Anomie - Cultural Suicide

[kauka (deleted)]

These are interesting times.

Times of remembrance.

Times of change.

A time of hope.

Thanksgiving. Today is a day of conflicting emotions for many Native Peoples.

My ohana, my family, celebrates Thanksgiving as a time for ohana, a celebration of our extended family, but nothing more. The story of the “first Thanksgiving plays no role in our ohanas Thanksgiving celebration. Nonetheless, today is a very special day for our ohana.

Thanksgiving. There is the politically correct, revisionist history taught to schoolchildren across the country about the origins of Thanksgiving. Then there is the not very comfortable, not very politically correct truth. Artfully, purposefully hidden.

People who gain power through the powerlessness of others retain their power in part by revising history to suit their purposes.

We are Native Peoples. We cannot change the past. But we can hope to better understand who we are today, how we got here, and what we can do to create a better future for our people. We may allow ourselves to forgive past injustices, and perhaps past atrocities, if those responsible take accountability and make amends for their actions. But we cannot forget their actions, nor their motives. And we must never forget; for those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I have long worked in the area of health care policy and social justice on behalf of my peoples, Kanaka Maoli, the indigenous peoples of Hawaii. We have suffered many of the same assaults on our culture as did the American Indian. And we suffer, as a consequence, many of the same maladies. There were 750,000 of us living in our ancestral land of Hawaii in the late 1700s, prior to contact with Euro/Anglo cultures. There were only 15,000 Kanaka Maoli alive in the early 1900s. Our people, when compared to “white racial/ethnic groups in Hawaii and the US, suffer from higher poverty rates, higher disease rates, higher incarceration rates, disproportionate representation in lower SES strata, and lower overall health status.

White privilege is still alive and well in Hawaii, though we do not allow those behaviors to go unchallenged. The teaching of classes in the Hawaiian language was outlawed in Hawaii after white US business interests, with the help of the US Marines, overthrew our government in 1893. Twenty two years ago, in 1986, the Hawaii legislature passed a bill allowing students to be taught in the Hawaiian language:

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My sons mother is Lakota and Klamath. Back when we were married, she told me that her maternal grandmother had admonished her mother to only marry a white man. So her mother married a white man. She also told me that she was told by her mother to only marry a white man. Well. I have brown skin and long hair. You can well imagine the ice-cold look her mother, a white-skinned native woman, gave me when first we met. Ive always wondered why a woman would hate her culture so much that she would teach her children to marry outside of their own culture. Was she ashamed of her Native culture?

Many of us working in the health care policy and social justice arena believe that impoverished self-esteem in Native peoples results from failed acculturation. How? A Native is co-opted by the widely propagated belief that his native culture is somehow inferior to the dominant western culture, and therefore abandons his native cultural values and beliefs in favor of those of the dominant western culture. Evidence my sons maternal grandmother. And failed acculturation in an individual goes hand in hand with a lack of self-esteem, be it cause or effect.

This is not a new idea. In the late 1800s, French Sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his study of the causes of suicide, postulated that anomie, a lack of a sense of self, of a cultural or societal anchor, is a societal cause of suicide, as opposed to a psychological cause of suicide, such as major depression. It is not difficult to envision diminished self-esteem as a consequence of belonging to a culture that has been marginalized and demonized by the dominant culture. Id also postulate that lower overall health status, higher disease rates, higher incarceration rates, etc. are all examples of cultural suicide.

There is a lot to be said for the value of the Native Pride programs, those programs that teach children to take pride in their native heritage. One of my responsibilities to my son is to help him embrace his cultural heritage, and choose what is best for him when his multi-cultural values come into conflict.

This forum posting started out as a response to the rather snippy comments Ive read on this forum about “white people embracing Native cultures because they have no culture of their own. I completely disagree with that viewpoint. I believe that non-Native individuals who embrace and practice native cultural values do so out of respect for our values, and indeed become our allies in reversing the marginalization of our cultures by mainstream society.

[rebelyell08_PREV (deleted)]

`Thank you for this post today.

Peace to you and your loved ones.

[straighteyes (deleted)]

`ty for your kind words, it´s good to see that there are a lot of natives who open up their hearts and are able to work out old pain and old hate. Growing on a situation means never to forget but to open up and build a bridge. And forgiveness is not something you ask for its something you receive and when you aren´t able to accept this gift you will always stay in your own old slavery patterns.

straighteyes

[blackfootedgirl]

`Your Forum subject matter is a problem that mainly plagues our younger people in the mid teens to the mid twenty something age groups, in all ethnicities and demographics straight across the cultural board as well as filtering into other age groups as well, whether they feel ostracized from their cultural community,family or society.
The book "Lies my Teacher taught me" it may also be called "Lies My teacher Told Me" I can't remember as it is in storage.This book deals with the historical inaccuracies in our History text books still in print that are currently being used as teaching materials in our schools from the basic grade school level all the way up to the college universities. It is due to many of those inaccuracies that continue to perpetuate outdated misconceptions in our society as a whole.Lies My teacher Taught Me is also used as a textbook in some high school and college courses, either way it is an eyeopener.
Regarding your comment about diminished self esteem within some ethnic communities, I have friends whos parents were never taught Spanish upon immigrating to the US because their Grandparents felt it would be detrimental to their future, economically and for fear of their children would not be accepted into mainstream America if they spoke a foreign language or English spoken with an accent.That is only one of many examples I have experienced personally,and each culture has it's own story.
While true the white people who embrace the cultural ideals of other indigenous peoples often do so out of respect for the native values they seek to understand and sometimes they are searching for a way of life that feels more authentic for the person they are and I also agree many individuals do become allies in reversing the misconceptions and Historical inaccuracies that have been passed down for many generations,hoping to reverse the damage done. I think too a society armed with accurate information as a whole as well as in our text books combined with community awareness and acceptance of cultural differences in others, given time the gap will start to close.