I'm leaving the U.S. and going home and in packing up, I came across the hardcopy of something I wrote to Howard when I applied a couple years ago. So I dug into the computer files and found it, and I'll cutandpaste it below. Meanwhile, in the words of one of my favourite powwow songs, "Darling, don't cry, when I leave the USA, if you like I'll take you home, when I go back to Canada, heyahey heyaha"
I wonder if the wording of that question ever did change...
_____________
Note on the Wording of the Question
Yes or No: I am self-described as a Native American. If yes, please attach your Certificate of Tribal Affiliation
While reading the wording of this question, a few thoughts came to me which are so important that I felt moved to write this note. The wording of this question can be considered disempowering by tying self-description to proof of a certificate. Within Indigenous community, there has been great political activity and upset over the fact that people who are part of the community can be decreed non-status (as this is called in Canada) by the government. Many people are upset over the government being the arbitrator of who is Indian.
In Canada, there was a great movement by Aboriginal women to retain their status and the status of their children if they had married men who were non-status. This was a right that men had but women didnt. That struggle went all the way to the United Nations and eventually succeeded.
In response to this issue of the Government defining status and who is an Indian, many people in the Aboriginal community choose to recognize self-definition or community-definition irregardless of the governments decision. Self-definition stands as a post-colonial corrective to the government defining community through status in Canada or Certificates in the U.S..
The wording to the question I was moved to respond to seems to flow so that if a person circles Yes to being self-described as a Native American and does not have a Certificate of Tribal Affiliation, the person would be redirected to choose No. This reinscribes the system that a person cannot be Indian unless one has been deemed suitable by the government.
In thinking through this question, the wording could better reflect the post-colonial reclamation of self-identification and self-government with the following suggestions:
1) If you have a Certificate of Tribal Affiliation and would like to provide a copy, please attach this to your application.
2) Yes or No: I am self-described as a Native American. If Yes, Yes or No: I have a Certificate of Tribal Affiliation. If Yes, please attach your Certificate
I hope that I have succeeded in interesting you in the cultural specificities of Aboriginal community in North America. This community has done so much healing work at the cultural and social level, and self-description is very much part of that. I myself sit at the margins of this community, as a non-Aboriginal partner of a Two-Spirit Cree woman who has no time for white people trying to be Indian but who does support me in speaking up in the way I am doing now. I myself come from an Irish background, Ireland only just becoming post-colonial in the early 1900s, after 700 years of colonization.
