Colloquial Traits in Tribal Regionalism
Often I sit here in front of this computer and think about how to capture the voice of a narrator. Voice is the darkness around the thief, his soft footsteps, and his choice of victim. There is nothing innocent about what we writers do. We're persuasive colonizers seeking to intrude on your sensibilities. We're convincing--softly so.
When I read passages from Faulkner's work and observe the way he captured southern diction, I can't help but be humbled. The small pauses and grand judgements alike--all are done with a slight of hand I wish to master.
“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.” ― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
I've taken the task to implement something similar with my two tribal communities. I've sought to capture the way Kiowa and Cherokee people speak as the chosen "voice" for my narration. Why? It's not just because I was raised in these two communities, but that is a major reason. When you grow up between two tribal cultures, especially two which are historically set in two different landscapes (southern plains versus mountain/hills), you can't help but recognize the beautiful differences.My writing has always attempted to disrupt the homogenous stereotype of Native people belonging to the same culture (and often a culture perceived to be plains). It's important to know there are unique differences between each tribal culture and we are brought together by a common and shared history of colonialism. The continued struggle against this colonial force has further fused our identities in a universal Pan-Indian construct. But the differences in our languages, dances, songs, customs, social etiquette hasn't vanished.In the case of my writing, we can also include colloquialism.Kiowa and Cherokee people share colonial boundaries by having been transplanted into what was formerly known as Indian Territory (the largest prisoner of war camp in recorded history), which is now Oklahoma. Kiowa people live on the southern plains while Cherokee people live in Ozarks. But both tribes are in Oklahoma. Not only are my tribes divided by geographical topography but also language, culture, and tribal history. Before the reservation era, Kiowa people were nomadic and situated in a warrior culture (a part of a tribal plains coalition which held off the U.S. government from westward expansion for over 100 years), and Cherokee people were agrarian mountain people (who spear-headed major legal battles with the U.S. government generations before plains Natives seen their first U.S. soldier).
As a writer, my attempt is to show this distinction by way of vernacular. In the way you read Faulkner's representation of Southern culture in the above passage, I take the Oklahoman way in which Cherokee people speak that's indicative of small towns in the Ozarks of northeastern Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas. To contrast, I take an Indigenized English through Kiowa language to capture how tribes on the southern plains speak.Below I give an example from two different short stories. Time Like Masks (published in South Dakota Review) captures the Okie twang that is characteristic of how Cherokee people speak in my community of Tahlequah. Our Dance (published in American Short Fiction) captures an Indigenized English which is not only indicative of how Kiowa people speak, but Comanche and Apache on the southern plains.Cherokee/Tahlequah:
"Come to find out, he was the grandson to my aunt Josie, who was the sister to my mother, Leanna. According to Cherokee clan customs, Carl was a nephew, a nephew through a first cousin I hardly knew. Guess that was how relations grew as old got older—more years, more kin. My aunt Josie went and married a Kiowa and spent most of her days living in southern Oklahoma; I never visited so I hardly seen my cousins, much less their kids. Carl, on the other hand, made himself known to me in a peculiar way. Unlike others, I listened to him, and you might say, at least how I figured, he baffled everyone." --Oscar Hokeah in Time Like Masks
Kiowa/Lawton:
"Gaa, we were just little guys, around a year old, when Kiowas started getting that ahongiah back in ’76, no, maybe in ’77. It was the coalition of Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches that leased a tract of land to Fort Sill military base for one hundred years. Good thing, too, because us Kiowas divided our share of the money between all tribal members, fifteen hundred a piece. Those of us under the age of eighteen had our money held in trust, growing interest until our day. We were the last in our families to walk through the front doors of those cookie-cutter homes to hear our mothers say, 'Your per cap check is on the table.'" --Oscar Hokeah in Our Dance
The trick isn't just to capture the nuances in the speech pattern, but to also transfer it to literature. When we tell a story face-to-face we're filled with excessive pauses and added words to fill time and space for us to think as we speak. When transforming a vernacular to the page, you must take out enough and leave in enough to capture the intended identity. This is not easy. It took me years to find the right balance.But all this goes toward showcasing the beautiful differences between Kiowa and Cherokee culture. There are a number of other things I do--some obvious and some subtle--to further capture the difference, but this post is about voice so I wanted to speak directly about vernacular in my tribal communities and in my writing. As we move to an appreciation of diversity in America, we can further appreciate the complexity of tribal cultures.The two above examples are a part of my novel-in-stories, Unsettled Between. I'm deep in a final revision right now and tightening up character and voice. The novel is narrated by twelve different family members and focuses on the transformation of one character, Carl Geimausaddle. Like so many of us, Carl wants the freedom to be his own person, to shape his own identity. He attempts to do so by leaving his family and rejecting his Kiowa and Cherokee communities. But will life struggles allow him his freedom? Unsettled Between examines how identity is at the mercy of community and the inseparable bond we have with the people who love us the most.Unsettled Between is Rep'd by Allie Levick of Writers House Literary Agency.
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The Art of Reaction & Trusting Our Protectors
One of the beautiful behaviors of people is our need to protect. We don't like bullies. This becomes more the case the older we get. There is something about seeing someone being treated terrible that we can't stand. Maybe it's a new comer who is unjustly getting targeted, or it could be someone vulnerable who doesn't have the means to stand up for themselves. Either way, when you see opportunists attacking someone, you can be assured the protectors will come out if full force.
Those of us in the arts industry know all too well the backlash an artist can receive because of their popularity. Here you are doing your best work and putting all your energy into the art you are creating, and when it's time to showcase to the world what you've created, the bottom-feeders come out of the woodwork. They're like sharks sneaking up on you from small and unsuspecting places.Having been in and then out and then back in these environments I've learned a few things, and I'm going to give you a little insight on how to understand and work with the negative energy.
The first thing to understand is people are not going to stop. We can dream all day of the "what if" and how things "should be." There are people who gain energy from being positive and creating beautiful things, including beautiful relationships, and there are people who are energy vampires and they will attempt to use their negativity to tear you down. In fact, I'm sure there are bottom-feeders reading this post right now who can't wait to attack me for writing it.Here's the trick. Trust people to be who they are. If they're known for attacking people to build themselves up then they're always going to do so. Now, since you've picked out the bottom-feeders and you know how they are going to react, you can create your own reactions--not in a defensive tone but in a tone and advocacy for the positive things your doing. Just remind them and anyone listening of the good things your work is focused on. What will happen? One, they're not getting the negative response to feed themselves, and, two, you're giving people in your circles the opportunity to see the injustice. It'll show the clear avenue of negativity coming from the bottom-feeder.Next you'll start to see other people come to your defense. The protectors will step up and say, "She's doing good things for her people," in effect, and "She's trying to help," more or less. They're going to stand up for you. Why? Because you've helped them see the positive things you are doing. We have to remember: these bottom-feeders want people to only see the negativity. Everything they do will always come back to something ugly. They're incapable of doing it any other way. In response, we must be prepared to "show" and "describe" the positive aspects of our art. When the protectors can see, meaning visualize, how you are making your community better, then they are more willing to champion your cause.To a certain degree, exercising some savvy, you can set up these bottom-feeders for failure. Just keep putting yourself out there. At some point, they will attack you. Remember how I said, "Trust people to be who they are." Then when they do so. Take your opportunity to call the community to action. Remind them of the good you're doing and how you're bettering the community. It'll leave the bottom-feeders getting attacked for being so negative, and in the process you gain the solidarity the bottom-feeders are trying to disrupt.
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(The images used in this post were borrowed from Wikimedia and Wikipedia)
Native American Cuisine in Kiowa Literary Thematics
Exploring culture through foods is nothing new to the literary world. Likewise, it's not new to Native American literature. While we in the literary field know this to be true there is still very little exploration of the topic in thematic terms. How can traditional food and customs associated with consumption of those foods enhance the greater theme of a piece?Those of you reading this post to learn how to make Native American food may be asking, "What is Native American cuisine?" You'll have to search a little further to find out details on cooking Native American food, but I'll give you a little sample of what may constitute Native American cuisine in this article. For further elaboration on the topic of Native American cuisine check out: Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations by Lois Ellen Frank. She taught my ethnobotany course at the Institute of American Indian Arts and knows what she's talking about. Plus she's Kiowa so that puts her on my radar. There are a host of other options you can find on Amazon as well. Diabetes is a serious issue among Native peoples so I'm going to link a vital source for healthy eating here: Click Here!Back when I was a young guy "tearing it" on the Southern Plains of Oklahoma meatpies were indicative of KCA culture (Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache). It was a localized food specific to a certain geographic area. Today, using meatpies as a Kiowa artist, it can be applied for generational specificity in that it "was" localized, and now tribes across Oklahoma and other parts of Native America have latched onto it as a "cultural food." Living in Tahlequah today I've found many Cherokees making meatpies, but when I was growing up in Tahlequah as a child meatpies weren't in the community so I would dream of trips back to Lawton, Oklahoma (KCA country) where I could get my hands on a meatpie. Oh, the diaspora!
In my short story, Our Dance, you'll find in the second paragraph of the story the narrator describe receiving his Kiowa per cap, his ahongiah, (which was federally dispersed money where the Kiowa tribe allocated a financial disbursement between all tribal members), as "we both tore into those envelopes faster than the last meatpie on a plate." In the juxtaposition of receiving money alongside a cultural food like meatpies, we deduce the equal desperation in which both were acquired, and how each--meatpie and money--have become an appropriated substance for cultural survival.Meatpies are made from the combination of fry bread and meat. More or less a meat-stuffed piece of fry bread. Fry bread is commonly understood as a cultural food, but it's not traditional, meaning our ancestors didn't make fry bread prior to contact by Western peoples. It became a consistent part of our cultural foods when the U.S. government distributed food rations to tribes (we commonly refer to them as commodities or "commods" for slang). Because meatpies are basically fry bread with meat inside, they have also become a survival food for Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache people in southern Oklahoma (further out now due to diasporic conditions).When the narrator of my story, Our Dance, describes going for money the same as going for "the last meatpie on the plate," it speaks to the creative and critical thinking skills applied by Kiowa people to take something and appropriate it for cultural survival. In essence the story's title, Our Dance, is the dance of survival, like meatpies, like receiving per cap, like bonding with the community. To further connect this thematic for the reader, the quote at the onset of the story by James Auchiah, “Kiowa Five” artist (now Kiowa Six) and Chief Satanta’s grandson, reads, “We Kiowa are old, but we dance.” It is the dance of survival beginning with the narrator's ancestors and carrying into his present community which dictates his use of cultural foods for survival, and subsequently my use of culture, food, and customs to connect the thematic dots for my readers.