We can’t get away from it

Priceton.org

Patronizing and infantilizing members of other cultures

We just love PBS Antiques Road Show, and today are enjoying a rerun from 2005. The guest had a marvelous Native American (aka Indian) painting. The appraiser explained

It's painted by a Native American artist, and he was a Navajo artist by the name of Narciso Abeyta. His Indian name was Ha-So-De. He was born in 1918. And in 1939, he was one of the first classes at the Santa Fe Indian School, to be taught by Dorothy Dunn. When they were sent to Indian schools to Anglicize them a bit, Dorothy Dunn encouraged all the children there, who were taken from their tribal lands, to remember their native ways. And there were many famous American Indian painters from that class. But the interesting twist in Abeyta's life was in the early '40s. He was pressed into service with about 52 other Navajos to be a code talker in the Pacific theater. They were code talkers that helped the Marines, and these people were sent home, sworn to secrecy, all the Navajos, and they were not allowed to talk until it was declassified in 1968. And if you can imagine to be taken from the tranquil grounds that he grew up on and be thrown into the Pacific theater, with all the danger and the change of climate, the jungles. . .Unfortunately, he was shell-shocked, and his paintings suffered for it. So you acquired a painting that was done in his prime. And it's really quite wonderful. He and the other code talkers weren't recognized till 1981 for their service to this country. And Abeyta died in the late '90s. He actually has a son, Tony Abeyta, who follows his father's tradition and works in the contemporary vein, too. Have you ever had any thoughts about this painting and its value? Because it's a little nontraditional.

He was an Indian, an excellent artist, a patriotic American, a code talker in WWII, but the appraiser tries to make his service and experience somehow different than millions of other men and women who sacrificed, interrupted their lives and learned new or unusual skills never to be touched again. Why do that because of his ethnicity? Yes, many Indian children were sent to boarding schools and removed from their culture. Millions of children have that happen every day as they get on a bus and are driven out of their neighborhood and are told in a classroom that their religion, their habits, their values and their behavior are not acceptable. We call it "education" if we believe what they will have is better than what they are leaving. Would Narciso Abeyta and his classmates learned how to preserve their culture in paintings by remaining in the culture? Or did school give them new ways to appreciate and explain their culture?

Small town, rural and urban youth were also pressed into service, "thrown into the Pacific Theater with all the dangers and change of climate" and they too were sworn to secrecy if they had sensitive jobs. My uncles weren't accustomed to jumping out of airplanes; my dad had never lived out of the county and didn't know how to swim--the Pacific Ocean must have been quite intimidating. These Navajo men provided an invaluable service that others could not do--and so it was for many. Let's not make it something it wasn't because of their race.

When academics and experts do this, they not only infantilize minorities, but they are speaking from the perspective that their own lofty view in 2010 is somehow superior to that of the 1930s and 1940s. How biased and narrow (you only have to look through the newspaper headlines or entertainment pages to see how absurd that is!). Dorothy Dunn herself later came under criticism for limiting the self expression of her art students by insisting they do art the "indian" way. Sigh. You just can't please these people.

Why Wonder Bread can save the world

Tonight for dinner we’re having home made broccoli soup and bread baked by my son last Sunday and put in the freezer (we’ve already eaten half of it). I found this wonderful message about being grateful for our food on Ted Talks.

Ted.Com is a wonderful website where you can find speeches by experts on anything and everything. (Except Glenn Beck--he lectures 40 minutes a day, 5 days a week on everything from Crime Inc. to George Washington to Miranda rights, employs a number of researchers, has written best sellers and speaks at many special events, so he would be overlooked by the organizers of Ted as too commercial.) Nevertheless, you can find others who don't have audiences of 30,000,000.

This lecture by Louise Fresco (Dutch) is no different than what I knew back in the 1970s when I worked in the Agriculture Library. But the ordinary person is even further removed from knowledge of food today than they were then. It's hard to know who is more naive--the kids who thinks meat comes in Styrofoam, or the college professor who thinks oranges are "locally grown." She provides a fresh, non-confrontational explanation about the important of modern agriculture. She talks about why the much maligned white Wonder Bread is the solution to world hunger, not locally grown, sustainable farmers markets. The mythical image of life in the rural past that rich Westerners have (particularly western USAns aka Californians) is false and will condemn millions to hard poverty if they succeed in returning us (particularly women) to that era.

I would just make one correction--although yes, there are very few farmers today (in industrialized nations), there are still many millions employed in the food industy, from production of inputs, equipment, buildings, transportation, processing, packaging, marketing, merchandising, kitchen equipment and on to restaurants and fast food, all the way to bus boy and dishwasher at the Rusty Bucket where we go every Friday night. They are all part of our food chain. As Ms. Fresco takes her bread out of the oven she encourages her audience to think about their own food chain beginning with the farmer and the wheat.