Fancy Skins

2.0: Fancy Skins
By Gyasi Ross

Story Created: Jun 15, 2009

On the Blackfeet reservation, they call it “acting good.” Folks who act good – the fancy Skins – are on every rez and every city with a large Indian population. Most Skins are not the fancy type, mind you. Still everyone knows them – the kind of Skin that always has a conference to attend, who always drops names, who went away to school and always talks about his/her time away at school.

Native lawyers are the ultimate fancy Skins. They’re fancy Skins on steroids, Creatine and HGH. They love their schools shamelessly. They have screensavers of their alma maters of which their wives get jealous. These fancy Skins look lustily at the screensavers and think of how they were able to play fantasy baseball with the good white folks at school and have real, “deep conversation.” They miss those days.

Native lawyers especially love conferences and dropping names. They love conferences more than non-fancy Skins love mullets, stick game, tripe and Wal-Mart. They actively seek out opportunities to drop the names of other fancy Skins. “Dr. Such-and-such, esq. and I used to shut down Midnight Rodeo during the Federal Bar conference every year while I was a professor at DeVry Tech Law School of Gaithersburg.” It’s considered a coup of some sorts to be able to: 1. Shout out your alma mater; 2. Drop a name of a fancy Skin; and 3. Mention a conference you attended all in the same sentence. Extra fancy points.

Nothing wrong with being educated though, right? There are those rare educated Skins who actually seek to help Native people. God bless those folks who get a doctorate or juris doctorate or MSW et al. and specifically do not plan on getting rich. Instead they plan on working with actual Native people (imagine that). Even more, these non-fancy educated Skins probably would not have even gone to school except to work with Native people. A few Skin lawyers – not many – fall into this category; they take up hopeless causes and are truly heartbroken when the Supreme Court hands down yet another bad decision. They are heartbroken because, as a Skin lawyer friend who does tend to work for the downtrodden put it, “He has sweat equity in it (the losses).” These folks tend to lose sleep, get a bit frazzled and have imperfect hair.

But that doesn’t seem to be the bulk of the fancy Skins. Instead, it seems like there’s a fairly big gap between the fancy Skins and the non-fancy Skins. White folks generally give fancy Skins the opportunity to speak for all of the other Skins. The fancy Skins gladly take this opportunity, even though they don’t seem to know the concerns of all of the other Skins. The fancy Skins don’t seem to know the pain, needs or aspirations of the non-fancy Skins. Yet the fancy Skins get to do all of the talking. And most of the talking is generally only to other fancy Skins and white folks – never getting input from the people that they’re supposed to represent.

Case in point: I recall vividly a very fancy Skin one time pontificating and congratulating himself on all the incredible progress that he and his lobbying group had accomplished for Native people. He sang his own praises in a very public setting – on a panel, with other fancy Skins who also felt very good about their accomplishments. One particular audience member from a poorer tribe stood up after the panel and thanked the panel members over and over for all of the work that they’ve done for Native people. The audience member said that it “meant a lot.” Then the young audience member said that while he was very thankful for all of the great things that they had done for Native people, he was nonetheless curious when some of the Native people that he knew would receive some benefit from these incredible accomplishments?

Did this young Skin have a point? Is there a cultural divide between the fancy Skins and the non-fancy Skins?

What do you Skins think?