NORTH AMERICAN INDIGENOUS MUSIC SEMINAR UNIT 4 - IDENTITY AND DECOLONIZATION: INDIGENOUS NOW LANGUAGE RECLAMATION Language carries culture. DANCING ON OUR TURTLE’S BACK “Indigenous languages carry rich meanings, theory and philosophies within their structures. Our languages house our teachings and bring the practice of those teachings to life in our daily existence. The process of speaking Nishnaabemowin, then, inherently communicates certain values and philosophies that are important to Nishnaabeg being. Breaking down words into the “little words” they are composed of often reveals a deeper conceptual—yet widely held—meaning. This part of the language and language learning holds a wealth of knowledge and inspiration in terms of Aanji Maajitaawin [to start over; the art of starting over; to regenerate]. That is because this ‘learning through the language’ provides those who are not fluent with a window through which to experience the complexities and depth of our culture.” (p. 49) DANCING ON OUR TURTLE’S BACK ➤ “Listening to the sound of our voice means that we need to listen with our full bodies—our hearts, our minds and our physicality. It requires a full presence of being. It requires an understanding of the culturally embedded concepts and teachings that bring meaning to our practices and illuminate our lifeways. In regenerating our languages, an enormous task in and of itself, we must also ask our Elders and fluent speakers to teach us through the language, using specific words as windows into a deeper, layered understanding. We must listen and take with us those sounds that hold the greatest meaning in our own lives and in our resurgence.”(p. 61) INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN NA ➤ Canada now: 60 languages in 12 language families ➤ 75% are “definitely,” “severely,” or “critically” endangered (UNESCO) ➤ Cree, Inuktitut, and Objibwa (Anishnaabemowin) ➤ USA now: 100+ languages ➤ endangered ➤ Navajo = 50% of Indigenous population ➤ Mexico now: 100,000+ speakers = 15 languages ➤ Mayan, Uto-Aztecan languages ➤ Nahuatl = 1 million+ speakers JEREMY DUTCHER ➤ Toronto-based composer, singer ➤ Wolastoq (Maliseet) ➤ Tobique First Nation (northern New Brunswick) WOLASTOQIYIK ➤ Maliseet: “broken talkers” (Mi’kmaq) ➤ Wolatoq = “Beautiful River” ➤ agriculture: corn, beans, squash ➤ hunting, fishing ➤ gathering ➤ Wabanaki (“People of the first light”) Confederacy ➤ 1606-1862; 1993- ➤ “part composition, part musical JEREMY DUTCHER ethnography, part linguistic reclamation” ➤ album: Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa ➤ field recordings: early 1900s ➤ William H. Mechling ➤ Wolastoqey = language ““...the younger generations are not able to sing the Indian Songs, so that in all probability the music of the malecite [Maliseet] will die out with this generation.” -William H. Mechling (1913) Jeremy Dutcher JEREMY DUTCHER ➤ “Nipuwoltimk” ➤ “Pomok Naka Poktoinskwes” ➤ “Honor Song” ➤ George Paul : "This is a song that came to me while I was fasting for my people. The message in this song is for all people to work together and help each other the way our creator would want us to be as human beings here upon Mother Earth, and as children of our creator we must always have respect for each other. So join hands and honour the life you have with dignity because you are a part of the creators work. Show the world that love and forgiveness can bring about world peace.” GLOBALIZATION OF HIP HOP DECOLONIZATION “…the repatriation of land and life” (Tuck and Yang 2012) “WORD: HIP-HOP, LANGUAGE, AND INDIGENEITY IN THE AMERICAS”- JENELL NAVARRO ➤ Process of decolonization: “1) disseminating a conscious pan-indigeneity through lyricism and alliance building, 2) retaining and teaching Indigenous languages in their songs, and 3) implementing a radical orality in their verses that revitalizes both Indigenous oral traditions/ storytelling and the early message rap of the 1970s and 1980s.” (p. 2) “I am intentional about my argument that the use of ancestral languages in Indigenous hip-hop be considered an act of decolonization. Ultimately, in order to decolonize the Americas ‘land and life’ must be returned. Significantly, ancestral languages are such an integral part of Indigenous life that the revitalization of language produces material effects for Native peoples. In this way, I agree with Tuck and Yang, that the process of decolonization cannot remain relegated to the realm of discourse and metaphor. My understanding of decolonization, consequently, is that it is a process that involves both ideological work – for both the colonized and the colonizer – that Tuck and Yang seem to understand as the process of returning “life” to Indigenous people, and material self-determination or returning land and resources to those subject to settler colonialism. Thus, ancestral language acquisition for each generation defies linguistic genocide and maintains life in many ways such as communication with elders and ancestors.” (p. 4) NAVARRO ON THE URBAN CONTEXT “Furthermore, these Indigenous artists like Tolteka lay claim to urban space in this music along with their Indigenous identities in order to disrupt past/present and rural/urban dichotomies. This is significant because post-racial discourse has ascribed Indigeneity to the past and the rural/reservation: meaning within the parameters of post-racial ideals, Indigenous people do not exist and, even if they are granted some level of existence, it is outside the bounds of modernity. Specifically, then, post-racial discourse has implied that not only are we beyond race, but we are particularly beyond any moment where racial pride and identity should matter. Thus, when Indigenous artists like Tolteka and Tall Paul overtly assert their presence, and do so in urban contexts, they suggest not only that race/ethnicity most certainly matters, but also that it cannot be relegated to a past and outside of the symbols of modernity and futurity: the urban center.” (p. 10) TALL PAUL (PAUL WENELL, JR) ➤ Anishnaabe, Oneida ➤ Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota ➤ lives in Minneapolis ➤ “It was an identity struggle for me. I really didn’t know what being native meant when I was growing up. It had been washed out of my family, partly through forced assimilation. I would go to pow-wows and went to some of the sweats when I was a kid, but I was not around other native people enough to identify with it or take much pride in it. I think there’s a generational transition, and people my age are starting to take pride in it more. I hope to become more accustomed to the traditions and pass them along to my kids one day.” Homelands of Anishinaabe and Anishinini, ca. 1800 “PRAYERS IN A SONG” Gichi-manido wiidookawishin ji-mashkawiziyaan Mii-wenji nagamoyaan (Great Spirit help me to be strong) (That is why I am singing) Mii dash bami'idiziyaan Nimishomis wiidookawishinaam ji- aabajitooyaang anishinaabe izhitwaawin (So that I can help myself) (Grand father help us to use the Native ways) Miizhishinaam zaagi'iiwewin mii-ji-bi-gikendamaan keyaa anishinaabe (Show us all love) bimaadiziwin Ganoozh ishinaam, bizindaw ishinaam (so that we'll know how to live the Native (talk to us, hear us) way/the good life) ➤ Q. How do the lyrics reflect the relationship between language and identity? ➤ Q. What is the significance of having English and Anishnaabewomin lyrics? ➤ Q. What is the significance of having educational tools like hip hop lyrics in the video? MEXICA ➤ language = Nahuatl ➤ territory = valley of Mexico ➤ Teotihuacan ➤ Toltec ➤ Aztec TOLTEKA ➤ LA-based Chicano (Mexica) rapper ➤ English, Spanish, Nahuatl ➤ What’s in a name? ➤ reject Spanish surname ➤ “tolteka” = artisan in Nahuatl Navarro 9 Figure 2. CD jacket insert for Tolteka’s album “Reflexiones en Yangna, Califaztlan” (2008). defiance of the settler states (the U.S. and México) that commit violence against Indigenous peo- ples. This highlights the necessity to interrogate the ways in which cultural genocide is ongoing and continues to be enacted against Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Moreover, Tolteka dubbs the history of “manifest destiny” represented by this map more accu- rately with the title “manifest insanity” in his song and suggests that the discourses of progress, development, and expansion in the discourse of manifest destiny have all been practices of vio- lence against Indigenous peoples like Chicanos/as and the Hopi people alike. This is not to say that their histories are the same or that they could be conflated. Instead, by employing a transnational framework of conquest and colonization in the Americas, these artists highlight the multiple effects of colonization against distinct populations and the interrelated effects of post-racial discourses that reinscribe divisions between the Hopi as “Americans” who are a part of the dominant U.S. body politic insofar as they fit into white Americans’ nostalgic past and Chicanos/as who are cat- egorized as “illegal immigrants” and are imagined as threats who “illegally” cross borders. Tolteka also raps in Nahuatl to counter the linguistic genocidal effects of colonization much in the same way Tall Paul raps in Ojibwe. When I interviewed Tolteka in 2011, I asked him about the genealogy of conscious rap and how Indigenous rappers fit into that family. He responded by say- ing, “Indigenous communities have been producing rhythmic poetry for longer than my ancestral memory can currently remember, but probably, forever” (interview by author, Los Angeles, California). He was also very mindful about following up this statement with an acknowledgement of the driving force of conscious hip-hop that he identified as part of “the African poetic tradition … from signifyin’ and toastin’ back to the griots” (2011). His insistence on the Indigenous poetic tradition, therefore, is an important genealogy for his own personal Indigenous practice of hip-hop, rather than a disavowal of the centrality of blackness in hip-hop music and culture. This is signifi- cant because Tolteka is recognizing that the spirit of resistance in Indigenous hip-hop, as I note in the introduction, stems from the earlier tradition of speaking truth to power in predominantly African American and Puerto Rican hip-hop expression in the Bronx, New York, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.