so im gonna come of twitter retirement & talk about this "article" re: roanhorse. i have next to no interest in identity issues. youre either related or youre not. youve either done the work to learn about your tribe or you havent. and that goes for both on- and off-rezzers.

however, caveat: learning about your tribe is very hard no matter where you grew up, no matter who you are. the road to deep self knowledge about yourself and your people is riddled with landmines and booby traps and most people i know get lost along the way, to be frank.

they either stop bc theyre intellectually lazy and get too satisfied with the little knowledge theyve acquired or theyre too afraid to ask the questions they really want to ask or theyre simply not interested, the latter of which usually means...

they settle on skin color and/or federally sanctioned ID cards (tribal enrollment cards) to determine their sense of identity. and there are also the romantic ndns who just cant get enough of the fantasy of the old days that were totally absolutely perfect BEFORE THE WHITE MAN.

there are probably other iterations but most of them are some variation of what ive listed above. and most of the time people think their idea of what constitutes identity is the only one that counts. all others are lesser. basic identity gauntlet politics etc.

its important to know that is in the background of the roanhorse hit piece. bc thats what it is: a hit piece. its not journalism, not by a long shot. journalism involves an attempt at neutrality and an actual legitimate for-real attempt to gather different points of view.

which that piece did not. it did not even try. it did not even attempt to gather enough povs to create a 3D image of the situation. this is obvious to anyone with a decent brain who makes an honest attempt to think about what is not being said / excluded / etc.

but this is already more than the article deserves; this is already more analysis than any hit piece deserves. im only doing this bc this kind of trash is so common in ndn country that most of us dont pay attention to it. but im thinking maybe we should pay attention to this one.

bc what these people are doing is setting the standard for cancel culture in indian country. and anyone who attains any kind of success—bc thats what this is ultimately about in the broadest sense, success and jealousy and petty ndn bitterness—is going to get this treatment.

anyone who achieves any kind of success is going to get some of this treatment, no matter what. bc there is nothing, absolutely nothing ndns hate more than another ndn having success. this happens at the local, rez level and the urban level and the pan-tribal level.

ive seen it literally my entire life. ive watched ndn tear each other down like there is nothing that could matter more in this world that making sure another ndn cant feel good or enjoy their life or etc. i have never seen anyone worse about this than ndns. ever.

and since this roanhorse stuff began, i have not been able to get that out of my mind, that this all starts with classic ndn hatred and petty jealousy of another ndn who is experiencing some kind of success. and holy fuck i am sick of this bullshit.

long story short: this is why we cant have nice things. bc we would rather no ndn have any success than one ndn have some success. its remarkable how much this...behavior dominates indian country. its dominates our local cultures, it dominates our local politics...

and it dominates how we relate to native people who have success at a national, pan-tribal level.

so heres a personal story to illustrate what im talking about, and i have a feeling it relates the issue at hand.

when i got into the iowa writers workshop a wayyyyy long time ago, that was a big deal for me. i did not think i had a shot in hell at getting into that program and i was proud that i got in. a geeky kid from a tiny town on an isolated reservation in an empty state and i made it.

it was one of the few moments of my life where i felt real pride and happiness. and when i came home for that first xmas break, i ran into an auntie at a c-store and she asked where id been. i told her, and she said, Nephew, we should get that in the newspaper. thats a big deal.

and i told her i didnt want to. she asked why and i just shrugged my shoulders. but the truth is, at that point in my life i was so sick of getting shit from people on my own rez: for being smart, for getting good grades, for reading books (lol), for not being a "tough guy"...

and—this is a big one—for having light skin that i just didnt want to share my moment of success with anyone but my family and friends. i didnt want to expose something that meant a lot to me to any number of people who not only wouldnt give a fuck, but would respond by saying,

"fuck that guy aint even blackfeet / indin / enrolled / one of us / etc." ive heard this shit my whole life. and though it took me a long time to figure it out, its all bullshit. total fucking bullshit. every bit of it.

and at a certain point i decided no one would ever be the arbiter of my identity again. ever. no one would ever get to tell me who i am and am not. ever. but it was a brutal road to get to that point, and tbh, no ndn with legitimate connection should ever have to go through it.

but instead—every ndn has to go through it. thats how ridiculous this shit is. literally ever ndn i know has gone through it. my dad who is dark as fuck went through it when he was younger bc he doesnt speak our language. there is a woman here i know who...

looks like she could have been in an edward curtis photo and *she* got called white when she was growing up. when she told me that i was stunned; that was when i realized literally all of us go through this. no one escapes. everyone gets put thru the identity meat grinder.

and bc we put each other through all this pain bc we were put through all that pain we all grow up with this brutal, cruel sense of ourselves, everyone looking around to make sure no one calls us out for not being what we cant help but be and one of the ways we do that...

is to call others out. we point out "flaws" in others. we call them out for their skin color, their hair, their eyes, their lips, the way they talk, what they like to do, what they wont do, anything we feel like. anything to draw attention to someone who *isnt us*.

its shockingly basic psychology. and it dominates indian country. and this stuff with roanhorse, no matter how you argue it, comes back to that. yes there various "arguments" as to why she shouldnt do what shes done and what i hope she will keep doing. but behind all of those...

"arguments" is the old bitterness and jealousy and resentment of someone who has something you want: positive attention.

but theres more, so im going to keep going.

there is also the old prejudice, the anti-black prejudice that permeates indian country. its everywhere and that this is part of the flareup around roanhorse is not news to me. ive also see this shit my whole life and it is very, very difficult for me to imagine this would...

be happening with this kind of vehemence if Roanhorse were not part black. im probably not supposed to say this but im just going to go the full piikuni and say it. wanna know how i know its a big part of the issue?

its not even mentioned in the article.

all this talk about her background and...no mention that she is part black. the article practically turns itself into a pretzel trying not to note this. and yet Roanhorse herself notes this. so...why not talk about it in the article too?

ill tell you why: bc youre trying not to talk about the elephant in the room bc you dont want to be accused of being a racist fuck. but its not an elephant bc of Roanhorse herself; its an elephant bc *a lot of fucking natives* are hugely prejudiced toward blackness...

particularly when it shows up in a native person. i dont think its going too far to say this attitude saturates indian country. its part of the air we breathe. and yet the article dosent mention it. FASCINATING. TOTALLY FUCKING FASCINATING.

so in order to make its "point" the article erases part of Roanhorses identity. and thus we return to the opening of this thread: ndn purity politics. Roanhorses identity doesnt fit within the purity pardigm (just like literally every fucking indian person alive).

so they just ignore part of who she is. and then act as judge, jury and hangman, trying her according to their personal identity rules. and i am going to stress the fuck out of this: the "rules" the discuss in the article are not everyones rules. and im not even talking...

about people from other tribes rules. im talking about people from her own tribe. people from the navajo nation. what i absolutely cannot stand about trash articles like this is the way they imply the rules of engagement stated in the article *are the only rules of engagement*.

what do i mean? i mean the way the people who are talking about "how we work" (navajo, ohkay owingeh, whothefuckever) dont leave any room for the ndns from their own tribe who see things differently. so you know the traditional way of life?

guess what, motherfucker. there are any number of people in your tribe, my tribe, all the post-colonial indigenous nations of north america...who dont live like that. who dont think like that. who...wait for it...dont want to live like that. this is the thing we never, ever...

ever, ever, ever talk about. that fact that there is a stunning diversity in indian country and that most indians, if we look at the totality of indigenous nations in the US and Canada, dont live traditionally. and a whole fuckton of them dont want to. and...WAIT FOR IT...

that doesnt mean theyre not native. that doesnt mean theyre not a "real indian." a real piikuni. a real navajo. a real salish. a real crow. a real whatthefuckever. and the effects of this continuing to think running this identity gauntlet is legitimate is actually massively...

detrimental to our sovereignty. bc we cannot stop alienating our own people. we cannot stop running our own people off our land. we cannot stop behaving as though making people slide through this narrow, narrow identity window is more important than the survival of our nations.

im here to tell you that is utter, complete bullshit. if you look around you and see a lot of indians who arent "real," you are part of the problem. you are contributing to the war of attrition the colonials have been fighting with us for centuries. and you are on their side.

you need to open that tiny-ass brain of yours and worry for a moment about something other than whether or not people know your name. fuck your litmus test. fuck your identity bullshit. fuck your need to draw attention to yourself by tearing down others. get fucking real.

our sovereignty is on the line and you are worried about a writer who was adopted out after she was born. holy fuck what kind of asshole/s are you. i cannot even imagine how hard it would be to reconnect if you had been adopted out. can you? my guess is you cant.

my guess is you cant even imagine the slightest fraction of the difficulty. and thats why you barely talk about that in the "article" in question, am i rite. bc then you might have to address how hard it would be for someone to reconnect after adoption.

but you only would have done that if you were interested in legit journalism, which you were not. you just wanted to take someone down, bc thats how you roll.

you know what we need? we need healing. and i dont mean fakey ass romantic indian healing.

i mean real deal healing. therapy. expanding our povs to include more types of people. intellectual work that helps us understand how the colonial pov infected us and—surprise surprise—is actually the source of our identity purity politics.

fuck there is so much more i could say about that trash. i feel like the intellectual work of my whole life has been working against the assumptions that underpin that article. there is the mention that she is not enrolled. guess what—the enrollment system, whether you use bq...

or not is still a federally created and sanctioned system. and there is the critique of modern art mediums from a traditional pov. guess what? modern art and traditional protocols are two different things. if youre not willing to address this conflict, then...

it means youre not really engaging the issue at the deepest level. so you know, fuck right off. and there is the whole using a person from a tribe that has nothing to do with the tribes in question. why do we do this? sorry, pan-indianism is not a starting point for any...

legit argument. if we give even the slightest rip about sovereignty, then have to stop recruiting people from other nations to solve our internal problems. BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT SOVEREIGNTY WHEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A BOOK. A WORK OF FICTION. THATS

WAY MORE FUCKING IMPORTANT. and there is also the issue of turning control of art over to the state, i.e. tribal governments. bc thats what this piece leads to. that a tribe should be able to say who can say what about what. they dont say that, but its implied.

its implied in *all* appropriation politics in indian country. all. and idk if any of you have actually ever dealt with a tribal government, but HOLY SHIT most of them are fascistic and authoritarian and anyone who says otherwise has never actually dealt with one.

i often have the thought that the only thing stopping them from going the full fascism is sheer lazy disinterest in establishing a true "state" and the FBI lol. #4real2. so let me say that turning over any kind of control re: artistic production to tribal governments is the end

of freedom in the *modern* arts in indian country. jfc ive been talking about this since even before i was washed up. and there is also the issue of the saad bee hozho collective, which is a bunch of poets lol. im not laughing bc poetry, im laughing bc...

poets who have not committed serious time and energy to writing fiction have no idea what it actually takes. im not saying you wrote a story once. im saying you dedicated a decade of your life and really buckled down and submitted to the discipline of fiction. the same way...

you have with poetry. bc anyone whos done this knows that fiction doesnt exist without using something other than your own self. it literally doesnt exist. unless youre way the fuck into autofiction and like...idk whatever. its cool if you are but most of us arent lol.

and there is the idea that people who are *not even artists* have the right and authority to tell artists what to do lolol. like, control issues much? when i want someone to fix my plumbing, i dont call a fucking professor. i call a plumber.

and on and on and on but im done. i havent gone off like this on social media since that one guy was being all pissy and i ripped him on fb. but those were the old days, when i was full of vim and vigor. im gonna have to to back into retirement now.

i feel like one of those gelflings from the dark crystal after the skeksis drain them of their life force lol.

also, when i made that comment about crows up above, that was a mistake. its not ever ok to be a crow. i just want to be clear about that.