Keene: Imagining Indigenous futures, creating new images

While retaining their roots in the past, it’s important for Indigenous people to envision their future in American and world society, Dr. Adrienne Keene said during her keynote address Wednesday at the Symposium on the American Indian at Northeastern State University.

When Dr. Adrienne Keene went east to teach about Indigenous culture, her mere existence shocked many people she encountered.

She was the first Native American most had ever met. Some were surprised to learn Natives still existed.

“When I moved to the East Coast, it was like experiencing invisibility,” Keene said during her keynote address Wednesday at the 48th annual Symposium on the American Indian at Northeastern State University.

The Symposium, conducted by the Center for Tribal Studies, is being held virtually this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Activities will continue through Saturday and may be viewed online by those who register.

Keene, a Cherokee, grew up in California, where she was around people from many Native tribes and cultures. She currently is a professor at Brown University and cohost of the “All My Relations” program. Her address was titled, “The Strange Case of the Hipster Headdress: Reclaiming Indigenous Representations and Imagining Indigenous Futures.”

Most Americans have no concept of what contemporary Indigenous people or their lives are like, Keene said. They see an image of the “Q Shaman” in his horned headdress storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 and think of an “Indian-type” figure, or visualize a sepia-toned print of Plains warriors as they existed 150 years ago. They don’t see people going to work, living their lives, in today’s culture.

Google images of Natives, and some progress has been made; photos of leaders such as Deb Haaland and others come up. But most are still the stereotypes in feathered headdresses.

“This is where most people are starting from – a place that does not showcase this history, does not showcase our diversity,” Keene said.

On “All My Relations,” she interviews a diverse group of contemporary Natives. She also has a book coming out, “Notable People,” profiling 50 prominent Natives. For those interested in who represents the Cherokees in the book, she winnowed the selection down to Sequoyah and Wilma Mankiller, with aerospace engineer Mary Golda Ross receiving an honorable mention.

Over the years, the image of Indigenous people has helped colonizers justify subjugating them, taking their land and other properties. If Natives were considered to be uncivilized and savage, that was good enough reason to seize the land for use by the “superior” white people moving in.

“Now these processes of extraction are about cultural extraction,” Keene said.

She described going into an Urban Outfitters store near her campus and seeing all the products derived from retailers’ perception of “Native” items that would sell — everything from T-shirts with Plains headdresses to dreamcatcher earrings and jewelry holders shaped like totem poles.

They steal these cultural expressions from another people’s history, artifacts, ways of knowledge and art, reflecting an imbalance of power between the two cultures.

“It’s not like we’re on the same playing field, all sharing our culture equally,” Keene said.

Which culture is dominant today is obvious when Natives are wearing western clothing and speaking English, she added.

The stereotypes commonly thought of as “real Indian” do not portray Keene’s family or the people she knows.

“Our identity is not just racial identity; it’s about being connected to a sovereign nation, which is a political identity,” she said.

Young Native students’ self-esteem is lowered when they are shown stereotypes, including pictures of Disney’s Pocahontas and Chief Wahoo in studies, she said. She wants to see young people viewing material that enhances their self-image, rather than that promotes white supremacy.

Keene sees progress today, with a greater movement toward justice for all races, but progress needs to continue. The Native movement has achieved abolishing mascots, including getting rid of images and removing harmful names – think the Washington Football Team. And the young Native woman disappeared, seemingly overnight, from the Land O' Lakes butter carton.

“They removed the Native but kept the land,” as one observer pointed out, Keene said.

Other positive imagery is growing. On TV, people will be able to watch “The Rutherford Files,” with Native characters; “Reservation Dogs” on FX; and “Sovereign,” a Native family drama. For the kids, there’s the cartoon “Molly of Denali” on PBS, featuring an Alaska Native girl. The Cherokee Nation produces "Osiyo TV." Indigenous Fashion Week will be held again in Toronto, and the children’s book, “We Are Water Protectors,” won the latest Caldecott Award.

“We are still here. We will always be here,” Keene said. “What does our future look like beyond settler colonialism?”

She encouraged her audience to continue visualizing a positive future for Indigenous American people.

“You can’t be what you can’t see. We are only limited by our ability to imagine the future,” said Keene.

Trending Video