debate an official response to the criticisms of the department’s treatment of Ishi during the five years he lived in the Hearst Museum (Brandes, 2003, p. 87; Speaker, 2003; Foster, 2003, Kroeber, 2003; Bistman, 2003; Scheper-Hughes, 2003). This debate continues to the present day (Scheper-Hughes, 2020). Any one of these “Ishi stories” could mean “the story of Ishi” recounted by a historian or anthropologist who gathers together all that is known with the goal of offering a definitive picture of Ishi in one of these narrative moments. Regrettably, no such perspective exists. It could refer to Ishi’s own story, the story told by Ishi or on his behalf. It could refer to the stories of Ishi in these moments: stories of his experiences, fears, dreams, hopes. Ishi in the wilderness; Ishi outside jail; Ishi’s life in the new world; the songs of Ishi; Ishi’s archery; Ishi’s life as a janitor and craftsman in the museum; Ishi back in the wilderness; Ishi the victim; Ishi the new age deity; Ishi the celebrity; Ishi in film, in plays, on TV; Ishi’s songs; Ishi’s brain; Ishi’s return to his homeland; and Ishi’s voice and stories since this return (Bistman, 2003, pp; 152–53; Clifford, 2013). An ongoing scholarship on each of these Ishis leads to new gaps and silences, multiple endings, confusions, conflicting voices, stories of happiness (was Ishi happy?), tragedy, loss of his family, illness, death, terror, healing, redemption, abuse—nothing is final (see Heizer and Kroeber, 1979; Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003; Clifford, 2013). No one understood Ishi’s language; he spoke with gestures, pantomime, one-word sentences, a personal pidgin, place names, a mixture of English, pidgin, and Yana. He refused to learn English, even though he commanded an “English vocabulary of five or six hundred words” (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 226. 225–228; also Golla, 2003, pp. 214–220).Wax impressions of several hours of his speech were recorded on phonographs and later transferred to tape. They have yet to be fully analyzed (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 30–131; Golla, 2003, p. 219–221; Jacknis, 2003; Perry, 2003, Luthin and Hinton, 2003). There is no closure. No final word on what Ishi said, felt, thought, or believed, just lists of words, songs, and blank spaces filled in with stories about but not by him.

You can call me Ishi  11

Rereading Theodora My telling begins with a rereading of Theodora Kroeber’s biography 1961, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America, an instant classic with multiple printings and two anniversary editions. Kroeber’s book helped make Ishi the most famous and most studied Indian in America. Few other Indians have generated more commentary (for reviews, see Shackley, 2003, pp. 159, 164; Clifford, 2013, pp. 91–191). Theodora’s Ishi is framed by multiple discourses. In the background is traditional humanistic Boasian salvage anthropology, which represented “the concerted effort to document the cultures of rapidly disappearing indigenous people” (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 106; Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003a, xv; Clifford, 2013, p. 104). According to critics, salvage ethnography was North American anthropology’s weak response to what is now known as the America/California genocide (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 106; Madley, 2016). Indigenous cultures were (are) disappearing, as they were being intentionally destroyed through church and state-sponsored ethnocide practices. These destructive practices come together in the North American present when the ghost of Ishi, 100 years old on March 25, 2016, meets the ghost of recently canonized Junípero Serra, the architect of the California mission system that laid the foundation of the genocidal system that destroyed Ishi’s tribe (May 2016; Bauer, 2014; Bierman, Noah, 2015; Herrera, 2017; Kroeber, 1961, pp, 43–47). Both Ishi and Serra are products of the California genocide: Serra as an architect and Ishi as a victim. Neither man will die. In 2016, Stanford University considered renaming streets and buildings that honor Serra. Meanwhile, Berkeley activists reclaimed Ishi as teacher and prophet and pushed to have the central courtyard of Dwinelle Hall named Ishi Courtyard (Lee, 2016; Day, 2016; Bistman, 2003, p. 153; Vizenor, 2003, p. 369–370). With survivance humor, Vizenor calls Ishi the “last of the stone agers, the orphan child of cultural genocide, a curious savage, the relic of a vanishing race, a native humanist in exile” (Vizenor, 2003, p. 364). Kroeber saves Ishi for the ages. She opens the space for discussions of cultural survival, for struggle, and for renewal in the face of genocide (Clifford, 2013, p. 7). Ishi does survive, initially at least. His story, in fact, extends, as indicated earlier, into the present. Kroeber’s book, like Ishi’s story, is open-ended. As Clifford (2013, pp 104–105),Vizenor (2003), and Starn (2004) suggest.

This telling, telling as performance So, is there anything new to say about the Ishi story? Are there new ways to tell the controversy surrounding the treatment of Ishi, the Kroebers, and the ethics surrounding the study of Indigenous communities (Feld, 2005; Starn, 2004; Sackman, 2011, Clifford, 2013; Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003). The publication of Kroeber and Kroeber’s Ishi in Three Centuries (2003) can be read as the official reaction of the

12  You can call me Ishi

Kroeber family to these events and criticisms and, in a sense, the carrying on of the family legacy (Feld, 2005, p. 83). My thesis is simple. There has been no closure analytic, ethical, or ethnographic in the case (Feld, 2005; Sackman, 2011; note 6, Preface).With Kroeber and Kroeber, it continues to spill over into this new century (also Clifford, 2013; Starn, 2004). It is time to bring a new, critical performative standpoint to his story, a standpoint that gives him an active voice, a performative presence in his own life story and ethnodrama. This is a story grounded, but not driven, by a new telling of the facticities of the Ishi story, a commitment to ground the narrative in the available historical record. Biegert calls this “committed documentation” (see Biegert 1976, quoted in Peyer, 1989, p. 553; also, Benjamin, 1983). I suture my ethnodramas into the documents produced by Theodora and Alfred Kroeber, journalists, and others. However, the record is read through a 21st-century lens. Call this historical or utopian autoethnography, a critical ethnodrama, a narrative that pushes back against the myth that Ishi happily accepted his new life in Alfred Kroeber’s museum (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 119)—a narrative that imagines a new past and a new future. A telling that uses the spoken narratives of Kroeber and others but erases the boundaries between what happened and could have happened. A revisionist history that imagines a new Ishi with a voice of his own.

Gerald Vizenor’s Ishi the trickster Throughout, I steal from Vizenor (2003), who imagines Ishi as a post-Indian, a visionary, a trickster, a comic healer, a joker, a survivor who exposes the contradictions in the colonizer’s voice. In a series of postmodern plays and essays, Vizenor (1985, 1988, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2008) returns to the key scenes in the Kroeber/Ishi story, moving back and forth from his capture to life in the city, life in a museum, his experiences with Alfred Kroeber and the anthropologists at the University of California, and dying but never being allowed to return to his homeland. Vizenor gives Ishi agency, an active voice, mocking, rewriting, contesting, the Kroeber version of his life. Ishi becomes Vizenor’s model of the Native American as post-Indian, an anthropologist’s invention named, by chance, a lonesome hunter, an exile, a man without a tribe, a visionary, an oral historian, a fugitive on the run; he endured through guile and pretense—a master of Native irony. Vizenor’s Ishi is an inventor of Native survivance. He produced his own version of the simulation of an Indian warrior who survived in a museum. With Vizenor, I revisit Ishi’s story. I rework Vizenor’s playful reinventions of the Ishi narratives, taking Ishi into new spaces created by Vizenor. Remember, Ishi understood fewer than 500 words of English, so from Kroeber forward, we only have someone else’s account of Ishi’s life. (Remember also, Ishi lived less than five years after his capture. Kroeber’s book is based on these five years as they were reported primarily by Alfred Kroeber and his associates 35 years after his death.)

You can call me Ishi  13

Start here So this is a call for a new beginning, a publicly accountable, critically interpretive ethnography, anthropology, and sociology for a new century—a discourse that uses the Ishi story to build on the pain and suffering of the previous century. I use the story to critique a social science that functioned as an agent of the state, a social science complicit with holocausts and exterminations of Native peoples, genocidal programs connected to colonial empires, stolen lands, violence, and destruction (Starn, 2004, p. 17; Scheper-Hughes, 2003, pp. 123), exhibiting the need for an ethnography of suffering, writing against genocide, seeking studies of forgiveness, charting a new path forward. The need has never been greater. However, it is not enough to criticize the Kroebers; they were doing the best they could with the resources they had to work with. Surely the first half of Theodora’s book painfully exposes the violent treatment of California Indians by ranchers and gold miners. And Alfred eloquently supported the repatriation initiatives demanded by Northern California Indian tribes (Kroeber, 2003). Quoting Scheper-Hughes, at some “point we all need to forgive each other as we go about, once again, reinventing anthropology as a tool and practice of human freedom” (2003, p. 123). Of course, this is a form of historical presentism (Fisher, 1970; Skinner, 2002) applying the standards of the present to the past. On this I follow Benjamin’s advice about writing history. Benjamin’s histories rip the present out of its present context, turning it back against itself, exposing its contradictions; quoting the present back to itself exposes these contradictions and ruptures in the colonial project (Benjamin, 1983, p. 24; 1968, pp. 255–266). I hope to expose the contradictions in the Ishi narrative. I want to invent a new version of Ishi’s past, a new history. I want to create a chorus of discordant voices, memories, and images concerning Ishi and his place in our collective imagination—an Ishi who might have been had he been given different opportunities. But Ishi belonged to the Kroebers,Alfred (later Theodora, Karl, and Clifton), and his associates, Pope and Waterman. They managed his transition from the jail in Oroville to the streets of San Francisco, with its vaudeville shows, markets, and the Hearst Museum.They dressed him, staged his performances, insisted he return to Mill Creek and Dear Creek to show them his old hunting grounds, had him accompany Kroeber when he gave his “Ishi, the Last of the Yanas” lecture to women’s clubs, allowed the public to view him on Sunday afternoons when he performed in a museum exhibition room, took him into their homes, filmed him, recorded him, loved him, and memorialized him (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 134–138, 168; Adams, 2003, p. 20). The anthropologists insisted on keeping two Ishi’s alive: the modern, civilized Ishi, Ishi the Indian with good table manners, and the premodern, precontact Ishi, Ishi the wild man, Ishi the aborigine. (These two Ishi’s were on display during the return to Mill and Deer Creek.) Ishi never had a chance to be who he might have become. Kroeber and his associates forced him into the public limelight over and over again, showing off their pet buffalo, as one critic quipped (Day, 2016). Was he an innocent victim, heroic survivor, or trickster (see Kroeber, 2003, p. 139)?

14  You can call me Ishi

Here is where the tragedy lies. In making Ishi into the universal last wild man, they perpetuated the vicious underside of colonial anthropology.They were not saving Ishi for himself, rescuing him from the vast wildness surrounding Mount Lassen with its murderous ranchers. They were saving an ideology. They had a human subject, and they did not want to let him go. He was the last wild Indian; there were no replacements on the horizon. The irony is painful. So little was really learned from Ishi. His language was never decoded, only a few of his songs were ever translated (see the essays by Kroeber, Waterman, Nelson, Pope, Sapir, Nettel, and Baumhoff in “Ishi Among the Anthropologists,” pp. 117–223 in Heizer and Kroeber, 1979; also, the chapters by Shackley, Starn, and Golla in Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003, pp. 157–228). Ishi did teach Pope how to use a bow and arrow. He gave Alfred great comfort when his first wife died. *** In 2013, too many harsh Midwestern winters drove my wife and I to Carmel and Monterey, California, the land of sun, California Indians, the gold rush, Spanish Missions, Father Junípero Serra, and mass genocide of Native Californians (1849–1870). The Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmel, 3080 Rio Road, became a new research site. It was five blocks from our rental cottage. We’ve returned to Carmel and Monterey every year since. I’ve spent hours in the Carmel Mission, the chapel, bookstore, gardens, classrooms, and courtyard, admiring the work of Native Americans, many of whom died building the mission. Their fingerprints left traces on the stones in the courtyard. Father Serra’s story is the story of state-sponsored genocide that leads directly to Ishi’s story and the slaughter of his family. *** This book comes out of repeated visits to the aforementioned sites, the contemporary postmodern west and its museums, missions, and reservations. Ishi is my guide. With him, I linger in the spaces of memory, Wild West and vaudeville shows, museums, and murdered Native Americans, questioning the politics of creating and preserving images of a vanishing dark-skinned Indian and noble savage for white audiences. With Ishi, I pose the following questions: • Whose racialized Native (Ishi) was represented by Kroeber in her original book, and whose racialized Ishi is being represented today in the work of her critics? Will the real Ishi stand up? • Can Anglo scholars any longer claim, as the Kroebers did, the uncontested right to represent the vanishing Indigenous Native, the last wild Indian? Whose wild Indian? • Can the critical legacies of these discourses, from Kroeber to Serra, from Ishi to Vizenor, advance an agenda of Indigenous empowerment? Can it function as a pedagogy of liberation? • Think of Ishi as the great trickster, the post-Indian survivor, the one who speaks only in silence while deploying a trickster hermeneutics, unraveling

You can call me Ishi  15

•

•

and decoding the colonial definition called Indian, the hyper-real Indian, the museum Indian (Vizenor 1998, p. 27; quoted in Owens, 2003, p. 375–376). Can we imagine a critical pedagogy based on these understandings? Can we chart a new beginning and walk away from the desire to capture, record, represent, and inhabit the heart of the true Native (Owen, pp. 377–378, paraphrase)? Can we address and embrace the ugly silences, denials, and distortions that define our histories with the Indigenous other (Owen, 2003, p. 379; Vizenor, 1994, pp. 126–137)? Can we imagine new archives and new museums filled with new performances, names, stories, exhibits, pictures, and photos—new archives that erase the photographs of the noble savage, the wild Native in disguise, erasures of the white Indian (Owen, 2003, p. 380; Denzin, 2015, pp. 168–175). Can we? These are the central questions I examine in this book.

2 ISHI AND THE WOOD DUCKS, PART 2, OR ISHI THE “URBAN” INDIAN1

Synopsis: Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2, or Ishi the “Urban” Indian is the first play in a fiveplay cycle that dramatizes the events surrounding the life and death of Ishi from the time of his capture on August 29, 1911, until his death in 1916. Alfred Kroeber used Ishi as an exhibit in his museum for his lectures on the survival skills of Stone Age man. Upon capture, this wild Indian was turned into an urban Indian, a live exhibit performing for white audiences. How this happened so quickly is the central question Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 examines. The play begins with Ishi’s capture in Oroville and ends with his appearance 35 days later on October 3 as a celebrity audience member in a vaudeville show at  the San Francisco Orpheum headlining Lilly Lena of the London music halls (San Francisco Call, October 6, 1911; Adams, 2003). *** Stage: The stage is bare, no scenery, a few props, and just a folding table and two chairs. On the table are various items, including a barley sack, a bow and arrows, a spear, beaded moccasins, arrowheads, and a deer skull. In the corner of the stage are three posters: one poster advertises Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show; a second poster announces Lilly Lena’s performance at the Orpheum and a third is a life-size poster of Ishi in front of his wickiup house in the Hearst Museum. He is wearing only a loincloth (Vizenor, 1995, p. 306). The poster gives the times of Ishi’s Sunday afternoon museum performances with Dr. Kroeber. *** Narrator (to the audience): Our play begins with the events immediately following Ishi’s capture on August 29, 1911, and his transfer seven days later to the Hearst Museum at eleven

Ishi and the wood ducks  17

o’clock on the evening of September 4, 1911, and the subsequent events that turned a wild Indian into a celebrity, an assimilated Indian. ***

Act one: Scene one, day one Dateline: August 31, 1911: San Francisco Examiner: “Tribe’s Dirge Chanted by Savage” (August 31, 1911): He understands no word spoken to him. His is a silent language. In gestures more eloquent than the spoken word, he lays bare the tragedy of his people and their deaths. His silence is broken only by his mournful chanting to the Great Spirit (In Heizer and Kroeber, 1979, p. 96, paraphrase). Alfred Kroeber: We will call him Ishi, after the Yahi word for “man” (Kroeber, quoted in Kingsley, 1911, p. 103, paraphrase). *** August 29, 1911, from Kroeber (1961, p. 133). Ishi in canvas shirt. September 6, 1911, from Kroeber and Kroeber (2003, p. 2). Ishi in oversized suit, dress shirt, necktie. ***

Act one: Scene two: More detail Ishi One (to the audience): A little history will help. After I was given the name of Ishi by Alfred Kroeber, I was affectionately known as the last wild Indian in North America. I deeply resented this, but what could I do? The newspapers picked it up and ran with it. I was born in 1860. I died of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis on Christmas day, March 25, 1916. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: In 1915, sculptor James Earle Fraser unveiled his monumental sculpture The End of the Trail for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The image of the near-naked, exhausted, dying Indian mounted on his exhausted horse proclaimed the final solution, the elimination of the Indigenous peoples from the continent. Ishi Three: I died a year after Fraser’s sculpture was released. At least I did not ride into Oroville on the back of a starving horse.

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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Dozens of other popular images of the “vanishing Indian” were displayed during this period. Boots: Vanishing Indians everywhere. Theodora: Let me clarify. Ishi was the last of a lost tribe, not the last wild Indian in North America. Boots: That is not how your subtitle reads! Ishi Two: I spent my entire life from 1861–1911 along the streams in the Mount Lassen foothills with a small tribe of Yahi/Yana Indians. On August 29, 1911, I left the wilderness delirious and starving. I was cornered by barking dogs in the Old Ward Slaughterhouse and taken into custody by the local sheriff in Oroville, California. At that moment, I became a ward of the state and placed under the supervision of Alfred Kroeber. I was given a job as an assistant janitor, $25 a month. And so I entered the wilds of civilization with the status of a wage earner (Kroeber, 1961, p. 146). When last seen in a play, I was the central character in Gerald Vizenor’s Ishi and the Wood Ducks: Post Indian Trickster Comedies (1995). I was walking into the sunset, out of Judge Kroeber’s courtroom, having been declared an artist, a member of my own tribe, and innocent of violating the Indian Arts and Craft Act (Vizenor, 1995, p. 335–336). Narrator: Thank you, Ishi.While you were performing in Gerald’s play, you did not know your brain had been sitting in a vat of formaldehyde in the Smithsonian for nearly 50 years (Starn, 2004). Of course, this discovery would lead to a huge controversy over how your brain had been treated by the Berkeley Department of Anthropology before and after your death (ScheperHughes, 2003; Starn, 2004). But before these matters can be addressed, it is necessary to step back and discuss the events surrounding your capture. These events set in motion the process that would turn you into a white, assimilated urban Indian.

Act one: Scene three: Historical aside—Ishi sightings? Nancy Rockafellar: It was commonly understood that by 1900, the Yahi were a vanishing tribe, numbering perhaps no more than five members, including Ishi (K. Kroeber,

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2008, p. 32; also T. Kroeber, 1961, pp. 94–95). On November 9, 1908, two engineers came upon a naked Indian fishing with a harpoon in Deer Creek. The next day surveyors discovered a small Indian village along the same river. Reports of these discoveries immediately appeared in the local and national newspapers, including those owned by William Randolph Hearst (San Francisco Examiner). Kroeber and Waterman read the stories and corresponded with the surveyors. Waterman traveled to the area and sent photographs of the village to the San Francisco museum. On April 13, 1911, H. H. Hume, a surveyor, discovered several barley sacks containing moccasins, arrowheads, arrows, deer hides, nails, and screws hanging in an oak tree. It was assumed the sacks belonged to Ishi, who appeared four months later in Oroville (Kroeber, 1961, p. 113). Ishi One (to the audience, barefoot, leather thong in right ear): Yes, those were my sacks. I thought they were in a safe place. I went back to get them, and they were gone. I had nothing to hunt with. Ishi Two (to the audience, singsong voice): Have you heard my wood duck story? Winotay, winotay, winotay. It is a love story and quite complicated. I fall in love and then I am killed. And then I am put back together (see Kroeber, 1961, p. 199). Narrator: Ishi and his story made the front page of the San Francisco Examiner, September 7, 1911: Ishi Tells Tale of Wood Duck for Over Six Hours Ishi the aboriginal Indian, who was captured last Monday, started telling a story yesterday of the loves of U-Tut-N, the wood duck. The story took over six hours to tell and consisted of three words. Ishi uses three tones in singing it. Boots: He loves his wood duck stories. It keeps him calm.

Act one: Scene four: In deep trouble, need real name Ishi One (to Boots and Wile E. Coyote): I’m in deep trouble. The courts are charging me with two crimes— breaking and entering at the Old Ward Slaughterhouse and stealing a ratty old canvas shirt.

20  Ishi and the wood ducks

Boots: Hey, we’ll fight this! How can they charge you with theft? The old canvas shirt was in a dumpster. And breaking and entering—the slaughterhouse was wide open.You just walked in. You took nothing. Besides, it is on original Yahi/Yani land. Wile E. Coyote: I’m with you guys. I say justice for the little guys! Ishi Two: Thanks, Boots. We can bring all of this into the courtroom, but we may have to go up against Judge Kroeber. There is also the slight issue of my name. I’m not going to be called the last wild Indian in North America. It is not right. Dr. Kroeber thinks he can use a Yahi word for my name. If I have to go before Judge Kroeber to get this changed, I will. Boots: The judge said he’ll send me back to the wilderness if I don’t get a real name. I like being called Boots. See my shiny new cowboy boots (Vizenor, 1995, p. 304)? Wile E. Coyote: Kroeber has no right to use a Yahi name. Never trust a judge. Trust me. Ishi Two: We all need real names, but they have to be secret. I will no longer be known as Ishi. From now on, call me Ishmael. I am in exile, like my namesake in Moby Dick, a social outcast, a victim of robbery. They stole my identity (Melville, 1851; Kroeber, 1961, p. 4).

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Act one: Scene five: Don’t believe me Ishi Three: Confession time. I am an unreliable storyteller. I am an invention. I was named by an academic; my name is cultural evidence that I am “the property of the state and its anthropologists” (Vizenor, 2008, p. 3, paraphrase). There is no good reason to believe what you read here. These are the words the anthropologists used to create me in their image. To understand who I am, you must read between the lines. I cannot read. I cannot write. I refused to share my name. I gave no details about my family. Most of what they said about me was based on rumor, gossip, and hearsay. They said I was a well-bred Yahi, a good Indian. In my first dinner in a white man’s house, the day after my arrival in San Francisco, they said I had good table manners, that I followed good Indian etiquette (Kroeber, 1961, p. 138). Yahi Chorus: Good manners. Imagine that, a savage with good manners.Yippee, and then they turned you into a janitor, asking you to clean up after the tourists. Boy oh boy! Boots: Hey, I have good manners too. Wile E. Coyote: So do I. Boots: Whenever they asked Ishi/Ishmael about his family

22  Ishi and the wood ducks

or past life, he would tell a story like the wood ducks story or the story of how the coyote stole the fire (Jacknis, 2003, p. 253). Ishi One: Forgive me. I get ahead of myself. We must go back to the day I was captured. Remember, what is said about me comes from the mouths of white people.

Act one: Scene three: Day one: I was not captured Wile E. Coyote: We are wards of the state. Native Americans have no rights. They can do anything to us. Ishi One: The Yani and Yahi were here before any whites. This is our land. It was stolen from us. Ishi Two as Wild Indian (soft voice): I was not captured. I put up no resistance. I was lost and alone. They pointed their guns at me. I had no way to defend myself. They got me in a wagon. We went down a road. The wagon came to a big tree. I was afraid they were going to hang me. The sheriff was nice to me. We did not stop under the big tree. He gave me a big fat cigar (Kroeber, 1964, p. 147–148). Ishi Two as Wild Indian (soft voice, cont’d): They took me into a big house and then into a small room with bars and without windows. People filled the outer room.They stared at me and said words I did not understand. They laughed when I spoke in Yahi. I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes. The sheriff came back and spoke to the crowd.They left.The sheriff came back with a clean shirt and pants and a bucket of water and towel so I could wash myself. I put on the clothes.The sheriff offered me food to eat. He left. I laid down on a strange bed on the floor. I was tired. I fell asleep.

Ishi and the wood ducks  23

Ishi Two as Semi-Wild Indian: I dreamed I was going on a journey that would take me to the lost trail and my lost family. Alfred Kroeber (to the audience): I sent T. T. Waterman to Oroville to interview and then transport the Indian we have decided to call Ishi to the University of California Museum of Anthropology at the Affiliated College in San Francisco. He can live in our museum. Ishi Three: Two days later the anthropologists turn me into a research subject. I complied, but I tricked them.They got me to tell one of my stories to Waterman. On Wednesday, September 6, I agree and start telling the story of wood duck (U-Tut-Ne). The first time I told the story, it took me six hours (Jacknis, 2003, p. 242). On Thursday September 7, I repeated the story for the phonograph (Jacknis, 2003, p. 239). The story contains three words that are repeated in different combinations. Winotay winotay, winotay, tay-o-win, o-win-tay, u-tut-me

Act one: Scene four: Ishi’s second dream Ishi Two: I am very upset. I had another dream, more like a nightmare, not the happy wood duck story—winotay, winotay, winotay dream. I dreamed there were skeletons and bones from dead people in the museum room next to where they were asking me to sleep. The dead are sacred and must be separated from the living. I cannot sleep next to the dead. Boots: Calm down, sing your winotay song. Ishi One (softy, while dozing off): Winotay, winotay, winotay.

24  Ishi and the wood ducks

Ishi Two: How can I keep on living? Boots: What choices do you have? Interlocutor: So ends Ishi’s first day in the white world. What are his choices?

Act one: Scene five: Day two Ishi Two as Semi-Wild Indian: The next morning, a stranger (aka Waterman) came into my room. He sat beside me and asked me questions and made little bird footprints on pieces of white bark. I spoke for the first time in Yahi: siwini, auna, moocha, banya, hisi, saldu. The old words poured out faster than the stranger could mark them down. The stranger left and then he came back. He asked me if I would like to go to a movie. I did not know what he meant. But there in a dark room I saw a huge train pass by on the big screen. I was scared (Jacknis 2003, p. 265, note 29).We left the dark room and went back to the jail. I was exhausted. I half-slept, half-dreamed—siwini, swini, swni (pine wood). I woke up from a dreamless sleep: I want to speak the tongue, to hear this stranger speak it. I am no longer afraid of guns and poisonand hanging trees (Kroeber, 1964, p. 154). The sheriff came into the little room: Sheriff (with the stranger’s help): Ishi do you want to go back to the Yahi world? I’ll help you if you want. Ishi One: No, I don’t know that world anymore. Sheriff: Would you like to go to a reservation? Ishi One: No, that is the world of the Fat Ones

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with short memories who forgot what happened in the past— murders, rapes, hangings. Stranger aka Waterman: Come with me to my house. It is a museum—watgurwa. You will like it there. Can I enter your dreams? Can I be your friend? Boots: Don’t let him into your dreams. Don’t do it! Don’t go. Ishi One to Waterman (ignoring Boots): You speak the Tongue of the People. You are my friend. I will go with you to your museum. Ishi Two: Careful, pal, that museum is filled with native bones and artifacts stolen from our sacred burial sites by white thieves who masquerade as archaeologists (Vizenor, 2000, p. 14). Boots: Don’t trust a white man who asks you to come live in his museum. He’ll put you on stage and ask you to perform.You’ll never get out. Mark my words, go there, you die there. Ishi Two: Maybe I die if I go to the reservation. I was starving back at Deer Creek. Do I really have a choice? Wile E. Coyote: We always have choices.

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You might have found a sanctuary with Maidu Indians on their reservation (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 119). Ishi Two: They were our enemies (Starn, 2004, p. 21). Ishi Three: How can I keep on living? Yahi Chorus: Ishi, you have no choice but to be a trickster. Be like Wile E. Coyote. Trick them, tell them silly stories. You know how. Remember, you took six hours to tell them the wood duck story and nobody understood a word of what you were saying. Mr. Trickster won that round. Gerald Vizenor: Be what I call a post-Indian trickster, an invention, a transformation of the white man’s invention of the Indian. They have never seen the likes of you before (1995, p. 299). Play your game but pretend to go along with them. Be shy, coy, smile, be a strong Yahi, share very little (Kroeber, 1961, p. 125). Interlocutor: So ends Ishi’s second day in the white world. He has fallen into the anthropologist’s web. Or has he? Who is being tricked?

Act one: Scene six: Whose truth? Narrator: Oh, dear reader. What you have just read is very critical to this story. It hinges on your willingness to believe that Ishi, after having been in custody for only two days (a) finds a friend who speaks his language (the Tongue of the People) and (b) he is also able to converse and identify with a white man who leads him to immediately forsake his previous life, agrees to live in a museum and to enter into a new life with white friends (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 119). Wile E. Coyote: It’s all pretty complicated. Ishi-as-the-trickster

Ishi and the wood ducks  27

could have pulled off a charade. In fact, you can say this is exactly what he did. But I could go with the doubters. Yahi Chorus: Ishi was at the end of his rope. He gave in, seeing no real alternative (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 120). Wile E. Coyote: Did he give in, or was he pretending? I believe he was pretending, just waiting to see what was going to happen, maybe even thinking of revenge. Afterall, white people killed his family. Boots: I don’t believe the official story for a minute. I don’t even think the sheriff asked Ishi these questions. They make for a good story. They set the stage for their larger story, turning Ishi into a white Indian, a friend of the “anthros” (see Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 123). Yahi Chorus: They had to tell the story this way; it’s an old story; it is called the salvage anthropology narrative. Simple. The anthropologist’s job is to document the cultures of rapidly disappearing Indigenous people (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 106; Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003a, xv). Wile E. Coyote: When Alfred Kroeber asks his wife, Theodora, to write Ishi’s story, he is asking her to record the story of the last member of a dying culture based on the materials he gives her. Yahi Chorus: A fantasy. Kroeber and Kroeber wanted to tell a story that justified taking Ishi into custody. This story fits the narrative about an uncivilized aboriginal who could easily walk out of the Neolithic world and into the modern world. They wanted to tell a story about how Ishi and the anthropologists would become family, close friends, and how they immediately shared a universal language of love. Kroeber: His soul was that of a child (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 124, 238).

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Wile E. Coyote and Boots: Nonsense! We are asked to believe that all of this happened in forty-eight hours. The die was cast when Ishi got on board the train at the Oroville Station, maybe the instant the sheriff put him in the wagon and took him to the Oroville jail. Kroeber: Ishi is the last “uncontaminated” aboriginal American Indian in the United States; the last person in the United States to come into contact with civilization. The flint arrow point and the fire drill are the two features the Stone Age man has in common with the prehistoric cave dwellers who lived even before America was “discovered by its aboriginal inhabitants.” These are Ishi’s tools, his link to prehistoric cave dwellers (Kroeber, 1911, p. 116 in Heizer and Kroeber, 1979, paraphrase). Boots: They claim they were on a salvage mission, rescuing a member of a disappearing culture, turning Ishi into a living exhibit (Foster, 2003, p. 94). Yahi Chorus: This is why they had to bring Ishi in.They were at risk of losing him.They had no choice but to tell the story and take the actions they did.

Act two: Scene one: Entering a new life Interlocutor: So ends Ishi’s second day in the white world. He has fallen into the anthropologists’ web. Ishi One: I was up before daylight the next morning. The sheriff helped me dress for the journey.The stranger helped too.The three of us, along with Boots, walked to the train at the Oroville Station. It took us to Oakland. Yahi Chorus: In Oakland, you will have to take the ferry across big water to San Francisco. Then you ride a cable car to the museum on the hill. Kroeber: I’ll be waiting to meet you at the museum. Boots: I don’t trust that man.

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Kroeber: Boots, not to worry. Ishi is our ward. He is our responsibility now. We will take good care of him (Vizenor, 1995, p. 309). Wile E. Coyote (sinister laugh): Ha-ha. Is anyone foolish enough to actually believe this white man? Kroeber: Not so cynical,Wile E.The morning after Ishi’s arrival at the museum, a friendship between the two of us was born that lasted all our days together. Granted, the ordeal by fear and strangeness was acute, but he conveyed a gentleness and a timidity that seemed to keep the fear under control. Still, he started at the slightest sound (Kroeber, 1961, p. 124, paraphrase). Wile E. Coyote: Kroeber is turning Ishi into the Indian he wants him to be. Ishi, the trickster, is playing along. Kroeber: To repeat: his soul was that of a child (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 124, 238).

Act two: Scene two: Ishi and the anthros Wile E. Coyote: Keep this time line in mind: August 29, 1911: Ishi is captured. August 30, 1911: First newspaper stories appear. August 31, 1911: Kroeber is designated Ishi’s guardian; Ishi visits with Waterman in jail. September 3: Waterman takes Ishi to a movie in Oroville. September 4: Ishi arrives in San Francisco, taken to the museum. September 5: Taken to dinner at Waterman’s home in Berkeley. September 6, 7: Ishi is tape recorded telling his wood duck story and other stories.The American Phonograph Company proposes making audio recordings by and about Ishi (Kroeber, 1961, p. 130). September 6, 7: Small film companies propose bringing Ishi’s ethnic view to the screen. September 20: Taken to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. October 1: Hearst Museum opens to the public and more than 1,000 guests attend, celebrating the opening of the museum while also expecting to meet and see Ishi. Attendees included the president of the university, members of the Board of Regents, and the governor (Kroeber, 1961, p. 134; C. Kroeber, 2003, p. 6). Announcements of the event were carried in the Hearst newspapers (Kroeber, 1961, p. 135). October 3: Ishi is taken to a vaudeville show. Newspapers report the visit (Adams, 2003;Wallace, 1911/1979). ***

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Stage Right: A spotlight shines on a poster of Ishi shaking hands with Lilly Lena from the San Francisco Call, October 8, 1911, p. 11 in Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003, p. 18. *** In one short month, Ishi moves from being an unnamed wild Native American from a vanishing tribe to being the best-known Indian in North America.The story was there, just waiting for him to step into it. Yahi Chorus: Not everybody was happy about Ishi’s treatment by Kroeber. An editorial in The Call commented, “Apparently the cave man is placed in the same category as the chimpanzee and held in captivity to make a scientific holiday, but before they put him in the museum they put him in jail” (Adams, 2003, p. 24, paraphrase). Wile E. Coyote: For the record, Phoebe Hearst’s money supported Kroeber’s research. Her money funded the museum named after her. Her son’s newspapers carried Ishi stories. Her money also funded research done by members of the Berkeley Department of Anthropology. Ishi Two: I think Little Chiep wanted to be like me. He wanted to be wild and free and have stories that come out of the mountains (Vizenor, 1995, p. 303). Boots: He was afraid of you. Local Newspaper: Ishi was Kroeber’s pet buffalo. He should never have been sent to San Francisco. Kroeber used Ishi to advance his own career (see Day, 2016). Yahi Chorus (loudly): HE WAS A WARD OF THE STATE AND THE STATE COULD DO ANYTHING IT WANTED TO DO WITH HIM AND THEY DID. Ishi One and Two: How could they even think about putting me in a museum? Boots: A home in a museum with a fake name? Get real! ***

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Act two: Scene two: Ishi’s beautiful dream Interlocutor: And so, on a sunny August morning in 1911, Ishi’s life as a free man ended. He was now formally a ward of the state of California. In turn, the state transferred their power to Professor Kroeber and the University of California at Berkeley. Ishi One (to Boots): The day I was caught, I was on the run, lost my bearings, didn’t trust anyone, was at a breaking point, betrayed by barking dogs, hunted like a fox, driven into a corner, nowhere else to go (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 110). I know there was no one else living from my tribe. I was terrified. I thought I was going to be killed because white people killed members of my family. Boots: This was genocide, California style, pure and simple (Madley, 2016; Kroeber. 1961, p. 77). Ishi Two (to Boots): Before I tell you my new wood duck stories, which I know you are anxious to hear, there is another set of events you need to know about. Boots: Before wood ducks? Ishi Two: Yes, I had a beautiful dream the night before I wandered into Oroville. Maybe I was hallucinating because I was so weak from lack of food. Boots: Give me details. Ishi Two: I dreamed that I am the last of the people.

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In my dream, I went down into the canyon to the alder tree crossing. I made a fire and had a sweatbath. I then jumped into the cold water of Banya Creek. Today, this area is called Ishi Wilderness. A voice said I was the last one, and when I am gone, there will be no one to remember. It will be as we never had been. I prayed, “O Great One, only the land remains, the Lost Ones have found the trail to the Land of the Dead where they are at peace. I am free to go now, and I will meet them when it is time, and I will find my mother and father and the Little One and the Lost One” (Kroeber, 1964, p. 144). Boots: This is beautiful. So peaceful. Ishi Two: There is more. In my dream, all was well. At first, we could not hear the dead and then we could. The sun came up, a beautiful sunrise (Perry, 2003, pp. 278, 282). The dead came down through the hole in the sky. They went out to hunt deer, To hunt birds, To catch fish. They made sunflower seeds out of sand and they put it over deer meat. They made grasshoppers out of snow. And acorns out of rain. Lizard made arrows, and they were taught To go forward (Perry, 2003, p. 219, 292, paraphrase). Yahi Chorus (in unison): Love it. Love it. Ishi Two and Ishi One: This dream gave me confidence in myself. I could leave the wilderness if that is what I needed to do to survive. I could take my dreams and stories with me. In my dream, the new salmon were swimming in the clear water; the marigolds made me think of Round Meadow where a huge butterfly settled on my hand. I smiled at the sky. I was at peace with myself. I dreamed of other peaceful dreams, and I fell asleep. Yahi Chorus (in unison): We are here for you, Ishi. Boots: I experience my dreams as stories.

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Ishi Two: All my dreams are stories. They come in fragments, some are short: winottay, winotay, winotay (Vizenor, 1995, p, 302). Others are long. My dreams are from my life before I came to the city; they are from a long time ago, when I was a young man, happy, surrounded by my family. Boots: Why do you keep singing winotay, winotay, winotay (Vizenor 1995, p. 303)? Ishi Two: It is the title of my love story. There are many traditional stories I can tell.The white scholars have given them names.They are all the same story: Journey of the Dead, Long Long Ago, Lizard Story, and Coyote and His Sister. The Yahi are storytellers. These are stories we tell one another (see Kroeber and Kroeber. 2003c, pp. 230–233; Jacknis, 2003; Perry, 2003; Luthin and Hinton, 2003a, 2003b). Boots: Now can we hear the wood duck story? Ishii Two: Not today.You can read it in the appendix. Close your eyes and listen carefully; this is a love song about the loves of U-Tut-Ne, the wood duck who grew up and wanted a bride.

Act two: Scene four: Where are we going with this? Ishi: My stories and my dreams keep the memories of the members of my family alive. I can recall many traditional myths, stories, songs, and tales that I learned through years of listening and am able still to recite and perform (Perry, 2003, p. 277; also Jacknis, 2003, p. 243). Narrator: Ishi’s stories place a firewall between his past life and the world he has been thrust into. In these stories, he is a sophisticated and subtle storyteller. This allows the stories to build, as in the opening lines to Ishi and the Wood Duck with the repeated words winotay, winotay, winotay (see Perry, 2003, p. 276;Vizenor, 1995, p. 302).

34  Ishi and the wood ducks

Wile E. Coyote: When we get to the later plays in this cycle, we will see that Ishi-the-trickster never criticizes Kroeber like the members of the press did, nor does he raise ethical issues surrounding his treatment by Kroeber, as will be the case after his death (see Starn, 2004; Scheper-Hughes, 2003;Vizenor, 2003). Boots: Where are we going with this story? Ishi Two: It’s a story about a journey, about a trickster getting his due. It’s a story about a powerful California family, an ambitious young anthropologist, a Yahi Indian at the end of his robe, and the taken-for-granted genocidal practices embedded in 20th-century American race relations. Ishi Three: We need a counternarrative. Wile E. Coyote: I want to be in your story. Boots: The more the merrier. Ishi Two: The Yana and Yahi have many coyote stories: “Coyote and His Sister” and “Coyote Rapes His Sister” are just two of many (Luthin and Hinton, 2003, p. 320). Wile E. Coyote: I’m not familiar with those coyote stories. Ishi Two: Sit tight guys; we are on a journey. We’ll play along with their game for a while until we figure out how to get back to Deer Creek. Yahi Chorus: Before we skip this joint, how about going to a vaudeville show at the Orpheum and catching that Lilly Lena from London? I hear Ishi even got his picture taken with her.

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*** Stage Right: Spotlight shines on news story San Francisco Sunday Call: October 8, 1911: Ishi, the Last Aboriginal Savage in America, Finds Enchantment in a Vaudeville Show With broad shoulders squared, he pussyfooted down the aisle of rich plush and into his private box above the glittering splendor of the Orpheum stage—Ishi, the primordial man and the only wild Indian in existence and the exotic dancer from London (Wallace, 1911/1979, p. 107). ***

Curtain lowers, lights dimmed, drum roll The performers come back on stage and take bows. Performers (to the audience): This play has attempted to answer a simple question: How was Ishi transformed from a wild Indian into an urban Indian, into a trophy Indian in one short month? The answer is simple. Ishi the post-Indian trickster had no choice but to go along with his white capturers, to smile, wear the clothes they gave him, and sing them his songs. He played along with them when they had him act like a wild Indian, a trophy Indian, the next assimilated Indian. He performed his repertoire of skills, which they called prehistoric and aboriginal, including fire, harpoon, and bow and arrow making. He did not resist when he was asked to dress as a white man, in suit and dress shirt. He was also willing to be photographed in the wilderness wearing only a loincloth. As a trickster, he had mastered two identities: wild Indian and urban Indian living and performing in a museum. His life as a holocaust/genocide survivor was denied. It was never part of his public identity (Scheper-Hughes, 2003). This denial allowed Alfred Kroeber and the public to never acknowledge that his tribe was destroyed during the California genocide. This allowed Kroebers to call him the last Yahi. Turning Ishi into the polite, well-performing, civilized Yahi denied him this painful history. His new story involved the anthropologists recording and translating his nearly lost language. This story had nothing to do with genocide. He had been turned into an anthropological subject, simultaneously a celebrity, an oddity, the last wild Indian in North America. Maybe he had the last word. He never learned English. Even his name— Ishi

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Don’t call me last man— an insult, Call me trickster, post-Indian, walking dead, they killed my family I was hunted, handcuffed, shot at, tracked down, cornered, jailed, photographed, caged in a museum, met a governor, danced with my friend Boots, dreamed I was free. DON’T EVER CALL ME ISHI AGAIN WHITE MAN Never ever

Coda: In memory of Ishi Gerald Vizenor: Ishi created a special sense of natural presence in his stories, a native presence that included others. He was a visionary; his oral stories were assertions of liberty. He was amused by the trace of time on a wristwatch and by the silence of scripture. He was a tricky storier in exile. He is in our vision, in our dreams. He persists in our memory; we hear his exile as our own, and by his tease and natural reason, we create new stories of native irony, survivance, and liberty, and in these ways, he has secured a decisive presence in our national literature and history (Vizenor, 2008, pp. 5, 17, paraphrase). To be continued. Boots and Ishi hold hands and walk off into the sunset. Curtains, lights, applause.

Notes 1 The title “Ishi and the Wood Ducks” is taken from Vizenor’s (1995) play. See Deloria (1969/1988, pp. 146–147) on assimilated urban Indians and white-created Indian others in the early 20th century. Ishi lives on in film, plays,YouTube, and made-for-TV movies: The Last of His Tribe (1992), Ishi: The Last of the Yahi (Dadigan, 2012; Harvey, 2008), the 1992 documentary film Ishi, the Last Yahi: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/ishi_ the_last_yahi, and the 2016 YouTube Ishi, The Last Yahi full movie, SnagFilms. YouTube has what would appear to be an entire website devoted to Ishi materials (https://www. youtube.com/results?search_query=ishi): Ishi, Arrow, Part 1, Part 2; Ishi, Stick Pressure; How to Shoot a Bow Ishi Style; Ishi Music; Ishi-We Run (official video); Ishi, an electronic band out of Dallas; Ishi picture books; Ishi, the Last of His Tribe—Part 1 of 9 (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=J0ZI-T2MhR0). Special Forces Investigate America’s Last Wild Indian (Ishi) Video #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Db7TCUB6M4. This 2015 film uses photographs of Ishi in the wilderness from Kroeber (1961). Ishi’s discovery is narrated in the YouTube video Ishi Discovery Site, at the Charles Ward Slaughterhouse, Oroville, CA; see also Ishi facts, 2016; http://www.ishifacts.com/.

3 ISHI THE HAPPY INDIAN AND URBAN WARRIOR IN SAN FRANCISCO’S GOLDEN GATE PARK

Prologue Yahi Chorus (chanting accompanied by soft offstage flute music) Dear audience. Please consider the following descriptions of our dear friend Ishi: There were those to whom Ishi was Rousseau’s unspoiled savage (T. Kroeber, 1961, p. 171). Ishi was almost childlike in his innocence. He was the favorite playmate of my childhood (Zumwalt, 2003, p. 12, paraphrase). Ishi’s friendship with children comes as no surprise. Ishi possessed a genuine maturity that allowed him to give and receive pleasure from being with children (K. Kroeber, 2002, p. xviii). He had the soul of a child and the mind of a philosopher (Saxton Pope in T. Kroeber, 2002, p. 238, paraphrase). The closing years of his life (1911–1916) were by far the happiest. He liked everybody and everybody liked him (Waterman, 1918, in C. Kroeber, 2003, pp. 6–8). Gerald Vizenor: Will the real Ishi please stand up. He was the new post-Indian trickster, a man who wore many masks, took chances, played it safe, survived, a chancer until the end when he was “killed by the whiteman’s food, clothing and shelter” (Vizenor, 2000, p.15-16; Chico Record. 1916, quoted in Adams, 2003, p. 25).

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San Francisco Solar Dancers: May we begin with a moment of silence. We wish to acknowledge the land upon which we gather today. These lands were the traditional territory of a number of California First Nations bands prior to European contact: the Yahi,Yana, Mill Creeks, Maidus, Kombos, Shastas, and the Nozis were some of the last bands to be forcibly removed.These lands carry the memories and stories of the resistance of these people, including their struggles for survival and identity in the face of overwhelming colonizing power. Ishi nearly survived the destructive forces of this colonial system. *** Stage: A diorama, a revolving set of scenes displaying various was of representing 19th- and 20th-century Native Californians continuously plays on a 40 x 60-foot drop-down screen above a long table. On the table are specimens from Northern California Indian culture, including a human skull, a funeral urn, a bearskin, and a bow and arrows. Stage Left: A spotlight shines on a life-size poster of Phoebe Hearst, benefactor of the Hearst Museum. On the diorama: • • •

• • • • •

Three members of the San Francisco Solar Dancers march in a small circle waving a banner “FREE ISHI NOW.” Three Solar Dancers dance a jig while holding a bag of bones labeled “Property of Hearst Museum.” Indians in costumes from several Northern California tribes are engaged with other Solar Dancers in a mock battle, shouting: “INDIANS ARE THE INVENTION OF COLONISTS AND MISSIONARIES” (Vizenor 2000, p. 13). Fancy dancers make their own music. Drummers, accompanied by a Navajo flutist, quietly drum. An evangelist preaches to an invisible congregation while selling tickets to the Hiawatha Confessions, a thriving booth and peep show (Vizenor, 2000, p. 21). Scenes from the movie Ishi, the Last Warrior run on a smaller drop-down screen. An actor named Ishi demonstrates his skills with a bow and arrow. A spotlight shines on a life-size poster of Mrs. Hearst, benefactor of the Hearst Museum.

The audience sits on three sides of the stage. Tribal elders in ceremonial dress sit center stage. In the theater lobby of Blue Welcome, a tribal woman (Vizenor 2000, p.19) sells Indian tacos from a food truck, and a group of young boys identified as

Ishi the happy Indian and urban warrior  39

Ishi’s playmates set up a teepee, paint their faces with war paint, and engage in a war dance around a pretend fire. Narrator: The events in this three-act play occur on one day, October 30, 1914. They follow the experiences of the San Francisco Solar Dancers, Ishi, and Ishi’s Golden Gate Park playmates as they call for Ishi’s freedom, asserting that he is a political prisoner. The protestors also demand the release of the thousands of Native remains housed in the Hearst Museum, charging their abuse and misuse by the Berkeley anthropologists (also Vizenor, 2000, p. 24). ***

Act one: Scene one: News alert Dateline: Headline: San Francisco Examiner: “The Natives are grumbling again,” Mary Ashe Miller, October 29, 1914: Ishi, the aboriginal Indian captured by Alfred Kroeber and his fellow anthropologists, is causing trouble again. He has become the cause célèbre of the San Francisco Solar Dancers (SFSD), a ragtag group of Native activists, aka urban warriors, or ethnic emissaries. Hold on reader, this may be a rough ride. Fred Day, San Francisco Examiner Reporter: The San Francisco Solar Dancers seem to be led by Gerald Vizenor, a Berkeley anthropologist, who, invoking the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (H. R. 5237), demands that the university administration change the name of Kroeber Hall to Ishi Hall. Vizenor contends that it was Ishi’s capture that made Kroeber so famous (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, pp. 120–121; Vizenor, 2003, p. 369). The Berkeley department and university administration have rejected this proposal. Gerald: My proposal, which focused on the significant contributions that Ishi had made to the University of California, did win wide support from the students and faculty. Ishi served with distinction the curatorial interests of the new museum. He was their stage Indian who could perform prehistorical tasks, such as stone tool making for classes of grade school children. Ishi endured without rancor a museum nickname (Ishi) and was after all vested as the first Native employee of the University of California (Vizenor, 2003, p. 369). Boots: Hey, they paid Ishi $25 a month to be a janitor (Kroeber, 1961, p. 142).

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Solar Dancers: Kroeber turned Ishi into a celebrity Indian, a museum boy, and took away his Native identity; now he can’t even prove he’s from anywhere (Vizenor, 2000, p. 147, paraphrase). Ishi: I’m not happy Big Chiep did this to me, not happy. Boots: Imagine, this is what they did with stage Indians: made it seem normal. Native Americans on stage, everywhere, performing for white people.

Act one: Scene two: Trouble at graduation Provost Pontius Booker: Parents, students, distinguished guests, welcome to our annual graduation ceremony. Please stand in honor of our outstanding graduates. Today, we are presenting honorary degrees to Ishi and Boots, aka Tulip. Ishi and Boots/aka Tulip: We are thrilled to be here. But we just want to be free; we do not want any honorary degree. We are not Indians; we are Yahi, sacred spirits, ghosts, post-Indians. We are but faded memories who live on in the sacred bones, memories, and shadows of our ancestors. Stage Left: Boots moves a large bag of bones labeled property of Hearst Museum offstage. San Francisco Solar Dancers (disrupting provost—waving Free Ishi Flags): Free Ishi Now!!! Free Ishi Now!! Release All Native Bones Now! Close Hearst Museum Now. Yahi Chorus (rushing on stage): This graduation ceremony must stop. We must honor our distinguished Native elders: Snow Boy, Four Skins, Pocahontas, Ishi, Sacagawea, Fritz Scholder, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Riel, Wovoka, Geronimo, Tonto, aka Jay Silverheels aka Harold Preston Smith.

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(Without warning, arrows with fiery tips sail over the stage, hitting the lectern and starting a fire in the curtains behind the distinguished guest speakers): Phoebe Apperson Hearst, and three Solar Dancers— Cloud Burst, Bad Mouth, Injun Time—are hit and fall to the stage floor. Ishi pulls an arrow out of Phoebe’s shoulder and stops the wound from bleeding. Alfred Kroeber rushes to Phoebe’s assistance. (The commencement band stops playing). Administrators flee the podium and plaza. Native parents hug elders. Native students dance with glee and throw their graduation gowns on stage (Vizenor, 2000, p. 151). Solar Dancers take the microphone: We want to be remembered as the Solar Dancers who performed at the last commencement on this campus. Long live Ishi and long live Boots. *** Stage Right: Sirens, blaring bullhorns, and police cars shut down traffic. Indigenous students break ranks and surround the graduation stage.Tear gas fills the air. A minivan crashes into the water fountain on Sproul Plaza. Boots and Ishi slip offstage. Alfred and Theodora Kroeber look bewildered. ***

Act two: Scene one: Trouble at Golden Gate Park Narrator: Meanwhile across the San Francisco Bay, near the buffalo enclosure in Golden Gate Park and a few blocks from Ishi’s home in the Hearst Museum, Ishi and his playmates echo the concerns of the Solar Dancers. In a popular performance, which they stage weekly, Ishi and his friends contest the standard view that Ishi was happy living in the Hearst Museum.They challenge the Berkeley anthropologists to defend the ethical guidelines that gave them the right to collect Native artifacts and Native remains while making Ishi perform before grade school children next to a room filled with skulls, bones, and skeletons.

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Yahi Chorus and Ishi Playmates: FREE ISHI NOW OPEN THE DOORS OF THE HEARST MUSEUM AND KROEBER HALL NOW RELEASE ALL NATIVE REMAINS WHITE MAN—CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS FREE ISHI NOW FREE THE BONES OF ISIHI’S ANCESTORS

Act two: Scene two: Bones and graves Mary Ashe Miller, San Francisco Examiner: Well, it happened. Today, the protest in Golden Gate Park over Ishi turned into a public melee involving the governor, the mayor, the university president, Phoebe Hearst, and Gerald Vizenor. Before the day is over, the Solar Dancers join forces with Ishi’s friends on Sproul Plaza and march to the president’s house.Ten members of SSSD and three of Ishi’s park friends are jailed for obstructing justice. Narrator: The next day, Ishi is forced to join the anthropologists on a trip into Yahi country, his so-called homeland (T. Kroeber, 1961, p. 205). Stage Right: Spotlight shines on a large poster Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) HR.5237—101st Congress (1989–1990):https://www.congress.gov/bill/101stcongress/house-bill/5237 The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) provides for the ownership or control of Native American cultural items (human remains and objects) excavated or discovered on Federal or tribal lands. Vests ownership or control of human remains and associated funerary objects: (1) in the lineal descendants of the Native American; or (2) if the lineal descendants cannot be ascertained, or the funerary objects and so forth are unassociated, in the Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization on whose land the remains or objects were located. The Act (1) allows the intentional removal from or excavation of Native American cultural items from Federal or tribal lands for discovery or study…; (2) prohibits the purchase, sale, use for profit, or transport for sale or profit of Native American human remains or cultural objects obtained without the right of possession to such objects. Prescribes criminal penalties for violations;

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(3) directs Federal agencies and museums with possession or control over holdings or collections of Native American human remains and funerary objects to inventory them, identify their geographic and cultural affiliation, and notify the affected Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organization; (4) requires each Federal agency or museum with possession or control over such holdings or collections to provide a written summary of unassociated objects; (5) provides that if the cultural affiliation with a particular Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization is established, the entity with possession or control over such items, upon request, shall expedite the return of such items unless they are needed to complete a specific scientific study, in which case the items shall be returned after the completion of the study; (6) provides that when such a request is made, the burden shall be upon the appropriate entity to prove by a preponderance of the evidence their right to possess such items; (7) directs the Secretary of the Interior to establish a committee to: (1) monitor and review the implementation of such inventory and identification process and repatriation activities; (2) facilitate resolution of disputes relating to the return of remains and objects; (3) consult with Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations on matters within the scope of the work of the committee; and (4) compile an inventory of unidentifiable human remains in the possession or control of Federal agencies and museums and recommend specific actions for developing a process for their disposition; (8) authorizes the Secretary to assess a civil penalty against any museum that fails to comply with this Act; (9) authorizes the Secretary to make grants to: (1) assist Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations in the repatriation of such items; and (2) assist museums in conducting such inventories and identification; and (10) authorizes appropriations. Coyote, Yahi Chorus, and Ishi Playmates: One more time: FREE THE BONES OF ISIHI’S ANCESTORS

Act two: Scene three: Red power San Francisco Solar Dancers: Don’t give too much credit to the US Congress. Every one of their guidelines can be traced back to arguments we have been making for decades (see Hoxie, 2001). Let’s hear it for: Sovereign rights Protected ruins Protected artifacts Native civil rights, Red power Self-determination Bodies, human remains, funerary objects

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Human mascots Human cultures Bodies, bones, skulls bought and sold *** NB: The NAGPRA arguments are contained in the 1906 American Antiquities Act, which protected prehistoric Indian ruins and artifacts; the 1924 Indian New Deal program and 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (Hoxie, 2001); the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act; the 1969 birth of the Native American Red Power Movement (Smith and Warrior, 1996; the 1969–1971 Occupations of Alcatraz and Wounded Knee; the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975). *** San Francisco Solar Dancers (cont’d): We demand to be heard, to be honored. We’ve been ignored for too long. Today, we are taking our protest into the heart of the Berkeley campus. Mr. University President, we are back! Ishi and Playmates: OPEN THE DOORS OF THE HEARST MUSEUM LET THE SUN SHINE ON NATIVE REMAINS RELEASE ALL NATIVE REMAINS WHITE MAN—CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS FREE THE BONES OF ISIHI’S ANCESTORS ***

Act three: Scene one: Gentle Ishi: A letter from the past Announcer: Dear audience, allow me to read from Exhibit A. Who Is Ishi? The Zumwalt-Kroeber Letter April 2, 1962 Mrs. Alfred Kroeber c/o University of California Berkeley, California My dear Mrs. Kroeber, Perhaps few readers of your charming book about Ishi have the pleasant memories that I do. For me, Ishi was a hero and a delightful playmate. We spent hours in the park by the lake. He taught me to shoot lizards, how to call quail and wild ducks, stalk rabbits, wade and catch frogs, and roam at will. He was kind and gentle, patient, understanding, given to laughter. He

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was my favorite childhood playmate. We gathered bird feathers together. He waited for me after school on the corner of 11th Avenue and Lake Street.We rode the streetcars together. He would pick me up like a sack of potatoes. We climbed trees and looked into bird nests. We played marbles together, made arrows, ate hardboiled eggs on picnics, made watercress sandwiches, picked wild strawberries, rode the ferry across the bay to Sausalito. We played Indian together; he even submitted to being scalped and burned at the stake. Sometimes I was scalped and burned at the stake. Ishi (to Zumwalt Jr.): I never liked playing Indian. It was all I could take to just be an ordinary Yahi on Deer Creek. No playing white man’s Indian there. I saw my friends and family members burned, scalped, shot at, and murdered. Zumwalt Jr. (in present): Ishi, we were just playing at being pretend Indians (Deloria, 2004, 1969/1988). Ishi: Pretend, real, or red, white settlers killed Yahi. Zumwalt Jr. (in Kroeber letter): We loved Ishi. Ishi loved the natural world. He showed us how to be in nature. I can recall one afternoon when we both lay nose to nose on the ground smelling the earth from different places around the lake so that I would learn how to tell one place from another by scent alone. Then Ishi drew an outline of the lake and marked from where each sample came (Zumwalt Jr., 2003, p. 17, paraphrase). Just writing about Ishi makes me see him again and miss him even more. In my mind’s eye, he is always grinning, smiling, laughing; to me, he is always there, my best childhood playmate. Ishi (to Zumwalt Jr.): You were my best friend too. You are too kind. My family taught me how to be in nature. All the things we did together in the park were things I learned from my parents along Deer Creek.When Dr. Kroeber brought me to the museum, I immediately longed for my old life: swimming with the salmon in the cold water of Banya Creek, looking at the flowers and colorful butterflies at Round Meadow, seeing the sunrises over the walls of the canyon. When they brought me to the city, I left all of this behind. Then I discovered Fred, the Golden Gate Park, Jerry and Billy, Kite, Poyser, and a new world opened up for me—new friends, new playmates.

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Zumwalt Jr. (in Kroeber letter): Mrs. Kroeber, through your book, you have brought Ishi back alive for me. It is as if he were a family member who never left. (2003, pp. 11–12, 14, 16, 17 paraphrase). Thank you. Sincerely yours, Fred H. Zumwalt Jr. (2003, pp. 11–12). Theodora Kroeber: Thank you, Mr. Zumwalt.Your letter tells me I did the right thing in writing Ishi’s story. (see Kroeber, 1961, photo inserts between pp. 132–134). And they did! San Francisco Solar Dancers: Yes, but whose Ishi story did you tell? Your husband’s version or Ishi’s? *** (back to the present)

Act three: Scene three: Ishi dreams, Ishi is unhappy Lilly: Ishi, what is wrong? You look unhappy. Let us give you a party. No, wait, we have some protesting to do. Ishi: I’m too sad for a party. I had a bad dream about the future. The souls of my dead mother, father, and sister spoke to me. They said it is not safe to return to the Land of the Dead. If you go back, you will become ill, and you will die. Lilly: Nonsense. Party time, baby! Wile E. Coyote: They’ll trick you into believing this is a good thing to do. Yahi Chorus: Don’t go, Ishi. Don’t go. Mr. Kite: Come with me to the meadow in the park. We’ll fly a beautiful kite and be free and play with Jerry and Billy.

Ishi the happy Indian and urban warrior  47

Lilly: Boys, this is not enough. You can stick your heads in the sand and play with puppy dogs and chipmunks and fly kites, but you need an organized plan to oppose these crazy anthropologists. They don’t own Ishi. They can’t just take him back to his homeland because they want to do their ethnoeverything of the southern Yahi. Yahi Chorus: Right on, Lil! Right on.You can’t trust Saltu (Ishi’s word for white people) (Kroeber, 1961, p. 137). Lilly: Okay, the plan: we need to team up with Fred, Ishi, and their playmates. We have one day to make our escape. We need to enlist the help of the San Francisco Solar Dancers. Yahi Chorus: We’re on it! Wile E. Coyote: Who gave Kroeber and the anthros the right to take Ishi into custody, put him on stage, dress him in a white man’s costume, and demand he perform for schoolchildren. Is this what they call salvage anthropology—saving a culture from disappearing by turning it into a spectacle, an imitation of the real. Yahi Chorus: It was cruel. Ishi is a shy man. They turned him into the public performer they wanted him to be—primitive man as hunter, maker of fire and bows and arrows. They were marketing his cultural identity. BUY YOUR TICKETS, COME SEE ISHI, THE LAST WILD INDIAN IN NORTH AMERICA, PERFORM IN A CAGE. Wile E. Coyote: We need to do to them what they did to Ishi. HEY, WHITE MAN, CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS! ***

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Tribal elders march back on stage and burn their ceremonial costumes. In the theater lobby, Blue Welcome sets fire to her food truck. Ishi’s playmates burn an efficacy of Alfred Kroeber in front of their play teepee. Solar Dancers set fire to a plaque honoring Phoebe Hearst. Fred Day covers the story for the Hearst newspapers. Ishi and Boots stand offstage, celebrating the destruction as an affirmation of a turning point in their relationship with the Hearst and Kroeber families. Lights, curtain lowers, actors take a bow, audience applauds.

4 ISHI IN THE WILDERNESS Anatomy of a life and a death (1861–1916)

Prologue Narrator (to the audience): Good evening. Tonight, we will take a trip with Ishi into the wilderness. Remember, early 20th-century anthropology left the comforting feeling yet false impression that countless “untouched,” “unspoiled” tribes around the world flourished in their full exotic glory. This was Kroeber’s view of Ishi and his culture. This is the basis of salvage anthropology (Starn, 2004, p. 140, paraphrase). Much of what is known about Ishi comes from what was learned during a camping trip with him to his homeland in May of 1914. It is an episodic story, incomplete and loosely strung together (Kroeber, 1961, p. 10). Alfred Kroeber (to the audience and Ishi): Ishi, you are a part of history. No one else can show how the Yahi story is the story of mankind. This is why we are taking this trip—to recreate the experiences of an unspoiled primitive (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 212–213, paraphrase). Coyote: White man nonsense. In fact, you killed Ishi. Never forget:

Custer died for your sins San Francisco Solar Dancers (to the audience): We gather here today to honor and tell the story of Ishi’s continuing struggles against the colonial powers represented by Alfred Kroeber and the state of

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California. Having escaped Kroeber’s momentary grip, Ishi and his friend Boots want to find their way home but no longer know where home is. Spotlight shines on a life-size staged photo of Ishi as he appeared after his capture on August 4, 1911 (Kroeber, 1961, p. 132 photo of Ishi in Clifford, 2013, p. 95) *** Narrator as Announcer (to the audience): Distinguished guests, dear readers, welcome. The players in the Vanishing Indian Traveling Medicine Minstrel Show present selections from their new three-act play Ishi and the Anthros, or Minstrels No More. Our performers have teamed up with the San Francisco Solar Dancers to tell their story about the trials and tribulations of Ishi, who continues his struggles with the anthros. Key events in this three-act play occur from May 4–May 24, 1914, during an expedition to Ishi’s homeland led by Albert Kroeber and his cronies. The trip to the homeland was more than a spring outing. Evidence gathered during this adventure supported the key argument in the Ishi narrative; namely, he was a happy, assimilated Indian who could now, as a result of his experiences with Kroeber and museum staff, move back and forth between the Neolithic and the contemporary worlds. But tragedy lurks. Ishi will die of TB within two years, his body dissected and cremated, and his brain shipped to the Smithsonian. Photographs from the trip indicate that Kroeber staged a version of Ishi that Ishi himself never knew (Starn, 2004, p. 141). Our performers undo the happy Ishi narrative, showing how Kroeber turned Ishi into the kind of Indian his theory required; Ishi, the trickster, plays along.The story unfolds in three acts. Narrator: Sit back and enjoy. *** Stage Right: Spotlight shines on a diorama with multiple photographs of Ishi taken before and after the May 1914 wilderness trip. • •

•

Three members of the San Francisco Solar Dancers return, marching in a small circle waving a banner “FREE ISHI NOW.” Indians in costumes from several Northern California tribes return to engage with other Solar Dancers in mock battle, shouting: “INDIANS ARE THE INVENTION OF COLONISTS AND MISSIONARIES” (Vizenor, 2000, p. 13). Fancy dancers make their own music.

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•

•

An evangelist preaches from the Vanishing Indian Traveling Medicine Minstrel Show wagon, while an assistant sells tickets to an evening performance of Ishi pretenders. A cast of Ishi pretenders dressed in various Ishi costumes dance across the stage while hiding their faces behind Ishi masks (from the cover of Kroeber, 1961). Each pretender dances with a life-size Ishi puppet figure made of plaster and papier-mâché. ***

Will the real Ishi please stand up? *** Stage Right: The Yahi Chorus dances across the stage. Lights dim, the curtain comes down, and the audience applauds.

Act one: Scene one: The anthros are back at it Ghost of Ishi: Getting back to the present. Ishi, despite the help of the San Francisco Solar Dancers, failed to escape the grasp of Alfred Kroeber and his cronies. The anthros continue to insist that he be their guide for a trip into Yahi country (Kroeber, 1961, p. 205). Indiana Jones: Now this is my kind of story! Dateline: HEADLINE: San Francisco Examiner: “The Anthros are doing it again,” Mary Ashe Miller, April 14, 1914. Fictional text: Alfred Kroeber and his heartless cronies,Waterman and Pope, want to take Ishi, their pet Indian, on a field trip–vacation to the Land of Dead Souls, the wilderness where members of his family were murdered. Have these professors no compassion? They claim the trip will produce valuable scientific findings. They claim there are hidden mysteries in Ishi’s brain. Apparently, he can count to five, although he understands no English. Ishi continues to be the cause célèbre of the San Francisco Solar Dancers. Hold on readers, this may be a rough ride. San Francisco Solar Dancers: Go, Ishi. We got your back. Don’t trust the white man. Yahi Chorus: Praise the sacred spirit!

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Boots: No worries. Remember, Ishi was the original post-Indian trickster. He could be whoever you wanted him to be. He was a master of pretense. From the day of his capture up to the present, he has played along with Alfred and his buddies, pretending to be the kind of Iron Age Indian they want him to be (Vizenor, 2000). *** Will the real Ishi please stand up? ***

Act one, Scene two: The anthros get back to nature Theodora: And so, the year was 1914. Spring was in the air, sweeping through the windows into the museum workrooms. Ishi’s three friends—Big Chiep (Kroeber), Watamany (Waterman), Popey (Pope)—were restless. But where were they to go together with Ishi? Where better to go than back to Yahi country, Mill Creek, Ishi’s homeland? It would be good for Ishi. He would thrive in the smell of the pines, the taste of fresh salmon and deer, the thrust of a spear, the feel of the canon trails against his bare feet (Kroeber, 1961, p. 206). Coyote: Be warned. To repeat the story told by T. Kroeber is not Ishi’s version; it comes from Pope, Kroeber, and Waterman (Kroeber, 1961, p. 209; the words Ishi speaks in this play, as in previous chapters, are paraphrases, words Ishi might of spoken or were attributed to him). Ishi Two: Crazy, idea this treep (trip). There are no houses, chairs, beds, or food on Mill Creek, too many bad memories. Besides, it is cold (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 205–206). Kroeber: Nonsense. It will be fun.You can ride a horse, shoot your bow and arrow, kill a deer, fish for salmon.You can help us map Yahi country, give us a sense of what it means to be an Indian, reenact stalking a deer, spear a salmon, teach us place and plant names, show us village sites, caves, and the places where you hid from the authorities.

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Ishi One: I don’t want to ride a horse, or kill a deer, or build a fire, or climb rock walls. I don’t do these things anymore. I cannot go back to the Land of Dead Souls where my ancestors live, the place I walked away from. No tell my family story. No. Kroeber: You will be able to take us step by step into your world and show us how to feel one Indian’s world with some accuracy and fullness (Kroeber, 1961, p. 212). Ishi One: I don’t care! Coyote: Don’t let them turn you into their imaginary last wild Indian in North America.

Act one: Scene three: Anthros pack for trip Narrator: And so preparations were made. Trunks were packed with clothing, cooking utensils, blankets, tools, cameras, and stored in the old bones room at the museum. Ishi packed and carried his bow, arrows, fire drill, and clothing. Ishi One: Do not store in a room of dead spirits. Dead spirits are angry over having their bones stored in a museum. Dead spirits get into supplies. Kroeber: Nonsense. Every article is stored in a sealed container. No evil spirit can break in. There is nothing to worry about. Don’t be silly. Ishi One: I do not believe you; the spirits are very strong. Narrator: But before the trip could begin, permission to kill a deer, not study a Yahi, had to be granted. Coyote: Remember, as a ward of the Federal Indian Bureau in Washington, DC, Ishi had been placed under Kroeber’s supervision.

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San Francisco Solar Dancers: Talk about a colonial apparatus controlling Indigenous persons! Coyote: I guess they did not have Institutional Review Boards (IRB) in those days, no ethical guidelines outlining the rights of human subjects. But they cared about deer. Ha-ha. Fish and Game Commission: To whom it may concern (Kroeber. 1961, p. 207): In coordination with the law, permission is hereby granted to the Department of Anthropology by the University of California acting through its agents A. L. Kroeber, T. Waterman, and S. Pope to take for scientific purposes one male deer at any time and place. Such deer can be transported and exhibited for scientific purposes. Such a deer is exempted from seizure by the state by order of the board. University Research Board (summarized by T. Waterman): This trip is hereby authorized because of its contributions to ethnography and ethnobotany (Kroeber, 1961 p. 208). Ishi Two: What about my rights? Who is protecting me? Am I to be exhibited like a deer? Coyote: The sacred spirits and the San Francisco Solar Dancers are your best hope.

Act one: Scene four: Fast forward: A ghost speaks up and perhaps Saves Ishi’s Soul Ghost of Ishi (offstage): Don’t go with the anthros. If you could look into the future, you would learn that within a few months of returning from the wilderness (December 1914), you would come down with the cough of TB and die 15 months later (March 25, 1916). You had your first cold shortly after you were brought to the museum and your first pneumonia the same winter (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 232–233). You have been getting sick ever since you got here. Don’t forget those Eskimos the admiral brought to New York in 1897 from the North Pole. Four of the six died of TB. They were accused of spreading the disease among their people. Ishi One: I do not want to go.

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Act two: Scene one: The ship sets sail Narrator: Ishi’s wishes are ignored. The trip is cleared. Kroeber and the entourage take the ferry across the bay to the train station in Oakland. Word is leaked to the press. A crowd gathers as the professor and his Indian board the train. Playing the good Indian, Ishi waves to the crowd and poses for his picture. His cases and arrows are stored in the train aisles. Fellow passengers stare at Ishi. The train reaches high country the next morning. Ishi tips the porter as he steps off the train. He is met by the press and photographers and welcomed back to his country by Mr. Apperson, a local rancher who will be their guide (Kroeber, 1961, pp. 208–209). Ishi One: Apperson was an old enemy. He and his family lived on our land. He was one of the white men who could not be trusted. Coyote: Welcome home, Ishi. Don’t trust a white man. Ishi One: I do not want to be here.

Act two: Scene three: Kroeber photographs Ishi Narrator: We know one version of Ishi-the-primitive-in-the-wilderness expedition through Kroeber’s photographs. Theodora: Ishi reverted to his native undress, wearing only a breechclout, while Kroeber, Pope, and Waterman took to full undress (19601, p. 210). Ishi Two: Those photos of Kroeber, Pope, and Waterman in full undress are not in the book; rather, Kroeber is shown fully dressed, wearing a sports jacket, hunting boots, and dress shirt (p. 135). I’m wearing only a breechclout. Orin Starn: I recall those photographs Alfred Kroeber took of Ishi on their 1914 return trip to Deer Creek. Although Ishi preferred a shirt, tie, and shoes by then, Kroeber photographed him wearing a primitive’s loincloth in his old haunts. This is a dubious touch, as Ishi probably never wore skins or went naked.

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Ishi One: Ishi will not go naked. Starn: Kroeber had Ishi pose semi-naked while tying a forked wood spearpoint to a harpoon, flaking an obsidian arrowhead. In fact, Yahi harpoons were tipped iron nails recovered from settler garbage dumps. The arrowheads were made from broken window glass. Ishi wore scavenged settler clothing. Kroeber created an imaginary Ishi (Starn, 205, p. 141). Fatimah Tobing Rony: I call this “taxidermy” because these images give the illusion of life to cultures that have been destroyed (Starn, 2004, p. 141, paraphrase). Coyote: The life Kroeber had Ishi reenact for his camera, primitive, natural picturesque, and primordial, was a life Ishi probably never fully knew, nor did the photographs give any hint of the traumatic conditions of Yahi survival in the canyon, including their ongoing struggles and conflicts with murderous white settlers (Starn, 2004, p. 141). Ishi Two: These pictures are not the real me. I played along for the professor (Kroeber, 1961, p. 205, paraphrase).

Act two: Scene four: The anthros play Indian with Ishi Kroeber: Despite his grumbling, during this time in his old homeland, Ishi was in full health. He was the life of our little party, singing Yahi songs, dancing by the fireside, swimming in Deer Creek, spearing salmon. He was his happiest on this trip. He was the Ishi I came to love like a brother. Ishi Two: So he says! San Francisco Solar Dancers: Kroeber, you were happy because your pet Indian was playing Indian for you. Ishi Two: I was not happy. The smiles are all pretend. This why Professor Vizenor calls me a trickster. I played the white man’s version of Ishi being a primitive.

Alfred and Theodora Kroeber sitting on steps, 1925. (courtesy of the Bancroft Library and the Regents of the University of California)

PLATE 1 

Ishi, full face, 1914 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5768)

PLATE 2 

Ishi at the time of his capture, 1911 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5910)

PLATE 3 

Ishi seated beside hut at Museum, 1914 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5891)

PLATE 4 

Left to right: Sam Batwi, A. L. Kroeber, Ishi, 1911 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 13-944)

PLATE 5 

Ishi making a bow, 1914 (courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California; catalog no. 15-5798)

PLATE 6 

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James Clifford: They made a photographic record of the trip, emphasizing Ishi’s primitiveness (Clifford, 2013, p. 95). He performed for them in front of their camera. Ishi fire making. Ishi adzing juniper wood for a bow. Kroeber, Pope, and Watermansing “Gunga Dinn” and “Mandalay” around the campfire. The anthros swim naked in Deer Creek: Ishi uncovers the bones of a bear paw. Ishi and Pope kill a deer. Kroeber and Pope kill a rattlesnake. Anthros explore caves, hike to abandoned village sites, use ropes to swing across Deer Creek, scale canyon walls, draw maps of Yahi ancestral territory with burial sites and native place names, fill notebooks with the names of plants and herbs. *** Ishi One: Ishi is ready to go home now. I want to go back to the museum. Professor does not want to leave, having too much fun playing at being pretend Indian. Boots: Sadly, the time to return home has arrived (Kroeber, 1961, p. 216).

Act two: Scene five: Slow train leaves deer creek Yahi Chorus: Everyone in Vina and Oroville who could get to the train station crowded the platform to see Ishi off. He smiled, shook hands, posed for pictures, gave a demonstration of shooting with bow and arrows, waved to the crowd, posed once more, and shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen! Goodbye!” (Kroeber, 1961, p. 220). And back to his museum he goes. San Francisco Solar Dancers: Hey, say what you may, but he was a ward of the government, no matter how many photographs they took of him in the wilderness. They pretended he was a free man. But that was garbage. They said he had the mind of a child and was childlike and unable to live on his own.

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Indian Commissioner: I told him he was free to return to Deer Creek where he could live with other Indians at government expense. Yahi Chorus: There were at least three tribes Ishi could have been referred to: the Wintu, the Pit River Maidu, and the Redding Rancheria. More than 60 years later, the Pit River Maidu and the Redding Rancheria would lead repatriation efforts to return Ishi’s remains directly to them, but they were never contacted by Alfred Kroeber (Bistman, 2003, p. 148; Starn, 2004, p. 106). Coyote: They were not contacted when Ishi was originally captured. To have done so would have contradicted the assertion that he was the last wild Indian in North America. Ishi One: I will not go back. Given what they have done to me, I prefer to live like a white man in my museum house. This is where I will grow old and die (Kroeber, 1961, p. 218). Call it what you want, Stockholm syndrome, whatever—I’m too tired to resist. I do identify with my capturers and this new life. I’ve seen too much. I cannot go back to my old life. Indian Commissioner: He is barely able to conform to the customs of civilized life. He can barely be trained to perform simple manual labor. He can do janitor work. He is like a child in his innocence. He has the mind of a six-year-old child (Kroeber, 1961, p. 218). He is free to go back to Deer Creek. Alfred Kroeber: He has taken readily to civilization and slowly learned English and supports himself as an assistant janitor in the museum. He is free to return to his old homeland but much prefers to live in the museum (Kroeber, 1961, p. 219). Yahi Chorus: Supports himself? Free to leave? He was a prisoner of the state.

Act two: Scene six: Ishi dies: Death in a museum Yahi Chorus: And so it was decided. Ishi would return to his life in the museum to die on March 25, 1916, in the Pacific Island exhibit room, the sunniest room in the museum (Kroeber, 1961, p. 233).

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San Francisco Solar Dancers: In early December, he came down with a hacking cough, the beginning of active TB. The disease was never arrested. In late August of 1915, on the dawn of World War One, Kroeber left for Europe. He never saw Ishi alive again. Because of his German last name. Kroeber’s person and baggage were searched each time he crossed a national border, but he maintained contact with Pope, Gifford, and Waterman and sent letters to Ishi (Kroeber, 1970, p. 98). Coyote: The events accompanying Ishi’s last days and its telling are summarized below in Figure One. (pp. xxx–xxx). *** Insert: Spotlight shines on Figure One, Ishi’s Last Days *** Ishi Three: It is a painful story, one of betrayal, deception, gaps, contradictions, and some regret. Summer had not gone well upon my return from my homeland. I lived with the Waterman’s in Berkeley and worked with Edward Sapir in order to record linguistic material on the Yahi language. San Francisco Solar Dancers: Was there no mercy? The man was obviously dying.They worked him to death. And what about all the so-called ethnography materials the expedition supposedly gathered, the materials that were used to justify the trip, the mysteries in his brain. What were they? Theodora Kroeber: Death came at noon, March 25, 1916, quick, sudden, a drifting off into deep sleep. It was the time of year when the new clover was in bloom and Deer Creek was swollen with the spring salmon run. It was a time of renewal, of rebirth (Kroeber, 1961, p. 233, paraphrase). Spotlight shines on Ishi’s death mask (Kroeber, 1961, p. 132). Coyote: To survive in the white man’s civilization obviously requires early and continuing immunization (Kroeber, 1961, p. 231). Something Ishi never received. The anthros killed our dear friend.

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Ishi Pretenders: Are you sure? There are six of us. Only the real Ishi knows who died and who escaped, who is real, who is pretend. But they can’t kill, dissect, cremate, or bury a pretend Ishi. Indiana Jones: Hey, he and the pretenders have fooled me for 40 years. Waterman: I killed Ishi by letting Sapir ride him so hard and by letting him sneak out of his lunches (Kroeber, 1961, p. 234). Yahi Chorus: They watched him die and then violated his wishes that he should reach the Land of the Dead properly prepared. We remember the story well. Against his wishes, there was an autopsy and dissection and cremation. Scheper-Hughes: Yes, they cremated his body and put his ashes in a black Pueblo jar in Mount Olive Cemetery (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 114; Kroeber, 1961, p. 235; Starn, 2004, 46). They put his brain in a jar of formaldehyde, which sat on a shelf in Kroeber’s office until Kroeber mailed it to the Smithsonian.They claimed it contained hidden mysteries. Coyote: I thought Kroeber opposed an autopsy. Ishi Three: Dissection goes against Yahi practice. We believe that a person makes his or her way to the upper world after death through a hole in the sky on a rope. Nobody can see into the brain. Who do they think they are anyway? Coyote: Theodora did not say Ishi’s brain was sent to the Smithsonian.Was she trying to protect her husband? Did he not tell her? Did someone even keep a record of the location of the brain and its treatment? Ghost of Ishi: Remember, it will be hard to even get to the Land of Lost Souls after they cremate your body and bottle your brain. Dissection makes the journey impossible (Starn, 2004, p. 47). Coyote: Let’s talk about staging performances This is where the Ishi pretenders with their puppet look-alikes enter our play.Wearing white face, they will make it impossible to identify the real, pretend, and papier-mâché Ishi.

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Act two: Scene seven: Kroeber and Ishi’s brain Kroeber (March 24, 1916) to Gifford: Calm down, folks. I admit dissection should never have happened. I know it happened but that was a result of a miscommunication. I had insisted that there be no autopsy; it would lead to nothing of consequence. I insisted that upon death his body should be untouched and handled as little as possible. Cremation should follow at once; the hospital staff should be thanked; the ashes should then be buried in a cemetery urn. We’ll pay for the costs of a cemetery plot (Kroeber, 1961, p. 233). If there is any talk of the interests of science, science can go to hell. Nothing of interest can be learned; we have hundreds of Indian skeletons in our museum that nobody ever comes near to study. Coyote: So why do you save those bones and skeletons in your museum? Waterman (March 30, 1916) to Kroeber: Your instructions were received too late; a simple autopsy was performed, a compromise between science and sentiment. His brain is in a jar of formaldehyde on a shelf in your office. Smithsonian to Kroeber (December 30, 1916; Starn, p. 158): Referring to your letter of October 27, 1916, the National Museum will be very glad to receive the brain of Ishi, which you offer to present, and I will ask you to forward it by express, collect. San Francisco Solar Dancers: We have to step in here. We are filing an injunction with the courts, stopping this process before it gets started. Indiana Jones: Let me help. We can help Ishi escape. With our pretend and fake Ishi’s, we will create confusion and take the real Ishi into hiding. Kroeber will never know the difference. Ishi: I want to get back to the museum, my new home. This trip to my homeland has been too painful. It has led me to relive my family’s death, and it has been awful. Ghost of Ishi: I am the curse of the Yahi.You will never escape the white man and his culture. His psychoanalysis will not help you. You will never rest until your ashes and your soul return to the sacred Yahi homeland that no white man has

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ever seen. It takes the spirit released by the funeral flames and five risings and settings of the Sun to travel west down the Trail of the Dead to the land of the Yahi ancestors (T. Kroeber, 1970, p. 92). Coyote: Atrocity! Tell me more. In a coffin, they placed his sacred possessions: bows, five arrows, a basket of meal, a box of shell bead money, a purse of tobacco, some obsidian flakes. At the burial site, the inscription read ISHI, THE LAST YANA INDIAN, 1916 (Kroeber, 1961, p. 236). Ghost of Ishi: But was it the real me or a pretend Ishi? Indiana Jones: No way to tell. Rumor has it, the real Ishi has been living under disguise with the Pit River Maidu and the Redding Rancheria since late March 1916. His soul has been safe all these years. San Francisco Solar Dancers: They say that when he died, he left $520, money he had been paid as an assistant janitor in the museum. The public administrator took half for the state of California and donated the rest to the medical school where it was placed in a special fund to advance the science of healing, a science “for which he himself had great concern” (Kroeber, 1961, p. 237). Yahi Chorus: There was a public outcry. Letters expressed great sorrow and outrage; staff members were blamed for not taking better care, for exposing him to infection, making him live in a museum, not returning him to a native community. Hospital staff and high school students mourned his death. Then he seemed to fade from public attention, bit rumors and stories circulated about him in the various tribal communities in the Oroville area. Alfred Kroeber: He was my brother. Theodora Kroeber: He walked quietly out of the Neolithic world and then he was gone, the long journey from his ancient Yana homeland along Mill and Deer creeks to the land of the Yana dead completed (1961, p. 238). Narrator: And so Theodora ends her story of Ishi; his journey was complete.

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Epilogue Stage Right: Spotlight shines on a diorama with multiple photographs of Ishi taken before and after the May 1914 wilderness trip: • •

• •

•

Three members of the San Francisco Solar Dancers return, marching in a small circle waving a banner “FREE ISHI NOW.” Indians in costumes from several Northern California tribes return to engage with other Solar Dancers in mock battle, shouting, “INDIANS ARE THE INVENTION OF COLONISTS AND MISSIONARIES” (Vizenor, 2000, p. 13); Fancy dancers make their own music. An evangelist preaches from the Vanishing Indian Traveling Medicine Minstrel Show wagon, while an assistant sells tickets to an evening performance of Ishi pretenders. A cast of Ishi pretenders dressed in various Ishi costumes dance across the stage while hiding their faces behind Ishi masks (from the cover of Kroeber, 1961). Each pretender dances with a life-size Ishi puppet figure made of plaster and papier-mâché. ***

Will the real Ishi please stand up? *** San Francisco Solar Dancers: Free Ishi Now!!! Free Ishi Now!! Release all native bones now! Close Hearst Museum now. How long must we wait for an apology? How long? Custer died for your sins. FREE ISHI! THE END ***

Appendix: Ishi’s death, a chronology, and a dialogue A chronological summary of the events accompanying Ishi’s last days and its telling are given next. It is a painful story, one of betrayal, deception, and some regret. ***

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1913: Kroeber’s first wife, Henrietta, dies of TB, linking her death to Ishi’s. 1928: Kroeber marries Theodora Krakow Brown; she is his student. December 10, 1914–February 1, 1915: Ishi is hospitalized for 62 days, first TB diagnosis in early 1915. Summer 1915: Ishi does linguistic work with Edward Sapir. Ishi stays with the Waterman family in Berkeley. August 22, 1915: Ishi is hospitalized for six weeks and then moved to the Museum of Anthropology. August 28, 1915: Kroeber prepares for a trip to Europe, tells Waterman and Dr. Gifford that Ishi requires care and attention as a person, not a case. September 30, 1915: Ishi spends his last days in his room at the museum. March 18, 1916: Ishi is readmitted to the University of California (UC) Hospital with a high temperature. March 24, 1916: Kroeber, anticipating the end, tells Gifford that there should be no autopsy because it could result in general dissection. “We don’t need any more Indian skeletons. Get a plot in a public cemetery. There is no objection to a death mask. If there is any talk about the interests in science, science go to hell. Nothing of scientific value is involved. We have hundreds of Indian skeletons that nobody comes to study; the only interest in the case would be romantic morbid nature” (Kroeber, 1961, p. 234). Coyote: Aren’t you a little late with instructions? And callous? March 25, 1916: Ishi dies at UC Hospital. An autopsy and dissection are performed against Ishi’s wishes and Kroeber’s directions. His brain is removed, weighed, examined, and preserved.The cause of death is advanced pulmonary TB. March 30, 1916: Gifford’s letter to Kroeber states his letter of March 24 arrived too late. There was an autopsy, and his brain was preserved. Pope and Waterman argued that the world needed to learn as much as possible about the causes of death (Kroeber, 1961 p. 235). Coyote So, Gifford did know Kroeber’s objections to the autopsy and dissection? March 31, 1916: Ishi’s cremated remains were placed in a small black pueblo jar in a niche in the columbarium at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Pope, Gifford, Waterman, and two visiting anthropologists attended the burial service His brain is placed in formaldehyde, a compromise between science and sentiment, and placed on a shelf in Kroeber’s office. 1961: In her book,Theodora Kroeber reports only that there was an autopsy of Ishi, and his brain was preserved, but she does not report the shipment of his brain to the Smithsonian by her husband. Kroeber dies a few months before Theodora’s book is published.

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October 27, 1916: Kroeber returns from Europe and writes the curator at the Smithsonian, Ales Hrdlicka. “I find that at his death last spring, Ishi’s brain was removed and preserved. There is no one here who can put it to scientific use. If you wish, I am glad to deposit it with the National Museum’s (brain) collection. It is on a shelf in my office. It is Ishi’s gift to science” (Starn, 2004, p. 159, paraphrase; Foster, 2003, p. 97) November 7, 1916: Smithsonian to Kroeber: We will very gladly receive and take care of Ishi’s brain. For shipping, it should be enclosed in an oilcloth and laid in a modest box (Starn, 2004, p. 159). January 5, 1917: Wells Fargo ships brain to Smithsonian—accession number 60884, museum number 298736. For 64 years, it is stored in a ground glass jar on the third floor of the Natural History Building. In 1981, it is moved to Hall 25, tank #6. In 1994, it is moved to Third Pod, Museum Support Center. “Nothing of scientific value comes from Hrdlick’s brain collection, all that is left is hundreds of pages of weights and measurements. Ishi’s brain was preserved and was still there in 1999 when discovered by Nancy Orin Starn (Starn, 2004, p. 184; Lakota Country Times,Vol. 6, No. 30: April 21–27: Rockafellar, 1999).

5 ISHI’S BRAIN The trickster’s revenge

Prologue Gerald Vizenor: Dear audience, tonight, we present a play about a painful topic: Ishi’s brain. Bear in mind that Ishi was the original trickster.The discovery of his brain turned his story upside down.Where had this final part of Ishi’s body been hiding all these years? In plain sight, of course. James Clifford: It is a California morality tale that is still unfolding. *** Stage: A spotlight shines on a diorama, a revolving set of scenes displaying artifacts made by Ishi exhibited in the Hearst Museum for the last 80 years. The exhibit includes primitive tools, arrowheads, arrows, bows, and spears. In the center of the table is a tall jar holding a faux brain labeled “Property of the Smithsonian:Vat Number 920050.” It continuously plays on a 40 x 60-foot, drop-down screen above a long table. On the table are additional specimens from the Hearst Museum, including native bones, masks, clothing, and skulls. Stage Left: A spotlight shines on life-size posters of Ishi, Alfred Kroeber,Theodora Kroeber, and Phoebe Hearst, benefactor of the Hearst Museum.

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On the diorama: • Three members of the San Francisco Solar Dancers march in a small circle waving a banner that says, “BRING ISHI HOME NOW.” • Three Solar Dancers dance a jig while holding a bag of bones labeled “No Longer Property of Hearst Museum.” • Indians in costumes from several Northern California tribes are engaged with other Solar Dancers in mock battle, shouting “INDIANS ARE THE INVENTION MISSIONARIES” (Vizenor 2000, p. 13).

OF

COLONISTS AND

***

Act one: Scene one: Theodora’s book and Ishi’s brain Narrator: Contrary to Theodora Kroeber, Ishi’s story did not end with the publication of her book in 1961. In fact, he has had multiple lives since he died.While he exploded into the national news when his brain was discovered in 1997 (Curtius, 1997), memorials honoring his memory started appearing in 1966 and have continued to appear to the present day (see https://www.facebook. com/pages/Ishi-the-Last-Yahi-Indian-Memorial/324030521037940 (Jiménez, 2017). Indeed, as previously noted, her book has been taught to millions of California middle schoolers since 1961. The discovery of the brain occasioned a chain reaction, including the repatriation of Ishi’s body by the Smithsonian to the Pit River Rancheria and the internment of Ishi’s brain and ashes in August 2000 in an undisclosed site in the Lassen National Forest; divisive discourse involving the Berkeley Anthropology Department, including criticisms of Alfred Kroeber and his treatment of Ishi; criticisms of Theodora’s book by Native California Indians; “fresh commentary, recrimination, and interpretation in the larger public discourse surrounding Ishi and his legacy (Feld, 2005, pp. 81, 93): The publication of Kroeber and Kroeber’s Ishi in Three Centuries (2003a) can be read as the official reaction of the Kroeber family to these events and criticisms; in a sense, it is the carrying on of the family legacy (Feld, 2005, p. 83). My thesis is simple. There has been no closure in the case (Feld, 2005; Sackman, 2011; preface). With Kroeber and Kroeber, it continues to spill over into this new century (also Clifford, 2013; Starn, 2015). With his new celebrity status, Ishi gains a voice he never had when he was on exhibit in the Hearst Museum. Call this Ishi’s revenge. It colors every page in Kroeber and Kroeber (2003).This book provides my road map into Ishi today. Accordingly, I start with the Kroebers and their responses to the aforementioned events and the criticisms of their mother’s book.

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Act one: Scene two: Repatriation Karl Kroeber: Mother’s book helped California Indians demand that public officials and the Smithsonian allow the repatriation of Ishi’s remains to his native land. Orin Starn: Backstory here, Karl? Karl: Yes, Orin! It is complicated. The repatriation movement gained momentum with the discovery ( thanks in no small part to your efforts and Art Angles) that Ishi’s brain had not been cremated in 1916 with the rest of his body, that it had been preserved all those years ago by the Smithsonian, while his ashes rested in an urn in a public cemetery in Colma, California. Orin: Backstory. Why did it take more than 80 years for the story of Ishi’s brain to come out? The last time there was any mention of Ishi’s brain was in Theodora’s book, where she said it was in a jar on the desk in your office. Alfred: This was a bad time for me. My first wife died in 1913, two years after Ishi came to us. Ishi, through his quiet presence, helped me come to grips with her death (Kroeber, 1970, p. 84). At the same time, I came to understand that Ishi depended on me and my strength as he adjusted to his new life in the museum. But I counted on him. I was still mourning her death when Ishi died. Ishi was my friend. I could never have talked about his brain with Theodora. Coyote: Get to the point Alfred. Alfred: It’s simple. Finding Ishi’s brain helped Native communities put pressure on the California legislature to allow the Pit River Rancheria to receive Ishi’s ashes and brain (Kroeber, 2003, p, xiii). Coyote: Didn’t it put a little pressure on the Berkeley Anthropology Department too (see Brandes, 2003; Speaker, 2003)? Karl: Let me take that up later after I address Orin’s main points.

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Orin: Karl, how can you or your father claim your mother’s book helped the repatriation movement when your dad hid the brain story?

Act one: Scene three: A backstory Orin: Before you answer, think a minute. Are you saying Ishi’s brain was the cause behind the Pit River demand for the return of Ishi’s ashes? Is this what you mean; it gave them the cause they needed? Karl: The backstory is complicated. Dad was asked to appear as an expert witness for the state by the Indian Claims Commission in its suit against Native California Indians who sought redress for past injustices, including lands lost to the government (2003, p. xv). He chose to speak on behalf of the Indians, not the government. He was very effective in this case. He was aided by Robert Heizer, a professor of anthropology at UC associated with the archaeological survey from 1948–1960. Professor Heizer was an expert on the history of the treatment of Native Americans by white settlers. He encouraged Mother to write Ishi’s story, as Father could not bring himself to do so. It took him more than 30 years to finally ask Mom to write Ishi’s story. He allowed her to use him as her key informant of Ishi’s last years (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 118). There were photographs of Ishi in our house when we were growing up. It was like he was a family member. Robert: I became very knowledgeable about the extermination of California Indians in the 19th century. Ishi and his family were victims of that violence. I helped Theodora write the first half of her book, which is one of the first histories of this violence. Her book was a damning condemnation of the extermination of Native peoples, but it was free of ideological didacticism and abstract words like “genocide” and “holocaust”. Karl: When I said Mom’s book helped California Indians secure the repatriation of Ishi’s remains, this is what I was referring to. Coyote: Does this mean your dad, despite his best intentions with Ishi, was part of this system of injustice and genocide?

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Act one: Scene four: California genocide Boots: Who put Ishi in a museum, and who sent his brain to the Smithsonian? Nancy Scheper-Hughes: Let me jump in. Yes! Alfred Kroeber was part of a genocidal apparatus that guided much of 20th-century ethnographic inquiry: “see, hear, record no evil” were the watchwords (2003, p. 100). Ishi was Northern California’s Anne Frank, cruelly hunted like a fox, family murdered, starved to death, forced to live in a museum room next to a room of skeletons and Native bones (Eargle, 2000, p. 11). Karl: HOLD ON! Mother brought Ishi alive, showing how his ancient culture allowed him to adapt so easily to civilized life (Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003, p. xvii). She focused on Ishi, the proud human being who successfully made the transition from primitive to civilized human being. He was an “irrefragably” civilized man. At his first formal dinner, days after arriving in San Francisco, he displayed perfect table manners. He was friendly and cordial to the visitors who came to the museum to watch him engage in ancient life-way skills (Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003, p. xvii). Vizenor: I’ll say it again. Ishi was the original trickster; he could be the Indian you wanted him to be. Boots: Two story lines here: Theodora’s civilized Ishi and Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s Ishi as holocaust victim. Coyote: Theodora’s Ishi is outside and inside history at the same time.Yes, his family was destroyed by white settlers, but he survived just long enough to die from TB, the white man’s disease. His impeccable manners and friendly manner did not protect him. Boots: He leaves the pages of Theodora’s book just as she wants us to remember him: “He walked quietly out of the Neolithic world and then he was gone, the long journey from the ancient Yana homeland to the land of the Yana dead completed, his leave-taking from his friends and their world as quiet as his own preferred and understated phrase of farewell.” “YOU STAY.”

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Coyote: But this is a fiction, a myth; he neither walked out of the Neolithic age quietly (he was headline news from day one) nor did he complete his leave-taking from the world of the living by returning to the land of the Yana dead when he died. Vizenor: His ashes and brain were in suspension for more than 80 years. He did not return to the land of the Yana until the summer of 2000. Coyote: Theodora perpetuated an untruth, a myth that remains to the present day. But before we get out of this space, let’s address the Berkeley department and this business of Kroeber, the Berkeley Department, and Ishi (Foster, 2003). Stanley Brandes: As is well-known, 80 years after the fact, Alfred Kroeber did not honor Ishi’s wishes that he not be autopsied and inexplicably arranged for his brain to be shipped to the Smithsonian. When pressed for an explanation, he said this happened during a bad time in his life!

Act one: Scene five: Los Angeles Times Narrator: Dear readers, one version of Ishi’s story began anew in 1997 when Mary Curtius, a Los Angeles Times writer, reported on the efforts of the Butte County Native American Cultural Committee (BCNACC) to repatriate Ishi’s ashes. The location of his brain was unknown. Coyote: Hold on. The Berkeley anthropologists may have stopped talking about Ishi but not the Native peoples and citizens of Oroville. Five years after Theodora’s book, the first of several memorials honoring Ishi appeared in Oroville. *** Stage Right: Spotlight: Key Moments in Ishi time line (1966–1999) 1966:Ten-year-old Jeff McInturf persuades his father, Haskell, to help him construct an Ishi memorial near the stockyard where Ishi was found in 1911 marked as a California Historical Landmark #809.

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1995–2020: People of Oroville continue to construct additional Ishi memorials near the site where he was originally arrested. 1986: Ishi Wilderness is set aside by the U.S. Congress. *** Insert: The Ishi Wilderness, named after Ishi, is a 41,339 acre (167 km2)1 wilderness area located on the Lassen National Forest in the Shasta Cascade foothills of Northern California, United States (Ishi Wilderness, n.d.). The wilderness was created when the US Congress passed the California Wilderness Act of 1984. The US Forest Service reminds visitors to the wilderness to respect the record of the Yahi/ Yana Indians who lived in the area for more than 3,000 years. *** 1992: Ishi: The Last Yahi (documentary). New Ishi memorials appear in Oroville (1992–1985). 1995: BCNACC and Art Angle are convinced it is time to put Ishi’s spirit to rest. They petition the federal government, and UC to help them relocate his remains. Repatriation is the issue. 1996: Gerald Vizenor proposes renaming Kroeber Hall Ishi Hall. After all, without Ishi, there would have been no Kroeber, no book, and probably no museum. 1997: May 14: First repatriation resolution. 1997: Curtius’s Los Angeles Times story on BCNACC efforts to repatriate Ishi’s body and remains. 1999: February 17: University of California San Francisco report on the whereabouts of Ishi’s brain. 1999: February 19: “Discovery” of Ishi’s brain leads to national news coverage. 2000: August 10: Ishi’s solemn burial at Butte County near Oroville. 2000: Oroville memorials: annual Ishi Gathering and Seminar established by Richard Burrill in 2000.

Mary Curtius: Prior evidence suggests the brain is held at UC. But in 1999, UC administrators could find no record of its existence. Art Angle: I have been searching for Ishi’s brain since 1977. It has to be somewhere. Now Nancy Rockafellar (University of California (UC), Berkeley historian) and Orin Starn have launched their own search.

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Orin Stern: I found Ishi’s brain. It has been in a vat at the Smithsonian since 1917. Art and I are requesting its return to the Maidu Indians (Feld, 2005, p. 82; Starn, 2005, p. 21; Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 99). Art Angle: Ishi needs to be returned to his homeland beneath Mount Lassen (Starn, 2005, p. 21). He must be returned and given a proper burial. Don’t forget, Alfred Kroeber shipped the brain to the Smithsonian in early 1917, but as we know, Theodora never reported that fact. Boots: How long must we wait for an apology? How long?

Act two: Scene one: Ishi, hero or victim? Coyote: Ishi became a local hero and remains so to this day, a symbol of California’s genocidal treatment of Native Americans, a focus of the repatriation movement, and, more recently, branches of the survivalist movements (note 5). Yahi Chorus: The discovery of his embalmed brain in the Smithsonian in January 1999 by Orin gives a second life to our old friend (Feld, 2005, p. 81; Starn. 2005; Foster, 2004, p. 90; Curtius, 1997). Boots: Three cheers for Orin and Art and Yahi leaders for requesting the Smithsonian return Ishi’s remains, including his brain. Coyote: We hold the Berkeley Department of Anthropology, and the university, and Kroeber responsible for Ishi’s treatment (Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003; Fagan, 2000). The Ishi Pretender Chorus: The Berkeley Department of Anthropology differs on how to handle this situation: embarrassment, denial, apology. Remember, Vizenor’s proposal was rejected.

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Gerald Vizenor: They should rename Kroeber Hall Ishi Hall. After all, without Ishi, the original post-Indian trickster, there would have been no Kroeber, no book, and probably no museum.

Act two: Scene two: The politics of justice: Ishi, hero or victim Berkeley Department (March 29, 1999; Brandes, 2003, p. 87): Assuming Responsibility for Ishi: The recent recovery of a famous California Indian’s brain from a Smithsonian warehouse has led the Department of Anthropology at the UC Berkeley to revisit and reflect on a troubling chapter of our history. Ishi’s family and cultural group, the Yahi Indians, were murdered as part of the genocide that characterized the influx of Western settlers in California in the 19th century. Ishi served as an informant to Alfred Kroeber. Despite his devotion to Ishi, Kroeber failed in his efforts to honor Ishi’s wishes not to be autopsied and he inexplicably arranged for Ishi’s brain to be shipped and curated at the Smithsonian. We are considering various ways to pay honor and respect to Ishi’s memory. Perhaps working with the people of Native California we can ensure that the next millennium well represent a new era in the relationship between indigenous peoples, anthropologists and the public (Brandes, 2003, pp. 87–88).

Vizenor: Not everybody at Berkeley agreed with this statement (Foster, 2003). Count me in that group. Foster (quoting from Berkeley Department of Anthropology, March 17. 1999). “Statement by Members of the Department of Anthropology on the Proper Treatment of Ishi’s Brain”: We now realize that early 20th century anthropologists engaged in “salvage anthropology,” a human science that grew up in the face of American genocide…we find abhorrent our faculty’s exploitation and betrayal of Ishi, a man who had already lost what was dear to him at the hands of European colonizers. We wish to express our profound distrust, anger, and sorrow for what happened to this tragic human being (Foster, 2003, p. 93, paraphrase).

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Vizenor: Critics criticized the conduct of Kroeber and his colleagues on the following grounds: 1 . They placed him in a museum where he was a major exhibit. 2. They brought him into San Francisco and its polluted air condemned him to death by TB. 3. They exploited and overworked him as a research subject. 4. Sending his brain to the Smithsonian violated a sacred trust; 5. Theodora relied on her husband as her main informant on Ishi’s life at the museum.This led her to produce an overly sentimental account that was insensitive to Ishi’s view of his life. It was dependent on and reflective of her husband’s sentimental attachment to Ishi.

Foster: Each of these charges can be refuted. (1) If not a museum, where should Ishi have been housed? Besides, he was fortunate to have close friends who could communicate with him; the happiest days in his life were during the field trip to his homeland. (2) He was not brought to a polluted area of the city. (3) Ishi was pleased to help record specimens of his language. (4) Medical autopsies were a commonplace practice. (5) Theodora’s book was as fair and accurate as it could have been given the materials she had to work with.

Act two: Scene three: Mea culpa won’t work Gifford to Kroeber (March 30, 1916): Mea culpa: I followed your instructions. Ishi should have a Christian burial. The only departures from your request were that a simple autopsy was performed and that the brain was preserved. His ashes were sent to Mount Olivet Cemetery and located in a simple urn. Art Angle: Mea culpa won’t work. Not quite so simple. First, his ashes were separated from his brain. WHERE IS HIS BRAIN? Second, he died outside his homeland. He needs to be returned to his homeland. They placed his ashes in a white man’s urn in a white man’s cemetery. It is in a niche in an ornate columbarium along with the ashes of hundreds of other people but no Native Americans. Taped organ music plays softly, plastic flowers adorn

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nearby niches (Curtius, 1997; Kroeber, 1961, p.). There is no Native presence here. Foster: And so ends Ishi’s story, or so it seems. Theodora quietly ends her 1961 book with his death. But it was not to be. His story was destined to, once again, become front-page news. How this happened is the topic of this three-act play. Yahi Chorus: You can’t keep Ishi and his ghost quiet. Coyote: It is commonly believed that Ishi lay dormant for 80 years until the early 1990s when it was revealed that his brain, long believed to have been cremated, lost, or stored at UC San Francisco was found by Orin Starn in vat number 920050 in storage at the Smithsonian where it had been since 1917 when it was shipped there by Alfred Kroeber (Foster, 2003, p. 90).

Act two: Scene four: Ishi’s ghost Yahi Chorus: You can’t silence Ishi and his ghost. Boots: Right on. His story began anew in 1997 when Mary Curtius, a Los Angeles Times writer, reported on the efforts of the BCNACC to repatriate Ishi’s ashes. The fate of his brain was unknown. Coyote: Mary did more than a report on BCNACC. Mary Curtius: Evidence suggests that Ishi’s brain is held at UC. But in 1999, UC administrators could find no record of its existence. Art Angle: I have been searching for Ishi’s brain since 1997. It has to be somewhere. Now Nancy Rockafellar (UC Berkeley historian) and Orin Starn have launched their own search. Orin Stern: I found Ishi’s brain! It has been in a vat at the Smithsonian since 1917. Art and I are requesting its return to the Maidu Indians (Feld, 2005, p. 82; ScheperHughes, 2003, p. 99; Starn, 2005, p. 21).

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Art Angle: Ishi needs to be returned to his homeland beneath Mount Lassen (Starn, 2005, p. 21). He must be returned and given a proper burial. He is incomplete; he is not in his homeland with the Yahi tribe. Don’t forget, Alfred Kroeber shipped the brain to the Smithsonian in early 1917, but Theodora never reported that fact. Boots: How long must we wait for an apology? How long? Coyote: With Theodora’s book, Ishi became a local hero for some people and remains so to this day. Alfred Kroeber: He was a hero.There is a romantic image here, a man of two cultures, a stalwart, a friend for all. Larry Meyer: Nonsense, I would not use hero. He was a survivor who needs to be treated with respect and sensitivity. He was also a symbol of California’s genocidal treatment of Native Americans, a focus of the repatriation movement and, more recently, branches of the survivalist movements. He puts a human face on Native Americans affected by the California genocide. Yahi Chorus: The discovery of his embalmed brain at the Smithsonian in January 1999 by Orin gives a second, maybe third, life to our old friend (Curtius, 1997; Field, 2005, p. 81; Foster, 2004, p. 90; Starn, 2005). Boots: Three cheers for Orin and Art and Yahi leaders for requesting the Smithsonian return Ishi’s remains, including his brain. Coyote: We hold the Berkeley Department of Anthropology, and the university, and Kroeber responsible for Ishi’s treatment (Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003; Fagan, 2000). The Ishi Pretender Chorus: The Berkeley Department of Anthropology differs on how to handle this situation: embarrassment, denial, apology. Remember, Vizenor’s proposal was rejected.

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Gerald Vizenor: They should rename Kroeber Hall Ishi Hall. After all, without Ishi, the original post-Indian trickster there would have been no Kroeber, no book, probably no museum. Boots: How long must we wait for an apology? How long? Lights curtain, soft drumming, audience cheers FREE ISHI NOW!

PART 2

6 ISHI’S ETHICS

Roy (offstage voice): What have they done with ethics? (2009, p. 3, paraphrase). Stage: A courtroom scene is projected on a drop-down screen. An actor dressed as Ishi in a suit and tie wearing judge’s robes presides over the courtroom scene. An exhibit table showcases artifacts made by Ishi and exhibited at the Hearst Museum. The exhibit includes primitive tools, arrowheads, arrows, bows, and spears. In the center of the table is a tall jar holding a faux brain labeled “Property of the Smithsonian: Vat Number 920050.” It plays on a 40 x 60-foot, drop-down screen above a long table. On the table are additional specimens from the Hearst Museum, including Native bones, masks, clothing, and skulls. Stage Left: A spotlight shines on life-size posters of Ishi.

Act one: Scene one: What’s in a name anyway? Narrator: Ishi’s story continues. Even though his body and soul have been returned to his homeland, his ghost continues to speak out, exploring different models of ethics, justice, healing, and forgiveness. Ishi as Judge: We are here today to explore what would be learned by placing Judge Kroeber on trial.

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Alfred: Give me a break, Ishi. I apologized for the mix-up with your brain and ashes. Boots: Not good enough, Alfred! When you were dressed up as a judge, you said you’d send me back to the wilderness if I don’t get a real name. I like being called Boots. Ishi Two: He kind of did the same thing to me. Thanks, Boots. There is the issue of my name. He has this thing about calling me the last wild Indian in North America. He insists on using the Yahi word for my name.

Alfred: Ishi, calm down. We can change your name.

Act one: Scene two: Ishi’s moral code Coyote: Tell me again how Ishi’s story happened. It is such a painful story. Is it all about his name? Was there even an ethic in place? What kind of ethic of care was operating? Cliff Christians: Tough question, Coyote. Ishi is right, it started with Kroeber giving him a name when Ishi refused to reveal his Yahi name. In Ishi’s day, anthropologists could pretty much do whatever they wanted to do. Remember, Ishi was a ward of the state who was placed under Kroeber’s supervision. Boots: Ishi the trickster had a sacred moral code involving honoring the dead, family, and life itself.This is why he would never reveal his Yahi name to a stranger. He did not want an autopsy or cremation when he died. His sacred code prohibited these practices. Ishi: When I died, I wanted to take a journey to the land of the ancestors.

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Gerald Vizenor: They denied Ishi and the members of his tribe participation in that ritual with no guilt whatsoever. Coyote: This is why we raised all the fuss about his brain and his ashes. We could not care less about the Berkeley anthropologists. Our ethic of care forgives. Ishi: I was taught to forgive. To have compassion, to have a strong moral commitment to healing, not punishing. Cliff: Only in the past decade has an ethic of care and healing connected to Indigenous models of restorative justice been given attention. Rather than searching for neutral principles to which all parties can appeal, like justice, Indigenous ethics rests on beliefs about the sacred, not punishment, but transformation, empowerment, social justice, and human rights (Christians, 2007, pp 57–59, paraphrase). Coyote: Right on, Cliff. There are more evolving, empowering methods of inquiry and a model of justice as healing. Ishi: Yes, healing the wounds of injustice, healing the pains of loss and physical punishment, restoring human dignity. Roy: Is this all about white guilt? Yahi Chorus: Hey, as far as we can tell, neither Alfred nor Theodora felt any guilt. Coyote: This is all about Indigenous persons creating a moral space framed by Indigenous values. Pure and simple. Ishi: Yes, yes. Each tribal community has its own sense of the sacred, of justice, of healing.

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Act one: Scene three: Decolonization and the sacred Claudio: Sometimes the word decolonization is used in this context. It is a metaphor for change. Roy: Ideally, it is nothing short of a call for the repatriation of Indigenous land and life, a demand for Indigenous sovereignty, a dismantling of the colonial apparatus. Yahi Chorus: It is also a call for restorative social justice, for justice as healing, not justice as punishment. Boots: It is more than the application of critical Indigenous pedagogy to the problems of colonialism. Most critically, it uses the facts and experiences of oppression to correct the damages of colonialism. Marcelo: It signals an end to innocence. Yet it is always utopic, a “call to work toward healing, unity, and cooperation” (Diversi, 2015). Sandy Grandy: The central crisis in the world today, as defined by a Red pedagogy, is spiritual, “rooted in the increasingly virulent relationship between human beings and the rest of nature” (2008, p. 354). Linda Smith: As a Māori woman from New Zealand, I understand decolonization and spirituality within a moral view of the person. The essence of a person has a genealogy that can be traced back to an Earth parent. A human person does not stand alone but shares with other animated beings relationships based on a shared “essence” of life…including the significance of place, of land, of landscape, of other things in the universe. Ishi: I understand this. This is why I could never reveal my sacred family name, why my ashes needed to be returned to my home in the mountains. Coyote: Spirituality is a critical site of resistance. It is one of the few parts of us that the West cannot decipher, cannot understand, and cannot control…yet (G. Smith, 2000, p. 74).

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Linda Smith: A respectful, radical performance pedagogy must honor these views of spirituality. Boots: This pedagogy demands a politics of hope, of loving, of caring nonviolence grounded in inclusive moral and spiritual terms.Yet it will not do to simply fold radical Indigenous discourse into critical theory and performance pedagogy. Margaret Kovach: Graham taught me that key terms in critical theory, such as emancipation, must be fitted to the values of local Indigenous communities.Terms like respect, mutuality, and honor must become part of the researcher’s moral fiber, not just scripts to be read and performed. By proactively framing participatory views of science, democracy, and community, Indigenous people can take control of their own fates and not be sidetracked by non-Indigenous others’ attempts to define their life situations (G. Smith, 2000). Yahi Chorus: Go, Graham!

Act one: Scene four: Repatriation. Healing. Returning what was stolen Gerald Vizenor: The Repatriation Act reflects a desire to heal, to honor the sacred, to acknowledge the damage that has been done to the person, to the earth, to the community and to return what was stolen. To get beyond guilt. Boots: About time. Coyote: The NAGPRA moves in several directions at the same time: it protects and requires the return of sacred objects, including those stolen or excavated from gravesites or Native lands; vests the ownership of these objects in the tribal community where the objects were located; and prohibits the sale, display, or marketing of such objects. Ishi: They did not have this act when I was placed in a museum,

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forced to live alongside skeletons and bones. They had the nerve to exhibit objects—clothing, blankets, tools—they stole from my campsite. They insisted I perform for schoolchildren and church groups and make objects that could be displayed for sale, marketed as authentic objects created by the last wild Indian in America. Yahi Chorus: Ishi, don’t forget Ishi. They cremated you, stored your brain in a jar, and mailed your brain to a museum. Judge: Hear, hear. Silence in my court! Boots (to A. Kroeber): How do you heal Ishi? Ishi died from the disease created by your colonial practices. His wounds could never be healed. This is your legacy. Gerald: Hear! Hear! Claudio: Can these damaged bodies of decolonization ever be repaired? Can you give me a cured Ishi? Marcelo: I have the duty to manipulate and transform the tale of colonization, using my life as a resource to show with a political purpose and experience to expand the sacredness of life.

Ishi Two and Three: Is it too late to do this with me? Am I beyond help? Will NAGPRA save me? Would it have saved me?

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Coyote: Probably not. After all, we are dealing with the anthros! Marcello and Claudio: We are all in-betweeners. Us, in-betweeners. Them, in-betweeners. You, in-betweener. Everybody, in-betweener. Writing from the flesh, exposing the vulnerability of our branded bodies. We are not ready to settle for a world without them, where everybody is and should be us (2009, p. 223).

Ishi: Is there a space here for me? Can I be an in-betweener? Amen

Act one: Scene five: Hearing silenced voices Gerald: The insertion of NAGPRA, Indigenous voices, epistemologies, ethics, and ways of knowing into Western colonial discourse changes the nature of the discourse itself (Kovach, 2009, p. 12, paraphrase). It creates a space where Indigenous knowledge and tribal-based methodologies—stories, oral histories, performances, rituals, art—can live, be saved, be staged, be disruptive, be empowering, and be community affirming. Margaret: I am taking Cree; it is my first class today. Walking into the First Nations University, there are Indians everywhere with shiny hair flying as both instructors and students race down the hall to class.The instructor is Plains Cree, he was raised with the language. He asks who is Cree.We put up our hands. He asks why we do not know our language. He points to me. I say adopted. He nods (2009, p. 113).

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Gerald: Margaret’s text brings a painful memory alive: Canada’s “Baby Scoop Era” (1945–1990). High numbers of Native babies and young children were taken from their Native mothers and placed for adoption in non-Native homes. In most cases, their Native heritage was denied by the adoptive parents. Margaret: The system prevented new mothers from accessing their own infants. This is why I did not learn how to speak Cree. Boots: Imagine Ishi in a space such as this; he was forced to speak a language that was not his.

Gerald: In order for the voices of the oppressed to be heard, they must be made visible through performance, performance true to their culture.

Boots: Ishi confronted Maggie’s dilemma. How does he perform in a way that is true to his Indigenous self? Consider this invitation: Indigenous Circle: We invite Indigenous scholars/researchers and their allies to the 2015 Indigenous Inquiries Circle (IIC) preconference at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.1 It is more important than ever that Indigenous voices and the voices of the ancestors embodied in the memory and the pedagogy of the land be heard. Indigenous paradigms, epistemologies, and methodologies more often than not travel outside binaries. The IIC will continue to create and hold a space for Indigenous scholars/researchers and their allies to continue the work of decolonization, Indigenize the academe and beyond, and continue the healing processes in regard to the traumas to the lands and Indigenous peoples from ongoing colonial practices. Yahi Chorus: Let the healing begin.

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Act two: Scene one: Ethics and the Indigenous I Gerald: We have been using the Ishi story to outline an Indigenous code of ethics, informed by a human rights and social justice agenda.

Boots: Fine, but whose human rights? Whose social justice? These are colonizing terms. We need an ethic that will offer an alternative to state-sponsored regulatory systems, including IRBs,2 in the United States and IRB counterparts in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere. It will be positive, not negative.

Boots: How do you get outside the colonizing trap? Coyote: You begin with the sacred Indigenous self, the spiritual center of the person. Ishi: Hopefully, this code will be based on a relational ethics, an ethics of care. It will use process consent agreements, rather than traditional informed consent forms (Ellis, 2009, 308–310).

Coyote: It will throw the word research out the window and replace it with a new code. Yahi Chorus (as a chant): Such a code will serve the following purposes:3 (1) Identify and implement moral practices that honor sovereign tribal history, including a set of core values and practices, such as social justice, human rights, integrity, belief in the dignity and worth of the person, compassion, love, empowerment, resistance, and dialogue. (2) Summarize the broad ethical principles that embody and enact these core values. These principles outline our ethical responsibilities to ourselves, to our students, to stakeholders, to our clients, to those we study, to the broader society,

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(3)

(4) (5) (6)

and to other professionals, as well as our conduct in practice, performance, and research settings. Clarify and distinguish the relationship between guidelines framed by specific Indigenous communities, federal regulatory agencies (IRBs), and specific disciplinary codes. Distinguish between IRB guidelines and guidelines grounded in human rights and social justice considerations. Provide ethical standards to which the general public and public officials can hold qualitative scholars accountable. Socialize scholars new to the field to these values, ethical principles, and ethical standards.

Yahi Chorus: This code serves to implement a primary mission of Indigenous communities and the global qualitative inquiry community—namely, to use the methods and principles of critical qualitative inquiry for social justice purposes. Coyote: It turns inquiry into moral practice. Boots: Members of this community understand that a code of ethics cannot guarantee ethical behavior (Stake and Jegatheesan, 2008; Stake and Rizvi, 2009).

Coyote: This is why we need to draw on the collective wisdom of tribal elders who honor reconciliation, justice, healing, and forgiveness. Amen *** The flaws in the current regulatory ethical apparatuses are well-known and have been extensively reviewed by others. The past is littered with controversy, acrimony, and struggle. Conflict has centered on the following topics: 1. Mission or ethics creep or the overzealous extension of IRB regulations to interpretive forms of social science research has been criticized by many, including Gunsalus and associates (2007), Dash (2007), and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP, 2006).4

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2. Communication and education scholars have contested narrow applications of the Common Rule and the Belmont Principles of respect, beneficence, and justice (Christians, 2005; Lincoln, 2009; Title 45, Code of Federal Regulations, part 46). Respect is achieved through informed consent agreements, beneficence through perceived risks or harm, and justice through assurances that subjects are not unduly burdened by being required to participate in a research project. But respect involves caring for others and honoring them. It is more than agreeing to sign an informed consent form. Beneficence cannot be quantified, and justice includes more than being randomly selected to be a subject in a research project. 3. Oral historians have contested the narrow view of science and research contained in current should be exempt from IRB regulations (Shopes, 2011; Shopes and Ritchie, 2004; American Historical Association, 2008). 4. Anthropologists and archaeologists have challenged the concept of informed consent as it impacts ethnographic inquiry (see Fluehr-Lohban, 2003). 5. Journalists argue that IRBs’ insistence on anonymity reduces the credibility of journalistic reporting, which rests on naming the sources used in a news account (Dash, 2007). Dash contends that IRB oversight interferes with the First Amendment rights of journalists and the public’s right to know (Dash, 2007, p. 871). 6. Indigenous scholars Battiste (2008) and Smith (2005) assert that Western conceptions of ethical inquiry have “severely eroded and damaged indigenous knowledge” and Indigenous communities (Battiste, 2008, p. 497).5 Coyote: Allow me to summarize. *** Ishi’s ethical practices: A one-act play Characters: Speaker One Speaker Two Speaker Three—Ishi Three in disguise Staging Notes: Performers are seated around a seminar table on the third floor of Gregory Hall, a four-story, 125-year-old brick classroom on the campus of the University of Illinois.There 25 chairs along the walls and around a 40-foot-long wood table. Two large nature paintings on loan from the Art Department hang on the north and east walls of the room.There is a pull-down screen at the

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south end of the room for projecting video. Overhead lights are dimmed. Sun streams in through the two north windows. It is one o’clock in the afternoon. The time is the present. There are two voices, Speaker One and Speaker Two. The text of the play is handed from speaker to speaker. The first speaker reads the text for Speaker One. The second speaker reads the text for Speaker Two, and so forth to the end.

Act one: Scene one: Getting unstuck (This dialogue starts stage left and then three speakers step forward one at a time) Speaker One: We gotta get out of this place. The anthros are still arguing over my brain and what Kroeber did or did not do to me (Angeliti, 2020; Scheper-Hughes, 2020). They’ve also returned only 20 percent of its Native artifacts and remains (Lefebvre, 2020). Speaker Two: We have to be aggressive. We are on the side of justice. We are researchers committed to positive social change. We are social workers, health-care and educational researchers, anthropologists, critical performance ethnographers, sociologists, archaeologists, and activists. Ethics, politics, and justice cannot be separated. Speaker Three (Ishi Three in disguise): Don’t go overboard. Speaker One: There needs to be significant regulatory reform at the national level (Levin and Skedsvold, 2008, paraphrase). The scholarly societies must organize to make this happen. Speaker Two: We have to be hopeful. The existing ethical regulations give us directions on where we do not want to go. We need to formulate our version of the Belmont Principles. Speaker Three: Hope can be an illusion. Speaker One: Okay. We can learn from the existing IRB models. If ethics cannot be separated from politics and power, then whose power, whose knowledge, and

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whose history is shaping what we are doing? Are we really on the side of the angels? Speaker Two: We must be critically self-reflective and hold to the highest ethical values. Researchers put subjects at risk. Researchers lie, misrepresent, break promises, cheat, squander funds, misappropriate intellectual property, and steal. No ethical code can prohibit this kind of conduct. Speaker Three: Put at risk. Tell me about risk. How would you like to see your brain in a jar? Speaker One: Ouch! So, you’re saying researchers with little integrity can always find some ethical principle to justify the violation of some other ethical principle (Stake and Rizvi, 2009, p. 531)? Speaker Two: Yes! Speaker Three: Ask Judge Kroeber. Speaker One: Ethical conduct has to be guided by an inner voice, by one’s conscience. Ultimately, researchers are forced to rely on personal, situational judgments. Codes and institutional reviews cannot protect us from the need to be ethical, from the need to address complex ethical dilemmas (Stake and Rivzi, 2009, p. 531). Speaker Two: We need a transdisciplinary, feminist communitarian ethical code; a normative model; a dialogical code that enables community transformation, empowers the oppressed, enacts a politics of resistance, recognition, and difference; a code informed by human rights initiatives (Christians, 2005, pp. 157–158). Speaker Three: Where does the NAGPRA fit in? Speaker One: Your ethical model embodies a set of methodological directives for conducting critical interpretive inquiry, so now methodology, ethics, and inquiry are folded into one framework.

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Speaker Two: Ethics in this framework generates social criticism. This leads to resistance and empowers persons to transformative action. Speaker Three: The NAGPRA, importantly, turns ethics into the artifacts and practices of Indigenous material culture. The sacred Indigenous self is anchored in these practices. Honor these rights and you honor the Indigenous moral community and its members. Coyote: Yup. All members of Ishi’s community experienced an affront when Ishi was cremated and his brain was embalmed. Boots: Pretty obvious!

Scene two: Core values Speaker One: Remember, our mission is rooted in these interdisciplinary core values: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. We respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person; we honor people and their material culture (see Denzin, 2018, pp. 241–261; Fluehr-Lobban, 2003a, pp. 264–265 for a discussion of these issues). Speaker Two: We must do no harm! But this is complicated. Journalists, for example, have First Amendment protection and a commitment to their profession and to the public to tell the truth. That means they may harm people because the truth can hurt (Dash, 2007). This does not preclude having honest relationships with those with whom we engage in critical inquiry. Speaker One: There is no justification for thoughtless harm, as in the treatment of Ishi. Speaker Two: Performance ethnographers worry about the four ethical pitfalls identified by Dwight Conquergood: the “Custodian’s Rip-Off,” the “Enthusiast’s Infatuation,” the “Curator’s Exhibitionism,” and the “Skeptic’s Cop-Out” (Conquergood, 1985, p. 4).

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Speaker Three: Classic Kroeber. Speaker One: Custodians ransack their own and our past, searching for texts to perform for profit. Enthusiasts visit our cultures and become superficially involved, trivializing who we are. Skeptics are cynical and detached, acting as if they own our worlds. Curators sensationalize our worlds, staging performances for the voyeur’s gaze.This is the “Wild Kingdom” approach, the fascination with the exotic other, the nobel savage (Conquergood, 1985, p.7). Speaker Two: Kroeber acted as a custodian of Ishi’s life, putting him in a museum; giving his wife the story he could not write; acting as curator, photographer, skeptic, director of live performances, and romantic; and creating the Ishi he wanted his wife to memorialize. Speaker Three: I want a new beginning. We want dialogical ethics, texts, performances, and inquiries that speak to and with the other. We want works that reengage the past and bring it alive in the present.The dialogic text attempts to keep the dialogue alive, to keep the conversation between performer, inquirer, and audience ongoing and open-ended.The dialogic text enacts a dialogical ethic. It involves more than empathy: it interrogates, criticizes, empowers, and creates languages of resistance.The Kroebers were unable to create this text. Speaker One: We want a dialogical ethic that honors the essential human freedoms of expression and worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear of violence. We want a code that is sensitive to the basic human rights; the rights to housing and health; the rights of Indigenous people and people with disabilities; the rights of children; the rights of workers; the right to sexual and gender self-expression, language rights, cultural rights, and environmental rights; the rights of prisoners; and the right to freely participate in democracy. Boots: Ishi, in his silence, modeled this ethic.

Scene three: A relational ethics Speaker One: As an autoethnographer, I need a relational ethic. When I write autoethnography, I write about my own life and the lives of others who are close to me,

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intimate others. I have a responsibility to them. How do I tell the truth, do no harm, and honor and respect our relationship at the same time? Speaker Two: Right, there is a range of responses. Let’s make a list (holds up a bulletin board with the following items listed): 1 . Do not publish or delay publishing potentially harmful or painful material. 2. Do not publish under a pseudonym, fictionalize the story, or use pseudonyms or no names for participants. 3. Do not publish without approval. 4. Do not seek approval after publication. 5. Do not work out with participants what will be contained in the story, change, or omit identifying details or problematic events. 6. Do use multiple voices. 7. Do seek consent beforehand. 8. Do use process consent (below) in addition to informed consent. 9. Do follow a socially contingent ethic. Speaker Three: So which option do I follow? Speaker One: Your conscience. I don’t always use recognizable people in my stories, other than myself and a few family members and public officials. I focus on places, historical events, fictional dialogues, and performances with unnamed narrators, numbered voices, persons wearing masks. I have to take responsibility for what I write, whether I share it or not with those I write about. Speaker Two: I tell my students to use process consent, not just informed consent. Relationships change during the course of a project; people change their minds, back out, stop talking. Practicing process consent means checking at each stage of inquiry to make sure participants still want to be a part of the process. Relational ethics values mutual respect, dignity, connectedness, and being true to one’s conscience, one’s values, an ethics of care (Ellis, 2009, p. 310). Speaker One: This is a socially contingent ethic; it works outward from shared personal experience; it is based on care, respect, love; it respects rights, needs, and intimacies specific to a relational context.

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Speaker Two: Taking a story back to those you write about is not like sharing field notes. Special care has to be taken when writing about thick family relations, parents, friends, and lovers. Taking a story back to an intimate can cause harm. It can destroy a relationship. It can place the writer in harm’s way (Bochner, 2007, p. 199; Ellis, 2009, p. 314). Speaker One: At the relational level, it gets complicated. I have the right to write about my past and my present relationships. But what can I decently write about other people? Whose permission do I have to ask for? Will I change them or hurt them? What can I decently reveal about myself? How can I write about the past? The dead are dead.What is the exact truth of a story? What is its emotional truth? Should I tell the truth if it hurts someone else? Speaker Two: Only I can decide whether or how to write about them, about me. And once I have written about them, we are all forever changed. This is my right to write about the past and the present, and others have the same right. I believe in named sources, no hiding behind fictionalized or made-up names. This keeps me honest (Blew, 1999, pp. 6–7). Speaker One: Our ethical principles are these: (1) honor and respect the dignity of the person, (2) assert the moral integrity of the researcher-practitioner relationship, (3) enact the dialogical commitment to empowerment and transformation, and (4) implement the multiple agendas of social justice and human rights at the concrete local level. Speaker Two: These relational and dialogical codes redefine the Belmont Principles of respect, beneficence, and justice. Speaker One: We implement these principles by following the Oral History Association’s guidelines (2000, Shopes, 2007 a, b). In this way, we go beyond the Belmont guidelines concerning respect, beneficence, justice, harm, confidentiality, risk assessment, and subject selection.

Scene four: Oral historians Speaker One: I think I can be of some help. I’ve been fighting this ethics battle between IRBs and historians for the last 20 years. Oral historians have their version of

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the Belmont Principles and practical ethical conduct. We have our own concepts of respect, beneficence, justice, informed consent, risk, and selection of subjects. Speaker Two: Oral historians respect and honor the rights of interviewees to refuse to discuss certain topics. We never randomly select interviewees. That would be unimaginable. We select people because of their oral histories and the stories they can tell. They are never anonymous. Anonymity violates a fundamental principle of oral history; that is, anonymous sources lack credibility. Oral history interviews are copyrightable documents owned by the narrator. He or she must sign over the rights to the interview via a legal release form. This release form is akin to process consent. It allows the narrator (interviewee) to define the terms of the research relationship. Oral history guidelines state that researchers should guard against possible exploitation of interviewees and take care not to reinforce thoughtless stereotypes (Shopes, 2007a). Speaker One: This is dialogical…a give and take, back and forth between interviewer and interviewee. Speaker Two: We do not want IRBs to constrain critical inquiry or our ethical conduct. Our commitment to professional integrity requires awareness of our own biases and a readiness to follow a story wherever it may lead. We are committed to telling the truth, even when it may harm people (Shopes, 2007a, p. 4). Speaker One: When publishing stories about other people, my ethics require that I subject my writing to a fine-mesh filter: do no harm (Richardson, 2007, p. 170). Speaker Two: So, there we have it. A set of methodological guidelines. The dignity of the person is honored through the terms of the research contract, which takes the place of an informed consent document. Beneficence, do no harm, is challenged in the oral history interview, for interviews may discuss painful topics, and participants have the right to walk away at any time. Deception is never an option. It is assumed that telling the truth about the past is of great benefit to society. ***

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Stage: A courtroom scene is projected on a drop-down screen as an actor dressed as Ishi in a suit and tie, wearing judge’s robes, presides over the courtroom scene. Ishi: Let me remind you. We are here today to explore what would be learned by placing Judge Kroeber on trial. Coyote: What have we learned? Boots: There is no justice in this morality tale; we can only pray for the willingness to forgive.

The end A spotlight shines on a tall jar, holding a faux brain, labeled “Property of the Smithsonian:Vat Number 920050.”

Notes 1 The 2015 IIC also invited scholars to explore, inquire, and critically analyze the “unhiring” of Dr. Steven Salaita from a position in the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois. See Singh, J. (2014). Racism and Colonialism: University of Illinois Fires Palestinian Scholar for “Uncivilized”Tweets About Israeli Assault on Gaza. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/racism-and-colonialism-university-of-illinois-firespalestinian-scholar-for-uncivilized-tweets-about-israeli-assault-on-gaza/5401492. 2 The Belmont Principles and the so-called Common Rule regulate US IRBs (see Christians, 2005 for a discussion). 3 These guidelines draw from the revised 2008 Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (see https://www.socialworkers.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=KZm mbz15evc%3D&portalid=0; also Reamer, 2006). 4 Mission creep includes these issues and threats: rewarding wrong behaviors, focusing on procedures and not difficult ethical issues, enforcing unwieldy federal regulations, and fighting threats to academic freedom and the First Amendment (Becker, 2004; Gunsalus et al., 2007; Haggerty, 2004). Perhaps the most extreme form of the IRB mission is the 2002 State of Maryland Code, Title 13—Miscellaneous Health Care Program, Subtitle 20—Human Subject Research § 13-2001, 13-2002: Compliance with Federal Regulations: A person may not conduct research using a human subject unless the person conducts the research in accordance with the federal regulations on the protection of human subjects (see Shamoo and Schwartz, 2007).

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5 There is a large Canadian project on Indigenous intellectual property rights—Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage. This project represents an international, interdisciplinary collaboration among more than 50 scholars and 25 partnering organizations embarking on an unprecedented and timely investigation of intellectual property issues in cultural heritage that represent emergent local and global interpretations of culture, rights, and knowledge. Their objectives are • to document the diversity of principles, interpretations, and actions arising in response to intellectual property issues in cultural heritage worldwide; •  to analyze the many implications of these situations; • to generate more robust theoretical understandings, as well as exemplars of good practice; and • to make these findings available to stakeholders—from Aboriginal communities to professional organizations to government agencies—to develop and refine their own theories, principles, policies, and practices. Left Coast is their publisher.

7 ISHI COMES HOME

The United Nations has declared 2011–2020 as the third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, noting that 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples. Throughout these chapters, I imagined how Ishi’s life story would have been different had he lived in a decade committed to the eradication of colonialism. I gave him a voice—a voice he did not have in Theodora Kroeber’s original book. I asked what if a critical, Indigenous ethical framework, a Red pedagogy, to use Sandy Grande’s (2008) phrase, had been in a place when he was captured, jailed, and sent to be a live exhibit in a museum. This pedagogy, embodied by First Nation, Native American, Māori, and Aboriginal Indigenous scholars, articulates a performative, Indigenous epistemology. It locates the person in a supportive moral community, not a community of colonizers, as was the case for Ishi. Red pedagogy is inherently political, cultural, spiritual, and intellectual. It honors tribal culture and ancestor relationships. It is based on a belief in survivance, of going beyond survival to an active repudiation through the performance of oppression and tragedy (Grande, 2008, p. 250; Kovach, 2009, p. 102;Vizenor, 1993, 2008). Red pedagogy is grounded in sacred rituals, in performance, in storytelling. It is anchored in a search for sovereignty, for in Indianismo, the New Indian (Grande, 2008, p. 241). Ishi’s story, as told by Theodora Kroeber, has few of these features. Rather, his is an assimilation narrative with a tragic ending. The performance of sacred tribal rituals (recovering brains and related artifacts) and the telling of oral histories validates traditional ways of life. The performance becomes a form of public pedagogy. It uses a performative aesthetic to foreground cultural meaning and to teach these meanings to cultural members. It should be unruly, disruptive, critical, and committed to the goals of justice and equity. There is no healing in Kroeber’s story.The past is never past, never free from history, never free from the disgraces of the Indigenous-colonizer relationship (Kovach, 2009, p. 76).

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Coming home Here is how Ishi’s moral community marked his coming home in early August 2000: A hole a few feet had been dug for Ishi’s grave. With care and reverence, Mickey and Floyd put everything into the basket. Ishi’s remains, the melted obsidian, the pieces of the broken pot. They sprinkled purifying wormwood and tobacco over everything. Then the basket was lowered into the hole, and the hole was covered with dirt. They then scattered twigs and leaves over the spot to leave no trace of what lay beneath. It was growing dark by then. I pictured a sliver of a moon rising above the stone walls of the canyon that had been home to Ishi’s people for more than 4,000 years. But nobody wanted to leave. Mickey told me they stayed at Deer Creek, and they sang and wept late into the night (Starn, 2004, p. 266, paraphrase). A few days later, the community representing the Pit River and the Redding Rancheria came together in Deresch Meadows in a memorial to celebrate Ishi and his return to his homeland (Starn, 2004, p. 274–275). There was dancing, singing, drumming, storytelling, hugging, praying, toasting, speech making. In another site, a trio of Maidu dancers from Sacramento, big bare-chested men, decorated with feathers and shell-based headdresses, were swaying, clapping, and stamping to the sound of their whistles and clackers, and the audience cheered (Starn, 2004, p. 295, paraphrase). Welcome home, Ishi. *** The day Alfred Kroeber died, Theodora wrote, Paris was quiet, a soft rain shimmered on the streets. The sun was rising, his death was real, I held his hand, his Spirit left his body. He journeyed down the trail to the Land of the Dead. (Starn, 2004, p. 268) He was traveling to the same place where Ishi’s soul also traveled. Shortly before she died, Theodora wrote, “Howsoever one touches Ishi, the touch rewards” (Starn, 2004, p. 268). In death,Theodora reaches to her idealized Ishi: Ishi the healer, the redeemer. By now, she knows what her husband did with Ishi’s brain.Yet she refuses to be critical, insisting to the bitter end to keep the Kroeber myth of Ishi alive. But Ishi, the trickster, has the last word.

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Ghost of Ishi: Theodora thought she could put Alfred together with me in the Land of Lost Souls. Impossible. But when he had me cremated, he forgot that it is impossible to even get to the Land of Lost Souls after they cremate your body and bottle your brain. Dissection makes the journey impossible. Coyote: Let’s talk about staging performances. This is where the Ishi pretenders with their puppet look-alikes enter our play.Wearing white face, they will make it impossible to identify the real, pretend, and papier-mâché Ishi. Ishi the Trickster: Alfred never knew the real Ishi. *** Roy asks, What happens when ethics have been used up? When they have been hollowed out and emptied of meaning. What happens then? (Roy, 2009, p. 2 paraphrase) Ishi as Trickster: Theodora and Alfred’s story of Ishi is what happens.

Epilogue: Alfred Kroeber Redux This story will not end. The Ishi controversy continues to the present day. A series of exchanges in the “Culture and Humanities” section of the Berkeley Blog (July 1, July 6, July 13, July 20) debate the call to remove A. L. Kroeber’s name from Kroeber Hall. Critics contend there has not been adequate public discussion about the name removal. Criticisms of Kroeber, they argue, are not appropriate, even those centering on the handling of Ishi’s brain and autopsy (see Scheper-Hughes, 2020; this call to rename had been anticipated in 1985 by Vizenor, who proposed renaming Dwinell Hall Ishi Hall). Scheper-Hughes: Don’t jump on the popular culture protest bandwagon and shame another public figure for their racist actions. Kroeber does not deserve this. Coyote: Are you justifying what Kroeber did?

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Scheper-Hughes: I’m saying these new criticisms divert attention away from Kroeber’s contributions to the field. Boots: You could say the handling of Ishi’s remains was consistent with common practices. But the criticisms diminish the contributions of his wife and daughter to the literature on the California genocide and Native Californians. Scheper-Hughes: Kroeber was neither racist nor a colonist. But we must at least apologize for his actions. Tribal Elders (in unison): No criticisms. Kroeber is everyone’s grandfather, yours, ours. We must honor our elders. Scheper-Hughes: If there is to be a name change, rename Kroeber Hall Ishi Hall. Elders: YES! Ishi the Trickster prevails! Ishi the Trickster: • • • • • • • •

I am many things at the same time: I am a foil for Scheper-Hughes. I am her symbol of my mistreatment in 1916–1917. I am a stand-in for the Native community. I am a stand-in for the California genocide and the call for repatriation. I am a reminder for the public and politicians that the bones in the Hearst Museum have not been returned. I am a recurring figure in the history of anthropology, a symbol of an anthropology that might have been but never was. I am a reminder that left on their own, anthropologists create self-serving ethical systems. I am the moral conscience of anthropology. ***

Ode to Ishi Returning to Chapter 1, I repeat my opening questions. Hoping they have been answered:

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• Whose racialized Native (Ishi) was represented by Kroeber in her original book, and whose racialized Ishi is being represented today in the work of her critics? Will the real Ishi stand up? • Can Anglo scholars any longer claim, as the Kroebers did, the uncontested right to represent the vanishing Indigenous Native, the last wild Indian? Whose wild Indian? • Can the critical legacies of these discourses, from Kroeber to Junípero Serra, from Ishi to Vizenor, advance an agenda of Indigenous empowerment. Can it function as a pedagogy of liberation? • Think of Ishi as the great trickster, the post-Indian survivor, the one who speaks only in silence while deploying a trickster hermeneutics, unraveling and decoding the colonial definition called Indian, the hyper-real Indian, the museum Indian (Vizenor 1998, p. 27; quoted in Owens, 2003, pp. 375–376). Can we imagine a critical pedagogy based on these understandings? • Can we chart a new beginning and walk away from the desire to capture, record, represent, and inhabit the heart of the true Native (Owen, pp. 377–378, paraphrase)? • Can we address and embrace the ugly silences, denials, and distortions that define our histories with the Indigenous other (Owen, 2003, p. 379; Vizenor, 1994, pp. 126–137)? • Can we imagine new archives and new museums filled with new performances, names, stories, exhibits, pictures, and photos—new archives that erase the photographs of the noble savage, the wild Native in disguise, erasures of the white Indian (Owen, 2003, p. 380; Denzin, 2015, pp. 168–175). Can we? These are the central questions I have attempted to answer in this book. In each instance, the answer is that a trickster hermeneutics is on the horizon, museum Native Americans are becoming relics of the past, all the wild Indians have moved to Hollywood. Let Ishi have the last word. Don’t call me Ishi, ever again. It took two federal acts for me to get free: The National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989 and the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. It took the American Indian movement; Red power; Red pedagogy; Indianismo; the New Indian; Wounded Knee II; World War Two, the Nazi Holocaust, and Hiroshima; the civil rights movement, tribal capitalism, and

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Indigenous mobilizations; Indigenous history, sovereign rights, and broken treaties; Theodora, Alfred, Karl, and Clifton; Three decades of the world’s Indigenous people; the 2017 Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Dakota Pipeline Resistance; Gerald Vizenor, Sandy Grande, and Vine Deloria; Sitting Bull, CrazyHorse, and Little Beaver; Graham Green, Tonto, and Minnie Ha Ha; Ishi-the-Pretender; and The Ghost of Ishi. AMEN

APPENDIX

Ishi time line (A genocide primer) 1840s: Approximately 400 Yahi people live in California—total Yana people, approximately 1,500. 1849: The California Gold Rush begins. 1860: Ishi is born; he dies in 1916. 1865: Massacres of Yahi people begin. 1866: The Three Knolls Massacre occurs, killing 40; 33 are killed in the Dry Camp Massacre. 1871: The Kingsley Cave/Morgan Valley Massacre occurs, killing 30. 1870–1911: A small band, including Ishi (5–20), of Yahi hide in the Mill Creek area. 1908: A survey party surprises a band of four; Ishi escapes. October 1910: T. T. Waterman leads an expedition into Mill Creek area to find the lost band of Indians, seeking “incontrovertible evidence of their existence in the wild state.” August 1911: Ishi (aka Wild Man, Stone Age Man) walks into Oroville and is jailed. September 4, 1911: T. T. Waterman brings Ishi by rail to San Francisco to the old Law School building on Parnassus Heights. He is given his own room. October 1911: Hearst Museum of Anthropology opens at Parnassus. Over the next six months, 24,000 people visit the museum and watch Ishi demonstrate arrow making and fire building.

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November 22, 1911: Ishi is hospitalized for a respiratory infection. December 26, 1911: Ishi is hospitalized with bronchopneumonia. September 1912: Ishi is hospitalized for abdominal pain. Ishi and Dr. Saxton Pope become friends. They attend a Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. May 1913: Ishi is hospitalized with back pain. May 1914: Dr. Pope completes a medical history of Ishi and reports “no premonition of illness.” Summer 1914: Ishi, Waterman, Pope, and A. Kroeber visit and map the Deer Creek area of Tehama County. December 10, 1914–February 1, 1915: Ishi is hospitalized for 62 days, first TB diagnosis in early 1915. Summer 1915: Ishi does linguistic work with Edward Sapir. Ishi stays with the Waterman family in Berkeley. August 22, 1915: Ishi is hospitalized for six weeks and then moved to the Museum of Anthropology. August 28, 1915: Kroeber prepares for a trip to Europe, tells Waterman and Dr. Gifford that Ishi requires care and attention as a person, not a case. September 30, 1915: Ishi has improved, but he is in no condition to move to the country. March 18, 1916: Ishi is readmitted to the University of California (UC) Hospital with a high temperature. March 24, 1916: Kroeber, anticipating the end, tells Gifford that there should be no autopsy because it could result in general dissection. “We don’t need any more Indian skeletons. Get a plot in a public cemetery.” March 25, 1916: Ishi dies at UC Hospital. An autopsy is performed. His brain is removed, weighed, examined, and preserved. The cause of death is advanced pulmonary TB. March 30, 1916: Gifford’s letter to Kroeber states his letter of March 24 arrived too late. There was an autopsy, and his brain was preserved. March 31, 1916: Ishi’s remains were placed in a small black Pueblo jar in a niche in the columbarium at Mount Olivet Cemetery. October 27, 1916: Kroeber returns from Europe, writes the curator at the Smithsonian, Ales Hrdlicka. “Ishi’s brain has been removed and preserved. I am glad to deposit it with the National Museum’s (brain) collection.” January 1917: National Museum does not know whether the brain is deposited nor who it comes from. Kroeber replies that it was sent as a gift from UC. January 1917: The brain is shipped to the Smithsonian—accession number 60884, museum number 298736. For 64 years, it is stored in a round glass jar on the third floor of the Natural History Building. In 1981, it is moved to Hall 25, tank # 6. In 1994, it is moved to Third Pod, Museum Support Center. 1911–1916: Ishi lives in the Anthropological Museum, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

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Key events:

The massacres 1871: Kingsley Cave Massacre: Four cowboys kill 30 Yahi Indians. Ishi is one of a few survivors. Ishi was never his name; he was named by chance (Vizenor, 2003, p. 362). He was the last of his tribe, this nameless Indian (Miller, 1911; Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi). 1908–1909: California surveyors discover a band of Mill Creek Yahi survivors, including Ishi and his sister and possibly his mother. Alfred Kroeber calls for the capture of the lost band of Indians, but they avoid capture.

Capture and life in a museum August 29, 1911: Ishi is discovered cowering in the corner of an animal slaughterhouse in Oroville, California. Barking dogs give him away. He is wearing ragged clothing. He is taken to jail, where he is contacted by UC anthropology professors Albert Kroeber and Thomas T. Waterman. Newspaper accounts refer to him as the “wild man,” and in his photo, he looks frightened and emaciated. Kroeber names him Ishi, the Yahi word for “man” (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 110). Kroeber gets permission from the Office of Indians for Waterman to move Ishi to the Museum of Anthropology at UCSF. Ishi is given a private room next to a hall housing a large collection of human skulls and bones (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 110). Ishi serves as a janitor and an informant to Kroeber (the Big Chiep), shares the Yahi language, and demonstrates the Yahi craft of bow and arrow, quiver, arrowhead, fire drill, and harpoon making to museum visitors (Kroeber, 1961/1989, p. 206). 1911–1916: Ishi is a living exhibit in Kroeber’s museum.

Return to Mill Creek May–June 1914: Kroeber (with university approval), accompanied by Waterman, Saxton Pope, and his 11-year-old son, take Ishi by rail and horseback back to the Mill Creek–Deer Creek area, hoping Ishi will demonstrate what primitive life in the wild is like. Ishi reverts to native undress, wearing only a breechclout (Kroeber, 1961/1989, p. 210). Kroeber photographs Ishi making fire, preparing to harpoon salmon, swimming, hunting, calling rabbits, and butchering wildlife (Bauer 2014). December 1914: Ishi develops a hacking cough and is hospitalized. In early spring, he is diagnosed with TB. May 1915: By late spring, he appears to have recovered. Kroeber leaves for Europe. Ishi is hospitalized in mid-August with acute symptoms—fever, loss of appetite, general weakness. He is brought back to the museum on September 30.

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Death in the museum March 25, 1916: Ishi dies in his museum room. A simple autopsy is performed. Ishi’s brain is preserved as a racial artifact (Vizenor, 2003, p. 365). December 12, 1916: Ignoring its spiritual, sacred value, Ishi’s brain is prepared for shipping to the National Museum. Kroeber determined that “there was no one who can put it to scientific use” (Vizenor, 2003, p. 366). March 31, 1916: Ishi’s ashes are placed in a small black Pueblo jar and placed in a niche in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma, California, a small town near San Francisco. February 20, 1917: Ishi’s brain is stored in a deerskin-wrapped pottery jar and shipped to the National Museum. It is eventually stored in tank #6, along with John Wesley Powell’s brain (Starn, 2004, p. 185).

Ishi in two worlds 1958–1959: Robert Heizer suggests that Theodora, Kroeber’s second wife, write a biography of Ishi, stating he will be her key informant. Alfred Kroeber states he will also be a key informant. The biography is published in 1961. Over one million copies have been sold. It has been taught in California grade schools and remains on reading lists for grades nine through 12 (www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/rl/documents/912list1990.doc; also see White, 2016). October 1985: University administrators deny Gerald Vizenor’s proposal that an extension of Dwinelle Hall, on the UCSF campus, be named Ishi Hall. May 7, 1993: The central courtyard of Dwinelle Hall is named Ishi Court (Vizenor, 2003, p. 370).

Whose body? Whose brain? 1995: Art Angle (Maidu) enlists the help of tribal leaders, Nancy Rockafellar (medical historian) and Orin Starn (cultural anthropologist) to address the wrongs that were done to Ishi, his brain, and his ashes. They demand the immediate repatriation of the brain for proper burial. • Spring 1997: The Butte County Native American Cultural Committee (BCNAC) requests that Ishi’s brain, remains, and spirits be returned to his native homeland. • 1995–1999: Ishi’s brain is missing. Nobody knows where it is—UCSF, Smithsonian? • January 27, 1999: Thanks to the efforts of Orin Starn, Ishi’s brain—museum number 298736—is located on the third floor of the Natural History Building at the Smithsonian in formaldehyde in a ground glass jar.

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• Spring 1999: With this discovery, anthropologists at Berkeley debate what should be done. The university’s official response states that the brain had not been maintained for scientific purposes; hence, no official response was required. Northern California Indians call for an apology. The department issues a statement that was read into the record of the California state legislature repatriation hearings on April 5, 1999: What happened to Ishi’s body, in the name of science, was a perversion of our values. We deeply regret our department’s role in the final betrayal of Ishi, a man who had already lost all that was dear to him at the hands of Western colonizers. The exploitation of Native Americans is still commonplace in American society. (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 121, paraphrase)

Lost and found March 24, 1999: Eight representatives of BCNAC travel to the Smithsonian to view the brain and conduct a cleansing ceremony. March 25, 1999: Smithsonian states that the members of BCNAC have no cultural affiliation with the Yahi. Hence, they cannot receive Ishi’s brain. April–May 1999: The California state legislature intervenes, and the Smithsonian identifies the people of the Redding Rancheria and the Pit River Tribe as Ishi’s closest relatives, and they are designated recipients of Ishi’s brain. April 12, 2000: California’s attorney general’s office obtains a court order for the removal of Ishi’s ashes from the Colma cemetery for reburial by the designated Native American people according to their customs.

Home at last May 2000: Ceremonial fires burn for several nights in the foothills outside Oroville in anticipation of Ishi’s return. Pit River, Maidu, and Mohawk Indians and a few anthropologists tend the fires (ScheperHughes, 2003, p.121; also, Starn 2004, pp. 272–276). The fires are the prelude to the secret burial of Ishi’s brain and his cremated remains. His brain and his ashes are placed in a Yana tribal basket (Sackman, 2011, p. 298). A communal feast with storytelling, dancing, confessions, talking circles, and sweathouse rituals follow. The grandfathers—Ishi and Kroeber—were not criticized for what they had done. They had their reasons. Then the bear dancers came and announced their arrival with snorts and grunts. Eight-three years late, Ishi had come home (Scheper-Hughes, 2003, p. 122). 2020: Scheper-Hughes proposes that Kroeber Hall be renamed Ishi Hall.

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Ishi today: Film and theater (incomplete) 1992: Ishi:The Last Yahi. A documentary by Jed Riffe and Pamela Roberts, narrated by Linda Hunt. 1992: The Last of His Tribe. An HBO movie with Graham Greene as Ishi and John Voight as Alfred Kroeber. 2012 (March 9): UC Berkeley Theater department apologies for the production of John Fisher’s play, Ishi:The Last of the Yahi. 2016: Ishi, the Last Yahi, Snagfilms.

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INDEX

Alfred Kroeber Redux 103–106 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 90 American Phonograph Company 29 Angle, Art 10, 72–73, 75–77, 110 Anzaldua, Gloria 8 Apperson, Mr. 55 ashes 9, 60, 61, 68–69, 71, 75, 110 autopsy 9, 60–61, 64, 75 Battiste, Marie 91 Belmont Principles 91, 97–98 Benjamin, Walter 13 Berkeley Blog 103 Biegert, Claus 12 Booker, Pontius 40 Boots: Alfred Kroeber Redux 104; Ishi and the Anthros 52, 57; Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 18, 20–21, 23–25, 27–28, 30–34; Ishi’s Brain 70, 73, 76–78; Ishi’s ethical practices: A one-act play 94, 95; Ishi’s Ethics 82, 85–86, 88–90; Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 39–40 brain preservation 18, 60–61, 64–65, 110; see also Ishi’s Brain Brandes, Stanley H. 71 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show 8, 16, 29 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 9 burial 9, 62, 64, 102, 111 Burrill, Richard 72 Butte County Native American Cultural Committee (BCNACC) 9, 71, 72, 76, 110, 111 California Fish and Game Commission 54 California Wilderness Act (1984) 72 capture 16, 109 celebrity status 16, 67 Christians, Clifford G. 82–83 Claudio 84, 86–87 Clifford, James 10, 57, 66

clothing 35, 55–56 committed documentation 12 Common Rule (1981) 91 Conquergood, Dwight 94 Coyote, Wile E. 103; Ishi and the Anthros 49, 52–56, 59–61, 64; Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 20–22, 25–30; Ishi’s Brain 68–71, 73, 76–77; Ishi’s ethical practices: A one-act play 94; Ishi’s Ethics 82–85, 87, 89–90; Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 46–47 cremation 9, 60–61, 64, 94 critical theory 85 Curtius, Mary 71, 72, 76 Dash, Leon 91 Day, Fred 39 death 54, 58–60, 64, 110 decolonization 84–85, 88 Deer Creek, California 9, 19, 55–58 dissection 60–61, 64, 103 dreams 23–24, 31–33, 46 Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne 17–18 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley 110 End of the Trail,The 17 ethics see Ishi’s ethical practices: A one-act play see Ishi’s Ethics see research ethics First Amendment (1791) 91, 94 Foster, George 74–76 Fraser, James Earle 17 genocidal practices 11, 13, 14, 35, 69–71, 74, 77, 104 Gifford, Edward 64, 75 graduation ceremony 40–41 Grande, Sandy 84, 101 Gunsalus, C. K. 90 Hearst Museum see Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology Hearst, Phoebe 41, 42, 48

index  121

Hearst, William Randolph 19 Heizer, Robert 69 homecoming burial 102, 111 Hrdlicka, Ales 65, 108 Hume, H. H. 19 illness 54, 59, 64, 109 Indian Claims Commission 69 Indigenous Inquiries Circle (IIC) 88 Indigenous pedagogy 84–85 Indigenous self 89–90, 94 institutional review boards (IRBs) 89, 91, 98 Ishi and the Anthros: autopsy and brain preservation 61–62; death of Ishi 58–60; departure from Deer Creek 57–58; epilogue and appendix 63–65; field trip preparations 51–54; prologue 49–51; trip into wilderness 55–57 Ishi and the Wood Ducks 18, 33 Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2: epilogue 35–36; historical background 17–19; museum life 28–30; naming Ishi 19–20; Oroville jail 22–26; prologue 16–17; stories and dreams 31–34; unreliable storytelling 21–22, 26–28 Ishi in Three Centuries 11–12, 67 Ishi in Two Worlds 11, 67, 69–70, 76, 110 Ishi’s Brain: genocidal practices 70–71; politics of justice 74–76; prologue 66–67; renewal of Ishi’s story 76–78; repatriation 68–69, 71–73 Ishi’s ethical practices: A one-act play: core values 94–95; oral historians 97–98; prologue 91–92; relational ethics 95–97 Ishi’s Ethics: decolonization and spirituality 84–85; hearing silenced voices 87–88; Indigenous self 89–90; Ishi’s moral code 82–83; naming Ishi 82; prologue 81; repatriation 85–87 Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: activism 39–40; epilogue 48; Ishi’s unhappiness 46–47; Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (1990) 42–44; prologue 37–39; trouble at Golden Gate Park 41–42; trouble at graduation 40–41; Zumwalt-Kroeber letter 44–46 Ishi the “Urban” Indian see Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 Ishi Wilderness 32, 72 jail captivity 22–28 janitor work 18, 58, 62

Jones, Indiana 51, 60–62 justice 74–76, 83, 89 Kingsley Cave Massacre (1871) 109 Kite, Zumwalt 46 Kovach, Margaret 85, 87–88 Kroeber, Alfred L. 7, 9, 12, 13, 109; death of 102; Ishi and the Anthros 49, 51–53, 55–58, 61–62, 64–65; Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 16–17, 19, 20, 23, 27–29; Ishi’s Brain 68–70, 77; Ishi’s ethical practices: A one-act play 95; Ishi’s Ethics 81–82; new criticisms of 103–104 Kroeber, Clifton 11–12, 67 Kroeber, Karl 11–12, 67, 68–70 Kroeber, Theodora 11, 13, 101, 110; death of 102; Ishi and the Anthros 52, 55, 59, 62, 64; Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 18, 27–28; Ishi’s Brain 67, 69–71, 75, 76; Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 46 Kroeber Hall, UC Berkeley 39, 72, 103 language 10, 24, 35, 59, 87–88 Lassen National Forest, California 67, 72 Lena, Lilly 16, 30, 34–35, 46–47 Los Angeles Times 71 Maidu tribe 26, 38, 58, 73, 102 Marcelo 84, 86–87 massacres 9, 11, 107, 109; see also genocidal practices McInturf, Jeff 71 memorials 67, 71–72, 102 Meyer, Larry 77 Mill Creek, California 13, 52, 107, 109 Miller, Mary Ashe 39, 42, 51 Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmel 14 Mount Lassen, California 9, 14, 18, 73 Mount Olivet Cemetery, California 9, 60, 64, 75 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (1990) 39, 42–44, 85, 87, 93–94 Oakland, California 28, 55 oral historians 97–98 Oral History Association (OHA) 97 Oroville, California 29, 57, 62, 109, 111; captivity 17–18, 23, 28; memorials 71–72 Oroville Register 9 Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles 34–35

122  index

performance ethnography 94–95, 101 performance pedagogy 85 Perry, Jean 32 Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology 23, 25, 29–30, 38–39, 41–42, 66–67, 109–110 photographs 55–57 Pit River Maidu tribe 58 Pit River Rancheria tribe 67–69, 102 Pope, Saxton 13, 51, 55, 57 Redding Rancheria tribe 58, 102, 111 Red pedagogy 84, 101 relational ethics 95–97 repatriation 13, 58, 68–69, 71–73, 85–87, 110–111; see also Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (1990) research ethics 90–94 Rockafeller, Nancy 10, 18–19, 65, 72, 110 Rony, Fatimah Tobing 56 Roy, Arundhati 81, 83–84, 103 sacred codes 82–85, 101 sacred objects 62, 85 salvage anthropology 11, 49, 74 San Francisco Call 30, 35 San Francisco Examiner 19, 39, 42, 51 San Francisco Solar Dancers (SFSD): Ishi and the Anthros 49–51, 54, 56–57, 59, 61–63; Ishi’s Brain 67; Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 38–41, 43–44, 46 Sapir, Edward 59 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy 13, 60, 70, 103–104, 111 Serra, Junípero 11, 14, 105 Sheriff of Oroville 9, 18, 22, 24, 28 Smith, Graham 85 Smith, Linda 84–85, 91

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History 9, 60, 61, 65, 68, 73, 76, 110 social justice 83, 89 spirituality 84–85 Stanford University 11 Starn, Orin 10, 55–56, 65, 68–69, 72–73, 76, 110 tuberculosis (TB) 17, 54, 59, 64, 109 United Nations (UN) 101 University of California, Berkeley (UCB) 10, 11, 30, 39, 59, 69, 73–74, 111 Vanishing Indian Traveling Medicine Minstrel Show 50, 63 Vizenor, Gerald 7, 11, 12, 110; Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 18, 26, 36; Ishi’s Brain 66, 71, 72, 74–75, 78; Ishi’s Ethics 83, 85–88; Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 37, 39 Waterman, Thomas 13, 19, 23–25, 29, 51, 55, 60–61 Webber, T. B. (local sheriff) 9, 18, 22, 24, 28 winotay song 23, 33 Wintu tribe 58 Yahi Chorus: Ishi and the Anthros 51, 57–58, 60, 62; Ishi and the Wood Ducks, Part 2 30, 32, 34; Ishi’s Brain 73, 76–77; Ishi’s Ethics 83–86, 88–90; Ishi the Happy Indian and Urban Warrior in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 37, 40, 42–43, 46–47 Yahi tribe 8, 18, 22, 74, 109; language 24, 59 Yana tribe 70–71 Zumwalt, Fred H. Jr. 44–46