Indigenous Pop : Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop [1 ed.] 9780816533732, 9780816509447

Citation preview

Ind i genous Po p

E d i ted by

Jeff B erglund Jan Johns on Kimberl i L e e

Indigenous Pop Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop

TUCSON

The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2016 The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2016 Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16  6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-0944-7 (paper) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Cover art by Steven Paul Judd Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Berglund, Jeff, editor. | Johnson, Jan ( Janis), editor. | Lee, Kimberli A., 1959– editor. Title: Indigenous pop : Native American music from jazz to hip hop / edited by Jeff Berglund, Jan Johnson, And Kimberli Lee. Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015034492 | ISBN 9780816509447 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Music—History and criticism. | Popular music— United States—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML3557 .I63 2016 | DDC 781.64089/97073—dc23 LC record available at http:// lccn.loc.gov/2015034492 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

What is the Sound of America? After Silas Whitman & Ron Welburn Did Chief Joseph hear the Dixieland jazz, the ragtime jubilees and house parties, the evangelists bands playing Pentecostal hymns on hot, summer nights? Was he there for the do-wop, the creek river rallies, the syncopation, that grind and gyration of hips and spines on a hard-wood floor? Did he hear, wow the crowd on a quarter-acre of heartbreak? Did Chief Joseph ask: Are you a musician or an entertainer? Their hymnals transposed to bell and drum, from the old ledgers, from the King James Bible. And did he speak the language of the later Gods? Dizzy Gillespie, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Charlie “Bird” Parker? This is what happened when the missionaries tried to convert our heathen souls: The Lollipop Six, Nezpercians, Jack Teagarden, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Scrapper Blackwell, “Big Chief ” Russell Moore, Dan Beyhylle and the Ten Little Indians, Junior Walker and the All Stars, Pee Wee Russell, Harry “Fox” McCormack, Chief Shunatona and the All Indian Band. What is the sound of America?

The ching-chinga-ching, ching-chinga-ching of brush strokes against a brass cymbal? a 49’er, I don’t care if you’re married I’ll get you yet, I’ll take you home in my one-eyed Ford? Horns so anguished they made people weep? Buglers dodging flying bullets? Survivance. This is the sound of survivance. The sound of wind whistling through the Snake River Canyon. The sound of a stomp dance, bells and seeds. The sound of “Indians Playing the White Man’s Jazz.” —Tiffany Midge (Standing Rock Sioux)

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 Joe Shunatona and the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra 17

Joh n W. T r o u tman 2 American Indian Jazz: Mildred Bailey and the Origins of America’s Most Musical Art Form

33

C h ad Ha mil l 3 Jazz and the Politics of Identity: The Spirit of Jim Pepper

47

Bil l Sieg el 4 Singing for the People: The Protest Music of Buffy Sainte-Marie and Floyd Westerman

61

K im ber l i L ee 5 Brothers of the Blade: Three Native Axmen: Link Wray, Robbie Robertson, and Jesse Ed Davis

75

S cott Pr inzing 6 “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee”: The Engaged Resistance of Folk and Rock in the Red Power Era

Jan Johnson

92

viii contents

7 “We’ll Get There with Music”: Sonic Literacies, Rhetorics of Alliance, and Decolonial Healing in Joy Harjo’s Winding Through the Milky Way 107

Gabr iel a Raq uel Rios 8 Hearing the Heartbeat: Environmental Cultural Values in the Lyrics of Native Songwriters

123

S am ant h a Hase k and Apr il E. Lindal a 9 “The Story of a Lifetime”: Singing, Crossing, and Claiming in Lila Downs’s “Minimum Wage”

136

C asie C. Cobos 10 Babylon Inna Hopiland: Articulations of Tradition and Social Injustice by the Hopi Reggae Musician Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva 155

Dav i d s. Walsh 11 Blackfire’s Land-Based Ethics: The Benally Family and the Protection of Shi Kéyah Hozhoni

179

Jef f Ber g lund 12 A Reading of Eekwol’s Apprentice to the Mystery as an Expression of Cree Youth’s Cultural Role and Responsibility

201

Gai l A. Mackay 13 “By the Time I Get to Arizona”: Hip Hop Responses to Arizona SB 1070

224

Mar cos Del Hier r o Contributors 237 Index 243

Acknowledgments

T

like to thank supporters of this project from its inception: audiences at the American Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the Native American Literature Symposium. Special thanks to Simon Ortiz for recognizing early on the contribution this book would make. Thank you to Patti Hartmann, formerly of the University of Arizona Press, for being interested in this project when it was a promise of an idea, and to Kristen Buckles, for being an incredibly patient and supportive editor, who ushered the finished manuscript through the editorial process. Thanks to the whole University of Arizona Press team, from the designers and production team to the copyeditor, who have made this project even better. The editors would like to give special thanks to Tiffany Midge for the gift of her poem and to Steven Paul Judd for the use of his artwork on our cover. Thanks also to all the contributors for their hard work and patience while this book came together. Jeff wants to thank Monica Brown, his partner in all ways, for her encouragement and steadfast love; he also wants to thank their daughters, Isabella and Juliana, for their support and inspiration. Thanks to Klee Benally, Jeneda Benally, Clayson Benally, and Berta Benally for their cooperation on his chapter, but also for inspiring him to see that music and art are transformative practices with real-world consequences. he editors would

x acknowledgments

Jan thanks her beloved late parents, Pat and Johnny Johnson, for their love and inspiration, and all those in her life who have taught her to see, hear, think, and feel in the deeper registers. Special thanks to John Rankin for Slim Harpo, Macon Fry for Candi Staton, and Jeff Hannusch for “Boogie in the Mind” and many, many more. Kimberli would like to send thanks to her dad, David Lee, and daughter, Cheyenne Roy, for their generous love and support. She wants to also recognize and thank her Charging Crow family and all her relations, colleagues, and friends who have helped her in this writing endeavor. Thanks especially for all those singers, songwriters, and musicians who have made this world a better place to be.

Ind i genous Po p

Introduction

When did it begin? When a Nez Perce or Ponca trumpet player at Carlisle Indian School accustomed to playing Sousa marches coaxed from his horn a curvy melody he’d heard on a late night radio broadcast? Or when a Shawnee teenager poked a hole in the speaker of his amplifier, spun the volume dial up to 10 and strummed his Danelectro guitar? When did Indians begin to combine their tribal musical traditions with the popular music they heard all around them?

I

ndigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop

creates a forum for the interdisciplinary discussion of popular music performed and created by American Indian musicians. In addition to examining the influence of popular musical forms from blues, jazz, country western, rock, folk, punk, reggae, and hip hop on Indigenous expressive forms, our contributors similarly note the ways that the various genres have been shaped by what some have called the “Red Roots” of American-originated musical styles. Our book aims to fill a noticeable gap in serious scholarship on contemporary Native music, and asserts that the study of this body of music provides an important window into history, politics, and tribal communities, as it simultaneously provides a complement to literary, historiographical, anthropological, and sociological discussions of Native culture. In doing so, our understanding of American culture as a whole is challenged and enriched. The title of our book—Indigenous Pop—implies our rationale: we’re simultaneously interested in examining the Indigenous roots of American musical

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traditions, as well as the way that popular (pop) contemporary and emerging (fresh) forms have led to innovative transformations and melding with tribal and Native traditions. “Pop” has different connotations in different eras, so it is an ever-changing, elusive category that is ineluctably altered by its conjoining with “Indigenous.” By pairing the term with “Indigenous,” we challenge expectations about the term itself, and look beyond simple understandings of “pop” as music masterminded for consumer consumption, following the immediate trends of the particular cultural moment. Our contributors take up the challenge of exploring this pairing, as well as the cross-cultural influence. We are simultaneously interested in examining the Indigenous roots of American musical traditions, as well as the way that popular contemporary, emerging (fresh) forms have led to innovative transformations and melding with tribal and Native traditions. As live performances gave way to vinyl records, expanded radio play, and eventually to television, cassette recording, satellite, CDs, digital music, the Internet, and the iPod, the nature of audience, performativity, reception, and commercialization all underwent radical changes and expanded the border-crossing aspects of the transmission of music. By joining “pop” with “Indigenous,” we are also applying pressure to some notions about traditionalism and Indigenous cultures by foregrounding that tradition is not a static category, but one that is contested and evolving. The study of Indigenous music and song-making has long been constrained to the realm of ethnomusicology, and has often focused on the old songs, “traditional songs,” or chants. It has been studied for its rhythmic patterns, timbre, tonality, and symbolic meaning. However, it hasn’t been discussed in the broad continuum of expressive artistic responses that lends itself to literary and rhetorical analyses. While there is clear value in the linguistic and ethnomusicological approaches, it is important to recognize that music commands attention within other fields, as well as note that the artificial divisions between song, music, and literature are constructs of western academia. By translocating our discussion of contemporary Indigenous popular music, we’re claiming new and multiple spaces for the analysis of musical traditions; traditions that are responsive, evolving, and in dialogue with shifting sociopolitical contexts. Arnold Krupat, well-known scholar of American Indian literature, once said, “Literature is that mode of discourse which foremost seeks to enact and perform its insights, insisting that we understand with affect, feel with comprehension” (43). Krupat’s deliberate confounding of predictable expectations about the function and role of literature brings into clear relief the peculiar and distinct role of

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expressive and artistic language in moving readers (listeners and audiences) on a visceral and performative level. The register of the literary is different and unique, involving emotional and affective cognitive involvement: indeed, it commands it. Krupat’s comment is true for music as well. In fact, in writing about the distinctiveness of song and music generally, David Samuels notes, “Singing heightens the aural and visceral presence of the body in language,” what he refers to as “the layered sociability of embodied vocal performance and participation.” Furthermore, Samuels points out that it is precisely this unique intersection of song and its “interactional structure” that “establishes a zone of experiment and contemplation” (18). It is this interactive and responsive aspect of song that the contributions to this volume emphasize over and over. Indisputably, the links among contemporary popular music by Indigenous performers are continuous with, but not singularly influenced by, myriad tribal traditions. Here again, contributors to this work highlight the incredible diversity, plurality, and complexity of Native cultures, noting that oral traditions, and musical ones at that, had shifting functions across time and space. Just as literary critics have pointed to the porousness of categories of Indigenous oral traditions, our book intends to highlight the multiplicity of influences, as well as roles, of Indigenous popular musical genres. For all Indigenous tribal societies, music and songs played and continue to play an integral role in peoples’ everyday lives. In fact, it was a fundamental part of the cultures themselves. In the “old days,” there were songs for all types of situations, and many were composed and sung by individuals for any reason: perhaps a personal song of lament or joy, or a song to help with work, or a song to express one’s romantic feelings for another, but sung to no-one in particular. Sacred ceremonial songs were also essential to Native societies, some of which were only known to holy people, others the whole community would know and be able to sing. In some Native communities, songs were given to individuals by guardian spirits in a vision, and then sung in times of need throughout one’s lifetime. Other songs were sung in celebration of victories against enemies, still others sung for those who had fallen to the enemy—but in all of this, the songs and music were composed to function in the society—they were there to do something for the people. Indeed, in his last book, The World We Used to Live In, Vine Deloria Jr. offers eyewitness accounts where knowledgeable singers use song to alter aspects of the time-space continuum and to alter other natural laws. Unlike in many Western cultures, songs were not mere entertainment, or a distraction from the mundane everyday world—nor were they considered

6 introduc tion

as “high art” or composed to be appreciated by only the elite. Songs define who people were/are. In the close to Luke Lassiter’s remarkable ethnography, The Power of Kiowa Song, one of his singer informants notes, “[S]ong was our community’s lifeblood and that singing was the community’s most precious service; song made them who they were” (228). Songs had power, real power, and had the potential to change the circumstances or situations for the people. For example, there were songs composed and sung for the planting of the corn to ensure a good harvest, and songs sung to welcome and accept death. Music was woven into the fabric of everyday life—from the beginning of life and even after death, songs were sung to bring a good life, a good death, and a good afterlife. Joanne Shenandoah (Iroquois) writes in an article for Native Peoples Arts and Lifeways that “we believe the universe does its own cosmic dance and there is a song for every living thing” (12). Further, in American Roots Music, William K. Powers writes that “for all Natives, music is culture, and all musicians are the culture’s custodians. Among some tribes, the Native word for sing is synonymous with the words pray or heal. Music is an ancient gift of the spirits, who insist that the past is worthy of keeping. And so, during the past five hundred years, Native cultures have continued to dance and pray to the sounds of ancient voices, defying the potential threats of white domination and the loss of their lifestyle” (147). As the editors of this book, we see this “defiance” as a mode of survival, and acknowledge the same phenomenon continuing in modern Native American music. In most traditional societies, singers and musicians, by and large, were not “trained” in the art of music—anyone who wanted to sing could become a singer, and most would learn songs in an organic manner of oral tradition, having the lyrics and tunes passed down through generations. Anyone could compose their own personal songs, but other songs might belong to the whole community, or perhaps just to one extended family. Frances Densmore, in her book, Teton Sioux Music (1918), writes that she found “unmistakable evidence of musical criticism [in Sioux and Chippewa cultures]. Certain men acknowledged ‘good singers’ and ‘good songs’ . . . imply[ing that] singers satisfy some standard of evaluation” (59). But, while some songs might be considered “better than others,” it’s unclear whether people were castigated as “bad singers”—each person had a unique voice that could add to the harmony of the group. Of course, there were people who were known as “song-makers” in tribal societies, men or women who had a particular adeptness in creating music. These folks were often sought out when an important song was needed for a birthing or naming perhaps, or

introduc tion 7

a memorial. Song-makers were well-respected members of their communities, and were sometimes compensated for their song with gifts and high praise in the tribal society. It’s important also to remember that there were, and still are, song-makers who work collaboratively, and put together songs with each other, working out melodies and lyrics that will complement one another. Whether singing a cappella or with a group around the drum, Native voices would lift in song to express a wealth of emotion, but also to help something happen: to send prayers into the universe, to make the people dance, to evoke good feelings during a troubling time. Esteemed poet Simon Ortiz (Acoma) reflected on the particular role of song in his family and culture and its resonances in the work he does as a poet: The song is basic to all vocal expression. The song as expression is an opening

from inside of yourself to outside and from outside of yourself to inside, but not

in the sense that there are separate states of yourself. Instead, it is a joining and

an opening together. Song is the experience of that opening, or road if you prefer, and there in no separation of parts, no division between that within you and that without you, as there is no division between expression and perception (242).

Ortiz suggests that song is the most integrated and potentially powerful form of human expression, and thus of continuing significance to Native peoples. Songs make connections, songs involve the universe in “me,” and “me” in the universe. Songs come out of “me” to “you.” Songs that come from traditions and contextually resonant places (the “us” before “me”) come across time and generations to “me” and connect “me” to a greater “us,” and allow “me” to sustain and revise and express in unique ways the “us” that survives. For these reasons, among many more, songs and music held an indispensable place in Native American life, and still do. This collection, however, focusing as it does on modern, more contemporary music, is meant to speak to the continuance of the ways that music and song-making work for Indigenous peoples in the Americas. The “bridge” between the more traditional songs and the contemporary songs isn’t a huge stretch—Native people have adapted and adopted Western languages and instrumentation into their cultures, and now put them to use to further Indigenous issues. And Native folks have, in effect, “indigenized” these entities, inventing new ways, Native ways, to employ music and songs in many popular genres to convey Native thought and concerns in song. The chapters in this

8 introduc tion

book eschew the notion of appropriation or adaptation; rather, we note how the interests and perceptions of Indigenous performers ineluctably alter the soundscape of various genres of popular music, reinventing the various musical languages that circulate and are exchanged in the national and global marketplace. Our concentrated focus on contemporary and popular music purposefully revises stereotypical understandings about the “pastness” of Native peoples and cultures, and attempts to recalibrate expectations that Indigenous peoples are in all places and inextricably linked to contemporary trends and interests. Indisputably, music is an everyday means of connecting to others with similar interests, similar feelings; music can provide a sense of companionship, can echo and put feelings into words, can offer an opportunity to reflect on and process one’s feelings. Music is a form of creative expression that provides listeners/audiences/consumers with a sense of intimacy and understanding. 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and now MP3 players made this experience mobile, personal, even more accessible than the experience of listening to a live performance, to listening to vinyl or being limited by the airwaves’ frequencies and commercially dictated choices. George Lipsitz, in his monumental book, Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music (2007), remarks on the particularly unique repository that popular music offers: “Of course, recorded music functions within commercial culture as a commodity produced to procure monetary returns for investors. It makes no pretense of presenting historical events with accuracy. Yet when read critically and symptomatically, popular music, like all forms of commercial culture from any era, registers change over time in important ways and serves as a vitally important repository for collective memory” (viii). It is this neglected repository—ironically, Lipsitz only mentions one Indigenous group, Redbone, in passing in the context of ethnic transformations—that Indigenous Pop intends to share so that time does not erase the beautiful complexity of Indigenous performances. The editors of Indigenous Pop—Jeff Berglund, Jan Johnson, and Kimberli Lee—all have experience presenting on and writing about popular music (and in Jan’s case, performing it). It was this passionate avocation that led to our collaboration. Beyond a personal interest in contemporary Indigenous music, we have all committed to incorporating Indigenous music into our American Indian literature or rhetoric courses, and are committed to the effort of encouraging the broad interdisciplinary field of American Indian Studies and Indigenous Studies to look to music in all its varieties of forms as a relevant archive of

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knowledge, as a valuable record of resistance, of persistence, and survivance, of in short, resilience. Year after year, when we attended conferences in our fields, we hoped that we could meet other scholars working on brilliant Indigenous musicians. And that is how we ended up meeting each other. What developed out of mutual admiration and shared interests was a series of collaborations that has now led to this project: presenting first to an eager audience at the American Studies Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then later to a standing-room-only audience in Minneapolis at the inaugural meeting of the then-recently formed Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Based on interest from attendees and editors alike, it was apparent that our interests were shared by many in the field. We were encouraged by the enthusiastic responses we received, and then began the challenge of hatching the initial ideas for Indigenous Pop. We were further encouraged when, midway through this project, the National Museum of the American Indian mounted Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians in Popular Culture in 2010, featuring artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Robbie Robertson, Rita Coolidge, and Derek Miller, among many others. Finally, lively conversations with scholar Ron Welburn on the “Red Roots” of jazz also inspired this project. Our collection contributes to a small but growing body of scholarship on contemporary Native American music. Philip J. Deloria’s brilliant Indians in Unexpected Places (2004), demonstrated that American Indian people participated fully in the making and experience of modernity, including popular music. Deloria devotes one chapter of his study to the power of music to represent ideas and expectations about Indians. He discusses “Indianist” composers of the late nineteenth century, and marching bands and orchestras produced in the Indian boarding schools, which also produced small string quartets and jazz bands. Deloria writes that “if music was intimately involved in the setting and selling of expectations of Indianness, Native American people were involved in recording, contesting, affirming, transforming, controlling and performing those expectations in critical ways” (188). A full-length study of Native expressive culture with a focus on music is David W. Samuels’s Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation (2004). Samuels explores rock and roll bands at San Carlos and what makes them “Apache.” He explains: the relationships between cultures and identities are not fixed. Rather, identities are emergent, produced out of the practices and expressive forms of everyday life

10 introduc tion

Traditions are not simply handed along from one generation to the next. Part of

their enduring power comes from the possibility of their strategic reinvention in order to speak strongly in new social and political contexts. (5)

Samuels, an ethnographer, shows how San Carlos musicians are able to express Apache identity through the songs of non-Native musicians such as Merle Haggard, Bob Marley, and Led Zeppelin. Brian Wright-McLeod’s The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More Than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet (2005) is a comprehensive compilation of sound recordings by Native musicians organized by region, genre, and artist. It includes biographical information on artists and bands, discographies, a large section on pow wow music and traditional archival recordings, and audio books. Illustrated with photographs and album covers, WrightMcLeod’s book provides an excellent overview of Native American music, and is the starting place for anyone pursuing scholarly study of contemporary Native American music. Another work essential to understanding the development of Native American music is John W. Troutman’s Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879–1934 (2009). Troutman reveals the complex and contested political nature of popular music during the allotment and assimilation eras of federal Indian policy, and argues that “musical performance was implicated in the design and execution of the citizenship agenda, which through the 1920s mandated the assimilation of Native peoples into the body politic of the United States along with the allotment and liquidation of tribally controlled lands” (5). By looking at reservations, boarding schools, and public venues, Troutman shows that Indian musicians were able to make European music their own, and to take advantage of opportunities to resist their control by authorities provided by musical practices. While exploring why traditional Native music was considered by Indian policymakers to be dangerous, Troutman discovers that music was an incredibly powerful weapon for contemporary self-determination in the early part of the twentieth century. The most recent work on contemporary Native American music is Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada: Echoes and Exchanges, edited by ethnomusicologists Anna Hoefnagels and Beverley Diamond (2012). This anthology of research essays and interviews with and reflections on Aboriginal musicians focuses on First Nations, Metís, and Inuit people with a critical awareness of context, intercultural exchange, and power relations. Subjects range from

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multiple issues in pow wow music, to the great popularity of hip hop in Saskatchewan, to the ability of traditional and contemporary music to function as a healing agent. This work is perhaps the most “academic” offering, and doesn’t include analyses of some of Canada’s best known contemporary Native musicians such as Buffy Sainte-Marie or Robbie Robertson, although it does reveal the tremendous diversity and vitality of Native music in Canada. Fans of Native musicians and lay readers have found value in Sandra Hale Schulman’s From Kokopellis to Electric Warriors: The Native American Culture of Music (2004), a non-scholarly but essential overview of the Nammys, the Native American Grammys and major performers, authored by an industry insider. Aside from these works, there is limited scholarly attention to music by Native people that transcends the primary definition of “traditional.” Even a great book edited by Tara Browner with the promising title Music of the First Nations: Tradition and Innovation in Native North America (2009) only includes one chapter out of nine on “pop” music: an essay by David Samuels on country music. Our aspiration is that Indigenous Pop opens up new venues for scholarship in the ways that scholars such as Houston Baker, George Lipsitz, Michael Eric Dyson, and Juan Flores have done in the allied fields of Ethnic Studies. Building on these works, Indigenous Pop fills an important gap by bringing together in-depth analyses of a wide variety of popular Native musicians and popular genres of music in their time, place, and social-political contexts. Many of the most significant and popular Native musicians of the twentieth century are covered in this collection. We hope that by examining the work of these musicians through a variety of lenses, we can delve deeper into the ways in which contemporary Native American music addresses social issues that affect different tribal groups, provides spaces to contemplate Native historical truths, and illustrates Native modes of continuance, activism, and decolonial thought. The musicians’ art and songs we focus on in this book are important forms of expression because they send their message into the vibratory universe to invoke change, and promote healing for Indigenous communities, but also to serve as a bridge for non-Native folks to begin understanding the serious issues that must be dealt with and acknowledged. This collection is primarily arranged chronologically, but also grouped, more or less, according to popular generic forms. In Chapter 1, John Troutman studies the career of Pawnee-Otoe bandleader Joe Shunatona and the all-Indian United States Indian Reservation Orchestra

1 2 introduc tion

of the 1920s and ’30s. He demonstrates how music and the non-Indian desire for “Indianness” converged, providing opportunities that Indian musicians exploited because of the contradictory impulses of the federal government to both condemn and promote the public consumption of “Indian music” early in the twentieth century. Chad Hamill profiles the career of influential jazz singer Mildred Bailey, a Coeur d’Alene Indian woman from Idaho who was generally perceived as white by audiences. Bailey pioneered the “swing” vocal style in the 1930s, influencing Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Bing Crosby, among others. She credited the Indian songs of her youth as shaping her voice. In chapter 3, Bill Siegel analyzes the innovations and influence of Kaw and Creek saxophonist and composer Jim Pepper, whom he finds synthesized music of the Kaw Peyote Church and other tribal music with jazz, rock, country, and other popular genres, all with a strong sense of his Native American identity and its relevance. Chapter 4 focuses on the protest music of two Native American performers, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman. Here, Kimberli Lee looks into these songwriters’ lyrics and assesses their work in terms of the rhetoric(s) of resistance that each artist utilizes for maximum effect to invoke change. In large part, both Sainte-Marie and Westerman were activists for Native rights beyond the musical arena, but much of their social justice work and Indigenous philosophies and histories reverberate in their music and lyrics. Lee advocates for more serious attention to be paid to Indigenous music in classrooms and scholarly venues, and Lee understands the music of these two artists to be a catalyst for decolonial thought and action. If one instrument epitomizes rock and roll, it is the electric guitar. Invented in 1931, it was crucial to creating the sound of rock and roll in the 1950s. In chapter 5, Scott Prinzing profiles three highly influential and innovative Native American rock guitarists whose work collectively spans the 1950s to the present, and who all appear on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists. Shawnee guitarist Link Wray is credited with creating two of the most important developments in rock music: the amplified distorted electric guitar and the “power chord.” Kiowa guitarist Jesse Ed Davis is recognized as one of the finest session guitarists of the 1960s and ’70s in the genres of blues, country, folk, and rock. He played with dozens of top recording artists, including three of the Beatles, and he co-founded the Graffiti Band with John Trudell shortly before his untimely death in 1988. Singer/songwriter, lead guitarist, and co-founder of the highly influential late-1960s roots rock band, The Band, Canadian Robbie Robertson highlighted his Mohawk identity in his successful solo career

introduc tion 1 3

following the breakup of The Band. In 1994, Robertson formed a group called the Red Road Ensemble, which released the album Music for Native Americans. Today, Robertson continues to work as a musician and producer. In Chapter 6, Jan Johnson explores the engaged resistance and aesthetic activism of Narragansett folk singer Peter La Farge and two influential rock bands of the late ’60s to early ’70s Red Power era: Redbone and XIT. All three engaged with mainstream audiences to bear witness to the continuing injustices experienced by American Indians, and acted as aesthetic activists in the struggle for American Indian civil and human rights in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Johnson demonstrates ways that music acted as sonic counterpart to the direct and literary activism of the Red Power era. In chapter 7, Gabriella Rios examines jazz saxophonist Joy Harjo’s Winding Through the Milky Way in terms of the work’s ability to function as decolonial practice through sound and music. And, while Rios acknowledges that Harjo’s work is situated in “Creekness,” the music here also aids in decolonial practice by serving to heal various Indigenous communities and consciousness. Additionally, Rio posits that these songs help people with remembering and recalling their cultural stories and histories. Rios shows us how Harjo’s soundscapes are a process of reasserting Indigenous identity and therefore become an act of survivance. In chapter 8, Samantha Hasek and April Lindala focus on environmentally conscious lyrics in the songs of musicians Robbie Robertson, John Trudell, Joanne Shenandoah, and emerging artists Digging Roots. What these diverse artists have in common, Lindala and Hasek argue, are lyrics that articulate the relationship between all living beings and the Earth itself. In promoting Indigenous environmental values, lyrics come to represent the heartbeat of Mother Earth. In Chapter 9, Casie Cobos focuses on Mexican-American singer and songwriter Lila Downs. Hailing from Oaxaca, Mexico, Downs sings in many languages: Spanish, Mixtec, English, and Mayan among them. Cobos focuses on Downs’s song “Minimum Wage” to examine and explore the ways in which border rhetorics can be fluid enough to move between cultures and help make meaning. She writes, in part, that “Downs’s music acts as a space of intervening, traveling, and shifting within and outside of geo-historical frames of labor, bodies, lands, boundaries, and identities,” thus showing that fluidity. By focusing on these border rhetorics framed as music, Cobos illustrates how Downs’s work is accessible as a tool to understand the complexities of the border dwellers’ lives and work.

14 introduc tion

In chapter 10 and chapter 11, David Walsh and Jeff Berglund dig into two southwestern tribal nations’ investment in, and invigoration of, two very different musical genres of resistance and protest. David Walsh examines the uses of Rasta-reggae discourse in the reggae of the Hopi musician Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva. Interest in reggae by the Hopi people in Arizona has resulted in the incorporation of reggae and Rastafarian discourses into many of their lives, though this popular musical form has received little attention from academics, despite the tribal and regional investment in the genre. This chapter demonstrates how Rasta-reggae discourse provides Indigenous peoples a way to juxtapose their traditions with colonial legacies. Specifically, Hopi religious tradition is understood as the legitimate system for living a fulfilled and purposeful life in contrast to the forces of Babylon. Hopi religious and social traditions (as it is hard to separate the two) are seen as an idealized opposite of the sociohistorical problems faced today. Walsh argues that key Rastafarian terms, such as Babylon, Zion, I-and-I, and Jah, are all incorporated into a Hopi worldview, and used to flesh out new understandings of that worldview. Jeff Berg­ lund focuses on over a decade of performances and recordings by three Diné/ Navajo siblings—Klee, Jeneda, and Clayson Benally—who form the band Blackfire. Raised in Big Mountain, Arizona, on disputed Navajo-Hopi “partition land,” part of the legacy of United States colonialism, the three fused their non-Native mother’s interest in folk music with their Medicine Man father’s knowledge and song wisdom in an updated version of punk to create a passionate, committed, but critical commentary on ecocide, oppression, racism, and genocide. Specifically, Berglund’s analysis foregrounds Blackfire’s investment in land sacred to Diné people, Diné Bikéyah, and their efforts to galvanize a resistance movement to interrupt the making of artificial snow from contaminated waste water at the Arizona Snowbowl on the San Francisco Peaks, outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, a mountain known as Dook’o’oosłííd, sacred to Diné people and thirteen other tribal nations in Arizona. In Chapter 12, Gail MacKay explores the rap and hip hop word artistry of First Nations musician Eekwol (Lindsay) Knight. By examining the work in the social context of Cree youth and cultural values, MacKay points out that Knight’s work illustrates the serious realities that many First Nations youth are facing, especially young women. Knight’s work is an honest look at family stories that many Cree and Saulteaux are familiar with: violence, doubt, aimlessness, and despair. But through the songs, Knight reminds the youth of their resilience and responsibilities, thus affirming their empowerment. By drawing

introduc tion 1 5

on such diverse scholars as Smitherman, de Certeau, Anzaldúa, and Moraga, in chapter 13 Marcos Del Hierro also analyzes Indigenous hip hop, specifically responses to Arizona’s controversial law, SB 1070. Hip hop artists have been addressing political concerns of many oppressed groups for years, yet some of the most ground-breaking work in this arena comes from what Del Hierro calls “mixtape tactics,” which is a subversive underground scene of websites, traded MP3s, and other accessible venues. As more artists in and around Arizona unite against this racist law, we begin to see how institutionalized racism and colonization are faced down through rhymes, rhetoric, and resistance. Writing about often-ephemeral performances, particularly hard-to-get recordings of music from earlier decades, especially when artists were not “mainstream” commercial successes, has made this project challenging. We were interested in highlighting some of the major figures within the field of Indigenous popular music, and have striven to provide a broad representation of popular musical genres. Certainly, the tension between our ideals and the roster of available contributors was always before us. Of course there are important musicians who don’t receive well-deserved attention in this volume. But so many incredible musicians are discussed in detail, for the first time in this context, by our talented group of contributors. We trust that this is only the beginning of a new wave of interest in what we are calling “Indigenous pop” and that intrigued readers will search for the major and minor musicians referenced by our contributors. A young Coeur d’Alene girl learns her family and tribe’s songs and later finds that their rhythms and voicings allow her to forever influence the trajectory of jazz vocal stylings. Many decades later a trio of musical Navajo siblings find hardcore/punk to be the vehicle most suited for their critique of the status quo and demand for social and environmental justice. Indigenous musicians continue to innovate, to sing, to sing stories and to transform what came before. If we listen, we hear a country like nobody else can sing it.

Works Cited Deloria, Philip J. Indians in Unexpected Places. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004. Deloria, Vine, Jr. The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2006.

16 introduc tion

Densmore, Frances. Teton Sioux Music and Culture. 1918. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Hoefnagels, Anna, and Beverley Diamond, eds. Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada: Echoes and Exchanges. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012. Krupat, Arnold. The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Lassiter, Luke E. The Power of Kiowa Song. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998. Lipsitz, George. Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Ortiz, Simon J. “Song/Poetry and Language—Expression and Perception.” Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Eds. Dean Rader and Janice Gould. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003. 235–246. Powers, William K. “Native American Music.” American Roots Music. Eds. Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren, and Jim Brown. New York: Harry N. Abrams. 2001. Samuels, David W. Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004. Shenandoah, Joanne. “Native Music: Ready to Set the World on Fire.” Native Peoples Arts & Lifeways. Vol XIV No. 3, 2001. Troutman, John W. Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music: 1879– 1934. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. Wright-McLeod, Brian. The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More Than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005.

1 Joe Shunatona and the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra John W. Troutman

F

of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, through the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in 1934, the federal government went to great lengths to control the musical palette of American Indian youths. Most reservation agents and boarding school superintendents associated what they called “Indian music” with “savagery,” and associated Euro-American art music with “civilization.” In consequence, musical performance was considered a critical tool in the government’s agenda, spanning the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, to “assimilate” and therefore “uplift” Native people toward the cultural norms of an idealized population of white, middle-class Americans. The efforts to censor the musical output and opportunities for American Indians cut a wide swath into Indian country, stretching from numerous nation-wide dance bans that affected every reservation in the country to strict musical rules and regimentations practiced in all of the off-reservation boarding schools. Likewise, the punishments meted out for not conforming to strict musical rules ran the gamut, from confiscating sacred drums, to imprisoning dancers, to starving them through the withholding of their treaty-guaranteed rations. As well, the 7th Cavalry’s massacre of over two hundred men, women, and children identified as Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee certainly stifled the public performance of Native expressive culture on reservations all over the country, for years to come. rom the founding

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Despite such intensive efforts to control musical performances on reservations and in boarding schools, Native musicians, singers, and dancers challenged government officials every step of the way. Thousands of young American Indians, typically on the receiving end of these musical campaigns in the federal Indian boarding schools, led the charge in the early twentieth century to fortify the celebration and practice of tribally derived songs and dances on reservations across the country. Their persistence would eventually contribute to the official refutation of the assimilation and allotment policies that had defined the mission of the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) for the fifty years prior to the passage of the IRA. At the same time, many Native musicians and singers, interested as well in the newly emergent strains of jazz and other popular music genres in the United States, began touring the country professionally, often in “all-Indian” bands. These performers musically figured their tribal heritages in a variety of ways. Some, such as Robert Koon, performed in predominantly non-Indian ensembles such as the Sousa marching band. Others took particular advantage of the development of a non-Indian market for Indian-themed music. Indeed, they realized that a new opportunity for Native entertainers existed in the early twentieth century, an opportunity borne from what appeared to be an obsession by white Americans to consume performances of racial and ethnic difference rendered in musical terms. Any Native musician surveying the most popular trends in the fast-growing music and entertainment industries of the early twentieth century would observe the lucrative lure of “authentic” Native actors (“show Indians,” as they often were called on reservations) performing in Wild West shows, the popularity of Tin Pan Alley “ethnic” novelty genres such as “coon songs,” and vaudeville shows steeped in a blackface minstrel tradition that already had dominated popular entertainments in the United States for nearly one hundred years. Even the arbiters of so-called “serious” art music were cashing in on the act of “racial” music, as composers such as Charles Wakefield Cadman reinvented themselves as “Indianists” who, they convinced themselves, could articulate an essence of “Indianness” in their semi-classical and operatic pieces. This rapidly expanding mass market of popular American entertainments paid performers to exploit and celebrate notions of fixed racial and ethnic difference, in effect reifying the legal or de facto segregation that consumed much of the United States in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the growing desire of non-Indian Americans to experience authentic “Indianness” in the entertainment industry complicated this emphasis on segregation and collided

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  19

with the earlier described government efforts to destroy Native music traditions on reservations and within boarding schools. The OIA began to receive a great deal of correspondence by interested, and often influential, non-Indian people—teachers, professors, entrepreneurs, and U.S. senators who requested of the office “the real thing”—Indian music, legends, and dances. In effect, the OIA was asked to satisfy the requests of non-Indians influenced by a modern mass media industry that seemed to promote notions of fixed racial difference, at the same time that the OIA sought to maintain an anti-Indian music stance conceived within an aging and equally flawed ideological “savagery to civilization” evolutionary paradigm. What followed in the 1920s and early 1930s was a peculiar effort by the OIA, headed for most of the period by the most vociferous anti-dance commissioners of Indian affairs, Charles Burke, and later, C. J. Rhoads, to administer repressive anti-dance policies while it increasingly served as an authority and broker of “authentic” Indianness in the fast-growing market for (a rather ill-defined) Indian music. In consequence, not only nonIndian entrepreneurs, but also savvy Native musicians, utilized the OIA to further their own interests in exploiting the desire by non-Indians to experience “authentic” Indian music.1 The various incarnations of the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra, a popular musical troupe comprised of American Indian musicians, provide a glimpse into the different ways in which music and the non-Indian desire for Indianness combined in the American cultural landscape and entertainment marketplace of the early twentieth century. The orchestra in this period took shape primarily through the efforts of two individuals: Thomas O’Brien, a non-Indian band manager, and Joseph Bayhylle Shunatona, a seasoned PawneeOtoe bandleader who established a career as a musician and humorist that would extend for several decades. This essay will focus on a brief snapshot of their careers, spanning a five-year period from 1929 to 1933, in order to demonstrate the contradictory efforts by the federal government to both condemn and promote the public consumption of “Indian music” at the end of the federal Indian policy era of allotment and assimilation, as well as to highlight the careers of some of the American Indians who worked in this era of the modern popular music industry. Joe Bayhylle Shunatona received musical training while enrolled as a student at the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, a federal Indian boarding school located in northeastern Oklahoma. Chilocco played a significant role in the lives of his family members as well, as his mother, S. B. Lincoln, was an

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Figure 1.1.  United States Indian Reservation Orchestra. Joe Shunatona is in the rear, wearing a black vest. Credit: John Troutman, personal collection.

employee at the school, and his wife, Gwendolyn Johnson (Wyandotte), was a 1916 Chilocco graduate (“Class of 1916” 31; “All Indian Band” 245). Shunatona excelled on a variety of instruments, including horns and piano, and left Chilocco to attend a music conservatory in nearby Wichita, Kansas. During his senior year he performed a number of concerts and recitals, including five recitals with French pianist E’Claire that raised $1,800 for the war effort. He graduated in 1918 in Elocution and Dramatic Art, and soon left Kansas for New York, to study grand opera with world-renowned baritone Oscar Seagle (“Shunatona a Success” 2). He created, in this manner, a trajectory for himself with tremendous potential to succeed in the art music world. It is unclear exactly when or why, then, Shunatona began to concentrate his professional efforts within the realm of the popular stage. This decision may have had something to do, however, with resistance or ignorance he encountered in the “serious” music scene due to his Native heritage. According to

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  21

one anecdote, for example, a patron of the arts, after hearing him perform a piano recital in New York City, remarked to him after the show, “Well then, Mr. Shunatona, how do you like our country?” (Wantland 3) It seems that at some point in the 1920s Shunatona had dropped his interest in an art music career and was instead pursuing the “show Indian” trajectory, performing with dozens of American Indians in the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. From there he crisscrossed the country on vaudeville circuits, at one time performing with a male quartette called The Four American Indians. Later he served as a Publix Theatre master of ceremonies. He and his wife Gwendolyn moved to New York City in the late 1920s (Gridley 109; McBride 147–8). When taking to the road for extended lengths of time, however, they would deliver their two children to stay with a relative at the Pawnee Indian Agency (Farris). In 1929, while Shunatona was directing what he billed as an “all Indian jazz band,” a precursor to the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra, he secured a tremendous gig: a performance during the 1929 inauguration of President Herbert Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis, the first vice president of acknowledged Native (Kaw) heritage (Farris; McBride, 147).2 It is important to acknowledge the ironies of this juncture, ironies that persistently defined the work of this generation of Native musicians. Shunatona studied Euro-American instruments and music in a federal Indian boarding school, a study designed by the OIA to do the cultural work of effectively assimilating and de-tribalizing the Native students: to “kill the Indian [and] save the man,” in the words of Carlisle Indian School founder Richard H. Pratt. Shunatona excelled in his formal musical training and soon embarked upon a career in classical performance. He quickly discovered, however, the glass ceilings and limits of his patrons’ imaginations, who seemed largely unable to look beyond his Native heritage. He also realized that, despite the government’s efforts to destroy Native cultural traditions, “Indianness” was quite a lucrative selling point in the modern American entertainment industry. Consequently, he hit the road, joining the ranks of hundreds of American Indians who travelled the country playing music in various vaudeville troupes and ensembles, performing Indianness for white audiences at every stop, in every small town and grand hall along the way. Despite the fact that assimilation remained the cornerstone of federal Indian policy in 1929, here we find Shunatona leading his “all-Indian band,” in full regalia, at the inaugurations of President Hoover and Vice President Curtis, celebrating the Native identities that the same government had spent the last fifty years seeking to destroy.

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By then, Shunatona’s successful career as an “Indian” musician had attracted significant interest within the music industry. Prior to the inauguration, manager and talent scout Thomas O’Brien had signed on to promote Shunatona’s outfit. O’Brien understood that many non-Indians were deeply invested in their desire to experience “authentic” Indianness. This invested desire, he understood, could easily translate into the investment of the contents of their pocketbooks, when given the opportunity. Who better, then, to provide Shunatona’s band with the stamp of authenticity than the federal government’s Office of Indian Affairs? In January 1929 he sent the first in what would become a long series of telegrams to Commissioner Charles Burke, requesting Burke to endorse his band’s name, the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra (O’Brien 1/9/29). O’Brien informed Burke that the band, consisting of “between twenty and thirty five men,” from twenty tribes, was planning a “world tour.” The financial backing of the troupe, he reported, was “tremendous” (O’Brien 1/9/29). In order to lend credence to his request, O’Brien additionally convinced George Lamotto, a soloist for the band, to send a separate telegram from Tulsa that same evening (Lamotto). In some ways O’Brien and Lamotto worked against very difficult odds. Burke had dedicated a great deal of his tenure as commissioner to banning Indian dances on reservations, and he was equally disapproving of the “show Indian” tradition of American Indians performing Indianness for cash despite the impoverished conditions that characterized many reservations in the 1920s, with very few opportunities for residents in more isolated areas to make a living. Typically disapproving of such requests as O’Brien’s, and suspicious of them all, he asked O’Brien for a full report and quietly asked Superintendent Wright of the Osage Agency to launch an independent investigation of the band (Burke 1/16/29). Native Americans had traveled in Wild West Shows since the mid nineteenth century, and the shows had quickly developed into some of the most popular and profitable entertainments in the country, much to the chagrin of the OIA. Beyond the OIA’s philosophical objections, however—that the shows enabled Native performers to morally “degrade” themselves and celebrate their tribal traditions and victories at war—OIA officials also remained well aware of the various problems performers occasionally endured, through the lack of pay, being stranded far from home or even overseas, or through the lack of medical care (Moses).3 These combined concerns typically provided the OIA rationale for denying requests from entrepreneurs such as O’Brien.

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  23

We also find in the OIA archives, however, evidence that Burke and former OIA officials would at times acquiesce to market pressure. Recognizing the seemingly relentless market interest in maintaining the notions of Indian “difference” that the government had worked decades to destroy, OIA officials attempted to thread a needle in response that would, if possible, maintain a determined investment in the “savagery to civilization” evolutionary paradigm that had defined federal Indian policy, while at the same time acknowledge, however begrudgingly, a pressure to accommodate palpable non-Indian desires to experience authentic Indianness. After extended correspondence, for example, O’Brien seems to have convinced Burke that he would legitimately ensure the safety and moral “upkeep” of the Native performers. At that point, and in his knowledge that the OIA had no legal means to prohibit the performances, Burke was left with no other option than to encourage O’Brien to provide for the musicians in an adequate manner. Although Burke never officially endorsed the band (following the OIA’s policy to not endorse any private “Indian band”), OIA officials seemed at least implicitly to support his efforts through their typically genteel correspondence with him. O’Brien was not satisfied with implicit support, however; to market Shunatona’s band, he continued to seek explicit government endorsements and developed a strategy that would manipulate the OIA’s philosophical objections to his advantage. In August 1930 he reported eighteen “full-blood” Indians in the band from fourteen different tribes. “Every one,” he wrote to the commissioner, “is a college man and three of the boys are now taking a law course through the LaSalle Correspondence Law School in Chicago” (O’Brien 8/11/30). He continued: “I am egotistical enough to believe that this is the only successful Indian organization that has ever attempted to become prominent with the finer theatrical circuits of America. I have had hundreds of Indians tell me that this organization is doing more to show the honest evolution of the Indian than anything that has ever been done before” (O’Brien 8/11/30). His use of “full-bloodedness” to promote Shunatona’s band served O’Brien in multiple ways: in this correspondence with the OIA, the deployment of blood quantum would implicitly signify to the OIA that these musicians, having attended college and performed in the “finer” theatres, despite, after all, their “full-bloodedness,” could represent, better yet, advertise, the success of the OIA in its civilization agenda. Alternatively, in the market economy, blood quantum served as an index of authenticity for potential non-Indian audiences. The more “full-blooded” a band in its advertisements, O’Brien realized, the more tickets the band could potentially sell.

24  John W. Troutm an

The composition of the band’s tribal composition and blood quantum actually varied significantly each time O’Brien corresponded with the OIA, owing in part to changes in personnel over the months and years, but also perhaps to the fact that O’Brien would manipulate his blood quantum and tribal calculus to meet different needs along the way. Despite such fluctuations, O’Brien maintained a solid booking schedule in major theatres across the country by wielding the novelty of its “Indianness.” By mid-1930 the band had played Boston five different times over a sixteen-month period, New York City for twenty-six consecutive weeks, and Chicago for nine (O’Brien 8/11/30). In the fall of 1930, O’Brien, who at that point reported twenty-two “fullblooded Indians” from eighteen tribes, including “two Indian girl soloists,” requested the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles J. Rhoads (Burke resigned in March 1929) to endorse an upcoming European tour (O’Brien 8/11/31). The tour centered on an appearance at the 1931 Paris Exposition Coloniale Internationale. Unfortunately for O’Brien, the new commissioner was even more adamant than Burke in his refusal of O’Brien’s request: “Generally speaking, the use of Indians for what may be classed as ‘show purposes’ is frowned upon. In any event, it is essential that public performances of any nature in which Indians participate be so managed and supervised as to elevate the Indian rather than exploit him, thereby creating favorable impression in the mind of the general public which will in turn ultimately react to the advancement of the Indian race as a whole” (Rhoades 12/22/30). Rhoads continued: “It should, therefore, be clearly understood that the proposed trip is in no way under governmental auspices. To this end may we suggest that you eliminate the word ‘reservation’ from the name of the band, as its inclusion might give an erroneous impression.” (Rhoades 12/22/30). O’Brien was devastated by this new wrinkle in his rapport with the OIA. He responded one month later, stating that he was in agreement with Rhoades that “Indians should not be exploited just because of the fact that they are an Indian. Please allow me to say that this Indian band is not being exploited just because they are Indians. We have twelve members in the band now, most of them are full blooded, and ten of them are college graduates” (O’Brien 1/20/31). Although the size of the band seems to have diminished, along with the degree of their blood quantum and number of diplomas, O’Brien was determined to press for an endorsement. O’Brien gained an ally in Bascom Slemp, head of the U.S. exhibit for the 1931 exposition, who joined in the effort to

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  25

persuade Rhoads that their presentation would be educational in nature, and not merely titillating or exploitative. In a letter to Rhoads, Slemp wrote: The cultural developments will be shown by their musical progress as displayed by this band, so the appearance of the band at our Exposition would be an exhibit in itself of many things. The band will show three things: 1. The Indians in their original garb;

2. The progress and development of the Indian race as shown by their appearance; and

3. The musical or cultural development of the Indian (Slemp).

O’Brien and Slemp reached to the heart of the savagery to civilization evolutionary paradigm, suggesting that the band would physically and sonically demonstrate, again, advertise, the value of the OIA. Furthermore, O’Brien was able to call in a favor to Vice President Charles Curtis, for whom the band had performed and favorably impressed. Curtis wrote Rhoads, urging him to support the band in any way possible (Curtis). Caving to political pressure, Rhoads begrudgingly wrote a letter endorsing the band (Rhoads 2/9/31). With government permission to use the name United States Indian Band at the exposition, the troupe gained free passage across the Atlantic in return for performing for the ship’s passengers en route (McBride 148). They departed on the Ile de France on April 25, 1931, and performed several times over the course of the eight-day journey. Their arrival in France sparked a great deal of press. They were featured in a front page photograph in Le Petite Journal, and the French newspaper reported that the “picturesque jazz band . . . played the Marseillaise in a somewhat unexpected rhythm. Everyone applauded the fantastic band leader, Shunatona” (quoted in McBride 150). Their arrival by train to Paris generated another spectacle. One paper reported: “Hurried travelers in St. Lazare Station were treated to an unusual sight this morning when the boat train . . . pulled in. Wearing picturesque feathered headdresses and costumes of American Indians, a fairly large jazz band descended from the train and struck up a lively tune as it marched into the street and boarded a motor bus bound for the French Colonial Exposition” (quoted in McBride 150.). The band performed regularly at the exposition, which was designed to celebrate the colonial efforts of Western Europe and the United States. They were featured at the inauguration of the American section of the fair. According to

26  John W. Troutm an

Postcard from Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris, 1931, featuring the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra. Joe Shunatona is in the foreground, holding a black blanket. Credit: John Troutman, personal collection. Figure 1.2. 

a European edition of the Chicago Tribune, “The American Indian Band, in full war paint, played the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner” (McBride 158). The band also secured bookings outside of the fair, including a two-week run at the Empire Music Hall (McBride 158). While no programs have surfaced that provide the band’s repertoire, tantalizingly vague newspaper accounts seem to suggest that the band performed a variety of songs, from the most popular jazz tunes of the day to arrangements of tribal or Indian-themed songs and dances. Molly Spotted Elk, a Penobscot dancer and old friend of Shunatona’s from the vaudeville circuit, joined the band for the European tour. According to one newspaper account, Spotted Elk “showed the dances that the Indian along the St. Lawrence River displayed for Cartier and Champlain, the gorgeous sun dance of the far Northwest, the fierce firelight rituals which impressed La Salle upon the shores of Michigan, and the Thanksgiving rites which the Jesuits saw offered up to Manitou on Huron’s beaches” (quoted in McBride 156).

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  27

Despite rave reviews of the band, and only a few weeks into a European tour that the band anticipated would extend to London, Berlin, Rome, and beyond, the band encountered significant problems that abruptly ended the tour, all due, it seems, to O’Brien’s mismanagement and malfeasance. On the one hand, O’Brien seems to have secured passports that would only allow the band to travel within France. In addition, he brokered a paltry sum for the band’s run at Empire Music Hall; after five weeks of work, the band of sixteen musicians had not even made eighteen hundred dollars. O’Brien then pleaded that Slemp produce funds to cover basic expenses, but Slemp had no such money available (McBride 160). Spotted Elk, in contrast, operating independently of O’Brien, had secured promising contracts for dancing and film work in Europe; by May, according to Bunny McBride, she was lending money, food, and cigarettes to the band members. She wrote in her diary, “Talked with Joe [Shunatona] about the condition of the band and the boys—poor things . . . O’Brien is to blame . . . The poor Injuns are more or less hungry. Gave them money” (quoted in McBride 160). O’Brien had in actuality created problems for the band before it even departed the United States. In preparation for the tour, O’Brien purchased two hundred dollars worth of “Indian equipment” from a shop in Brooklyn with the request that the items be sent collect to Paris. To ameliorate the concerns of the shop owner, O’Brien deceived him, reporting, “This band is under the supervision of the United States Government, Bureau of Indian Affairs” (Luongo). During the next month, in fact, O’Brien, providing the first name of “Harry,” ordered hundreds of dollars worth of “Indian customes [sic], rugs, and decorations” from various shops in New York and told the merchants that “it was for the U.S. Government and that the Goverment [sic] would send a check in a few days” (Croissette). Shortly afterwards, the OIA received a slew of complaints from merchants demanding satisfaction. The OIA categorically refuted O’Brien’s statements and made it clear that while familiar with the band, the government took absolutely no responsibility for it. In his correspondence with Commissioner Rhoads, one merchant challenged the blood quantum and tribal composition of the band that O’Brien had carefully figured in his correspondence with the OIA, claiming that the band, performing “negro jazz,” was comprised not solely of “full-blooded,” educated Indians, but of “Orientals” and “Jews” as well (Croissette). As a result of these problems, by June the band had returned to the United States and “severed all connections” with O’Brien. Shunatona quickly hired

28  John W. Troutm an

a new manager, and renamed the band Chief Shunatona and His American Indian Band (Kraus). Even after Shunatona and the rest of the band left him, however, O’Brien reported to their new manager that he and the band had worked “under the direct patronage of the Department of Justice and Indian Affairs” (Kraus). In the midst of this continued deception, O’Brien continued to correspond with Rhoads, who, amazingly, never seemed to bring up any of the allegations that merchants were flinging at O’Brien. O’Brien developed his own spin to the story of his demise by reporting that the band cut him loose because they had “gone the way of all Indians who insist on drinking” (O’Brien 7/1/31). He wrote that his “own decentness” kept the dignity of the band high and that he refused to accompany them on the “dance hall tour” that Shunatona and the rest were eager to book (O’Brien 7/1/31). Shunatona seems to have thrived professionally in the years after he fired O’Brien. By 1932 he and Gwendolyn had moved into a residence on West 55th Street in New York City, though they continued to spend most of their days living out of hotel rooms as the band hit entertainment circuits that took them routinely through St. Louis, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle. Whenever they had time to recuperate from the incessant touring, however, Shunatona would perform on New York’s radio station WINS three times a week (“Class of 1916” 31). That year Shunatona was earning enough money as a musician to enable Gwendolyn to resign from her waitressing job at a local café. They became key figures in New York City’s thriving American Indian community; he served, for example, as the “organizing president” of the Indian Confederation of America, an organization established in 1933 to provide a social organization for Native residents and aid for Native newcomers to the city (Leahy and Wilson 77; Gridley 109). His musical successes began to translate into other endeavors as well; Shunatona’s drama training paid off when he passed the screening tests in New York for Universal Pictures’s adaptation of Oliver La Farge’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Laughing Boy (Shunatona 7/28/32). The book, which focused on two Navajos, Laughing Boy and Slim Girl, was recognized for its take on contemporary racism, poverty, cultural dispossession, and prostitution. John Huston and William Wyler collaborated on both the casting and screenplay, and were anxious to hire Native American actors for the roles.4 Upon Shunatona’s request, Commissioner Rhoads wrote a letter on his behalf that he sent to Carl Laemmle Jr., the vice president and general director of Universal (Rhoads 8/4/32). Unfortunately Universal ran into numerous problems with censors over the material, and in addition to the much-publicized

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  29

challenge of casting the film, along with mounting costs, the film company shelved the idea before it was firmly off the ground.5 Meanwhile Shunatona continued to tour his Indian band, performing once more for the 1933 presidential inauguration. By that time he had amassed additional radio work. For several years, three times a week on the WMCA network, he performed the role of “Skookum” on the Cowboy Tom Roundup with co-star Tex Ritter (Kinnaird 13). By the 1940s the Shunatonas had returned to Oklahoma, where he maintained a busy schedule on the stage, radio, and television as an entertainer and Indian humorist; in 1957 he published a book of Indian humor called Skookum’s Laugh Medicine (Shunatona; Posey 46). During this period he routinely played a role in several Oklahoma pow wows and other intertribal gatherings, from the Pawnee Homecoming, to the American Indian Exposition at Anadarko, to the Ponca pow wow and Osage dances at Pawhuska. He also served the Gallup Ceremonials as the official announcer (Shunatona 3). The story of Joe Shunatona and the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra, in its various incarnations, demonstrates the juxtaposition of pressures and opportunities felt by Native performers of popular music in the early twentieth century. Trained musically in federal Indian boarding schools designed to destroy their cultural values and traditions, they were nevertheless consistently treated, and marketed, as “Indians” rather than simply as musicians in the mass entertainment industry. Though trained as a concert pianist, Shunatona found his greatest professional opportunities (and perhaps his greatest musical satisfaction) leading “all-Indian” jazz bands in dance halls and radio shows throughout the country. Native musicians experienced a non-Indian public who solicited the anti-modern authenticity of their Indianness in musical performance, even through Shunatona’s jazz, a genre representing arguably the most modern music of the day. On top of navigating these often bewildering pressures and desires, through the early 1930s Native musicians constantly had to contend with promoters and OIA officials who sought to manage the meaning of their music through demanding an evolutionary bent to their performances. In the end, however, these savvy musicians realized that they could exploit the non-Indian yearning for Indianness, fire managers who sought to toe the OIA line, and even make a living in the midst of the Great Depression by playing the day’s popular hits while donning regalia and musically celebrating their tribal heritage. By the early 1930s navigating these politics of music was old hat for Shunatona; his band hit the dance halls and airwaves without looking back.

30  John W. Troutm an

Notes 1. For a history of these musical politics in Native America, see Troutman, Indian Blues. 2. Charles Curtis had Kansa, Osage, and Potawatomie relatives on his mother’s side of the family. 3. Moses recounts these problems in his Wild West Shows. 4. Obviously the casting of a Pawnee-Otoe such as Joseph Shunatona to play a Navajo character met their requirements of authenticity, but Wyler and Huston spent months in the Southwest, among the Navajo, Hopi, Paiute, Apache, Comanche, Crow, and Blackfoot, looking for actors. 5. In 1934, O’Brien requested that the BIA support him once again: he had constructed a new United States Indian Band and sought governmental backing to perform at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition (O’Brien 3/26/34).

Works Cited “All Indian Band.” The Native American. December 6, 1930. Clipping found in National Archives (NA), Record Group (RG) 75, Central Classified File (CCF) General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Burke, Charles H. Letter to J. George Wright, January 16, 1929, NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. “Class of 1916.” Chilocco Graduates, 1894 to 1932, no date. National Archives (NA), Record Group (RG) 75, Central Classified File (CCF) Chilocco 820, file 64151-34-820. Croissette, Mrs. V. Letter to Charles Rhoads [sic], May 25, 1931, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Curtis, Charles, Vice President of the United States. Letter to C.J. Rhoads, February 4, 1931, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Farris, W. Q., Day School Inspector, Osage Indian Agency. Letter to W.M. Crawford, S.D.A. In Charge, Osage Indian Agency, January 24, 1929, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Gridley, Marion E., ed. Indians of Today. Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1936. Herman, Jan. A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.

Joe Shunatona and the United S tates Indian Reservation  31

Kinnaird, Clark. “A Juvenile Program that Pleases Adults.” Broadcasting Vol 4, No. 5, March 1, 1933: 13, 34. Kraus, Arthur M. Letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 2, 1931, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Lamotto, George H. Letter to Charles H. Burke, January 9, 1929, Western Union Telegram. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Leahy, Todd, and Raymond Wilson. Historical Dictionary of Native American Movements. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008. Luongo, James M. Letter to C. H. Rhoads [sic], April 27, 1931, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. McBride, Bunny. Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Moses, L. G. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. O’Brien, Thomas. Letter to Charles H. Burke, January 9, 1929, Western Union Telegram. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. O’Brien, Thomas. Letter to C. J. Rhoads, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 11, 1930, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. O’Brien, Thomas. Letter to C. J. Rhoads, January 20, 1931, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. O’Brien, Thomas. Letter to Charles J. Rhoads, July 1, 1931, Western Union Telegram. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. O’Brien, Thomas. Letter to H[a]rold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, March 26, 1934, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Posey, Alexander. The Fus Fixico Letters: A Creek Humorist in Early Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Rhoads, C. J. Letter to Carl Laemmle Jr., August 4, 1932, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Rhoads, C. J. Letter to Thomas O’Brien, December 22, 1930, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Rhoads, C. J. Letter to Thomas O’Brien, February 9, 1931, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. “Shunatona a Success.” The Carlisle Arrow and Red Man. 14 May 10, 1918. Shunatona, Chief Joseph. Letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 28, 1932, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Shunatona, Joseph Bayhylle. Skookum’s Laugh Medicine. Tulsa: Np, 1957.

32  John W. Troutm an

Slemp, C. Bascom, Commissioner-General, Commission of the United States of America, The International Colonial and Overseas Exposition at Paris. Letter to Charles J. Rhoads, no date, manuscript. NA RG 75, CCF General Services 929, file 1119-29-929. Troutman, John W. Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879– 1934. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. Wantland, William C. “An Essay: The Ignorance of Ignorance: Cultural Barriers Between Indians and Non-Indians.” American Indian Law Review 3 1975: 1–50.

2 American Indian Jazz Mildred Bailey and the Origins of America’s Most Musical Art Form

Chad Hamill “All the credit’s gone to the African for the wonderful rhythm in jazz, but I think a lot of it should go to the American Indian.” —R u t h E l l i n g to n

I

the Coeur d’Alene tribe of Idaho introduced concurrent resolution no. 49 in the Idaho House of Representatives, seeking to right the historical record and bring home Mildred Bailey, one of jazz’s first female vocalists. For over eighty years, Bailey—a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe— had been known primarily as a “white jazz singer.” Lost within discussions of the origins of jazz was Bailey’s Indian identity, left to linger like a neglected crop within the Coeur d’Alene farmlands where she learned to walk, talk, and sing. Although she could certainly be forgiven if she chose to hide her Native ancestry within a racially stratified 1930s America, Bailey never sought to do so. To the contrary, it was a source of personal pride she readily shared with those around her. Mildred Bailey was “white” because she was cast that way within a jazz narrative that had left no room for Indian jazz musicians. The “white jazz-singer” misnomer mattered for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Bailey exerted considerable influence within the jazz and pop worlds, pioneering the vocal “swing” style that countless singers sought to emulate, including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, and Tony Bennett. n March 2012,

34 Chad Hamill

Figure 2.1. 

Mildred Bailey. Credit: Estate of Mildred Bailey

Rather than crediting her contemporaries, Bailey pointed to the Indian songs of her youth as shaping a voice that is still heard throughout the world, sixty years after it was recorded one last time: I don’t know whether this music compares with jazz or the classics, but I do know

that it offers a young singer a remarkable background and training. It takes a

squeaky soprano and straightens out the clinkers that made it squeak; it removes

the bass boom from the contralto’s voice, this Indian singing does, because you

have to sing a lot of notes to get by, and you’ve got to cover an awful range. (Sudhalter in Ulanov 249)

Bailey belonged to a family lineage of Coeur d’Alene singers, ensuring that traditional songs would be woven into the fabric of her Indigenous identity. Bailey’s great-grandfather was Bazil Peone, head speaker and song leader for the Coeur d’Alene tribe at the turn of the twentieth century.1 Remembered for his contagious charisma and resounding voice, he helped lead the Coeur d’Alene people through a period of tumultuous change. Within an increasingly colonized landscape, Bazil’s electrifying oratory and indigenized Catholic

A meric an Indian Ja zz  35

hymns held the people together, illuminating a path toward a future that would be different, but no less Coeur d’Alene (Hamill 45). In just fifty years from the point of contact with Europeans, the Coeur d’Alene had successfully adopted static agriculture, moving away from traditional forms of nomadic subsistence in response to the continual influx of settlers to the region. In the Indian Commissions Agreement of 1889, the Coeur d’Alene tribe ceded the northern territory of their ancestral lands to the U.S. government for half a million dollars. Funds were divided equally among Coeur d’Alene families, most of whom invested in state-of-the-art farming equipment (Frey 73–75). Born in 1900 and raised on a farm bordering the reservation by her Coeur d’Alene mother and a Scotch/Irish father, Mildred Bailey reflected this rapidly shifting landscape. The home in which Mildred spent her formative years was perpetually awash in music. Her father, Charles Rinker, played the fiddle while Josephine, her mother, was a prodigious piano player (C. Rinker 2). Mildred’s parents routinely held Saturday night gatherings for neighboring wheat ranchers, turning their living room into a makeshift dance hall reverberating with music and the percussive undercurrent of feet rattling the floorboards. For their guests, the evening wouldn’t be complete without an appearance by Josie’s young protégé. As a bedtime reprieve Mildred would sidle up next to her mother at the piano. With fingers flitting over the keys and voices aligned in a well-choreographed harmony, they went through popular songs of the day, including everyone’s favorite ragtime classic, “Dill Pickles” (C. Rinker 2). In addition to learning music from her mother at home, Mildred would accompany her to traditional gatherings on the reservation. During these excursions, Mildred sang in the manner and spirit of her ancestors, forging melodic bonds with countless generations who had sung before her. Like river rock made smooth by centuries of rushing waters, traditional songs were beginning to mold Bailey’s voice, casting within it the distinctive markings of its source. During her childhood, Mildred was also exposed to the Catholic Indian hymns. In the mid-eighteenth century, a Coeur d’Alene prophet by the name of Circling Raven had a vision that foretold the coming of the “black robes.” His vision paved the way for the Jesuits, and although the path to Coeur d’Alene country took nearly a century to travel, when the Jesuits finally arrived they were received with open arms (Hamill 25–26). For the Coeur d’Alene, the Jesuits and the religion they represented were the fulfillment of a prophecy and they made it their own. The European hymns the Jesuits introduced were translated

36 Chad Hamill

into Salish and the melodies reconfigured to conform to the Indigenous song style. Bazil Peone and other Indian hymn leaders sang the indigenized hymns like sacred songs given by the animal spirits, as prayers that embodied spiritual power (Hamill 39–40). In this sense it can be said that Mildred’s early encounters with the melodic were not strictly musical, but distinctly spiritual in character and constitution. She was participating in an Indigenous epistemology of song, coming into musical ways of knowing that would inform her unique approach to singing and her invaluable contribution to jazz. Figure 2.2 includes a transcription of the Catholic Indian hymn, “X.alips Č’awm” (“The Daylight’s Prayer”). Adapted from a traditional Indigenous song, “X.alips Č’awm” is sung at the end of an all-night wake, during morning’s first light (Hamill 116–117). Like all the hymns introduced after the arrival of the Jesuits in the 1840s, “X . alips Č’awm” is sung in the Salish language (in this case, the Coeur d’Alene dialect). The translation in English is as follows: You my Jesus, I am meeting the daylight. You my Jesus, you are my heart.

Because I am very pitiful, you are going to protect me from my enemy. Mary, you are my mother, you are going to pray for me.

The melodic contour of “X . alips Č’awm” is indicative of Coeur d’Alene, Spokan, and Salish song style, with the frequent use of upward glides preceding pitches as well as downward movements between pitches. Both movements are shown in the example, with lines (termed “slurs” in musical parlance) tracing the melodic contour from one note to another (not to be confused with ties between notes, the glides (or slurs) wrap around the note itself ). In this traditional style, what happens “in between the notes” gives a song its strong emotive quality, a type of movement used frequently and to similar effect in jazz. Motivated by the prospect of better schools for Mildred and her three younger brothers, Charles and Josephine moved the family to Spokane in 1912. By then Mildred’s musical foundation had been built, providing her added stability during teenage years that held promise, but were filled with heartache. After a typical day at Joseph’s Academy, where she studied buttoned-down piano music with one of its nuns, Mildred re-entered an alternate musical universe she shared with her mother at home. Josie was adept at playing everything from opera to show tunes.2 From the piano bench she led Mildred on musical expeditions, exploring new musical terrain that regularly crossed boundaries

A meric an Indian Ja zz  37

Figure 2.2. 

“X.alips Č’awm (The Daylight’s Prayer),” sung by Joe Woodcock and others

of style and genre. During this time they continued to make trips down to the reservation, exploring an old musical terrain that predated any of the European classical pieces Josie placed on the piano’s music desk, singing traditional songs that awakened within them a collective Indigenous memory they shared with their Spokan/Coeur d’Alene ancestors. But while the road they shared seemed one of limitless potential, it was about to come to an abrupt end. In just a few short years, Josie would follow her ancestors home, succumbing to TB at the age of thirty-six (A. Rinker 7). Deeply distraught at the news of her mother’s death, Mildred jumped up on her horse and rode into the surrounding countryside, hoping to escape the pain that threatened to cut her heart in two. She returned the following morning, resigned to face a profound loss that would

38 Chad Hamill

usher in a period of acute uncertainty, when music was often the only thing she could recognize in a cold and unfamiliar world. Not long after Josephine passed, Charles sought a housekeeper to cook and take care of the home. After two false starts, he settled on Josephine Pierce, a Danish widow with a daughter of her own (Price 2005:7). She and Charles were soon married in a ceremony that marked a dramatic shift in her behavior. She seemed intent on ridding the home of the Rinker children, reminders perhaps of Charles’s former wife, whose essence was evoked every time Mildred sat at the piano. Resistant to her incessant bullying, Mildred told her father flatly: “If you don’t get rid of this woman, I’m going to leave” (A. Rinker 8). Soon thereafter, Mildred packed up and left for Seattle. She moved in with her aunt Ida and uncle George. With no children of her own, Ida was delighted to have the young and vibrant energy of a seventeenyear-old in the house. For Mildred, she was happy to be wanted. After the trauma of losing her mother and enduring an intolerable turf war in which her father sided with the enemy, the maternal affection of Ida seemed to heal her wounded heart. All too soon, however, those wounds would be reopened. On a cold and rainy day in December, Mildred accompanied Ida and her driver for a ride along the shore of Puget Sound. The rain began to thicken, washing away all the usual points of reference. As the oncoming vehicle crossed the middle divider and entered their lane, Ida’s driver turned to the right, snapping the guardrail and sending them off a steep embankment (C. Rinker 5). Mildred was the only one to be pulled from the car alive. In the span of a few months, Mildred had lost her mother, her remaining family, and now her aunt in an accident that would physically and emotionally haunt her for the remainder of her life. If she was going to persevere, she would need to dig even deeper and sing through her pain, the same way she had heard them sing on the reservation so many times before. After being released from the hospital, Mildred found an apartment in Seattle and began combing the Help Wanted ads. Armed with little more than her musical gifts, Mildred landed a job at Sonny’s Music Shop as a piano player and singer. Like a dealer selling cars, Mildred would take potential buyers on an auditory test drive of contemporary hits. One day a local piano player heard Mildred perform the appropriately titled, “How You Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm.” Moved by her flawless vocal style, he asked her to join him on stage at one of Seattle’s new speakeasies, the Silver Grill (C. Rinker 6–7). After Prohibition in 1920, speakeasies proliferated dramatically in urban areas, becoming critical outlets for the emergence of jazz, America’s growing

Americ an Indian Ja zz  39

obsession. Bailey was swept up in this current, winding her way through speakeasies up and down the West Coast. During her stint at the Silver Grill, Mildred met a merchant by the name of Ted Bailey. They were soon married. Sharing none of her musical aspirations, Bailey increasingly pressured her to give up touring for a life of domestic simplicity. Mildred boarded a train for Los Angeles instead, leaving her husband behind but keeping the name “Bailey,” for which she would soon become widely known. While she was singing on the speakeasy circuit, Mildred’s younger brother Alton­—a budding musician himself—was forming a band with his older brother in Spokane called the Musicaladers. He had all the musicians in place except for a drummer who could keep decent time. They took a shot on an unknown musician who went by the name Bing. Much to their surprise, not only did he “really ha[ve] a beat,” he could sing (A. Rinker 15–16). At the time they couldn’t have imagined that in less than a decade, Crosby’s voice, which could scarcely be heard from behind the drum kit, would captivate millions. After some limited success in Spokane, Alton set off with Bing for Los Angeles in late 1925, hoping that Mildred could help them reach the next rung on the music business ladder.3 Driving down the coast in a haggard Model T Ford they picked up for $30 (with a missing top it came cheap), they lived a form of musical hand-to-mouth, playing and singing at parties and rickety roadside establishments for food, gas, and the occasional hotel room. After two weeks on the road, their winded Ford sputtered, gasped, and reluctantly rolled onto Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, a stone’s throw from the house Mildred shared with her new husband, a successful bootlegger named Benny Stafford (A. Rinker 118–120; Giddins 2). It had been three years since Mildred had seen Alton and she didn’t know what to make of the strangers at the door. Concerned, Alton pleaded, “Don’t you know me? I’m your brother, Alt.” With a flash of recognition Mildred shrieked, throwing her arms around him with such enthusiasm they nearly toppled onto the porch (A. Rinker 27). After their impromptu reunion, Alt and Bing followed Mildred through the door and into the promise of Hollywood, a promise that would be kept—to varying degrees—for each one of them. After catching up with Alt, Mildred asked the boys to play. She liked what she heard, giving them an endorsement that buoyed their road-weary bones (A. Rinker 29). She returned the favor, singing a couple of Irving Berlin songs. Reflecting on that moment, Alton remembered that “she played the songs with the same feeling and style which later on would make her a star . . . you

40 Chad Hamill

knew you were listening to someone who was very special” (A. Rinker 29). In that moment, Bing knew it too. According to Crosby biographer, Gary Giddins, “Bing understood Millie’s rare abilities as a singer, her unaffectedness, understatement, and versatility. And she saw in him the real thing, an antidote to the prissy aesthetes who had no swing or feeling for the blues. Bing, having won prizes for elocution, admired her impeccable diction; she encouraged his innate affinity for focusing on the language of a song” (Giddins 124). Upon meeting one another, the fates of Mildred Bailey and Bing Crosby became entwined, wrapped around their mutual affection for Louis Armstrong, the king of swing.4 Not long after they arrived, Bailey notified Bing and Alt of auditions for a traveling vaudeville show. She drove them to the audition and they got the gig, sharing the thirteen-week bill with a range of acts, including a dog routine and a chorus line (Giddins 126). While performing with the troupe some months later at the Metropolitan in Los Angeles, Crosby got a call from Paul Whiteman’s manager. In 1926 Whiteman was a superstar, reaching a level of celebrity previously unheard of in the field of popular music. Incredulous, Crosby hung up the phone. Whiteman’s manager persisted, eventually dispelling his disbelief and inviting him and Rinker to meet with Whiteman in his dressing room at the nearby Million Dollar Theater. Upon their arrival the next day, Whiteman cut right to the chase: he wanted the duo to join his band. Stunned, the young musicians—less than a year out of Spokane—got the kind of break that turns dreams into lucid, life-altering reality. Soon after becoming regulars in Whiteman’s New York club as the Rhythm Boys, Whiteman secured them a record contract with Victor Records. Their first recording under their new moniker was “Mississippi Mud,” an eventual hit written by Harry Barris, the third “boy” in the ascendant trio. In 1928 The Rhythm Boys were part of Whiteman’s newly configured band, joining soonto-be jazz legends such as Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, Eddie Lang, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey on records that were selling faster than they could be made (A. Rinker 53–54). During this time, Bailey was still in Los Angeles, gradually moving away from the speakeasy circuit. While pondering an uncertain musical future, Bailey received word that the Whiteman band was coming to town to film The King of Jazz (Whiteman would play the starring role). The band arrived to a delayed production, leaving them in limbo. During this time Bailey became fast friends with a number of the musicians, taking them up to the Hollywood Hills

A meric an Indian Ja zz  41

to go horseback riding, a skill she developed while growing up on the Coeur d’Alene farm (A. Rinker 76–80). After the picture finally went into production, Alt and Bing suggested to Bailey that she host a party for Whiteman and members of the band. The featured attraction would be Bailey’s home brew, the nearest thing to Prohibition perfection Hollywood had to offer. Not surprisingly, the whole band took them up on it, including Whiteman. Once the party had hit a comfortable stride, Crosby asked “Millie” to sing a song. Surrounded by musical heavy-hitters, she was on edge. With her heart pounding and her nerves firing, she began to sing “What Can I Say Dear After I Say I’m Sorry.” Halfway through the first verse, Whiteman’s eyes became distant as he drifted out of conversation, put down his beer, and listened. While the words were apologetic, the voice was soulful, smooth, and beyond reproach. After the song ended, Whiteman sauntered into the family room, gave Bailey a kiss, and asked if she would sing with the band for an upcoming radio spot. Bailey’s home-brewing days were over (A. Rinker 80–82). Over the next three years Bailey was a featured singer with Whiteman’s orchestra, becoming the first woman to front a big band. After her first record in 1929, titled, “What Kind o’ Man Is You,” Bailey embarked on a highly productive and dynamic career that spanned the next two decades. In the 1930s Bailey was a star of radio (as well as the first female vocalist to have her own radio show) and recorded hundreds of songs, a feat unmatched by her contemporaries (including Lee Wiley and Ella Fitzgerald). After a somewhat contentious split with Whiteman, Bailey joined forces with former Whiteman sideman Red Norvo. Married in 1932, they soon earned the title of “Mr. and Mrs. Swing.” Will Friedwald called Bailey and Norvo “one of the best partnerships in jazz, like Reinhardt and Grapelli, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer, Holiday and Young” (Friedwald 30). In the mid-1930s, Bailey also enjoyed fruitful collaborations with producer John Hammond, who hired accomplished soloists like Roy Eldridge, Teddy Wilson, and Buck Clayton to provide a subtle backdrop for Bailey on intimate sessions designed to sound as if they were sitting alongside the listener in the comfort of their living room (Friedwald 29). While Bailey’s distinct sound was being broadcast throughout 1930s America, it was becoming embedded within the musical lexicon of jazz itself, shaping the sound of singers to come. Bailey too had her influences, and while she would have credited Louis Armstrong with having a role in honing her jazz technique, for her the process of stylistic development was more localized:

42 Chad Hamill

Sheet music was hard to get in my hometown and a tune had to be learned [from] a recording or traveling band. It had to be memorized. I could never get the exact

notes of a song, so I used to sit down and try to scheme out the best way to sing it smoothly. Sometimes I would think how a tune might have been improved if the

composer had changed certain parts of the melody, and I would try and sing it my own way. It sort of stuck this way through the years and before I could straighten myself out—I got to thinking I was traveling down the wrong trail—I found out that they were calling this swing and liking it! (Friedwald 27)

Figure 2.3 includes a transcription of Bailey’s vocal performance in “Junk Man,” a recording she made with the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1934. The upward and downward melodic glides like those on “X.alips Č’awm” are evident, as is Bailey’s elusive and elastic approach to melody and rhythm. “Her way” of singing, an approach Bailey honed during her formative years, represents a critical phase in the development of jazz, still in its infancy in 1934. While attending gatherings on the Coeur d’Alene reservation, a young Mildred would have routinely taken in songs like the one below. War Dance songs were integral to pow wows, which took root in Coeur d’Alene country in the early twentieth century. The Coeur d’Alene Drummers demonstrate the same elastic melodic quality that can be found in Bailey’s performance of “Junk Man,” where the melody sits in the grooves between beats, comfortably laying back while the band—or in the case of the Coeur d’Alene War Dance, the drum—remains locked in predictable 4/4 time. The “War Dance Song” not only hints at swing, it does so convincingly—supporting Bailey’s contention that she was swinging before she knew what swing was. Mildred Bailey continued her prolific singing career into the late 1940s, during which time her health began to wane. Her thyroid was most likely damaged during the horrific car accident of her youth, causing her to gain considerable weight over the years (a condition most likely exacerbated by the rigors of the road). After being diagnosed with advanced diabetes, Bailey was given a dim prognosis; rest would likely prolong her life, but not for very long (C. Rinker 24–25). Bailey let go of her recording and touring commitments and sold the Coeur d’Alene farm, purchasing a similar farm in Stormville, New York (just outside of Poughkeepsie). In her final year, Bailey settled into a life that had the familiar feel of those early years on the Coeur d’Alene reservation while situating her near the rhythmic pulse of the jazz and pop world she had grown accustomed to. Friends who visited her there—including Eddie Condon, Lee Wiley, and Eddie Sauter—encountered a consummate singer who

Figure 2.3. 

“Junk Man,” performed by Mildred Bailey

Figure 2.4. 

“War Dance Song,” Coeur d’Alene Drummers

A meric an Indian Ja zz  45

had traded her love for performing for a palpable peace. Irving Townsend “remember[s] watching her late one night at her farm in upstate New York while she listened to a record of Duke Ellington’s ‘Black Butterfly.’ She sat at the kitchen table with a single candle blowing in the wind from the open door. The shadows of the leaves on the maples outside the door danced all over the kitchen walls, and Mildred played the record over and over again as if afraid the trees might stop blowing if the band did” (Rinker-Miller). Sadly, Bailey’s peace would once again be short-lived. While lying in a Poughkeepsie hospital, mounting bills siphoned away what money she had left, making it impossible to keep up with payments on the farm. Unsettled perhaps by the desperate physical and financial condition of a musical mentor that had given his career its start, Crosby (along with Frank Sinatra) paid her hospital bills and her mortgage. The entwined paths of Bailey and Crosby quietly crossed one last time in a graceful gesture far removed from the hustle of Hollywood. With her debts settled by those who understood her true worth to be incalculable, Bailey passed away on January 11, 1951, just short of her 51st birthday. Of Mildred Bailey’s place in the history of pop and jazz, Will Friedwald states that “no understanding of jazz singing can be complete without factoring in Mildred Bailey (Friedwald 27). In turn, I would suggest that no understanding of Mildred Bailey’s singing can be complete without factoring in the influence of Coeur d’Alene songs. Beyond straightening out a “squeaky” voice, removing the “bass boom,” increasing vocal flexibility, and perhaps even showing her how to swing, Coeur d’Alene songs connected Mildred to spiritual ways of being in the world. Singers that connect as deeply as she has with her audience—both then and now—bring this ontology to their singing. Moving beyond range, phrasing, timbre, or even what is heard, powerful singers connect to our very soul. By singing in the manner of her ancestors, Bailey not only left an enduring imprint on America’s collective consciousness, her Spokan / Coeur d’Alene voice helped mold its most distinctive musical art form.

Notes 1. Both of Bazil Peone’s parents were Spokan Indians displaced after the 1887 Spokane Treaty, which sent many members of the tribe to neighboring reservations. 2. After attending various musical productions at The Auditorium in Spokane, which included traveling road shows, plays, operettas, and Gilbert and Sullivan

46 Chad Hamill

musicals, Josephine would come home and play many of the tunes she heard, having memorized them by ear (A. Rinker 6) 3. Like his mother and sister, it appears Alton had considerable musical gifts. According to Crosby, “he had a great ear for music, he could play pretty near anything after he heard it a time or two, and play the right harmony, too. He’d pick out a part for each instrument . . . and he’d voice all the harmonies for them . . . We were quite a novelty around Spokane ’cause we would have arrangements taken from hit records, which we could play. That made us really unique.” (Connibear interview in Giddins 97) 4. Bailey introduced the young Crosby to the music of Armstrong, essential—in her view—if he were to become a serious singer. Crosby and Armstrong’s eventual collaboration would prove to be both musically and culturally significant, even seismic (Giddins 124).

Works Cited Frey, Rodney. Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane: The World of the Schi-tsu’umsh : Coeur d’Alene Indians. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. Print. Friedwald, Will. A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010. Print. Giddins, Gary. Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print. ———. “Mrs. Swing: How Mildred Bailey Helped Define Jazz Singing.” The Village Voice Online, 7–13 June 2000. 12 May 2013. Hamill, Chad. Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau: The Jesuit, the Medicine Man, and the Indian Hymn Singer. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2012. Print. Price, Jim. “Mildred Bailey: The Spokane Connection.” University of Idaho, Moscow. 24 Feb. 2005. Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. Rinker, Alton. The Bing Crosby I Knew. N.d. MS. Collection of Julia Rinker-Miller, Bear Valley Springs. Rinker, Charles. The Mildred Bailey Story. N.d. MS. Collection of Julia RinkerMiller, Bear Valley Springs. Rinker-Miller, Julia. In Search of Aunt Millie. 1992. MS. Collection of Julia RinkerMiller, Bear Valley Springs. Ulanov, Barry. A History of Jazz in America. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1972.

3 Jazz and the Politics of Identity The Spirit of Jim Pepper

Bill Siegel

J

im Pepper (1941–1992), saxophonist and composer, is among the most important Native American artists in the history of jazz and pop music. His music and example set a new standard in musical expression and contributed to a modern sense of identity for Native America, whether traditional or urban, or for those who may have become separated from their own tribal identities in mainstream America. Pepper was Kaw on his father’s side, Creek on his mother’s. If you don’t know him or his music, it’s because American history is in a pervasive state of self-denial regarding Indigenous culture and its continuing contribution to American culture as a whole. Pepper’s influence echoes through the jazz world, reaching musicians of all stripes, including some of today’s masters of modern jazz such as perennial poll winners Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, the late Michael Brecker, and others around the world. But more important for our discussion here, he also reached younger musicians, especially Native Americans, helping them learn and accept who they are and what they could do with their art. Pepper synthesized the music of his people—especially the Kaw Peyote Church, of which his father and grandfather were practicing elders—and that of other Indigenous tribes and nations with jazz, rock, country, R&B, and other pop forms, doing it with an unflagging sense of his own Native identity and its relevance. It’s a challenge to speak of cultural identity in today’s global hybridization of cultures. Palestinian scholar Edward Said wrote that “identity is a set of currents,

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flowing currents, rather than a fixed place or a stable set of objects” (Barenboim and Said, 5). Today’s “flowing currents” run through Indigenous families and communities maintaining traditional identities relatively intact; others who are re-creating lost identities by restoring rituals and languages; those who know their heritage, but find no place for it in their lives; those whose identities were lost or hidden in the name of survival in the midst of the American holocaust; and those bringing traditional ways into harmony with the “modern” world. Pepper was among the latter, spending many summers at his grandfather’s Oklahoma Kaw reservation, surrounded by songs and intertribal dances of the pow wow circuit and practices of the Kaw Peyote Church. The strength of his Kaw identity never waned, nor did his zeal for jazz and blues: Maybe I was always geared to be a musician . . . to be expressing myself, trying to get feelings out for other people to feel. It comes from . . . the dancing, from

the music, from my grandfather singing, my father dancing . . . My name is Jim

Pepper, and my Indian name is Hunga-chee-Edda, which means Flying Eagle

. . . In my younger life, I spent a lot of time in Oklahoma with my grandfather . . . , Ralph Pepper, who was . . . a very spiritual man . . . [H]e was always singing these songs from the time I was very, very small. I remember the music that he sang. (Osawa)

Pepper even proclaimed who he was on his professional musician résumé: “NATIONALITY: NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN.” Pepper’s love of jazz came in his teens from late night radio broadcasts of such jazz greats as Sonny Rollins and Gene Ammons. Later influences included Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, and others. He taught himself to play impressions of their music, remaining mostly self-taught throughout his career. Leaving his family’s Portland, Oregon, home for New York in his twenties, he found fertile ground to experiment and learn from other young saxophonists. Many of his contemporaries say Pepper could intuitively master virtually anything. He played standards, frequently punctuated with bebop and R&Bflavored solos: “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and “Greensleeves” among his favorites. He met the challenge of Thelonius Monk’s complex, quirky music in “Pannonica,” “Crepuscule with Nellie,” and “Ruby My Dear.” And he gained the respect of fellow players with his sound, style, and Coltrane-esque explorations. In the 1970s he went to San Francisco where he dabbled in psychedelia on albums with such trippy titles as Second

Ja zz and the Politics of Identit y  49

Poem to Karmela or Gypsies Are Important, Sandy’s Album Is Here at Last (produced by The Mothers of Invention’s Ian Underwood), and Signals from Earth with a group called The Pygmy Unit. He also traveled to Alaska several times to study the music of Indigenous fishing villages. He eventually became an icon in Europe, living out his later years in Austria before returning to Oregon after a diagnosis of cancer. Testaments to Pepper’s sound demonstrate his bona fides in jazz. Accomplished musicians still speak of the uniqueness and fullness of his sound. Drummer Bob Moses notes that there was something different about Pepper’s style: You could almost say there’s some similarity in lines between all the saxophone

players, there’s shared things they all went through. Pepper skipped right over that, he played his own way which works on any style. Not just his sound, but his choice of notes. And that’s just amazing, because there are only twelve notes, and how you’re getting these patterns that no one else has found—it’s always been kind of magical. He found patterns that were particularly Pepper patterns. (Osawa)

Drummer Reuben Hoch of the Chassidic Jazz Project (who formed the group West End Avenue with Pepper in the 1980s) calls Pepper’s sound “absolutely unique . . . ridiculously fat and beautiful” (Hoch). Saxophonist Dave Liebman says he learned a lot from Pepper in their younger Brooklyn days; he too used the word “fat” to describe Pepper’s sound (Liebman). Alaskan drummer and Pepper friend Ron Thorne recalls that “he also had this real, pure R&B side to him that few people knew about. . . . [His] band would sneak in some straightahead jazz tunes and some fusion-oriented material whenever possible . . . damn, they were funky, too!” (Thorne). As he honed his style and broadened his repertoire, Pepper played on dozens of albums and performed with a wide variety of groups and stylists. This essay focuses on a small handful of his recordings: his first group effort, Out of Sight and Sound with The Free Spirits; the eponymous Everything Is Everything; Pepper’s Pow Wow, the first album under his own name; and Comin’ and Goin’, a blend of original and traditional Indigenous songs. The Free Spirits included Moses, guitarists Larry Coryell and Columbus Baker, and bassist Chris Hills: We were, like, pushing the boundaries of madness . . . We would start our set with

Jim Pepper playing 20 minutes by Coltrane-vibe stuff, right on the rock. Back in ’64, ’65, nobody could do both. Miles Davis’ Bitches’ Brew was 1970 . . . and then

50  Bill Siegel

there was . . . Blood, Sweat & Tears, they were ’68, ’69. There was another band . . . led by Jeremy Steig, a good player, they had a jazz player doing rock. And even that was about a year, a year-and-a-half after The Free Spirits. I think we were the first jazz-rock band that I know of. (Osawa)

After recording Out of Sight and Sound, Pepper helped form the band, Everything Is Everything. The group’s one album included the first recorded release of what would become Pepper’s signature song, the Peyote church chant “Witchi Tai To,” which Pepper had been performing in clubs for several years. In the song, he overlaid the traditional chant with rock/jazz/country spicing. The song became a crossover hit on Top 40 lists, has been recorded in well over one hundred versions by musicians of all stripes and from all cultures around the world, and is still performed by countless others. “Witchi Tai To,” Pepper’s first foray into a new musical synthesis, will be discussed in more detail later in this essay. Pepper’s Pow Wow has become something of a musical “bible” for Native artists as a vehicle for affirming modern Native American identities and artistic expression. It includes Pepper’s own arrangements of traditional and social pow wow songs, some written by his father, and some by folk singer Peter La Farge. The album opens with Pepper’s father chanting “Witchi Tai To” in traditional style, followed by Pepper’s own arrangement and vocals. The Comin’ and Goin’ album features a bus-load of jazz and “world music” luminaries, including Don Cherry, John Scofield (who was at the same time recording with Miles Davis), Bill Frisell, Ed Schuller, Hamid Drake, Kenny Werner, Nana Vasconcelos, Collin Walcott, and others. At the center was Pepper’s soulful saxophone—a combination of gritty R&B, Coltrane-inspired wails, plaintive chants, and earthy humor. Pepper and Walcott even hit the road for a short time with an unlikely project of blues duets on tenor sax and sitar. Pepper’s lasting place in jazz history is due to how he used his art to bring Indigenous music to the forefront. Jazz has thrived for decades by the infusion of fresh blood breaking through barriers of mainstream constrictions. And Pepper brought plenty of new blood wherever he carried his saxophone. He may not have been the first to demonstrate the influence of Indigenous music in the evolution of jazz, but his was certainly among the strongest voices attesting to its place in modern jazz and pop music. Even without formal documentation, there is a strong oral history of Native America’s contributions to jazz. Duke Ellington‘s sister, Ruth Ellington, once

Ja zz and the Politics of Identit y  51

said, “All the credit’s gone to the African for the wonderful rhythm in jazz, but I think a lot of it should go to the American Indian” (Lees 40). Joy Harjo, Muscogee Creek poet and musician, agrees, saying, “It’s always been my contention that . . . we were there when jazz was invented, and that we were part of that invention. So in a way, what Jim was doing was just a very natural evolution, especially with jazz . . . it was a relationship that no one has really talked much about” (Osawa). And former Downbeat editor Gene Lees contrived a “family tree” of jazz saxophone leading back from some of the world’s top saxophonists to a Native American jazz saxophonist: One of the major influences in jazz was Frank Trumbauer, who helped shape

the playing of Lester Young and Benny Carter. Benny told me that himself, and Lester Young attested to it so often that there can be no question about

it. Woody Herman said Trumbauer influenced him, and was sure that Johnny

Hodges would say the same thing. Thus Trumbauer’s influence can be found in Phil Woods, whose avowed influences are Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, and

Charlie Parker, in that order. . . . John Chilton wrote of Trumbauer’s “pithy sense of understatement and dry, delicate tone.” (Lees 40)

But perhaps most apropos is Lees’s finishing touch: “Trumbauer’s wife, Mitzi, made the wry observation, ‘Frank was an Indian, you know, and would never say one word where none would do.’” Here we have an interesting thesis: a Native American musician whose music reflected his own possibly culturally based speaking style, creating a way of playing that “helped shape” the sound of the world’s most innovative jazz musicians. Eventually, Pepper formed a close association with “free jazz” pioneers Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman, and he often acknowledged Coleman’s and Cherry’s encouragement of his explorations into his musical heritage: Like Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman was a tremendous help to me. . . . I was play-

ing in a place called the Dome, and apparently Ornette was walking by the club . . . and I was in there playing a solo. . . . He was standing in the wings, and I hap-

pened to look over and thought, Oh God, that’s Ornette! He introduced himself to me and said . . . I want you to come over. So I went over to his place, and he

just proceeded to lay this beauty on me. I feel like I’m a very lucky individual. . . . [We] talked a lot about ethnic things . . . maybe it was through him that gave me the strength to start using my Indian heritage. . . . I always had a lot of pride

52  Bill Siegel

about being an Indian. But it just didn’t seem to fit with the jazz thing. But seeing

him use his own beauty made me search out my own ethnic roots. I love the man for that influence. . . . [And] I have the feeling that [Don Cherry is] gonna

bring out the Indian thing in me more, because . . . he’s one of my favorite people on this earth—you know, the love and joy that he has. He’s played with many

different people, from North Africa to Sweden, to Albert [Ayler] to Ornette, to Trane . . . He’s a very special person, and he has love—he has love in his music. (Linder)

Pepper’s mother also understood that her son’s work was a product of a particular view of the world: “Jim Pepper believed in the Indian philosophy of equality and respect. When we speak of equality, we are speaking of social equality. The belief that everyone is entitled to a feeling of dignity, a feeling of accomplishment and a feeling of self-esteem—Respect—a feeling of belonging and acceptance” (F. Pepper). In terms of Indigenous identity, it’s worth returning to “Witchi Tai To” because it remains the song most associated with Pepper. Pepper was well aware of the ramifications of bringing a sacred chant into the world of pop music. When he first made a demo tape of “Witchi Tai To,” he wanted to be sure he was showing the chant proper respect and honor, so he brought the home-made cassette recording to Peyote church elders to consult with them: I was very paranoid about how all the older Indians would feel about me taking on a religious song and putting it out in pop [form] . . . I would have never released it unless I had approval of the Old Ones. . . . I went directly to my grand-

father and his older cronies, and played what I did to it. . . . I asked them, “Would

it be sacrilegious,” and they said, “No, it’s a beautiful song, it’s great that other people could do it” . . . I got their approval, so I went ahead and did it . . . it gives

me more inspiration to use all and every kind of Indian music that I can. Because it’s beautiful. (Linder)

Pepper had transformed the ancient chant into a jazz composition with a rock and country & western feel. His modernized arrangements—through the incorporation of contemporary non-Native pop forms—illustrate the vibrancy of modern Indigenous cultures on their own terms. Creek author and scholar Craig Womack writes about such Indigenous cultural growth and change:

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Native cultures are most often analyzed as if change is something they faced only

after European contact, and as if, in every instance, contact with other cultures threatens “cultural purity.” Creeks, however, who experienced exposure to new cultures for hundreds of years, still managed to retain their language, worldview, and

government, even in a system of constant flux. Indian cultures are the only culture

where it is assumed that if they change they are no longer a culture. In most other cultures, change is viewed as a sign that the culture is vibrant and alive, capable of

surviving. Creeks provide an interesting historical example in terms of the way an indigenous culture might actually flourish in the face of change. (Womack 31)

After “Witchi Tai To,” Pepper composed and recorded many songs combining jazz and pop forms with the music of the Kaw reservation and from the larger pow wow circuit. His music celebrated the vitality of modern Indigenous American cultures. There’s his celebration of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn in “Commander G.A. Custer Git the Buzz” (also recorded as “Custer Gets It”); “No War Dance,” a short pow wow–inspired piece with an obvious antiwar message; the haunting “Love Chant for a Lakota Lady”; the inspirational “Comin’ and Goin’”; “Caddo Revival,” based on a Native Baptist church hymn; and Don Cherry’s lyrical “Malinyea” with Collin Walcott’s sitar opening. All this, while continuing to play jazz standards from the non-Native world. Pepper also frequently worked with American Indian students, teaching them about the evolution of jazz and about Native-inspired music, legitimizing the idea that Native and non-Native artistic expression are not in conflict with each other: Native music is rhythm and melody. Some of [jazz] was the music of the Black slaves brought here; it was written in rhythm. What happened to change that was

that they added European harmony. . . . [M]y favorite music is rhythm, melody, and sweet ‘har-moh-nee.’ Those three things are the ingredients for when I try to

put my Native music with jazz. I use the rhythm, the melody, and I add harmony

to it. And I try to make the harmony so it is in harmony with whatever song I am doing. (Osawa)

But Pepper himself was not always “in harmony,” and his identity, to borrow Said’s word again, was often in flux. The Peyote Church had a strong hold on him, but so did the “profane” world of jazz:

5 4  Bill Siegel

Right now I’m not living in a Peyote [Church] way . . . I’ve done a couple spiritual-

Mecca things, where I go to Oklahoma and I’ll go to a few meetings, but I haven’t

had the opportunity to really do it for a length of time, which means a couple, two, three years. . . . You know, the meetings are a very strong, special thing. There

have been times I’ve gone to meetings, and I didn’t feel the strength to go inside, and I would stay outside the meeting and listen to the music, and just feel the vibes. (Linder)

When he couldn’t bring himself to join the circle of chanters, he’d sometimes spend the night sitting outside the window of church meetings, listening to the men’s night-long chants. It’s clear he still wanted to be part of it, to live “in a Peyote way” as a member of his father’s and grandfather’s church. But at the same time, the pull of jazz was stronger. In addition to this sense of divided loyalties, Pepper was acutely aware of the larger story of how Indigenous cultures had been nearly wiped out in relatively recent history. But even in his darkest, most painful struggles with where his identity fit in the world he traveled through, Pepper never retreated from or tried to hide who he was and where he came from. Some listeners and friends saw this struggle in his music: [Pepper] almost always played for his life; but also—and this carries more weight—for the life of his race, his people and his tribe. All those who knew him

well could not shake off the feeling that he was constantly driven by a deeply seated fear, the traumatic terror of absolute extermination . . . the menace of losing his identity, which pursued him like a shadow. (Weismueller)

Pepper’s tour promoter Monique Goldstein recalled one of his performances, which was held in a church: “Jim was ‘a little’ drunk, when he abruptly stopped in the middle of playing ‘Love Chant for a Lakota Lady,’ . . . looked [the audience] straight in the eye, and clearly spoke: ‘YOU GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKERS! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS!!?!?!!!’ The next day I received some angry phone calls” (Goldstein). Responding to complaints after the performance, Goldstein defended Pepper’s actions without compromise. Included in Pepper’s sense of identity was this demon of “the traumatic terror of absolute extermination,” but he was far from alone. Among many families intent on survival at any cost, there was the common refrain that their “Indian blood” was not to be talked about. Dave Brubeck, Modoc on his father’s side,

Ja zz and the Politics of Identit y  55

spoke about this dichotomy between accepting and denying one’s identity: “My dad was born in 1884 near Pyramid Lake [near Reno, Nevada], which is an Indian reservation. . . . My mother’s attitude was, ‘Don’t tell him [Brubeck] that nonsense.’ And my father toward the end of his life told his grandson to be proud of who you are” (Lees 42). Pepper’s father spoke of the dangers of identifying oneself as Indian and how this affected the young Jim Pepper: Well, being an urban Indian, it was kind of hard in a way. When we first went

to Portland [OR], they didn’t have any respect for Indians. You couldn’t go into a restaurant like the other people. They treated you like the Blacks. Jim was the

only Indian in the school there [and] they started giving him a bad time. And I

think by coming down here to Oklahoma, it made [his] belief and kind of formed his character. (Osawa)

Jazz singer Kay Starr, Iroquois from her father and famous in the 1940s and 1950s, once said, “The American people would like us to just disappear. . . . And we have almost done it” (Lees 39). All of this helps support the proposition that Pepper was driven by a vital need to affirm contemporary Indigenous identity through his music. Identity politics began to change dramatically throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s, just as Pepper was experimenting with “modernizing” Indigenous music. National and international politics were combining to form a perfect storm as the world saw its biggest cultural upheavals in generations. In America, the Black civil rights struggle was energized; millions of Americans were fed up with a senseless war in Southeast Asia; a new wave of feminism was on the rise; and the struggle for Native American rights took to the stage as well. Native American occupations of Alcatraz (starting in 1969 and continuing through 1971) and the Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., in 1972; the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and protests at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973; FBI attacks at Pine Ridge in 1974 and subsequent imprisonment of Leonard Peltier—all of this meant that Native America was alive and well, and that Indigenous identity could no longer be denied. According to Russell Means, a founder of AIM: People were ashamed to be Indian. You didn’t see the young people wearing

braids or chokers or ribbon shirts in those days. Hell, I didn’t wear ’em. People

56  Bill Siegel

didn’t Sun Dance, they didn’t sweat, they were losing their languages. Then there was that spark at Alcatraz, and we took off. We put Indians and Indian rights

smack dab in the middle of the public consciousness for the first time since the so-called Indian Wars. [We] laid the groundwork for the next stage in regaining our sovereignty and self-determination as a nation. (Alcatraz)

Dr. LaNada Boyer, a leader of the Alcatraz occupation, also points out how these events shaped a new Native America: “We were able to raise, not only the consciousness of other American people, but our own people as well, to reestablish our identity as Indian people, as a culture, as political entities” ( Alcatraz). At the same time, several Native artists in the 1960s folk music circle—such as Floyd (Crow) Westerman, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Peter La Farge—were not afraid to stand before audiences as Indians. They wrote and sang about Native history and the continuing oppression of their peoples. Johnny Cash brought songs like La Farge’s “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “As Long as the Grass Shall Grow,” and others to a wider audience through his album Bitter Tears. Having their stories told on the national stage by these popular singers allowed many Native Americans to regain or strengthen their sense of identity and pride. The songs resonated with Pepper, who included La Farge’s “Drums” and “Senecas,” accompanied by his father, on his Pepper’s Pow Wow album. In the 1960s, American Indians were broadcasting a clear message and challenge to America. Daniel Barenboim, music director of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, put it this way: “You have to ask yourself: does music have a purpose, a social purpose, and what is it? Is it to provide comfort and entertainment, or is it to ask disturbing questions of the performer and of the listener?” (Barenboim and Said 44). He could easily have been talking about Jim Pepper’s music. Pepper made audiences laugh with songs like his “Polar Bear Stomp,” which under its surface conveyed a forceful message: “I hates the man / That says all bears / Shit in the woods / ’Cause I don’t / ’Cause I’m a polar bear! / Yes, I am!” One could say that Pepper is proclaiming, in effect, that “yes, I’m a bear/Indian, but don’t go thinking that all us bear/Indians are the same!” But there were also lyrical compositions, like his “Squaw Song,” which celebrates the diversity of Native identities through a simple, rhythmic recitation of the names of thirty or more Indian Nations. In these songs and others, Pepper tells us that Indigenous identities are alive, whether he says it through traditional music, modern jazz, or a synthesis of the two.

Ja zz and the Politics of Identit y  57

Even in his last days, Pepper remained dedicated to bringing his own Native music into harmony with multiple musical styles, in effect expanding his sense of his own identity and place in the world. He had begun work on an ambitious symphonic suite with saxophonist Frank Griffith, and although Pepper did not live to see the project finished, it inspired “Third Stream” musical innovator, Dr. Gunther Schuller and his son, long-time Pepper bassist Ed Schuller, to create a fully orchestrated suite of Pepper’s music, titled Witchi Tai To: The Music of Jim Pepper. As Ed Schuller explains: Like many jazz and folk musicians throughout the twentieth century, [ Jim]

dreamed of his music being arranged and performed in a symphonic setting. For this he was awarded a Cary Foundation Grant in the late ’80s through the Brooklyn, NY Council of the Arts. Though some music was eventually written

and arranged . . . it was regrettably never performed in Pepper’s lifetime. . . . In

1993, with the help of Mr. Griffith and vocalist Caren Knight-Pepper four of Jim’s compositions arranged for symphony orchestra were indeed performed with

the Brooklyn Philharmonic under the baton of David Amram. . . . [But] some-

thing more complete needed to be done. We needed to do something with Jim’s music that he himself never had been able to do. To involve a symphony orchestra seemed to be one possible way to achieve this. (E. Schuller)

Pepper spent most of his final years living and performing in Germany and Austria, where he was wildly popular. According to Hoch and many others, “They loved him in Austria . . . loved him. He never got that kind of recognition here. It’s too bad . . . more people should know about him, they should know his music” (Hoch). Pepper’s mother wrote that “he did not find respect and acceptance of his music in America—but he did find it in Europe, where he was respected as a person and as a jazz musician” (F. Pepper). Jim Pepper opened the door for a new infusion of Indigenous American cultural identity into musical composition. Barenboim boils it down: “Music says, ‘Excuse me. This is human life’” (Barenboim and Said 26). Pepper’s legacy has been noted by many of his contemporaries and by artists who followed him. In Womack’s Red on Red, primarily a proposal for a radical new analysis of Indigenous literary criticism, he writes: “This study, unfortunately, does not include all Creek writers and artists. . . . Jim Pepper’s horn probably belongs in here somewhere” (Womack 1). Acoma poet and teacher Simon Ortiz alludes

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to Pepper’s role in the effort to reinforce old Indigenous identities and to forge new ones: “The American public wants a certain version of the Native American. It goes with our art. They don’t want us to go out of those so-called norms. It’s not ‘Indian’ to be a poet. It’s not ‘Indian’ to be a rock and roll star. Which is really silly, because that’s not what art is about at all” (Osawa). And Pepper himself seemed aware of his own future legacy: “I’m creating my own music. I’ve got a shot at creating my own destiny” (Zwerin). In 1999 Pepper was posthumously granted the Lifetime Musical Achievement Award by First Americans in the Arts (FAITA), and in 2000 he was voted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame at the 7th Annual NAMMY Awards ceremony. In 2005 the Leroy Vinnegar Jazz Institute and the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission named Pepper Jazz Musician of the Year at the Portland Jazz Festival. In April 2007 his legendary silver Selmer saxophone, beaded baseball cap, turtle rattle, leather horn cases, early LPs, and

In 2007, Jim Pepper’s turtle shell rattle, iconic silver saxophone, and beaded baseball cap—along with handwritten music scores and copies of some of his albums—were made a permanent part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s collection. Photo credit: Bill Siegel Figure 3.1. 

Ja zz and the Politics of Identit y  59

original sheet music were added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. In October 2007 he was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. And in 2008 the Paul Winter Consort’s Crestone CD included two versions of “Witchi Tai To” sung by John-Carlos Perea and won a GRAMMY Award. Speaking at a memorial service for Pepper, his mentor Don Cherry said: “I’m here and representative of many musicians that have called me and contacted me, all over the world, that had been affected by Jim Pepper’s music, his vibes, and his light, his smile, and his swing, his good and wonderful feeling for life. He will always be alive, Jim Pepper” (Osawa). So let’s allow Pepper himself the last word in this essay, from his song, “Remembrance”: “You must not forget me / When I’m long gone / Because I love you so dearly / Sugar honey / D’weeda, d’weeda, d’weeda ho / Yeh, d’weeda ho . . .”

Works Cited Alcatraz Is Not an Island. PBS/KQED, 2002. Film. Barenboim, Daniel, and Edward Said. Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print. Everything Is Everything. Everything Is Everything. Vanguard/Apostolic, 1969. CD. Goldstein, Monique. “Three for Jim & I.” Jim Pepper: Remembrance. CD Liner Notes. Hoch, Reuben. Personal Interview. 2005. Lees, Gene. Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White. New York: Da Capo Press, 2001. Print. Liebman, Dave. Personal Interview. 2005. Linder, Adrian. Interview with Jim Pepper. 1979. (Unpublished). Osawa, Sandy, Dir. Pepper’s Pow Wow. Upstream Productions, 1999. DVD. Pepper, Floy. “Wind, Water, Equality and Respect.” Witchi Tai To: The Music of Jim Pepper. CD Liner Notes. Pepper, Jim. Comin’ and Goin’. Antilles/New Directions, 1983. CD. ———. Pepper’s Pow Wow. Apostolic, 1971. CD. ———. Remembrance. Tutu Records, 1990. CD. Schuller, Ed. “Flying in the Face of Mediocrity.” Witchi Tai To: The Music of Jim Pepper. CD Liner Notes. Schuller, Gunther. Witchi Tai To: The Music of Jim Pepper. Tutu Records, 1998. CD.

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The Free Spirits. Out of Sight and Sound. ABC Paramount, 1967. CD. Thorne, Ron. Personal Interview. 13 July 2005. Weismueller, Peter. Remembrance. CD Liner Notes. Womack, Craig S. Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Print. Zwerin, Michael. “Jim Pepper: Indian on the Jazz Path.” Comin’ and Goin’. CD Liner Notes.

4 Singing for the People The Protest Music of Buffy Sainte-Marie and Floyd Westerman

Kimber li Lee The wisdom of Infants and Elders Crying and laughing Weeping and laughing Songs in the beginning Sung in the end. —J o h n T r u d e l l

M

It is one of the oldest forms of communication between humans, but it is also a form of expression among all living beings. Sometimes a song is only sung to oneself. The song is sent into the vibratory universe, and for those who hear it, it can evoke deep emotions. It’s important to remember that every culture has music and songs in one form or another. For Indigenous peoples the world over, music and songs are so intimately integrated into everyday life that it would be impossible to function as a culture without them. Song-makers and music-makers among American Indian populations are still regarded in some ways as keepers of sacred knowledge, tribal memory, and even as healers. This is particularly true for “traditional” and tribally specific music; however, I would argue that is also a facet of what is known as contemporary American Indian music. Many American Indian musicians have worked their craft outside the traditional parameters of pow wow, flute, chant, or stomp. And, since before the 1960s, Native American music has been bringing a unique fusion between traditional sounds and contemporary musical instrumentation to general audiences the world over. usic is power.

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Indigenous musicians from all over the western hemisphere are writing and performing contemporary music in practically every genre of popular music today: rock, country, jazz, blues, hip hop, punk, folk, and heavy metal, among others. The creativity is astounding, and many Native songwriters are winning awards, scoring for films, and showcasing their work around the globe. Vital messages of Indigenous continuance, survival, and resistance are interwoven into these works of art, and help the listeners to think critically, stand strong, and engage in understanding tribal points of view. In this essay, my focus sharpens on two particular artists: Buffy Sainte-Marie and Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman. These two songwriters/performers, often deemed “folk singers,” are really much more than that—they are agents of change and teachers of truths— demonstrating through music how oral traditions are persisting yet evolving, and functioning productively for Native people and others through songs.

Buffy Sainte-Marie Artist, author, mother, actress, singer, educator, and accomplished musician, Buffy Sainte-Marie has also been an activist for Native causes for more than fifty years as well as a cornerstone of the contemporary Native American music scene. This is music that, since the early 1960s, has brought an uncommon blending of traditional indigenous instrumentation with modern electronic and digital technologies. Sainte-Marie’s music has long illustrated that as the forms and styles of Native music evolve, songs still carry the realities, hopes, dreams, and experiences of Native people. Born in Saskatchewan in 1941, on the Piapot reserve in Qu’Apelle, SainteMarie is of Cree heritage, but records of her birth were lost. She was raised by her adoptive parents in the northeastern United States—both in Maine and Massachusetts. Only later in life would she reconnect with her Cree relatives at the Piapot reserve in Saskatchewan, and those connections would be deep and long lasting. Growing up with her adoptive parents in New England, Sainte-Marie became interested in music at a very young age, tinkering with piano sounds at the age of three (Stonechild 17). As a teen, she became interested in guitar and writing songs. Her interest in music took on new focus when she began studies at the University of Massachusetts in the early sixties, although she had virtually no formal training and could never read music—she always played by ear. Sainte-Marie honed her craft in the burgeoning coffee

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Figure 4.1. 

Buffy Sainte-Marie. Photo credit: Kat Ho

house scene so prevalent in college towns of the mid-to-late 1960s, and eventually began to book gigs in New York City. By age 24, she was touring both the United States and Canada, and gaining popularity worldwide. From her earliest performances, she sang songs that carried messages of the struggles and oppression Indigenous peoples faced, singing out for social justice and fair treatment. Since those early days of coffee house and college gigs, Sainte-Marie has gone on to become an internationally known and respected recording artist, winning prestigious awards and honors around the globe. Her songs have been recorded by such mainstream artists as Elvis Presley, Cher, Barbara Streisand, Donovan, Chet Atkins, and many others (buffysainte-marie.com).

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But it seems that few people are aware of Sainte-Marie’s dedication and commitment to American Indian activism and education. In her early years in New York City, she, along with songwriter Peter La Farge (of Narragansett descent), founded one of the first organizations to promote social justice for Native Americans—the Federation for American Indian Rights, also known as FAIR (Wright-McLeod 74). La Farge, son of author Oliver La Farge, was best known for penning the “Ballad of Ira Hayes,” a song popularized by Johnny Cash on his controversial album Bitter Tears. La Farge died prematurely in 1965 under suspicious circumstances, but his work is still being recovered and recorded today. Fewer people still are aware that some of Sainte-Marie’s songs were considered so controversial for the times that her music was “black-listed” and refused air-play (Wright-McLeod 74). As she has mentioned in interviews, high-ranking U.S. political officials considered many of her songs, especially “Universal Soldier,” un-American, and the FBI began a dossier on her activities. Despite this scrutiny, it is important to note that Sainte-Marie never shied away from putting herself “out there” in terms of her songwriting or physical commitment to a cause. For example, in 1970, she spent time on Alcatraz Island during the occupation by Indians of All Tribes, and gave considerable support to the American Indian Movement in its various endeavors. She, along with Anna Mae Aquash, and other prominent AIM supporters, took part in the protest at Gresham, Wisconsin, in 1975, which turned into a violent confrontation (The Spirit of Anna Mae). In 1976, Sainte-Marie took her activism in a new direction—she became a mother for the first time, and, along with her son, Dakota Starblanket, became the first American Indian cast members on the popular children’s educational television show Sesame Street. Her commitment to education for, by, and about Native Americans is beyond significant—it’s astounding. Sainte-Marie has set up foundations and scholarships to assist Native students in both the United States and Canada through the Nihewan Foundation, and provides support and teaching materials for educators and students through her Cradleboard Teaching Project and interactive website. In fact, Sainte-Marie was at the forefront of linking Indigenous communities via the Internet and in utilizing digital technologies for educational opportunities for underserved children (Running for the Drum). Having earned advanced degrees herself, she understands that a good education is a powerful tool Native folks can deploy in support of the People. Further, she understands how music can be powerful as an educational tool to promote understanding within and between various cultures.

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The three songs I want to concentrate on here address crucial issues and situations that have impacted Native people in the past and continue to have serious repercussions today: ongoing exploitation of Native people and Native lands, the appropriation of Native cultures, and the revitalization, reclaiming, and reimagining of Native American futures. Written early in her career, the song “Now that the Buffalo’s Gone” was included on Sainte-Marie’s first record, It’s My Way (1964). Although it is 50 years old at this writing, I feel it holds as strong a message today as it did in its infancy. It speaks to a predominantly white audience—using an interesting rhetorical element favored by writers in the nineteenth century, the direct address. In the song, our singer pointedly, yet gently, reminds Americans that they need to face the responsibilities of ongoing oppression of Native peoples and debasement of Native lands. She sings: Even when Germany fell to your hands

Consider, dear lady; Consider, dear man

You left them their pride and you left them their lands But what have you done for these ones? Oh, it’s all in the past you can say But it’s still going on here today

The government now wants the Navaho land That of the Inuit and the Cheyenne

And it’s here and it’s now you can help us dear man Now that the buffalo’s gone.

This is an effective rhetorical piece because Sainte-Marie is making a tactical emotional appeal for a change in the status quo toward Native people. By making a comparison between the treatment of Germany after World War II and the near-annihilation of Native peoples on this continent, Sainte-Marie brings the argument into the present. As a professor who teaches several Native American– focused courses, I often hear a similar refrain from my non-Native students who say, “It’s not my fault. What happened to the Native Americans was a long time ago; I had nothing to do with that part of history.” Oftentimes it surprises my students to learn that American Indians are part of their contemporary world since they have always thought of “Indians” in the past tense. Rather than allowing listeners to revel in romanticized notions of Native peoples in the past, Sainte-Marie’s songs help illustrate that these situations are part of an ongoing

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neo-colonial agenda against Native Americans today. Further, I think of this song as a clear call to action—if the public wants “to help,” then they need to do so by acknowledging the past, but also by taking responsibility in the here and now. Another important song by Sainte-Marie is “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” a song that traces the American Indian resistance movement (and the deep reasons for it) of the early 1970s. Sharing the name of Dee Brown’s bestselling book of 1970 was clearly no accident. Brown, a non-Native historian, was one of the first American historians to tell the story of the “Indian Wars” of the nineteenth century. His book was one of the first books to accurately portray the military conquests in the West against Indigenous peoples. It was widely read and reviewed quite favorably in those days, and for many readers, both Native and non-Native, it was a real moment of awakening about American history and tribal peoples. The song itself is a rhetorical call to resistance and a way of highlighting systematic colonial practices perpetrated against Indigenous people. In this song, Sainte-Marie represents and tells the Native side of the story. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith points out in Decolonizing Methodologies: Indigenous communities have struggled since colonization to be able to exercise what is viewed as a fundamental right, that is to represent ourselves. The repre-

senting project spans both the representation as a political concept and represen-

tation as a form of voice and expression. In the political sense colonialism specifically excluded indigenous peoples from any form of decision making. States

and governments have long made decisions hostile to the interests of indigenous communities . . . (150)

This point of view is clearly seen in the lyrical content of the song—SainteMarie reveals to us the manner in which much of this “dirty-dealing” is present now, and has been present in the past. She sings: I learned a safety rule / Don’t know who to thank

Don’t stand between the reservation and the corporate bank They send in federal tanks / It isn’t nice, but it’s reality. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee / Deep in the Earth

Cover me with pretty lies / Bury my heart at Wounded Knee They’ve got the energy companies that want the land

And they’ve got churches by the dozens that want to guide our

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Hands / To sign Mother Earth over to pollution, war and greed. Get rich, get rich quick!

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

This song, ensconced in a rock and roll vibe of truth-telling, and punctuated by instances of the Cree women’s victory cry, is powerful indeed. And, the song is made more powerful by invoking the iconic place and history of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. It is a place of sorrow, resistance, survival, and initiative, as most any Native American will confirm. It is truly hallowed ground—from the massacre of Bigfoot’s band in 1890, to the AIM occupation in 1973, to the Remembrance March 2014, Native people from many nations will forever hold Wounded Knee in reverence and respect. In Sainte-Marie’s song, we listeners come to understand that all Americans should know the significance of that place and acknowledge its history.

Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman Good friend and sometime stage-mate of Buffy Sainte-Marie, Floyd Westerman was born in 1936 in Veblen, South Dakota, on the Lake Traverse Reservation. According to Brian Wright-McLeod, Westerman spent most of his childhood away from his parents in either Catholic missions (until age 7), or in the Wahpeton and Flandreau boarding schools (until age 17). During these years, he picked up a guitar and began to learn basic chords and started to sing. At Wahpeton boarding school, he also met Dennis Banks, who would become one of the founding members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the two became friends. After a two-year stint in the United States Marine Corps, Westerman returned to his music, and made his way out to Colorado, playing a folk-music circuit in and around the Denver-Boulder area. According to journalist Eugene Chadbourne, this is where he first met and became close with a young Dakota writer, Vine Deloria Jr. Both men loved music and wrote songs; country/western music was high on the genre list of favorites for both of them. The crossing of their paths would begin collaboration for Floyd’s first recording, Custer Died for Your Sins (named for and based on Vine Deloria Jr.’s first book) and a lifelong friendship between the two. Westerman revealed in an interview in Native Peoples Magazine (2005) that:

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Vine is the reason why I moved into the public eye. He’d come to the lounges

and piano bars where I was playing in and near Denver and sit around and sing. We’d talk about his book he was writing—Custer Died for Your Sins. He said, “You know, there should be a song about the anthropologists who poke around in our lives.” I said, “I’ve been thinking about that. That’s true.” He’d written about

anthropologists, about missionaries and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who really got Indians hung up and frustrated and castrated. I decided I wanted to express

the Indian point of view through songs, so we lifted songs out of these chapters. It’s possible I could have gone to Nashville and had a very successful career on

the country-western route, but instead I went to the core of expressing the Indian point of view—sometimes very critically of America . . . which probably explains why my music is more popular in Europe. (Gibson)

It should come as no surprise, then, that the recording was a deliberate effort with his good friend Vine Deloria Jr., with songwriting credits also going to Jimmy Curtiss. The album is unique in that it coalesces in a crossroads of resistance rhetoric, calls for social justice, and a stand for American Indian sovereignty—all with a bit of humor injected. It is one of the earliest instances of a powerful pairing of Native literature and contemporary Native American music meant to inspire, influence, and most of all change the status quo for American Indians in the late 1960s, and still resonates today. Among the most striking songs on the recording are the title cut, “Missionaries,” and “Here Come the Anthros.” In “Custer Died for Your Sins,” a song clearly critical of the genocidal federal policies of the U.S. government, our singer reminds us that the government has indeed sinned against the tribes. In straightforward, clear communication, Westerman calls up the past and present state of affairs. He sings: For the tribes you terminated / For the myths you keep alive

For the land you confiscated / For the freedom you deprived Custer died for your sins / Now a new day must begin

These powerful images and stinging accusations are tempered with the words: “Now, a new day must begin.” This is a way of imagining a new future for Native people, and an imperative call for de-colonization and change for American Indians. Creek scholar Craig Womack reminds us, in Red on Red, that “[the

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Celebrating the conclusion of The Longest Walk, Washington, D.C., 1978. From left to right: Muhammed Ali, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman, Harold Smith, Stevie Wonder, Marlon Brando, Max Gale, Dick Gregory, identity unknown, Richie Havens, David Amram. Courtesy of David Amram Figure 4.2. 

process of ] decolonizing one’s mind, a first step before one can achieve a political consciousness and engage oneself in activism, has to begin with imagining some alternative” (230). It is no wonder that Westerman’s album and Deloria’s book served as touchstones for many involved in the American Indian Movement and other Native civil rights groups during the 1970s. These songs encouraged and motivated activists, young and old alike, to take initiative and continue to struggle onward. That Westerman envisioned his audience to be both Native and non-Native seems clear, but the Native audiences were the ones who were listening intently, it seems. Clearly, he worked on this record as an activist for the Native nations. He meant it as an act of resistance, a testament to survival, and an avowal of unity.

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The style of the song is country-folk, following a sort of Woody Guthrie model of protest songs. Yet there is a decided emotional edge to the sound. Interestingly, Westerman’s baritone, while a bit raw, has the depth and range similar to that of Johnny Cash, and “Custer Died for Your Sins” has that same sensibility of being a “lived song.” The power of this song comes from the imagery in the lyrics and the unembellished, straight-from-the-heart honesty contained therein. The second song on the record, “Missionaries,” is a powerful indictment against the unrelenting push to “Christianize” American Indian populations—a situation that has been ongoing since Columbus landed. Deloria dedicated an entire chapter in his book to mission work in the United States and writes: Columbus managed to combine religion and real estate in his proclamation of discovery, claiming the new world for Catholicism and Spain. Missionaries have

been unable to distinguish between their religious mission and their hunger for land since that time. (105)

These issues are closely paralleled in the song as well. In it our singer is speaking directly to the colonizing missionaries, who have managed to wreak havoc with traditional religions of so many American Indian tribes. He sings as a voice for the People, speaking back to the religious organizations whose true mission was to crush tribal culture and retain the land: Go and tell the savage Native / that he must be Christianized

Tell him end his heathen worship / And you will make him civilized

Shove your gospel, force your values / Down his throat until he’s raw

This rebuke of the missions (and the ensuing devastation of traditional spirituality they caused among the tribes) is impressive and enduring. In the early twentieth century and well into 1960s, very little was known or revealed about how the churches operated on the reservations, except by the tribes themselves and the perpetrators of the oppression. Ceremonies, songs, and traditional spiritual practices had been outlawed on reservations since the late nineteenth century. The Native holy people who took the ceremonies into closely guarded secrecy managed to keep them from being lost forever. Interestingly, in “Missionaries,” our singer quite plainly tells of this survivance, “Take the white god

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to your white men, we’ve a god of our own.” It wouldn’t be until almost ten years later, in 1978, with the congressional power of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, that ceremonials and rituals could be practiced more openly. Still, though religious “freedom”has been attained, it is not surprising that many Native spiritual leaders are still keenly cautious and protective of their ceremonial practices today. While the missionaries pushed and pulled at American Indian spiritual life, another group of invaders, the anthropologists, began to infiltrate Indian country, with another kind of mission. Deloria wrote of them with his own special insights, and poked at them unmercifully in his book. His criticisms are on point, but delivered with his special brand of stinging humor. Westerman’s song, “Here Come the Anthros,” follows suit, also bringing the rhetorical tactic of humor and a lilting tune to address the situation of observational “study” in Native communities during the 1960s. Of special interest here is the irony that the anthropologists themselves are being observed, studied, and written about. He sings: The anthros still keep coming / like death and taxes to our land

To study their feathered freaks / with funded money in their hand Like a Sunday at the zoo / their high priced cameras click away Taking notes and tape recording / All the animals at play

Both Deloria and Westerman illustrate clearly the ways in which Native peoples are objectified in anthropological analysis. For years, academic anthropologists and ethnologists made their careers off the stories, songs, and practices of Native Americans, and precious few thought to “give back” to the Native communities they studied and drew from. Today those academic practices have changed a good deal, and I would argue that the critical attention both Westerman and Deloria brought to this issue had some hand in bringing those changes about. This is activism and resistance in its most useful mode: transformation. Another Dakota poet and songwriter, John Trudell, also advocates for this kind of critique. Once known for confrontational politics as AIM’s national chairman, Trudell says he thinks that songs, literature, poetry, and art are the venues of American Indian activism that carry the most lasting power today. Through these paths, he says, Native people can be active and move with “direction and force” rather than being reactive with knee-jerk responses to

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problems. In a similar vein, Deloria related in an interview with Osage scholar Robert Warrior that in order to establish new relationships between American Indian people and the rest of the world, he’d turn to poets: Poetry is one means of describing the human condition that transcends insti-

tutional concepts and definitions. We need poets and expressions of insights by

artists more than we need alternative solutions or institutions . . . In the poetry of the modern American Indian we find a raging beyond nobility that calls for recognition of the humanity and nationality of Indian existence. (Tribal Secrets)

I would add that contemporary American Indian songs and songwriters like Floyd Westerman are included in this concept—songs are the close relatives of poetry in the Indian world, and if we think about this deeply, we will understand that this is true for all cultures. This is why I have my students listen to American Indian songs, and study the “texts” of American Indian songwriters in my writing and rhetoric classes. I have written about this elsewhere, but it’s worth reiterating that many people will listen to music and have a more open relationship to it. Much of the time, folks will discuss a song more freely than they will a poem, despite the commonalities between the two forms. Listening to these songs allows us to approach and discuss topics both Buffy Sainte-Marie and Floyd Westerman point to: American Indian sovereignty, the oppressive dictates of governmental and Christian organizations, and the objectification of Native American people. These issues and topics are often uncomfortable for many students to confront in a classroom, but approached through songs and music, they somehow become less stressful to discuss. I would encourage others to bring contemporary Native songs into American studies classrooms, and to consider the ways they can engage us, sustain us, and make us think. But I want to return to Westerman and his life for a moment here. Most people will always remember him for his acting career, and certainly, he had a successful one—he played unforgettable characters on the large screen and small. His portrayals of Native characters allowed many in the general viewing public to see Native people as complex, multi-faceted people. He dedicated his life and his voice to speaking out for American Indian rights, the environment, and Indigenous causes worldwide. Of special concern was Native youth—Westerman knew that support for Native youth was crucial for the continuation of American Indian cultural values and practices. He advocated

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for Native-centered education, protection of sacred sites, and treaty rights. Upon his journey to the spirit world, his longtime friend Dennis Banks said of him, “[Floyd] was the greatest cultural ambassador that Indian America ever had—a real national treasure.” Floyd’s good friend, Anishinaabe musician Keith Secola, told me in a recent interview that music was always Floyd’s first love, and he rarely travelled without his guitar; he was always ready to jam and pick a tune. And, he is certainly well respected among musicians of conscience, singers and songwriters such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Robbie Robertson, and Sting. He recorded and toured with many of them. His last recording, released in 2006, A Tribute to Johnny Cash, was dedicated to one who influenced and inspired him. The recording won critical acclaim, and Westerman received a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for his effort in 2007. We must never forget that while the forms and styles of contemporary (and traditional) Native American music are always changing, the medium of song still serves, as it has for millennia, to transmit and process information important to Native communities: histories, philosophies, political concerns, and social values. These songs retain memories, stories, and insights. But they also serve to express a wide variety of emotion: joy, sadness, love, anger, defeat, victory, or confusion. Honor songs, prayer songs, and songs of encouragement are all sung with powerful words meant to do something significant for the People, and the world. We should all be listening carefully.

Works Cited “Buffy Sainte-Marie Biography.” Buffy Sainte-Marie Official Website. Mejia Design, 2013. Web. 12 May 2014. Cash, Johnny. Bitter Tears. Columbia Records, 1964. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins. New York: Avon Edition, 1970. Gibson, Daniel. “Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman.” Native People’s Magazine. Vol. 18, Issue 4, July 2005. Sainte-Marie, Buffy. It’s My Way. Santa Monica, CA: Vanguard. 1964. Secola, Keith. Interview. March 2006. Stonechild, Blair. Buffy Sainte-Marie: It’s My Way. Markham, ON: Fifth House, 2012. Trudell, John. Interview. April 2005.

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Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed, 2002. Warrior, Robert. Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1994. Westerman, Floyd (Red Crow). Custer Died for Your Sins. Perception Records, 1969. Womack, Craig. Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1999. Wright-McLeod, Brian. The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005.

5 Brothers of the Blade Three Native Axmen: Link Wray, Robbie Robertson, and Jesse Ed Davis

Scott Pr inzing

R

a cultural form with American roots and identity, though its origins are rarely associated with Indigenous people or music. But as rock and roll became commonplace over the airwaves in the 1950s, many Native Americans, like their non-Indigenous fellow citizens, became fans, and began picking up guitars, basses, and drums and making music in this emerging idiom. Within this context, a number of Native American musicians rose to professional status, playing alongside and influencing major rock musicians, and becoming rock stars themselves. As both prominent innovators and hit-makers, Link Wray (Shawnee), Robbie Robertson (Mohawk), and Jesse Ed Davis (Kiowa/Comanche/Cheyenne/Seminole/Creek), in particular, used the electric guitar—or “ax” in the vernacular—to shape the universal language of rock music in profound ways from the 1950s to the present. These three “axmen” have left an indelible stamp on rock, while also proudly declaring their Native identity. Many other Indigenous guitarists have made strong contributions to rock music, but few have also shared an artistic legacy as grounded in an enduring pride and display of Indigenous identity as these three men. In this chapter, I will present career overviews of both the achievements and the influence of each of these Native Axmen. By highlighting recordings and the words of these musicians and their critics, I will reveal how their Indigenous identity influenced their own music. ock music is

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Link Wray During the first decade of the rock and roll era, guitarist Link Wray popularized what are perhaps two of the most important developments in rock music: the power chord and the distorted electric guitar sound. His 1958 top 20 hit single, “Rumble,” was a three-chord instrumental composition. Despite its simplicity, it was considered threatening enough to incite teenagers to commit violence and was banned from some radio stations. In an era when the subculture of the teenage rebel was celebrated in film and music, “Rumble” capitalized on that trend, but its influence has reached far beyond the jukeboxes of the late ’50s. Its sound and attitude were new, and while it may not have led to teens wielding chains and switchblades, its powerful new sound did lead many teenagers to pick up guitars. Many rock music critics consider Wray the father of heavy metal, punk, and grunge, which all rely on distorted power chords above all else. Fred Lincoln Wray Jr. was born on May 2, 1929, in Dunn, North Carolina, to a Shawnee mother. By his own description, his family was extremely poor. In an interview with Jimmy McDonough in 1997, Wray explained, “I was from the poorest part of North Carolina—Dunn, where I was not white and it was not safe. Elvis was brought up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi, but he was still a poor white guy—and the whites ruled the world down south. My mother was a Shawnee down south, right? Ku Klux Klan country” (McDonough). Wray first heard slide guitar at age eight from a traveling carnival worker named “Hambone,” and eventually joined a traditional jazz combo on rhythm guitar at age fourteen. He soon became more interested in the lead guitar work of Chet Atkins and the pained and soulful singing of Hank Williams (of Cherokee and Creek descent) and Ray Charles (McDonough). By the late 1940s, Wray was playing lead guitar. His father had relocated the family to Virginia where the Wray brothers first began performing, interrupted when Link began a two-year stint as an Army medic in Germany in 1950. His military service left him with chronic tuberculosis, eventually resulting in the loss of his left lung. Wray and his two brothers, Doug and Vernon, relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1955 and released several singles under the name Lucky Wray. They performed their own brand of high energy country and western music, which was new and something the kids related to more than the adults. It was, according to Wray, “rock and roll before it was rock and roll” (Rumble Man).

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Figure 5.1 

Link Wray. Photo credit: Public Domain

Late in the decade, the Wray brothers began performing as the house band on The Milt Grant Show, a live daily Washington, D.C., television record hop that preceded American Bandstand. The now legendary instrumental, “Rumble,” was born during a performance on this show in 1958. The song is based on a simple progression of full-on D and E major chords followed by a descending pentatonic scale that conjures up a menacing street fight about to erupt. But youth gang violence did not inspire the tune; rather the exciting new sound inspired the title. Milt Grant urged Link and the boys to play “The Stroll,” a recent hit by the Diamonds. Not knowing the song, Link launched into “the most important D-chord in history” (Fricke, “100 Greatest Guitarists”). It was an instant hit with the teenage crowd, who demanded three more performances that evening. When later attempting to record the song (initially dubbed “Oddball”), Wray was dissatisfied with his guitar sound in the studio. In an attempt to reproduce the rumbling sound of the overdriven PA system at the initial performance,

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he poked holes in his amplifier speakers and achieved the desired effect. Thus, the distorted electric guitar was born. Wray claimed divine inspiration for the authorship of the song he built his career upon, saying, “My Jesus God just zapped it into my head” (Rumble Man). Cadence Records wanted a new recording, but Wray insisted that his original one-track recording be released. “Rumble” was banned by several radio stations, but it eventually sold four million copies (LinkWray.com). After the success of “Rumble,” Wray adopted the black leather jacket and sunglasses look of the ruffian and—with the exception of a brief stint in “hippy” attire during the early ’70s—he stuck with this look until his last days. In his later career he began to wear his hair long in a ponytail, perhaps as a nod to his Shawnee ancestry. Pete Townshend of The Who stated in unpublished liner notes in 1970, “He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble,’ I would have never picked up a guitar.” And in 1974, Townshend wrote, “I remember being made very uneasy the first time I heard [“Rumble”], and yet excited by the savage guitar sounds.” The admiration was mutual: Wray was a fan of the Who and Townsend, of whom he said, “Pete Townshend is a genius of rock and roll, he took my sound and carried it to the heavens” (Rumble Man). “Rumble” proved to be a seminal recording in the early development of many rock icons, including Bob Dylan (“‘Rumble’ is the best instrumental ever”), John Lennon (“Gene Vincent and Link Wray are the two great unknowns of rock and roll”), Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and The Kinks. Other rockers who have cited Wray as an influence include Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix (Cherokee descent; Native American Music Association Hall of Fame inductee). After a decade of trying to recapture the success of “Rumble,” Wray diverged from his rock instrumentals and returned to his country blues roots (perhaps influenced by the Americana of The Band). In the very early ’70s he relocated to Arizona with his brother Vernon and released three albums recorded at Wray’s Three Track Shack: Link Wray, Beans and Fatback, and Mordicai Jones. He also recorded a bigger production country album, Be What You Want to Be, with guests including the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. During this era, Wray recorded a chant-based acoustic piece called “Shawnee Tribe,” as well as his diatribe, “Ice People,” that addressed the similar oppression of Indians with African- and poor European-Americans, “The red man lives and dies on the reservation / And the black man just lives anywhere he can / And the poor white man he doesn’t live any better.” Equating their situation with that of the

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buffalo, he sings, “We’re all caught up together like the buffalo on the plains / We’re just shooting sport for Ice People / We’re just a game.” Up to this point, references to Wray’s heritage were limited to titling instrumental numbers after Indian tribes (“Apache,” “Comanche,” “Shawnee”). During this Red Power era, Wray also wrote and recorded “Days Before Custer.” After a few years of limited success as country blues rocker, Link Wray teamed up with retro-rockabilly artist Robert Gordon in 1977 for two albums and live performance. While critically acclaimed, the pairing was awkward, with the legendary Wray a featured sideman to the young upstart. By 1979, Wray was back in charge, releasing another solo album, Bullshot, a hard-rocking collection of both covers and originals. Rolling Stone’s reviewer wrote, “The resurrected Wray does a version of ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ that can make you forget Bob Dylan’s ever existed” (Young). While not very active in the ’80s, Wray continued to inspire new generations of musicians. The 1980 Adam and the Ants song “Killer in the Home” was based on the “Rumble” riff. The Fall sang in 1983, “I used to have this thing about Link Wray, I used to play him every Saturday / God bless Saturday” (from “Neighbourhood of Infinity”). Despite his relative inactivity, a whole new audience was introduced to Wray through movie soundtracks, including Blow (2001), Breathless (1983), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Desperado (1995), Independence Day (1996), It Might Get Loud (2008), Pulp Fiction (1994), Sid and Nancy (1986), and The Warriors (1979); and the TV series The Sopranos (1999), and Roswell (2000). The twenty-first century began with Link Wray in his seventies and still recording and touring. His last release was 2000’s Barbed Wire, although he continued to perform until just four months before he died at age seventy-six of heart failure on November 5, 2005. Because “Rumble” was released more than twenty-five years before the inception of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Wray has been eligible for induction. As of this writing, he has not yet been recognized by that institution, although a fan-driven campaign is in effect to induct Wray. Nevertheless, in 2003, Link Wray was ranked at number 67 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of all time; “Wray is the man behind the most important D chord in history. You can hear that chord in all its raunchy magnificence on the epochal 1958 instrumental ‘Rumble.’ By stabbing his amplifier’s speaker cone with a pencil, Wray created the overdriven rock-guitar sound taken up by Townshend, Hendrix and others” (Fricke, “100 Greatest Guitarists”). In a 2011 list comprised of votes from dozens of fellow rock stars, his ranking had

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progressed from 67 to number 45. In 2006, Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich declared January 15 to be Link Wray Day. Also in 2006, Wray was honored by the First Americans in the Arts with its Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Native American Music Association’s Hall of Fame. In 2009, the Library of Congress added “Rumble” to the National Recording Registry, and a multi-band tribute concert for Link was held in Cleveland. Most recently, and in one of the most public accolades a rock guitarist could receive, Led Zeppe­lin’s Jimmy Page cited Link Wray’s “Rumble” as a major influence in the 2009 documentary, It Might Get Loud. In the scene, Page proceeds to play air guitar while grinning with his eyes closed as his cherished original 45 RPM single of “Rumble” plays on the turntable. Page’s testimonial lends much weight to Wray’s eminence and influence on succeeding generations of rock guitarists. While Wray has long been considered a major forefather of heavy metal and punk, his Native identity has long been overlooked by the mainstream music press. This omission was somewhat remedied when the National Museum of the American Indian’s “Up Where We Belong—Native Musicians in Popular Culture” featured Wray and eleven other artists in 2010. The exhibit displayed Wray’s Danelectro Longhorn guitar along with rare video of the original Raymen performing “Rawhide.” A documentary film on Wray’s life and career titled Be Wild Not Evil: The Link Wray Story was being produced as this chapter was being written. Link Wray’s legacy places the contributions of Native Americans as foundational to rock genres of American popular music.

Robbie Robertson Jaime Robert Klegerman was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on July 5, 1943. His mother was Mohawk and his father was Jewish. His father died a few years later; Robertson took the surname of his stepfather. His most influential early exposure to music took place at Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve where young Jaime spent summers visiting his mother’s family. “They all played something—mandolins, fiddles, guitars,” Robertson recalled. “That’s where I started playing music” (Flanagan). Robertson performed in various high school bands around Toronto. Robertson’s mother was a big fan of Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks and introduced her son to the regional rockabilly sensation in 1959. The teenage guitarist

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became a regular whenever he played Toronto, hanging around and chatting up his band, The Hawks. Impressed by the songwriting talents of young Robbie, Hawkins recorded two of the then fifteen-year-old Robertson’s songs in 1960. Robertson joined The Hawks on guitar in 1961 and soon distinguished himself wherever they played. According to Classic Rock magazine, “Nobody else was playing rock ‘n’ roll this hard back in 1963” (65). The Hawks soon split with Hawkins and began branching out into rhythm ‘n’ blues and soul music, to which Hawkins had been resistant. Even without Hawkins they had three lead vocalists, and with two keyboardists the quintet was capable of reproducing and reinterpreting songs by a vast array of artists. In 1966, folk messiah Bob Dylan enlisted The Hawks to back him up on his notorious tour that year as an electrified rocker. Robertson’s distinctive lead guitar was an important part of the sound, and Dylan famously praised him as “the only mathematical guitar genius I’ve ever run into who doesn’t offend my intestinal nervousness with his rearguard sound” (RollingStone.com). After a motorcycle accident, Dylan took some time off from public life in the upstate New York hamlet of Woodstock. He invited the Hawks to join him to write songs and record some demos. The ensuing sessions produced a legendary canon of songs that were repeatedly bootlegged and shared by Dylan fans hungry for any new material. Some of the songs from this period were eventually released by Bob Dylan & The Band as The Basement Tapes (1975). The Hawks secured a recording contract and parted amicably with Dylan. The songs they wrote and rehearsed in the basement of “Big Pink,” the band clubhouse of sorts, were released by newly monikered The Band as Music from Big Pink (1968). Big Pink arrived on the scene sounding unlike anything else on the charts, yet it was filled with the familiar sounds that were worked up in Woodstock: blues, country, folk, and gospel blended together in a mix in stark contrast to the rock and roll of the ’60s. This new sound maintained the integrity of the original musical influences that drew on the collective talents and interplay of three or four voices, and surprisingly downplayed lead guitar. While Robertson was the chief songwriter and de facto leader of The Band, he only ever sang three or four songs, preferring to arrange and direct the others. When Rolling Stone listed Big Pink at number 34 in its “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” piece in 2003, it wrote, “It was the rustic beauty of the Band’s music and the

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incisive drama of its own reflections on family and obligations, such as ‘The Weight,’ that made Big Pink an instant homespun classic” (RollingStone.com). Robertson had toned down his flashy soloing from the Hawks and Dylan tour eras, now embracing an ensemble approach. He would slip in short and sweet phrases and distinctive licks that complemented the other players. Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham once said, “Robbie is among the two or three most selfless guitarists in the business” (Hoskyns 151). His use of pinched harmonics became an often noted, readily recognizable style throughout his career, a trademark of sorts in an era of myriad Clapton and Hendrix copycats. Music from Big Pink had a far-reaching impact on rock music. Artists who have articulated a claim that Big Pink literally changed their lives include Clapton, Elvis Costello, and Sir Elton John. Upon hearing the album, Clapton almost instantly decided to leave super-group Cream and earnestly set out to meet and become a member of The Band. Clapton’s approach to his music was forever altered, inspiring him to downplay his guitar god image for more down-to-earth singing and songwriting. Clapton has maintained a musical and personal friendship with Robertson ever since their first encounter in 1968, writing songs together and guesting on each other’s solo albums. Sir Elton John credits Music from Big Pink for influencing his and writing partner Bernie Taupin’s view of the musical world so strongly that they wrote and recorded the Wild West concept album, Tumbleweed Connection (1970) in musical response. It is interesting to note that once again, the music of North America—written primarily by an Indigenous Canadian—heavily influenced these British musicians, who then experienced great success in the United States, shaping the course of popular music for decades to come. Few British artists have made such a broad impact on popular music in their time as Clapton, Costello, and John. By the time of The Band’s eponymous sophomore release in the fall of 1969, public and press expectations were high. With eight of its twelve songs written by Robertson (he co-wrote the remainder), the album had a thematic thread of the American South: harvest time in particular. Ever since Robertson’s earliest days on the road, the high school dropout had educated himself by extensive reading. And on visits to Oklahoma, staying with drummer Helm’s extended family, he seemed to have absorbed the people he met there and their stories. Set in the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, the songs were sung in the voices of the common man (poor white farmers, a Confederate soldier, a drunkard) of that era. Robertson, a Canadian of Mohawk and Jewish

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ancestry, wrote first person narratives of the land he had come to love in a way that only an outside observer could. With several hits from the album, Robertson earned accolades as one of the great songwriters of the age. Greil Marcus prominently featured The Band in Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll, the celebrated book that also analyzed the music of Americans Robert Johnson, Randy Newman, Elvis Presley and Sly Stone. The Band—ironically four-fifths Canadian—secured a unique place in American music history. Describing The Band as “All American,” Rolling Stone declared it to be the 45th “Greatest Album of All Time,” writing, “Robertson’s songs vividly evoke the country’s pioneer age . . . while pointedly reflecting the state of the nation in the 1960s” (RollingStone.com). Not only did The Band embrace and resurrect American music, it became the first rock group from North America to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. Robertson forged through the ’70s as the primary songwriter for The Band. The title of 1971’s Cahoots is taken from a line in the song “Smoke Signals,” one of the only Band songs to reference American Indians: “Went to the movie matinee / To see the blue coats try to get away / From a smoke signal,” and, “Indian maid will plant the seed / And cultivate a whole new breed.” While Robertson’s primary identity was as a musician and storyteller of American stories, he had yet to draw on his own Native heritage as a major source. As a result, he initially proved himself an important songwriter and guitarist before using that platform to introduce the story of his own heritage. Northern Lights—Southern Cross (1975) featured Robertson’s “Arcadian Driftwood,” introducing many to the story of Canadians displaced to Louisiana as Cajuns. Reconnecting this way to a conflicted Canadian heritage may well have also led to Robertson’s reawakening his Mohawk roots, though, already in the early ’70s, he had spoken publicly about a concept piece he called Works, which explored the struggles of the American Indian. There was even talk about using it for a film version of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, but a recorded performance of it has yet to surface. In 1976 The Band called it quits as a touring group after sixteen years and decided to bow out with a celebration they called “The Last Waltz.” The major motion picture and live album The Last Waltz proved a more fitting legacy and is still heralded as one of the finest films about rock music and generally credited as an influence on nearly every “rockumentary” that followed. Drawing on musical friends from blues, country, folk, gospel, jazz, pop, and rock, The Band went out in style. Joined by Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond,

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Dr. John, Emmylou Harris, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, the Staples Singers, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ron Wood, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan himself, the film and live album immortalized The Band as major players in the history of rock and roll. Robertson in particular, made an impression on the big screen in interview segments that soon had Hollywood calling on him for acting roles. In 1980, Robertson accepted a role in Carney, created background music, and produced source music for Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Thus began Robertson’s lengthy involvement with film music that included The Color of Money (for which he co-wrote Eric Clapton’s hit, “It’s In the Way That You Use It”). In 1987, Robertson recorded his first solo album, the highly praised Robbie Robertson. The music videos for “Show Down at Big Sky” and “Fallen Angel” were executive produced by Scorsese and had strong Native imagery throughout. This album marks Robertson’s renewed interest in the heritage he had mostly ignored since childhood. The summer visits to his mother’s reservation made an indelible impression on him: It was like a time warp. My uncles and aunts had lots of kids. I had all these cousins who could tell things from listening to the ground. They could sniff

the air and say when it was going to rain—tomorrow. These guys didn’t climb

trees—they could run up a tree. I’d run to the bottom of the tree, come to a halt, and say, “What happens if you fall?” It was just a different way of life altogether. (Flanagan 59)

Although the song “Broken Arrow” sounds Indian-themed because of its title, “It is more about Indian summer than Indians—unless, like Robertson, you spent childhood summers on a reservation” (Flanagan 60). “Hell’s Half Acre” is a harder rock song about a young Indian man who is drafted and loses his soul in the Vietnam War. Robertson said, “I thought of the whole idea of sending kids off to some foreign land to fight for something they don’t understand . . . The ultimate rape was to do it to an American Indian. That, to me, showed the picture more vividly” (60). Robertson collaborated with U2 on two songs for this album, as producer Daniel Lanois was working on U2’s landmark album, Joshua Tree, at the same time. In 1989 Robertson won Album of the Year and Best Male Vocalist at the Canadian Juno Awards, and shared Producer of the Year with fellow Canadian Lanois. The Band was also inducted into the Juno Hall of Fame.

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Robertson made his boldest statements yet about Indian identity and his perspectives on Indigenous experience in the ’90s. He released three solo albums that decade: Storyville (1991), Music for the Native Americans (1994), and Contact from the Underworld of Redboy (1998). The rootsy Storyville was inspired by nineteenth-century New Orleans. In 1994, Robertson returned to Indigenous themes, with Music for the Native Americans, a collection of songs to accompany the TBS cable TV mini-series, The Native Americans. While writing and singing many of the songs himself, Robertson mixed in collaborations with both traditional and contemporary Native artists such as pop star Rita Coolidge (Cherokee), Canadian folk rock duo Kashtin (Innu), the drum group the Silvercloud Singers, flutist Douglas Spotted Eagle (Diné), and the women’s a cappella group Ulali. Contact from the Underworld of Redboy (1998) is Robertson’s most critically acclaimed solo work. While continuing with Indigenous themes, he experimented with hip hop, electronica, and spoken word, and made much bolder political statements about the struggles of both contemporary and historical Indians. With this release it became clear that Robertson had moved beyond trying to recreate the Americana that he helped forge with The Band, and was now committed to searching for new avenues of musical expression, particularly those that explored his Native identity. Collaborations included several important American Indian performers, such as James Bilagody (Diné), Rita Coolidge, Joanne Shenandoah (Iroquois), peyote song duo Primeaux and Mike, the Six Nations Women Singers, and spoken word by political prisoner Leonard Peltier (Lakota/Anishinaabe). In 1994, The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Eric Clapton presented the induction, saying that hearing Music from Big Pink “changed my life.” In 1997, Robertson was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters. Robertson has also been formally recognized by a number of institutions outside of Canada. As a member of The Band, he received The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. Joining Link Wray as one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists” in 2003, Robertson was ranked at number 78: “Robertson’s songwriting laid the foundation for the Band’s rustic soul, but his terse, poignant guitar playing was the group’s most underrated weapon. By 2011, his ranking had risen to 59. Robertson was awarded an honorary degree by Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. And, in addition to his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Canada’s Walk of Fame, and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of

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Fame, Robertson was bestowed with the Royal Order of Canada. “Through a fertile blending of diverse musical styles,” the Governor General’s office said on May 27, 2011, “he has introduced native music to a much wider audience” (CBC news.ca). Robertson released his fifth solo album, How to Become Clairvoyant in 2011, featuring several collaborations with his longtime friend and colleague, Eric Clapton. The song “Axman” cites a dozen guitar legends, including Wray: “They said the Axman’s coming / He plays a mean guitar . . . You got T Bone and Link Wray / All brothers of the blade.”

Jesse Ed Davis Jesse Edwin Davis III was born in Norman, Oklahoma, on September 21, 1944. Davis’s mother was Kiowa, and his father was Comanche, Seminole, and Creek (Ellerhoff ). He was a highly regarded but underrecognized studio guitarist, an in-demand session player for blues, country, folk, and rock artists, including three former Beatles. He began his career as a guitarist with country singer Conway Twitty before establishing a name for himself in bluesman Taj Mahal’s band in the late 1960s. During his relatively short career, Davis performed on albums or on stage with all four Beatles, Jackson Browne, David Cassidy, Eric Clapton, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, Albert King, Taj Mahal, Steve Miller, Keith Moon, Willie Nelson, Harry Nilsson, Leon Russell, and many more. Davis’s most enduring, and most Indigenously oriented, legacy was to co-found the Graffiti Band, which paired his music with the spoken-word poetry of John Trudell. His untimely death at age 43 cut short a legacy that is still grossly under-recognized and under-appreciated. While Link Wray was experiencing the life of a touring musician, the teenage Jesse Ed Davis was still posing in the mirror using a cheap acoustic guitar with a rope for a strap, miming to Elvis Presley records (Reed). Davis began his musical career in the late 1950s, playing in Oklahoma City and the surrounding area with other teenage musicians. In the early ’60s, Davis was a regular whenever The Hawks would do a stint in town, watching the young Robbie Robertson closely, hoping to follow in his footsteps (Helm). By the mid ’60s, Davis had begun touring with Conway Twitty, who was at that time more of a blues singer than country crooner. After Davis and Twitty parted ways, he relocated to California, where, through a friendship with The

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Figure 5.2. 

Jesse Ed Davis. Courtesy of Hugh Foley

Hawks’s Levon Helm, he connected with Tulsa-born pianist Leon Russell, who helped Davis find work as a session player before joining Taj Mahal’s band where he played guitar and piano on Mahal’s first three albums. The music was an eclectic mixture of blues, country, jazz, and calypso. Taj Mahal played in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in 1968; the DVD of the event features a Davis guitar solo in Mahal’s “Ain’t That a Lotta Love.” Eric Clapton was first introduced to Davis’s playing during the Circus; the two guitarists became friends and would later provide slide guitar on each other’s solo albums in the early ’70s. Jesse Ed Davis was busy both producing and playing on dozens of albums by many artists of international stature and some of less renown. He also recorded

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and released three solo albums featuring performances by several superstar friends. Davis released his 1971 debut solo album, Jesse Davis!, featuring piano by Leon Russell and guitar by Eric Clapton. At a time when American Indians were becoming more visible due to media coverage of the Red Power Movement and the occupations of Alcatraz and Plymouth Rock, the album cover art is a painting by Davis’s father of an American Indian male in traditional attire, smoking a sacred pipe. This was strong imagery of a musician clearly proud to claim his Indigenous heritage. Davis’s funky blues reveals an influence by the styles of friends Dr. John and Leon Russell. The album’s songs include a few obvious Indian themes; the autobiographical “Washita Love Child” features female background vocals that evoke Indigenous chanting. It begins, “I was born on the bank of the Washita River / In a Kiowa Comanche tipi” and adds, “Tied my hair back / And I did that powwow dance.” Thus he inserts himself in the “Indian discourse” of the time. Davis’s extensive high-profile session work continued earning praise, with one reviewer describing him playing “with the subtlety of a Robbie Robertson” ( JasObrecht.com). Artists whose albums featured Davis’s guitar work in 1971 included the Byrds, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, Albert King, Taj Mahal, and Cree singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie’s She Used to Wanna Be a Dancer. Davis’s second solo album, Ululu (1972), featured Dr. John on keyboards throughout, and mixed Davis originals with covers by his high-profile friends. Most notable for its connection to other Native rock musicians was “Strawberry Wine,” a Robertson composition from The Band’s 1970 release, Stagefright. The final solo album by Davis, Keep Me Comin’ (1973), utilized a band of lesser-known studio musicians. One of the most significant songs, “Ching Ching China Boy,” recalled a childhood incident of bullying, where two other boys harassed Davis, mistaking him for being Asian: “I’m not yellow, I said, I’m red.” In addition to focusing on his solo career, Davis continued to do sessions throughout the ’70s for major artists like Gene Clark of the Byrds, Roxy Music’s Brian Ferry, and Arlo Guthrie (in addition to those mentioned above). While Davis was mostly absent from the entertainment business in the first half of the ’80s, the two years of collaboration with former American Indian Movement–leader-turned-poet John Trudell celebrates his legacy as a musician with Native American heritage. “Jesse came along and gave me some songs,” Trudell said, “dressed me up as a rocker and put me on stage” ( JohnTrudell. com). The duo produced two albums, aka Graffiti Man and Heart Jump Bouquet, both sold on cassette via mail order. Davis wrote all of the music and played

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most of the instruments. The pairing perfectly blended the blues, rock, and reggae of Davis—also adding touches of traditional Native singing and drumming—with the powerful rhythmic spoken word of Trudell. The music offset poems of passion and pain, politics and war, Indigenous struggles both individual and collective. Davis brought Trudell’s poetry to a wider audience, both on stage and on radio. Bob Dylan played aka Graffiti Man over the PA during intermission at his own shows and declared the recording the best album of the year. “Only people like Lou Reed and John Doe can dream of doing work like this. Most don’t have enough talent” (Gilmore). Trudell released his debut CD on Rykodisc, the Jackson Browne-produced, also-titled, AKA Graffiti Man (1992), comprised mostly by songs written and recorded with Davis. Davis lost his battle with addiction at age 43 on June 22, 1988, when he was found dead in a laundry room in Venice, California, of a suspected heroin overdose. Davis’s playing pervaded the sounds of the ’60s and ’70s, and to those who know his work with Trudell, he is revered. Yet he is unknown to many more because much of his extraordinary guitar work was done as session work on the albums of others. His playing was enormously influential, however. Davis’s best known work is his lead guitar on Jackson Browne’s classic “Doctor My Eyes” (1972). His first slide guitar playing on record was on “Statesboro Blues” from Taj Mahal’s debut album. In fact, his performance inspired Duane Allman to learn slide, the song becoming not only an Allman Brothers Band signature song, but a southern rock standard ( JasObrecht.com). Derek Trucks, nephew of Allman’s drummer Butch Trucks and a member of the band since 1999, said, “The Taj Mahal version where Jesse Ed Davis is playing the Elmore James licks—that was the record that made Duane want to play slide” (Fricke, “In Memory”). Playing with each of the Beatles on recordings and in performance, Davis left his mark on the rock canon. And he has been enshrined in pop culture history in his role as a member of the backup band for George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh. Harrison enlisted Davis to fill in for Eric Clapton before his last-minute recovery from illness. While he may have been under-recognized during his lifetime, in 2002 Jesse Ed Davis was inducted along with Dave Brubeck and Patti Page into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. “Whether it was blues, country, or rock,” states the official citation, “Davis’s tasteful guitar playing was featured on albums by such giants as Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, John Lennon, and John Lee Hooker, among others” ( JasObrecht.com). Davis was also inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame on November 10, 2011. And perhaps finally

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getting recognition in the mainstream music press, Davis was listed as one of “Five Fretboard Innovators Who Never Got the Acclaim They Deserve” in the same issue of Rolling Stone magazine that ranked Robertson and Wray in the “100 Greatest” list (“Rolling Stone”). There is currently a film project on Davis in production.

Conclusion Rock music would be very different today were it not for the contributions of these three Native American “axmen” who left unique and indelible marks on rock music far beyond their own recorded works: Wray for creating the distorted guitar sound and the “power chord,” and as the catalyst for many major rock stars to begin playing guitar; Robertson as a creator of what has become known as Americana, and Davis as one of the finest and most widely influential studio guitarists of the 1970s. Each helped shape some of the most important musical culture of the past several decades. These three “Brothers of the Blade” are held in high esteem by critics, peers, and fans alike. With shared pride in their Native ancestry, and their unique cultural and ethnic origins, along with their broad influence on the development of popular music, it is clear that the American musical form of rock and roll was profoundly and permanently shaped by these three Native American musicians.

Works Cited Alternate Take blog. Rolling Stone, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. Ellerhoff, Steve Gronert. Red Dirt Boogie: Confronting the Myth of the American Indian in the Songs of Jesse “Ed” Davis. Dublin: Trinity College. August 2011. Print. “Episode 4.” Audio blog post. John Trudell Archives. Mothers World Media Inc. and The John Trudell Archives, Nov. 2010. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. Felder, Hugh. “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Classic Rock, July 2011. Print. Flanagan, Bill. “The Return of Robbie Robertson: A Decade After The Last Waltz, The Band’s Leader Comes Out of Retirement to Make His Big Statement.” Musician, Sept. 1987. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. Fricke, David. “In Memory of Duane: Derek Trucks’ Allman Brothers Playlist.”

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———. “100 Greatest Guitarists: David Fricke’s Picks.” Rolling Stone, 2 Dec. 2010. Web. 24 Dec. 2015. Gilmore, Mikal. “Dylan: On Recapturing ‘Highway 61’ and Touring with Tom Petty.” Rolling Stone, 2 Dec. 2010. Web. 24 Dec. 2015. Helm, Levon, and Stephen Davis. This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band. New York: William Morrow, 1993. Print. Hoskyns, Barney. Across the Great Divide: The Band and America. New York: Hyperion, 1993. Print. Link Wray: The Rumble Man. Dir. Robert Bentham. Perf. Link Wray. Cherry Red Films, 2003. DVD. Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music. Revised Edition. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975 and 1982. Print. McDonough, Jimmy. “Be Wild, Not Evil: The Link Wray Story.” Perfect Sound Forever. 2006. Web. 15 Jan. 2012 Obrecht, Jas. “Jesse Ed Davis: ‘I Just Play the Notes That Sound Good.’” Jas Obracht Music Archive. 27 July 2010. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. Reed, B. Mitchel. Jesse “Ed” Davis Talks About His Background, His Music and His New Album. Epic. 1973. 7” LP. “Rolling Stone Picks Hendrix, Robertson, Wray—and Jesse Ed Davis.” Indian Country Today. 1 Dec. 2011. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. Young, Charles M. “Bullshot.” Rolling Stone, 9 Aug. 1979. Web. 15 Jan. 2012.

6 “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee” The Engaged Resistance of Folk and Rock in the Red Power Era

Jan Johnson

I

of the band Redbone sang, “We were all wounded at Wounded Knee,” a traumatic history was re-presented to include not only the Lakotas who were the victims of the 1890 massacre, but all American Indians from 1890 to the present. The song also re-contextualized Wounded Knee for an historically amnesic majority culture by naming the ideology of Manifest Destiny as responsible for both the 1890 massacre and the siege and standoff that was occurring at the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, when the song was released. In the context of the Red Power era, Wounded Knee 1890 came to stand for all contemporary, ongoing injustices experienced by American Indians. Redbone’s song is an example of the important voice that music contributed to twentieth century American struggles for social and political justice. Music supported the direct action of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and accompanied the anti–Vietnam War, feminist, and environmental movements of the 1960s and ’70s as well. Less recognized, however, is the significant role of music in the American Indian rights movement of the same period, commonly called the Red Power era, and arguably initiated by the takeover of Alcatraz Island by Indian activists and the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s novel, House Made of Dawn in 1969. In the late 1960s, Indigenous oral traditions of song and story emerged from reservation tribal communities and urban enclaves alike, and entered n 1973 when Pat Vegas

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public discourse in powerful and strategic ways. Through lyrics and performance, Native musicians contributed to what Dean Rader calls the “engaged resistance” of the Red Power era, which includes the takeover of Alcatraz Island by activists in San Francisco Bay in 1969, the literature of writers such as Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, and the paintings of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, among others (Rader 1). In his powerful book, Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI, Rader defines engaged resistance as “a fundamentally indigenous form of aesthetic discourse that engages both Native and American cultural contexts as a mode of resistance against the ubiquitous tendencies of assimilation and erasure” (Rader 1). Rader demonstrates how American Indians were determined to communicate a Native story to the mainstream public, and to do it through what Simon Ortiz identified in 1981 as the most authentic and important element of Indian identity: resistance (Rader 1). Rader’s project explores Ortiz’s claim of resistance and identity by looking at aesthetic works that function in two different and often antagonistic worlds, the Indian and the Anglo, through “provocative Native texts that access both worlds through the door of resistance” (2). This essay utilizes Rader’s theoretical insights on engaged resistance and aesthetic activism, and applies them to music, the aesthetic genre his book doesn’t include. In addition to supporting the efforts of those who took direct action such as occupation and takeovers of places, and nurturing an ethnic, pan-Indian identity among Native young people (Scales), Red Power music made American Indians’ histories and living conditions visible to the mainstream public, and thus garnered support for change. These musicians combined the ancient traditions of song as “medicine/power” to contemporary styles of music and venues of dissemination to advance the survival and continuation of Indian existence. This essay looks at the 1960s folk singer/songwriter Peter La Farge and the 1970s rock bands Redbone and XIT as important examples of Red Power’s aesthetic engaged resistance. These musicians raised the awareness of the mainstream public to the injustices experienced by American Indians, and they encouraged Native people to actively fight for justice. They did this by speaking out, by telling sonic stories that resisted the status quo that kept Indians mostly poor and invisible to the mainstream public. In his influential essay “Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism,” poet/writer/activist Simon Ortiz argues that Native people have consistently “creatively responded to forced colonization” in a manner he sees as one of resistance (Rader 1). This resistance takes many forms and occurs in many

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languages, one of which, I think Ortiz would agree, is music. Importantly, resistance is not merely recalcitrance or refusal to comply with colonial authorities and policies. Rader defines resistance as much more than “rebuttal; it is ability, capacity, energy, authority, fortitude; resistance is an ethical stance and strategy” (2). In addition, Native resistance has historically been “ameliorative”: it is engaged to make things better (2). In the Red Power era, Native musicians employed the opportunities afforded by writing, recording, and performing to contribute to the struggle for justice for American Indians. They purposefully engaged with the mainstream American public in order to protest injustice and historical amnesia, and to communicate narratives of survivance, or resistance plus resilience (Vizenor). Much of the protest by American Indians in the 1960s and ’70s was in response to racism, discrimination, and the deplorable living conditions of many Indian communities as a result of federal failure to uphold its legal obligations to tribes inscribed in treaties. Native music could tell the stories that textbooks weren’t teaching and newspapers weren’t covering. Popular music could extend far beyond reservations and Indian communities to witness to the mainstream public about a largely invisible and ignored history and present. Through their songs, these musicians asserted ethical demands for fairness and justice to listeners who understood that much of the discourse of the times was occurring on records players and radios.

Peter La Farge Though Peter La Farge’s career slightly preceded the Red Power era, he established a precedent for other Native folk singers such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, and for Native rock musicians who came after him in a more militant time. As the first American Indian musician in the New York folk scene of the 1950s, La Farge is notable for awakening the consciousness of the non-Native public to the injustice and difficult conditions of Indian life in the 1950s and ’60s, and for nurturing the growing activism among Indians. According to music critic Bruce Eder, La Farge “occupied a special niche in contemporary folk music as the first politically aware Native American to attract serious attention . . . and made a vital and unique contribution to the early-’60s folk revival” (Eder). Born in New York City in 1931, La Farge’s tribal heritage was Narragansett through his mother Wanden Matthews; his father was the well-known

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Peter La Farge. Photo courtesy of Sandra Hale Schulman Archives

Figure 6.1. 

anthropologist/author Oliver La Farge. When his parents divorced in 1935, Peter moved with his mother and sister Povey to Colorado. There he grew up riding horses on his mother’s and stepfather’s ranch and interacting with nearby Indian communities. He began rodeoing at an early age, and had a radio show in Fountain, Colorado, at age fourteen. He was competing in rodeo and working as a singer at age sixteen. La Farge enlisted in the Navy in the late 1940s, and while serving on an aircraft carrier, an explosion and fire killed many of his shipmates. Although La Farge wasn’t physically injured, he is reported to have suffered anguish and nightmares for the rest of his life, which may have contributed to his later substance abuse (Kane; Wright-McLeod 119).

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In the mid-1950s, La Farge attended the Goodman School of the Theatre in Chicago and then went to New York where he acted in off-Broadway productions. La Farge scholar Sandra Schulman reports that Peter acted in a Broadway production of King Lear, rode a saddle bronc in a professional rodeo in Madison Square Garden, and performed as a musician at Carnegie Hall, all in the same year (Schulman). La Farge began concentrating on song writing and found himself in the folk scene in Greenwich Village. He was tall, dark, lean, and handsome, and always wore his cowboy hat, jeans, and rodeo champion buckles to signify his identity as an Indian cowboy. La Farge was unusual as “a Native American in the beat Mecca of lower Manhattan” (Eder). He hung out with Bob Dylan, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Dave Van Ronk, and Pete Seeger, and credited Cisco Houston with teaching him to write and sing (“Ballad of Peter La Farge”). Schulman characterizes La Farge’s lyrics as “a tough, proud, hard-nosed ‘tell it like it is’ message from the American Indian to the Euro-American public” and “a perspective on Euro-American culture that was shocking, disconcerting and troublesome for many non-Indians” (Schulman). La Farge’s most wellknown song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”—also recorded and made famous by Johnny Cash—remains much better known than La Farge or any of his other compositions of resistance. Like most folksingers in early 1960s Greenwich Village, La Farge accompanied himself on an acoustic guitar. Though he had a limited, nearly monotone, vocal range, he sang with animation and passion, and after one unsuccessful album on Columbia—before Columbia signed Bob Dylan—La Farge was signed by Moses Asch to Folkways Records. Between 1962 and 1965, he recorded five albums with Native American and cowboy themes (Eder). Sandra Schulman calls La Farge an enormously talented yet under-recognized figure in Native American activism and music history. The Encyclopedia of Native Music states that La Farge “opened the doors for future generations of Native performers. In expressing his views on the injustices against indigenous people in America, his music was prophetic to the coming era of Indian activism” (Wright-McLeod 120). Because La Farge’s songs revealed such an extensive knowledge of U.S. Indian policy and Native experience, Schulman emphasizes that La Farge is significant for singing about issues that were not in the public consciousness, and wouldn’t be for a decade: “Virtually all the books that discuss the topics of his songs and contain the information in the lyrics of his songs were written after he died” (Schulman).

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When Johnny Cash recorded “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and six other La Farge compositions on his 1964 Bitter Tears album, which was devoted to the status of Indians in the United States, it went to number 3 on the Country charts despite some U.S. disc jockeys refusing to play it due to its political critique (Eder). “Ira Hayes” told the story of Pima tribal member Ira Hayes and the discrimination the World War II hero faced when he returned home—he had helped raise the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima and had become a public figure, albeit a tortured one due largely to the American public’s racism. In addition to decrying the racism Hayes experienced, La Farge’s song pointed out that the poverty of Hayes’s Pima community resulted from the government’s theft of the tribe’s water supply, which prevented them from continuing a twothousand-year practice of farming (Schulman): Down their ditches for a thousand years the waters grew Ira’s people’s crops,

Till the white man stole their water rights and their sparklin’ water stopped. (La Farge)

In identifying the social and political reasons for the Pima’s poverty and Hayes’s drinking, La Farge’s song challenges the common stereotype of the time that Indians were drunk and poor due to their personal failings and/or inability to assimilate into mainstream culture. In fact La Farge’s songs are notable for identifying the structural and institutional sources of the injustices experienced by Indians at a time when very few non-Indians were aware of them. “As Long as the Grass Shall Grow,” a phrase that echoes treaty language and tells the story of the Senecas and their leader Cornplanter, exposes the blatant betrayal of the Senecas’ treaty with the United States: After the US revolution, Cornplanter was a chief

He told the tribe these men they could trust, that was his true belief

He went down to Independence Hall and there a treaty signed

That promised peace with the USA and Indian rights combined

George Washington gave his signature, the Government gave its hand

They said that now and forever more that this was Indian land As long as the moon shall rise As long as the rivers flow

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As long as the sun will shine

As long as the grass shall grow

On the Seneca reservation there is much sadness now

Washington’s treaty has been broken and there is no hope, no how Across the Allegheny River they’re throwing up a dam

It will flood the Indian country, a proud day for Uncle Sam It has broke the ancient treaty with a politician’s grin

It will drown the Indian graveyards, Cornplanter can you swim The earth is mother to the Senecas, they’re trampling sacred ground

Change the mint green earth to black mud flats as honour hobbles down. (La Farge)

In addition to showing the direct effects of broken treaties, La Farge also connects the trampling of a people to the trampling of land that is sacred to the Senecas. Clearly ahead of his time in connecting the oppression of Indian people with the abuse of the natural environment (long before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, as noted by Schulman in “Indigenous Folk Singer”), La Farge’s song “Radioactive Eskimo” demonstrates his awareness of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s nuclear energy experiments in Inupiat lands in the late 1950s, which included the intentional release of strontium-90 into the groundwater (“Inupiat Code of Offenses”). In “Radioactive Eskimo” he sings: ...

My wife can’t suckle our babies, the milk must come from cans My wife’s too radioactive, say we’re real atom fans.

When we eat the caribou, the moss the caribou eats

Is rained on good by the dirty rain, it’s radioactive meat. (La Farge)

Here La Farge protests human and environmental genocide with sarcastic irony, and alerts his listeners to a frightening U.S. practice that is still occurring today. La Farge died suddenly in 1965 at age thirty-four, officially from a stroke, with suspicions of a drug overdose or foul play. He contributed a Native voice of resistance to contemporary colonialism to the folk scene by making the conditions of Indian life visible to a section of mainstream culture. He also “set the stage” for Native American rock bands that insistently carried on the struggle for Indian rights with an amplified and militant force.

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Redbone Redbone was arguably the first Native rock band of the Red Power era to be signed to a major label and to garner a national and international audience. They recorded both political and apolitical songs, and due largely to their exceptional musicianship and commercial success, they were able to tour widely and share stories of Indian history and resistance with a large audience. The roots of Redbone began with brothers Pat and Candido “Lolly” Vasquez, from Fresno, California. Of Yaqui/Shoshone and Mexican heritage, their music was influenced by farm workers from Louisiana who brought roots music styles such as Cajun and funk with them. Pat and Lolly played in local bands as teenagers before moving to Los Angeles in 1963 to work in the music industry. In L.A. they changed their last name to Vegas and worked as songwriters and session musicians, with Pat playing electric bass and Lolly playing electric guitar. From 1964–66 they worked with Leon Russell and Delaney Bramlett as the house band for the ABC teen music show Shindig. In 1966 they released Pat and Lolly Vegas Live at the Haunted House, co-produced by Leon Russell and Snuff Garrett. They also worked in the surf and hotrod genres as The Avantis, releasing Hotrodders Choice on Del-Fi, in 1966, and recorded as The Routers, The Sharks, The Mar-kets, and The Deuce Coupes (Guerrero). The Vasquez/Vegas Brothers’ status rose in 1967 when their composition “Niki Hokey,” recorded by P.J. Probert, hit number 23 on the Billboard chart (Wright-McLeod 119–120 and “Redbone History”). Their friend Jimi Hendrix suggested they form an all-Native band. Hendrix was proud of his own Cherokee heritage and encouraged the Vegas brothers to emphasize Indian identity and issues. In Wright-McLeod’s account, Pat and Lolly were introduced to guitarist Tony Bellamy during backup sessions for John Lee Hooker and Odetta. While auditioning drummers at their house in the Hollywood Hills, they met Pete DePoe from the Neah Bay Reservation in Washington State; DePoe had moved from ceremonial and pow wow drumming into contemporary percussion. He is credited with creating “the King Kong Beat,” which echoes the cadence of Puerto Rican dance music the Bomba and the Cua (Wright-McLeod). Another element important to Redbone’s sound resulted from Lolly Vegas, who was one of the first electric guitarists to run his guitar through an oscillating Leslie speaker. The Vegas brothers, Tony Bellamy, and Pete DePoe as Redbone—Cajun slang for mixed blood—soon signed a five-album deal with Epic Records.

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Soon after forming, Redbone traveled to several reservations in the Southwest and were appalled by the conditions Indian people they saw were living in, including no electricity or indoor plumbing. This experience was a profound inspiration on their songwriting and activism. The band’s first release on the CBS/Epic label, 1970’s Redbone, was unusual for the time, a double album produced by the band members themselves. Redbone recorded six albums between 1970 and 1974, with three of their pop songs charting. Their funky, soulful, and groove-laden “Come and Get Your Love” from their fifth album, Wovoka, rose to number 5 on the Billboard Chart in 1974 and is still a dance favorite. Their album cover art always signified “Indianness,” and each release contained a mixture of non-Native and Native-themed material. They performed in Native regalia such as buckskin shirts and pants, performing a double entendre1 of identity to exploit the majority culture’s growing fascination with all things Indian, but also to signify a timeless Indian identity and aesthetic sovereignty to Indian audiences. The 1973 siege at Wounded Knee by American Indian Movement activists was underway when Redbone recorded its most politically potent song, “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee.” But CBS/Epic refused to press it. In 1973 “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee” was released in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and France, and even when the single reached the United States, it was virtually banned by American radio stations. The song hit number 1 in the Netherlands but never charted at home. The single “Wounded Knee” engaged with listeners by providing historical context for the 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and the standoff there with the U.S. government. As a corrective to historical amnesia and hegemonic versions of the event, the song narrates the cause of the massacre of Lakotas by the Seventh Calvary from the Indian point of view. First, the Army’s genocidal response to the Lakota people’s non-violent spiritual renewal inflicted trauma on all American Indians, and second, the attack was caused by the ideology that Native people were expendable in the U.S. nation’s westward expansion. The chorus claims: We were all wounded at Wounded Knee, you and me We were all wounded at Wounded Knee, you and me In the name of manifest destiny, you and me, you and me, you and me

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In the song, specific Lakotas come to represent all Indians, as “we” were penned in like buffalo, and “we’d” gone for preservation to the reservation at Wounded Knee: They made us many promises but always broke their word They penned us in like buffalo, drove us like a herd

And finally on the reservation where we’d gone for our preservation, We were all wiped out by the seventh cavalry You and me, you and me

The song reveals that the Lakotas weren’t safe even on the reservation, where the military actually had a duty to protect them. By bringing the 1890 event back into popular consciousness, the song provides context for Indians returning to the site to take a stand against the government nearly one hundred years later and declares that the fight for justice continues: Now we make our promises, we won’t break our word

We’ll sing, sing, sing out our story ’til the truth is heard

There’s a whole new generation, Braves who dream of veneration Who were not wiped out by the seventh cavalry.

In addition to “Wounded Knee,” other politically engaged Redbone songs are “Wovoka,” referring to the prophet who taught the Ghost Dance ceremony of hope and resilience, and “Alcatraz,” about the 1969 takeover of the island that helped begin the Red Power movement. These songs bear witness to important events in history, place contemporary issues into context with that history, and convey a message of survival, hope, and resistance to ongoing colonization.

XIT Intense racism made New Mexico a dangerous place to be Indian when the band XIT formed in Albuquerque in 1968. Indians who were young people at the time say “XIT as the sound of the movement was the only thing that kept us going” (Norell). A Navajo who was in boarding school in Shiprock recalls that XIT’s music “kept us lifted up, it kept us with our identity” (Norell). In 1974 after three white teenagers tortured and murdered three young Navajos in

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XIT. Photo courtesy of the Soar Corporation, Copyright: All Rights Reserved, 1990

Figure 6.2. 

Farmington, New Mexico, XIT’s music could be heard coming from a resistance camp in Shiprock, giving “light and strength” (Norell). Whereas Redbone enjoyed greater commercial success than XIT, XIT may have had a higher profile among Indian people, who considered them to be more politically committed to engaged resistance (Blackerby). XIT formed after Dakota tribal member Tom Bee met the Albuquerque acid-rock garage band Lincoln Street Exit. He signed the band to the Lance Records label he co-owned, becoming the band’s manager and producer. Bee had been adopted at birth and grew up in Gallup, New Mexico; he had been involved in the Gallup and Albuquerque music scenes from age 15, working as a songwriter, singer, and band manager, and he wrote songs with Lincoln Street Exit guitarist and lead singer A. Michael Martin (Scales). After recording the

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LP Drive It for Mainstream Records in 1970, Bee visited L.A. to drop off demo tapes of his own compositions at record labels. Soon Motown bought one of his songs for The Jackson 5, and asked if Bee knew of any rock acts for its new Rare Earth Records rock label. By then, Lincoln Street Exit was known simply as Exit; Bee changed the spelling to XIT to represent “Crossing of Indian Tribes,” and secured the band a contract on Motown’s Rare Earth label. With Tom Bee writing lyrics and managing the band, XIT had a goal of aesthetic activism and engaged resistance from its inception. The band wanted to raise awareness of the conditions of American Indians, to educate everyone about Native history. They wanted to tell Native history from a Native perspective, and to signal their solidarity with other Natives struggling for visibility and justice. According to Bee, Motown wanted the band to name itself something romantic and stereotypical like “Yellow Horse,” but he was very aware of the pan-tribal orientation of the American Indian Movement and urban Indian activists. He chose XIT to reflect that supra-tribal orientation, as well as the band members’ identities: Bee was Dakota (lyrics, lead and background vocals), A. Michael Martin (lead vocals/guitar), Mac Suazo (bass), and Lee Herrera (drums/percussion) were of Pueblo descent; Obie Sullivan was Creek (keyboards), Tyrone King was Navajo (percussion), and R.C. Gariss (lead guitar/piano) was a mixed-blood Cherokee; Willy Bluehouse (Isleta Pueblo) joined on lead guitar following the departure of A. Michael Martin (Scales; Wright-McLeod 215; Bee). In 1972, XIT recorded Plight of the Redman in Detroit at Motown’s Hitsville studio. Scales calls Plight of the Redman “politically incendiary” in telling this history to mainstream audiences who had never heard Native Americans tell their own stories. In a 2008 interview Tom Bee told Indian Country Today: As soon as they heard “Go away white man, this is our land,” they said “We don’t want the record.” They heard it as a slap against America. The album was never

meant to be militant or radical, it came from the heart and told a story, but unfortunately the truth hurts and cuts deep. The press called us “the musical ambassadors of the American Indian Movement.” We believed in their platform, we did

a lot of benefits in conjunction with AIM, and the message in our music basically was their platform, so it was a perfect combination. (Murg 2008 in Scales)

Although Motown claimed it didn’t know how to market the record and it was met with some resistance from radio stations and retail chains (Scales), it was

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distributed by a major label and was heard by an American audience, unlike Redbone’s most scathing critique of colonialism. Plight of the Redman tells an epic story, functioning as analogue to Dee Brown’s 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee according to ethnomusicologist Christopher Scales. It opens somewhat romantically with Native Americans living idyllically in “Beginning.” We hear the sounds of wind and thunder, then traditional Native drumming and singing in the Navajo language: “Hey ya hey / Akodaani / Dii nihi keyah ho / akonisin.” Then a voice intones over this chorus: “Little is really known about the American Indian or what links our human soul with the earth. . . .” The next track, “I Was Raised” covers a happy childhood, followed by “Nihaa Shil Hozho/I am Happy About You” in which the speaker finds romantic love and contentment. Side two of the album presents the betrayal, conquest, and confinement of Indians in “Coming of the Whiteman,” followed by “War Cry,” which explains that Indians were forced to fight to protect their homes. “Someday” holds out hope that the land will once again belong to Indians, followed by “End,” with spoken word over swelling music, in a proclamation that forcefully details the harsh reality of Indian life: ...

We have existed without adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medicine, to name but a few

In their place we have been given malnutrition, poverty, disease, suicide, and ...

bureaucratic promises of a better tomorrow.

The treatment of our people has been a national disgrace. The time has come to put an end to that disgrace Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, whatever necessary.

We must now manage our own affairs and control our own lives and through it all remain to be

The True Americans! (Tom Bee)

Taken together, Plight offers a “manifesto” of Indian resistance and activism. The hard-rocking, hypnotic, and angry “Reservation of Education” from XIT’s second album Silent Warrior tells a child’s haunting story of coercive assimilation through the boarding school: When I was young I heard of hate But not the word discriminate

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Oh I was raised in boarding school And I was taught to ridicule.

When I was young I heard of fate But not the word “segregate”

Oh I was told my way was wrong And I must change to get along.

When I was very young, so very very young It’s a reservation of education (Bee).

Like other Native artists and writers of the Red Power era, La Farge, Redbone, and XIT engaged with popular culture to bear witness to American Indian history, to resist erasure and the continuing legacy of colonialism, and to encourage tribal members and others to work for justice for Native Americans. They leave an important body of aesthetic activism that testifies to the vitality of American Indian engaged resistance in the middle of the twentieth century. These musicians truly were warriors, and their music embodies what Simon Ortiz has articulated as the hallmarks of Native peoples’ response to colonialism: creative resistance (Rader 1). In truth, they were much more than musicians, they were a movement. They wanted to change the world, and they did.

Notes 1. I borrow this term from Gerald McMaster’s essay “The Double Entendre of Re-enactment,” in which he surveys contemporary Native Canadian and American artists who re-enact the earlier re-enactments of non-Native artists such as photographer Edward Curtis and filmmaker Robert Flaherty.

Works Cited The Ballad of Peter La Farge and Rare Breed: The Songs of Peter La Farge. Dir. Sandra Hale Schulman. Perf. Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Alan Lomax. Slink Productions. 2010. DVD. Bee, Tom. Message to author. 8 April 2015. E-mail. Blackerby, Scott. “Redbone and XIT.” Message to author. 10 June 2014. E-mail.

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Eder, Bruce. “Peter La Farge Artist Biography. Web. n.d. 12 June 2014. Guerrero, Mark. “Redbone: Cajun Funk with a Touch of Latin Soul.” Web. Accessed 10 June 2014. Kane, Wanden M. “Biography of Peter La Farge.” 2 April 1999. Google Groups. Web. Accessed 12 June 2014. McMaster, Gerald. “The Double Entendre of Re-enactment.” VTAPE. Toronto, 2007. Print. 12 June 2014. Native Village of Point Hope. “Atomic Energy Offenses Against the Peace and Security of the Inupiat of Point Hope.” Web. 17 October 1992. Accessed 12 June 2014. Norell, Brenda, “XIT, Carriers of the Message of the Red Man.” N.d. Web. Accessed 5 May 2014. Rader, Dean. Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI. Austin: U Texas Press, 2011. Print. Redbone. “Wovoka.” The Essential Redbone. Epic-Legacy. 2003. CD. ———. “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee.” Epic (Netherlands). 1973. Single 45 RPM. “Redbone History.” Web. Accessed 12 June 2014. Rowlands, Lucinda. “‘Without Reservation’ by XIT.” Indian Country Today, 20 November 2002. Electronic. Accessed 5 May 2014. Scales, Christopher. “Plight of the Redman: XIT, Red Power, and the Refashioning of American Indian Ethnicity,” in Popular Music and Human Rights 1: British and American. Ian Peddie, Editor. Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. Electronic. Accessed 5 May 2014. Schulman, Sandra Hale. “Indigenous Folk Singer: Peter La Farge.” PDF. n.d. Web. Accessed 6 June 2013. Vandegraft, Douglas L. “Project Chariot: Nuclear Legacy of Cape Thompson.” Web. Accessed 12 June 2014. Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Wright-McLeod, Brian. The Encyclopedia of Native American Music: More Than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. Print. XIT. Plight of the Redman. Rare Earth Records, 1972. CD. ———. Silent Warrior. Rare Earth Records, 1973. CD XIT: Without Reservation. Dir. Chuck Banner. Warrior. 2002. DVD.

7 “We’ll Get There with Music” Sonic Literacies, Rhetorics of Alliance, and Decolonial Healing in Joy Harjo’s Winding Through the Milky Way

Gabr iel a Raquel Rios This is a song: This is a retelling of ancient stories passed down. We retell it with new technologies that are really old technologies. We retell it to make, to be, and to survive. This is a survivance song: I’m going to tell you a transmigration story. I’m inviting you on a journey— Journey to the Milky Way, where Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca make a new sky, where we gather debajo del Arbor De La Vida, where spirit dogs lie and music lifts our spirits Up and up to the First World, on the Quinto Sol. We sprinkle cornmeal along the way. Sounds carry us there— los sonidos de alegría, de tristeza, de la tierra y de todo el mundo Se transforman en música I’m taking you through the Milky Way and back again.

Q

uestions about music have motivated me to take various kinds of journeys throughout my life. I am fascinated by music, by sounds and silences, and by how sounds mean, and how different sounds come together to mean differently. And I have questions about how sounds work together with bodies and rhythms in the making of music and in the making of meaning through music. As a rhetorician, the questions have spurred me to thinking—what Walter Mignolo would call border thinking—about how

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making music can function as a decolonial practice, and how sounds evoked in particular compositions can serve as tactics in shifting or creating a locus or loci of enunciation for American Indians. According to Mignolo, border thinking refers to “’an other thinking’ that is based on the spatial confrontations between different concepts of history” (Local Histories/Global Designs 67). What I take away from Mignolo’s discussion of border thinking is its ability to offer an epistemological stance that posits the limits of Western metaphysics, namely the linearity of time. In her album, Winding Through the Milky Way, Joy Harjo offers a work that serves as a site of praxis for embodying and realizing cultural memory and identity in a way that disrupts linear constructions of those ideas. Additionally, Harjo’s work allows for a nuanced analysis of how sound works together with other aspects of performance to create culture and identity that is situated in a Muscogee Creek understanding of how those concepts are negotiated through the medium of music as rhetoric. In situating this story, however, it is important to note that though Harjo is, I think, offering her own situated Creek stories, she also brings a message that is intertribally constructed and that speaks to shared experiences among not only American Indians, but other peoples affected by colonization. Additionally, I see Harjo’s use of music, in this way, as part of an intertribal American Indian tradition of song-making that has always existed for the purposes of healing and bridging of alliances. Ultimately, I hope for this story to offer another way of thinking about how sound functions in Harjo’s work. Specifically, I am interested in how the sounds that she uses work together with other elements of performance in the making of songs to create what Malea Powell would call “rhetorics of alliance.” I argue here that sounds work together with other aspects of musical performance as a way of enacting healing as a decolonial practice, a practice that is contingent upon Toni Morrison’s concept of “rememory.” Toni Morrison’s concept of rememory is important not only for cultural studies, but also for rhetoric, as memory is one of the five canons of rhetoric. Morrison’s concept of rememory disrupts a linear understanding of how memory functions as a praxis of time and history. Rememory disrupts the linear time connected to the word “remember.” It suggests another way of thinking that can move beyond the colonial difference enacted through the construction of linear time. In many American Indian traditions, songs carry much more than only entertainment value: they transmit memory, knowledge, and history, and carry

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Figure 7.1. 

Joy Harjo. Photo credit: Paul Abdoo

ontological weight. For most American Indians, songs are also medicine; they heal and they reconstruct broken bodies/spirits. Kimberli Lee argues in her essay “Heartspeak from the Spirit” that songs are not only “texts,” but also “active sites that can and do bring about change” (Lee 90). Songs are alive. In Red on Red, Craig Womack offers a theory for cultural memory and explains the importance of the situated telling of stories as a way to bolster a pan-tribal effort of cultural continuance. He begins with the “we,” as an idea that “has to do with the way narrative shapes communal consciousness: through imagination and storytelling, people in oral cultures re-experience history” (Womack 26). The communal consciousness is imperative in the retelling of stories

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because “[w]ithin the telling, the event is re-experienced so that the people are reconstituted as a nation as they hear about their origins in ancient stories of creations and journeying” (Womack 26). But, these stories, as all stories, have fluidity. They are fluid because peoples are constantly changing, surviving, adapting, moving, and migrating. And, they are often formed through a series of what Angela Haas would call “intellectual transmigrations,” or moments of reciprocal and respectful cross-cultural dialogue (Haas 55). The construction of History proper does a few things to the intellectual traditions of American Indians (and Indigenous peoples more generally), but crucial to my argument here is history’s complicity with the construct of the human in rationalist terms. This complicity holds American Indians subject to a kind of “pure” authenticity that does not recognize the inevitable cultural exchange that occurs in all intellectual productions and between all peoples, and instead sees an intercultural exchange between American Indians and non-Natives as inauthentic. Additionally, this kind of thinking sees the products of American Indian artists as “ethnic” or “other” in such a way that does not value the cultural specificity of their work. In fact, when I initially searched for Harjo’s album, I found it housed in the “World” section of a local music shop. The creation of sounds in Harjo’s music comes out of intellectual transmigrations, and yet, the distributors and sellers of Harjo’s work mostly misperceive the nature and significance of these intellectual transmigrations. This practice—the categorizing of Harjo’s music as “World”—is a typical colonial practice, and it works not only to make Harjo’s work ephemeral, but also to make American Indian peoples into exotic Others, with no real, grounded identities or practices. In this way, the dominant discourse presents American Indian music as a mystified act of “ritual” that can only be understood through “anthrospeak” (Womack). But, this categorization of Harjo’s work is also due to the ways in which Harjo weaves together sounds that many would argue are not “Native American” and that are therefore “universal.” On the one hand, Harjo certainly does weave together distinct sounds to create a soundscape that is diverse and rich, but so do many musicians. It is only through what Walter Mignolo would call the “coloniality of power”—the process by which Western thinkers turn nonwestern peoples into objects of study— that Harjo’s weaving together of sounds could be marked as somehow “different” from the kinds of weaving that other musicians perform. Therefore, the process of reasserting and recreating identity and culture through song becomes an act of “survivance.” The sheer fact that Indigenous folks are still making music, and

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that music is formed through intellectual transmigrations, at once resists colonial formations of authenticity and represents Indigenous presence/survival. But songs and popular culture are hardly readily accepted forms of intellectual production, and even when they are, they are often understood only as written poetry/literature. I do not contest that songs can be and are poetry, but the analytical tools available to the study of songs as only written poetry often tend toward a dismissal of their sonic value. Unfortunately, as Michelle Comstock and Mary E. Hocks point out, sound is also not yet embraced in the field of rhetoric and composition as a viable form of technology or literacy (Comstock and Hocks 1). Nevertheless, sonic literacy is important because the “general acoustic environment of a society can be read as an indicator of social conditions which produce it” (R. Murray Schafer, qtd. in Comstock and Hocks). Thinking with Mignolo, this idea can be extended to understand how acoustic environments are also situated in land bases and in the geo-politics of language and space. Perhaps more interestingly, in terms of what sonic literacies can offer to the field of rhetoric and composition, is how the study of sound can bolster discussions around contested knowledges. Comstock and Hocks argue that sounds are already contested territory insofar as they regulate dialectical relationships between what is heard and unheard, seen and unseen. However, songs can also help to uncover the ways in which sounds as contested territory offer another way of thinking about the body, memory, trauma/healing, and cultural exchange. Harjo’s weaving together of diverse sounds, along with her intertribal approach, create a kind of rhetorics of alliance (Powell, “Rhetorics”). Powell argues that American Indians have been able to survive and resist colonization through their tactical use of the tools of dominance and through their ability to create alliances. Harjo’s use of contemporary soundscapes and instruments undermines the colonial perception of American Indians as pre- or anti-modern even while she asserts her Muskogee Creek heritage. In fact, many contemporary Native musicians are fusing traditional musical styles with more “modern” practices—fusing traditional beats and themes with contemporary rhetorical frameworks and song structures. But, as Lee argues, “While forms and styles of contemporary Native American music are always changing, the medium of song still serves, as it has for millennia, to transmit and process information important to Native communities: histories, philosophies, political concerns, social values, and stories” (Lee 89). Powell’s rhetorics of alliance can help us see how Harjo uses a tradition of song-making to continue a tribal identity

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and assert and affirm sovereignty in ways that follow intertribal epistemological attitudes toward sound and voice in song-making. In Shaking the Pumpkin, Jerome Rothberg explains: “non-verbal phonetic sounds, dance gesture and event, game, dream, etc., along with all those unstated ideas and images the participants pick up from the poem’s [song’s] context” are charged moments in which “meaning is coming to surface, where nothing’s incidental but everything matters terribly” (Rothberg xxi). A song is always-already a performance composed of elements that hold individual agency. Rhetorics of alliance can exist among all of the aspects of performance: sound is connected to the body is connected to the visual is connected to the dance is connected to the audience is connected to sound is connected to all of the aspects that come together to make songs an “active site” and a “contested territory.” Harjo’s music embodies the harmonious balance that must exist between all “things” in this way, but a major player in how this happens is memory. In this way, rememory can disrupt Walter Ong’s phonocentrism, which sees orality as superior to other types of expression because it is “present.” Ong’s notion of presence and orality is derived in part from his believing that orality is ephemeral and connected to the body, and therefore can come only out in the “here and now” (Comstock and Hocks). But, I would argue that all things change, nothing is static, and critical sonic literacies can help us to better understand how memory is situated in the body and in land bases, and how American Indian musicians like Harjo use memory and sound in music for decolonial healing and to assert sovereignty. In a recent interview, Harjo shows how her work embodies this concept of relationality and rememory in talking about poetry, music, and dance: It was at my tribal grounds in Oklahoma that I first remembered that music, poetry

and dance all came into the world together. I see them growing together, though [for her] the poetry was practiced and public long before music. Music was stolen

from me when I was about 14 and it took me until I was 40 to be able to reclaim it again. The saxophone was my first musical helper [ . . . ] I began learning to sing on

Native Joy for Real. It all comes together on Winding Through the Milky Way [ . . . ]. (emphases mine, Native Digest)

Songs of survivance reaffirm the animated nature of songs, their role as “helpers” in the creation of active spaces of healing, cultural continuance, and even the construction of identity.

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In When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Robin Riddington and Jillian Riddington remind us that “[sounds] are interpretations and meanings we give to a limited range of frequencies that we experience. Sounds are meaningful because we know how to contextualize them. Listening is an act of creative intelligence” (Riddington and Riddington 35). Vizenor has likewise articulated that “the natural world is a venture of sound and shadows, and the outcome of the oral tradition is not the silence of discoveries, dominance, and written narratives. The natural development of the oral tradition is not a written language. The notion, in the literature of dominance, that the oral advances to the written, is a colonial reduction of natural sound, heard stories, and the tease of shadows in tribal remembrance” (Vizenor, Manifest Manners). Yet it is imperative to note that when Vizenor speaks of an “oral tradition,” he is nonetheless being ironic. All cultures have “oral traditions,” and what Vizenor makes evident here is that the result of oral traditions was never meant to be a written text. Other scholars like Womack, Mignolo, and performance studies scholar Diana Taylor also argue that writing does not come out of orality; writing can, however, work together with or alongside orality—again recapitulating the importance of the communal. Harjo’s musical journey takes listeners to the place where we can see and experience the power of song for these purposes. So, we come back to the Milky Way. In Red on Red, Womack’s understanding of the pan-tribal-to-tribal specific is based on communal mentality. Haas additionally argues that this identity is born out of transmigrations that have existed for centuries. The contemporary stories, however, are wrought with a different and more pressing kind of pain, as pan-tribalism often gushes forth through the effects of colonialism. Womack explains, “Travels in the Southeast, through places important to Creek history, are a catalyst for the speaker’s ancestral memory, her ability to empathize, feel, and imagine this legacy of oppression faced by Native people in the Americas” (emphasis mine, Womack 226). Creek narratives are narratives of migration, and Harjo travels those stories physically (and) through songs and stories: We’re in a story that will always include the ancient while riding to the outer

edge. We’ll get there with music, poetry, lyrics, stories, sheer sorrow and joy. Start with a voice. Let it fly free. Bring in a saxophone to touch those places the words can’t reach. Add an insatiable guitar, some heavy philosophical bass, a little piano

and other tribal rhythms to take us back to Congo Square and before, back up to the Milky Way. (joyharjo.com)

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In Winding Through the Milky Way, Harjo invites us on that journey. If/as we follow, we become part of a story that, for Harjo, is necessary and inevitable. Harjo has literally left Oklahoma, the land of her upbringing, but her “travels are not dictated by chance, but by paths that her ancestors took” (Womack 227). Womack recalls the often-quoted comment Harjo makes with respect to her travels ending when she “has enough money and the right words,” concluding that “Harjo is already trying to get back to Oklahoma, and for her the journey will always be more than just a physical return, in fact, always being preceded by first trying the waters through language and imagination” (qtd. in Womack 224). However, using Harjo’s own articulation that we are always in a story, I would add that returning to Oklahoma, for Harjo, is also always-already a discursive move—much like Vizenor’s “semiotic being.” For Vizenor, a semiotic being is one who is discursively made and therefore resists race-based formations of American Indians. Sounds, however, have much to do with that journey, especially considering that there are places “words can’t reach.” From one perspective, the Milky Way is a symbol, perhaps a metaphor, for travel and alternate realities. It may even be a symbol of a trajectory that leads us into alternate stories. On her website, Harjo tells us that poetry and song came from the same place—Winding Through the Milky Way is a work that takes us back to those roots. Sonically, the songs are “contemporary,” using modern instruments, but the entire endeavor is motivated by Harjo’s desire to combine all forms of expression that can help us to travel back to the place of “beauty” and back to a place of tribal identity and heritage. For Muskogees, beauty is achieved through creating balance and harmony—“going home” is achieving that balance (Womack 229–231). The return home is indicative of a variety of things: recovery, rememory, balance, and even decolonization. As Womack highlights, going home “is more than heading back to Albuquerque; it is the state of the Native Union where the hoop is no longer broken, lands are returned, people are in control of their own resources; in other words, going home to vibrant Native nationalism, to real self-determination” (Womack 231). Harjo wants to take listeners “back home,” and songs are part of how she does that. In Winding Through the Milky Way, Harjo makes it clear that songs are a “making” by “Opening” with a “Song for the Maker.” The music creates a space, an active site for the making of something—an opening, not a beginning. Again, Harjo disrupts linear/chronological depictions of time by attempting to create a space where we might expect an indication of chronological time (a first

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or beginning song, for example). The sound of a drum and shell shakers begins the performance. These sounds coming from the shakers are reminiscent of Creek stomp dance rituals in which the shaking of shells opens the ceremonies. The drum is the “heartbeat” and the shakers signal a call for people to come together (Womack). Harjo’s call in the song says, “the human mind is small when thinking of small things / it is large when embracing the maker of walking, thinking, and flying.” At least implicitly, the song calls for the “opening” of the mind—the call here is indicative of the concept that both the speaker and listener share in the creation and ultimately in the making of meaning. Harjo both makes and calls for a space to be delineated. Sound—even her voiced “call”—works together with dance and lyrics to create an alliance with listeners for healing. Surely, she is speaking to an American Indian Creek audience, as they are listeners who most readily discern the sound of shell shakers. But, in fusing these sounds with jazz and poetry, she is also making claims and issuing calls that have much to do with sovereignty and decolonial healing. In what might seem a bold and perhaps antagonistic approach, Harjo challenges traditional constructions of popular sonic structures like jazz as being part of a “Western” tradition as well. In the song “Winding Through the Milky Way,” she argues, “Go ahead, jump holy, all the way to the stomp grounds. We were here when jazz was invented.” Womack quotes Harjo’s discussion of why she boldly states her (peoples’) presence at the creation of jazz, and it is largely due to cultural exchange and, as Haas would say, intellectual transmigrations. Harjo argues that when African peoples were forced into U.S. slavery, they were brought to the traditional land bases of the Muskogees: “Of course there was interaction between Africans and Muscogees!” (qtd. in Womack 261). But Harjo is not being contentious when she makes this claim; on the contrary, I believe that she is calling for an alliance between American Indian peoples and African Americans (as well as other colonized peoples in the Americas). Harjo is evoking rememory to articulate and continue a tradition of intertribal survivance and alliance building that has existed for centuries. Creek Milky Way stories come by way of their shared histories with Cherokees after removal. Harjo’s use of the Milky Way story in this way always-already speaks back to alliance and intellectual transmigration. That this discursive moment locates itself in the title track of the album is poignant as well, not only because of the Milky Way as a road to alternate realities, but because the Milky Way is already a site of multiple tellings. Various tribes have their own stories of how the Milky Way came to be. While, for example, Cherokee, Creek, Aztec,

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and Mayan Milky Way stories are distinct tellings, they all tell about (trans) migrations to alternate worlds—necessary crossings for (sometimes) healing, and for (re)balancing, resituating, and rememory. Traditional Cherokee Milky Way stories speak of two spirit dogs who come to steal cornmeal left out to dry only, to drop bits of it in the sky as they are chased off. Their trail leaves a path to an alternate reality. In Aztec stories, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca make a new sky that offers the same possibility. Natives have used and continue to use these stories rhetorically, to offer alternatives and possibilities for changing the stories that have created the colonial realities we inhabit. For Harjo, sound is important in that creation. Sound is what carries us to the Milky Way. In Mayan stories of how music came to be, sound is also crucial. Music is integrally tied to land because music is a result of the sounds of the land coming into being. The sounds that are present in Harjo’s music have everything to do with the geopolitics of knowledge, and her tactical use of sounds that are typically seen as non-Native, though they are born of the Americas, sends a message of sovereignty. Making music for Harjo is deeply politicized, and her choice of instrument even plays a part in the rhetorics of her soundscape. Rabbit, the traditional trickster figure of Creek stories, is a powerful tool in Harjo’s sound-making and is a necessary figure for Harjo in a process of rememory. Rabbit, working as a rhetorical trope of sorts, plays a part in many stories. What is perhaps more important is that Rabbit is the maker of the saxophone (Womack 242), Harjo’s primary companion and co-teller on her journey. He is also a powerful player in Creek storytelling. According to Womack, Creek cosmology is dependent upon agonisms that must be reconciled in order to restore balance. Rabbit is typically the harbinger of disorder; in fact, he “cannot accept the notion of an ordered and meaningful creation” (Womack 242). Trickster figures are not easily definable. Womack notes that Harjo finds value in the ambiguity of Rabbit as he provides a necessary element of mystery, playfulness, and laughter. Likewise, Powell argues, “The Trickster reminds us to be fully conscious of the simple inconsistencies that inhabit our reality” (Powell, “Blood and Scholarship” 9). But the sounds that come out of the saxophone have a strong association with jazz and with sonic structures that are both deemed too “contemporary” to be American Indian and that are also attributed solely to African American origins. On Winding, the song “Rabbit Is Up to Tricks” features the saxophone prominently. The song tells the story of Rabbit, who comes from a “world long

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before this one.” In this world, resources were plentiful, but no one would play with Rabbit because he was a trickster. So, Rabbit “thought to make a person” because “he was lonely in this world.” But the “clay man” whom Rabbit makes mimics all of Rabbit’s destructive, “insatiable” behavior: We lost track of the reason and purpose of life. We could no longer see or hear our ancestors [ . . . ]

Rabbit embodies the story—the reality—of colonization. Rabbit has disrupted the balance of the universe. The process of rememory through song is imperative not only for the survival of Harjo and her people, but also for the survival of us all. This is just one inclination toward both an intertribal alliance (because the legacy of colonialism affects all Indigenous peoples in a similar way) and a Creek cosmology and worldview that views all beings/things as interconnected. The journey Harjo takes us on is ever-mindful of the present-day realities that make up American Indian experience. However, it is imperative that we understand songs as active sites of resistance, and not as overly romanticized moments of nostalgia. In fact, Womack argues, “Harjo politicizes the Southeastern transformation idea and brings out the larger meaning for all tribal peoples by making the lure to other worlds the imagining of life without colonialism” (Womack 230). This is also crucial to survivance, as it rests on the notion of tribal remembrance as a form of resistance and recovery, and the imagining of alternate possibilities. The process of decolonization is always a double move of “‘liberation’ and emancipation” (Mignolo, “Delinking”). Minds must be liberated even as spaces and sovereignty are reclaimed. Alliances and intertribal unity (not universality) become necessary for survival. The sonic structures, together with instrumentation, lyrics, etc., all work together to create a rhetoric of alliance, one that can offer another way of understanding ourselves as connected—as relatives on this planet. The song “Equinox” speaks to this concept of intertribal-tribal alliance. As Harjo travels through the Milky Way, she comes to find that she “must keep from breaking through the story by force,” because if she does, she will “find a war club in [her] hand.” Instead, she “make[s] songs of the blood, the marrow.” For Harjo, song-making helps her to situate herself in the world—it is a lifegiving act. It is also one that keeps her grounded and reminds her of beauty, truth, and community. Each aspect of the musical performance is necessary here. Rabbit (saxophone) is featured prominently in every song, and it is somewhat

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muted in tone, never overpowering. Harjo’s singing mimics the subtlety of the sax, almost whisper-like in quality. In “This Is My Heart,” Harjo sings, “my heart is close enough to sing to you / in a language too clumsy for human words” and laments that while “this is her soul,” she can’t see it. It is also important to note that Harjo’s music—while projecting an “individual” journey—is also alwaysalready a communal one that includes the listener, “you,” and others. “My Heart” opens with the sound of shell shakers. The non-voiced soundscape is even and ambient, though constructed with steady, rhythmic guitar strumming that is similar to a rapid heartbeat. The song continues, “This is my soul / it is a good soul / it tells me, come here forgetful one / we sit together / we cook a little something to eat / then a sip of something sweet / for memory.” The saxophone—her helper—follows the lyrics in a short solo, continuing and underpinning her process of rememory. Saxophone as trickster is possibly the “forgetful one,” and the sound patterns of the sax solo mimic those sung by Harjo. She is deliberately using sound here to change the story, to offer an alternate possibility offered by the Milky Way. At the end of the saxophone solo, Harjo speaks to the listener, singing, “put your head here / my heart is close enough to sing,” which brings us full circle, back to the possibilities that her heart has to materialize itself. But, she ends, singing, “this is our heart / we make a good heart / it is beautiful above us / it is beautiful below us / it is beautiful inside us / it is beautiful all around us.” Here, she evokes the Navajo Beauty Way which is similar to the harmonious state of “home” in Harjo’s other songs. But, again, this is an intertribal aspect of her music that rhetorically creates community and argues for alliance building as well. The generative possibilities of music exist inside and outside of it. Music exists alongside a variety of other forms of rhetoric for Creeks, and Harjo shows how invoking memory through music and through sounds reminds listeners that we are all connected—all animated things of and on the Earth are connected. And, as Harjo reminds us, we are in a story, a story that was always born of an “oral tradition.” Womack explains: “The story is personalized through the speaker’s voice and movements [ . . . ] it incorporates both ‘I’ and ‘we’ [ . . . ] [o]ral stories tell the history of individuals and their communities” (Womack 249). From a politicized perspective, however, Harjo is nonetheless speaking from a particular locus of enunciation that is Muskogee Creek, which functions ultimately also as survivance. “Sunrise” is reminiscent of Muskogee Creek stories about sacred fire. According to Womack, fire has a relationship to the sun (Womack 235). For

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Creeks, fire is cleansing; it is important to clean out old fires and build new fires. Sunrise opens with the sounds of crackling flames, and signals a “new fire,” one that will cleanse from the damage of colonialism. Harjo sings, “Find us beneath the shadow of this yearning mountain, crying here.” Harjo’s lyrics are active—they (re)enact/(re)create specific places where specific things happen(ed). Womack shows how the relationship between fire and sun works together with memory in Harjo’s work to support the process of rememory: “one can take up migratory paths if these sacred relationships are held in active memory, if one remembers these story connections, the act of memory itself a cleansing and rekindling of old fires” (Womack 235). The saxophone follows, as if taking listeners to that place—to that mountain. In fact the rhythm of the sax sounds “sour” and “jangling.” The song then breaks into a rhythm-and-bluestype sound that once again recalls sounds that are linked to shared histories and shared struggles between American Indians and African Americans. And the land participates in this making, to the point at which we cannot tell if the mountain cries or the people cry, though I would proffer that it is both. The nonverbal elements take us into varying depth of emotion as well. What emerges is a song that tells the survival stories of Harjo, her people, other colonized peoples, and her land, all together and all at once. Music conceptualized in this way functions much like it does in the Mayan story about how music came to the Earth. The story starts with sounds, sounds of the Earth and of all the non-human creatures of the Earth. These are sounds of pain and happiness, of mystery and skepticism. But one day, humans began to mimic those sounds (Vigil 68–69). The confluence of these sounds creates music, and music is a creation for survival, healing, and alliance building. “Witchi Tai To” is a cover of Jim Pepper’s famous song from the ’70s. Pepper was also Creek, and Harjo is heavily influenced by his music. Covering this song in particular is linked to rhetorics of alliance, not only because doing so recalls a moment when American Indians were strongly asserting their sovereignty through the popular music scene, but additionally because “Witchi Tai To” sparked talk about shared histories among American Indians and African Americans as evidenced by the “rock” sound of Pepper’s performance of this song. “Witchi Tai To” is not a Creek song, though it is a traditional Native American Church peyote song. The song, then, embodies the intertribal intellectual transmigrations that Haas argues inform many intellectual practices among American Indians. Interestingly, Harjo performs the song in a way that is reminiscent of stomp dances. Stomp dances are performed for various

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reasons, but a pivotal function of any dance is to remember responsibility and to create balance. Stomp dances work together with songs as part of the healing or celebratory moment embodied by the song/performance. The call-andresponse of a stomp dance is a rhetorical indication of this healing. Womack argues the call-and-response is “a structural representation of this worldview that would strive to prevent one force from dominating another: for example, a song leader singing verses echoed by men singers repeating and improvising on his phrases, women shell shakers balanced by men singers, and so on” (Womack 241). In “Witchi Tai To,” Harjo first sings in an Indigenous language, then shifts to English, singing, “I went back home to claim my soul. Take it back from the sugar man. Take it back from the moneyman.” The lyrics are indicative of the need to reclaim something that has been taken, but Harjo’s voice is dubbed over, repeating each phrase much like the call-and-response structure of stomp dances. Additionally, the musical instruments follow this structure. After Harjo has sung, she continues with a saxophone solo. The saxophone is crucial as Trickster because he becomes the mechanism by which balance and rememory can be ushered forth. In the call-and-response structure, if the saxophone can function as a kind of agonistic figure, then it is contrasted with a harmonic figure musically. After the saxophone has played for some time, its tune becomes a short cadence of notes that is mirrored by a guitar, and in the background the shaking of shells reinforces the stomp dance structure. Sound is crucial and not merely coincidental, nor does it function purely aesthetically. The final song on the album, “Goin’ Home,” also reinscribes the “sacred hoop”—the cyclical pattern of harmony. But, as has been the case throughout this work, Harjo’s themes and aims are layered, multifaceted. It is also important to note that Black Cherokee musician Larry Mitchell is a frequent contributor to Harjo’s work, and collaborates with her on many of the songs in Winding. His featured role on “Home” becomes poignant when the community theme emerges throughout the song, as it speaks back to the shared histories between Cherokees and African Americans. Harjo sings at the “opening” of the album and Mitchell starts at the point in which the album brings us “home,” back into balance. Harjo chimes in, “Last dance and the night is almost over. One last round under the starry sky, we’re all going home somewhere, somehow.” The journey home is a journey we all take, she articulates. She goes on to sing, “If you found love in the circle, then hold on to it, not too tight. . . . goin’ home, goin’ home.” Here, the circle is the literal circle formed in the stomp dance, as

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well as the “circle of motion” that is life, our lifetimes. It is also the circle of relations that is necessary for our survival. It is important to live life, to let life take you home. Going home is inevitable. Harjo warns, however, “Be kind to everybody you meet along the way—we’re all related in this place.” We are all connected on a cosmological scale, but from a politicized perspective of survivance, Creeks and other colonized peoples must learn to find home again. These are survivance songs that Harjo shares with us. This is a journey home she invites us to share. The journey Harjo calls us to join can only be completed with active listeners. When scholars fail to “listen” to the discourses of mainstream or non-academic scholarship, they also participate in the “unseeing” and “unhearing” of particular Native voices that Powell warns about in her “Rhetorics of Survivance.” But, when Harjo says, “We’re in a story that will always include the ancient while riding to the outer edge. We’ll get there with music, poetry, lyrics, stories, sheer sorrow and joy,” she is making songs a site of praxis that evoke survivance and rhetorics of alliance. When she acknowledges that “a saxophone” can “touch those places the words can’t reach,” she recognizes the physical, embodied, performed component of transmission. And, when she boldly uses and lays claim to sonic structures that are typically viewed as non-Native, but that are born here in the lands currently being called “the Americas,” she sends a message about sovereignty and the connection of sounds to land bases and to peoples who have shared experiences on those land bases. In tandem, these concepts function as the foundation for American Indian song-making as rhetorics of alliance for decolonial healing enacted through rememory.

Works Cited Brooks, Lisa Tanya. The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Comstock, Michelle, and Mary E. Hocks. “Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies.” bgsu.edu. bgsu. n.d. Web. 5 June 2009. Haas, Angela. “A Rhetoric of Alliance: What American Indians Can Tell Us About Digital and Visual Rhetoric.” Diss., Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2009. Harjo, Joy. Interview by Joan L. Woodruff. Native Digest. Web. 9 December 2009.

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———. Winding Through the Milky Way. Fast Horse Recordings. 2007. CD. Joy Harjo. Joy Harjo. Mekko Productions. 2009. 9 December . Lee, Kimberli. “Heartspeak from the Spirit: Songs of John Trudell, Keith Secola, and Robbie Robertson.” SAIL 19.3 (2007). Print. Lincoln, Kenneth. Speak Like Singing: Classics of Native American Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Print. Mignolo, Walter. “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality.” Cultural Studies 21.2–3 (2007): 449–514. Print. ———. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print. Powell, Malea. “Down by the River, or How Susan La Flesche Picotte Can Teach Us about Alliance as a Practice of Survivance.” College English 67.1 (2004). Print. ———. “Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use Writing.” CCC 53.3. (Feb. 2002): 396–434. Print. ———. “Blood and Scholarship: One Mixed-Blood’s Story.” Race, Rhetoric and Composition. Ed. Keith Gilyard. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann, 1999. 1–16. Print. Riddington, Robin, and Jillian Riddington. When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Rothberg, Jerome. Shaking the Pumpkin; Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1972. Vigil, Angel. “El Murmuro del río Cómo la Música Llegó al Mundo: Un Mito Maya.” The Eagle on the Cactus:Traditional Stories from Mexico. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 2000. 56–57. Print. Villanueva, Victor. “Colonial Memory and the Crime of Rhetoric: Pedro Albizu Campos.” College English 71.6 (2009): 630–638. Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. 1994. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. ———. Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Ed. Gerald Vizenor. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Womack, Craig. Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

8 Hearing the Heartbeat Environmental Cultural Values in the Lyrics of Native Songwriters

Samantha Hasek and April E. Lindal a

M

usic is an invited guest to our most momentous celebrations, our reverent gatherings and ceremonies and even our most intimate encounters. Music unites people in a creative, emotional, social, and political way. Music is a creative, nonthreatening means for artists to convey impactful messages in a multimedia world. What types of messages are created through lyrical content? We are interested in exploring environmentally and socially conscious messages authored by Native American and First Nations musicians. Within this essay we will investigate established musicians including Robbie Robertson, John Trudell, and Joanne Shenandoah, as well as emerging artists Digging Roots. Native music is a complex and diverse world made up of musicians who have studied music well beyond the familiar Native flute or drum. The musicians perform within genres such as rock and roll or hip hop or a fusion of many musical genres. Our title, however, begins with the words “hearing the heartbeat,” which reflects the traditional cultural beliefs and practices of some tribes. The heartbeat is in reference to the big drum; each strike of the big drum is believed by some tribes to represent the heartbeat of Mother Earth, and when that drum is struck, Indian nations come together to dance and celebrate life. Just as Native cultural storytellers and wisdom keepers use oral traditions and stories as a means of passing on cultural values from one generation to the next, we contend that these Native musicians serve as contemporary Native

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orators purposefully using Earth-centered rhetoric to address human impacts on the environment and to inspire an appreciation of the Earth. Are people hearing the heartbeat?

Indigenous Environmental Cultural Values What do we mean when we say Indigenous environmental cultural values? We maintain that these values consist of the following ideas: 1) there is a consciousness in all life forms, and all natural beings are connected; 2) knowledge can be gained through observation of, and living in harmony with, the Earth; 3) Earth is the foundation for all life, even life yet to come, and as such it should be given honor and respect. In regard to the first idea of consciousness in all life forms and interconnectivity, George “Tink” Tinker, author of “The Stones Shall Cry Out: Consciousness, Rocks and Indians,” states, “Consciousness is seen in plants and trees, animals and birds, rocks and mountains” (Tinker 113). Within some tribal cultures, an elder may communicate with rocks or trees, addressing them as grandfather or grandmother. Within oral traditions of Native peoples, there is a cyclical sense of teaching and learning among peoples, animals, and plants. In the introduction of Keepers of the Animals: Native American Studies and Wildlife Activities for Children, authors Michael Caduto and Joseph Bruchac reveal, “Native Americans see themselves as part of nature, not apart from it. Their stories use natural images to teach about relationships between people, between people and animals, and the rest of Earth. To the Native peoples of North America, what was done to a frog or a deer, to a tree, a rock or a river, was done to a brother or a sister” (Caduto and Bruchac xviii). Tinker also asserts, “American Indians are deeply aware of our part in another family tree entirely—one predicated on interrelationship rather than on dissent or hierarchy of any kind” (Tinker 108). Within households of traditional Haudenosaunee people, bundles of corn are hung. Just as you would not speak to your family members in a loud, angry voice, the corn is viewed as a family member. It is believed that the corn would not grow the next year if it heard hateful words or yelling. A balance is maintained by every life form’s presence and by understanding that each life form can teach and can learn, that each life form is affected by our actions and inactions. The second idea, that knowledge can be gained through observation and living in harmony with the Earth, implies that we, in the United States, are

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experiencing a disconnect from the natural environment possibly due to the capitalistic model which focuses on consuming resources, rather than understanding where and how these resources originate. White Earth Anishinaabe activist and author Winona LaDuke contrasts this “industrial thinking,” the mindset that “humans are entitled to full dominion over the earth,” with “Indigenous thinking,” that natural law and a state of balance are fundamental beliefs (LaDuke). Indigenous thinking reveals itself through Indigenous story­ telling. The PBS Circle of Stories website states that “Indigenous storytelling is rooted in the earth. Years upon years of a kinship with the land, life, water and sky have produced a variety of narratives about intimate connections to the earth” (“Many Voices”). The third idea is that we need the Earth and its resources (i.e., food, water, medicine) to survive. Authors Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri state in the text, Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions, “If we harvest too many fish in one season, there will be fewer fish to eat in the future. If we cut down too many trees, the land will become barren and regrowth will occur with birch and trees of less usefulness. If we scatter the Earth with our refuse, junked cars, and abandoned appliances, the collective beauty of a place will suffer” (Peacock and Wisuri 44). Haudenosaunee musician Joanne Shenandoah spoke to this third idea in a 2009 interview, “It is said amongst the Iroquois we are caretakers of our mother earth. We must be mindful of all our actions upon this earth as we consider our children’s future for seven generations” (Shenandoah). It should be noted that not all Native peoples live with these environmental cultural values. In many cases, Native people have lost hold of this connection to the Earth and its inhabitants due to the significant injustices that have happened because of colonization. Through numerous federal policies promoting mainstream assimilation, such as Indian boarding schools, or the outright termination of tribes, Native people have continually been demoralized and deprived of this Indigenous thinking, robbed of land, resources, and access to knowledge.

Carefully Chosen Words Why an exploration of lyrical content? Song lyrics are carefully chosen words that, standing alone, can instill the attitudes, beliefs, and values of the author, but when put to music can serve as a medium of connection between people.

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While music may not be viewed as a standard means of academic instruction, lyrical analysis can serve as a solid basis for discussion. Students can easily remember song lyrics if they become familiar with the song. In his essay, “Musical News: Popular Music in Political Movements,” Mark Pedelty draws from labor organizer and musician Joe Hill, who says, “a pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over” (3–4). Pedelty’s essay explores the relationship between music and political movements in the United States on a broad scale, but the same can be said for lyrical analysis of Native American songwriters with a specific message. He also says that “Many young activists first hear about important issues, events, and people through listening to popular music” (Pedelty 1). Beyond speaking to broad issues, the same goes for American Indian issues. Kimberli Lee writes in her essay, “Heartspeak from the Spirit: Songs of John Trudell, Keith Secola, and Robbie Robertson,” that songs are “designed to make us think and give us strength, demonstrating how Native oral traditions are evolving and continuing to function for Native people” (90). In reality, in doing such an examination of lyrics by Native peoples, nonNative students may also find a clearer understanding of multiple issues affecting American Indian communities. In addition to Indigenous environmental cultural values, another example of this may be the legal and political distinctiveness of tribes as sovereign, and how that distinctiveness affects a tribe’s relationship to the federal government. It is vitally important to note that we have examined a small sampling of lyrical content by a small representation of Native musicians. The volume of lyrical output is as great as it is also diverse in content. Native musicians write for various genres and styles of music; they write for all ages, for all populations, and for different purposes.

Robbie Robertson Robbie Robertson played guitar and performed globally with the legendary rock group, The Band. Robertson, from the Six Nations reserve in Ontario, has had a significant amount of success in the world of rock and roll. His influence from the Indian community “crept into him” and over time his compositions reflected that influence. In 1994, Robertson did the soundtrack for the cable TV documentary The Native Americans, which became his album, Music for The Native Americans and featured his band, The Red Road Ensemble.

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Figure 8.1.  Robbie Robertson. Photo credit: David Jordan Williams

In the opening of “Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood,” Robertson quotes the iconic lines of the Nez Perce leader, Chief Joseph: Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. (Robertson)

In invoking the wisdom of Chief Joseph, Robertson addresses the audience directly here, appealing to not be misunderstood and to understand fully his affection for the land. Robertson’s recirculation of Chief Joseph’s famous speech

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reminds listeners of the numerous treaties among tribes and the federal governments of the United States and Canada that have not been honored, treaties that may outline specific land and water rights for affected tribes. Chief Joseph’s use of the word affection would be in line with Indigenous environmental cultural values as having affection for a loved one, family member, or friend. In the next line, Robertson, via Chief Joseph, addresses the theme of land ownership and decision-making. For some Indian people, individual land ownership was a foreign concept since the individuals in the tribe were collective caretakers of the land. In relation to the Indigenous environmental cultural values, if the Earth is our mother, we could ask: how can an individual own his or her mother? In the next line from Joseph’s speech, Robertson reminds his listeners that only the one who created the land may dispose of the land. The choice of the word dispose rather than destruction is an interesting one. Rather than pause on Chief Joseph’s intent, it is worth noting that Robertson’s recirculation of Joseph’s speech draws attention to different layers of meaning. For example, in Robertson’s hands, the word disposal may lead contemporary listeners to think of how consumer culture is a disposable one. This may draw listeners’ attention to everyday behaviors—even those involving to-go cups. For example, how does our collective action of disposing of to-go cups affect landfills? In January 2011, Ecoimprints.com reported that “25 billion Styrofoam cups” are put in the trash each year, and we know that Styrofoam is not biodegradable. Paper cups are not much better because they need to be lined to prevent leaking. It also stated in this report that after twenty four uses, a stainless steel tumbler breaks even with a paper cup in terms of environmental impact. While it might be readily apparent to a government or an environmental studies teacher, Robertson’s lyrics above embody Indigenous environmental cultural values, while offering a segue to discussing issues such as the significance of treaties and the importance of sustainability for our ecosystems.

Digging Roots The Canadian Native group Digging Roots exemplifies Earth-centered, actioninspiring music. The Ontario-based lead members are ShoShona Kish (Anishinaabe) and Raven Kanatakta (Anishinaabe and Mohawk). Their music has roots in traditional Native style with steady drumbeats, shakers, and chant-like vocals that serve as the foundation for modern layers of rock, hip hop, reggae

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and blues, a combination that makes their music so striking. Digging Roots put out its first recording in 2006 and two more in 2009 and 2014, and has toured for several years, garnering awards for music that is full of soul and power, political statements, and positive expectations for social change. At a concert in November 2011, Kish conveyed “To be born First Nations is to be born political.” She maintains a sense of responsibility to inform others of the injustices to First Nations people and the Earth. The Native awareness of and desire for interconnection is present throughout the song “Spring to Come” from the album We Are. Singing is a traditional way to give voice to prayers and hopes; here, the call is for springtime awakening for the land and for the self. In a guest rap by Kinnie Starr, many natural beings—a mountain, a human, rivers and lakes, a hawk, and trees—are all included. The mention of each flows right into the next, suggesting that there is no end to the connectivity among them. Kinnie opens her request for awakening with, “I asked the mountain if she might want to move me / She said tell the rivers to wake up the lakes” (Digging Roots). Starr is looking to a non-human but nonetheless conscious being, an elder, for guidance. She asks a mountain to “move” her, and it can be interpreted that she means this in a profound way, to be changed not physically but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. From there she raps about natural cycles: rivers receiving the spring rain and distributing that life source around the land, and the beginning of a new year of abundance of food, represented by a hawk and its prey. Here, meaning is found in observing and learning from natural processes. Starr’s second to last line mentions another relationship among conscious individuals: the Anishinaabe people, the paper birch tree, and the sugar maple tree. The Anishinaabe have traditionally relied upon the two trees as sources of food and transportation materials. But they are not seen as mere resources. In her last line, Starr puts the birch and maple trees first, then completes the connection by describing the Anishinaabe as “seas of black hair” (Digging Roots), building on that value that people are indeed connected to the Earth. The entirety of the song attests to natural processes and includes human beings as a natural part of those processes. Aside from lyrical content, Digging Roots uses a traditional technique based on observations of the local land to compose some of their music. “Spring to Come” incorporates a repetitive chorus of “oh yeah” within the dirty blues style of the song. The tune of that chorus was created from the horizon line of an island seen from a beach where Kanatakta and Kish were spontaneously .

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playing music. This technique of horizon line singing was shared with them by Kish’s great aunt, who told them how the tradition was started: “Anishinaabe people would be traveling around in the bush . . . We [our ancestors] would be looking at the horizon line—the trees go up and they go down—and we started created [sic] melodies off that. We’d be making a melody based on the tree lines” (Kanatakta). Digging Roots has been using tree lines for years, collecting melodies from Canada, Mexico, and Australia. This technique heightens environmental awareness. To be inspired by tree lines, they must be preserved, and of course inspiration can only come when the musician is spending time with the land.

Joanne Shenandoah Grammy Award–winning Haudenosaunee artist, Joanne Shenandoah has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, and three presidential inaugural celebrations. Shenandoah’s biography sheet quotes Gloria Steinem, who says, “Joanne Shenandoah’s words and music take us back to a time when we were linked, not ranked. Reawakening this cellular memory will help it come again.” At first glance, Shenandoah’s lyrics to “The Three Sisters: Corn, Beans and Squash” from All Spirits Sing are rather simple; the song is, after all, designed for children (the album is dedicated to all the children of the world, big and small). However, the overarching theme of Earth connection can be found when three sisters sing about their relationship with each other and with the Earth they are growing in: squash sprawls across the ground, shading the soil with its leaves, while corn is the tall, strong support for beans to grow and replenish the soil’s nutrients. Shenandoah gives the three sisters their own roles and voices: “Won’t you come and hear our sound . . . Three sisters in a mound.” Given our previous discussion that plants have a consciousness, it is not farfetched to give them voices. For Haudenosaunee people, the three sisters are not only a food source, but also a source of spiritual connection with and strength from the Earth. The book, Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists, by Sally Roesch Wagner captures a quotation from Harriet Maxwell Converse from the late nineteenth century: “The three vegetables, the corn, beans and squash were known to the . . . Senecas as Dio-he’-ko, meaning ‘our true

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Figure 8.2. 

Joanne Shenandoah. Courtesy of Joanne Shenandoah

sustenance’” (53). The method of planting these three vegetables together, according to Arthur C. Parker, was based upon the belief that they were “guarded by three inseparable spirit sisters and that the plants would not thrive apart in consequence” (qtd. in Wagner 53). Planting of these foods should be done with joy to help the Three Sisters to grow. Shenandoah’s choice to give the Earth a voice with these lyrics is powerful, but not surprising. In giving Earth a voice, the song acknowledges her consciousness, her status as a living being. Mother is, through Shenandoah’s lyrics, giving specific instructions. Many of the words are single syllable; there are no more than six syllables per line. These purposeful choices reiterate that this playful music is designed for young children. Shenandoah is distinctly employing herself in the role of teacher as well as entertainer.

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John Trudell Mark Pedelty’s previously mentioned essay examines popular musicians who perform a journalistic role in political movements. Pedelty posted a survey to activists. Of the three hundred eighty artists named in the subsequent report, John Trudell was identified as an influential voice. Trudell was born to a Santee Sioux father and Mexican Indian mother. His biography on his website reads, “Trudell is an acclaimed poet, national recording artist, actor and activist whose international following reflects the universal language of his works, work and message.” His social-cultural beliefs serve as the framework for his lyrics, which are both thought-provoking and provocative. More so than the other artists we have examined, Trudell juxtaposes illusion vs. reality. The book Lines from a Mined Mind allows us to examine over two hundred pages of Trudell’s lyrics. Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich’s foreword describes Trudell as “a being who has dropped the postures of ego and destroyed the social filters that keep us at a safe distance” (quoted in Trudell vii). She instructs readers, “Lose your filter. It is really the only way to let these lines touch you.” Erdrich’s suggestion is a thoughtful request, as Trudell is a master of bridging the beautiful and the brutal. His lyrics may make some uncomfortable, they may force some to sit up and others to stand up, and ultimately, he asks all to hear his message. Trudell acknowledges the equal consciousness of humans and nonhumans with the lyrics of “One Time”: he describes spending time with the mountains, trees, and sky, when “My relatives touched my spirit / Nudged it lovingly” (Trudell 9). They speak to him, reminding him to be patient and to remember that they have been, are, and will be around for all time. As noted earlier in the three ideas of Indigenous environmental cultural values, elders in this case are represented by the mountains, trees, clouds, and the sky. Trudell identifies himself as the subordinate or the child by calling himself the “impatient one” and describes having his spirit “nudged” in a manner that was “lovingly” as a grandparent may do to a grandchild. Those elders are saying “we are forever”; thus, the clouds, mountains, sky, and trees are claiming authority over him, a mortal. In the 1992 song “Children of Earth” from the album of the same name, Trudell lyrically, explicitly reminds us in one particularly clear-worded verse

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that as humans we have the responsibility to take care of our mother the Earth, but furthers that dialogue by stating, “If we do not care for her / She cannot care for us” (Trudell 142). This speaks directly to the interdependent and reciprocal relationship of humans with the Earth. Trudell does not shy away from telling his audience outright that it is our obligation to take care of the Earth (Mother), because she gives us all we need. Such messages are beyond the concept of stewardship and good sustainable practices for our ecosystems; they are about understanding the influential interconnected relationships that all inhabitants of the living, natural world share with each other. This idea is a matter of survival for all of those inhabitants, not merely the human race. With regards to Trudell’s song “Young Ones Listen,” the title itself is a call to action. The “young ones” could represent all human beings, no matter what age, for the rocks and plants around us could in fact be the elder. All eight lines contain a call to action. Specific words are chosen including “remember,” “listen,” and “live.” Trudell advises within these lines, “do not take the word of America” (34). This may be revisiting the historical fact that the United States has not honored treaty rights with Indian nations. But this line could also be referring to industrial thinking and the promotion of capitalism. Rhetoric surrounding politics is often persuasive in nature, so Trudell could be sending a blanket warning here to all people, not merely Native peoples. In partnership with the next line, “Listen to them in caution,” in this case “them” may represent the politicians of America who promote the concept of industrial thinking in an effort to promote capitalism, or in an attempt to lift themselves to positions of political power. Trudell then cautions the listener to avoid emulating “them” and to instead live with appreciation. The second half of this line goes back to the concept of Indigenous thinking, which promotes living within the tenets of Indigenous environmental cultural values, living within our means in respect for natural law and all of the Earth’s inhabitants. Trudell also calls upon the audience to explore its sense of place in his verses, with instructions to reflect on “where we are,” which could have layered meanings. Geographically where are we located within the borders of America, or geographically where are we living on the Earth? Though Trudell is a Native American citizen of the United States, his message is relevant globally; we are all global citizens, after all, each making an impact on the Earth. However, Trudell could also be asking us where we are in relation to time as it pertains to the seven generations that have yet to walk this Earth.

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Conclusion Lyrics can educate, inform, and engage in thought-provoking ways. Lyrics can unify relationships. Lyrics can plant political ideas. These talented Native artists serve as modern-day orators purposefully using Earth-centered rhetoric to address human impacts on the environment, and to inspire an appreciation of the Earth. Blended with a dynamic musical score, the lyrics they craft act as an aesthetic catalyst for the willing activist-to-be and serve as a reminder for the seasoned idealist. What each of these above artists has in common, other than their Native ancestry, is their skill in crafting lyrics that highlight the relationship among Native peoples, all beings of creation and Earth itself. Their lyrics promote Indigenous environmental cultural values; their carefully chosen words represent that the heartbeat of Mother Earth. The lyrics examined here give voice to those who cannot speak; they give voice to the Earth itself. We ask that you not only listen to the music discussed here, but that you contribute to the collective growing voice on behalf of all of the relatives including the Earth. Do not simply listen to the Earth’s heartbeat, contribute to it. Dance to it.

Works Cited Barreiro, Jose, and Tim Johnson, ed. America Is Indian Country: Opinions and Perspectives from Indian Country Today. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2005. Print. Caduto, Michael J., and Joseph Bruchac. Keepers of the Animals: Native American Stories and Wildlife Activities for Children. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1997. Print. Digging Roots. We Are. Odeimin Music, 2009. CD. Kanatakta, Raven. Telephone interview by Samantha Hasek. 21 October 2011. LaDuke, Winona. “Voices from White Earth: Gaawaabaabiganikaag.” Thirteenth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. October 1993. Address. Lee, Kimberli. “Heartspeak from the Spirit: Songs of John Trudell, Keith Secola, and Robbie Robertson.” Studies in American Indian Literature 19.3 (2007): 89– 114. Print.

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“Many Voices.” Circle of Stories. Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 30 September 2012. http://www.pbs.org/circleofstories/voices/index.html. Peacock, Thomas, and Marlene Wisuri. Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions. Afton, MN: Afton Historical Society Press, 2002. Print. Pedelty, Mark. “Musical News: Popular Music in Political Movement.” Media Anthropology Network. N.d. Web. http://www.media-anthropology.net/pedelty_ musicalnews.pdf. Shenandoah, Joanne. All Spirits Sing. Music for Little People, 1997. CD. ———. Electronic interview by April E. Lindala. 18 May 2009. Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble. Music for The Native Americans. Capitol, 1994. CD. Tinker, George. “The Stones Shall Cry Out: Consciousness, Rocks, and Indians. Wicazo Sa Review 19.2 (2004): 105–125. Print. Trudell, John. Lines from a Mined Mind: The Words of John Trudell. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008. Print. Wagner, Sally Roesch. Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists. Summertown, TN: Native Voices, 2001. Print.

9 “The Story of a Lifetime” Singing, Crossing, and Claiming in Lila Downs’s “Minimum Wage”

Casie C. Cobos On the outskirts of L.A. I recite a native poem Million hands, ten thousand years It’s the season for the crop — “M i n i m u m Wa g e , ” L i l a D o w n s

A

train is coming—it

is in the song, the sounds, the words of Lila Downs’s song “Minimum Wage.” A train is coming—it is in the bodies and in the stories of the people in Downs’s stories. If we listen, we will hear the chugging and the beats of the snare drums, the working and the rhythm of the “million hands [who work] the season of the crop,” the deep sounds of struggle that Downs carries in her low registers. The train, the music, and her voice carry the people who travel to the United States, those crossing over, crossing back, never crossing at all. The stories that Downs tells in this song are both the story of and also more than merely the story of the U. S.-Mexico border-crossers who sometimes make dangerous treks to find work in el Norte. She calls out to immigrants that also come from across the oceans—“Ethiopian, Columbian, Pakistani, Cantonese.” She tells the stories of those who do the labor that no one sees—the dishwashers in the restaurant kitchen, the pickers of the fields, the cleaners of homes. She tells the stories of the workers who were born in the United States but don’t look like “Americans,” the ones who are chased down and asked for papers. She tells the stories of leaving loved ones behind to work for minimum wage—and often less. Importantly, Downs uses this song,

“ The S tory of a Life time”  1 37

as well as many of her other songs, to solidify music as a way to tell stories of Indigenous bodies that have practiced migration throughout the Americas for centuries, and Indigenous bodies that continue to make connections to these lands through labor for minimum wage or otherwise. When Lila Downs sings “Minimum Wage” at her concerts, she often dedicates this song to “the paisanos . . . todos los Mejicanos que cruce pa’ la frontera,” for the people, all the Mexicans who cross the border to work the jobs in the kitchens, in the yards, in the fields, to, as Downs says, “make this place [their] home.” It is both the labor of migration and the labor of working for pay that make a space for a home—a home long situated in many of their ancestral origin stories through land base connection and migration. Through the consistent rhythmic drumming, her voice’s low register, and the blues and folk sounds, Downs both celebrates the peoples who do the hard, often unrecognized labor after crossing, and critiques the systems that allow for the constant use of bodies belonging to peoples long connected to these lands. This song, then, becomes just as much of a critique of the injustices done to migrant workers who labor for minimum wage, as it is a celebration of the very people who provide this labor while living in psychological and physical borderlands. The celebration of the peoples, mixed with the musical melodies of the blues, show the strife of celebrating peoples while also making known overlooked laborers of the U.S. economy. In George Lipsitz’s Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place, it is precisely “the cross-cultural communication carried on within today’s contemporary popular music [that] retains residual contradictions of centuries of colonialism, class domination, and racism” that allows for both the critique of nationalistic discourses on migration and the allowance of cultural celebration within migrating communities (Lipsitz 5). By relying on discussions of cooption of cultural practices by dominant societies and the ever-present celebrated musical practices in colonized groups, Lipsitz brings to the forefront content like that found in Downs’s stories of migration and labor practices in “Minimum Wage.” Furthermore, he connects his postmodern arguments of connections among music, identity, and colonization of place and peoples by arguing that: The rapid mobility of capital and populations across the globe has problematized traditional understandings of place and made displacement a widely shared

experience. Under these conditions, dispersed populations of migrant workers,

emigrants, and exiles take on new roles as cross-cultural interpreters and analysts. (Lipsitz 5)

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However, while Lipsitz certainly brings to the forefront those who migrate, his reliance on the postmodern, and his discussion of nationalistic discourse, do not necessarily take into account the Indigenous peoples who make up many of these migrating peoples in the Americas. In this way, Lipsitz’s transnational argument confirms the discourse of the nationalistic, by making migration discussions about those who cross nation-state borders, but not about those who have lived on lands of the Americas before lines were carved into maps and border fences were staked into the land. Downs’s music, however, directly draws attention to Indigenous peoples and their long history here; in fact, through Downs’s choice of dress, her multiple languages in songs, her musical rhythms, and her discussions with her concert attendees, she continually reminds her audiences that she will not fail to recognize the Indigenous peoples of these lands and points to at least sixty-four Indigenous languages still spoken in Mexico today. In so doing, she centers the Indigenous peoples still practicing in what is now Mexico, those who were carved into el Norte by the imperial border, and those who are kin to those who have crossed al otro lado. Through her music and through “Minimum Wage” specifically, Downs tells stories of the borderlands and its peoples. Downs’s lyrics move among first-person narrators who wash dishes, leave their families for jobs, and get caught by the border patrol in order to weave these stories together to form the “story of a lifetime” (“Minimum Wage”). Thus, Downs’ music acts as a space of intervening, traveling, and shifting within and outside of geo-historical frames of labor, bodies, lands, boundaries, and identities. Downs’s “coming back” narratives in her own life, as well as those in her music, in particular “Minimum Wage,” must be seen as essential in thinking about borderland identities. In acknowledging physical bodies and in reclaiming Indigenous identities through the very sites of mixing musical genres and embodied stories, Downs creates a site of social activism that deconstructs the colonial binary implemented in the negation and subjugation of physical and psychological border-crossers.

Lila Downs and Her Music While Downs sings many songs in English, most of Lila Downs’s lyrics are in Spanish—with purposeful Indigenous-language interventions made through Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya, and Nahuatl. Instead of seeing her ventures into English in some of her albums as selling out, we should challenge ourselves as

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listeners to think of her music as she does: as an intercultural participation in her own Indigenous identity. We should challenge ourselves to look at the ways that she uses “her creative impulse to explore what brings us together rather than that which divides” (“Lila Downs”). In this way, she moves away from a cheapened a-colonial postmodern celebration of hybrid music and takes a firm stance in a complicated cultural identity that allows her to move between nation-states, as well as celebrate her maternal identification with Indigenous communities in Mexico, and her paternal connections to the United States. In 1968, Lila Downs was born in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico. Her mother was Mixtec, and her father was Scottish-American. With Downs’s mother’s own participation in cabaret music and her father’s interests lying in art and cinematography, she became interested in music and performance as a child. While she spent much of her childhood in Mexico (with time also spent with her father in Minneapolis), her family moved to the United States during her early teen years, where they remained until she moved back to her mother’s hometown after her father died. She spoke Spanish as a child, learned English with her father in the United States, and later learned Mixtec when she began to write and translate poems and Mixtecan codices with her mother. Learning to embrace and understand her Indigenous heritage was a work of love, since her own mother was often ashamed of being Mixtec when Downs was a child (McLaughlin). Because of Downs’s own mother’s roots in Oaxaca, Mexico, “[e]mbracing and highlighting Indigenous origins, whether in the U.S. or Mexico, has always been an important aspect of her music, as well as the topics of political and social justice, immigration, and transformation, all rooted in the human condition” (“Biography”). In fact, she infuses much of her music with Mesoamerican images, practices, sounds, and narratives—and her seamless weaving of Indigenous practices in her music can allow listeners to see even her English-language songs as already speaking back to the life forces of her own Indigenous identity and practices. Lila Downs’s music—and the ways it manifests itself through dance, voice, lyrics, and instruments—centers her woman-ness, her Indigenous heritage, and her own border-crossing life. Unlike earlier formulations of Mexican and Mexican American musical groups that required a male front singer for legitimacy, Downs relies on and capitalizes upon her position as a transnational woman who sings and writes original songs with her band, as well as rewrites cover songs that reposition the feminine as a necessary answer to colonialism

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and nationalistic patriarchy.1 Downs’s music, then, can be seen as putting into practice Ana Castillo’s call for activist creative powers that privilege women. In Massacre of the Dreamers, Ana Castillo seeks to foreground Indigenous identities and combat European patriarchal notions that ripped the creative power from women in situations arising from the physicality of narratives like “Minimum Wage.” And in looking for ways to build a theory of “[women] in the flesh,” Castillo argues that in reclaiming Indigenous practices, we must also “reinsert the forsaken feminine into our consciousness” (Castillo 12). Even while having fun with her music through covers like “La Bamba” on her 2004 album, Downs certainly brings both women and cultural consciousness to the forefront with songs like “Dignificada,” in which she tells the story of the assassination of Digna Ochoa, a Mexican woman and human rights lawyer whose murder was covered up by Mexican authorities (Border, “Dignificada”). Downs actively uses her popular music to entertain and to incite activism, and she does so through her ability to cross musical boundaries. By doing so, she also disrupts ideas of nation-state borders and nationally claimed music. Her music becomes a site of “struggle over place and displacement” (Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads 4). Furthermore, the music she writes with her spouse, Paul Cohen, weaves together many traditions of music. It crosses musical genres and ethnic borders—from early rock and roll sounds to rancheras, from jazzy blues to folk music, and from Mexican love ballads to mariachi canciones. Rafael PérezTorres argues that “the hybridity of the music becomes not just a means of blending various cultural influences and style, but rather a way to alter semiotics of the music itself ” (Pérez-Torres 324), and while his larger argument speaks to Chicana/o hip hop, his discussions of music as a means of transformation at the level of sign and semiotics point to the ways that music becomes more than a genre. Music, especially when bringing different sounds together, asks its listeners to weave the music, the lyrics, and the politics of a song into more than simply something to be heard. Music, like Downs’s, asks its audience to listen and react. Granted, Downs’s transnational fame and the appeal of her own beauty create a place of privilege that allows her to speak and sing to millions of people throughout the Americas. However, in using this place of privilege, she shifts what could be a one-dimensional, popular sound coming from a Mexican American woman, and instead brings her politicized mestizaje to the foreground to combine seemingly disparate musical sounds, such as rancheras and blues—and thus invites listeners to cross musical and national boundaries.

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These different sounds come from her longtime band, La Misteriosa. Through the use of synthesizers, drums (of many kinds), harps, guitars, keyboards, trumpets, accordions, and her voice (with its wide range of sounds and octaves), Downs and La Misteriosa have created a plethora of sounds that have made her popular from New York City to Mexico City, from San Antonio, Texas, to Guelatao, Oaxaca. In fact, during the celebration of the Mexican Bicentennial in 2010, Lila Downs was lauded on stages in both Dallas and in Mexico City.

Engaging Indigeneity and Borders In Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Mae Ngai argues that the 1970s ushered in “Asian American, Chicano, and Latino Studies [which] directly challenged the nationalist narrative of [United States] assimilation and proposed, instead, to read immigration and ethnic history through the lenses of race, conquest, and colonialism” (Ngai 263). While colleges and universities often help students learn about their ethnic heritages, struggles, and survivals in ways their elementary, middle school, and high school educations often leave out, at-home and/or in-community education through cultural practice should not be taken for granted. Musical performances, both by well-known artists and regional retellings, had already been challenging American and Mexican nation-state imperialism through their popular music that reached the masses. From Lydia Mendoza’s rancheras to the lyrics of the “Corrido de Gregorio Cortez,” music had already been a part of Mexican and Mexican American cultural practices, both everyday and ceremonial. Furthermore, whether or not these peoples knew their specific Indigenous lineages, the practice of stories and prayers through music had long been tied to various Indigenous practices—including ceremonial songs sung and danced throughout crop cycles, as well as the communal practice of song and dance in the reading of codices. And through these many forms of cultural musical practices, musicians were making interventions in race, conquest, and colonialism that scholars like Americo Paredes began to analyze in the early twentieth century. Lila Downs continues these critiques through her music today. While Downs’s popular music may be seen as distinct from a specifically Indigenous and politicized sound, Jacqueline Shae Murphy, in her discussions of American Indian dance practices, argues that it is a false understanding of American Indian dance to be idealized as only authentic when practiced in isolation.

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Murphy’s dance examples include formal theater and ballet recitals performed and choreographed by Indigenous dancers as part of their dancing and political identities. Similarly, Downs’s purposeful inclusion of political lyrics and intentional use of Indigenous practices in her music maintain what Jacqueline Shae Murphy argues is a “cultural, political, and spiritual agency even while adapting, drawing from, and contributing to the contemporary world” (Murphy 25). Listeners can hear that Downs’s purposeful mixture of music creates agency for communities that are often erased in their various forms of labor participation. Lipsitz makes further connections between dancing and music when he brings forward José Limón’s discussions about Chicano music and dancing in Texas as a form of kinship and community affirmation even after and through border disruptions of peoples from colonialism to legal initiatives like NAFTA (Limón 238–239, “Home” 306–307). And while dance is a leading practice in Downs’s performances in her concerts and videos, it is not dance itself that legitimizes her music as perfomative and political, but instead it is the coming together of embodied musical practices—the dance with the lyrics with her voice with the instruments with her band—that creates an Indigenous cultural centeredness that binds the kinship practices of Mexican peoples on any side of the multiple psychological and physical borders. In her eighth album, Shake Away, Downs weaves together popular and catchy tunes with specific Nahua deities with which many Mexicans and Mexican Americans are familiar, including Coatlicue and Quetzacoatl in “Ojo de Culebra” and Xolotl in “Perro Negro.” In “Ojo de Culebra,” specifically, Downs calls her family, the people, to remember that they are chained, and that they need to break free by reconnecting with the land—by being replanted in the soil from which colonialism has separated them. The calls to her people are echoed in other songs, including “Shake Away,” in which she is constantly calling to her family—both to be heard and for them to hear. And when Downs covers “Black Magic Woman” 2 with Raul Midón, she reclaims the identity of “the Black Magic Woman”—the one owned and claimed through its various versions from Fleetwood Mac to Santana. Rather than remain the owned and dangerously “dark,” “othered,” and gendered woman, Downs confronts—and channels—the accusations of brujeria and calls her peoples to remember and reclaim their identities. She makes “the Black Magic Woman” the healer that no one owns. While she calls her people to remember, she does not ignore the very real physical, colonial borders between Mexico and the United States; however, she works to combat those borders through the peoples she actively remembers in

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her music. As Lipstiz argues, “Through music we learn about place and about displacement. Laments for lost places and narratives of exile and return often inform, inspire, and incite popular music” (Lipstiz 4). In fact, Downs tells the following story of how her first album, Border, came to be: I was living in Oaxaca, and there were some Mixtec people who were going to

the U.S. and working there. I was working at my mother’s car parts store. She had a little shop, and one day, a man came to me and asked me to translate a death

certificate because he had picked up his son’s body from Acapulco, which is the

closest place they send the bodies from, from the U.S., and he came to me obvi-

ously because I’m bilingual, so he umm . . . you know, I told them that I read the death certificate, but it just made such an impression on me that I started to write

songs about these stories . . . he had drowned . . . he was trying to cross the border, and he drowned. (“Cross-Border Musical Influences”)

Having been confronted with the seeming necessity of economic crossing for Mixtec peoples, among other Indigenous communities, to find work in the United States and with the deaths that happen far from family without the means to read a death certificate, Downs found the physical and embodied narratives of exile that Lipsitz speaks about in the theoretical. Downs’s conversation with a father who had his son’s body, but could not access a document, forces exile to become a reality. While she tells the story as non-musical narrative in the above form and reaches readers, her choice to use music as a vehicle to tell this story and a myriad of others allows her to reach a wider audience as she tells and retells it in various songs, across albums, and in concerts. In “Sale Sobrando,” Downs sings: Los hombres barbados vinieron por barco y todos dijeron mi Dios ha llegado

ahora pa’l norte se van los mojados

pero no los dicen ‘welcome hermanos’ 3

In this particular song, she tells that same story as a retelling of colonization— of Mexican peoples who now cross the Rio Grande and are treated with disrespect, even though the Spanish colonizers of their ancestors crossed the oceans and were welcomed as gods.4 In other songs or conversations from the stage, she uses stories about La Malinche and La Llorona, women who crossed into

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territories and forced confrontations with colonialism and patriarchy. Downs discusses her own understanding of La Llorona: I think there’s a constant tragic sense in Mexican souls. I think it’s this constant, melancholic sadness, mourning for the past. There’s a mourning for a time which, in my mind, is before the Europeans came. The verses in “La Llorona,” “The

Crying Woman,” refer to that. It says, “Yesterday, I was a marvel. Today, I am

not even a shadow.” People can interpret it about anything, it can be about love, too. But I think it’s about that sadness, that “sentimiento” from the rancheros. (McLaughlin)

Downs’s own positionality seems to help her listen to the stories of those like her—those who cross back and forth: “I can’t say that I don’t feel American when I am singing a song in Spanish, because it’s part of who I am at all times, and this is what is so complicated about people like myself because we are all these different things, and sometimes people have a hard time with that” (“Cross-Border Musical Influences”). Therefore, in order to understand her music, we must understand the transnational, borderland mentality in which she is living—and about which she writes in “Minimum Wage.” The southern U.S. border, as Gloria Anzaldúa argues, is a 1,950 mile-long open wound

dividing a pueblo, a culture,

running down the length of my body, staking fence rods in my flesh, splits me   splits me

me raja   me raja. (Anzaldúa 24)

The physicality of ripped land and ripped flesh creates continual psychological effects on the peoples who cross, have crossed, and have never crossed the lands that Anzaldúa says were “Mexican once / . . . Indian always / and . . . will be again” (Anzaldúa 25, 113). We must purposefully call on the borderland mentality—that of los atravesados 5—rather than simply recognize those who live near the border. Recognizing only those who live near the United States-Mexico border leaves out those who travel the labor circuits of the Midwest, or those who blend into cities as kitchen workers in the Northeast. The inhabitants of the borderlands, the ones

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marked by colonial border stakes, and the ones that Downs sings of in her song, are los atravesados—“the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half-dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the ‘normal’” (Anzaldúa 25). She makes visible those who have been erased, ignored, and denigrated, and in naming them, she makes their presence apparent throughout the United States. In a similar fashion, Downs’s music tells stories of those also erased, ignored, and denigrated, and in singing their narratives in her songs and in retelling their stories in concert after concert, Downs makes visible those who are often assumed to be not present or who are purposefully ignored. Furthermore, she makes real the bodies that become part of sweeping legislation and generalized peoples through state laws like those making their way across the United States after Arizona’s SB 1070 in 2010, and those who are “hidin’ from the Minute Men” (“Minimum Wage”). Migrants, then, remain almost invisible as fellow humans while also receiving a large amount of focus in the constructions of laws and attention from pseudo–law enforcement. In this way, migrants often suffer abuse at the hands of the authorities, yet remain largely ignored as part of the U.S. labor force.

Critiquing Colonialism in “Minimum Wage” Released in 2008, the Shake Away album showcases Lila Downs’s and Paul Cohen’s wide breadth in instrumental and lyrical composition. From covering “Black Magic Woman” to singing about cooking chickens in “Los Pollos,” they work through several popular musical genres, but they do so with Downs’s cries for social justice in the forefront. In “Minimum Wage,” Downs sings a border story that has influenced so many of her other albums. She speaks out against the immigrant fear that plagues U.S. nativist discourse and instead centers an Indigenous discourse of connection to land and peoples. Downs’s music produces a counter-hegemonic story to depict a world not constructed by imperial maps. “Minimum Wage” engages with the complicated discourse of immigration and nationality—over and against migration and Indigeneity—by overlapping several too-often-true stories of running from border patrol agents (whether or not one has the papers to prove U.S. citizenship), working in the back of kitchens, picking produce in California, and leaving family behind with the hope of getting paid—and not always the minimum wage.

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With only trap drums opening “Minimum Wage” before Downs’s low register joins the song, we hear the consistency that is reminiscent of a train rhythm that sets up a bluesy sound of travelers and lamentation. On the train of her low voice comes the story of the travelers. The travelers to whom listeners are first introduced are those who travel the mostly desert from Mexico to the United States—“Traveled seven hundred miles / crossed the border to the States.” And still the consistent rhythm of the drums mimics the border crossers’ everpresent moving steps as they are “ . . . running / cross the desert in a shake.” The rhythm keeps the urgency of those traveling in the forefront of listeners’ minds by mimicking labored breathing and feet running. This rhythm also simulates the clickety-clack of the train tracks that immigrants built in the last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The drums are a constant source of movement both as an instrumental base, and as an act of migrant embodiment. Throughout the song, they are ever-traveling through the consistent rhythm of the drums, and this consistency allows Downs to remind her listeners of the constant migrating across land for jobs through the very last lines of the song when she sings, “It’s a bumpy road to ride in / But I’ll take it any time / For the minimum wage.” While Downs keeps us moving throughout the song, this “bumpy ride” speaks beyond the physical roads of travel and into the hardships of a migrant worker’s lifestyle. From finding work to being hunted, and from leaving family to confronting language barriers, Downs uses this song to tell story after story of workers present not only now in the United States, but long before its borders bisected the Americas. Downs sets up the language barrier that many immigrants to the United States experience as part of their border crossing: “Come to English only country / Hidin’ from the Minute Men.” This line, however, works from the point of view of a hegemonic discourse that attempts to paint the United States as a country with a single language. The often-stated “You’re in America now, speak English” is a reminder of which languages are expected to be spoken where in these continents. Therefore, the line of “English only country” works through a normalizing rhetoric that locates a language (English) with an identity (American) that bars non-citizens from a country (the United States of America) even though this nation-state rhetoric is already fraught with complicated spatial histories, practices, and peoples. As Ngai argues in her work on immigrant labor, “‘Foreignness’ was a racialized concept that adhered to all Mexicans, including those born in the United States, and carried the opprobrium of

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illegitimacy and inferiority” (Ngai 132). Legitimizing a single language further points to foreignness, even if those speaking English are already citizens. Importantly, this discourse ignores not only the fact that the United States does not recognize one official language for the country, but also the reality that many languages have been spoken in this country since its founding. Furthermore, if we recognize the way a settler colonial state is built upon lands with which Indigenous peoples live in relation since time immemorial, then we must also recognize that a multitude of Indigenous languages were spoken in relationship with these lands before the United States had documents to form a government that refused to choose a single language—and that these Indigenous peoples are speaking and teaching their languages today. Further critiquing the idea of a single-language country, Downs sings “country” as “cŌnthry” in the line of the song that first brings up language. While it may seem as though she is simply playing with sound in her song through what would be construed as a Spanish-accented use of country, she does this nowhere else in the song. This accented word, then, becomes a direct interaction with the previous words that paint the United States as English only—and plays with a line that comes two stanzas later, “Then they ask me why in Spanish / Why you keep on comin’ back?” While these two lines are not juxtaposed directly against each other, positioning the two languages—English and Spanish—against each other as both spoken on the U.S. side of the border complicates the English-only discourse that is so often relied on in anti-immigrant rhetoric. The interaction between the lyrics that speak specifically to language, then, begs the question of how to identify two colonial languages associated with specific nation-state land bases in areas that were Mexico before they were the United States, areas where Spanish has been spoken centuries longer than English—but not as long as the multitude of Indigenous languages spoken in all of these lands. Finally, placing the words spoken in Spanish, “Why you keep on comin’ back,” into the mouths of “agents” and the rest of the song in English, Downs flips the language speakers and critiques the singlelanguage discourse. With these spatial, lingual, and colonial issues consistently present in this song, the deep fissure in the land that we call the border becomes more apparent beyond commentary on any deep-seated issues of language. When Downs sings, about “Hidin’ from the Minutemen” while “ . . . they [the agents] ask me why in Spanish / Why you keep on comin’ back?” notions of crossing and re-crossing and never crossing come into play with particular assumptions

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made by border guards that all brown bodies must have crossed the border— and sometimes crossed without documents. However, in looking at histories of Mexican and Mexican American peoples in the United States, Emma Pérez argues that “to settle upon Chicano/a experiences as only immigrant erases a whole other history, the history of a diaspora, of a people whose land also shifted beneath them” (Pérez-Torres xix). Assuming immigration—and not diaspora and/or diasporic return—erases colonial histories of border-making and land-claiming. Furthermore, this accusation of “coming back” after being deported becomes an interesting moment in Downs’s song for several reasons: it fails to realize that many Mexicans remained on the now-northern side of the border after the Treaty of Guadalupe and so never crossed (hence the expression “We didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us”); it ignores stories of Indigenous migrations throughout the Americas that are documented among and across many peoples; it ignores the many federal and backdoor programs, including the Bracero program, that the United States put in place in order to lure immigrants as laborers during times of need. Bringing the very real dangers of groups like the contemporary Minutemen into the song confronts the militarized tactics of keeping immigrants out of the United States. The contemporary Minutemen are a self-organized militia that attempts to pattern itself on the more loosely organized colonial militia of the 1700s, the minutemen. The historical minutemen were a loose organization of men, including Paul Revere, formed to give warning of threats of war from Britain. Interestingly, the contemporary Minutemen’s moniker relies on a historical group of men protecting colonists who were claiming lands that already belonged to multiple Indigenous groups in what is now the northeastern part of the United States. The historical minutemen were the first round of defense against what were seen as outsiders (the British) invading claimed land—while refusing to recognize that various Indigenous groups already lived in communal, spiritual, and everyday relation to the land. In a similar fashion, the contemporary Minutemen are calling immigration a war against the United States; however, this time, it is against peoples who have already migrated to and lived in relation with this land for centuries before the contemporary Minutemen—or the historical minutemen—formed. This confrontation enforces “the notion that migrants pose a potential threat of foreign invasion [and] has become a familiar provocation in nationalist discourses . . . The association of immigration control with the state’s authority to wage war reveals that sovereignty is not merely a claim to national rights but a theory of power” (Ngai 12).

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Therefore, Downs’s use of the contemporary Minutemen, in particular, calls forth the very real attacks on migrant Indigenous peoples while crossing into, working in, and living in the United States—while also bringing forth ghosts of the migrant, historical minutemen who attacked Indigenous peoples to claim their new land. In this song, there is no distinguishing between those who have their legal documents and those who do not. The song simply evokes immigrant fear of the contemporary Minutemen, “agents [that]strapped me down,” with their “black van comin’” (“Minimum Wage”). Beyond critiquing nation-state borders, however, “Minimum Wage” also works to make visible the laborers’ lives that extend beyond the physical Mexico-United States border areas of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. One of Downs’s stories in the song tells about a person whose family is strewn across the United States: Well I left my dad in Jersey

And my sister in Des Moines

They’ve been working in this country Pickin’ lettuce, washing floors.

And later in the song, Downs tells more stories, one in particular about a woman who left her child to find work—“No one forced the boss to hire me / But it’s nearly been fifteen / When I left my baby cryin’ . . .” These stories do several things, two of which include making visible the dependency on migrant laborers throughout the United States (from the Southwest to the Midwest, and from the South to the Northeast) and making visible the way that migrant workers often leave family members in order to find work. Piecing these stories together through lyrics and the consistent rhythm of the music weaves these narratives into a much larger story that is heard over and over by Downs’s fans. Importantly, however, these stories also speak to the migratory practices of Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas before colonization. From Cahokia Mounds near what is now St. Louis, to Tenochtitlan where Mexico City now sits, several centers of Indigenous trade posts existed before borders cut people off from traveling freely. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have long histories that tied them to land bases throughout the Americas. Indigenous peoples in what is now the U.S. Southwest had regular trade routes, ceremonial practices, and hunting grounds that allowed peoples to migrate and interact with various communities. However, with colonial borders and

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claimed places by Europeans and later U.S. Americans, many of those practices were stopped in the name of civilization. It is important, then, that Downs tells these stories, situates many of these migrant bodies as belonging to the lands of the Americas: On the outskirts of L.A. I recite a native poem

Million hands, ten thousand years It’s the season of the crop

It’s my people doin’ the pickin’ In the Valley of the Dolls

It’s a decent job to work at Any day I’ll take this job.

Downs’s narrator names migrant workers as real bodies doing real labors attached to the land bases of the Americas. Throughout these lines, she names colonized places (L.A., the Valley of the Dolls) while claiming Indigenous spaces (through prayer and seasons) that work beyond colonial borders. Furthermore, the direct calling forth of prayer and poetry remind us of the ways that these practices were intimately intertwined with music in Indigenous communities, as well as deeply connected with land and labor. Being “on the outskirts of L.A.” lends strength to the idea of migrant workers being pushed to the margins of society—both in the places where they work, and in the places where they live. However, “recit[ing] a native poem” and claiming this space with “ten thousand years” of practicing seasonal crop cycles speaks back to Downs’s own musical form as poems, songs, and dance were very much a part of Indigenous corn-planting cycles. While the migrant workers work in Europeanized places, they are still connected to their lands, and in this way become part of, and reclaim relationship with, the land, rather than being merely immigrants to the land. Finally, in the lines—“It’s my people doin’ the pickin’ / In the Valley of the Dolls”—the narrator is naming the migrant peoples as part of her own kin, while also naming the place that United States citizens have taken over. She uses these two lines to juxtapose those who are invisible producers and those who are hyper-visual through their money and fame. But in so doing, Downs’s narrator claims these invisible people, and gives them a voice throughout her

“ The S tory of a Life time”  1 51

Lila Downs. Copyright © 2011 Sony Music Entertainment México S.A. de C.V. Photo credit: Ricardo Trabulsi

Figure 9.1. 

song. In “Minimum Wage,” the people who are invisible tell their stories and thus combat their erasure. They tell “the story of a lifetime”—the lifetime of Indigenous peoples now, their ancestors, and their descendants throughout the Americas who continue (and will continue) to travel past colonial borders. Because of Downs’s continual portrayals of her family’s Mixtec roots, listeners should be reminded that the peoples she sings of are often attached to Indigenous communities that were practicing their own forms of communal labor long before European nation-states and the United States settled into Indigenous territories. Through her music, Downs complicates the assumed nationalistic stability of identity, land, labor, and people. She does so through “Minimum Wage,” but she also does so through many of her other songs, whether they directly confront the colonial border between Mexico and the United States, or they tell stories of Indigenous peoples on these lands long before that border existed. If we listen to her music as confirming the long-standing relationships between Indigenous peoples and their land bases

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that are too-often erased through colonial discourse, then we have to see how her popular music does more than reach thousands of fans. Downs brings social justice to the forefront of her popular music. This is not to say that people cannot simply enjoy her music for its breadth of qualities—her range of musical instruments and voices, her weaving of cultural styles, her use of dance and rhythm, her interaction with her audiences, her community of band members, and so on. However, to deny her musical practices as a very purposeful embodiment of her Indigenous identity is to miss the critique of continued colonialism that attempts to interrupt relational living among the peoples and lands she honors in her music—and thus to miss the very train that “Minimum Wage” travels on.

Notes 1. Lydia Mendoza (1916–2007) is one of the most famous women to enter into the Mexican and Mexican American world of music—and, like Lila Downs later did, did so through highly gendered performances and through a “supranational” base that “supersede[d] the ‘imagined community’ of nation states (BroylesGonzález 357). Similarly, Selena (Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, 1971–1995) based her identity in Tejano music and also used her femininity and national crossover to stabilize a fan base first in the Unites States and then in Mexico. Dubbed the “Queen of Tejano Music,” her crossover career preceded Downs’s. 2. “Black Magic Woman” was also the title of Downs’s 2009 tour in which she featured her 2008 album Shake Away. 3. While the use of mojado is decidedly racist when translated as wetback and also classist when used as a critique by Latin@s, the way that Downs uses the imagery of water beginning with Spanish colonizers—before ever mentioning immigrants—may turn this slur into a critique of the racist thought process behind calling an Indigenous migrant a mojado/wetback. 4. Some documents and oral stories claim that some Nahua peoples believed that Cortez was a prophetic return of the deity Quetzacoatl. Many other sources complicate this claim or deny it completely. 5. Los atravesados can be translated as “the crossers”; however, Anzaldúa’s use of this word is meant to encompass more than those who physically cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

“ The S tory of a Life time”  1 53

Works Cited Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Print. Armstrong, Mary. “Lila Downs: Beyond the Border.” Song Out! The Folk Song Magazine 45.4 (2002): 34–39. Print. “Biography.” Lila Downs. Sony Music Entertainment. 2012. Web. 15 December 2011. Broyles-González, Yolanda. “Ranchera Music(s) and the Legendary Lydia Mendoza.” The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Angie Chabram-Dernersesian. New York: Routledge, 2006. 352–360. Print. Castillo, Ana. Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Chicanisma. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Print. Downs, Lila. Border (La Linea). Narada, 2001. CD. ———. Shake Away. The Blue Note Label Group, 2007. CD. ———. Una Sangre (One Blood). Narada, 2004. CD. “Lila Downs.” National Geographic Music. National Geographic Society. n.d. Web. 14 December 2011. “Lila Downs’ Cross-Border Musical Influences.” Morning Edition. NPR. 7 November 2006. Web. 14 December 2011. “Lila Downs, ‘Dignificada.’” Link TV. n.d. n.p. Web. 12 December 2011. Lipsitz, George. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place. New York: Verso, 1994. Print. ———. “‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’: Work, Music, and the Transnational Economy.” The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Angie ChabramDernersesian. New York: Routledge, 2006. 299–313. Print. Manriquez, Stephanie. “Lila Downs: Ambassador of Mexican Music.” Trans. Victor Flores. Extra: Two Languages Una Voz. n.d. Hispanic Digital. News. Web. 13 December 2011. McLaughlin, John, ed. “A Four-Way Conversation: Lila & Jamie Downs, Paul Cohen, John McLaughlin.” The Digital Folklife. Web. 25 January 2015. McLaughlin, John, and Jamie Downs, eds. “The Folk Life.” Web. 26 January 2015. Minutemen Project: HQ-Command Center. Minuteman. n.d. Web. 12 January 2012. Murphy, Jacqueline Shae. The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Print. Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Print.

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Parades, Americo. “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Print. Pérez-Torres, Rafael. “Chicano Hip Hop and Postmodern Mestizaje.” The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Angie Chabram-Dernersesian. New York: Routledge, 2006. 324–339. Print. Rebolledo, Tey Diana. Women Singing in the Snow. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Print. Participatory Politics Foundation / Sunlight Foundation. Web. 12 July 2012. Vargas, Deborah R. “Cruzando Fronteras: Remapping Selena’s Tejano Music Crossover.’” The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Angie Chabram-Dernersesian. New York: Routledge, 2006. 314–323. Print.

10 Babylon Inna Hopiland Articulations of Tradition and Social Injustice by the Hopi Reggae Musician Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva

Dav id S. Walsh

A

it is my responsibility to tell you we are the keepers of the rain . . . and what I’m saying is, I can make it rain positive lyrics on the land” (Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva in Koblah) 1. Native Americans today are confronted with devastating odds; reservations in both Canada and the United States have some of the highest rates of unemployment, alcohol and drug addiction, domestic abuse, and suicide, all of which are exacerbated by historical genocidal policies of, and current structural ties to, the federal governments (Smith). Many Indigenous peoples turn to their cultural traditions to help address these social ills. One such tribe are the Hopi of Northeastern Arizona, whose strong and vibrant cultural/religious traditions remain a fundamental aspect of their lives. A new means for engaging with these traditions in Hopiland (the Hopi reservation) has recently been embraced in the form of Rastafarian-inspired reggae music. This chapter will demonstrate how Rasta-reggae discourse has been used to create a framework for understanding Indigenous plights and the social ills affecting Indigenous peoples today. This discourse allows Indigenous peoples a way to juxtapose their traditions with the problems they face. Specifically, Hopi religious tradition is understood as the legitimate system for living a fulfilled and purposeful life in contrast to the forces of Babylon. Hopi religious and social tradition is seen as an idealized opposite of the socio-historical problems they face today, and may be equated to the Rastafarian term Zion. s a Hopi,

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Reggae has been “raining positive lyrics” in Hopiland since the 1980s, near the end of the Bob Marley era. Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva is one of many influenced by reggae in Hopiland, and has since become an internationally known award-winning Hopi reggae musician. This chapter will focus on Lomayesva’s music, examining how his use of the popular reggae terminology “Babylon,” “Zion,” and “I-and-I” serves to articulate a particularly Hopi message about the importance of tradition in the contemporary world. Casper’s album artwork also serves to articulate a connection between reggae music and Hopi tradition. Scholarly work on reggae, Rastafarianism, and Jamaican culture abroad often cites Hopi reggae as an example of the global impact of Jamaican music (Steffens; Hepner), or as the novel product of a syncretism (the combining of two traditions to form something new) between Hopi and reggae traditions (Koblah). By not contextualizing the phenomenon within its contemporary Hopi setting, however, these works fail to recognize how reggae speaks to Hopi tradition. I engage articulation theory and the work of anthropologist James Clifford to suggest that, rather than syncretism, Casper’s music articulates the importance of traditional Hopi religion in the modern world through Rastafarian themes and discourses. Hopi reggae is not a simple turning from one tradition to another, but rather a complex negotiation of tradition in modern contexts: a negotiation which both relies on and reinforces the legitimacy and need for Hopi tradition. This negotiation began in the 1980s with five people from Hopiland who shared a mutual love for reggae.

Reggae Inna Hopiland “For the international reggae community, all roads lead to the Kykotsmovi Civic Center . . . The Hopi concerts do turn into family affairs, attracting all ages. Traveling vendors sell clothes, beadwork, t-shirts and tapes of the featured bands. Locals sell burritos, parched corn, pici bread and sodas” (Sitts). In 1983, Gerry Gordon, a white schoolteacher, and four Hopi men brought their love of reggae to Hopiland. Tired of driving four hours to the city of Phoenix, Arizona, to see bands in concert, they decided to bring a Phoenix band to the reservation. The concert took place in a school gym for an audience of nearly two hundred people. The following year, the first Jamaican reggae acts, Freddie McGregor and Michigan & Smiley, played Hopiland. The billing for this band,

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and most of the rest to come over the next twenty-three years read, Reggae Inna Hopiland (Weber). The Hopi organization Culture Connection was then formed to continue to bring acts to the reservation. In 1987, more than nine hundred fans attended the Sunsplash reggae tour in Kykotsmovi’s Hopi Civic Center. Tony Johnson, a Sunsplash promoter, called the Hopi show “a spiritual rebirth.” When asked about the Hopi-Jamaica connection, Johnson stated, “I think it’s really something very mystical. Reggae has a lot to do with the spiritual aspects of Africa, and Jamaica embodies it . . . I think the Hopis embody the spirit of America . . . it is two ancient cultures coming together” (Culture Connection, 1988). These concerts solidified a tradition of bringing reggae to Hopiland. Over the two decades of Culture Connection’s project, they hosted approximately thirty-five shows, with crowds ranging from a few hundred to two thousand. Karen Abieta was a board member of Culture Connection for nine years, and now does the publicity and production for most acts in Hopiland. She is also a local disc jockey and hosts the weekly reggae show “Rez Rasta Riddims” on Hopiland radio. The radio station’s call letters are KUYI, which is the Hopi word for water, itself a religious reference and one that I will return to later. Abieta plays predominantly conscious reggae,2 including the Hopi reggae artist Lomayesva. Karen has fostered relationships with many major reggae artists over the last ten years. In the summer of 2007, she hosted a major concert on the reservation, bringing out Damian and Stephen Marley. Over a thousand people attended the concert from both Hopiland and surrounding reservations. Two elders from the nearby Havasupai reservation were seen dancing in traditional dress, demonstrating the inter-generational appeal of reggae and its alignment with tradition (Kraker). The New York Times stated about another large concert almost ten years prior: (Reggae) has long provided anthems of anti-oppression for third-world peoples

around the globe, and it is popular on Indian reservations throughout the western

United States. (At the Friday concert, there were Apache, Navajo, Havasupai, Ute and other tribe members, along with a fair number of Pahana—white people) . . . But it has found a special welcome—and an unlikely one—among the insular and secretive Hopi, a farming tribe with a complex and closely held set

of spiritual beliefs whose history in this area goes back to the beginning of the

millennium and who are known for guarding their ancient culture from outside

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influences. Children are initiated into the tribal religion as teenagers; those who

are never initiated are never fully in the know. And everyone is discouraged from being too forthright with outsiders. (Weber)

Some elders have been active in bridging the gap between Hopi and Rastareggae, either by participating in Culture Connection, attending concerts, or even traveling to Jamaica (Roskind). Yet others have spoken out against it, successfully banning reggae concerts on the reservation for two years in the late 1980s. An article written by Gerry Gordon of Culture Connection stated, “The politicians tried to make Reggae the scapegoat for all the reservation’s social problems; they even banned Reggae concerts for two years. We had to educate them about Reggae music and Rasta culture” (Culture Connection, 1994). This cultural clash demonstrates an internal negotiation and assertion of Hopi authenticity. These are not new conversations in Hopiland, however; Geertz states that traditionalist movements from a decade prior were in fact new claims towards authenticity and authority (Geertz). Culture Connection (and Casper since) differ from the traditionalist movements claims of authority, instead deferring to Hopi structures of authority within which they articulate cultural authenticity of Hopi-reggae. Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva grew up listening to reggae and attending Culture Connection’s early concerts on the Hopi reservation. He later became active with the organization. Today he is the only Hopi reggae artist to produce his own albums and attain international renown. His musical sound blends reggae rhythm and style with accents of Hopi-style singing and drumming. His lyrics blend traditional reggae discourse with contemporary issues facing the Hopi, larger issues facing Native peoples, and Hopi religious themes. Lomayesva’s vocals are backed by The 602 Band, which has had a revolving membership, consisting of other Hopi and Native American, African American, Jamaican, and white members. Lomayesva was born Calvin Arthur to a Hopi father and a Navajo mother, but aligns himself mostly with his Hopi roots. As an infant, Lomayesva was given the name “Loma-da-wa,” meaning “radiant sun,” in a Hopi naming ceremony. His paternal grandfather Sankey Lomayesva gave him the nickname “Casper.” Sankey, an elder of the Hopi’s Sun Clan, is credited with Lomayesva’s spiritual upbringing. Growing up, he spent his time between Holbrook, Arizona (just outside the Navajo reservation), and near his grandfather in Kykotsmovi (the village where Culture Connection holds its concerts). Lomayesva

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now lives and works in the Phoenix valley when he is not touring or traveling to Hopiland. Casper Lomayesva started his own label, Third Mesa Music, and released his first album Original Landlord in 1997. In 2000, he followed with the album The Sounds of Reality, which won a Native American Music Award for Best World Music in 2001. In 2004, he released his third album, Honor the People, and his fourth and most recent album to date, Brother’s Keeper, was released in 2011. Thus far, his album sales have exceeded twenty thousand units. Touring has taken Lomayesva across the United States and Canada. He plays mostly on reservations, but has also appeared at a number of large venues, including the American Indian Inaugural Ball in Washington, D.C., in honor of George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential inauguration; Reggae on the River in Piercy, California, in 2000 (the largest annual reggae festival in the United States); The Native American Music Awards in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2001; the Harbour Front Music Festival in Toronto, Ontario, in 2003; the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in Louisiana in 2004 and 2008; and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., in 2005. With Lomayesva’s widespread success, he has secured an idea Culture Connection dreamed of thirty years earlier, that in the Indigenous world, Hopiland is the place for reggae.

Reggae Themes in Hopi Contexts: A Theory of Articulation Although Rasta-reggae is a relatively new phenomenon among the Hopi, they have long used religious music to warn against the destruction of the world and to sing of hope found within Hopi religious tradition. Armin Geertz states, “Ritual songs are called pöötavi, ‘road prayer-feather,’ which . . . provides the participants with a symbolic road to tread” (Geertz 94). Geertz references specific types of religious songs: “The underlying tone of the male Wuwtsimtatawi and Masawikkatsintatawi is of tragedy, despair, and fatalism . . . The female songs refuse to give up and they find a source of hope in the possible rehabilitation of Hopi religion” (Geertz 93). These songs sung in ritual performances inspire Hopis to be good people. Taken together, the male and female songs warn of the consequences of not living a good life while appealing to Hopi religion as the antidote to improper living.

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Lomayesva’s music replicates the tone of these songs. He sings of the troubles found in contemporary Hopi communities, and alternatively he sings of hope found within Hopi tradition. Like the pöötavi or “road prayer-feather” songs, his music offers a “road to tread” within the contemporary Hopi setting: to struggle against Babylon and practice Hopi religiosity. Lomayesva is not the only Hopi person to express a traditionalized Hopi context and worldview via Rasta-reggae. In a BBC report on Hopi and reggae, one Hopi woman, Fern Talayumptewa, related reggae to traditional religious music, stating, “[Reggae is] very spiritual to me, and that’s what I like about it. With the lyrics especially, they express their feelings . . . for everybody to have a good life. As far as the Hopis, when they go through their traditional songs, they basically express the same things, there is that connection there” (Kraker). Similarities in spirituality and emotion of ceremonial songs and reggae create a powerful connection, which allows reggae to be heard in a particularly Hopi way. Structural similarities provide a foundation for the incorporation of reggae discourses into Hopi contexts. Use of reggae terms offers Indigenous peoples a discourse for juxtaposing their traditions to contemporary struggles. Specifically, Hopi religious and cultural tradition is seen as an idealized opposite of the problems they face today, as the notion of Zion is the idealization for Rastafarians. Contemporary problems are imposed by Babylon; alcohol and drugs were introduced from outside Hopiland, and problems like alcoholism and domestic abuse are seen as an effect of colonialism (Smith). This use of Rastafarian terminology is not syncretism, however. It is a reconstituting of the terms in a manner that lends itself to articulating Hopi tradition and social injustices. Paul Johnson suggests that the idea of syncretism has been posited by scholars of Afro-Brazilian and Caribbean religions as either a process toward conversion, or a front to appease dominant society, and that eventually the syncretic elements could be dropped to reveal pure religion, whether African or Catholic (P. Johnson 70–73). Apter demonstrates a culturally specific bias in the use of the term syncretism. From its origins with the pioneering scholar of African-diasporic traditions, Melville Herskovits, syncretism has implied not that two equal elements (cultures, religions, traditions, etc.) were combined in the forming of African diasporic traditions, but that the syncretic equation itself was seen as inauthentic, as an impurity. Herskovits thus devoted himself to recovering the “African” in African-diasporic cultures; a process that Apter states, “essentialized tribal

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origins in Africa, perpetuated myths of cultural purity in the New World, overlooked class formation, and developed passive notions of acculturation and cultural resistance, all of which distorted the ethnographic record under the guise of an imputed scientific objectivity” (Apter 161). Herskovits’s ethnography was thus constituted through specific cultural assumptions and political ideologies. Johnson, however, suggests an approach that acknowledges Afro-Brazilian religious expression to be dynamic and nuanced, “the language of saints versus that of orixás was a discursive switch allowing slaves to speak to varied audiences” (P. Johnson 73). Rather than either a combining of elements or a Catholic facade, Johnson sees an active engagement with tradition that reveals the agency displaced in Herskovits’s summation. Clifford’s articulation theory allows for the dynamic understanding offered by Johnson. Clifford writes of the importance of regarding claims of indigeneity not as an attempt to return to an ahistorical past, nor as the alienating effects of a history of colonialism, but instead, as active engagement with identity in a postcolonial world. By focusing on the “articulations” of Indigenous peoples, the scholar can take seriously Indigenous peoples’ understandings of themselves, wresting the constitution of the Indigenous subject within academic writing from the scholar and creating another space for the subjects’ articulations of themselves to be heard (at least to a degree). Clifford states that articulation theory frees studies of Indigenous peoples from the ahistorical ethnographic present, while also discounting claims of “invented” and “inauthentic” tradition. This is not only a more ethical approach, allowing those like Lomayesva to frame the scholastic discussion, but also allows me to seriously examine the articulations of his and other Hopi reggae fans as they express tradition in the modern world. Clifford states: The notion of articulated sites of indigeneity rejects two claims often made about

today’s tribal movements. On the one hand, articulation approaches question the assumption that indigeneity is essentially about primordial, transhistorical attach-

ments (ancestral “laws,” continuous traditions, spirituality, respect for Mother Earth, and the like) . . . On the other hand, articulation theory finds it equally

reductive to see Indigenous, or First Nations’ claims as the result of a post-sixties, “postmodern” identity politics (appeals to ethnicity and “heritage” by fragmented

groups functioning as ‘invented traditions’ within a late-capitalist, commodified multiculturalism). (Clifford 2001 472)

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Articulation theory dismisses essentialist understandings of tradition, which assume “authentic” Indigenous religious expression to be that which is somehow untainted by the contemporary world. In this view, the novel introduction of reggae is an inauthentic expression of Hopi religion as it does not appear to emanate from Hopi “tradition.” Articulation theory recognizes human agency and ingenuity within living tradition, suggesting that tradition is not what existed from the past until today, but rather what is articulated today about the past. At the same time, articulation theory guards against judgments about contemporary expressions of tradition as being merely “invented.” Invention assumes and implies inauthenticity through a break from historical processes. Articulation, however, is the process through which tradition is expressed, the act of which creates historical continuity. The notion of authenticity, then, is not about a distinction between true tradition and false invention, but is about the efficacy of articulating one’s place within an historical continuity. Authenticity is what is acquired through the creation of a thread of tradition. And just as tradition can be articulated in different ways, there may be competing claims of authenticity which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I approach Hopi articulations of tradition via Rasta-reggae discourse in this manner; understanding it as neither a simple extension of historical Hopi religious traditions, nor as an inauthentic invention. Loretta Koblah states that the artwork in Lomayesva’s album The Sounds of Reality represents himself as “the creative source of syncretism between traditional and contemporary urban global musics, between past, present, and future” (Koblah). This reading of the artwork within The Sounds of Reality, however, does not accurately capture Lomayesva’s articulations. His creativity does not lie in how he syncretizes the “traditional and contemporary,” creating a hybrid tradition, but rather in how he engages and juxtaposes tradition and the contemporary to reveal insights into each, and in creating a framework for understanding their interaction. Clifford’s theories of articulation demonstrate that the artist is not just a source for bringing together different religions and eras, but rather is a pivot. Lomayesva is dynamically creating connections that are articulated within certain circumstances to reveal and highlight different aspects of those interactions. In other words, he is not creating a syncretic combination across time and space. He is engaging Rastafarian themes found in reggae discourses to speak about his own tradition. Examples of specific themes and terms that Lomayesva translates into a Hopi context are Babylon, Zion,

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and I-n-I. I begin with Lomayesva’s use of the terms “Babylon” and “Zion” to demonstrate how his use of the Rastafarian concepts depicts a dangerous world threatening Hopi tradition.

The Rastafarian Babylon and Zion The multi-faceted term “Babylon” refers to a dominant institution (governmental, political, economic, or even religious) that sustains itself via the oppression of minorities, women, and the poor. Babylon is the system that creates oppression and social ills; it creates false hierarchies and enforces its power downward onto the people. Slavery was the primary historical enforcement of Babylon, and today it is the predominant metaphor for the effects of living within the Babylon system. Unlike Western compartmentalization of religion from other social realms, Rastafarianism pulls these realms together into a holistic worldview. Thus Babylon is a religious concept while it is also deeply political and social. Zion, on the other hand, equates to heaven. As a place, heaven is Africa or Ethiopia, the idealized motherland for Black Rastafarians. At the same time, Zion is not otherworldly. It is what this world is supposed to be (and would be) were it not corrupted by the Babylon system. Babylon is the profane opposite to the sanctity of Zion, and this profaneness is both religious and political. According to Rastafarianism, if people free themselves from the shackles of Babylon, they can experience Zion here on Earth. The dichotomy of Babylon and Zion is used by Rastafarians to create an understanding of their position in the world that proclaims they are not free because they are objectified by Babylon. But it also offers a way to move toward freedom through de-objectification, through Rastafarianism (for more on the Babylon and Zion dichotomy in Rastafarianism, see Edmonds; Hepner; Hutton and Murrell; Steffens; White). The Babylon/Zion dichotomy has been the central Rastafarian aspect of reggae to be incorporated by Native American reggae enthusiasts. The view of the world presented by the pairing of these two terms, of external, governmental oppression of tradition and the people, speaks to the experiences of modern Native Americans. This is not to say that these Native people have become Rastafarians. Rather, they translate Rastafarian language and worldview into their own experiences. This is most noticeable in the music of Hopi artist Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva.

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Babylon in Lomayesva’s World The dichotomy of Babylon and Zion is fundamental to the lyrics in Lomayesva’s music. It creates a metaphorical framework from within which he articulates his understandings of Hopi in relation to themselves, their religion, and to the rest of the world. In Lomayesva’s music, Babylon is reconstituted as the historical forces working against Hopi tradition, such as Spanish and United States colonialism, government agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs and reservation police, government-backed corporations, and conflicts with neighboring Indian nations. Babylon is not merely implicated within systems of power and influence. The social ills affecting Hopi people today are understood to be the direct effects of the Babylon system. These range from such things as alcohol and drug abuse, to sexual and domestic abuse, to suicide and gang activity, to poverty and under-employment. He sings, “In ah Babylon world every person has problems” (Lomayesva, Honor) In the song “Roadblock,” Lomayesva sings about Bureau of Indian Affairs police, saying, “Security cop Casper mon no deal with / if you’re native, you look suspicious / take I mon to court, dem ah call ah justice” (Lomayesva, Original Landlord). These lyrics demonstrate how the Babylon mentality normalizes oppression, [that “suspicious” has a specific look, and that institutions like the courts can normalize oppression via concepts like “justice”]. The chorus of the song asserts, “3 o’clock roadblock in the Hopiland / 4 o’clock roadblock in the Navajo / 5 o’clock roadblock in the Zuniland / all created by the one called the Babylon!” (Lomayesva, Original Landlord). Lomayesva continues along this vein in his third album in the song “Rez Cop.” He states, “I have a question, when you gwan stop / harassing conscious positive people non-stop . . . Babylon come in any color / give him a badge, give him revolver . . . Dem no want peace upon the reservation” (Lomayesva, Honor). The Peabody Coal Company is a mining company that has had an operation at Black Mesa on the Hopi reservation from 1964 until today. Many Hopis are in favor of removing the company, citing a decline of potable drinking water and contamination of the Navajo Aquifer (the importance of water for the Hopi will be returned to shortly). The U.S. government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, however, have consistently supported Peabody Coal. In what has been dubbed the Black Mesa Controversy, Peabody Coal and the federal government have circumvented the Hopi’s ability to make their own decisions on the

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issue by allowing Peabody Coal to operate on the reservation (Clemmer 218). Lomayesva references this localized struggle in a few of his songs. He sings, “Tell you about the things the world not see / and of the ways, government policies / they strip upon me land at ah Peabody” (Lomayesva, Original Landlord). He revisits the issue in the song “No Dibi Dibi” by stating, “The government system, ah push on and on / Continuing to thief from Indigenous ones / Then they wonder why all the youth all have guns / My Quah used to say, you watch for the signs / They strip upon me land, like it’s a gold mine” (Lomayesva, Sounds). Lomayesva asserts that this government system that legitimizes the actions of Peabody Coal is responsible for social issues concerning youth. The social problem of youth violence is understood as an outcome of negative Babylon policies. Lomayesva references his grandfather (Quah) and says, “Watch for the signs.” “Signs” refers to Hopi prophecy that has been passed down through generations, suggesting that ancestral prophets have foreseen these problems. Although Babylonian social and moral agency is thrust upon the Hopi, they have the power of knowledge to combat the Babylon system. This statement empowers the people who have been taken advantage of by oppressive systems, legitimizing traditional authority as revolutionary authority. In the song “Babylon World” Lomayesva asks, “Is there any way to defeat this here system?” (Lomayesva, Sounds). His response is the expression of a need for Zion. In a reconstitution of the Babylon/Zion dichotomy, the forces working against Hopi tradition are understood as Babylon, Hopiland is reconstituted as the place of Zion, and Hopi religious tradition itself becomes the metaphorical Zion. The Rastafarian goal of moving from Babylon to Zion becomes a movement from forces against the Hopi towards Hopi tradition. The moral responsibility of this strategy is to transcend Babylon and turn to Hopi tradition. Lomayesva sings, “Our Hopi reservation no stretch far or wide / it gives us sense of purpose, me say gives sense of pride / religion and our culture helps keep us strong / I’m proud of these people, that’s why me sing this song” (Lomayesva, Original Landlord).

Zion as Lomayesva’s World Lomayesva’s references to Hopiland and tradition as Zion are, however, not made explicit. The Rastafarian idea and usage of “Zion” is the metaphorical equivalent to his articulations of Hopiland and religion, and is in fact the framework for his articulations. Koblah points out this connection, suggesting

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that Lomayesva’s “The Last Train to Hopiland” is a song title that “alludes to the many reggae songs about the ‘Zion train’” (Koblah). There are, however, major differences between the Rastafarians’ Zion and the Hopi’s Hopiland/ tradition, which may be why the connection is not made more explicit. Zion as Ethiopia stands at a radical distance from the Rastafarian diasporic base of Jamaica, while Hopiland is at the feet of the Hopis (and just a few hours’ drive from Lomayesva). The physical proximity has implications for the spiritual proximity as well. Rastafarians in Jamaica can attain the spiritual Zion, but they must make their way through the Babylon system and culture to do so. Hopi tradition, however, is in the forefront of Hopiland. Tradition is not hidden by Babylon but rather Babylon is understood as moving into Hopiland and threatening their intact culture. Many of Lomayesva’s songs speak of the importance of these traditions; maybe none as explicitly as “Make It Rain.” One of the major religious and cultural themes for the Hopi is rain. Loftin states, “Rain—or rather the ‘spiritual substance’ of rain—is perceived to be the constitutive, underlying structure of all the world’s forms and rhythms. When the Hopi dance for rain, they are dancing (praying) for the creation and sustenance of the cosmos” (Loftin 37). Lomayesva sings about rain in many of his songs. Planting, growing corn, and the ability to bring rain are key elements in Hopi religion and most Indigenous religions of the Southwest. “Like the clouds that bring what we need / We need the moisture to nurture the seed / Like the storm, and the wind as it blows / Like the positive music, yes it flows” (Lomayesva, Sounds). Rain also becomes a metaphor for music itself in Lomayesva’s lyrics. In the song “Make It Rain” he sings, “Rain, I can make it rain / I rain positive lyrics again, I rain positive upon the land” (Lomayesva, Sounds). Lomayesva remembers the impetus for writing the song, stating, “My music is centered on where I come from . . . I was just sitting up on the mesa by myself reasoning with the Spirit . . . So when I’m reasoning to myself, I look around, what do I see? I see the clouds moving in, I feel the little droplets of rain coming” (Koblah 21). He is speaking of a Hopi religious moment, a spiritual interaction with the rain. Hopi religion provides a ritual space to embody these spiritual interactions through the Kachina dance. Kennard states that the Kachinas (masked beings who are both ancestors to the Hopi and the spiritual manifestation of beings found in nature) sing songs that are “really another medium in which the symbols for rain, corn fertility, and growth are expressed” (Kennard 13). In singing that his music is rain, Lomayesva suggests that his music presents another forum for bringing

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traditional spiritual fulfillment. He is not only suggesting that Hopi religion and Babylon are opposites, but is also demonstrating the effects and benefits of turning away from a focus on Babylon. “Now in these days, we talk about the pain . . . You listen crowd of people I can make it rain” (Lomayesva, Sounds). Lomayesva rains in the form of music, that is, his music has the same spiritually nourishing effect as rain, which is the opposite effect of Babylon. Lomayesva is also implying here that he, like Kachinas, has the power to “rain.” This poses a problem to some elders who hear this proclamation as heresy (for lack of a better word), or a usurpation of religious authority. Repeatedly elders have raised the issue to Lomayesva, to which he replies that his music is metaphorical rain. He does not cause rain but presents another medium for the expression of culture. Hopi tradition is his Zion.

I-and-I and Hopi “I&I love that slim belly one” (Lomayesva, Original Landlord) is a reference to Lomayesva’s grandfather Sankey in the song “Nuff Dread Dem Come” on his first album Original Landlord. The line situates his relationship to his grandfather and thus to the Hopi. This relation relies on the Rastafarian phrase I-and-I. This is a term that is often used in place of “I,” “me,” or “my people.” It is a Rastafarian philosophical concept explained by Steffens as follows: “‘I-an-I’ means ‘you and I’ or ‘I and the Creator who lives within I,’ indicating that there is no separation, that disunity is an illusion fostered and imposed on the people by Babylon” (Steffens). For a Rastafarian, I-and-I linguistically creates an idea of unity between individuals, or the speaker and their community (usually understood as Rastafarians and/or diasporic Africans). The expression is often used in everyday speech; it serves to articulate a spiritual connection between oneself and Jah (short for Jehovah, a biblical name for God which Rastafarians prefer), and a connection between oneself and their community in everyday situations. For Lomayesva, I-and-I also articulates connections between him and his grandfather and by implication, between him and his roots. He is using a religious/philosophical concept of an external tradition (Rastafarianism) as the expression for an internal connection. Lomayesva translates I-and-I into preexisting Hopi linguistic concepts, thus “Hopi-izing” the concept and making it an acceptable means for intra-Hopi articulation. He stated after a concert in Prescott, Arizona, “the translation in

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Hopi for ‘I-n-I’ meaning just me by myself or alone is Nu’-Vh . . . Example: ‘I-n-I just a chill upon the mesa on a rainy day.’ ‘I-n-I’ can also mean ‘I-n-I People’ (gathering of family, friends, etc). In Hopi it’s E’Tum . . . Example: ‘I-n-I people can only help ourselves!” (Lomayesva, Original Landlord). Let us examine each part of the concept separately. Nu’-Vh, or Nu’wa, can be translated as “I myself,” or “I in particular” (The Hopi Dictionary Project). It is a distinct “I” from other people. This definition is slightly different than what Lomayesva implies. To be “just me by myself ” and “just chill upon the mesa” implies a particularly embodied sense of alone. His “chilling” on the mesa is not completely alone, however, as it is raining. I spoke of the importance of rain in the Hopi religious system. Lomayesva’s explanation articulates a deep connection among the Hopi, the land, farming and fertility, and the spiritual Kachina beings who bring the rain. To be alone on the mesa in the rain is to be separate from other people, but also connected to the place of Hopiland and the religious, spiritual, and even social understandings implicit in the symbolic qualities of the rainy mesa. E’Tum, which Lomayesva translates as a gathering of family and/or friends, could not be found in many popular Hopi dictionaries. But understanding these terms in English is not as important as how he is translating Hopi linguistic concepts into Rastafarian terminology. His example “I-n-I people can only help ourselves!” implicitly captures the Rastafarian meaning of connecting people in opposition to oppression. For Rastas, I-and-I people stand in opposition to the forces of Babylon, and for the reclamation of Zion on Earth. Lomayesva’s example suggests that Hopi people must help themselves recover their Zion of Hopiland and tradition.

Lomayesva’s Album Artwork While Lomayesva’s music is a process of engaging reggae themes in Hopi contexts, his album artwork articulates this process in visual form. The artwork, all created by Hopi individuals, depicts different ways of imagining Hopi reggae. Some of these images draw upon symbols of both Hopi and Rastafarian religious traditions, demonstrating different perceptions of their combination. Others focus more specifically on the Hopi context, legitimating the reggae sound found within the album as Hopi. In general, all four of Lomayesva’s album covers focus on the latter, while the artwork found inside the CD

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Figure 10.1. 

Original Landlord album cover. Courtesy of Casper Lomayesva

case engages the more complex work of articulating Hopi and Rasta-reggae together. The covers of his third and fourth albums, Honor the People and Brother’s Keeper, both depict four Kachina beings, a reference to Hopi tradition. The other two album covers are more complex articulations of his relationship to tradition. Lomayesva’s first album, Original Landlord, depicts him standing in front of a famous site in Hopiland, Petroglyph Rock. The image shows Lomayesva wearing a white shirt on which the rock face is superimposed, giving the impression that he is emerging from the rock face. The logo of his label, Third Mesa Music, depicting a mesa village with a labyrinth-like design outstretched below, is also superimposed onto Lomayesva’s shirt in a manner suggesting it is one of the original petroglyphs.

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Third Mesa Music logo. Courtesy of Casper Lomayesva

Figure 10.2. 

Koblah says of the image, “The earliest traces of Indigenous artwork, story, and religious divination are written into the natural landscape, and the Hopi reggae artist’s project is projected as a continuation of this ancient mode of Indigenous expression blended with the ‘modern’” (Koblah). The idea of projecting the “modern” as a continuation of “ancient modes” is not new to the Hopi. Armin Geertz demonstrates that established Hopi prophecies function as a tool that is interpreted in relation to contemporary issues (Geertz 4). The artwork functions in the same manner for Lomayesva, allowing him to both interpret his music through established tradition, and to interpret tradition through his music. He is emerging from tradition, and his label Third Mesa Music (as represented by the logo) is solidified as tradition. The album cover of The Sounds of Reality is reminiscent of the label’s logo. It is a nondescript mesa village underneath the sun and a string of clouds (image by Stanley George). Added to this is a shadowy figure as part of the sky above the mesa, and behind this figure are Hopi pottery designs. Most of these designs symbolize a different connection to rain and moving water. The shadow figure is probably the easiest religious symbol for a non-Hopi audience to decipher

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The Sounds of Reality album cover. Courtesy of Casper Lomayesva

Figure 10.3. 

and relate to. However, the pottery symbols are much more straightforward for a knowledgeable Hopi. The non-Hopi symbol of musical notes falling from the sky to the mesa village below immediately appear both out-of-place, and just as easily incorporated into the mesa as another form of rain. An image inside the album Honor the People demonstrates the blending of Hopi and Rastafairan/reggae traditions (image by Damian Lomayesva). The image depicts a lion walking on a mesa top underneath the Sun Kachina mask with feathers on each side. A stone circle surrounds this image. The lion on top of the mesa is not a Hopi image, but a Rastafarian one. “The lion represents the ‘Lion of Judah,’ the supreme deity of Rastafarians, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I and the dreadness of Rastafarian culture. It is also a popular

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Detail from inside Honor the People album. Courtesy Casper Lomayesva

Figure 10.4. 

icon of reggae culture and the reggae industry” (Koblah). This lion is undoubtedly Rastafarian, as it has a cross on its head and is carrying a flag of the Rasta colors. The lion is walking over the mesa, suggesting the motion of Rastafarianism coming into Hopiland. The two faces in the mesa suggest that the mesa is alive, that it has agency, and that Hopiland is interacting with the Rasta lion. The feathered mask hanging in the sky belongs to Da-wa, the Sun Kachina. Lomayesva is personally connected to this Kachina: he and the artist are both members of the Sun clan, and he shares a name with the Kachina, Lomada-wa. Feathers stretch from the sun representing sunlight, yet they droop, giving the impression of dreadlocks on the head of the sun (Patterson 228).

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Detail from inside The Sounds of Reality album. Image by Bonnie Seeyouma, courtesy of Casper Lomayesva

Figure 10.5. 

The Kachina image links Hopi religion to Rastafarianism, and is connecting Lomayesva (via his connection to the sun) to both religions as well. Inside the album jacket to The Sounds of Reality is an image of a mesa in a globe-like circle in the universe (image by Bonnie Seeyouma). The spiral design in the lower right corner that turns into a microphone cord is a representation of the Kachina Ho-bo-bo, the whirlwind or breath being. The spiral is a manifestation of breath in the most visible form of wind, a whirlwind (Patterson 250). The breath of the whirlwind, the end of the spiral, turns into a Rastacolored banner, which then becomes a microphone cord. The red, gold, and green banner is in the shape of a Hopi snake image. The snake is, among other things, representative of rain and fertility of the soil (Owusu 63). This is a poignant representation of Lomayesva’s articulations. The image depicts the singer sprinkling rain/music from one hand while holding a microphone in the other.

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The singer is the link between Hopi spiritual/musical rain on the one hand and the Rasta-reggae microphone in (literally) the other hand. It is at this point that other scholars and reporters of Hopi reggae have ended their analysis, concluding that Hopi reggae is a syncretization of two cultures. Koblah states of the album artwork, “Even to the viewer unfamiliar with Hopi iconography, the scene clearly amalgamates elements from the two cultures, positing the singer as the creative source of syncretism between traditional and contemporary urban global musics, between past, present, and future” (Koblah). However, the image suggests that the process does not end here, as the Rastacolored microphone cord then turns into a Hopi image for the breath being. The implication is that breath is flowing through the Rasta cord to be delivered by the singer, or that Rasta-reggae serves as the medium for connecting the singer to Hopi religious tradition and to the place of Hopiland. The singer is not a link between Hopi and reggae, but more accurately, reggae is a link between the singer and tradition. Clifford’s articulation theory elucidates a more nuanced reading of this image than theories of syncretism offer. Whereas syncretism reduces the dynamic process of cultural exchange to a simple combining of elements from different cultures, ignoring how members of one culture understand and implement elements of the other culture on their own terms, “articulation offers a non-reductive way to think about cultural transformation and the apparent coming and going of ‘traditional’ forms” (Clifford 2001 478). The singer, via the non-traditional form of Rasta-reggae, is articulating traditional Hopi religion to the Hopi, while at the same time articulating himself to the Hopi.

Hopi Reggae The New York Times journalist Bruce Weber states, “Ask Hopi under 50 what draws tribe members to reggae, and they use words like ‘relevance’ and ‘identification’” (Weber). He goes on to quote a Hopi woman, Jennifer Joseph, “It’s mostly the lyrics . . . They sing about the same things we feel. They sing about oppression, and we feel that here. And they sing about peace and unity in the world, which is what our religion teaches us. But it’s the beat, too. It has the same feel as our tribal drumming” (Weber). To the casual observer, Indigenous reggae may appear inauthentic. It may be interpreted as a sign that Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples have lost their traditional ways and

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are instead turning to other religious and cultural expressions such as reggae. But it is quite the opposite. Reggae has offered Native Americans an important vehicle for the modern expression of their tradition. Lomayesva engages reggae concepts like Zion, Babylon, and I-and-I to speak to Hopi tradition and address social ills that plague Hopiland. This dynamic process of interacting with another culture and incorporating elements of it into Hopi tradition exemplifies the vibrancy of Native American cultures today. Clifford’s theories of articulated identities provide a conceptual framework for examining Lomayesva’s music. Clifford suggests a more fluid concept of religious interaction than syncretic theories have offered. Articulation is a process of negotiation. This process may be playful, it can be messy, it may be contradictory, and it raises more questions than answers. But this must be expected from a lived engagement with the world. An articulation of Rastafarian-influenced reggae and Hopi tradition brings to light not just a history of reggae influence and appreciation among the Hopi, but also Hopi understandings of their historical positionality in relation to the post-colonial state, and competing claims of authority and tradition. Lomayesva states, “We communicate our culture through our music . . . not all of us are beads and feathers. We have a lot of variety, just like any other culture . . . this [reggae] is good for the community because it represents our culture” (Koblah). Articulations of Hopi tradition and worldview via the medium of reggae do not demonstrate cultural loss. Rather, reggae in Hopiland is a continuation of a long history of a vibrant and dynamic culture. Reggae may not endure in Hopiland forever, its impact may be hard to measure, but through the music of Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva, following in the footsteps of Karen Abeita, Culture Connection, and a people who accepted reggae into their land and homes, reggae will always be a piece of Hopi tradition.

Notes Portions of this chapter previously appeared in a different form in “Rez Riddims: Reggae and American Indians,” American Indians and American Popular Culture: Literature, Arts, and Resistance, edited by Elizabeth DeLaney Hoffman. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011. 241–54. 1. I have followed the work of Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva since 2004. I have interviewed him on multiple occasions and conducted research at his

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concerts. In addition, I have interviewed the founders of Culture Connection (a Hopiland-based reggae association) and Karen Abeita who hosts the Hopi radio reggae show. My primary source for this chapter, however, is Casper’s musical articulations, as well as his album artwork. 2. “Conscious reggae” is a sub-genre of reggae that has a positive message, usually defined through a Rastafarian ethic, and which is distinguished from other forms such as dancehall reggae.

Works Cited Apter, Andrew. “Herskovits’s Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora.” Syncretism in Religion: A Reader. Ed. Anita M. Leopold and Jeppe S. Jensen. London: Equinox, 1991. 160–184. Broder, Patricia. Hopi Painting: The World of the Hopis. New York: Brandywine Press Book, E. P. Dutton, 1978. Clemmer, Richard. Roads in the Sky: The Hopi Indians in a Century of Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Clifford, James. “Indigenous Articulations.” The Contemporary Pacific, Fall. University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. 468–490. ———. “Varieties of Indigenous Experience: Diasporas, Homelands, Sovereignties.” Indigenous Experience Today. Ed. Marisol de la Cadena and Orin Stam. Berg Publishing, 2007. 197–223. Culture Connection. “Reggae Inna Hopiland.” Reggae Beat Magazine, April, 1994. ———. “Relocation: The Half That’s Never Been Told.” Reggae Report 8.2 (1990). ———. “Skankin’ on the Mesa.” Reggae Inna Hopiland Newsletter, Spring (1986). ———. “SunSplash Comes to Hopiland,” Reggae Inna Hopiland Newsletter, Spring (1988). Dockstader, Frederick. The Kachina and the White Man. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. Edmonds, Ennis B. “Dread ‘I’ In-a-Babylon: Ideological Resistance and Cultural Revitalization.” Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader. Ed. Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer, and Adrian Anthony McFarlane. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 23–35. Elston, Catherine. “Culture Connection Brings Jamaica to Arizona.” Daily Sun June (1989).

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Geertz, Armin W. The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Hepner, Randal L. “Chanting Down Babylon in the Belly of the Beast: The Rastafarian Movement in the Metropolitan United States.” Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader. Ed. Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer, and Adrian Anthony McFarlane. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 199–216. Hogan, Shanna. “Native American Recognition Days Offers Look at Culture.” East Valley Tribune November 1 (2007). The Hopi Dictionary Project, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. Hopi Dictionary—Hopìikwa Laváytutuveni. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998. Hutton, Clinton, and Nathaniel Samuel Murrell. “Rastas’ Psychology of Blackness.” Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader. Ed. Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 36–54. Johnson, Greg. Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007. Johnson, Paul. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé. Oxford: University Press, 2002. Keali’inohomoku, Joann. “Music and Dance of the Hawaiian and Hopi Peoples.” Becoming Human Through Music: The Wesleyan Symposium on the Perspectives of Social Anthropology in the Teaching and Learning of Music. Ed. Paul Lehman, William English, and Gerard Knieter. Connecticut: Wesleyan University August 6–10 (1984). Kennard, Edward. Hopi Kachinas, 2nd ed. Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1971. Koblah, Loretta. “Ribbon Shirts in Rasta Colors.” Image and Narrative 22.11 (2005). http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/worldmusicb_advertising/loret tacollinskoblah.htm Kraker, Daniel. “Casper Lomayesva.” The World, BBC World Service, 2007. Loftin, John D. Religion and Hopi Life in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Lomayesva, Casper Loma-da-wa. Brother’s Keeper. Third Mesa Music, 2011. ———. Honor the People. Third Mesa Music, 2004. ———. Original Landlord. Third Mesa Music, 1997. ———. The Sounds of Reality. Third Mesa Music, 2000.

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McLeod, R. “Dreams and Rumors: A History of Book of the Hopi.” Master’s thesis, University of Colorado (1994). Norell, Brenda. “Casper’s Brave Underground Sound.” Indian Country Today January 18 (2005). Owusu, Heike. Symbols of Native America. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1991. Patterson, Alex, Alexander MacGregor Stephen, William Henry Holmes, and Thomas Keam. Hopi Pottery Symbols. Boulder: Johnson Books, 1994. Roskind, Robert. The Beauty Path: A Native American Journey into One Love. Blowing Rock, NC: One Love Press, 2006. Rozemberg, Hernan. “Hopi Message Takes Form of Reggae Beat.” Canku Ota (Many Paths): An Online Newlsetter Celebrating Native America, 26 December (2000). http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues00/C012302000/CO_12302000_Reggae.htm. Sitts, Richard. “Group in Hopi Connects with Reggae Stars.” The Independent, Gallup, New Mexico, 14 September (1989). Smith, Andrea. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005. Steffens, Roger. “Bob Marley: Rasta Warrior.” Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader. Ed. Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer, and Adrian Anthony McFarlane. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 253–265. Talayesva, Don. Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian. Ed. Leo Simmons. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1942. Trepper, Beth. “Reggae Inna Hopiland.” Reggae and African Beat 1.6.5 (1987). Ullestad, Neal. “American Indian Rap and Reggae: Dancing ‘To the Beat of a Different Drummer.’” Popular Music and Society Summer (1999): 63–90. Waters, Frank. Book of the Hopi. New York: Penguin, 1977. Weber, Bruce. “Reggae Rhythms Speak to an Insular Tribe,” New York Times, 19 Sep­tember (1999). http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/19/us/reggae-rhythms -speak-to-an-insular-tribe.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. White, Timothy. Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998. Yaiva, Somana. “Casper and the Mighty 602 Band Take Music to a Higher Level.” Navajo Hopi Observer, Tuesday, 10 July (2007).

11 Blackfire’s Land-Based Ethics The Benally Family and the Protection of Shi Kéyah Hozhoni

Jeff Berglund

B

lackfire, a punk band formed by three siblings—Klee, Jeneda, and Clayson Benally—offered this manifesto on their official website: “‘For Our Children’: These words have been last words, battle cries, compromises, and now these words are ours. How shall we honor them?” Through their art—punk, high-energy rock, traditional dance, and multimedia activism, traveling throughout the Navajo Nation, nationally and internationally— the Benallys remain committed activists in the political struggles facing the Navajo/Diné people. Born in the Black Mesa area, for the Todich’íínii clan, raised in Tuba City and Flagstaff, Arizona, the Benallys have lived their lives immersed in the continuing political struggles facing the Diné people. They are dedicated to the land, to the people’s struggle, and have recorded five CDs, all of them independent releases, three of which received the public acclaim of a Native American Music Award: One Nation Under from 2001, Woody Guthrie Singles from 2004, and Silence Is a Weapon from 2007. Punk, metal, rock, fusion, Ska-influenced “AlterNative,” and “octane-driven punk” are all terms that reviewers have applied to Blackfire’s music, acknowledging that their music recalls the Dead Kennedys, DOA, Sex Pistols, and Nirvana. The siblings were often joined by their father, Jones Benally, a hataalii, a medicine man, who provided backing with traditional elements. In the case of their 2007 two-CD set, Silence Is a Weapon, the four recorded an entire CD featuring traditional songs. The foursome also performed traditional dances as the

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Figure 11.1. 

Blackfire. Photo Credit: Julaire Scott, Courtesy of Blackfire

Jones Benally Family in order to educate and to demonstrate the cultural values that have aided the Diné people’s survival.1 Clayson (drums in Blackfire) feels that education is one of the key roles of music: “Some people may view music as entertainment; but for us it’s more of a form of education where we really have an opportunity to share with people who we are. And of course it tears down all these . . . barriers that exist between cultures” (Dunnaway 191). According to Jeneda (bass and vocals in Blackfire), the band does not consider their work to be activism, although by most accounts, they are political through-and-through.2 As artists in performance—whether it be their traditional dances or recordings, their contributions to symphonies, their work on documentary films, or their original punk music—Blackfire works to educate their listeners about the historical treatment of their Indigenous ancestors and the legacies of these traumas that continue to affect contemporary people (Blackfire, interview).3 Through a rhetoric of resistance and endurance, Blackfire stages sovereignty claims that look toward a common, shared future for

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Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike, but claims that continue to center attention on crises affecting Diné people and their beautiful homeland that was placed within four sacred mountains by the Holy Ones, Diné Bikéyah, shi kéyah hozhoni. Silence Is a Weapon, with its mixture of traditional and contemporary elements and its political center, fully realizes the band’s earliest and deepest influences. As Jeneda noted in a September 2008 interview with me, “First of all, we grew up going to lots of traditional ceremonies where you sing all night in order to heal a patient. And so, with our father we would be there singing all night and learning the traditional songs and the traditional ways. That’s really a core part of our upbringing that singing is a way to heal people that are out of balance, to heal the imbalances and the disharmony in one’s body. And when we were growing up we didn’t have a radio when we were really little. We didn’t even have a radio in the truck and there weren’t radio signals out where we were living. A lot of times we would just sing songs when we were driving down the road” (Blackfire, interview). During my interview, in addition to noting the influence of their father’s songs, they also noted the influence of their mother’s friends from her folksinging days connected to the New York music scene. Klee (guitar and lead vocals in Blackfire) recalled, “We were given a cassette tape by one of our mom’s friends that was a compilation, and it had groups like the Ramones, the Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, a whole bunch of just hardcore ’80s punk. It was [a] huge revelation, really.” Jeneda continued, “It was a huge revelation because in the ’80s a lot of the music you heard on the radio was bubblegum pop and froo-froo hair music and I think that because of the injustices that we were experiencing, that we saw our families experiencing, we knew that reality was not bubblegum and froo-froo and knew that in order to have rights you had to speak out. Part of that, all of that, came through our creative process because even our first songs would be considered political songs.”4 In later years, as serendipity would have it, the group worked on several albums with producer Joey Ramone of the Ramones. That the band traces its early inspirations to punk should surprise few, since, as Greil Marcus has noted, “What remains irreducible about this music is its desire to change the world. The desire is patent and simple, but it inscribes a story that is infinitely complex— as complex as the interplay of the everyday gestures that describe the way the world already works. The desire begins with the demand to live not as an object but as a subject of history—to live as if something actually depended on one’s

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actions—and that demand opens onto a free street” (5). The punk aesthetic and its mode of critique provided a perfect fit for Blackfire’s political sensibilities. In a song such as “Exile,” from One Nation Under, Blackfire explores the confounding notion of being internal exiles, even more confounding for Diné people whose reservation comprises much of the original sacred land, Diné Bikéyah. The lyrics of this song read: and in the pages of your books blood paints the heavens

for all of the lives that you took blood on the hand of time I still hear the screams

the wounds haven’t healed

they’ve massacred my dreams

EXILED IN THE LAND OF THE FREE. (One Nation)

These subjects are returned to repeatedly in the album One Nation Under where the myths of the American nation are dismantled. The cover of the CD features an inverted United States flag with a superimposed Yei Bi Chei, a holy figure, shining bright over the solarized image of the flag. This common signal of distress, I would argue, is both a commentary about the state of affairs in Indian country and a critique of the hypocrisies and contradictions of a purportedly democratic nation. For Diné people, who have endured genocide, deicide, and ecocide, the strength of cultural traditions and the watchful presence of the holy people are reminders of survival and transformative persistence. The title of “What Do You See?,” from One Nation Under, transforms a line from Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner” into a question; the lyrics provide an answer: we see, what we were looking for was right in front of our eyes

you got to hold onto what you might lose

learn what’s not yet forgotten

when you know where you’re from

it’s easier to find where you’re going. it’s your choice to carry on

it’s a part of who you are

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Figure 11.2. 

One Nation Under album cover. Courtesy of Blackfire

sometimes we need to live a little more than we dream

leave this world a better place of unity, in unity. (One Nation Under)

Blackfire’s critique of national hypocrisy is on full display in their ironic subversion of the pledge of allegiance. The title song, “One Nation” begins: coming from the 3rd world born for this cause

buried my heart at the Holocausts one nation under

manipulation, brutalization, domination ONE NATION UNDER

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pushing the 4th word

can’t begin to count the loss

free trade the new gun is raised

and how many lives will it cost? One nation under

assimilation, extermination, annihilation

ONE NATION UNDER shikeyah hozhoni,

what have they done? (One Nation Under)

One Nation Under, of course, plays with the wording of the pledge of allegiance, leaving open multiple possibilities and substitutions for the original phrase, “One Nation Under God”: One Nation Under Manipulation, One Nation Under Brutalization, One Nation Under Domination, One Nation Under Assimilation, One Nation Under Extermination, One Nation Under Annihilation, all of which exhibit end rhyme with “nation.” Under such forces, one nation, the notion of E Pluribus Unum is an empty concept. “Nation” in the phrase “One Nation Under” also refers to the sovereign status of the Navajo Nation, yet highlights the subjugation of one nation by another. This notion is made all the more profound by the question posed to shi kéyah hozhoni (beautiful homeland): “What have they done?” This fight for the homeland did not begin with their generation, as the album dedication notes: “this album is dedicated “‘To those who defend the earth, to all our warriors. Remember all of our ancestors for fighting for us to be here today’” (One Nation Under). In my interview with the band, Klee notes that one of their greatest influences was their early awareness of government-originated injustices that infringed on the sovereignty of Diné people: Where we’re originally from, we grew in part, where our family is from, on Black

Mesa. Where we’re officially from, a lot of our relatives still are living up there, resisting forced relocation which is because of congressional law, part of a politi-

cal land dispute, the so-called Navajo-Hopi land dispute, which ultimately in our view is a resource grab for the coal which is the largest estimated coal deposits in

North America are found underneath that land. Since 1974 14,000 of our people

have been forcibly removed and that number is actually more than doubled now because of the generational impact of relocation policies and we grew up going

to meetings. Our family was just together like that. We grew up experiencing

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situations where our grandmother or our other relatives would just be crying and

be in total distress. There’s a picture in our album insert for One Nation Under. It’s a little kid with a sign that says, “BIA Don’t Kill Me I’m Only Three,” and

that’s me. That was published in a newspaper. Because that’s where our family would take us; that’s what we grew up experiencing, engaged in . . . In our father’s corral, where our father’s homesite still is on the rez is separated by the fence that is supposed to divide the Navajo and the Hopi people. The fence just cuts right through the middle of the corral . . . this political line that was created that has

impacted our life in this way. Our music, we recognize, that our music could be a

vehicle to get this message out there as well and to address this situation even if it’s not completely directly. (Blackfire, interview)

One of their earliest recordings is a song titled, “Fence”: They’re fencing in the horizons We’ll still be here tomorrow

But when you’ve lost your dreams Your freedom will follow A fence divides a people

A people divide themselves The only thing holding up A wall

Are the people who don’t Tear it down. (Blackfire)

This song illustrates the band’s awareness of the human-made tragedies listeners need to learn about and then strategically resist; if listeners don’t stand up and resist, all peoples’ freedoms will be threatened, not only those who are Diné and Hopi. In my interview, Jeneda noted how their family’s artistic sensibilities were inextricably intertwined with a sense of justice and the need to rectify injustices: “And I think that when you grow up in that kind of situation when your eyes are open and you understand what’s happening in the world and you understand what’s happening to the people that you love and the land that you love, you have to speak out because you’re angry and you have people [who] have every right to be angry about relocation and the atrocities and injustices that are happening against people and our land. So, for us, it was kind of natural to

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put that anger into song, into lyrics, into creative expression because we found that we could use music as a tool in order to bring more awareness to what was happening” (Blackfire, interview). In the pursuit of exposing audiences to important ideas and opportunities, Blackfire has toured extensively: countless United States tours, dozens of European tours, tours in Mexico, two sub-Saharan African trips in post-war Mali to a music festival called Concert in the Desert, as well as the U.S. punk tour called Vans’ Warped Tour, and get-out-the-vote concerts around Arizona and specifically on the Navajo reservation.5 Their presence throughout the world joins the Diné people’s causes to other Indigenous peoples’ claims, just as it also redefines Diné people as people of the world with a stake and a voice in global politics and art. Their participation in punk festivals and infrequent performances in what they admit are strange locales—the Grand Ole Opry and the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Oklahoma as the only “plugged in” band—all demonstrate the reach of their performative politics, but also the diversity of their audiences and their vision of potential allies. During 2003–2008 in Flagstaff and northern Arizona, Blackfire was intensely involved with the Save the Peaks Coalition—a broad mobilization of thirteen tribes that hold the San Francisco Peaks or, Dook’o’oosłííd, as a holy place, as well as the Black Mesa Trust and the Grand Canyon Trust—against efforts to make artificial snow from treated wastewater at the Arizona Snowbowl, a ski resort outside of Flagstaff. Klee Benally also produced, wrote, and directed a documentary titled The Snowbowl Effect to promote greater understanding of the issues surrounding this case.6 In August 2008, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a previous court’s ruling that blocked the U.S. Forest Service from allowing the use of reclaimed water to make artificial snow, and announced their decision to allow snowmaking despite the perspective of the tribes that this is would constitute a grave desecration of a very important spiritual place. About this ruling, Klee publicly commented: “Federal land management policies are inconsistent when addressing Native American religious practice relating to sacred places. This case underscores the fact that we need legislative action to guarantee protection for places held holy by Native American tribes . . . The deeply held religious beliefs of hundreds of thousands of citizens of this country have been trumped by a single for profit private business operating on public lands. What I keep wondering is ‘How is that considered justice?’” (Save the Peaks Coalition).7

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During events at protest rallies and press conferences, the group performed “Peaks Song,” now recorded on Silence Is a Weapon. The song specifically focuses on the case in northern Arizona, but it has implications for sacred sites around the world: How can we Have justice

On stolen land? Stolen lives

Testify to human Rights violations

So you want to fight Terrorists?

Well there’s the FBI The CIA and the Forest Service!

What do we want? Justice!

When do want it? Now! (Silence Is a Weapon)

The recorded song manages to retain the energy of live performances, particularly with Clayson giving call-outs through a loudspeaker megaphone at the end of the song. Audiences are encouraged to yell back answers and to carry on the pursuit once they’ve left Blackfire’s concert, or once the song ends on their music player. Notably, the song points out, like the ubiquitous T-shirt that shows Native warriors beneath the slogan, “Fighting Terrorism since 1492”— that Indigenous peoples are terrorized by the United States and its federal agencies.8 The real terrorist threat lives among us, not abroad in the caves of Afghanistan or northern Pakistan. In my interview, the band members discussed in-depth their experiences writing and recording “NDN/Alien,” with original lyrics written by folk musician Peter La Farge in the 1960s (referenced in chapters five and six). The song resonates for the band because of regional concerns, most specifically their experiences working in Flagstaff, Arizona, a reservation border town. Working from a half-minute clip of lyrics, the band built a refrain from La Farge’s refrain-less song and set the existing lyrics to their own original music: “I’m an Indian, I’m an alien, I’m a / Stranger in this town” (Silence Is a Weapon). Each

188  Jeff Berglund

member spoke about the relevance of this song to the issues facing Native people in northern Arizona. Jeneda, for example, notes, “NDN/Alien” definitely speaks to the racism that still exists and that [we] as Indigenous people, inhabitants in a land of freedom, have to continuously strug-

gle for any kind of equality, here in our own homeland we are treated badly, as less than human beings. Even in my lifetime, women were still being sterilized with-

out their knowledge. Even today people are being tested on by pharmaceutical

companies. That song speaks, even though it was recorded before we were born, to our own experiences today because in our own homeland we’re treated as if this isn’t our own land. “Peaks Song” is a call to action to get people to take notice that sacred sites—just because the land is off reservation boundaries, doesn’t mean that it holds no purpose for us. Reservation boundaries were created by

the government, not by our people. Even here in Flagstaff this is our traditional homeland. Our story, our history, that traces our family back to where NAU’s campus is. Our family was chased out of there by the city of Flagstaff, by the

colonizers. It’s interesting because some people who are non-Native say, “Why

don’t you just get over it?” But this is recent history. These are new wounds, not something that is buried in the past, but something that our parents and our grandparents still talk about because they’re feeling the effects. It’s something we

should be talking about, Native or non-Native. We should all be talking about the injustices that are happening in the community because that’s what is affecting us. (Blackfire, interview)

Blackfire’s 2007 album Silence Is a Weapon makes this as explicit as possible. The band likes to refer to this album as their “concept album” because of the thematic organization of songs, the two-CD format, the album art and the carefully designed liner booklets, as well the recycled cardboard CD case with intricate four-panel design and cut-outs. Designed by Klee Benally with Chris Ahtone (Kiowa), the artwork includes striking images of Chief Black Kettle and his men surveying modern ruins, which Klee says are actually photographs of Lebanon, but also meant to evoke the ruins of the World Trade Center. In my interview, Klee explained that they want their listeners to consider the meaning of these images: [A]re these images from global warming, global disaster, from human destruc-

tion? My point in approaching it, especially here, north of Flagstaff, people are

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so used to going to places like Wupatki and seeing these ruins, so used to looking

at our ruins, what if they were here looking at their ruins with some historical

perspective and how does that challenge people? To me, when you say “silence

is a weapon,” and we look at where that is coming from, there’s a lot we could talk about, that’s part of the reason, it’s just to have that reverence and to stop and consider the other side and to really consider the historical context we exist

within and the challenges we all face within this civilization and the solutions we have to come up with together. (Blackfire, interview)

The CD’s middle four-panel spread is a panoramic view of Navajo lands in northern Arizona, with a hogan in the foreground, standing strong in comparison to the crumbling U.S. Capitol building seen sinking in the background. Within the album inserts, we see other images linked to this narrative: Hopi women looking at a crashed satellite, broken fences, a Native woman paddling a round boat through flood waters in a contemporary city (meant to imply New Orleans), armed Native men in front of the U.S. Capitol building, and mountains of wreckage, electrical towers. All of this is overlaid with images of members of Blackfire holding fingers to their lips, implying silenced voices, but with a clear acknowledgment that the silencing finger is akin to a weapon, a weapon that won’t be tolerated and that can be dismantled with strong voices, a notion supported by photographs of band members with megaphones and loudspeakers, and signs that read, “End All Wars and Occupations.” The album insert that includes summaries of each of the traditional songs features images of the Benally family in traditional dress amid photographs of important landmarks in Dinétah, agave plants, corn, as well as a collage from their years of performing, an interesting contrast that reminds us how their work sustains and is continuous, not separate from tradition. As I’ve mentioned, one CD includes traditional works as well as the AIM song; liner notes explain that the Benally family has passed these songs down through the generations and looks back to their “great, great, great grandfather Haastin O’iníí, the man that can see, would tell people where to go find things. He had a special vision. He was a warrior and had many different songs because he trained warriors. Many of these traditional songs we sing are for him. These songs are for dances and the social aspect of these warrior ceremonies. These songs are a little different than the originals because we are not sharing the sacred songs. These are parts of the chants allowable to be recorded and heard

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by the public. Actual ceremonial songs are only used for the patient and ceremony” (Silence Is a Weapon). The other CD includes music by Blackfire that also incorporates traditional elements, but most of the songs are focused more obviously on contemporary crises and are intent on reaching contemporary listeners. Tellingly, neither CD is numbered—something the band did intentionally to force listeners to make choices and to question the role of tradition in shaping contemporary songs and expression. They want listeners to be engaged in a dialogue with the past, present, and future. This point is made explicitly, as well, with the inclusion of an epilogue at the beginning of one CD, and a prologue at the end of another. In the interview, Klee explained, the CD’s overall story: ...

it relates to the way that we still are maintaining our traditional and cultural heri-

tage, but we’re walking in this modern world that some people say is separate from a traditional. But it’s one world, crossed by different paths. I wish we could have had all the songs on one disk, but they wouldn’t fit. In this case, we integrated, as a

choice, showing differences, but also commonalities. We were hoping that people

would look at both CDs in the same way, with the same context. “Peaks Song” is

just a continuation of our warrior songs on the traditional disc, calling people to action, acknowledging that we need to come together, we need to inspire each other to be able to have that energy, through those prayers. (Blackfire, interview)

In song after song, this fusion of tradition and contemporary expression boldly counters the violent force of silence and repression. As listeners move through Blackfire’s tracks on Silence Is a Weapon, they move from songs about alienation, to an awareness that protection of sacred sites is about human rights, to a recognition of our common futures and shared histories of oppression. In a song called “Common Ground,” inspired by Hurricane Katrina, they sing: Let’s break these chains let’s unchain our hands and reach for

common ground. (“Common Ground” Silence Is a Weapon)

One of the last songs on the Blackfire-only CD from Silence, “Uprising,” explores how a recognition of historical traumas and wrongs can embolden resistance and remind us of the ancestors’ strengths: Blood paves the history of:

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the amerikan dream

From the long walk, the trail of tears to

wounded knee.

no compromise, no compliance

a rhythm of resistance they

could never [silence]. (Silence Is a Weapon)

Blackfire frames these historical issues in the resilience and fortitude of the ancestors, by looking at survival and endurance as evidence of strength in body, mind, and spirit, not to mention voice. Just as Blackfire’s ancestors resisted, so must we. A testament to the strength of the grandparents and to their ways as the way to a harmonious future is found in “Stand Strong”: need our hands, lay to rest our skeletons calm the nightmares of our children

need our feet, so we don’t die on our knees, so that we can fight for our liberty

STAND STRONG, FOLLOW YOUR HEART need our eyes, so that we can find, this dark cloud’s silver lie

need our hearts, calm the aching of these scars before we forget, who we are I am not your memory

I am not sure that you can see me past the hate and greed I am not your enemy

STAND STRONG, FOLLOW YOUR HEART need our hands, hold onto what we can

no compromise! defend our sacred land

STAND STRONG, FOLLOW YOUR HEART STAND STRONG. (One Nation Under)

Each part of the body is needed, is honored, is recognized as the source of strength, of persistence, as a way to overcome the past tragedies—lay to rest our skeletons—to overcome the force of trauma—calm the nightmares of our

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children—to trust the power of our hearts to bestow compassion. The lyrics reveal that strength will come from a bodily integrity—all of its constituent parts, with obvious parallels to a body politic, be it the Navajo Nation or the United States, a point that is made in the album’s welcome message: “This is a call to all people of all walks of life—our struggles are intertwined. We are all affected. We are all related, there is no denying that our pasts and our futures are connected . . . Learn all you can, question all you can, understand, and stand up for what you believe. We must see past our differences. We must communicate, learn to respect one another, and work together” (One Nation Under). Many of the group’s songs speak to a sense of disillusionment, to angst, ennui, nihilistic impulses, feelings that many young people feel, and that can be common among Indigenous youth in the face of dominant culture’s neglect. “Many Farms,” from One Nation Under, for example, explores the impossibility of sustaining interest, concern for anything, the daily concerns of living, much less the larger political concerns: I think I’ll try now I won’t give in

I’m so tired now

give me a reason break a scene

burn something

it’ll all come back to me break a scene

burn something

it’ll all come back to me

YOU DON’T CARE. (One Nation Under)

It also highlights how destructive impulses often emerge from the space of this emptiness, in an attempt to find a reason to get over feeling so tired. Their work offers such deep insights into contemporary existential ennui, and the yearning for meaning and connection, that sociologist Donna Gaines even makes reference to Blackfire in her book Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids (Gaines 273). Similar points are made in other songs from One Nation Under: “Lying to Myself ” and “Someone Else’s Nightmare.” The latter, “Someone Else’s Nightmare,” builds upon a sustained motif about dreams and the ironic meaning of the American Dream being unfulfilled, being in actuality a nightmare;

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this is contrasted repeatedly with the possibility of still being able to dream, to think of a better future, to move beyond the world that sleep—ignorance and neglect—has brought about. Such psychic pain is connected to genocide, racism, to political disenfranchisement, to the ironies of American democracy. According to Eduardo and Bonnie Duran, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart and Susan Yellow Horse-Davis, in “Healing the American Indian Soul Wound”: Historical trauma is more complex than surface exploration would reveal. His-

torical trauma is trauma that is multigenerational and cumulative over time; it extends beyond the life span. Historical trauma response has been identified and

is delineated as a constellation of features in reaction to the multigenerational, collective, historical, and cumulative psychic wounding over time, both over

the life span and across generations (Brave Heart-Jordan, 1995; Brave Heart, in

press a). Mourning that has not been completed and the ensuing depression are absorbed by children from birth on (Shoshan, 1989). Unresolved trauma also has been found to be intergenerationally cumulative, thus compounding the subse-

quent health problems of the community (Solomon, Kotler, & Mikulincer, 1988; Brave Heart, in press b). (Duran et al. 342)

Blackfire’s work corroborates and gives name to collectively experienced historical trauma. Listeners recognize their own experiences, and find in the example of Blackfire a model of strength and renewed commitment to cultural traditions and, sometimes, political engagements. Comments posted by audiences of Blackfire make this more than evident: on a website that promotes the sale of their albums, fans have written: “It’s cool to see Natives making it out there!!! Keep up the good work!”; “I think you wake up old poems or songs [and] you know the power in writing is knowledge passed on to the fresh minds of today”; and, “This cd is awesome, and powerful. It speaks out against government corruption and greed. It speaks out against injustice and violence. Blackfire has talent, and this album is deeply connected to Beauty. Keep on going Blackfire! You are awesome!” (cdbaby.com). During their traditional performances with their father, when they sing and dance in traditional forms, they claim to be less overtly politically engaged. Nonetheless, the Jonas Benally Family demonstrates the persistence, strength, and survival of essential cultural traditions. Clayson noted in my interview that the Benally Family does not shy away from potentially awkward or uncomfortable situations:

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We definitely challenge ourselves and go into places we know where there are

people with preconceived notions. We’ve gone into the Karl May Festival in Germany where there’s this author who wrote about romanticized visions of Indig-

enous people, all completely purely fiction, what Europeans understand as truth. So, we went into this festival knowing there would be people dressed up at Native Americans, the worst kinds of images that you could imagine. We went there

because we knew we had an obligation to go in and educate people and confront that, to call it, to tell what it is—it’s a negative stereotype that you might think you’re respecting and honoring Indigenous people, it’s really doing a disservice

to us. If you want to see and understand real aspects of our culture, we’ll educate you. (Blackfire, interview)

When they schedule traditional performances, they also try to book gigs for Blackfire, to confound stereotypical notions of who contemporary Native people are. As Jeneda states, “We try to do as many performances together with our dances and our band so we can show people that our culture is still alive—that’s really important, first of all. It’s also something that we’re carrying on. Through our music showing why it’s so amazing that our culture is still being carried on because there are so many struggles. We really want to inspire people to learn about their own cultures as well” (Blackfire, interview). Blackfire’s music encourages listeners to bear witness to historical and continuing traumas, as part of personal and cultural recovery, but also to ensure that a politically engaged populace carries on the struggle of previous generations. By bearing witness, initially to psychic, emotional, and spiritual senses of disharmony, much of which can be linked to systems of oppression and their legacies, Blackfire enables their listeners to build a platform of resistance and empowerment to ensure that Diné people and their sacred homeland, Diné Bikéyah, persists. These goals are linked to the efforts of their ancestors who always kept in mind future generations: for Blackfire, empowerment through political liberation is characterized as the best way to simultaneously honor the past and the future. As of 2012–2013, Blackfire had disbanded as a group though they each continue to exert their influence as Earth-centered Indigenous advocates and musicians and artists, remaining incredibly active in their fight against the use of reclaimed water on Dook’o’oosłííd. In 2013, Klee Benally released a new acoustic album, Respect Existence or Expect Resistance with supporting music videos. The song list could certainly serve as a primer to Indigenous environmental activism and very clearly fulfills the CD’s dedication: “To all those who fight fiercely in

Figure 11.3. 

Klee Benally. Photo credit: Theo Koppen

Respect Existence or Expect Resistance album cover. Art and photo by Jetsonorama, courtesy of Klee Benally

Figure 11.4. 

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defense of Mother Earth, against colonization, and oppression in all its forms.” About performing without his band-mates and playing acoustically, Klee notes, “I think there’s an amazing history of folk music where you just use your acoustic guitar and voice to express your concerns about what’s happening in the world. It’s a very raw and very, in some ways, intimate experience just playing acoustic. I like that intimacy and rawness. It’s that realness you could have with just the acoustic” (Silversmith). About the focus of the tracks on the CD and its title, Klee explains, “We have to respect our existence and our life with Mother Earth or we have to understand things will not work out for us as human beings on this planet . . . we can’t just continue to exploit the earth” (Silversmith). Jeneda and Clayson continue to work together as Sihasin, traveling and performing extensively, and have also released music videos. Sihasin, a Navajo word meaning “hope and assurance,” guides the duo as they create music “as a healing tool and vehicle to just inspire and give strength back to our people” (MacNeill).9 Through their music and their efforts to conduct music workshops for youth, like their sibling Klee, Jeneda and Clayson continue to forge artistic pathways

Figure 11.5. 

Sihasin. Photo credit: Clayson Benally

Bl ackfire’ s L and-Ba sed E thics  197

for future generations to develop a sustaining and supportive relationship with Mother Earth and, for the Diné, with shi kéyah hozhoni.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Klee, Jeneda, Clayson, and the Benally family for their generosity and open hearts. Ahe’hee’.

Notes Reprinted, with additional updates and changes, from the American Indian Performing Arts: Critical Directions, edited by Hanay Geiogamah & Jaye Darby, by permission of the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA © 2009 Regents of the University of California. 1. David Samuels, in his book, Putting a Song on Top of It, explains that for Indigenous people, “part of the enduring power of [traditions] comes from the possibility of their strategic reinvention in order to speak strongly in new social and political contexts” (5). When I use the term traditional, I hope that readers understand, as David Samuels suggests, that tradition evolves and adapts and is put in the service of new contexts. 2. During our interview, Jeneda explained, “I haven’t ever, ever considered myself to be an activist. I was quite surprised the first time somebody called me an activist. The way that I see it is that I’m somebody who cares. I care about community, I care about our environment, I care about what decisions we make and what we will be leaving for our future generations. I think that tool our parents ingrained in us. I know that I’m going to be a musician for the rest of my life, but I don’t know that I’m going to be sixty and touring in a Punk band” (Blackfire). This is in marked contrast to music journalist Brian Wright-McLeod’s characterization: they are “Activists in the truest sense” (Wright-McLeod 61). Anyone following developments around artificial snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona will consider the members of Blackfire to be activists. In August 2011, Klee handcuffed himself to bulldozers in a peaceful (prayerful) protest/gathering in a stand against “desecration and ecocide” (Klee Benally). 3. www.Blackfire.net. Readers unfamiliar with the band’s music will find some free samples available at this site. 4. In my interview, Jeneda noted, “We’ve also done a project with the symphony called Triumph. That premiered here in Flagstaff. We performed with it also in

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Alaska and we’re hoping to tour with it. A full symphony orchestra with modern dance as well. The idea was to bring our culture to a different audience. Usually we have our traditional dances, our rock music, and we thought, a symphony, how else could we reach out to a different audience to educate who we are, and how as Diné people we’re still carrying on our culture as well” (Blackfire, interview). See also Dawnell Smith and Charles M. Spining. 5. Blackfire’s music has been critiqued for not fulfilling expectations of Native performers. For example, a review of One Nation for World Music Central notes: “I admire the group’s passion and dedication yet, their music would be more intriguing if they added more traditional instrumentation to their songs and evolved past their heavily charged lyrics. After all, there are many compassionate people in the world such as myself that also believe in human rights and do not wish to be barraged by angry words. Gentle spirits can evoke change too” (“NavajoDiné Punk”). To such a review, I have four observations: 1) the so-called angry words reveal real, powerful emotions, complicated emotional traumas stemming from genocide and political and economic disenfranchisement, that deserve outlet. The label “angry” is too often a deflection from what’s really uncomfortable: the truth. Labeling an Indian person, writer, student, activist, or musician as angry casts them as unreasonable, as emotionally unruly, as illegitimate, as easy to dismiss; 2) this reviewer implies that these Navajo performers should be more traditional, less harsh, abrasive, and more beautiful, with little recognition of the transcendent pleasure that the intensity of punk can offer in its frenetic energy; 3) this reviewer assumes that Blackfire should move beyond politically charged rhetoric with little insight into the personal, ideological, and tribal implications of the group’s sustained focus; and; 4) finally, this reviewer assumes that Blackfire’s aim is to reach all compassionate people with a gentle message. I would argue that their aim is quite different; while hoping to build bridges across cultures, to encourage all listeners to learn to tear down the walls that divide, they are primarily interested in bearing witness to the emotional experiences of Diné and other Native youth by using tools that they feel drawn to, and talents that they have cultivated. See my essay, “Facing the Fire.” 6. Short films related to their concerts in Mali and their work to get out the vote can be seen on the DVD side of Beyond Warped. Another brief live performance and brief video interview can be found in J. L. Nizon’s Navajo Springtime. 7. Klee continues to make politically oriented films such as one on Dooda Desert Rock and the planned development of the Desert Rock Power Plant by Sithe Global Power LLC through Indigenous Action Media, which he founded.

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He is also instrumental in facilitating the Outta Your Backpack Media project (Indigenous Youth Workshops and Resource Distribution) with youth at Táala Hooghan, a center Klee Benally also runs on Flagstaff ’s east side. See www.indigenousaction.org/backpack/ and www.myspace.com/taalahooghan. In addition to his solo work, he is directing a feature-length film, Power Lines, in production in 2015. 8. At a small meeting I attended in June 2005 with several university colleagues and Nora Rasure, supervisor of the Coconino National Service, Lomayumtewa Ishii, assistant professor of history at Northern Arizona University, shared this perspective: “Indigenous people have intimate knowledge of geographical and geological areas where they derive their strength. One of these places is the San Francisco Peaks. For many tribes, these mountains represent much more than a religious place . . . Many tribal origins include the peaks as a significant and critical entity within various Indigenous epistemologies. These epistemologies are still in use and have become guiding factors for tribal survival in today’s world” (Ishii). Klee Benally’s CD, Respect Existence or Expect Resistance (2013), focuses sustained attention on protests related to the progression of artificial snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks. 9. At the duo’s website, Sihasin, pronounced “See-ha-szin,” they note that this word in Diné means “to think with hope and assurance. The process of making critical affirmative action of thinking, planning, becoming experienced and confident to adapt.”

Works Cited Benally, Klee. “Direct Action to Protect Holy Peaks Continues.” Indigenous Action Media. 14 August 2011. Web. ———. Respect Existence or Expect Resistance. Indigenous Action Media, 2013. CD. Berglund, Jeff. “Facing the Fire: American Indian Literature and the Pedagogy of Anger.” American Indian Quarterly 27 no. 1 and 2 (2003): 80–90. Print. Beyond Warped: Live Music Series, Immergent, 2005. DVD. Blackfire. Beyond Warped: Live Music Series, Immergent, 2005. CD. ———. Blackfire, Tacoho Productions, 1994. CD. ———. Interview by author, Táala Hooghan, Flagstaff, Arizona, 21 September 2008. ———. One Nation Under, Tacoho Records, 2001. CD. ———. Silence Is a Weapon, Tacoho Publishing, 2007. CD. ———. The Woody Guthrie Singles, Tacoho Publishing, 2003. CD.

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www.cdbaby.com. Reviews of One Nation Under are no longer available. Web. Dunnaway, David King, and Molly Beer. Singing Out: An Oral History of America’s Folk Music Revivals. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print. Duran, Eduardo, Bonnie Duran, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, and Susan Yellow Horse-Davis, “Healing the American Soul Wound,” International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, ed. Yael Danieli. New York: Plenum, 1998. Print. Gaines, Donna. Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids (with a New Afterword). 1991. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Print. Ishii, Lomayumtewa. “The San Francisco Peaks: A Matter of Perspectives and Purpose.” Unpublished White Paper, 15 June 2005, presented to Nora Rasure, supervisor of the Coconino National Forest Service, during our meeting in June 2005. Print. Kahn-Egan, Seth. “Pedagogy of the Pissed: Punk Pedagogy in the First-Year Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 49.1 (February 1998). Print. MacNeill, Harper. “Chasing Hope: An Exclusive Interview with International Hit Rock Band Sihasin.” Canyon Voices (Spring 2014). Web. Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1989. Print. “Navajo-Diné Punk.” World Music Central, 23 October 2003. Web. Navajo Springtime, dir. J.L. Nizon, Paris: Pour Voir Production, 2004, videocassette. Samuels, David. Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. Print. Save the Peaks Coalition, “Court Reverses Decision Protecting Environmental & Cultural
Integrity of San Francisco Peaks:
 Tribes & Environmental Groups Affirm Commitment to Protect Holy Mountain.” Web. Silversmith, Shondiin. “New Solo Album a Soundtrack for Indigenous Activism.” Navajo Times. 17 Oct. 2013. Web. Smith, Dawnell. “’Triumph,’ Well Rocked,” Anchorage Daily News, 22 January 2007. Web. The Snowbowl Effect, dir. Klee Benally, Indigenous Action Media, 2006. DVD. Spining, Charles M. “Flag Symphony Performance Truly a Triumph,” Arizona Daily Sun, 12 March 2006. Web. Wright-McLeod, Brian. The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. Print.

12 A Reading of Eekwol’s Apprentice to the Mystery as an Expression of Cree Youth’s Cultural Role and Responsibility Gail A. MacKay

O

in November 2005, an envelope was opened in a darkened auditorium, and the words spoken reached out across the land to Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan. No doubt Lindsay Knight’s family was watching the televised Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards that night and would have felt elated to hear her being honored with the award for Best Rap or Hip Hop Album. The poetry of a young Cree woman reverberated with her contemporary listening audience and connected them to current, historical, and timeless realities. Knight, who goes by the name Eekwol in her professional work, presented the album Apprentice to the Mystery, which can be read as an expression of youth’s role and responsibility in Cree culture. This article lays out an appreciation of her artistic and critical contribution by first establishing an understanding of the social context of Cree youth in Saskatchewan, then highlighting relevant points of Cree history, social structure, and values that orient an interpretation of youth’s role and responsibility. The article turns to close readings of two tracks from the album and interprets the poet’s critical social commentary grounded in Cree and Anishinaabe values and experience. At the outset of this exploration, some clarification about identifiers and identity should be made. The terms Aboriginal, Indigenous, and Native, though nuanced, are used interchangeably in this writing to identify descendants of the n a chilly Toronto evening

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Figure 12.1. 

Eekwol. Photo credit: Aloys Fleischmann

original inhabitants of the territory that is now bounded by Canadian borders. These terms as they are used here include people who are status Indians (federally recognized), non-status Indians, Métis, and Inuit. The term Aboriginal, drawn from the definition of aboriginal peoples in the Canadian Constitution 1982, Section 35 (02), is used in government and academic writing. The term Indigenous calls attention to people’s ancestral belonging to the land that transcends colonial history. Native is also a term that avoids the restrictions of legal definitions. Of these three, Indigenous and Native are more commonly used by individuals to self-identify and make reference to an “inclusive we.” The term First Nations is a self-naming term that identifies individuals previously identified as status Indians, the sociopolitical collectives previously identified as bands, and their reserved lands.1

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The identities of indigenous peoples of the northern plains in Saskatchewan are more complex than can be characterized by single tribal names. This complexity is in part due to the shared cultural kinship patterns of the Cree, Saulteaux (a dialect of Anishinaabe), Métis, Assiniboine, Dakota, and Lakota.2 It is also due to historical, military, political, and, more importantly, social alliances that made it possible for them to understand each other’s languages, participate in each other’s ceremonies, intermarry, and build multicultural bands.3 During the past century, multilingual ability has declined with each generation, and increasingly there is a tendency to narrow the indigenous identity to a single tribal identity (McLeod). The risk of permitting this to go unchallenged is to disregard the rich multicultural heritage of mixed bands, and to develop tunnel vision when isolating and simplifying an understanding of cultural practices and philosophies. Muskoday First Nation, like many First Nations in southern Saskatchewan, has a multicultural heritage. In the online Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan, Thompson writes, “Ancestors of Muskoday First Nation . . . were from St. Peters Reserve, a Saulteaux reserve near Selkirk Manitoba,” and they traveled in the 1800s to the present location of the reserve prior to signing Treaty Six. Muskoday First Nation is commonly identified as a Cree First Nation, and its website shows that the languages spoken are Cree and English (Muskoday First Nation, Official Home Page). Saulteaux cultural heritage is harmonious with Cree cultural values, but it is also a living part of the people’s ceremonial life and teaching. Acknowledging the Cree and Saulteaux heritage of the Muskoday First Nations answers why it is valid to make reference to Saulteaux cultural teachings in order to expand understanding of the Cree philosophy of youth’s role and responsibility. This is highlighted by Muskoday First Nation’s publication of Saulteaux traditional teachings recounted by Dr. Danny Musqua and authored by Diane Knight. The topic of Saulteaux and Cree cultural values is explained in more detail in the section on Cree history, social structure, and values of youth.

Social Context of Cree Youth in Saskatchewan Statistics that describe Aboriginal youth’s lives at the turn of the twenty-first century in Saskatchewan show trends of low income and low educational attainment, unemployment and poverty, core housing needs, mobility and homelessness, and exploitation and alienation. Youth age range is variously set

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to be between fifteen and twenty-five years, thirteen and twenty-nine years, and eighteen and twenty-four years by Statistics Canada, national Aboriginal organizations, and federal programs, respectively (Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples). The Canadian Council on Social Development examined the growing poverty rates of Aboriginal children in urban areas and reported in 2003 that 52 percent of all Aboriginal children were poor, and that the Aboriginal population was young. In 2001 one-third of the national Aboriginal population was aged fourteen years or younger (Canadian Council on Social Development). During the last thirty years or more, there has been a significant shift of Aboriginal population from reserves to the cities. Examples are the Cowessess First Nation in which 80 percent of band members live off reserve, and Muskoday First Nation in which, of the approximately twelve hundred band members, more than six hundred live off reserve. Mobility patterns are noted in numerous research reports that indicate Aboriginal people change residence at a higher rate than non-Aboriginal people. Norris and Jantzen refer to this urban-rural mobility as “churn” and argue that it is motivated by people moving to maintain family and cultural relationships (179–93). Statistics from the 1996 and 2001 censuses provide the following statistical snapshot of Aboriginal people in Saskatchewan in the time frame that Eekwol was writing and recording her album. Although the 2006 census indicates some improvements, the trends remained the same (Saskatchewan Trends Monitor). In Saskatoon, where 9.1 percent of the city population was Aboriginal, 37 percent of that population was between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four years and was likely caring for 38 percent of the population between the ages of zero and fourteen years. The scope of social and economic disparity is indicated by the 1996 census statistics for Saskatoon: 22.5 percent of the poor population in Saskatoon was Aboriginal. 64.9 percent of the Aboriginal identity population lives in poverty. 51.3 percent of the Aboriginal population earned less than $10,000. 55 percent of Aboriginal youth lived below

the low-income cutoff. 25.1 percent of the Aboriginal population was unemployed

(3.7 times the rate of non-Aboriginal population). 45 percent of Aboriginal youth

had jobs. 48.1 percent of the adult Aboriginal population had less than grade

twelve education. 10.8 percent of the Aboriginal population was a lone parent. (Statistics Canada)

Add to this the fact that Aboriginal people have been the victims of violent crimes at a disproportionate rate. In 1997, for example, 42 percent of victims

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in Prince Albert and Regina were Aboriginal compared to their 10 percent proportion of the population in these Saskatchewan cities (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics). Aboriginal children were disproportionately represented among the sexually exploited children in Saskatchewan (Department of Justice). First Nations women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four years were five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence (Indian and Northern Affairs). These numbers reckon an implicit contemporary orthodoxy of social and economic marginalization for many Aboriginal youth in Saskatchewan. Not surprisingly the atmosphere is racially charged: Aboriginal youth feel judgment and suspicion directed toward them, and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parents fear for the safety of their children. Real estate agents steer clients to neighborhoods away from the concentration of Native residents. In news media and social policy reports, we can hear the calls from the mainstream middle class for the judicial system to subdue, and for the social welfare system to rescue Aboriginal youth. This is reality. The following section describes the historical and social foundation of youth’s resistance.

Cree History, Social Structure, and Values of Youth David Mandelbaum’s The Plains Cree provides a history of the Plains Cree and situates their origin in the forested area between Lake Superior and Hudson’s Bay. His account of the Woodland Cree’s western expansion as a consequence of the fur trade is challenged by contemporary historians’ and archaeologists’ interpretations, but this debate does not concern the discussion here except to note the geographical distribution of strong linguistic similarities of the various dialects of Cree spoken in parkland, plains, and woodlands territories from British Columbia through Alberta and Saskatchewan, to the woodland territories of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Likewise there are strong similarities between the dialects of Anishinaabe (a sister language to Cree), which are spoken in Saskatchewan, Montana, North Dakota, Manitoba, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario.4 Mendelbaum states that it is known from fur traders’ reports that as early as 1730, Plains Cree hunted buffalo and fought against the Blackfoot for hunting territory, revenge, and prestige. The Plains Cree bands suffered in the 1800s due to smallpox epidemics, the decimation of the buffalo, and the intrusion of the Canadian state. It was in a dire shortage of

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food that Cree, Saulteaux, and Assiniboine bands signed Treaties Four and Six in Saskatchewan in 1874 and 1876 (Arnot). In the pre-treaty era, the Plains Cree organized themselves into small mobile bands of people related through kinship ties. The chief ’s authority relied upon his persuasive oratory and the respect given him for his demonstrated virtues of bravery, wisdom, kindness, and generosity. No one was obliged to follow his leadership and anyone could choose to leave the band to join another band at any time. There were social organizations of the Worthy Young Men Society and the Warrior Society. A man’s membership in these societies was by invitation based on recognition of his achievements and abilities to serve the well-being of the band. Membership carried status and responsibilities for protection and provisioning. Following the signing of the treaty, the Plains Cree settled on lands they reserved for themselves. The Indian Act was Canadian federal legislation passed in 1876 that consolidated all previous legislation dealing with Indians and Indian lands. From 1885 to 1920, the Indian Act was routinely amended and increasingly used to control every aspect of Indians’ lives. Among the most destructive to Cree society were the amendments that controlled the political leadership of the band and the socialization of children. The Christian churches functioned as colonial agents by administering the residential schools that the Indian Act legislated Indian children must attend. Fundamental to the political and social organization of the Cree is the principle of personal autonomy. Under the stresses of colonial oppression, this ethic of autonomy was transformed in Cree people’s minds to be a vice. Cree leaders perceive this transformation as the undoing of the integrity of Cree communal life. In the biography of John Tootoosis, the authors recount their interviews with the remarkable leader of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, and report his dismay at some Cree people’s acceptance of the categories of “good Indians” and “trouble-makers.” In this culturally oppressed view, “good Indians” were those who were compliant and obedient; “trouble-makers” were those who questioned the authority of Indian agents, laws passed into the Indian Act, and the Canadian government’s reneging on treaty promises (Sluman and Goodwill). In a similar vein, Reverend Edward Ahenakew, from Atahkakoop First Nation, wrote a condemnation of the harm inflicted by the residential schools in Voices of the Plains Cree: “For those who do live, who do survive and who graduate from the school at the age of eighteen, during every day of their training they have acted under orders. Nothing they did was without supervision. . . . They never needed to use their own mind and wills. They came to

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think that it would be wrong if they went their own way. Now discipline and expediency in life are good, but will and initiative are better” (Ahenakew 90). This value of autonomy is integral to the fulfillment of youth’s responsibility in their stage of life. This is well documented in Cree and Anishinaabe sources. The Plains Cree and Anishinaabe have strong parallels in history, territory, language, and culture. Archaeologists collected, during the 1960s and 1970s, a large volume of Blackduck pottery, a Late Woodland ware (ca. 0–AD 1600), in the vicinity of Muskoday Reserve (Frey, Hanna & Hanna Meyer). This discovery supports the understanding that Cree and Anishinaabe people have had a long history of sharing territory. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tanner recorded the ways that Plains Cree and Ojibway shared material culture, such as the horse, fishing, maple and box-elder sugar, and ceremonies, such as the Sun Dance and the Midewiwin (Tanner, Helen Hornbeck). In more recent history, Plains Cree and Saulteaux bands together signed Treaty Four and Treaty Six with the Crown. Saskatchewan First Nations such as Cowessess, Gordon, Muskowekwan, Pasqua, Piapot, Poundmaker, Sakimay, Saulteaux, and Whitebear were known as mixed bands because there were sufficient numbers of Cree and Saulteaux families constituting the community (Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre). Consequently, intermarriages occurred, which facilitated further cultural sharing and blending. The languages are mutually intelligible, though fluent speakers say that it takes two or three days of immersion to be able to converse with each other. Linguistic similarities between Cree and Anishinaabe correspond to a shared philosophy of life. An example to illustrate this is in the Plains Cree word mino-pimatisiwin and the Anishinaabe word bimaadiziwin to refer to the idea of “the good life.” Michael Hart, a social worker at Fisher River Cree First Nation in Manitoba, uses the concept of mino-pimatisiwin as a model for helping Aboriginal people in his practice. He defines the terms as meaning a life of personal healing, learning, and growth: the good life (Hart). The ethic of personal autonomy and the principle of mino-pimatisiwin provide insight into cultural understanding of youth’s role and responsibility. Lawrence Gross explains the philosophical significance of the concept of bimaadiziwin in Anishinaabe philosophy. The teaching of bimaadiziwin operates at many levels. On a simple day-today basis, it suggests such actions as rising with the sun and retiring with the same. Further, bimaadiziwin governs human relations as well, stressing the type of conduct appropriate between individuals, and the manner in which social life

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is to be conducted. Bimaadiziwin also covers the relationship with the broader environment. So for example, it teaches the necessity of respecting all life, from the smallest insects on up. Bimaadiziwin, however, does not exist as a definitive body of law. Instead it is left up to the individual to develop wherever it can be found. This makes the term quite complex, and it can serve as a religious blessing, moral teaching, value system, and life goal (Gross). The idea of personal autonomy being foundational to a person’s finding their identity and purpose in life is reinforced by the guidance Cree elders give parents about parenting. The Kisewatotatowin Aboriginal Parenting Handbook was produced under the guidance of Northern Plains Cree elders in Saskatoon. The term Kisewatotatowin means, “having and giving great love, caring, generosity, patience, trust and respect to your child, your family, your community, your nation and the universe” (Safarik). The handbook describes the stages of adolescence and adulthood. Adolescents are called oskayak, the young people, and undergo training in order to learn the survival skills and competencies needed to fulfill their role as adult men and women. The parenting handbook counsels parents on how to cope with the physical, intellectual, and emotional changes teenagers undergo in this stage. Among the advice is the direction to involve the whole family in decisions and to allow the youth to make mistakes in action, reaction, and judgment during this time of experiment and newfound freedom. Adolescence is the time when the young should be working with an elder and helping with ceremonies. The man’s role is to protect, and the woman’s role is to bring warmth and protection to the home. The Northern Plains Cree philosophy of guiding an adolescent’s growth is harmonious with the traditional Anishinaabe teachings about the cycle of life. Basil Johnston explains that in the stages of life, which is a journey over four hills, “the second hill is that of youth. It is a time in life when the young begin to bloom in spirit and flourish in physical power and stature. What is striking is that youth encompasses many ages. There are those very young, hardly out of infancy: there are those who are much older. But no one proceeds to the next stage until he has received a vision. Until that time, a man or woman remains a youth” ( Johnston 113). Johnston explains that in times past, a girl’s passage to womanhood occurred at about twelve years of age with the onset of menarche. He provides insight that goes beyond Mandelbaum’s interpretation of women’s defiling nature, but Johnston also is male and so does not carry women’s teachings. He notes that a girl may have had a vision bestowed upon her, or she may have chosen to seek a vision. Her community and family supported her

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determination. Johnston’s explanation of the significant experience of youth is an important foundation to understanding youth’s role and responsibility during this stage of life. The relevance of this Anishinaabe cultural information to Eekwol’s youth rhetoric is strengthened by the reality of cultural blending that is occurring in cities, which reveals that Aboriginal people are adapting and employing what is useful to the survival of an indigenous way of relating to the world. An example of this is Mohawk, Cree, and Anishinaabe women in Toronto who prepare their daughters and nieces for womanhood by holding a yearlong puberty ritual that is drawn from the Anishinaabe berry fast ritual (Anderson). Johnston’s monograph expands on the ideas of autonomy as central to a youth’s self-actualization. The quotation conveys the depth and subtlety of the experience from the moment a youth beings to understand, his training and preparation begins and continues until the vision comes to him. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, he ought to begin to seek his vision. Because no one knows when the state of readiness of body and spirit is attained, the teaching and preparation continue. In some cases the state of fitness comes readily and early, while in other instances, much later in life. But the teaching and instruction end only at the vision. For youth, the struggle in the moral order consists of the preparation, seeking, and attainment of the vision. What makes the search difficult is that the vision is not to be sought outside of oneself; nor is it to be found outside of one’s being. Rather it must be sought within one’s inner substance and found therein. . . . since it will be found within a person’s inner self, the search must be conducted alone, without the assistance or guidance of others. There are no signs to mark the trail; there are no trails set by others to encourage the seeker ( Johnston 114). Johnston explains that in this stage between childhood and adulthood, the youth is autonomous in awareness, exploration, interpretation, and fulfillment of his purpose revealed to him in vision. In and through vision a person may see, hear, sense or even feel his first self, his

incorporeal substance. By vision he will discover that his nature demands growth in order to attain fullness and power. From the moment of enlightenment the seeker has a purpose. From the moment of the coming the seeker is obliged to regulate his deeds, according to the vision. In a way a vision is discovery of self

and what ought to be. Growth begins . . . while the vision gives an insight into the

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quality of the inner being, what it is and what it ought to be, it can do no more than give some direction about the course of life. . . . With the vision, existence

becomes living; the youth is no longer young. He has now a freedom, which only he and no other can exercise and fulfill. It is his own. Yet his freedom and independence must be consistent with his communities’ laws and codes and with the great laws that govern the world. Through vision a person goes from youth to adulthood. ( Johnston 115)

Johnston’s description in many instances recounts the interaction between adults and youth, and between elders and youth. I believe that this is a fundamental aspect of youth’s self-realization. Though the adults do not guide or direct youth in their vision or self-discovery, the adults’ roles as supporter and model are crucial. Without grounding or leadership, misguided youth adopt the identity of activists and revolutionaries but remain puppet-like in their posturing in camouflage and masks, counting coup by their number of arrests. The adults’ leadership and elders’ counsel together develop the understanding and skills needed to be a leader. Cree elders Jim Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw, Joe Douquette, and Peter Vandall give further insight into the role of the elder in youth’s education. In his speeches “Leading Our Children Astray” and “Counseling the Young,” Elder Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw laments how youth have lost the ability to hear the elders’ counsel (47). Elder Douquette speaks of “Cree Education” and says, “Long ago this land was so clean. As for these Crees of old, they had their own education, they knew it well, they taught their children: they told their children how young people should live, they warned them against everything” (Douquette cited in Ahenakew 39). Elders counseled youth and adults, giving guidance on the laws of the physical world and social world ( Johnston 69, 122). Elders’ counsel does not dictate behavior, but rather by sharing the wisdom gained through a long life, it provides a warning that the listener is obliged to contemplate, comprehend, and act upon with his or her free will. Respect is a fundamental cultural attribute. A Cree youth from Cumberland House defined it as listening to a person “even if you don’t believe what they are saying” (MacKay, 88). The benefit of that understanding is that one learns humility with the development of understanding and maturity. Thus the balance between obedience and initiative is clear in Cree education of youth, in the guidance of youth seeking their vision, and in finding their purpose and identity. Eekwol’s lyrics exemplify the dynamic of youth being guided by elders’

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counsel to uphold the great laws and follow the principle of living a good life, acting on a Cree understanding of personhood, and exercising personal autonomy.

Eekwol’s Poetry Expresses Cree Youth’s Cultural Role Eekwol’s song “Too Sick” is a narrative and lyrical representation of the harsh realities of a contemporary orthodoxy depicted by the statistics in the first section. The music video for the song, the ninth cut on the album, was aired on Much Music and MTV (Eekwol, “Too Sick,” video, director Jim Morrison). The phrase “too sick” in hip hop vernacular translates as “very good” or “very bad” depending on the context. For some audiences, the video may have been the introduction to Eekwol’s music. The music industry has slotted her as an Aboriginal female hip hop emcee, and the subject matter of “Too Sick” appeals to the stereotyped expectations of a mainstream audience. The song begins with an idealized image of a warrior in sunshine; the goal was to raise a family traditionally. Shifts in time and perspective mark the transition and development of the story of love failing to overcome substance abuse, violence against women, murder, incarceration, and parent-child separation. To the non-Aboriginal audience, it is a grim but marketable contemporary Native story. However, I suggest an alternate reading to examine how Eekwol connects with her young Aboriginal female audience on issues of relationships, self-confidence, and self-preservation, and with her young Aboriginal male audience on issues of male role loss and cultural preservation. The shifts in time and perspective are the moments when the story advances, but also are the moments of critical decisions to be made by the players. The lyrics, sung audibly, inviting fans to sing along, begin in the first person. They contemplate the tender hope of love, and follow the fall into the hopelessness of intimate violence. When the sun stood high in my ancestors’ eyes a warrior sat on the earth with a smile

The rays reflected his frame shadowing his profile

I was prepared to share my life with his mind and ability

. . . The goal’s to raise a family traditionally (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

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Aboriginal youth are familiar with the images of a precontact idealized past. The contracted word goal’s makes the verb tense ambiguous: it could be past, as in “the goal was,” or present, as in “the goal is.” The omission of the sound in the contraction serves the meter and poetic device of interfacing past and present. The first line of the following quotation emphatically draws the story into the present and, in the manner of girlfriends’ conversational style, divulges personal reflections on events. It also presents points of entry where the young female listener in a female-gendered conversational style would take a turn in order to relate a similar experience as a way of affirming the speaker (Tannen). Now in 2004 what remains are the traces that history Blind as his compliments

See commitments to me rolled off his tongue

My perfection was the foundation of his words (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

Following the confessional style of women’s conversation, the following lines express the familiar psychological trait of women trying to save men from past emotional trauma, giving shelter in their love. I was the one

His past was filled with loneliness and misery

Years of violence and neglect plagued his memory Drunkenness informed his life

Now we’re two broken crutches in a tree of questions

I asked he would confess them. (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

But the story advances quickly in a familiar cycle of abuse from a honeymoon period, to a violent episode, to contrition and denial, and back to a honeymoon period. He believed and I believed we were above it F’k the past

He was safe with me and I loved it

But it leaked out a little as the pain came in trickles

I was caught in the middle of his pride and his riddles He couldn’t figure out

Shout him with a shout

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And I tried to understand as he pushed me to get them out I was quick to recoup I took the falls

finding nice posters for the holes in the walls (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

At this point, the song moves to the refrain that punctuates a shift in the plot development. The dynamic of the sick relationship is established. What seemed too good has turned to bad, and the contagion of violence is overwhelming. The two responses are to accept victimhood personally by blaming the situation on the loss of culture and despair in a detached manner, and to devalue the woman’s life to nothing. In the refrain, the woman is moving away from a personal reflection of her experience, to seeing it from the perspective of others. Too sick to stop the cycle hammer this nail into my head living in the cost of a culture lost some say

I’m better off . . . dead (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

Following this transition is a sample of a fiddle tune, which belongs to popular music of a previous generation. But it recalls the violence that attended the drinking parties of that generation too. Subtly, the visceral memory of violence is recalled for the Aboriginal listeners. The accompanying video images, framed through a car windshield and seen from the passenger’s perspective, include a sequence of a bridge, city lights, and blurred car headlights traveling on a darkened country road and approaching a curve. Without judgment, the poet connects the violence of the past to the present in the perspective of one who is not in control of the situation. But she does not totally absolve the new generation or the female victim of their responsibility in bringing forward the dysfunction wrought by alcohol and violence. The next segment of the song is the one that appears on the video clip used to pitch the video to MTV programmers. It is a succinct episode of the dysfunctional relationships in a cycle of abuse. The lyrics speak specifically to young women. The speaker notes her culpability and being too sick to stop the cycle. One for the road

so we dabbled with the drink

Said he needed to relax didn’t always want to think I’ll admit I was a part of it

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It made him happy brought us closer

besides I’m not as pretty or as confident a person when I’m sober Plus my connections in the world threatened him

didn’t trust guys, said they’re all into the medicine but the parties were full a’ the types he despises

saw the negative attention when he looked into my eyes I guess I presented it to everyone

My slutty intentions

and I sure as hell paid for it seconds after it was mentioned the glass hit my lip

felt the floor as I slipped

three or four tried to loosen his grip (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

At this point the song becomes a cautionary tale. The woman acknowledges the role of alcohol, jealousy, and her part in the dynamic of the relationship. Leading into the refrain, flute music accompanies a male voice apologizing, “Oh man, I’m so sorry . . . Promise . . . Promise,” and distances the listener from the situation. The emotion is detached in the fade-out of the apology and the repetition of the refrain. The repeated phrasing, however, suggests two readings of the line: “Some say I’m better off . . . dead.” When following the lyric “I’m better off ” and not anticipating the pause, the listener interprets the line to mean the woman is better off without the man and accepts the suggested possibility that she left the relationship. But the word dead follows a silent beat, and it leaves only the conclusion of desperation and murder. Here, two-thirds of the way through the song, after the femicide, the refrain marks the poet’s shift to the male experience. She switches to the second-person pronoun “you,” directs her words to the man, and draws the male listeners into the narrative. Words, not just sounds, are removed to keep the meter and give force to the poetic dual meaning. By using present and past tense in the line, and by alternating between devastating present and idealized dream, the poet fuses the context of the man waking up after a drunken blackout and being told of his crime of murder and the context of a generation of indigenous men struggling to fulfill their traditional male role. Man, wake up, you’re dreaming of the past When you ever want or needed a role in the cast The winter morning cold clean When the hunt’s at its best You had no arrows

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Took a knife

And stabbed your girl in the chest

No family to bring her home to where they’re already at rest Carried on the tradition of alcohol and violence

The city stripped you clean of your culture, selves and dreams

The pen walls continue to remind you of your girl’s screams (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

Looking to fulfill his male role in society, the man dreamed of the past traditional roles of warrior and hunter. But without the tools, and falling victim to the city and cultural genocide, the man turns his energy to violence against his woman and corrupts the indigenous traditional way of life. This final part of the song presents a picture of a new icon of Indian men as prisoners, and a new tradition of alcohol and violence. The line “no family to bring her home to where they’re already at rest” has particular resonance with the Aboriginal audience who lives and dies in the city and returns to the reserve to be buried in their home cemetery. The alienation is situated in the places of the city and the penitentiary. Before the song ends with the refrain being repeated three times, the lines spoken to the man in prison describing the consequences may be interpreted as words of warning to young men and women alike. it was love no doubt, but how you drew it, it burned out long ago when you should have

stopped the cycle from carrying through

now the son you created saw the things you do and will probably pick up where you left off too

She wanted to save you so bad should’a saved herself first

what could be the best thing you had took a turn for the worst

but don’t live off regret, she’s gone, move on but don’t forget (Eekwol, “Too Sick”)

“Too Sick” may appeal to the mainstream because it represents a conclusion already drawn, and in that light the song may be read as youthful melodrama. However, considering the common experiences of a large portion of the Aboriginal population, it is a song of warning for victims and a song of affirmation for survivors. It, like “Apprentro,” carries a youth’s voice of resistance speaking directly to youth, reminding them of their power and responsibility to challenge the status quo.

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Eekwol’s first lines of “Apprentro,” the first track on the album Apprentice to the Mystery, are: It’s time for you to listen for a minute

‘Cause this is where I share, share bits and pieces of my truth What I know and don’t know about life (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

The oppositional positioning of the audience in relation to the poet, and the implied oppositional positioning of her truth to theirs, suggest that the audience is comprised of people outside her world, people unfamiliar with the social context of a young Indigenous woman in Saskatchewan. But in the next lines wherein she uses the first-person plural pronoun, she aligns herself with the audience: It’s time to think back to remember who we were Whoever that may be

Take back what we dream and say what we mean I want to know more

You want to know more (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

The references are sufficiently vague to be applicable to a range of experiences possibly identified with by a colonized people defeated by subjugation, misunderstood youth railroaded by prejudice and condemnation, or, conceivably, survivors of addiction or abuse. In thirty seconds, she deftly catches the ear of her listeners, and by using the tropes of the first-person pronoun and presenting experiences familiar to her audience, she earns the authority to speak from their perspective. She then proceeds in the first person to describe self-reflection, doubt, criticism, and determination with which her audience can sympathize. But I always feel like obstacles are stopping me

And could it be that I’m tryin’ not to see creating diversions convenient tome Running away, hurting my people, my family, those most important to me Well I can’t do that anymore

Because I’m guessing through experience and lessons And I’m stopping the cycle

And sending the message

And I’m trying everyday I walk this earth to stay away from what’s bad for me (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

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In the final lines of the introduction, accompanied by the music’s crescendo, she asserts affirmation of their shared strengths and asserts power in an anthem of liberation. And the only way I can do that is by Recognizing the strengths we have Power in numbers, we got

Power in spirit, I got Power in music, I got Power in my voice Hear it (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

The unique appeal to the Aboriginal youth audience is in the references that operate as hypertext, in the manner that Haas conceives of the device, linking listeners to inherited knowledge through associative retrieval.5 Aboriginal youth, upon hearing these lines, would recognize that the strengths she alludes to are the cultural strengths of Aboriginal societies. “Power in numbers” relates not only to the current Aboriginal baby boom, but also to the cultural ethic of community support and cooperation. Community gatherings such as round dances, wakes, funerals, feasts, and pow wows depend upon a large contingent of impromptu volunteers who work together to feed, care, and provide for everyone in attendance. Accomplishments are usually attributed to the efforts of many. Aboriginal youth would recognize the cultural belief of “power in spirit” that aids human beings in all their endeavors and is present in all living things (Mandelbaum). Similarly they would recognize the cultural belief in “power in music” as supplication for divine help, and as a means of conjuring and healing. “Power in my voice” refers to the sacred nature of words carried by the life force of breath. These lines affirm youth’s culturally based resistance to the orthodoxy of oppression. A close reading of “Apprentro” provides examples of a Cree youth seeking vision and purpose. The song changes pace and beat following the introductory call for liberation: “Power in my voice, hear it.” The next lines review the situation of Aboriginal societies in a postmodern world, critique people’s complacency and abandonment of spiritual traditions, and enforce the prophecy of the tenuous opportunity to survive. Just bound by scraps of a tattered history The nnn-nation blind sided and shadowed the mystery

Too many colonized minds falling through the cracks And now we’re running out of time (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

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The use of the word “mystery” so early in the song and on the album is highlighted because it repeats a dominant concept in the album title Apprentice to the Mystery. It alerts the listener to the great significance of this concept to the overall message of the work. The audience is ambiguous because the summary and caution may be interpreted to apply to an individual or a collective. This ambiguity is sustained into the next group of rhymes. Left lost off track Opportunity for sacrifice

Climb the oppressor’s ladder and disrespect your ancestors’ lives It’s gone on for too long

Question who’s really strong or

just a paw, long arm of the government raise his magical wand it’s on

Make it official the pawn who’ll never really belong (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

The first three lines have potent critical significance when they are referenced to an understanding of the qualities of Cree leader. Compassion, generosity, sacrifice, and kindness guided ancestors’ decisions to protect the Earth for subsequent generations. All this is for naught if the Indian leaders, driven by greed and ambition, serve the interests of the oppressors. The poet calls upon the audience to expose the imposter for what he is and reveal that he will never really belong because he does not guide his actions by the laws sustained and transmitted by the ancestors. There is a slight pause, and the caution to heed the wisdom of the elders is repeated twice, with a pause in between, stamping the message with emphasis. We need to maintain the knowledge and wisdom from the elders before it’s all gone

We need to maintain the knowledge and wisdom because it’s going so fast (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

Closely following this are her lines describing her own commitment, which is tempered with humility and avoidance of directing others to follow her example. So what I am doing is Observing the mystery Understanding the mystery Following the mystery Becoming the mystery I’m nothing without the mystery

I know nothing about the mystery A tiny source of the force of this Universal history (Eekwol, “Apprentro”)

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These lines relate to the youth’s responsibility of seeking a vision as Johnston describes it. The words observing, understanding, following, and becoming are hypertextual references to the Anishinaabe (and I posit also the Cree) vision quest to gain knowledge of the incorporeal nature of one’s being that is part of a greater “something.” To name it restricts it. “Mystery” is the preferred understanding of manitou, which in the past has been glossed as “spirit” or “God.” The poet is humble: “I’m nothing without the mystery.” She does not interfere in others’ quest to know more: “I know nothing about the mystery.” She is not a guide. She is only an apprentice to her own mystery. She is “a tiny source of the force of this universal history.”

Conclusion Eekwol’s poetry gives us a lasting impression of the performance of a Cree youth identity in a postmodern time. Her songs “Too Sick” and “Apprentro” are read as expressions of Cree youth fulfilling the role and responsibility of people in that stage of life: thinking critically, exercising their autonomy, acting consciously, and serving the well-being of the collective. The analysis of Eekwol’s work as the expression of a young adult guided by her vision, as well as the advice and teachings of her elders, is based on the works of Johnston and the counseling texts of Douquette, Vandall, and Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw. From a cultural foundation that respects youth, Eekwol’s poetry presents a constructive and positive perspective and representation of youth. Eekwol is masterful in connecting her audience to current, historic, and timeless realities. Her word-crafting keeps a beat, makes a memorable rhyme, and builds complexity of meaning. She deftly employs the second-person pronoun, contractions, omission of words and sounds, and colloquial phrasing to use ambiguity as a rhetorical device in order to connect the current with historic realities. Dual meanings engage the listeners to contemplate and comprehend the significance relevant to their own experience. As a means of politicizing youth’s constructive resistance, Eekwol’s hip hop storytelling and rhymes reach youth’s intellect and passion, and challenge youth to act with their free will. Without judgment or condemnation, she leads the listeners to reflect on their own responsibility for and contribution to mino-pimatisiwin, living a good life. Her use of hypertextual references to Indigenous people’s social realities, cultural ethics, and beliefs are subtle enough that the sacred beliefs of the

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people are respected and protected, and the uninitiated do not feel excluded. The effect is to reach Indigenous youth on a wavelength they know is just for them. This is their music. Its message interfaces their present reality with the timeless reality of their cultural teachings. It incites them to feel their power and act to change the way things are. It calls upon them to fulfill their role as Indigenous youth.

Notes Reprinted from the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, volume 34, number 2, by permission of the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA © Regents of the University of California. 1. Identity is fluid, and the identifier may change to suit the connotation appropriate to the audience, context, or purpose. E.g., in an interview about gender and hip hop, Eekwol identifies herself as “indigenous,” the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Awards identify her as “First Nations” on its website, and a writer for SAY Magazine identifies her as a “Cree Member of Muskoday First Nation.” Eekwol on Gender, A Libra Lemons Production, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v+VA3uRLZ_1zM (accessed 07 February 2014); Aboriginal People’s Choice Awards, 2009, http://aboriginalpeopleschoice.com/artists/eekwol (accessed 07 February 2014); “Lindsay Knight, Recording Artist,” SAY Magazine, http://www.saymag.com/canada/spokesppl/eekwol.html (accessed 29 November 2009). 2. Dene people are also an indigenous group in Saskatchewan. Their territories are in the Taiga region. Historically there was less cultural exchange with the other indigenous groups named here because they did not have the same degree of economic, political, or social alliances with those groups as those groups had with each other (Hearne). 3. The topic of multicultural bands on the northwestern plains is the subject of ethnohistorical writing by Patricia Albers, Neal McLeod, Regna Darnell, Theodore Binnema, Laura Peers, and Jennifer S. H. Brown, John Tanner, and Robert Alexander Innes. 4. M. Paul Lewis, ed., of the online version of Ethnologue confirms that dialects of Anishinaabe are known by various names in different regions and include Saulteaux in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Ojibwe (also spelled Ojibway and Ojibwa) in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Michigan; Chippewa in North Dakota,

a re ading of eek wol’ s apprentice to the mys tery 221

Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ontario; and Pottawatomie and Odawa (variously spelled) in Ontario. 5. Haas explains that hypertext is an element of American Indian rhetoric and examines “how American Indian communities have employed wampum belts as hypertextual technologies—as wampum belts have extended human memories of inherited knowledges through interconnected, nonlinear designs and associative storage and retrieval methods” (Haas 77).

Works Cited Aboriginal People’s Choice Awards. “Eekwol.” Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards. 2009. 19 Jan. 2014. . Ahenakew, Edward. Voices of the Plains Cree. Regina, SK: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1995. Ahenakew, Freda. The Counseling Speeches of Jim Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1988. ———. Stories of the House People, told by Peter Vandall and Joe Douquette. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1987. Albers, Patricia. “Changing Patterns on Ethnicity in the Northeastern Plains.” History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492–1992. Ed. Jonathon Hill. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996. 70–118. Anderson, Kim. “Honouring the Blood of the People: Berry Fasting in the 21st Century,” in Expression in Canadian Native Studies. Ed. R. Innes, R. Laliberte, P. Settee, and J. Waldram. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Extension Division, 2000. 374–94. Arnot, David M. “The Five Treaties in Saskatchewan: A Historical Overview,” in Expressions in Canadian Native Studies. Ed. R. Innes, R. Laliberte, P. Settee, and J. Waldram. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 2000. 232–64. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Police-Reported Aboriginal Crime in Saskatchewan. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 2000. Canadian Council on Social Development. Aboriginal Children in Poverty in Urban Communities: Social Exclusion and the Growing Racialization of Poverty in Canada. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Council on Social Development, 2003. Department of Justice. Report and Recommendations in Respect of Legislation, Policy and Practices Concerning Prostitution-Related Activities. Ottawa, ON: Department of Justice, 1998.

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Eekwol. “Apprentro.” Apprentice to the Mystery. Mils Productions, 2005. ———. “Too Sick.” Apprentice to the Mystery. Mils Productions, 2005. Frey, Doug, Margaret Hanna, and David Hanna Meyer. “The Enigma of Saskatchewan Blackduck: Pottery from the Hanson (FgNi-50) and Honess (FgNi51) Sites.” Midcontinental Journal of Archeology 24 (1999): 153–76. Gross, Lawrence. “Bimaadiziwin, or the Good Life, as a Unifying Concept of Anishinaabe Religion.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 26.1 (2002): 15–32. Haas, Angela. “Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 19.4 (2007): 77–100. Hart, Michael. Seeking Mino-Pimatisiwin: An Aboriginal Approach to Helping. Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 2002. Hearne, Samuel. A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean. Edmonton, AB: M. G. Hurtig. [1791] 1971. Indian and Northern Affairs, Aboriginal Women: A Demographic, Social and Economic Profile. Ottawa, ON: Indian and Northern Affairs, 1998. Johnston, Basil. Ojibway Heritage: The Ceremonies, Rituals, Songs, Dances, Prayers and Legends of the Ojibway. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998. Knight, Diane. The Seven Fires Teachings of the Bear Clan as Recounted by Dr. Danny Musqua. Muskoday First Nation, SK: Many Worlds Publishing, 2002. Lewis, M. Paul, ed. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed. Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2009. 29 November 2009 . “Lindsay Knight, Recording Artist,” SAY Magazine 7.2 (2008). MacKay, Gail. Community Perceptions of a Cree Immersion Program at Cumberland House. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 2001. Mandelbaum, David T. The Plains Cree: An Ethnographic, Historical and Comparative Study. Regina, SK: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1979. McLeod, Neal. “Plains Cree Identity: Borderlands, Ambiguous Genealogies and Narrative Irony.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies 20.2 (2000): 437–54. Muskoday First Nation, Official Home Page, 07 February 2014. . Norris, Mary Jane, and Lorna Jantzen. “Aboriginal Languages in Canada’s Urban Areas: Characteristics Considerations and Implications,” in Not Strangers in These Parts, Ed. David Newhouse and Evelyn Peters. Ottawa, ON: Policy Research Initiative, 2003. 179–93.

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Safarik, Allen. Kisewatotatowin Aboriginal Parenting Handbook. Saskatoon, SK: Health Canada, Health Promotion and Programs Branch, 1997. Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre Heritage Site. “Our Languages,” 14 April 2009 . Saskatchewan Trends Monitor. “Sask Trends Provincial Aboriginal Representative Workforce Council ( June 2, 2009).” 08 February 2014 . SAY Magazine. “Eekwol on Gender.” A Libra Lemons Production, 2008. 7 February 2014 . Sluman, Norma, and Jean Goodwill. John Tootoosis: Biography of a Cree Leader. Ottawa, ON: Golden Dog Press, 1982. Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, Urban Aboriginal Youth: An Action Plan for Change. Ottawa, ON: Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, 2003. Statistics Canada. Aboriginal Peoples Survey. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada, 2000. Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballentine, 1991. Tanner, Helen Hornbeck. The Ojibway of Western Canada, 1780–1870. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1994. Tanner, John. The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Thompson, Christian. “Muskoday First Nation,” The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan, 2006. 7 February 2014 . “Too Sick.” Perf. Eekwol. Director Jim Morrison. Maverick Films, 2004. 8 February 2014 .

13 “By the Time I Get to Arizona” Hip Hop Responses to Arizona SB 1070

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T

he current anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States reduces

undocumented citizens to public dangers and economic burdens. Conservative politicians draw upon fears rooted in histories of colonialism, racism, and xenophobia in local, state, and national electoral victories. Since 2010, Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia have passed aggressive laws creating difficult living conditions for immigrants. The “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” widely known as Arizona SB 1070, is representative of anti-immigrant efforts made by conservative politicians. The law adopts the doctrine of “attrition through enforcement,” also known as auto-deportation, targeting immigrants not classified as “legal” within the state, primarily through requiring all non-U.S. citizens to carry forms of identification at all times. Law enforcement agents must ask for proper identification from those persons suspected of being illegal immigrants. Critics believe this requirement promotes and sanctions racial profiling, since Latinas/os are often stereotyped as illegal immigrants. Although defenders of the law argue that they do not promote racial discrimination, it is difficult to see how these actions do not construct the illegal citizen without using racial logics. Thus, the label of “deviant” is always/already placed on the non-white and working class body. This makes Latinas/os and other people of color subject to police harassment regardless of legal status. The recent Supreme Court ruling on SB 1070 upheld the heart of the law, giving the green

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light for states such as Texas and Nevada to pursue their own versions of antiimmigrant legislation. Immediately after the passage of SB 1070, activist organization First Nations United released a press statement calling for Indigenous solidarity against the law. The statement begins with a quotation from Chief Billy Redwing Tayac of the Piscataway Nation, recognizing “[s]o-called ‘Hispanics’” as Indigenous people. He states, “Instead of seeing ‘Hispanics’ as outsiders who do not belong here, we need to start seeing them as ancestors of the original inhabitants of these lands” (naisa.org). The press release denounces SB 1070 as a racist law based on settler colonialist policies that promote genocide. They also recognize that migration throughout the Americas is nothing new: “As an Indigenous organization, we recognize that Indigenous peoples from Latin America have every right to migrate up and down the continent as they please and as they have done through trade and communication routes since time immemorial.” Recognizing immigration issues in the United States as tied to Indigenous people’s rights is important because it is a rhetorical move inclusive of tribally affiliated, mixed-blood, Mestiza/o, and de-Indianized Indians’ struggles. Discussions about immigrants coming from the Americas are often reductive and paint a picture of Latin American immigrants that ignores the diversity of peoples, cultures, and communities they represent. First Nations United recognizes that the oppression of immigrants in the United States is a continuation of colonial practices. Maintaining fracture and disunity among subjugated peoples of the Americas is a colonial strategy that maintains power imbalances and prevents radical change through the recognition of mutual struggles among people and communities. Cherríe Moraga argues that the word “immigrant” is “a bitter and ironic misnomer” used to label “migrant Indigenous Americans [sic] displaced from their lands of origin” (Moraga 89). She adds, “If the immigrant rights movement, in which so many Chicanos are involved, were to recognize that this migration north is fundamentally an Indigenous rights issue, the very foundation of that movement would turn from reform to revolt, from the myth of integration to cultural sovereignty.” The colonial strategies are about who determines which people are labeled as illegal and undocumented based on who controls geographical land bases. The colonizing strategies are about the act of working the land being converted from a basic right into a source of capitalist exploitation. The colonizing strategies are about the continuing colonial process of removing Indigenous people from the land, marginalizing them, and using that power to

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keep them marginalized. Colonial strategies erase, remove, and divide communities so that Chicanas/os, Mestizas/os, and tribally affiliated peoples do not make the necessary alliances that recognize mutual oppressors and struggles. Gloria Anzaldúa explains that the establishment of borders is a colonial move that identifies all those marked as outside normative whiteness as los atravesados. In her theorization of the U.S. borderlands, los atravesados are “aliens—whether they possess documents or not, whether they’re Chicanos, Indians or Blacks. Do not enter, trespassers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot” (Anzaldúa 25). Anzaldúa’s inclusion of “Chicanos, Indians [and] Blacks” as transgressors is particularly important to hip hop and other cultural movements for change when considering that the United States historically has sought to keep all three communities fractured. Joy Harjo has called for cultural critics and historians to recognize the roots of Black music forms like the blues, jazz, R&B, rock and roll, and hip hop as influenced by both Indigenous and African cultures. She argues that these gaps in understanding exist because “[e]arly on . . . the connection between Africans and Indians was broken by fearful state governments” (Redmond 29). She locates the mix of cultures through music: “But when I hear our music, I always think of Africa announcing itself as part of the mix. And it also goes the other way.” This recognition of mutual influence extends into the ways of understanding how music provides methodologies for living and survival. Tricia Rose identifies the main methodology of rapping as being able to manage the concepts of “flow,” “layering,” and “ruptures in line” (Rose 39). She argues that this methodology teaches one how to manage the world: Interpreting these concepts theoretically, one can argue that they create and sus-

tain rhythmic motion, continuity, and circularity via flow; accumulate, reinforce, and embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threats to these narratives by building in ruptures that highlight the continuity as it momentarily

challenges it. These effects at the level of style and aesthetics suggest affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can be managed and perhaps contested in the cultural arena. (Rose 39)

Rose’s theorization identifies how a hip hop worldview approaches life’s rhythms as circuitous trajectories that one may manage in ways that recognize and produce agency. Rather than consider a rupture as a failure or obstacle, one may adjust to the rupture by treating it as a part of the flow. These concepts

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align with Joy Harjo’s ideas surrounding rhythm. After stating that “[o]ne day, the saxophone will be a Mvskoke (Creek) traditional instrument,” she says that “at the root” of intermixture among African and Indian cultures is “rhythm” (quoted in Redmond 29). She writes: And rhythm is at the root of form and sense in this earthly world, maybe in all the worlds. It holds the physical body together, literally. In fact, rhythm holds the whole world together. Rhythm and vibration hold it together. (quoted in Redmond 29)

For Harjo, rhythm works as a uniting life force among all things. Learning how to manage rhythm through flow, layering, and rupture in hip hop provides an Afro-Indigenous methodology for challenging the kind of “profound social dislocation and rupture” that immigrants face in the United States. Hip hop practices inclusive of Black and Indigenous influences also offer the potential for coalition-building among communities that refuse to remain divided by colonial forces. In addition to Black and Indigenous influences, hip hop is particularly useful because young people developed it by making do in the face of economic and technological disadvantages. The culture and its major elements (rapping, deejaying, graffiti art, and break dancing) developed in post-industrial New York City as a response to the extreme poverty, drug use, violence, and lack of opportunity existing in predominantly Black and Latina/o communities. Rose argues that technology and economics instrumentally shaped hip hop’s birth, development, and growth (Black Noise 25). While privileged artists enjoy access to dominant methods of communication, promotion, and dissemination, hip hop artists must adjust by developing communication tactics that rely on the underground in order to reach intended audiences. Michel de Certeau provides a theoretical context for understanding how many hip hop methods function—specifically his discussion of “tactics” and “practices.” Those living and working from marginalized spaces, because they lack a solid structure or institution and the power they give, must make clever use of time and space to execute practices that are often resistant, subversive, and transformative. These practices are defined by de Certeau as “tactics,” because the performers are subjects who “cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality” (de Certeau xix). Without this ability to make do, hip hop is unable to provide knowledge and critique to its audiences, which in this

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contemporary moment is especially vital if hip hop is to function as a tool for resistance and social change. The increased corporatization of the music industry restricts artists from expressing opinions about social issues. Instead, record companies overwhelmingly cater to “gangsta rap” audiences preferring violence, sexism, and misogyny, which plays into right-wingers’ hands who vilify all hip hop music as a social detriment. As a result, socially conscious hip hop music rarely plays on popular radio and video formats. Tricia Rose argues “that if the late Tupac Shakur were a newly signed artist today, [she] believe[s] he’d likely be considered a socially conscious rapper and thus relegated to the margins of the commercial hip hop field” (Rose 3). In spite of political tensions during the late 1980s and the 1990s, mainstream rappers like Tupac Shakur, Queen Latifa, and KRS-One could openly rap about issues like racism and xenophobia and find their songs blasting through radio airwaves across the country. In his 1996 song, “To Live & Die in L.A.,” Tupac Shakur famously raps, “Cause would it be El-Ay without Mexicans?” In the face of anti-immigrant discrimination during the mid-1990s, Shakur answers with a defense of Latinas/os in the name of Black and Brown solidarity. The song speaks out against policies targeting Latina/o communities, specifically California Proposition 187, which allowed the state to deny basic social services, such as education and emergency medical care, to anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant. Five years earlier, rap group Public Enemy’s “By the Time I Get to Arizona” spoke out against the resistance to acknowledging the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by Arizona politicians, including Senator John McCain. Front man Chuck D raps about looking at a postcard of Arizona that depicts happy tourists in the desert. He states, “What’s a smilin’ face when the whole state’s racist?” (Apocalypse 91 … The Enemy Strikes Black). The music video, which played on MTV, features Chuck D as the leader of a militant group hunting down fictional Arizona politicians as a warning to real audiences of increasing racial tensions. These kinds of songs and videos provided important commentary and knowledge to listeners who could mobilize the kinds of efforts and movements needed to make change. It is difficult to believe that either of these songs would receive any airplay in contemporary times. Over the past twenty years, Rose has seen an alarming shift in the commercial rap game that favors those artists who sell harmful portrayals and stereotypes of African Americans over those artists who critique and challenge issues like racism, poverty, and white supremacy. Today, revolutionary artists like Public Enemy still make music, but they rap from the margins.

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Conrad Tillard, in the documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, explains how white male consumers shifted demand starting in the late 1980s. He states, “Now once the market forces have helped that shift come along, that’s when you get sixty to seventy percent of the buying community now is a white community.” White consumers are not as interested in listening to critiques about race, oppression, and inequality. In the same documentary, rapper Jadakiss laments, “After 700,000, it’s all white people . . . So the white people want to hear that killing and everything. They want to hear about that shit” (Hurt). Those artists who want to explicitly promote socially conscious music find themselves at odds with an audience more interested in depictions of violence and misogyny. The colonial history of Black and Indigenous erasure as well as the construction of both peoples as inherently violent helps explain why white, male audiences would help popularize certain kinds of hip hop music over others. In tandem with record companies, the mass consolidation of radio stations and holdings during the 1990s took power and influence away from local radio stations and deejays, handing it over to five major conglomerates: Time/ Warner, Disney, Viacom, Newscorp, and Bertelsmann (Rose, Hip Hop Wars 17). The consequences, according to Tricia Rose, include what music gets played on the air, what artists receive exposure and promotion, and what local acts receive the airtime necessary to grow local music scenes. One of the worst consequences of mass consolidation is the reduction in Black radio news programming. According to Rose, “Historically, black radio news programs played a powerful role in gathering and disseminating information about black social-justice issues that were largely omitted from other radio program formats” (Hip Hop Wars 21). This kind of programming is important to other communities of color for two main reasons. First, with few exceptions, the majority of radio stations playing hip hop music are categorized in Black-dominated formats, such as rap and urban. Second, Black radio news programs provide a venue for discussing social justice agendas and promoting the kinds of movements and activities that imagine and create change. If this kind of programming is pushed to the margins, activists and their communities must look for ways of providing this information to listeners. Thus, for artists seeking to critique the current wave of anti-immigrant discrimination and legislation, their work is cut out for them. In order for them to realize hip hop’s potential for producing a voice against oppression, they must utilize tactics that may navigate and bypass all the overwhelming obstacles placed in front of them. Commercial and underground artists frustrated by the

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unethical and controlling nature of the record industry utilize what I call “mixtape tactics” to release content and messages usually censored by record labels for fear of offending or alienating white, middle class audiences. Bakari Kitwana defines mixtapes as “unlicensed mass-produced CDs in which a deejay creatively mixes emerging and established rap artists rhyming over unreleased and/or previously published music” (91). The ability to download mixtapes off deejay, file-sharing, and hip hop websites makes it even easier to access them. Because they are often low-budget, independently produced, and sold at lower prices (or free), these albums rely primarily on methods of communication privileging word of mouth and guerrilla marketing, both on- and offline. Part of mixtape culture and consumption is being someone in the know. Mixtapes also hold a liminal status because they lack legitimacy conferred upon music albums by major record label production and distribution. This means that mixtapes do not subscribe to the same musical archive produced by the record labels’ collective place and hegemony. Thus, Michel de Certeau would term the practice of mixtapes as “tactics,” especially because “[a tactic] does not have a place, a tactic depends on time—it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized ‘on the wing’” (de Certeau xix). This offers several advantages. Artists may adopt these tactics to release music and messages they otherwise would not be able to release on a major label, and because these tapes are downloaded and traded away from the mainstream, they often bypass structures and institutions that perform surveillance over cultural productions. The sense of exclusivity present in mixtape distribution also speaks to the different ways that mixtapes function rhetorically. For instance, in the case of those rappers using mixtape tactics to distribute their messages of resistance, a certain degree of protection from censors or gatekeepers exists because many may not know how to access these cultural productions. Todd Boyd states, “Corporate America is not sophisticated enough to track the real element buying habits of hip hop . . . You can’t track what’s under the radar because no instrument can be treated to track it” (quoted in Kitwana 91). This cat and mouse game that mixtape rappers play allows for an advantageous listening space where they can reach specific audiences, which include those folks targeted by racist laws like SB 1070. The quick turnaround from production to distribution allows artists to voice their opinions and spread information about issues like SB 1070 in the immediate moment in ways that traditionally produced albums lack. When attempting to galvanize protest efforts and build momentum towards resistance efforts and movements, agile methods of

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making meaning such as mixtapes come in handy. In addition, mixtape tactics make the argument that hip hop audiences, beyond traditional tracking methods, want to hear music serving as the soundtrack to the revolution. The response by youth to Arizona’s policies demonstrates that hip hop is a powerful tool of resistance. The hip hop community in and outside of Arizona responded by producing music and videos in opposition to the laws, and by making protest songs and videos available through a variety of websites. Looking at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network’s and Alto Arizona’s websites proves that hip hop culture is a driving force of resistance to SB 1070 among young activists. Alto Arizona’s page of “Songs in Solidarity with Arizona” features nine songs, and out of those nine, six are by hip hop artists. Hip hop rocker Zac de la Rocha helped organize Sound Strike, a coalition of artists promoting the boycott of Arizona in response to SB 1070. The website prominently features music and interviews with hip hop artists like Jasiri X, Immortal Technique, Chino XL, and Rhymefest. On the local front, the Phoenix New Times made a call for Arizona artists to submit protest songs, which became Line in the Sand: A Collection of Protest Songs from Arizona Artists Opposed to SB 1070. This seventeen-track collection features a strong hip hop presence, featuring Willy Northpole’s “Back to Mexico,” and “Back to AZ (anti 1070),” a track over nine minutes long featuring thirteen local artists rapping over the beat to Public Enemy’s “By the Time I Get to Arizona” (Cizmar). Rapper Willy Northpole, a Phoenix-based rapper signed to Ludacris’s Disturbing Tha Peace record label, released “Back to Mexico (SB1070 DISS)” immediately after the passage of the law. Northpole, who shares African and Mexican ancestry, released a music video on YouTube.com that, along with the song, shows solidarity among various communities in the mutual recognition that the oppression of one group by Arizona and the United States is oppression for all oppressed groups. Northpole’s choice to label the song a “diss” is significant because diss tracks are particularly aggressive songs meant to discredit and ruin the reputation of the rapper’s target. Traditionally, rappers produce diss tracks when involved in a beef with another artist or crew. Northpole’s beef is with the Arizona and U.S. government, the abuse of immigrants, and supporters of SB 1070 like Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio, and John McCain. Northpole balances the raw anger present in the lyrics and camera shots of his crew with critiques of racism, xenophobia, and capitalism. He ties SB 1070 to the United States’ history of institutionalized racism and colonization.

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He raps, “My fellow Mexicans you know I got your backs / They did it to the Blacks, they did it to the Natives” (“Back to Mexico”). He makes his critique global by including the Jewish Holocaust and the ongoing military occupation of Iraq. Like Tupac Shakur’s “To Live and Die in L.A.,” Northpole recognizes the shared struggle by communities of color against white supremacist policies by the government. The repeated phrase “They did it” builds a growing catalogue of violence, colonization, and oppression levied on racialized communities. The word “state” carries several meanings, referring to the State of Arizona and the nation-state as untrustworthy and the state of Latinas/os and immigrants being shit on in Arizona. The camera shifts from Northpole rapping in front of his crew of angry protestors, to a narrative of police allowing people to pass a checkpoint based on the look of their faces, and three men in Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and John McCain Halloween masks hitting a piñata. The Obama, Bush, and McCain caricatures dance around the piñata and take turns breaking it until money falls from its belly. Through these images, blame for the abuse and exploitation of Latinas/os and immigrants belongs to politicians across all political spectrums. Northpole’s beef with Obama, Bush, McCain, Brewer, and Arpaio informs his audience of the decision makers they should pressure for change. Northpole also alludes to language in the bill stating: For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state . . . where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully

present in the US, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. (Northpole 1)

Northpole’s lyrics call into question the bill’s rhetoric around the phrase “reasonable suspicion.” The use of skin color, phenotype, accent, and language to identify persons suspected of being illegal citizens points to the ways bodies are racialized and marked as othered by the state. Regardless of legal status, anyone fitting these suspicions is subject to police and public harassment. During camera shots of Northpole rapping in front of a crowd of Black and Latina/o protesters, people are holding Mexican flags and protest posters. One of the posters features a fist held up in the air, and “-SI SE PUEDE-” is written under it. The other poster shows an angry man with “NO SB 1070” written on the top corners above his head and “INDIAN LAND” written in large, bold print across the bottom. Visually, this video speaks to several alliances: the

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crowd is made up of Black, Latina/o, and other Indigenous people. Northpole, as an Afro-Chicana/o, is leading the call for action in the video, which brings the crowd of angry people. There are gangstas, cholos, and activists in the video. The posters, which feature Indigenous motifs and images, call to mind that SB 1070 deals with Indigenous issues that go back to land rights. The knowledge Northpole offers through “Back to Mexico” spans from actively naming politicians associated with SB 1070 to providing rhetoric of resistance that actively challenges the logic and reasoning behind the law. Quite appropriately, Northpole fulfills what Geneva Smitherman describes as one of the central tenets of hip hop music, to “disturb tha peace” (Smitherman 268). Hip hop adopts this tactic in order to create ruptures in the status quo that give voice to the voiceless and call attention to pressing issues. Jay-Z echoes these sentiments in his memoir Decoded, stating that rap music should be “dissonant” and “directly confrontational.” He believes “[t]he music is meant to be provocative—which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily obnoxious, but is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it’s dense with multiple meanings” ( Jay-Z 54). Northpole’s commentary is important because it provides analysis and critique through rap. By adopting mixtape tactics, the song and video are highly accessible to those communities using it in resistance efforts in Arizona and beyond. It also sends the message out to the world that protests reflect alliances built across communities in mutual recognition of racism and colonialism. The use of mixtape tactics reveals a sophisticated rhetorical understanding for how to communicate across spaces and technologies in spite of any lack of power or privilege. Mixtape tactics also signal that hip hoppers privilege the rhetorical canon of delivery in interesting ways, specifically, the concept of rhetorical velocity. Ridolfo and DeVoss explain one of the leading questions behind a cultural production’s rhetorical velocity is, “If I release the video in this format, could the video be used in this way, and would it be worth their time to do this? And would it be supportive of my objective for them to do that?” For Northpole, the message of social justice behind the song and video clearly seeks to reach as many fellow protestors as possible, which means he understands the nature of underground hip hop distribution. His work is also being used in this chapter, and several academic conference panel presentations I made. Additionally, colleagues enjoyed the video and used it in their composition classrooms in discussions about immigration. Although Northpole did not consciously create this work to reach me, he knew the possibilities for reaching many avenues of activism that existed by adopting and utilizing mixtape

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methods for distribution. The video was featured and reposted on mainstream hip hop sites such as Worldstarhiphop.com and Hiphopdx.com. Underground hip hop sites like Immortaltechnique.co.uk also reposted it. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network featured the video on the “Arts & Culture” page of its website. Local site Phoenixhiphop.net listed the song as one of the top ten Arizona hip hop songs of 2010. Willy Northpole’s song traveled across the Internet and reached a diverse audience that included local and global audiences, offering its critique of Arizona SB 1070. Ana Tijoux is another rapper in opposition to SB 1070. Tijoux’s family fled the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile during the 1970s, and she discovered hip hop as a source of power and resistance. In solidarity with immigrants in Arizona, she partnered with film director Alex Rivera, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, and the Puente Movement to produce the music video for her single “Shock” (Loewe). The song borrows from Naomi Klein’s concept of the “shock doctrine,” which argues that those in power exploit the powerless through applying extreme capitalism on manufactured and natural crises (7). Klein traces the shock doctrine to former University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman’s economic theories. Tijoux has reason to be familiar with Friedman because he was an advisor to Pinochet and many of the dictatorship’s economists studied at the University of Chicago. Klein writes, “In the decades since [the Pinochet dictatorship], whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or ‘shock therapy,’ has been the method of choice” (8). For Ana Tijoux, the exploitation of migrant workers is an application of the shock doctrine. Behind a marching beat, Tijoux calls for people to stand up in the name of social justice and fight. The majority of the video features Tijoux sitting on an old branch in the desert, accompanied by six young activists. A young man in shorts and a baseball cap turned backwards sits to her right and drums the beat against the wooden box that also functions as his seat. Behind him is another young man in sunglasses who is playing an acoustic guitar. To Tijoux’s left are three young women and one man, who are holding a white sheet serving as a projector screen playing images and video of young people in acts of civil disobedience. At several points, police forcibly remove students from the peaceful protests. Behind everyone is the natural Arizona skyline at sundown, complete with mountains. The land is an important part of the video because it echoes the reclaiming of space that hip hop typically produces in urban settings. This is an important visually rhetorical move because it shows these young protestors as actively claiming

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the land back for themselves. Halfway through the video, three undocumented youths offer testimonios about coming out as undocumented and unafraid. These same young people are featured throughout the video in footage of peaceful protests that are broken up by the police. During one such testimonio, a young woman says, “I’m coming out today as undocumented and unafraid because I’m tired. I’m tired of people saying that I’m illegal.” A second young woman follows with her statement: “I’m tired of living in fear. I’m tired of my family living in fear. I’m tired of wondering if I’m going to see my little brother and my little sister the next day” (Loewe). These statements, combined with the images of protest, a police presence, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the Arizona desert landscape provide a message of resistance, hope, and action for all those people and communities suffering in Arizona. If we interpret this activism as being based on Indigenous struggles for land and identity, then we see how important it is for Indigenous people to actively think of their struggles as tied to rights to the land. Artists like Willy Northpole and Ana Tijoux show why hip hop is important to resisting anti-immigrant political acts like SB 1070. Their work combines a recognition of immigration as being tied to the abuse of Indigenous peoples and communities with a need for alliances with other groups, by creating art that is inclusive rather than discriminatory. Utilizing mixtape tactics allows these and other artists to make their work and messages accessible to as many groups as possible, thereby adding songs to the soundtrack of the revolution. Hip hop was born as a response by marginalized young people to voice their concerns and frustrations towards the ways they were ignored and oppressed by the United States. At its best, hip hop remains true to this tradition in work that continues to raise awareness and inspires people to imagine a better world. In the current cultural moment, immigrants serve as scapegoats for crime, terrorism, and a weak economy—all while working as the most exploited labor force in the country. As more states work towards creating and intensifying laws that create hostile living conditions for immigrants and people of color, songs of protest are vitally needed to keep hope alive and to continue fighting the power.

Works Cited Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007. Print. Arizona. State of Arizona Senate. Senate Bill 1070. Phoenix: 49th Legislature, 2010. Print.

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Cizmar, Martin. “Buy A Line in the Sand: A Compilation of SB 1070 Protest Songs.” Phoenix New Times. 19 May 2010. Web. 22 July 2012. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Print. First Nations United. “First Nations United Statement Against SB 1070.” NAISA. 27 Apr. 2010. Web. 23 July 2012. Hurt, Byron, dir. Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Prod. God Bless the Child. DVD. PBS, 2006. Jay-Z. Decoded. New York. Speigel & Grau, 2010. Print. Kitwana, Bakari. Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005. Print. Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador, 2007. Print. Loewe, B. “New Ana Tijoux Music Video Stands With Arizona’s Immigrants.” NDLON. 10 July 2012. Web. 22 July 2012. Moraga, Cherríe L. A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Print. Northpole, Willy. “Back to Mexico.” YouTube.com. 12 March 2011. Public Enemy. “By the Time I Get to Arizona.” Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Back. Def Jam, 1991. CD. ———. “By the Time I Get to Arizona.” YouTube.com. 14 August 2011. Redmond, Eugene B. “A Harbor of Sense: An Interview with Joy Harjo.” Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country. Eds. Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 25–30. Print. Ridolfo, Jim, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery.” Kairos 13.2 (2009) Web. 1 May 2011. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Print. ———. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—And Why It Matters. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008. Print. Shakur, Tupac. “To Live & Die in L.A.” Greatest Hits. Interscope Records, 1998. CD. Smitherman, Geneva. “‘The Chain Remain the Same’: Communicative Practices in the Hip Hop Nation.” Talkin’ That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America. New York: Routledge, 1999. 268–87. Print. Tijoux, Ana. “Shock.” La Bala. Nacional Records, 2012. CD.

Contributors

Jeff Berglund is a professor of English at Northern Arizona University where he is a President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow and affiliate faculty with Ethnic Studies and Applied Indigenous Studies. He is the author of articles on Indigenous film, poet Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo), poet Esther Belin (Diné/ Navajo), and the pedagogy of American Indian literature. He is the editor and contributor of essays to Sherman Alexie: a Collection of Critical Essays (Utah University Press, 2010) as well as the author of Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality (Wisconsin University Press, 2006). Casie C. Cobos is an assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at Illinois State University. After receiving an MFA in fiction and MA in literature from McNeese State University, she completed her PhD at Texas A&M University as a Graduate Diversity Fellow, NBF BookUp Fellow, and University Dissertation Fellow. She recently published a co-authored performance piece, “The Calmécac Collective, or, How to Survive the Academic Industrial Complex Through Radical Indigenous Practices,” which stems from her studies in de/anti-colonial, Indigenous, and Chicana/o rhetorical practices. More specifically, her research interests include Indigenous cartography and land-based epistemologies, stories as embodied praxis, historiography, and culturally situated understandings of mental illness. Her current projects seek to center Chicana/o rhetorics in the histories of the Americas, and to understand

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the intersections of mental illness and Chicanidad. Furthermore, in order to encourage other scholars of color, she is co-editor (with fellow Indigenous Pop contributor Marcos Del Hierro) of a collection that gathers self-told stories of people of color to help guide future generations through the academic complex. In her work, Casie honors the stories of her family and community from which her research interests, writing, and community involvement come. Marcos Del Hierro is an assistant professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. His essay, “Fighting the Academy One Nopal at a Time,” appeared in El Mundo Zurdo: Selected Works from the Meetings of The Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa in 2012. As a member of the Calmécac Collective, he co-authored the performance piece, “The Calmécac Collective, or, How to Survive the Academic Industrial Complex Through Radical Indigenous Practices” in El Mundo Zurdo: Selected Works from the Meetings of The Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa in 2013. His forthcoming publication, “Stayin’ on Our Grind: What Hiphop Pedagogies Offer to Technical Writing,” will appear in the collection, Integrating Theoretical Frameworks for Teaching Technical Communication.” He is currently working on his first monograph project, Everyday I’m Hustlin’: Hip Hop Rhetorics and the Art of Makin’ Do, which theorizes the “Art of Makin’ Do” as a rhetorical tactic that looks at discarded knowledges, materials, and technologies as always/already reimaginable, reusable, and recyclable. In addition to his publications, Marcos has won several awards, including the Charles Gordonne Award for Creative Nonfiction (2011); the National Book Award BookUpTX Fellowship (2012); the Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (2013); and the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Faculty Fellowship (2015). Chad Hamill (Spokan) earned his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Colorado in 2008. He is the author of Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau: The Jesuit, the Medicine Man, and the Indian Hymn Singer (Oregon State University Press, 2012). The book examines the role of song—both Native and Catholic—in the perpetuation of Indigenous identity, a phenomenon he explores largely through the relationship between Gibson Eli (Hamill’s great-uncle), “the last medicine man of the Spokan tribe,” Fr. Tom Connolly, a Jesuit active in the Columbia Plateau for over half a century, and Mitch Michael, an Indian hymn leader. Interested in ongoing global engagement, Hamill has

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given papers and lectured in Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, leading to his appointment as a Fulbright Specialist in 2012. Hamill is currently associate professor and chair of the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University, where he has served as co-chair of the Commission for Native Americans. His forthcoming book, American Indian Jazz: Mildred Bailey and the Undiscovered Origins of America’s High Art Music, is under contract with the University of Washington Press and will appear as part of their Indigenous Confluences series. Samantha Hasek is a biologist living in San Francisco. This is her first publication, and she enjoyed reflecting on the creative expressions of humanenvironment relationships. While studying at Northern Michigan University, she served as a research assistant on the Zaagkii Project and the Decolonizing Diet Project, both of which explored Great Lakes Indigenous flora and fauna. Jan Johnson is a clinical assistant professor of English at the University of Idaho where she produces Sapaatk’ayn Cinema, a Native American film festival. After years of piano and violin lessons as a child, she joined her first rock and roll band in junior high. Later, she sang with country, rock, and R&B bands for several years before joining academia. She has published articles on Columbia River tribal poetry and environmental justice, trauma in the work of Sherman Alexie, and Nez Perce tribal jazz bands of the early to mid-twentieth century. Her current project is on Nez Perce decolonization, tentatively titled, From Nez Perce to Niimíipuu: Performances of Resistance and Resilience. Kimberli Lee is a professor of English in the Department of Languages and Literatures and Cherokee and Indigenous Studies at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She is the author of I Do Not Apologize for the Length of This Letter: The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 1940–1965. She has also published articles on contemporary American Indian music as rhetoric of resistance. Other areas of interest include Indigenous literature, rhetoric, and pedagogy. She has relatives among the Lakotas ( James and Eleanor Charging Crow) and Omahas (Colleen and Jesse Flores). April E. Lindala (Grand River Six Nations) is the director of the Center for Native American Studies and an associate professor of English at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. Her creative nonfiction essay,

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“For the Healing of All Women,” is featured in the 2013 anthology, The Way North published by Wayne State University Press. Lindala was also the project director and assistant editor of the 2011 anthology, Voice on the Water: Great Lakes Native America Now, celebrating the contemporary Michigan Indian experience. Gail A. MacKay is Anishinaabe-Metis from Sault Ste. Marie. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Saskatchewan, where her doctoral research focuses on Indigenous students’ discourse in their transition to higher education. Her publications include “The City as Home: The Sense of Belonging Among Aboriginal Youth” in Home in the City: Urban Aboriginal Housing in a Western Canadian City (University of Toronto Press, 2013) and “‘Learning to Listen to a Quiet Way of Telling’: A Study of Cree Counseling Discourse Patterns in Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed” in Indigenous Poetics (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2014). Scott Prinzing (MEd, Montana State University-Billings; BA, American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota) is the director of education and coordinator of music and Native American programming for MusEco Media and Education Project in Billings, Montana. He is a certified elementary teacher who has taught media literacy, American Indian history and culture, and the history of rock and roll to children, teens, and adults. He has freelanced as a music journalist for thirty years and as a radio deejay and producer for twentyfive. He was commissioned to produce the teacher’s handbook and compilation CD, American Indian Music: More Than Just Drums and Flutes, for the Indian Education Department of Montana’s Office of Public Instruction, and has presented to innumerable teachers’ organizations, student groups, and the public on this topic. Along with his wife, Kris, he performs and records with the progressive folk duo, Earthshine. He is also known throughout Montana and Wyoming as the “Green Man” in the Green Smarts with the Green Man series of public service announcements produced by MusEco. He is currently writing a reference book, Indians Who Rock, for the popular market. Gabriela Raquel Rios is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. Gabriela researches across disciplinary boundaries to focus on (re)claiming and building Indigenous and/or Chicana/o rhetorics. Her approaches are community-based and work to decenter

contributors 241

the Western rhetorical tradition in order to theorize and reclaim Indigenous material rhetorics from Indigenous perspectives. Her scholarship centers on the material structures of composing in relation to language and the environment. This perspective pays particular attention to Indigenous notions of place and the intimate relationship between Indigenous identity and ecology. She has a co-written book chapter called “Biocultural Diversity and Copyright: Linking Intellectual Property, Language, Knowledges, and Environment” forthcoming in an edited collection called Cultures of Copyright. Additionally she is working on a manuscript titled Khipu Structures of Coding: Decolonial Approaches to Object-Oriented Rhetoric and Coding Studies, which critiques and politicizes the study of writing with respect to Indigenous artifacts. Her most recent research interests stem from participation in activism with farm workers in Florida. She is a core member of Orlando’s chapter of the Youth and Young Adult Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry (YAYA-NWFM), and is working on a project for cultivating Indigenous land-based literacies and rhetorics. Bill Siegel has been writing about jazz topics for many years, with articles and reviews in such publications as InMotionMagazine, AllAboutJazz, Planet Jazz (Canada), jazz’halo (Belgium), and more. His poetry and artwork have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including Brilliant Corners, Blue Mesa Review, Number 9: Cruzando Fronteras/Literature from the Borderlands, International Poetry Review (translations of poems by Cuban poet, Nicolas Guillen), Black Bear Review, and Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust. He is the creator of the archival web site, www.jimpepperlives .wordpress.com, which includes articles relating to the life and music of Jim Pepper and artists who worked with Pepper or who consider him one of their strongest influences. The site also includes transcripts of interviews with Pepper, as well as an exhaustive discography of Pepper’s recorded works. He has interviewed many of today’s leading jazz artists about their experiences working with Pepper—including Joe Lovano, Larry Coryell, Rakalam Bob Moses, Ed Schuller, Dr. Gunther Schuller, Paul Motian, Dave Liebman, Pura Fe, and others—as well as younger Native American artists whose work has built on and continues to build on Jim Pepper’s legacy. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts. John W. Troutman is an associate professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His first book, Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879–1934, in 2011 won the Western History Association’s

242 contributors

biennial W. Turrentine Jackson Award for the first book on any aspect of the American West. He is currently completing a monograph on the history of the Native Hawaiian steel guitar. David S. Walsh is assistant professor of Religious Studies at Gettysburg College, specializing in Indigenous religions. David researches Indigenous religions of the Americas, specifically ontology and worldviews of the Hopi and Athabaskan peoples of the Southwest United States and Northwest Canada. Reggae music has always been an academic as well as a personal passion for David. When he came upon Hopi reggae while working toward a master’s degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he seized the opportunity to write his master’s thesis on the topic. He received a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of Colorado in 2008, and a doctorate from Arizona State University in 2015. His current research is on traditional relationships with nature among the Tłic̨ hǫ Dene in the Northwest Territories, Canada. His other publications include “Rez Riddims: Reggae and American Indians,” in American Indians and American Popular Culture; and “Moving Beyond Widdowson and Howard: Traditional Knowledge as an Approach to Knowledge,” in the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 4.1 (2011).

Index

Abieta, Karen, 157, 176n1 Aboriginal peoples: and music, 10, 207–9, 211, 212–13, 215, 217, 220n1; social context, 201–5 Acoma, 7, 57 activism, 233, 235 Adam and the Ants (band), 79 Africa, 157, 160–61, 163, 167 African diaspora, 160 Afro-Indigenous methodology, 227 Ahenakew, Reverend Edward, 206–7, 210 Ahtone, Chris, 188 Alcatraz, 55–56, 64, 88, 92–93, 101, 104 all-Indian jazz band, 21, 29. See also jazz Allman, Duane, 89 The Allman Brothers Band, 89 allotment, 10, 18, 19 American Bandstand, 77 American Indian Band, 26, 28 American Indian Inaugural Ball, 159 American Indian Movement (AIM), 55, 64, 67, 69, 71, 88, 100, 103, 189 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, 71

Ammons, Gene, 48 Amram, David, 57, 69 Anadarko (Oklahoma), 29 Anishinaabe, 125, 201, 207–9, 219; dialects, 203, 205, 220n4; music and musicians, 73, 128–30 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 15, 144–45, 152n5, 226 Apache, 9–10, 30n4, 79, 157 Arizona SB 1070, 224–25, 230–35 Armstrong, Louis, 40, 41 articulation, theory of, 156, 159, 161–62, 174 assimilation, 10, 18–19, 21, 48, 53, 54, 93, 104, 125, 141, 184 Assiniboine, 203, 206 Atkins, Chet, 63, 76 Aquash, Anna Mae, 64 audience, 9, 54, 56, 79, 86, 89, 99, 126, 128, 133, 138, 143, 156, 193, 215–20, 220n1; connection with, 45, 112, 201, 216, 219; and diversity, 186–87, 198n4, 234; experience, 8; female, 211; general, 61; hip hop, 227–32; Indian or Aboriginal, 100, 115, 211, 215, 217, 69; interaction with, 140, 152, 187; mainstream, 13, 103–4, 211;

24 4 inde x

male, 211, 229; nature of, 4; perception of, 12; white or non-Indian, 21, 23, 65, 69, 170, 211, 229, 230 authenticity, 18–19, 22, 29, 30n4, 93, 110, 111, 141, 158, 162; lack of, 160, 161, 162, 174; for non-Indian audiences, 23 Ayler, Albert, 48, 52 Aztec, 115, 116 Babylon, 14, 155, 156, 160–68, 175 Bad Brains (band), 181 Bailey, Mildred, 12, 33–43, 45 Baker, Houston, 11 The Band, 12–13, 78, 81–85, 88, 126 Banks, Dennis, 67, 73 Barenboim, Daniel, 48, 56, 57 Barris, Harry, 40 The Beatles (band), 12, 86, 89. See also Harrison, George; Lennon, John; Starr, Ringo bebop, 48 Beck, Jeff, 78 Bee, Tom, 102–4 Beiderbecke, Bix, 40–41 Bellamy, Tony, 99 Benally, Clayson, 14, 179–80, 187, 193, 196. See also Blackfire Benally, Jeneda, 14, 179–81, 185, 188, 194, 196. See also Blackfire Benally, Klee, 14, 179,184, 186, 188, 190–91, 194–96, 197n2, 198–99nn7–8. See also Blackfire Bennett, Tony, 33 Benny Goodman’s Orchestra, 42 Berlin, Irving, 39 BIA. See Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of the Bilagody, James, 85 Bimaadiziwin, 207–8 Blackfire (band), 14, 179–97, 197nn2–6. See also Benally, Clayson; Benally, Jeneda; Benally, Klee Blackfoot, 30n4, 205

Black Kettle, Chief, 188 Black Mesa, 164, 179, 184, 186 blood quantum, 23, 24, 27. See also mixed blood Blood, Sweat & Tears (band), 50 Bluehouse, Willy, 103 blues, 40, 48, 50, 78–79, 81, 129, 137, 140, 146; and Jesse Ed Davis, 86–89; as musical genre, 3, 12, 62, 81, 83, 226; and Native American politics, 10 boarding schools, Indian, 9, 10, 17, 18, 19, 29, 67, 125, 206. See also Carlisle Indian School Bob Dylan & The Band, 81. See also Dylan, Bob borderlands, 137–38, 144, 226–27, 235 Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse, 193 Brown, Dee, 64, 66, 83, 104 Browne, Jackson, 73, 86, 89 Browner, Tara, 11 Brubeck, Dave, 54–55, 89 brujeria, 142 Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of the (BIA), 27, 30n5, 55, 68, 164, 185 Burke, Charles, 19, 22–24 The Byrds (band), 88 Cadman, Charles Wakefield, 18 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, 201 Carlisle Indian School (Carlisle Indian Industrial School), 3, 17, 21. See also boarding schools, Indian Carter, Benny, 51 Cash, Johnny, 56, 64, 70, 73, 96–97 Castillo, Ana, 140 Charles, Ray, 76 Cher, 63 Cherokee, 76, 78, 85, 99, 103, 115–16; Black Cherokee, 120 Cherry, Don, 50–53, 59 Chief Joseph, 127–128 Chippewa, 6, 220n4 Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, 19, 20

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Chuck D, 228 Circling Raven (Coeur d’Alene prophet), 35 citizenship, 10, 145 civil rights (movement), 55, 69, 92 Clapton, Eric, 78, 82–84, 86–89 Clark, Gene, 88 Clayton, Buck, 41 Clifford, James, 156, 161 Coeur d’Alene, 12, 15, 33–37, 41–42, 45 Coeur d’Alene Drummers (band), 42, 44 Cohen, Leonard, 86 Coleman, Ornette, 51 colonialism, 113, 116, 117, 137, 141–42, 144–45, 164, 233; and authenticity, 111; and colonial binary, 138; and “coloniality of power,” 110; contemporary, 98; critique of, 104–5, 145–52; effects of, 113, 119, 160–61; legacy of, 14, 105, 117, 224, 229; Paris Exposition Coloniale Internationale, 24–26; policies and practices of, 66, 94, 110, 225; responses to, 105, 139. See also decolonization; neocolonialsm Coltrane, John, 48–50 Comanche, 30n4, 75, 79, 86, 88 Comstock, Michelle, 111–12 Coolidge, Rita, 9, 85 Cornplanter (Seneca), 97–98 Costello, Elvis, 82 country western (country), 11, 12, 62, 81, 83, 97; and Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman, 70–71; and Jesse Ed Davis, 86–87, 89; and Jim Pepper, 47, 50, 52; and Link Wray, 76, 78–79; as musical genre, 3, 12, 62, 67–68 Cowessess First Nation, 204, 207 Cream (band), 82 Cree, 14, 62, 67, 88, 201, 203, 205–11, 217– 20, 220n1 Creek, 13, 108, 111, 113, 115–19, 121; Craig Womack, 52, 69; exposure to new cultures, 53; Jim Pepper, 12, 47, 57; Joy Harjo, 51, 227; musicians, 75–76, 86, 103

Croisette, Mrs. V, 27 Crosby, Bing, 12, 33, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46nn2–3 Crow, 30n4 cultural identity, 10, 13, 47, 51–55, 93, 108, 112, 139 Curtis, Charles, 21, 25, 30n2 Curtiss, Jimmy, 68 Custer, George Armstrong, 53 Dakota, 55, 64, 67, 71, 102, 103, 203 Davis, Jesse Ed, 12, 75, 86–90 Davis, Miles, 49, 50 Dead Kennedys (band), 181 de Certeau, Michel, 15, 227, 230 decolonization, 11, 12, 13, 69, 107, 108, 112, 114, 117, 115, 121, 125. See also colonialism; neocolonialism Deloria, Philip J., 9 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 5, 67–72 Dene, 220n2 Densmore, Francis, 6 Department of Justice and Indian Affairs, 28 Diamond, Beverly, 10 Diamond, Neil, 83, 89 Digging Roots (band), 13, 123, 128–30 Diné, 179–80, 184–86, 189, 197, 198nn4–5, 199n9; and Diné Bikéyah, 14, 181–82, 194 Dolphy, Eric, 48 Donovan (musician), 63 Dook’o’oosłííd, 14, 186, 194 Dorsey, Tommy and Jimmy, 40 Douquette, Joe, 210, 219 Downs, Lila, 136–52 Dr. John (musician), 84, 88 Duran, Eduardo and Bonnie, 193 Dylan, Bob, 78–79, 81, 84–86, 89, 96. See also Bob Dylan & The Band Dyson, Michael Eric, 11 Ellington, Duke, 45, 50 Ellington, Ruth, 33, 50 Elliot, Ramblin’ Jack, 96

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Empire Music Hall, 25, 27 English-only discourse, 147 equality, 188 Erdrich, Louise, 132 Everything Is Everything (band), 49–50 extermination, 54 The Fall (band), 79 FBI, 55, 64 Federation for American Indian Rights (FAIR), 64 Ferry, Brian, 88 First Americans in the Arts, 58, 80 First Nations, 10–11, 113, 129, 161, 201–3, 205, 207, 220n1; musicians, 14, 123; women, 205; youth, 14. See also specific First Nations peoples and individuals Fitzgerald, Ella, 12, 33, 41 Fogerty, John, 86 folk music (folk), 14, 56–57, 67, 70, 83, 86, 92–94, 137, 140, 181, 186, 196; and Buffy Sainte-Marie, 62–67; as musical genre, 3, 12, 62; musicians, 13, 50, 62, 81, 85; and Peter La Farge, 94–98, 187 The Free Spirits (band), 49, 50 Friedwald, Will, 41, 42, 45 Garcia, Jerry, 78 Geertz, Armin, 159, 170 Ghost Dance, 17, 101 Giddins, Gary, 40, 46nn3–4 Gilbert and Sullivan, 45 The Graffiti Band, 12, 86 Grand River Reserve, 80 The Grateful Dead (band), 78 Gridley, Marion E., 21, 28 Guthrie, Arlo, 88 Guthrie, Woody, 70, 76, 179, 186 Haggard, Merle, 10 Hamill, Chad, 35–36 Harjo, Joy, 13, 51, 107–21, 226–27 Harris, Emmylou, 84

Harrison, George, 89. See also The Beatles Haudenosaunee, 124–25, 130 Hawkins, Ronnie, 80, 84. See also The Hawks The Hawks (Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks; band), 80, 81–82, 84, 85–87. See also Hawkins, Ronnie Helm, Levon, 82, 86–87 Hendrix, Jimi, 9, 78–79, 82, 99 hip hop, 14–15, 85, 128, 201; and Ana Tijoux, 234–35; Chicana/o, 140; and Eekwol, 211, 219, 220n1; as musical genre, 3, 62, 123; popularity of, 11; responses to SB 1070, 224–35; vernacular, 211; and Willy Northpole, 231–33 historical trauma, 92, 180, 190–91, 193–94 Hoch, Reuben, 49, 57 Hocks, Mary E., 111–12 Hooker, John Lee, 88–89, 99 Holiday, Billie, 12, 33 Hopi, 14, 20, 30n4, 155–75, 184–85, 179 Huston, John, 28 hymns, 34–36, 53 I-and-I, 14, 156, 167–68 immigrants, and immigration, 136, 145– 46, 148–50, 224–27, 231–32, 234–35 Indian Act, 206–7 Indian Commissions Agreement of 1889, 35 Indian Confederation of America, 28 Indian Reorganization Act, 17, 18 Innu, 85 Inuit, 10, 65, 202 Iroquois, 6, 55, 85, 125, 130 Isleta Pueblo, 103 The Jackson 5, 103 Jah, 14, 167 James, Elmore, 89 jazz, 9, 15, 25–27, 29, 76, 83, 87, 113, 115–16, 140; festivals, 159; and Jim Pepper, 47–58; and Joe Shunatona, 11, 19–22,

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26–29; and Joy Harjo, 115–16; and Mildred Bailey, 33–45; as musical genre, 3, 12, 18, 62, 226; musicians, 12, 13, 89; and politics of identity, 47–58; “Red Roots” of, 9. See also all-Indian jazz band Jesuits, 35–36 John, Sir Elton, 82 Johnson, Gwendolyn (wife of Joe Shunatona), 20, 21, 28 Johnson, Robert, 83

Lee, Kimberli, 109, 126 Lees, Gene, 51, 55 Lennon, John, 78, 89. See also The Beatles Liebman, Dave, 47, 49 Lincoln, S. B., 19 Linder, Adrian, 52, 54 Little Big Horn, 53 Lipsitz, George, 8, 11, 137–38, 140, 142–43 Lomayesva, Casper Loma-da-wa, 155–75 Lomayesva, Sankey, 158, 167

Kachina, 166–67, 172–73 Kanatakta, Raven, 128–130 Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw, Jim, 210, 219, 221 Kashtin (folk rock duo), 85 Kaw (Kansa), 12, 21, 30n2, 47, 53. See also Kaw Peyote Church; Oklahoma Kaw reservation Kaw Peyote Church 12, 47–48, 50, 52–54 King, Albert, 86, 88 King, B. B., 88 King, Tyrone, 103 The Kinks (band), 78 Kiowa, 6, 12, 75, 86, 88, 188 Kish, ShoShona, 128, 129, 130 Klegerman, Jaime Robert, 80 Knight, Eekwol (Lindsay), 14, 201–20, 220n1 Koblah, Loretta, 156, 162, 165–66, 170, 172, 174–75 Kristofferson, Kris, 73 Krupat, Arnold, 4, 5 Ku Klux Klan, 76 Kykotsmovi (Arizona), 156–58

Manifest Destiny, 92, 100 marching bands, 9, 18; Sousa, 18 Marcus, Greil, 83, 181 Marley, Bob, 10, 156–57 Martin, A. Michael, 102–3 Maya, 13, 116, 119, 138 McBride, Bunny, 21, 27 Means, Russell, 55 mestizaje, 140, 225, 226 Metís, 10, 202–3 Mexicans, 99, 132, 228, 231, 232 Mignolo, Walter, 107–8, 110–11, 113, 117 migrant labor, 137–38 Miller, Steve, 86 “Minute Men,” 147–49 Mitchell, Joni, 84 Mitchell, Larry, 120 mixed blood, 99, 103, 203, 207, 225. See also blood quantum “mixtape tactics,” 15, 230–31, 233, 235 Mixtec, 13, 139, 143, 151 Modoc, 54 Mohawk, 12, 75, 80, 82–83, 128, 209 Momaday, N. Scott, 92, 93 Monk, Thelonius, 48 Moon, Keith, 86 Moraga, Cherie, 15, 225 Morrison, Toni, 108 Morrison, Van, 84 The Mothers of Invention (band), 49 Motown Records, 103 MTV, 211, 213, 228

LaDuke, Winona, 125 La Farge, Oliver, 28, 64, 95 La Farge, Peter, 13, 50, 56, 64, 93–98, 105, 187 Lake Traverse Reservation, 67 Lakota/Anishnabe, 85 Lanois, Daniel, 84 Led Zeppelin (band), 10, 78, 80

248 inde x

Muscogee. See Creek Muskoday First Nation, 201, 203–4, 207, 220n1 Nahua, 142 Narragansett, 13, 64, 94 National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), 9, 58–59, 80, 159 Native American Church, 119 Native American Music Awards (Nammys), 11, 58, 73, 159, 179 Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame, 58 Navajo, 14–15, 30n4, 164, 189, 196, 198n6; and Benally family (Blackfire), 184–86, 198n5; Beauty Way, 118; language, 104, 196; in Laughing Boy, 28; Navajo Nation, 179, 192; and reggae, 157–58; reservation, 158, 186; and XIT, 101–2, 103 Neah Bay Reservation, 99 Nelson, Willie, 86 neocolonialism, 66. See also colonialism; decolonization Newman, Randy, 83 Nez Perce, 3 Nihewan Foundation, 64 Nilsson, Harry, 86 Northpole, Willie, 231–33 O’Brien, Thomas, 19, 21–25, 27–28, 30n5 Odetta, 99 Office of Indian Affairs, 18–19, 21–25, 27, 29 Oklahoma Kaw reservation, 48. See also Kaw (Kansa) opera, 36 orchestra, 9, 11, 17, 19–22, 26, 29, 41–42, 56–57, 198n4 Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, 58 Ortiz, Simon, 7, 57, 93–94, 105 Osage, 22, 29–30, 72 Osawa, Sandra, 48–51, 53, 55, 58–59

Page, Jimmy, 78, 80 Page, Patti, 89 Paiute, 30n4 Parker, Charlie, 51 Paul Winter Consort, 59 Pawhuska, 29 Pawnee Indian Agency, 21 Pawnee-Otoe, 11, 19, 30 Peabody Coal Company, 164–65 Pedelty, Mark, 126, 132 Peltier, Leonard, 55, 85 Penobscot, 26 Peone, Bazil, 34, 36, 45 Pepper, Floy, 52, 57 Pepper, Jim, 12, 47–58, 119 Pepper, Ralph, 48 Perea, John Carlos, 59 Peyote Church, 50, 52, 53, 54, 85, 119 Piapot reserve, 62, 207 Pima, 97 Ponca, 3, 29 Posey, Alexander, 29 Potawatomie, 30n2 Powell, Malea, 108, 111, 116, 121 pow wow, 10, 11, 29, 42, 48, 50, 53, 61, 99 Pratt, Richard H., 21 Presley, Elvis, 63, 76, 83, 86 psychedelia, 48 punk, 3, 14–15, 62, 76, 80, 186, 197n2, 198n5; and Blackfire, 179–82 Quetzalcoatl, 107, 116 racism, 15, 28, 94, 97, 101, 137, 188, 193, 224 Rader, Dean, 93–94, 105 ragtime, 35 Raitt, Bonnie, 73 Ramones (band), 181 rancheras, 140, 141 R&B (rhythm and blues), 47–50, 81, 119, 226 rap, 14, 129, 201, 226–34

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Rastafarian, 155, 156, 160, 162–63, 165–68, 171–73, 175, 176n2. See also Rasta reggae discourse; reggae Rasta reggae discourse, 14, 155–56, 158–60, 162–63, 165–69, 171–75, 176n2. See also Rastafarian; reggae The Raymen (band), 80 Redbone (band), 8, 13, 92–93, 99–101, 105 Red Power Movement (or Era), 13, 79, 88, 92–94, 99, 101, 105 The Red Road Ensemble (band), 13, 127 “Red Roots,” of American-originated musical styles, 3, 9 Reed, Lou, 89 reggae, 3, 14, 89, 128; and Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva, 155–75. See also Rastafarian; Rasta reggae discourse relocation, 184–85 rememory, 108, 117 resistance, 182, 185, 190–91, 205, 215, 217, 219, 228, 230–31, 233–35 rhetorics of alliance, 107, 108, 111 Rhoads, C. J., 19, 24, 25, 27, 28 Rhythm Boys (band), 40 Rinker, Alton, 37–40, 41, 46 Rinker, Charles, 35–36, 38, 42 Rinker, Josephine, 35–38, 46 Rinker-Miller, Julia, 45 Ritter, Tex, 29 Robertson, Robbie, 9, 11–13, 73, 75, 80–86, 88, 90, 123, 126–28 rock and roll (rock), 3, 9, 12–13, 47, 49–50, 52, 58, 62, 67, 75–90; and Jesse Ed Davis, 86–90; and Link Wray, 76–80; and Redbone, 99–101; and Robbie Robertson, 80–86; and XIT, 101–5 Rolling Stone Magazine, 12, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 90 Rollins, Sonny, 48 The Routers (band), 99 Roxy Music (band), 88 Russell, Leon, 86–87, 99

Said, Edward, 47–48, 53, 56–57 Sainte-Marie, Buffy, 11–12, 56, 61–67, 72–73, 88, 94 Salish, 36 Samuels, David, 5, 9, 11, 197 San Carlos Apache, 10 San Francisco Peaks, 14, 186, 197, 199 Santee Sioux, 132 Saulteaux, 14, 204, 206–7, 220 Schuller, Ed, 50, 57 Schulman, Sandra Hale, 11, 95–98 Secola, Keith, 73, 126 segregation, 18 self-determination, 10, 56, 114 Shakur, Tupac, 228, 232, 236 Shawnee 3, 12, 75–76, 78–79 Shenandoah, Joanne, 6, 13, 85, 123, 125, 130–31 Shoshone, 99 show tunes, 36 Shunatona, Joe, 11, 19–22, 26–30 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 93 The Silvercloud Singers (band), 85 Sinatra, Frank, 45 Sihasin (band), 196, 199 Sioux, 6 Six Nations, 80; Six Nations Reserve, 126; Six Nations Women Singers, 85 slavery, 53 Slemp, Bascom, 24, 25, 27 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 66 Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, 9, 59, 159 Snowbowl Ski Lodge, 14, 186 solidarity, 187–88, 190, 199 sovereignty, 56, 68, 72, 100, 112, 115–19, 121, 148, 180, 184, 225 Spokan, 37; and Spokan Treaty, 45 spoken word, 85–86, 89, 104 Spotted Eagle, Douglas, 85 Spotted Elk, Molly, 26, 27 Starr, Kinnie, 129

250 inde x

Starr, Ringo, 84. See also The Beatles Sting (musician), 73 Stone, Sly, 83 Streisand, Barbara, 63 string quartet, 9 speakeasy, 38–40 Springsteen, Bruce, 78 The Staples Singers, 84 storytelling, 109, 116, 125, 219 Sun Dance, 56 survivance, 9, 13, 71, 94, 107, 110, 112, 115, 117–18, 121 swing, 12, 33, 40–42, 45 syncretism, 156, 160, 162, 174, 176 Taj Mahal (musician), 86–89 Taupin, Bernie, 82 testimonios, 235 Tezcatlipoca, 116 Third Mesa Music (label), 159, 169–70 Tijoux, Ana, 234–35 Tin Pan Alley, 18 Tootoosis, John, 206, 223 Townsend, Pete, 78–79 traditional songs and teachings, 4–11, 115, 128–29, 203, 208; and Buffy Sainte-Marie, 62; Catholic Indian hymns, 36; Coeur d’Alene, 34–35, 36–37, 42, 44; devastation of, 70; fusion with “modern” practices, 111; Hopi, 168–75; and identity, 111; and Indian boarding schools, 29; and Jesse Ed Davis, 89; and Jim Pepper, 50, 52, 56; Navajo, 104, 179, 180–81, 189–94, 198n4; persistence and evolution of, 61–62, 73; peyote songs, 119 Troutman, John, 10 Trudell, John, 12–13, 61, 71, 86, 88–89, 123, 126, 128, 132–34 Trumbauer, Frank, 40, 51 Twitty, Conway, 86 Ulali (a cappella group), 85 United States Indian Band, 25, 30

United States Indian Reservation Orchestra, 11, 19–22, 25, 29 Ute, 157 U2 (band), 84 Vasquez, Pat and Candido “Lolly,” 99 vaudeville, 18, 21, 26, 40 Vegas, Lolly, 99 Vegas, Pat, 92 Vietnam War, 55, 84, 92 Vizenor, Gerald, 113–14 Walcott, Collin, 50, 53 Warrior, Robert, 72 Waters, Muddy, 84 Welburn, Ron, 9 Westerman, Floyd (Red Crow), 12, 56, 60–62, 67–73 Whiteman, Paul, 40, 41 The Who (band), 78 Wild West shows, 18, 22 Wiley, Lee, 41, 42 Williams, Hank, 76 Womack, Craig, 52–53, 57, 68, 109–10, 113–20 Wood, Ron 84 Wounded Knee (South Dakota), 17, 55, 67, 100, 101, 104; and Wounded Knee Massacre, 92 Wray, Doug, 76 Wray, Link (Fred Lincoln), 12, 75–80, 85, 86 Wright-McLeod, Brian, 10, 67, 95, 99, 197 Wyandotte, 20 xenophobia, 224, 228, 231 XIT (band), 13, 93, 101–5 Yaqui, 99 Young, Neil, 78, 84 Zapotec, 138 Zion, 14, 155–56, 160, 162–68, 175 Zuni, 16