Friends and Natives, part II: Decolonizing our Minds

This is part two of a post I did last month about Quakers and Native Americans.   It has become even more timely with the extreme actions of white supremacy that the Trump administration has engaged in during the last month, separating Hispanic immigrant parents from their children.  It is becoming more and more clear the ugly and hateful attitudes of the Trump administration to all brown colored people and that Trump's real agenda here as he faces a country that was crossing over from white majority to people of color majority is trying to turn back the hands of time by actually deporting people of color.  The violent suppression of Native people is the first systemic racism in the Americas, followed of course by slavery.   So colonization is a foundation in US white supremacy and it is therefore important to understand it.

A first step in de-colonizing ones own mind would be learning your own family history and faith history of oppression of Native People’s. (Which some people’s families came here well after the removals had happened, but that does not mean you are not benefiting from the outcomes of colonization.) For example, on whose tribal land do you now live?  https://native-land.ca/# What were the indigenous names for the significant geography of your area (the rivers, lakes, and mountains.)  Even some of the names we are told are Native names for local landmarks are in fact badly mispronounced English imitations of the real Native name for it.  Please notice the white privilege that we thought of these lands as “undiscovered” and unoccupied and therefore ours to name.  If I came to the city or town you live in and suddenly announced that hence forth it would be called “Hippopotamus” you would be indignant and wonder who I thought I was that I can just waltz in and name something that is already named in the awareness of all its residents.   And yet that is exactly what people of European descent did.  

So for example I grew up in Winnetka, Illinois – both names I were told were Native names – Winnetka does appear to mean "Beautiful Place" but it is unclear in what native language.  Illinois had a French ending because the French changed it from Illiniwek.  The tribe there, recorded by the US government as the Illinois called themselves the Inoka.  I then went to school in Indiana in territory that had belonged to the Miami (resulting in a nearby city being named that ) by 1846 most had been “removed”,  and the Osage tribe (official Bureau of Indian Management name – they referred to themselves at Wazhazhe).  The Miami and the Wazhazhe were both forced west to Oklahoma as were the Inoka.  So I grew up in lands with Native names but no Natives.  I knew there existed tribes in a few places in the US, but thought of them as mostly having been genocided long before my birth.  
It took moving to Seattle (a city named after a Native chief whose real name was Chief Sealth.)  before I met any real native Americans.   And then again I lived in a city that had forced the Duwamish tribe off its land and then denied them to this day official recognition as a Tribe – resulting in their having no reservation and no services.  Despite them popularly being referred to through the city as the Duwamish, this is turns out is also a mispronunciation of their name.

During the end of President Obama’s term he renamed Mt. McKinley as Mt. Denali its original name – in recognition of the indigenous people and that President McKinley had in fact never even been there.   However, Trump is now planning to rename it Mt. McKinley because he says Obama disrespected the former President McKinley  (There is of course blindness to the disrespect of a whole culture.)  My thought was ‘hmm well what if we all just kept calling it Mt. Denali?"   And then my mind went further and realized what if I just went to calling everything by its original name?  Would it help me to live with the humbling reality that all white Americans are standing on stolen land?

There are many other useful questions to begin looking at what it means to be the descendants of Settlers.  Unlike some people who were taught very rationalizing history about “Indian’s on the warpath” as a justification for US killing of Native tribes – I was fairly early on taught the ugly truth about the Trail of Tears, the slaughter of tribes etc.   But somehow this was still taught to me as “look what the US government did, look at what the army did”.   Somehow I was shielded till a native person called me the descendent of Settlers from the truth that indeed both sides of my family came to this country as “settlers”  - both took land awarded to them as if it were “empty”, “vacant”, and “unoccupied” and called it their own.  Suddenly I am seeing clearly that it was just such taking up of land that was why the army “cleared” the land, and why the treaties pushed the Natives further West and off their historic lands.  Suddenly I have to understand that indeed I have benefited from the complicity of my ancestors.

This is a good start to recognize how we are part of colonization.  And then we must look clearly look at how the media, Hollywood, tv and book portrayed the people indigenous to the United States.   I don’t know about you but when I was growing up they were still called “Indians” and tv shows and movies still showed them as “sneaky” and attacking white people (generally for no reason).  Books like the Little House on the Praire series, which was then turned into a tv show, portrayed the white people as nothing but kind, hard working and noble with a few references to Indians as threats.  Children still played in their imaginative play, as well as with little plastic figures “Cowboys and Indians” – a game in which the cowboys were the good guys and it was appropriate to kill all the Indians before they killed you.  (As a Quaker I was not allowed to play these games but that does not mean that my mind did not take in the programing.)  Phrases like “Indian giver”, and “circle the wagons” without any awareness of their racist origins.  For me decolonizing my mind means squarely confronting all these cobwebs, as well as confronting the implications of the term wilderness the gives lie to what was true about all US lands before they were “settled”.

Native People have been some of the most powerful fighters of climate change, using their treaty rights to stop massive oil pipeline and excavation projects.  And for that reason the tribes are under great threat under the Trump administration, which wishes to change their status to a race rather than to one of a sovereign nation.   This would be a clear opening move to strip all remaining power and self governance from them..  One example already happening is the desire of the Trump administration to strip an already financially strapped population because of the lack of jobs on reservations with health benefits by putting “work requirements” on them.  Health care was provide for under most treaties.  So the taking, and the violation of Native Tribes is not a historic footnote.  It has not stopped. 

So the big question remains what will you do now to not passively support the ongoing colonialization of this country?  And how might you benefit if you stepped out of a way of thinking that sees nothing wrong in taking, that says possession is 9/10^th of the law, that does not see killing, maiming or destroying as an inappropriate way to get ones way.   Sure you don’t personally believe that, but what practices in your life come out of that same way of doing things?  (An example which comes strongly to mind is how easily an without thought we feel it is ok to cut down groves of trees and to kill animals.)  I strongly encourage people to read the whole Spring issue of Yes Magazine on decolonization,  and particularly the article by Native author Kyle Powys Whyte of the Potawatomi Tribe, “White Allies, Let’s be honest about Decolonization”.   Will we stand with Native people this time to stop the taking?

                                          public art on the Lower Elwha Klallam tribal lands

Who is Wealthy?

My intention with this post is to help us get real about our actual wealth – as Quakers and Americans.  Due to the non-stop advertising messages coming our way almost all of us want something we don’t have (even if not a material object, we want to fix something or to go on a trip or get some comfort of some sort.)  By the nature of class in America people are generally surrounded by people of their own class and hear the wants and desires of people with similar means to their own – those further encouraging and normalizing our feelings about the things we want.  Politicians talk endlessly about the middle class and caring for the middle class.  Polls show that almost everyone thinks they are in the middle class.   Folks who are in fact poor think they are middle class, and folks who are in the top 15% of income in America think they are middle class.    So most of us, sadly, have no sense of reality about where we stand economically.

I am going to talk about the mean income in America (that is the point at which half make more and half make less).   The average is not a very useful statistic because taking all the income and dividing it by the number of people – because of the obscene wealth of the top 1% of America means that it skews high the statistic of average in America.  Further confusing those who are at the median to thinking they are some how $15,000 “behind” what is average in America.

Please stop for a minute – good thing it is tax season- and review what your income last year was, and then guess where you think you fall: bottom quarter, middle lower quarter, middle upper quarter, or upper quarter – or the 1%.   Occupy has made famous the phrase: the 1%, but most of us don’t know how much you would have to make to be in that club either.   Ok have you decided where you think you fall?

And the truth is: in 2016 the median income for a US worker was 31,099. ¹  (Almost exactly the median for a female with a bachelor’s degree – note for women getting a bachelor’s degree gets you in the middle – for men it gets you higher….19,000 higher.²)  For a family it was 72,707.¹  (that is for families of all races – for Black and Hispanic families the mean is as much as 30,000 less a year!) The poverty line (at which one qualifies for various forms of assistance) was 23,339 for a family of 4 in 2016.  43.1 million people lived at that level.  So that is people not working right?  NO.  If you earned the minimum wage set by Federal law (some states like WA have higher) and you were the single breadwinner for a family of 4 you would be below the poverty line.  Let that sink in “our minimum wage” does not keep a full time worker out of poverty.  ¼ of Americans make less than $10 an hour putting them below the poverty line.  That’s right ¼ of Americans are below the poverty line!   If someone is serving you….they are probably below the poverty line.³

Now if you think this news about the bottom fourth is bad – hold on there is more.  In 2012 the top 10% earned 50% of the nations total income – the highest ever recorded.  But worse yet the top 1% earned 20% of the nations income. ⁴  The word obscene does come to mind here. 

A picture of obscene in 2014.²   In fact in 2016 Forbes magazine listed the richest 25 families in America.  (Families like the Walton’s, the Koch’s, the Cargill’s etc.) All with fortunes worth more than 1.2 billion.  They collectively are worth 1.3 trillion.⁵ There is nothing I can imagine a human being doing that is worth that amount of money.  To live with that amount of money while 25% of our country lives below poverty is a sin.   (and I do not believe in the word sin.)

Census bureau data further shows the top 3% making over 400K a year.  Because I am writing this for a primarily Quaker audience and also a strongly Washingtonian audience the home of software millionaires, I need to further spell out this 2014 picture. I suspect a lot of my audience when they guess at the beginning thought they were somewhere between 50% and 75% when in fact the median as already mentioned is 31,099.  The top 10% was making over 160K, the top 15% was making over 115K, and the top 25% was making over 100K  which means that the top 25% are making 3x or more per person than over 50% of our country makes individually.²

Now if all this was not mind boggling enough – for many of you to realize that you are actually wealthy in America. Now we must confront the far more jarring reality that the US is the world’s 1%!   A 2012 story revealed that you needed just 32,000 (6 years ago) to be in the worlds 1%.   So in otherwords our median income puts us in the top 1% of the world.⁶    So just a minute ago I was feeling right in the middle of the pack, and now I see that I am wealthy beyond measure.    The BBC reported on a complex calculation that was done in 2012, it took the average wage of every country and multiplied it by the number of workers in that country and then came up with the average, they also adjusted the money for the exchange rate.  They came up with a monthly wage of $1,480 or just less than 18,000 a year.⁷  Earlier, I reported that the poverty line in the US in 2016 was 23,000 for a family of 4.   So that’s right – even the poor in American, many of them have more money than the average wage earner else where in the world!  There are second hand products that can be obtained here that are not available at all in many other countries.

How do we see what we have to share?  Those who earn less than 100K give the most 3.6% of their income.  Those over between 100k and 200K give the least 2.6% and those with the most, those over 200K give 3.1%.

Some of my regular readers are probably wondering why this heavily statistical and not (thus far) spiritual post?  I want to invite you to grapple with these facts.  I want to invite you into adopting an accurate picture of the money you have, the privilege you have and yes the wealth.  For me it is information that allows me to see my own situation and the world around me entirely differently.  For me there are profound moral implications to this information.  

What does our faith say to this level of inequality?  When I buy a cheap item in a store I don’t see the worker half way round the world who is paid less than minimum wage workers here to produce it?   But if I could would I still feel ok, feel right about my inexpensive purchase?  What choices would I make if I stay conscious each day of the fact that I am part of the world’s 1%?

1 https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-average-income-in-usa-family-household-history-3306189

2.       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

3.       https://www.thebalance.com/income-inequality-in-america-3306190

4.       4. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/

5.       https://www.forbes.com/families/list/#tab:overall

6.       http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html

7.       http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040

Quaker Parenting

This article appeared in Friends Journal in the April 2015 issue.

By: Lynn Fitz-Hugh & Sara Alice Grendon

My daughter, age 16, is a dyed-in-the-wool Quaker.  Other Quaker parents are often very curious how I pulled this off.  To me one of the most significant things is that from her birth, I felt I was steward of a spiritual being, a soul sent into my care and nurture.

I noticed early on her own expressions of spirituality, and unlike non-religious parents who might ignore or even discourage these expressions, I encouraged and nurtured them. My daughter had a great love of nature and expressed a sense of awe that tied what she encountered to a sense of majesty and the mystical.  I affirmed this.  I was influenced by the writings of Barry and Joyce Visnell who say that our image of An All Powerful and hopefully Loving God is shaped by our early experience of our own parents as all powerful.  This makes much more important how we as parents use power and model just, fair, compassionate and truthful behavior.

I am a leader among West Coast high school Friends, and soon to be part of a lovely team of powerful young Quakers, clerking FGC’s high school program. You don’t get this way by accident. There are choices my mother made as a Quaker parent which led to my growing into my Quaker-ness, and I suspect if one asked my weighty Young f/Friends how they got that way, we’d have similar experiences.  If we really wish to see the Religious Society of Friends continue, Quaker parents must raise Quaker children, and this does not have to mean shoving your beliefs down your kid’s throat. 

It seems Quaker parents rarely tell their children what to believe. However, they often don’t give them the spiritual framework to figure it out themselves, which is oh so necessary for a child exploring their own spiritual life. What I find most horrifying is when we don’t acknowledge our kids as having spiritual thought. As if somehow being a child means they can’t feel the Spirit. Doesn’t that contradict the idea of, “that of God in everyone”?

“Mommy, what is God?” I asked from the 3-year-old booster-seat.

“I can’t tell you,” my mother said. Unsatisfied with this frustrating answer I asked, “Why not?”    

“I could tell you what I think God is, but you’re going to have to form your own definition,” she told me, meeting my eyes thru the baby mirror.  I know that I proceeded to ask my mom for her definition of God, but I couldn’t tell you what she said next, because that isn’t the significance of this memory. This conversation from the back seat on a spring day when I was 3 is still so memorable because this interaction set a precedent for the rest of my life. I knew from that point onward, that my mother would never tell me what to believe.  

When Sara was about 3 or 4 we went to the Olympic Peninsula and camped overnight on a bluff looking out at the rock stacks jutting up in the ocean.  We woke at low tide and walked through the fog out to the base of the now exposed stacks.  The ocean had retreated to reveal starfish, barnacles, and small fish in tide pools swimming to the music of the ocean!  Sara was enchanted!

A number of years later when 7 she announced to me:  “I know what God looks like.”

Some parents would have rushed in with logic about how no one can know what God looks like.  I held my breath and calmly said:     “What does God look like?” 

She then described to me the mystical experience she had on the Peninsula that morning and said solemnly “that’s what God looks like.”  I could only agree and be amazed at her wisdom of recognizing the Presence of the Creator when 3 years old.

            I never set out to teach Sara the testimonies.  I tried to live them and this made them values that were real to her.  Each of us describes below our memories of how some of these things were communicated/learned:

Social Justice: 

When Sara was three, WTO took place in our town.  I decided I would take Sara to the demonstration but leave if it got violent or tear gas was released (this was before all that began.)  How to explain to a three year old what was happening?  She knew who our President was, and most children’s books had Kings as rulers, so I explained to her that there was an important meeting happening in Seattle where Presidents and Kings of other countries were coming together to decide how things like water and food would be made available to people all over the world, and some of the things they wanted to do would make it hard for people to have clean water or enough food.  Sara said,  “We should tell them to share with everyone.”  I told her that the people we were going to walk with would carry signs to make that message to the Kings and Presidents.  When the tear gas started a mile ahead of us I quickly pulled us out of the march and turned around to go home telling her simply “we need to go home now.”  She cried saying “No mommy, I want to see the Kings first.  We have to tell them.”

I think children naturally want to do what is right for all and if you don’t confuse them by doing otherwise they stay with that belief.  Throughout Sara’s life I explained why we bought certain foods or products and not others and what the labor conditions of the workers or the implications for other people were. Politics were constantly discussed at our dinner table.

I am an Activist. Most 16 years olds will not own up to that yet.  One of my frustrations with our faith is that not all Quakers are Activists, but I believe the words should be synonymous. When social justice is a testimony of our faith and we believe in peace, equality, integrity, and stewardship why would we not stand up for these?  I was taught to. Partly out of being born with a rebellious spirit, but largely due to my mom’s example.  I still remember WTO protest and many other protests. I was taught that if you want justice in this world you must seek it through non-violent revolution and that it doesn’t get done any other way.

Peace:

 My own parents, also Quakers, would not let my sister and me have toy guns or even water pistols growing up.  I resented the water pistols part so when Sara was little I got her a plastic fish that squirted water.  I did however always tell her that it was wrong to kill under any circumstances because there was that of God in everyone and that one should not hit or be violent to others either. I also told her that her classmates would believe otherwise because of how they were raised by their parents and prepared her for the idea that beliefs about this differ widely in our society. She never entertained the idea that violence was a way to solve things.  I acknowledge readily to parents of boys that I think this is much more challenging when raising a boy because of the messages in our culture to boys about violence.

The peace testimony is one I’ve watched parents nail bite over, and is perhaps the hardest to teach in a society that worships violence. In the simple logic of my toddler’s mind it wouldn’t make sense to hit another kid in the face for a toy, because then they would hit me, and who wants to get hit in the face? But it’s a little more complex than that; our culture is so saturated in violence that it’s hard to not expose our kids, but that’s the key: exposure. I was not allowed to watch certain TV shows, or movies rated higher due to “violent themes.” I won’t lie: I didn’t like it. When all your other friends with non-religious, non-pacifist, and very American parents get to watch something and you don’t, it’s not fun. But it was those kids that hit each other for building blocks and used violent language.  I’ve grown to appreciate my mother’s sensibilities.

Equality:

I was not allowed to watch Disney as a kid. This was the hardest media sensor of all because little girls love princesses, all my friends loved princesses, and wanted to be one. Of course I eventually saw some of the Disney Princess movies at other little girls’ houses, but that didn’t stop my mom’s intention from living on.  She would tell me;

          “Disney is sexist and racist; all those princesses are always rescued by men, why do they need men to save them?”  I never had an answer for that question. I look back now on my childhood and I frequently tell folks that my mother’s greatest feat as a parent was not allowing me Disney. Because I didn’t watch Disney I didn’t learn from the crows in Dumbo, or the warthog in the Lion king that, people who talk in Ebonics or with a Latin American accent are dumb.  I didn’t learn from the shading differences in lion’s fur that “bad guys” are darker than the other lions. In fact I didn’t learn the concept of “bad guys.” Simultaneously hearing in Children’s meeting that God is in all of us, along with less exposure to stereotyping, I learned equality.

  I did not want Sara to learn good/bad dichotomies or stereotypes about gender and race , but all her friends could watch Disney, and so this was frustrating to her.  I would explain to her what a stereotype was and that these movies had them.  This was uninteresting and unsatisfying to her and I did not think I was getting anywhere, till one day when she was four she was looking at a Disney T shirt of princesses in a store (a previously much coveted item) and she said to me:  “I don’t want this anymore.”  I asked why and she explained:  “There is no princess for Layla” (an African American friend in her preschool).  I knew at that moment that she understood.

Integrity:

 I told Sara it was important to tell the truth and I always told her the truth.  Sometimes I would tell her a subject was too adult and I would not talk about it, but even when I made her promises I would not make them unless I knew I could follow through on them.  I also made clear to her that I expected her to tell the truth and that it was important to me that she not lie.  I realized when she was small that if she did something wrong and I punished her when she told the truth, this would teach her to lie.  So if I asked her something like “How did this get here?  Who spilled this?” or “Who broke this?” and she told me the truth I did not punish her.  I just told her what I wished she had done or expressed my disappointment or other feelings about it.  I also sometimes expressed appreciation that she was telling me the truth. 

As she got older she would sometimes initiate discussions with me about situations with friends where she was struggling to figure out how to act with integrity.  The sincerity with which she examined these things always impressed me, and I wished some adults I knew would give as much thought to their integrity!

Integrity is my favorite testimony; it’s also the hardest to live by 100% of the time, which is why it is my favorite. Every kid will experiment with lying; when I did my mom didn’t get mad, just disappointed. That disappointment was enough to make it feel icky, and it remained so. But integrity is more than simply honesty.

This testimony I learned alongside equality, and in my world they are inseparable. I learned Integrity to myself as female, being spared images of Barbie’s “basketball boobs,” and Disney princesses’ helpless wails. Like violence, it’s about what you expose your kids to.

As a child I played a game with which I still do. When I didn’t like my classmates I’d look for their Light, in trait that wasn’t that awful, or the way they drew with crayons. Now I look for what I can relate too, even if it’s only their teenage insecurity. This is how I learned to treat even the kids I didn’t like with integrity.  

Simplicity:

We all know the United States is a hot bed of consumerism.  The encouragement to want, want, want, and buy, buy, buy, is a trap easy for children to fall into, since advertising is catered toward them. In part I learned simplicity because growing up with a single mom we never had a ton of money, so when I’d ask for luxury grocery items I was denied.  But she would say to me with my bottle of Nutella in hand. “Do you need that?” And I couldn’t make a case for why these things were a necessity, so this logic forced me to put them down. 

From my Aunt Cindy (who is not Quaker) I learned that gifts aren’t always material. Every year she takes me to a show for my birthday, and it’s the best gift she could give me.  My mother lives simply (as Americans go) and I learned by example, but never felt deprived or empty, only fulfilled by life.  

  Like most children Sara wanted toys her classmates had or things she saw advertised on TV.  We had a LOT of dialogues about how and why I was not going to buy most of these items.   I tried to tell her that she had enough and did not need toys that do things for you.. Everyone and their uncle was giving Sara stuffed toys, and when there were 30, I put my foot down!  I told her she had too many to play with and they needed to be loved by someone.  Then I said that from now on if she got another one she would decide whether to keep it and give up one she already had or to just give it away.  She kept to this and as a result we could see some parts of her bed!

If I had to say one thing to Quaker parents it would be that Quaker parenting requires a lot of hard stands, swimming against the tide of popular society, needing to explain a lot of things and having the strength of your convictions, but it also unites with that which is innate in all humans—a sense of fairness and love and wanting good for all.  The results are pretty stunning.

Sara now goes by Alice.  Both belong to Eastside Friends Meeting near Seattle, WA.  Lynn is a therapist and Climate Activist.  Sara Alice has turned 18 since this was written and attending Hampshire College and Mt. Toby Meeting and is a climate activist in her own right.