Skins and White Folks

7.0: Any tribal job a Skin can get, a Napikwon can get easier!
By Gyasi Ross

Story Created: Jul 20, 2009

Skins tend to have interesting and complex relationships with white folks. Generally, we hate them or love them – we’re rarely indifferent. And the relationships with white folks are not always predictable. The Skins whom you most expect to have a good relationship with white folks – the half-white, half-Skin college sophomore, for example – is often the one who most loudly and aggressively asserts their dislike for “the white colonizer.”

And the former revolutionary full-blood from the remote rez (who comes from a long lineage of hereditary chiefs) is often the guy with the white wife who lives in the nice predominately white suburbs of Seattle or Denver. This former revolutionary also tends to be very neighborly – he always has a very tasteful x-mas light display and keeps his lawn well-manicured – in between Columbus Day protests.

Back home, there was always mixed feelings toward white folks. I grew up thinking that “white” was a curse word, because my aunties would always say it under their breath when they used it in a sentence. My aunties, by the way, are amazing story tellers, and with their hushed tones and furrowed brows they can make anything sound scandalous (“You know that he’s really white”).

“He’s a Napikwon.”

Come to think of it, I wonder if they used those hushed tones when they talked about me. After all, I do have a little bit of German blood in me on my dad’s side. The German comes out when I wear lederhosen.

As an aside, I also grew up thinking that “Cree” and “Crow” were curse words because every time someone would call someone else a “Cree” or a “Crow” on the Blackfeet Rez there was a fight. It’s different for me since I have many close Cree and Crow friends and relatives. I love going to Rocky Boy or Crow Agency. I also realize, in hindsight, that it could have been any word that provoked those childhood fights – little Blackfeet boys just have a special way of calling other little boys names. It’s a skill of ours; we could have said “friend,” but made it sound vicious. Still, despite that disclaimer, there’s specialness to the Cree/Blackfeet/Crow rivalry that many other folks might not understand.

But “he/she’s white” always sounded particularly scandalous. And when people said “y’ know that he’s white” it usually meant that Skins felt that the white person got the job or some special treatment at the expense of the Skin (or a bunch of Skins).

Yet, despite many Skins’ general distrust of white people, it still seems like many Skins simultaneously tend to rely on/believe in white people more than they rely on/believe in Skins; especially when matters of competency are involved. For example, a brilliant friend of mine from Fort Belknap told me how he rallied people within his community to help organize voters. My friend told several Skins – who thought that they couldn’t vote because of past felonies – that they could, in fact, vote, and even pointed to the state law. Predictably, however, these skeptical Skins didn’t believe my informative Skin friend until a very nice and liberal white woman repeated exactly the same information that he just told them.

Reminds me of a quote from a very good movie, “Jungle Fever:” “I swear before God and four more white people…”

The thing that I wonder is why do white folks often seem to be the point of reference for us as Native people? I understand that at one point in history they had a certain amount of prominence in our psyche. We called the president “the great white father,” and the U.S. government was largely homogenous and white. And they really did, unfortunately, control a good deal of our ancestors’ lives – food, land and children. From our vantage point, it seemed like all white folks had it going on. And similar to the way the engineering industry is largely dominated by Indians (dot) – it’s understandable, if not entirely correct, to think that all Indians are successful engineers. Likewise, it was understandable to think white people were always in positions of power.

At those times in the past, white people were the image of power. Rightly or wrongly it still made sense, at least at the time.

But now, in 2009, there seems to be a residual perception amongst Skins that “white” still encompasses all that is “right.” There’s still a general pattern of successful Skins taking up with white partners – both men and women. Napikwons and napiakis. I’ve heard it said that “White women are to successful Skin men what headbands/bandanas are to Skin basketball players – it seems like Skin ballplayers always have one on, and while it may make them look good for a while they’ll probably end up with another Skin’s sweat on them.”

But I digress.

Still, I suspect that successful Skin men and women do not only pursue white partners because of the “status symbol” wife/husband thing. The “trophy wife” thing. It also seems like there’s a tendency to see “white” culture as normal in general – not just in romance.

An example – a friend, who is Navajo, told me of how some older men at his ceremonies disliked the way that the younger participants dressed. “Quit dressing like a gangster, those aren’t traditional clothes.” My friend told me that despite their clothing these young boys were earnestly seeking to learn the Navajo language; they zealously participated in the ceremonies. My friend felt that these young men should be congratulated and not chastised. Yet, these young men were criticized for not dressing as the older Skins felt was appropriate – like old Skins. Apparently old Skins dress like cowboys, wearing boots and a cowboy hat.

We’ve all seen “Dog: The Bounty Hunter,” “Married With Children,” and “Rock of Love” – we Skins should know by now that white people have just as many issues, if not more so, than Skins. White folks are weird! Still, some of us have a tendency to put them on a pedestal and think that they are the standard for what is normal.

What’s up with that? Is white right? Is God red? Is Bo Derek a 10? Is that why we cannot, to paraphrase Kylie Minogue, “get them out of our heads?” What do you Skins think?