academicxindigenous-blog

[academicxindigenous-blog]

The Triggering

You know that awkward moment when you’re in a lecture hall crying because you get high key triggered by imagery presented in your lecture? No, just me? Ok… Well, this seems to be a recurring theme for me this quarter.

The First Time: I walk into my intro to NAS class and the professor puts on a youtube video. It’s Taboo’s song he did for Standing Rock. I think to myself “This should be interesting. I’ve heard so much about this song and video, but never heard it”. Next thing I know damn near 30 seconds into the video I start seeing all the imagery of police at Standing Rock and the tears begin. A little back story: Last year around this time I was at Oceti Sakowin. Myself and a group of people headed off to ND from the Bay Area for the week of Thanksgiving. It was a time I’ll never forget. It was also a time I never really processed (my current realization). We arrived into camp on the night that the militarized police sprayed water protectors with water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures. I remember vividly sitting in the car around an hour outside of camp when everyone's phones started blowing up with FB live videos of the brutality occurring at Camp. We stopped and gathered as a caravan. Our spiritual leader and the elder that was traveling with us was a Wailaki man named Coyote. He told us “We came here to a job and we will do it. I know it’s scary but it's our duty”. As we arrived at camp we were traveling with an Army vet who is a trained medic. When we asked where we should send him to help we were told to “drive until we see the chaos”. I remember standing on Backwater Bridge just after the spraying stopped and having the realization that I could be shot with a foam tipped bullet or hit with a concussion grenade for just standing there. In that moment in class I had this resurgence of fear and pain and was suffering in silence.

The Second Time: In that same class the next week we were discussing the genocide of California Natives. As a California Native (Wukchumni Yokuts, Shoutout to nim inyana yokitsa) it was extremely traumatizing to cover the genocide of your ancestors in brutally graphic detail. When I say detail, I mean extremely explicit details of the fucked up shit that settlers were doing.

I’m still in the process of discovering ways to handle/Navigate this stuff...so DM me with the tips if you got them.

-Q

[academicxindigenous-blog]

And So It Begins

This Quarter I transferred into a UC (University of California) as 3rd year. I’m taking 3 Native American Studies (NAS) classes. All of them are taught by non-Native people and two of them are taught by white men. Obviously, an immediate red flag went up in my mind. Like, first of all, where my Native Professors at??? Secondly, one of my classes taught by a white man is titled “Native American Experience”, so obviously, I was like da fuc??? I went in knowing one of my professors was chill, and has a reputation of being excellent, but I still had this militant mentality going into these white men’s classrooms because I don’t need a white savior. Thankfully, my feelings were put at ease when the white professors renounced themselves as the end all be all when it comes to NAS. To quote one of my white professors, “I’m not saying don’t listen to me, but you should center the narratives being presented by the indigenous authors and speakers you’ll be exposed to”***. It’s only week 2, so let's see how it goes.

-Q

***Not verbatim, but close