Welcome to your authentic Indian experienceTM - the commodification and theft of Indigenous identity and culture

 Rebecca Roanhorse is a science fiction/fantasy author. I especially loved her novel Trail of Lightning. I haven't seen her series Echo yet, but it's on my list. I don't have Disney plus and I am not keen to subscribe to yet another service. But I will subscribe to it for a month or so soon. I also plan to watch Prey (not by Roanhorse but also on Disney Plus), which people have told me is also good. 

What I like about Rebecca Roanhorse's stories is that they are lively, funny in unexpected ways, and smart. She is smart. She has studied theology and law at Yale and the University of New Mexico. She was a clerk at the Navajo Supreme Court and then became an attorney. Even though her work is fantasy and science fiction, I think that her work offers interesting contributions to conversations about real world political issues.

Summary

Rebecca Roanhorse’s 2017 Welcome to your authentic Indian experienceTM features an Indigenous man named Jesse who works as a virtual tour guide providing non-Indigenous people with one-on-one virtual vision quests (p. 2). Here is a snippet of his life:

You change in the locker room and shuffle down to the pod marked with your name. You unlock the hatch and crawl in. Some people find the pods claustrophobic, but you like the cool metal container, the tight fit. It’s comforting. The VR helmet fits snugly on your head, the breathing mask over your nose and mouth.

With a shiver of anticipation, you give the pod your Experience setting. Add the other necessary details to flesh things out. The screen prompts you to pick a Tourist connection from a waiting list, but you ignore it, blinking through the option screens until you get to the final confirmation. You brace for the mild nausea that always comes when you Relocate in and out of an Experience.

The first sensation is always smell. Sweetgrass and wood smoke and the rich loam of the northern plains. Even though it’s fake, receptors firing under the coaxing of a machine, you relax into the scents. You grew up in the desert, among people who appreciate cedar and piñon and red earth, but there’s still something home-like about this prairie place.

Or maybe you watch too much TV. You really aren’t sure anymore. (Roanhorse, 2017, p.5)

Jesse has the best sales numbers but his wife does not approve of his job. He understands that tourists “don’t want a real Indian experience. They want what they see in the movies” (p. 2), so he studies and imitates mainstream representations of Indigenous people (p. 3). 

At work, the company is adding an experience which is demeaning to Indigenous women. Jesse does not protest the new experience even though he knows his co-worker wants him to speak up (p. 4). Jesse begins an experience with a new tourist, and the tourist looks sad and lost (p. 7), and when Jesse does his usual introduction the tourist expresses disappointment, saying he was hoping for “something more authentic” (p. 9). Jesse gives the tourist a ceremonial Indian name and the tourist leaves without completing the entire experience (p. 10). 

After work Jesse goes to the bar for a drink and afterwards encounters the tourist (p. 11). Jesse explains that he’s not supposed to fraternize with tourists and the tourist says he just wanted to apologize for what happened in the virtual experience (p. 12). The tourist says he had a great grandmother who was Cherokee. Jesse makes a mental note that this is often a claim made by people who fraudulently claim Indigenous identity. Jesse ends the interaction and goes home (p. 13). 

The next day at work, the same tourist returns for another virtual experience and just wants to talk (p. 14) as he needs a friend, so they arrange to meet at the bar after work (p. 15). They talk at the bar until last call and make plans to meet up again (p. 16). They quiz each other about representations of Indigenous people in the media, and the tourist stumps Jesse with a movie quote, saying “Looks like I know something you don’t” (p. 17). The two become friends, spending two evenings a week together for months (p. 17), until Jesse gets sick and misses several days of work (p. 18). Jesse has no way to contact the tourist to let him know he won’t be at the bar so he sends his wife to deliver a message and she stays out late (p. 19). 

When Jesse returns to work, he finds out there is a new hire (p. 20). The manager says the new hire is more authentic than Jesse, and Jesse is fired (p. 20). Jesse goes to the bar and runs into the tourist who is with one of Jesse’s co-workers, but the tourist is dressed in a ribbon shirt and wearing a bone choker (p. 21). He acts like he doesn’t even know Jesse. Jesse is upset and stays out for a few days, then goes home and finds the tourist in his kitchen. As he talks with the tourist he realizes that the tourist is the one who took his job (p. 24). Jesse finds a note from his wife breaking up with him and realizes that the tourist had been telling his wife bad things about him and that the tourist has moved in with his wife. The tourist asks Jesse, “did you ever think… that maybe this is my experience, and you’re the tourist here?” (p. 25). 

Reflection 

The beginning of this story reminded me of the poem “I am not your princess” in the book Not vanishing by Chrystos, a poet of Menominee descent. In the poem, Chrystos directly address a non-Indigenous reader. The poem begins “Sandpaper between two cultures which tear/ one another apart I’m not/ a means by which you can reach spiritual understanding or even/ learn to do beadwork” (Chrystos, 1988, p. 35). Chrystos goes on to say “Look at my heart     not your fantasies     Please don’t ever/ again tell me about your Cherokee great-great grandmother” (p. 35). The poem ends with a plea to “Let me rest/ here/ at least” (p. 36). 

The poem speaks to the demands made upon Indigenous people to act out settler fantasies of Indigenous identity for the pleasure of settler individuals. Chrystos’ poem was published almost 30 years before “Welcome to your authentic Indian experienceTM”, which speaks to the longevity of this trend. 

While Chrystos’ poem demonstrates how tiring and demeaning these demands can be, the main character in “Welcome to your authentic Indian experienceTM" embraces the opportunity to make a living by fulfilling these settler fantasies. In the story, once Indigenous identity is commodified, the forces of the market begin to erode its integrity. As an individual, the main character does not resist this erosion. Instead, he embraces it. This erosion of integrity, combined with the individual profitability of identity, leaves the main character vulnerable to having his identity stolen. The tourist befriends him, becomes familiar with the various areas of his life, and then proceeds to encroach upon them. The tourist demands authenticity, and the main character responds by allowing the tourist to breach professional boundaries. The main character thinks the tourist is a friend, and so chooses to relax his privacy as one does with a friend, but the more the tourist knows about the main character’s life, the more he can steal.

Fraudulent Indigenous identity claims are all too common outside of fiction. A high-profile example is Carrie Bourassa, who claimed Indigenous identity and took on a role at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research administering the distribution of funds to Indigenous health projects (Leo, 2022). She was dismissed from that project when her fraudulent claims were exposed (Leo, 2022). Her employer, the University of Saskatchewan, hired Metis lawyer Jean Teillet to do an investigation into whether or not Carrie Bourassa was making a false claim, but then Carrie Bourassa resigned before the findings of the investigation were released (Leo, 2022). 

As Jean Teillet had already done a great deal of investigative work on the topic, the university had her write a public report on the general topic of Indigenous identity fraud (Teillet, 2022). Teillet identifies tactics that fraudsters use to deceive their employers, illustrates the harmful impact of fraudsters, and recommends strategies that post-secondary employers can use to avoid being deceived. Following the report, the University of Saskatchewan adopted and implemented a more robust Indigenous verification identification process which includes the participation of Indigenous community members (University of Saskatchewan, 2023). 

The issue of identity fraud is not limited to the University of Saskatchewan nor employment. For example, Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Medicine Indigenous admissions pathway warns potential applicants that “Fraudulent behaviour will be investigated and treated in accordance with university policy” (Dalhousie University, n.d.). These real-world examples illustrate what is at stake in economic and material terms with respect to Indigenous identity fraud. 

What Roanhouse's story illustrates, though, is the emotional and spiritual hunger behind false identity claims. The sad and lonely tourist is seeking an authenticity that he presumably cannot obtain himself. Does he have no other avenue through which he can find spiritual fulfillment? Why must his fulfillment rest on the dispossession of another? 

Chrystos' poem also addresses identity fraud, with her line about the Cherokee great grandmother. The issues identified in her poem persist. 

Works Cited 

Chrystos.(1988). Not vanishing. Vancouver, British Columbia: Press Gang Publishers. 

Dalhousie University. (n.d.). Indigenous admissions pathway: Keknu’tmasiek Ta’n Tel Welo’ltimk (We are learning to be well). Dalhousie University. https://medicine.dal.ca/departments/core-units/admissions/education-equity/indigenous-admissions-pathway.html 

Leo, G. (2022, June 1). Carrie Bourassa, who claimed to be Indigenous without evidence, has resigned from U of Sask. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carrie-bourassa-resigns-1.6473964

Roanhorse, 2017. Welcome to your authentic Indian experienceTM. Apex Magazine 99 [as this story appears as one long page on the website, page numbers used for in-text citation reflect page numbers of webpage when printed]. https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/welcome-to-your-authentic-indian-experience/

Teillet, J. (2022). Indigenous identity fraud: A report for the University of Saskatchewan. University of  Saskatchewan. https://indigenous.usask.ca/documents/deybwewin--taapwaywin--tapwewin-verification/jean-teillet-report.pdf

University of Saskatchewan. (2023, March 2). USask implements Indigenous membership/citizenship verification policy. https://news.usask.ca/articles/general/2023/implementation-of-the-deybwewin-taapwaywin-tapwewin-indigenous-truth-policy-at-usask.php 

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This is an adapted excerpt from my dissertation, Singing into the Machine, p.109-111

This blog is a sister blog to https://twinkleshappyplace.blogspot.com/

Lost in space - A short story about being a good and proper Native astronaut

I first encountered Drew Hayden Taylor's work when I was a young adult. I'm pretty sure my mom had a copy of Funny you don't look like one: Observations of a blue eyed Ojibwe. I thought his writing was clever. 

He is incredibly prolific. He has authored 22 books, and edited 5 collections. And he continues to write for The Globe and Mail. You can read about his impressive body of work on his author website. 

Overall, I am a fan. However, I kind of have mixed feelings about a small fraction of his work because some of it leans too heavily on trauma tropes. I remember a colleague telling me that the thought the short story Boy in the ditch was a good read, but I found it disturbing. 

In this collection, I would avoid using Mr. Gizmo. It made me uneasy. I don't mind being uneasy as long as there is some kind of redeeming underlying purpose to making me uneasy, but I could not find the purpose within Mr. Gizmo. For entertainment value, I found Superdisappointed to be a funny read. And I thought Petropaths would be fun to teach. I tried to include a range of works in my dissertation, and so I challenged myself to pick only onr story from this collection. The story I chose to reflect on was Lost in space. 

Mitchell had been hovering effortlessly, drifting both in the gravity vacuum of space and, more interestingly, in and out of consciousness. Small tethers from the right shoulder and left pant cuff of his jumpsuit anchored him to opposed bulkheads. This was to make sure he didn’t bump into the walls of the ship and ruin his fun. His mind had no such restrictions and had meandered back and forth between alpha, beta, delta, and all remaining brain-wave frequencies. The small room was dark and the temperature was neutral. A sort of purgatory. Additionally, the oxygen in this hyperbaric chamber had been reduced to the minimum, allowing for a more recreational time alone. In other words, he was mellowing out in the twenty-first century version of an improvised isolation tank. (Taylor, 2016, p. 46-7)

Ojibway author Drew Hayden Taylor’s 2016 short story “Lost in space” begins with the protagonist, Mitchell, using oxygen deprivation to put himself in an altered state (p. 47). He is on a spacecraft mining the asteroid belt, and his only company is the ship’s artificial intelligence, Mac (p. 48). Mac informs him that his grandfather has died (p. 48). His grandfather was his only Indigenous grandparent and inspired his love of space (p. 49). He recalls a conversation with his grandfather, where his grandfather reflected on the connection between Indigenous identity and the land, and how his grandfather told him, “I can’t help wondering if it’s possible to be a good, proper Native astronaut” (p. 51). Mitchell reflects on the barriers to expressing his Indigenous identity in space, including not being able to burn sage because of fire suppression technology; no dawn to greet; no Four Directions to honour; the complexity of honouring Mother Earth and Father Sky while being “closer to the backside of Mother Mars” (p. 52); and no drumming due to the calibration of technology on the ship (p. 53). Mac locates a video of his grandfather drumming, and as Mitchell watches it, he reflects on how his grandfather encouraged him to “represent” (p. 55). “Song after song made him realize that even though he was only one quarter Anishinabe, he could be fairly confident he was the only Anishinabe out here in the asteroid belt, possibly the only one outside of Earth and the three space stations. This was the only drum music for millions and millions of kilometers. This was a responsibility. As his grandfather used to say, he’d better step up and represent, because he was a hell of a long way from home” (p. 55).

Drew Hayden Taylor’s story is fun. The question that his grandfather poses is an interesting one. Note that his grandfather doesn’t ask if it’s possible to be a Native astronaut, rather, he questions whether it is possible to be a good, proper Native astronaut. The main character reflects on cultural practices that he cannot do in space, the implication here being that being “good” and “proper” are expressed through cultural activities such as smudging and drumming. Ultimately, he decides that he is being a good and proper native by virtue of his commitment to “represent”, and he expresses his identity by celebrating his ancestor. What this story highlights is the fact that sometimes we are put in positions where there is no one around to affirm our Indigenous identity, and when we are put in those positions, we have to affirm ourselves.

After reading this story, I did have some questions. What exactly does it mean to represent? What are the unique responsibilities tied to being in a professional context where you are the only Indigenous person? How do you conduct yourself when you have no family present to help you navigate identity? These questions are especially relevant in the university environment, where Indigenous people are under-represented.

Works Cited 

Taylor, D.H. (2016). Take us to your chief. Madeira Park, British Columbia: Douglas & McIntyre. 

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This is an adapted excerpt from my dissertation, Singing into the Machine, p.133-135

This blog is a sister blog to https://twinkleshappyplace.blogspot.com/