Results tagged “Internalized Oppression” from People So Bold!

This is sermon by Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley (1949-2006)

When I was studying for the ministry, one of the expectations was that each week, the entire community would attend chapel (the worship service). Although I had been a Unitarian Universalist for more than a decade, I was still healing from the pain of my fundamentalist past, and I had not yet mustered the courage to attend chapel in this United Methodist seminary. But with the support of three Unitarian Universalist friends, one Friday toward the end of the first semester, I dragged myself to worship.

I wasn't sure what kind of message I would hear, but it was a week before exams, and I hoped for a place where I could center myself, and find some internal spiritual resources for the days ahead. To my surprise, there was no sermon. It was early December, and the entire liturgy focused on Advent, ending with a celebration of the Eucharist. Now I had not attended a Christian communion for over 20 years, but I tried to approach it with an open mind.

The prayer, offered by Dr. Mark Burrows, began with these words: "We, who are the children of Abraham and Sarah. . ." I don't recall the rest of the sentence, because in a split second, my mind went blank. It simply refused to be present to this experience that was sacred for most others in attendance. I began to weep-quietly at first-but a whimper soon turned to tears, then uncontrollable tears. My friends sat beside me trying to be supportive, but didn't have a clue what was so upsetting about that simple phrase: "We, who are the children of Abraham and Sarah?" I had no harsh feelings toward Dr. Burrows, but the moment I heard those words suggesting that I was a descendent of Abraham and Sarah, I felt the pain of exclusion.

My rational mind told me that the I should not take it literally; that the statement was merely a symbolic reference to our Jewish and Christian heritage. But that rationale didn't help. I simply could not get beyond the complex dynamics of race and class and gender in the biblical story. I knew the story of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis, but I also knew the story of Abraham and Hagar, an Egyptian woman whose ethnicity and social standing made her an outcast in ancient Israel, a stranger in a strange land.

As a woman of African heritage, I identified myself as one of Hagar's children, and I wondered why she had not been mentioned in the prayer. Was she not worthy of mention because she was a slave?

According to the story, when Hagar's son Ishmael was about 14 years old, Sarah became jealous. Hagar had sacrificed her body and her beauty. She had postponed her life in order to give this elderly couple the gift of a child. And yet, Sarah was jealous. Here were two brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, whose childhood play was, no doubt, innocent of any social or economic distinctions. And yet, Sarah's worry about inheritance spawned her jealously, which led to a crisis in the household. In the end, Sarah threw Hagar and Ishmael out of the house-banished them to the wilderness, with no food and only a half gallon of water.

A woman and her son alone-out in the wilderness, homeless. No crisis hot line. No overnight shelter. No abuse counselor. She needed someone to hear her story, someone to help her figure things out-where she was going to live, how she was going to feed herself and her son. But there was no pastor, no prophet, no priest, no lay minister to help her figure it all out. According to the story, in the depths of her despair, an angel appeared at Hagar's side, and asked: Where are you coming from, and where are you going?

That, my friends, is a question we need to ask ourselves. 

Where are you coming from, and where are you going?

Some say that the angel appearing at Hagar's side 

was the voice of God. 

Others say that it was the 'still small voice' within. 

I like to think of it as Love's call, asking her to reflect not only on her dilemma, but on who she was and what she was doing with her life. 

Love calls out to us as well, asking us to remember who we are -that we are beings connected to all being, connected to a process larger and more fundamental than our beliefs about the world

The first source speaks of the transcendent mystery and wonder of the universe asks us to call into existence that which has been forgotten: that we are not here to act as if we are brothers and sisters, but to remember that we really are brothers and sisters whose very reason for being is to love and care for one another. 

This is the purpose of the church.

This is the work of the soul. Soul work is hard work, but it must be done if we are to be fully alive. One thing that makes it difficult is that it is transcendent-we must move beyond ourselves, to the place of empathy and compassion; to the place of hospitality-hospitality of the human spirit. This is what counters alienation, nihilism, and brokenness in the human family. Soul work. Compassion. Hospitality. It is the work of the church. It is our salvation. It is what ministry is-to save souls through hospitality of the human spirit. So may it be.

I have been told by people who study these things that in all the stories ever told that there are only 36 plots.  So the savior story is one we have heard before,  a person, or group of person is in predicament from which they can not escape.  Perhaps their situation is of their own making, perhaps it is the result of an malevolent other.  What ever got them into this jam, they are on the road to disaster and do not have the internal resources to find a new way to redemption.  A hero comes among them, and shows them the solution. 

There are two variations in this story, the hero who comes from within the community.  The story called "the Rabbis gift" is my favorite example of this variation, because the messiah turns out to be all of the monks -- they discover the savior in each other and in themselves.  The other variation is when the hero comes from the outside, and shows the doomed community a new way that they could not have found on their own.

Which brings me to my question.  Is it possible that a plot that holds up an outside hero saving a community perpetuates that communities disempowerment?  I think of the white savior movie.  We have seen the story in so many variations, remember the white teacher who comes into an inner city class room and through love and patience inspires her students to see themselves as bright and creative?  The teacher gets resistance from the powers that be (principals, school boards, the other teachers) who do not believe that these kids can be taught.  The empowering teacher is breaking the rules and she must show the authorities that she, not they are righteous.

These movies are often based on true stories.  There actually was a white teacher who actually did help a bunch of young people of color discover their gifts and become a community of learners.  There actually was such a person whose actions can be turned into "a white savior" plot for a movie.   Such a person should be honored and held up, along with the thousands of teachers, parents, community activists, principals and young people of color who act within their communities to overcome serious problems and ways of acting that are bringing the community to ruin.  

When the film maker takes one story out of thousands and makes a movie out of it, that is creating an artifice.  It is reconstructing reality to tell a story, a story that has been selected, and presented for its impact.  Hollywood chooses from among all the stories of  people acting to make a difference the story of the good white teacher who makes a difference in some young people-of colors lives, and it is the movie, not the teachers original action that perpetuates the dominate cultures narrative of incompetent people of color being rescued by white people.

To turn this world we live in toward a just and sustainable community will take a lot of people, each of those people acting to empower each other.  Let us honor all who act to create human community, and let us see films that tell those stories of mutual empowerment.

At the time of the English invasion the Cherokee (Tsalagi) were organized in villages that mutually supported each other but had no central overlords.  Each village had an elected council and elected chiefs and an empowered women's council.  But was it always this way?  Were pre-Columbian indigenous people "prehistoric" in the sense that nothing happened to fundamentally change society, so people lived more or less as they had since the beginning of time.

The dominant cultures romantic notion of "people without history" is disputed by the evidence of highly centralized commercial empires that existed in North America, empires that become organized and conquered more and more people and then for reasons that historians are still researching collapsed.  Commodities were traded across North America while Europe had collapsed into warring feudal states during its Dark Ages.

The most recent of these commercial empires was the Mississippian culture, or so called mound builders.  This empire has its center at Cahokia, in Illinois. It is clear that while the ties that bound the various peoples together in this empire were commercial, the form of organization was a theocracy.  One of the legacies of the Mississippians is common rituals, and common symbols among many different Native American Indian communities who speak rather different languages and have different cultures.

The Mississippian culture extended from Wisconsin to Florida and included the Cherokee as one of the participating or subject peoples.  Here is a story that helps explain why this empire fell, and perhaps gives us insight into how democratic institutions are formed in response to (sometimes bitter) experience.

From MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE

By James Mooney

Among other perishing traditions is that relating to the Ani'-Kuta'nï or Ani'-Kwäta'nï (the priest people), concerning whom the modern Cherokee know so little that their very identity is now a matter of dispute, a few holding that they were in ancient people who preceded the Cherokee and built the mounds, while others, with more authority, claim that they were a clan or society in the tribe and were destroyed long ago by pestilence or other calamity. Fortunately, we are not left to depend entirety upon surmise in the matter, as the tradition was noted by Haywood some seventy years ago, and by another writer some forty years later, while the connected story could still be obtained from competent authorities. From the various statements it would seem that the Ani'-Kuta'nï were a priestly clan, having hereditary supervision of all religious ceremonies among the Cherokee, until, in consequence of having abused their sacred privileges, they were attacked and completely exterminated by the rest of the tribe, leaving the priestly functions to be assumed thereafter by individual doctors and conjurers.

Haywood says., without giving name or details, "The Cherokees are addicted to conjuration to ascertain whether a sick person will recover. This custom arose after the destruction of their priests. Tradition states that such person lived among their ancestors and were deemed superior to others, and were extirpated long ago, in consequence of the misconduct of one of the priests, who attempted to take the wife of a man who was the brother of the leading chief of the nation."[1]

A more detailed statement, on the authority of Chief John Ross (first Principal Chief of the Modern Cherokee Nation) and Dr J. B. Evans, is given in 1866 by a writer who speaks of the massacre as having occurred about a century before, although from the dimness of the tradition it is evident that it must have been much earlier:

"The facts, though few, are interesting. The order was hereditary; in this respect peculiar, for among Indians seldom, and among the Cherokees never, does power pertain to any family as a matter of right. Yet the family of the Nicotani--for it seems to have been a family or clan--enjoyed this privilege. The power that they exercised was not, however, political, nor does it appear that chiefs were elected from among them.

"The Nicotani were a mystical, religious body, of whom the people stood in great awe, and seem to have been somewhat like the Brahmins of India. By what means they attained their ascendancy, or how long it was maintained, can never be ascertained. Their extinction by massacre is nearly all that can be discovered concerning them. They became haughty, insolent, overbearing, and licentious to an intolerable degree. Relying on their hereditary privileges and the strange awe which they inspired, they did not hesitate by fraud or violence to rend asunder the tender relations of husband and wife when a beautiful woman excited their passions. The people long brooded in silence over the oppressions and outrages of this high caste, whom they deeply hated but greatly feared. 

At length a daring young man, a member of an influential family, organized a conspiracy among the people for the massacre of the priesthood. The immediate provocation was the abduction of the wife of the young leader of the conspiracy. His wife was remarkable for her beauty, and was forcibly abducted and violated by one of the Nicotani while he was absent on the chase. On his return he found no difficulty in exciting in others the resentment which he himself experienced. So many had suffered in the same way, so many feared that they might be made to suffer, that nothing was wanted but a leader. A leader appearing in the person of the young brave whom we have named, the people rose under his direction and killed every Nicotani, young and old. 

Thus perished a hereditary secret society, since which time no hereditary privileges have been tolerated among the Cherokees."

Do you recall the notion that was sometimes taught in our anti-racism trainings? It was argued that since People of Color didn't have power they couldn't be racists.  The problem is power is relative with the system of racism in the United States.  The present administration of the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma) presided over by Principal Chief Chad Smith illustrates that oppressed people can be oppressors as well.  As a righteous young Cherokee named Shannon Prince writes in Indian Country Today ;

Cherokee people have historically been both oppressed and oppressors; but so often, that history of oppressing others is ignored or equivocated. It astounds me, as a Cherokee, that our people continued to own slaves after the Trail of Tears. After the Trail of Tears, after suffering and crying under horrendous brutality, the Cherokee knew exactly what dehumanization was: yet we continued to dehumanize others. We didn't have a problem with the unjust hierarchal system that gave some peoples rights at the expense of others; we only had a problem when it was used against us. While we cried on the Trail of Tears, we ignored the cries of blacks and, as a nation, were fine benefiting from the racial hierarchy when it allowed us to enslave others. . . .

As Cherokee, we should ask how our ancestors could turn from our teachings of duyukduh, which emphasizes balance, interrelatedness and respect for all peoples. We should ask how our leaders and Beloved Women could condone such injustice - and why Smith continues to do so. 

What my brother laments is the disgraceful attempt of Smith and his supporters to rob the descendants  of Cherokee slaves of their right to Cherokee citizenship.  This is a right guaranteed by the Cherokee constitution and by treaty, and upheld in a recent ruling by the Cherokee courts.  All of Indian Country condemns this  betrayal of principal, yet Smith continues to advance the absurd claim that this racist campaign is act of sovereignty.  Shannon Prince correctly points out by this logic the United States was justified by its sovereignty in removing the Native people from their homelands,  sovereign people must act morally.  

Who then is a Cherokee?  People who are descended from the ancient Cherokee people. People who cherish Cherokee culture and care about the Cherokee people's honor.  The Freedman are descended from the Cherokee people, and the claim that the Dawes List is a list of Cherokee while the Freedman List  is a list of African slaves ignores that Cherokee adopted many African runaway, that Cherokee have intermarried with former slaves, that the Dawes and Freedman designation was a product of the racist U.S. government during the era of Jim Crow.  The Freedman Cherokee have given themselves to the Cherokee culture for well over a century and in this struggle they are showing their devotion to the Cherokee people's honor.   

Shannon Prince continues his powerful lament:

As Cherokee people, we have to decide the right way to handle history, the honorable way to exercise sovereignty, and the correct way to bring forth justice and healing. We have to celebrate the beauty in our culture, soothe our wounds of oppression as well as the oppression we dealt out to others, and practice gadugi with all members of the community. We have a long road ahead of us, and recognizing the citizenship of the freedmen is the first step. 

There were 500 plus nations in North America before Columbus, many more on the southern continent. Languages as different from one another as Korean is not the same as French. Different forms of social organization. Theologies and spiritual practices radically different from one nation to the next. Yet, we continue to hear of Native American spirituality as if there were an identifiable practice under patent to the "race."

For some years I have kept my Cherokee background close, only talking about it with friends. It was part of me, but to share it among UUs caused folks to approach me gushing about their spirituality. When I heard their story it seemed to be some sort of bird watching thing. My grandmother spoke Cherokee, had her distinct set of practices, and was a nominal Presbyterian.

I recoil from the term Native American if I detect that the speaker (or writer) is writing as if this term designates a definite group of people.

(I used to like the terms First Nations, or First Peoples - they had a plural ring to it. For a collective term I prefer American Indian, and then when designating a particular group of people say Cherokee, I use Cherokee Indians.)