The BIG LIE or the BIG STEAL? This current political debate sits on the surface. From the time of Native American genocide, from the time of Benjamin Franklin ripping off Native ideologies about democracy without ever giving credit or gaining a full understanding; from the time when they created a constitution which makes some people 3/5 of a human being, we have been accumulating big lies. The steals too, of land and labor, started a long time ago. That is why we are still struggling with the vestiges of colonialism today. And we can’t repair these big lies and steals if we don’t stop replicating them—if we won’t even face them.
It’s turtles all the way down.
— Ruth Voights
Communitarian Roots
My mother’s people were part of what were called the “Mission Indians” on the East Coast; remnants of tribes who banded together after having been decimated by disease and warfare. They migrated westward, by the early 1800s they were in eastern Wisconsin. The “Brothertown,” as they called themselves, built a prosperous economic base in the Fox Valley region, until their land was fraudulently taken from them.
I am an enrolled member of the Brothertown Nation. Our existence is not recognized by the federal government. In the last decades we have been trying to get recognition. To do so would take an act of Congress. That’s not coming anytime soon.
My grandmother’s people’s ancestral land was a little farther outside of where I grew up, around Lake Winnebago. That whole area is called the Fox Valley. I went to grade school in a town outside of Kaukauna, Wisconsin, a fairly rural area at the time, but dotted with paper mills, so it was industrial too: an area of company towns.
My father’s side are descended from German immigrants who came to Wisconsin. After serving in WWII my father and his brother started working in the paper mills. One of my earliest memories is hanging around the fire barrels to warm up, on a Wisconsin winter picket line with my father. My dad was union, and my uncle was President of their local mill workers union. Many rank and file members mixed up my father and uncle, so when the union would go on strike, we would get harassing calls from dissidents and strike breakers who thought they were yelling obscenities at my uncle.
From my father’s side, I get much of my understanding of the power of collective action. From my mother’s side I learned the importance of extended family, and about using communitarian forms of planning and organization to hold a group together. From both sides of my family, I learned the importance of sticking together to achieve our goals. To me it’s like the fingers of a hand. Every one of us is a finger. We each have certain things we can do. We are good separated, but if we put those fingers together, we can twist the cap off a bottle. If we put our fingers together, they become a fist, a weapon. You don’t need to be a hero. When we come together the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Getting to Native American Studies
Was I good at school? I had to be. My mother made sure of that. I was not a goody two shoes, but I did well. When I was in high school, we moved into the town of Kimberly, home of Kimberly Clark Mills. We lived across the street from the high school principal. His wife had been a nurse, had contracted polio, and lived in a wheelchair. She was very supportive of me and was instrumental to getting me into Carroll College, a liberal arts college in Waukesha WI, with a full scholarship.
I did a double major in clinical psychology and sociology, but I was already moving away from the psychology before I graduated. One of my more salient memories of undergrad was sitting in the cafeteria listening to the draft numbers of young men whose birthdays were coming up– which of my friends was headed to Vietnam.
At Carroll College, I began reading Native American literature, history, and politics on my own. I wanted a graduate program where I could continue that study. There were no graduate programs in American Indian Studies in 1969. If you wanted to study Native America, you had to do it through anthropology. I applied to the University of Minnesota because their anthropology department was purported to be good on Native American studies, and they were willing to give me money.
Getting to Minneapolis
I arrived at the U of M in 1969. What a moment! The students were organizing moratoriums against the Vietnam War that pretty much shut the University down. The power of protest was on display. We had teach-ins, where people learned the colonial roots of the Vietnam War, and what was really happening.
When I first got to the anthropology department I worried if I was smart enough. There were students from Ivy League schools there. We would have these department parties where people let you know. I remember there was this one woman who spoke French, who had studied at the Sorbonne. She had read Claude Levi-Strauss in the original French, for God sake! I thought, holy geez, do I belong here? At one of our parties, she came up to me and asked, “Do you speak Indian?” All I could do was stare at her. I thought. “OK, I think I’m going to be all right.”
The Founding of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota
I arrived at the U just when scholars and activists and people in the Native American community were demanding American Indian studies: not just an exotic adjunct of anthropology, but a valid historical, political, sociological area of study that deserved its own department. There were so many people involved in this effort, whose names are easily forgotten. We need to be careful as we raise up leaders, not to make it seem as though they did everything on their own. With that in mind, there is one person who was instrumental; W. Roger Buffalohead became one of the first chairs of one of the first Native Americans studies departments in the nation.
Roger was adamant that to make American Indian studies go, it would need community involvement. Giving back to the community was central to the ideology of the department. And what was happening in the community, especially at that time, was important to the department. This is when the American Indian Movement began in Minneapolis, and when the AIM patrol was active. In 1972 was the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan to Washington. By 1973 you had Wounded Knee II. At this time within the University, you also had the parallel movements: Black students took over Morrill Hall, demanding African American studies department. The Martin Luther King Center—a demand of Black students—began and served as a support system for American Indian students too. For me it was a moment to get serious about figuring out what I could do to contribute to social change. I could research. And, eventually, I discovered I could teach.
Roger is the one who got me involved. How did we meet? He found me, living the graduate student life, burning both sides of the candle, sleeping on the floor underneath the coat rack in the Social Science Tower. He said, “Get to work.” That’s how I became his research assistant. I researched Native American legislation. I began developing curriculum for this new field of study. Soon after, I began teaching for the fledgling American Indian studies department. I taught American Indian Studies 3061 which had a God-awful title: American Indians in the Modern World. It was legislative political history—in other words, colonial history. I discovered that I enjoyed teaching and I was good at it. I realized it was a way I could contribute. There is a need to reexamine “so-called histories” from the perspectives our own communities—another way to honor the old philosophy of living for the 7th generation.
I met so many people making change during that time. A great example is the Ojibwe and Dakota women who came to the U to teach language. The legislature had mandated that these languages, indigenous to Minnesota, must be taught, and these elders made sure it happened in the American Indian studies department. They did not have academic degrees (though we did have a Ph.D. linguist too). They were the ones who anchored the department and made sure it would not be cut. I still get shivers when I think about them.
Saved By Ojibwe Elders from Censure at MCC (MCTC)
At one point I was asked to do a course at MCC, (now MCTC), in their Working College program. I had in the class two older women, White Earth enrolled, active in the community: Harriet “Sis” Heisler who was in her 50s and Winnie Jourdain, in her 70s. Jourdain has a building named after her.
Sis Heisler had “love” and “hate” tattooed on her knuckles. She eventually got a master’s degree in social work. She ended up doing one the three model federal projects on child abuse: Ah-Be-No-Gee, headquartered in Little Earth Projects. At one point we counted: she had 57 foster kids. Sis was Clyde Bellecourt’s aunt. Generations of her family have carried on the struggle. After George Floyd’s murder, her youngest daughter became part of AIM’s patrol of the Little Earth neighborhood.
So there I was, teaching history to these two women who had lived through it. I felt so young. They would sit together in the back of the room. One day I was giving a test. I had a question about the Dawes Act. The elders whispered and laughed.
I didn’t find out until a couple years later, (Sis and I remained friends), that because of this incident, a student had complained to the Dean that I was letting Indian students cheat. The Dean called in the two elders, and they ran interference for me. They said, “Go ahead, expel us, but don’t you dare touch Professor Voights. You are not even going to talk to her.”
Sis also told me what Winnie had whispered to her: “They just wanted to make us little brown, white men.” A little “Indian humor” not appreciated by others. Not only would these women not cheat, but they could have taught an advanced class on the effects of the Dawes Act.
People like Winnie Jourdain and Sis Heisler allowed my generation to make even half a step. There were so many people like them, whose names have been forgotten.
Inside/Outside Organizing
You need to understand what it was like in the American Indian studies department in the early ‘70s. The administrative assistant, Linda, was the heartbeat of the department. She was Indigenous Hawaiian. Nothing happened without her. Late on a Friday afternoon we would sit in the office with our feet on Linda’s desk and the phone would ring and someone would call and ask, “How do you say Happy Birthday in Eskimo.”
Between those inane phone calls, we talked about the questions that dogged us. How do you be a part of this system and not be a part of the system? Were we making a difference inside this institution? How do we keep our value systems? How do we keep the community at the center? How do we not separate ourselves from ourselves? These questions were central to us.
How I Got to MCAD
On one of those Friday nights someone from MCAD called and said, “We have seventeen Native American students coming up from the Santa Fe Art Institute and they need a class or something.” The course slot was early in the morning. Roger looked at me and said, “You go over there.”
I didn’t want to, but I agreed. I fell in love with art students and stayed 40 years.
The Artist World and Racial Bias: Some MCAD Experiences
The arts have this reputation for being fairly open, but they are still part of a racist society. The MCAD administration kept trying to make me Native American Counselor or Native American Coordinator or whatever so they could put it on the books. Once they just put it on the books without me knowing. I threw a hissy fit. I said, “I’m not here for that and I’m not going to be your excuse to the world.” To create titles without accompanying structural changes in institutions does very little to empower people.
One summer, a few years after I started, I got a call at my home. I wasn’t working summer session at the time, but they told me GET OVER HERE. So, I got in my car and drove over, not knowing what this was about.
Native Americans students from New Mexico had rented the top floor of a house that was kitty corner to MCAD. It was a studio. All but one of the kids had gone home for the summer. A maintenance man had called MCAD. He said he entered the space because there was a bad smell coming from the place. Apparently, they had pulled the cord and the refrigerator was off. The maintenance man had opened the fridge and found ‘eyes looking back at him’ from the fridge.
He called the school, and the school called me.
I said, “Why call me? If you really think a murder has been committed, why not call the police? But I went over there, opened the dark fridge and found the eyes of a deer staring at me.
As a society, we grow up with these implicit racist ideologies within our individual psychology, that we are still dealing with. The maintenance man jumped to conclusions without looking carefully and the MCAD staff believed him. As for calling me to take care of it…
Fighting for College Access
From my work at the University of Minnesota to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design; from Working College at the former MCTC in the 1970s, that opened up college to older adults, parents, people working 9-5, or nights; to General College at the University of Minnesota; to supporting Tribal Colleges: I have been committed to the struggle for college access. I think the opening of the higher educational system to working people—to people who don’t normally have access to college and don’t have a support system once they get there—is a continuous struggle.
The University of Minnesota’s latest project to support and expand the special initial freshman scholarships for Native American students at the U is currently something to monitor. This is a small measure of what the university owes to the Native American community, regarding land and a lot of other things. It is just a small measure of how open to community the University should be.
In the recent past, my mobility has been limited. I am recovering from a fall. I have had a cervical collar and have not been allowed to drive. And then there’s COVID. But I have been able pick up the phone and harass state legislators to support the creation of a centralized database for missing and murdered Indigenous women, funded through the Minnesota Legislature. This project is a model for the nation. Many women, old and young, working together got this done. Many people making small contributions can make changes. My role was making phone calls. I’m pretty good at being the cranky, bothersome, grandmother you can’t get rid of. I’ve learned I have that talent.
Working in Collaboration
It was in the 1970s that I began to work collaboratively with other groups on issues of importance to Native Americans. I found that if we know what we want, we can work with other groups without losing our focus.
On Navajo reservations, in the 1970s, forced sterilization was happening. Many Dine speaking women did not read English. They were coming in for gynecological services and being forced to sign documents in English that they could not read, saying they agreed to sterilization. This was sterilization without their consent. Because the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) had taken up this issue of forced sterilization, I was willing to speak at their rallies and forums on this issue.
In the 1980s when I joined the Guatemala Solidarity Committee, I endured long sessions in small hot rooms, with men who thought someone had to understand a particular intellectual Marxist Leninist position in order to oppose US support for the Rios Monte regime committing genocide against Indigenous Guatemalans.
Even today, working with the DFL in taking steps to address the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women doesn’t mean accepting the entire DFL platform. Alliances are just that, alliances toward a particular goal. That always has to be kept in mind.
Every decade there is something else. When we stopped sterilizations, we had to stop genocide in Central America, and now the epidemic of murdered and missing women. You can’t rest. You have to remain vigilant. You constantly need to reorganize, evolve your networks and organizations, remain open and ready for the next campaign, be ready to collaborate, and be ready to run interference for the young people, like Sis Heisler and Winnie Jourdain did for me. Young people will—importantly— organize differently than we did. We elders need to be ready to support them.
I think it’s exceedingly important—if you have two groups who may not be totally coterminous in their ideological or belief systems—to find a way to work together towards the same goal. If you are doing the work, I will work alongside you, make the phone calls, or take the mic to talk about issues I’m concerned about such as Native American women. If we are clear about our identity, our goals and our belief systems, we can do that without getting over run.
Building Inclusive Museums
Before COVID I worked on the Native American woman’s art exhibit Hearts of Our People, at Minneapolis Institute of Arts. That is the kind of educational project I am doing now, outside of the college setting. Education does not just come from reading and research. I learned as a teacher that people learn in so many different ways. Some people need to hear it. I remember having a student who never took notes. He would sit in the front row and listen, and when it came time for the test, he would get an A. Some people have to see it. Some people have to do it: mold it, feel it, walk it. If you put all those together, you can teach just about anything with art. But then we have to be vigilant so that learning does not become exclusive.
Access to education means not just access to higher education institutions, but also to art and its repositories like museums, which have been repositories of colonialism. We need to turn that on its head. Some museums are trying to do that right now, creating something they are calling the inclusive museum. To do that we need to start with the community, just as we did in the old American Indian studies department. What does the community need from the museum? What should the museum be saving? Who has the rights to those objects? Who has access to our artifactual heritage?
An inclusive museum involves reparations, rewriting and expanding access. Right now, that is what I am trying to keep track of, on the internet and support people who are doing that.
Art and Politics
I have no problem with art as propaganda. There is a place for that. If, for example, you request a young artist to make a piece for a poster that would reflect on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, but you are explicit that the goal is to advance our cause of developing a database, it is OK to expect that the needs of the group are reflected in the art.
But if an artist makes a fresco on a wall to express what the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women means to them, (as an art collective of young women did on the Pow Wow Grounds restaurant recently) then you need to let the artist have full control of their expression.
Extraordinary/Ordinary Role Models
Everything circles for me. Those old Ojibwe and Dakota women in the American Indian studies department who were the mainstay; few people know their name. But they represent the generations, the turtles going down and down. That is where I find the truth.
Should young people have role models? Oh god yes. But I want them to have role models who are not superheroes. You don’t have to be a DC or Marvel superhero. Ordinary people do extraordinary things. I have no great talent. I give what I’ve got to give. I’ve learned that you have to do it over and over again, decade after decade.
Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson is someone whose work turns colonialism on its head. She was a grad student at MCAD. She and her husband are down in Chicago now, but she comes back periodically. She has a piece that reflects on the story of an elder talking to a scientist who was pontificating about the layers of the earth, and the elderly woman looks at him and just says “Turtles. Turtles all the way down.” For me her answer is a metaphor. We need to go down, down, down to uncover all the Big Lies and Steals.