the circus.

Sitting at a table with people can be dangerous. Whenever I meet people I hesitate to talk. I sit there looking at them wondering which type they are.

Recently I helped a someone paint. I enjoyed the activity. Shouting over the noise of assembly and being careful not to soak up too much paint in the roller. Making sure I x, so I don't miss any parts in the sunken parts of the wall. Work.

Afterwards there was dinner. Dinner with non-brown people can sometimes be tricky. Like learning a new dance or how to drive with one blurry eye.
In this case,it starts simple, but if you get people who are curious and don't have any boundaries it gets complicated quick.

All of a sudden you're bombered with questions. "How do you say this in Navajo?" Why do you do this? What about x, y, and w? Ordinarily I don't mind.

But these are strangers and I feel like I am-amusement.

They see that I am part of collective and that's the only part they are interested in. They don't want to know why I do my job. They don't care about where I come from, they just want to learn something they can tell their friends. They want pieces of my childhood served up on an attractive platter.

They want to know why "we", as in all Indians, say this or that. And along the way my personality shifts. I sit there, waiting for the next question and think of ways to answer it in the least amount of words-but making sure I close the question and not prompt any others.

In these moments, I wish I had remembered to learn card tricks & to carry a deck. A top hat would be nice-so they'd know who the monkey is, so I could stand on top of a table and perform.

I feel exploited, but try to remain grateful that they at least are interested and think it's cool. Rather than them lobbying to export us like they do immigrants. Which I laugh at. Which all Indians laugh at, because we know we're all immigrants-some of us just have had our green cards longer.

I think this is why I never made friends with people who weren't brown in college. I got tired of the questions not from them-but from their families. Young people know to be aware, older people don't care as much. They think living in a state long enough where they, "pay taxes" gives them a right to harass the locals.

Yesterday outside of Dennys while waiting for a table, a white man and his son walked up to my friend.
"pow-wow! Hey-are you Native American?"
(friend talking on cell phone) "huh?"
"Are you Native Americans?"
"uh..yeah"
"Man that is so COOL!!' (he then pranced around there among us acting weird)

It happened so fast that none of us registered it until the jackass had walked off. We were like, "what the hell?" My friend after finishing his conversation on the phone was like, "where'd that jerk go? Pow-wow my ass..."

Seriously, it's the stranger part that bothers me. I don't walk up to people and demand they give me attention. I try not to ask questions about culture unless I'm sharing something of myself. (Note I say try-maybe I'm guilty of this on some level, but unless you are british, a polar bear, a giraffe or a beagle-you're safe from me)

It's not what they say, it's the way they say it. Like we owe them explantations for our existance.

That's why I think culture is each person's responsibility. It's your own job to find out who you are. It's your responsibility to find out where you come from and what it means to you. That way when you meet someone you aren't trying to pick up pieces of theirs to fill the holes in yours. At least that's the way it feels, I'm not sure that that is the intention.

posted by Danna Saunders @ 11/22/2004 09:41:00 AM