To celebrate Indigenous Peoples Month, we are releasing the bulletin in honor of Indigenous peoples in the Miss Porter’s community and throughout the world. We aim to uplift their voices and stories through the story of Tallash Sarfo-Mensah who shares their experiences with Indigeneity, the two-spirit identity, and the stories they were passed down. In addition, the bulletin will discuss the cultural practices and traditions among the Indigenous communities which include story-telling and
the sport of lacrosse; the history behind Indigenous People’s Day; Indigenous People in visual art and how their identities are represented; and the use of traditional medicine in many Indigenous communities throughout the United States. We would like to thank this month’s guest writer, Tallash Sarfo-Mensah, for their contributions to this edition of the bulletin. We hope you all enjoy reading and have a great Indigenous Peoples Month!
Photo by MetroParks Tacoma
Indigenous Peoples Month
Niizh Manidoowag
By Tallash Sarfo-Mensah - Guest Writer
I was one of those girls who would avoid anything pink like the plague. If you suggested watching Disney Channel, I would consider our friendship over. Watching hours of Wild Kratts, and exclusively spending recess building forts from sticks and fallen logs ladened with mushrooms with the boys in my grade while discussing whatever new scientific fact we’d discovered was commonplace for me. Every day I would come home from my Christian school with sap-soaked hands and stories gained from drifting between both gendered friend groups. The thought that I was separate from a girl never crossed my mind.
“I can tell you because you aren’t really a girl.”
As a 6th grader, it struck me as a playground taunt from a boy who wanted to get under my skin, something you don’t reply to. When it came to gender, “different” wasn’t an adjective you aimed for in the traditional Christian environment I was raised in. Despite all of the gender-non-conforming foreshadowing, I wasn’t familiar with the umbrella term Two-Spirit until recently, when I began to surround myself with Indigenous folks. Still, even then, I did not identify with the concept. Why would I? I believed I was only black, not Indigenous. It wasn’t until months later that I could begin to grasp the reality of Indigeneity and its intricacies, beyond simply being a Western synonym for the peoples of Turtle Island (North America).
Being Indigenous is not simply bound by blood ties, nor does being any race negate Indigeneity. Native community members have taught me that being Indigenous is being defiant; specifically, it is about retaining your culture despite the push from white supremacy and general colonization to conform, regardless of what racial classification you fall under. This includes, to an extent, the lesser-discussed European peoples like the Irish and Basques. No hard and fast definition of Indigenous is free of Western constructs but, from my experience, Indigeneity is the antagonist of white supremacy. It is simply being human by having a non-capitalistic relationship with the land and understanding our survival relies on its health. It is learning from the land, but not abstracting the humanity and eldritch nature of the universe and our behavior into simple lines of equations; forcing the natural to the mechanical.
Two-Spirit is an extension of this lifelong role. No blanket definition exists in English beyond a traditional Indigenous third gender. The deeper and more spiritual explanations lie in the specific tribes and nations. In 1990, a group of queer Turtle Island Elders met at an annual gay and lesbian conference in Toronto. They went into ceremony for four days straight to try to receive a name for Indigenous people who fulfilled traditional third gender roles. And during the ceremony, an Ojibwe and Cree Elder Dr. Myra Laramie was given the Ojibwe term Niizh Manidoowag by Creator, Waka, or God which loosely translates to “two souled” in English[1].
This short tale I will share was gifted to me by Kai Potts of the Stony Cree people, and was gifted to them by Paulette Patra. If you choose to recount the story, you must mention them to respect their people’s traditions.
It begins with Creator, known as Waka, God, or Nyasane in my people’s language. Creator watched over our land filled with woods and fields, and every animal who traded beautiful furs as currency. Every animal, except Tatanka the Buffalo. Unlike the rest of the animals, Tantaka had to drag his fur everywhere, causing it to become dirty and torn and lose its beauty. So, he traveled to Creator and asked, “How come my fur is not as beautiful as the rest of the animals? I want to make sure my fur can be shared as a gift.”
Creator obliged and gave Tatanka a large hump for his back and explained, “Now look, you can put your fur on this hump. I gift you the space in between your hump and your fur.”
Tatanka trotted around in the autumn leaves, ecstatic to have immaculate fur to share with his community. Before leaving, he turned around, smiling. “Thank you so so much, Creator! But, may I ask, what is the name of this gift that you’ve given me?”
Creator responded, “The space between your fur and body is Niizh Manidoowag. It exists in the in-between to make things beautiful, and to make things right.”
The in-between is necessary for survival. Planetary bodies need to be in a balanced habitable zone to develop and sustain life. Earth cannot be solely deserts and tundras; we cannot have day and night without both sunrise and sunset; nothing can thrive only in extremes. This universal rule also applies to gender and sex. I will specify, though, that Two-Spirit is not solely an Indigenous version of being trans, nonbinary, or any other similar identity. It would be anachronistic to classify those roles as such, solely because Two-Spirit traditional third genders have existed for thousands of years before the development of English. I go by different names depending on who you may speak to. What is consistent is that I am in between, Two-Spirit, or more specifically, Chibado. Those with this role before me acted as spiritual mediums for both the living and dead and as advisors and mediators in important tribal matters. I am a Chibado who is from the Leopard, Buffalo, Tilapia, and Grasshopper clans, who spends an obscene amount of time drawing Warrior Cats and playing Monster Hunter, and whose favorite days of the year are when the Pequot Schemitzun powwow occurs. Still not really a fan of Disney Channel, though.
Disconnect to Reconnect
Practices and Traditions Among the Indigenous
By Benewa Donkor
There are many different Indigenous communities across the United States. Each with its own practices and traditions. Like all communities, their traditions have continued to change over time as they adapt to the ever-changing environment around them. Many Indigenous traditions seek to help build community. Story-telling and lacrosse are two community-building traditions that have extended beyond Indigenous communities and have become part of America’s cultural fabric.
Storytelling is a very important aspect of many tribes. The oral tradition helps communities connect past, present, and future as well as connecting communities closer together. Storytelling is a way for elders to share moral lessons, and cultural beliefs, and help the communities understand their place in the world. Today, storytelling has become huge not just within families at the dinner table but through platforms like podcasting and vlogging. Today, we love to learn about and from other people’s experiences.
Another tradition that is important to some Indigenous communities is Lacrosse. Lacrosse is one of America’s oldest sports as it dates back to 1100. The popular sport was played by the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois. Their territory is present-day New York and places in Canada bordering New York. Early versions of lacrosse games had anywhere from one hundred players to almost a thousand in each game! Many Natives believe that the sport was a gift from the Creator. The Onondaga Nation member, Neal Powless, a former player of the Iroquois national team states that “the sport is part of the Haudenosaunee creation story”. The Iroquois believe that while they are playing the sport they love so much, their ancestors are playing with them in the Sky World.
This image is of a 19th century lacrosse game between iroquois and canadians.
This piece of art displays an elder sharing stories and information that will be passed down from generation to generation.
Important Indigenous Figures in America
By Sophia Seraile Yam
Since 1992, Indigenous Peoples’ Day has received the recognition and respect it deserves. The switch from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day was first celebrated in Berkeley, California in the late 90s. From there, President Biden officially recognized the national holiday in 2021. Representation and bringing people aware to Indigenous peoples’ history is so important because it creates both a period for reflection and uplifting of Indigenous peoples.
There are many influential Indigenous figures in present-day America who have made a major impact on our country. For example, Deb Haaland, who has made history as the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary. She is a member of the Pueblo de Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican who also owns a small business. She is one of the first Indigenous women to serve in Congress where she focuses on climate change, missing and murdered Indigenous women and family-friendly policies.
Another Native American leader is Sharice Davids, who serves as Kansas’ Third Congressional District in Congress. She is part of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, but was born in West Germany. Davids is the first in her family to attend college, although her mother later continued her education to receive a degree in history. This Congresswoman was first elected in 2018 and then reelected in 2020. She is committed to making changes that are best for the people of Kansas, such as bringing good opportunities to her communities and lowering the cost of living. While there is still progress to be made, Indigenous people are being better represented in government and their voices are being heard.
Deb Haaland
Sharice Davids
Sharice Davids with her mother
Indigenous Identities In Visual Art
By Georgia Achilles
For centuries, visual art has documented and expressed our events, emotions, and identities. Art captivates us and holds an unfathomable influence in our world. Many celebrated artistic works have rested upon anti-Indigenous narratives or contributed to the erasure of Indigenous people. Yet Indigenous identity can be found at the heart of countless incredible works, intersecting with the artist’s life experiences to yield truly unique messages and reflections. Each of the three artists highlighted below explore indigeneity through the lens of their individual cultures, identities, and mediums, lending viewers a glimpse into themselves.
Rose B. Simpson is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Her work, which crosses metal, ceramics, fashion, performance, and writing, addresses her experiences as a Native woman and aims to create hope and catalyze healing in the post-colonial era. Her sculptures, which most often take on strong human forms, are powerful testaments to Native resilience and play with shape, texture, and color to immerse viewers in an altered, “psychological, emotional, social, cultural, spiritual, intellectual and physical realms”.
“My life-work is a seeking out of tools to use to heal the damages I have experienced as a human being of our postmodern and postcolonial era— objectification, stereotyping, and the disempowering detachment of our creative selves”
Kay WalkingStick is a Cherokee painter who uses her work to explore, among other things, indigeneity, gender, race, decolonization, and feminism. Her paintings have been gaining recognition for multiple decades as they provide beautifully nuanced insight to her identity and life experience, “My paintings have to do with a lot of various topics, but I suppose primarily it’s who I am, in my position, how I view the world. It’s my worldview”. By playing with color, landscape, and imposed subject, WalkingStick’s paintings serve as an intersection between culture, identity, gender, and the earth.
“Truth is that everything that we do and everything that we are and everything we see and everything that we remember goes into those paintings in one way or another, everything we are goes into those paintings.”
Simpson, Rose B. Cairn, 2018.
Simpson, Rose B. Studio, 2013.
Simpson, Rose B. Tusked, 2019.
WalkingStick, Kay. Buffalo Country, 2018.
WalkingStick, Kay. Gioioso Variation III/ New Mexico, 2001.
Wally Dion is a multimedia artist and member of the Yellow Quill First Nation (Saulteaux) who now lives and works in upstate New York. He works across sculpture, metals, fabric, and paint while grappling with issues of power and identity. His series of transparent quilts, which he began in 2023, weaves a view of land from an Indigenous perspective, “I wanted to make several transparent quilts and superimpose them, one in front another: a quilt for the microbiome, another for the bison, their manure & hooves, another for the summer fires that scorch the ground and a final quilt for the sweetgrass braid…I wanted to highlight the invisibility of systems when everything is working well, as it should be.”. His extensive background in advocacy for Indigenous communities greatly informs this and all of his work.
“It’s important to have objects in history for people to push against... I’m trying to raise the discourse for Indigenous makers in Canada. We will be measured in time.”.
In October of 2023, I, along with 24 other students, traveled to Costa Rica. There, we visited an ethnobotanist who showed us the world of plants and their various uses. An ethnobotanist is a person who “studies a region’s plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of local culture and people.” He taught us the different health benefits plants in the rainforest have and how many common fruits have different effects on humans. For instance, we tried an herb that paralyzed our sour taste buds and made everything we ate sweet, while another herb made our mouths numb, making them feel like pins and needles. We used the spores of a fern to leave impressions on our skin, and we learned about the properties and benefits of coconut water– it is a good source of electrolytes and helps replenish hydration levels. Through this conversation, we learned more about how cultures use their resources, like this one, for health benefits.
Indigenous communities throughout the world practice a wide variety of unique healing methods. Herbs have been consistently used for differing medicinal purposes, and many of these plants are still used by tribal members to this day to relieve several ailments. This type of treatment is most generally referred to as “traditional medicine,” and consists of medical aspects of traditional knowledge that have developed over generations based on the folk beliefs of indigenous communities. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as “the sum total knowledge of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as the prevention, diagnosis, improvement, and treatment of physical and mental illness.” While modern medicine seems to be most prevalent in this day and age, there are some Asian and African countries in which up to 80% of the population still relies on traditional medicine as their primary form of healthcare. The prevalence of this type of treatment in various parts of the world is dependent on different cultural norms, and some modern medicine is based on herbal medicine. Many countries also have treatments that can co-exist with conventional medicine–further preserving this practice.
Bibliography:
Personal Essay - Tallash Sarfo-Mensah Potts, Kai. “Trans Summit - Through the Lens of First Peoples: Two-Spirit and Indigenous Identity with Kai Potts.” YouTube, April 9, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbcIC41vik0.
Practices and Traditions among the Indigenous Peoples - Benewa Donkor “Many Local Traditions.” Site Search, pluralism.org/many-local-traditions. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
“The Native American Origins of Lacrosse.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/news/lacrosse-origins-native-americans. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
“Native Knowledge 360°-Celebrating Native Cultures through Words: Storytelling and Oral Traditions.” National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian, americanindian.si.edu/nk360/informational/storytelling-and-oral-traditions#:~:text=Indigenous%20 peoples%20have%20strong%20storytelling,language%20and%20ways%20of%20speaking. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
“The Importance of Indigenous Oral Traditional Storytelling: Part 2.” Cultural Survival, www.culturalsurvival.org/news/importance-indigenous-oral-traditional-storytelling-part-2. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Important Indigenous Figures in America - Sophia Seraile Yam “About.” Sharice Davids, shariceforcongress.com/about/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Norman, Jane. “Senate Confirms Haaland as First-Ever Native American to Serve in the Cabinet • Louisiana Illuminator.” Louisiana Illuminator, 28 July 2021, lailluminator.com/2021/03/15/senate-confirms-haaland-as-first-ever-native-american-to-serve-in-the-cabinet/.
Released on October 14, 2024. “Now Celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day - National Organization for Women.” National Organization for Women -, 14 Oct. 2024, now.org/media-center/press-release/now-celebrates-indigenous-peoples-day/#:~:text=Berkeley%2C%20California%2C%20became%20the%20first,it%20with%20Indigenous%20Peoples’%20Day.
“Secretary Deb Haaland.” U.S. Department of the Interior, 16 Mar. 2021, www.doi.gov/secretary-deb-haaland#:~:text=Secretary%20 Deb%20Haaland%20made%20history,serve%20as%20a%20cabinet%20secretary.
“Six Native Politicians Currently Serving in Congress.” Vision Maker Media, visionmakermedia.org/six-native-politicians-currently-serving-in-congress/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Indigenous Identities in Visual Art - Georgia Achilles Rose b. Simpson, www.rosebsimpson.com/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
“In the Studio: Rose B. Simpson.” Joan Mitchell Foundation, www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/journal/in-the-studio-rose-b-simpson. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Elizabeth S. Hawley and Kay WalkingStick. “Feminist Interview Project: Kay WalkingStick in Conversation with Elizabeth S. Hawley.” Art Journal Open, 7 Nov. 2024, artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=19027. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Kay WalkingStick.” MoMa. www.moma.org/artists/134591. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Editors, Studio. “Wally Dion.” Studio Magazine, 5 May 2021, www.studiomagazine.ca/articles/2021/5/wally-dion. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
designboom, myrto katsikopoulou I. “Iridescent Quilts by Wally Dion Celebrate Indigenous Identity and Great Plains Landscapes.” Designboom, 8 Aug. 2024, www.designboom.com/art/vibrant-iridescent-quilts-wally-dion-indigenous-identity-great-plains-landscapes-08-05-2024/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.
Front Page Image
Hamilton, Emma. “A Proclamation in Celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Metro Parks Tacoma, October 11, 2023. https:// www.metroparkstacoma.org/indigenous-peoples-day-proclamation-2023/.
