7 minute read
A Conversation Across Generations
What does racial equity demand of us?
FOR MANY OF US, it can be a rare opportunity to talk about race across generations outside of our own families, who often share our racial identities. Conversations Across Generations (CXG) is a GCIsupported program at the Alaska Humanities Forum that is a series of transformative intergenerational conversations about racial identity and experiences of racism in Alaska.
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Susan Soule and Charitie Ropati are about as different as it can get. Susan grew up Jewish in Brooklyn, New York. She is now 78 and living in Anchorage. Charitie, who is Yup’ik and Samoan, grew up in Anchorage and is now 19 years old, going to school in New York City at Columbia University.
Through CXG, they began a dialogue exploring the experiences that shaped the way they each think about race. Below is an excerpt from their conversation.
Charitie: A lot of what I learned was from the matriarchs in my life. My grandmother and my mother taught me a lot. I also learned a lot in school. In school I came to realize not only how unethical or unfair the education system is, but really how violent an environment it can be for Native and Polynesian students. We were learning a history that we didn’t really see ourselves in. My mom played such a big role in teaching me about all the things we face on a dayto-day basis. She prepared me for what it is like to go to the store or to school when my mom is visibly Native and my dad is visibly Samoan. We are treated very differently. I think that the houseless population in Anchorage is a good indicator of that. For Native peoples to be homeless on land that was once ours is just so jarring.
Whenever I talk about my identity, especially what it means to be Samoan and Yup’ik, I just talk about how a lot of the experiences that I had in school, they were really violent, really shaped who I am. Whenever I didn’t know what to do, I was like, how do I solve this? How do I navigate this space? How do I cope? How do I cope with a society that is very anti-Indigenous and doesn’t want to acknowledge the atrocities Native people have gone through?
Finding a community, not only within my family, but with other Native women, finding community with other women of color here [at Columbia] and meeting other amazing Black and Indigenous scholars made me realize things will be okay, you know?
Susan: Well, obviously I’m White. In terms of my experience with racism, it has always been of being with people to whom racism was inflicted. I was always a witness, rather than being personally impacted by it.
On the other hand... sometimes I would— after meeting people that I was going to have to know for a while—I would somehow subtly let them know that I was Jewish. Because I thought if I did not, they might say something that would embarrass them if they didn’t know. So, I mean, what was that about, looking after their feelings?
I never thought about it much growing up, but religious identity was very present. I didn’t ever really feel the discrimination but I know my parents did. Later in life I was struck by the fact that my parents didn’t have any non-Jewish friends and I asked them about it and they said it was because we always get hurt in the end. My parents were very much of the generation that was traumatized by what the Nazis did to Jews. That affected them in ways that it didn’t affect me.
Charitie: I don’t really like comparing traumas with each other because I feel like it’s a tool in white supremacy where they’re like, okay, all of the people of color compare traumas and fight amongst each other, whereas we should all be fighting against white supremacy.
But I do want to say it’s, it’s just how we remember these [traumatic] events. You don’t really learn about the boarding schools that happened in Alaska or happened in the Lower 48, or about missionization, or how past epidemics have hit our communities, how entire villages were wiped out, you know. So thinking about how that instigated cycles of historical trauma, how that instigated cycles of generational violence, that so many Native people are still breaking, like I’m breaking cycles of violence.
My mother was able to break the cycles of violence. You know, when she graduated college [she] was one of the first people in her entire family to do that and then had four children. And my older sister and I, we both go to college now, and we would not have been able to do that without our mom who initially broke that cycle of violence.
I feel like it’s… we can’t really compare those experiences, but when we have a conversation about how these events [the Holocaust and the genocide of Native Americans] are remembered, there is a difference in, honestly, how disrespectful it is. It’s interesting because when you walk into the Museum of the American Indian, not a lot is talked about what happened with the genocide. And then when you walk into the Holocaust Museum, it’s just very… it’s a very… I don’t even want to describe the experience.
Susan: From what I understand, intergenerational trauma literature grew originally out of the Holocaust, but the other thing, Charitie, that you just made me think about: it’s pretty safe for Americans to write big chapters about the horrors of the Holocaust, because it was done by those Germans over there. It is much less comfortable to talk about what was done to Indigenous people and what is being done to Indigenous people and people of color here and now. Why? Because what is happening here we have some responsibility for, and that it’s much harder for people to face that.
While working in Aniak in suicide prevention, I ended up getting very angry at the term “healing.” Because it puts the burden on the victim as opposed to the society that needs to be healed and changed. The people who are the victims of systemic racism do not need to change.
Charitie: I never thought of it like that, but you’re right. When we talk about how to heal from this trauma, that burden is placed on the victim when it needs to be placed on the people who incited that violence in the first place. It doesn’t matter if that event happened 400 years ago. The trauma from that event is literally ingrained in Native people’s DNA. I will know we are liberated when we no longer have to break these cycles of violence and historical trauma.
Susan: It just makes me reimagine, what would it look like to heal from that historical trauma and how the American government needs to take responsibility, even just acknowledging the genocide that happened.
Charitie: Acknowledgment isn’t enough at this point. Why? Because it’s something that’s ongoing.
Susan: Right, so really thinking about what it would mean for reparations to truly be given, and also what it means to break cycles of violence.
Charitie: It needs to be better. I don’t really have an answer because I am only one person. But it needs to be better. I remain hopeful because I know things will be okay. People always want to talk about the negative aspects of our people. Honestly, though, we are resilient. We are a people that were never meant to survive, but we did and we’re still here. We’re still creating spaces.
Susan: Nowadays, I piss a lot of people off. There is no doubt about it because sometimes I just get angry and talk before I think. I often struggled with ways to have useful conversations with people from the other side. How can I do that?
Charitie: I don’t even have conversations with people on the other side because people who oppose a lot of my beliefs are people who don’t think I should exist as a Native woman. I have come to a point where it’s not my job to educate people. But there are people in Anchorage who are doing this work, to educate themselves, to read things, to have conversations with Black and Native peoples. People like you. I’m so glad I got to hold this conversation and hold space with you. You’re amazing.
Susan: I don’t think of myself as amazing but I have really enjoyed the conversation with you too. I hope our paths cross after the pandemic. ■
