OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries Indigenous Systems of Knowledge with Dr. Sandy Littletree

San Jose ISchool Hispanic/Latinx Free Symposium Panels...

  Hispanic/Latinx Free Symposium

OCTOBER 15, 2021

In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15), the San José State University School of Information held a free symposium to discuss best practices in library services to meet the needs of the Hispanic/Latinx community with greater impact, cultural understanding, and sensitivity.

Entitled “Making Vital Connections: Understanding and Serving the Hispanic/Latinx Community,” this inaugural event featured keynote addresses and panel discussions.

I had the honor of sitting on a panel at San Jose Sate University's School Hispanic Heritage Symposium.  

I begin about 47 minutes in.

#Antiracist #libraries #LIS #Education #HispanicHeritage #SJSU

I Was Awarded the OLA EDI Anti-Racism Recognition Award for 2021

[Email from the Oregon Library Association Awards Chair.  Big congratulations and shout out to Marci Ramiro-Jenkins!]

 Hello Oregon Library Community!

As chair of the Oregon Library Association's Awards Committee, I am delighted to widely announce the recipients of the following awardswhich were announced at the OLA Conference on Friday, April 23. 

Presidents’ Award (conferred by President Kate Lasky and Past-President Elaine Hirsch): Marci Ramiro-Jenkins

  

Oregon Library Employee of the year: Lauren Calbreath

Oregon Library Supporter of the year: Barbara Wright

EDI Achievement Award (Inaugural award!): Max Macias

Oregon Librarian of the year: Librarians and Staff of the State Library of Oregon

Children Services Division's Evelyn Sibley Lampman Award: Tehlor Kay Mejia

Public Library Division's Pearl Award: Lanel Jackson

Congratulations on this well deserved recognition!

OLA Awards Committee:

Elsa Loftis, Portland State University, Chair

Leah Griffith, Newberg Public Library, Retired, Past-Chair 

Esther Moberg, Seaside Public Library

Sonja Somerville, Salem Public Library

Karen Muller, Hillsboro Public Library

Susan Stone, Portland Public Schools

Emily O’Neal, Deschutes Public Library

You can watch the EDI Antiracism recognition award (It starts there) or the entire awards here:

Living Under Racist Terrorism Impacts Learning

Young indigenous victim of colonial settler terrorism.

A whole generation of BIPOC children and college students in the US are being negatively impacted by the climate of fear that is being perpetrated upon them by the unrestrained white-supremacist movement and the government that supports this abomination.  Their mental health, their educations and their lives are all being stunted and slowed down by these racist attacks by settler colonists.

According to Zaretta Hammond in her astounding work, "Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain,"  students should be able to feel safe and confident to be able to become a self-sufficient learner.  Becoming a self-sufficient learner means the student becomes involved in their own educational and personal development by reflection and by being warmly challenged by an instructor who has earned their trust.  A dependent learner is always dependent on someone outside themselves to take charge of their education and are thereby passive learners who often give up because they have come to depend upon help.  They have a fixed mindset and not a growth mindset.

Hammond, Z., & Jackson, Y. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students.

One of Hammond's four elements of the academic mindset is, "Our belief in our ability to move about our world freely and control our external world."  This helps the student begin to believe in themselves, especially when the observe progress because of their hard work.  If the student does not feel they can move about freely, say for instance--they feel like their parents might be arrested by ICE, or that they themselves might be shot by the police because of the color of their skin--then the student's amygdala will be sent into threat reaction.

Human Brain

If the amygdala is sent into a threat reaction, learning cannot occur.  The amygdala is sent into threat reaction when the brain feels threatened.  It triggers the fight or flight reaction and learning is the farthest thing from what can occur at that point.  The student just wants to survive, they just want to get out of there.  The student cannot learn when this occurs.

As I write these words there is an attack on Latinx people in the US.  White supremacist have purposely targeted us and have murdered many in CA, TX and OH just in the past few weeks.  There has also been a string of immigration arrests in the US--leaving many children without their parents on the first day of school.  This creates a general fear in the Latinx community throughout the US.

WE (BIPOC) ARE BEING TARGETED AND WE KNOW IT!

Black Americans are under constant attack as well.  Not even safe in their own churches, Black Americans have to put up with daily racist humiliations like the recent mounted police officers leading a walking black man through town by a rope.  Black Americans, no matter what their age,  are often shot with no reason by the police and so-called vigilante criminals.  This creates an unsafe environment that is perpetrated by the dominant culture, who are also in charge of the educational system.  This can lead to distrust and set off a threat reaction in the amygdala and thereby impact learning.  

Image Source

All of the above lead to an unhealthy climate for children of color.  Granted, before 2016, it wasn't great for BIPOC kids in the US, but today the climate has worsened.  Today, even US citizens are arrested by ICE because they are Latinx.  This creates a climate of fear for our children.  If they are Latinx and old enough to understand what that means, they fear losing their parents--no matter what their citizenship status.  This creates an unsafe environment that is perpetrated by the dominant culture, who are also in charge of the educational system.  This can lead to distrust and set off a threat reaction in the amygdala and thereby impact learning.  

Our BIPOC student's brains are  are being turned into fixed mindset brains.  We need independent learners more than ever in our struggle for social justice.  Independent learners require a growth mindset.

Illustration from Hammond, Z., & Jackson, Y. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Our children's brains are being damaged by this treatment and we need to talk about this.  Our children face so many obstacles already--now we are facing a neurobiological attack in addition to the regular attacks we AND OUR CHILDREN face daily.

Some things YOU can do:

Fight against the current administration's acceptance of white-supremacy.

Make your classrooms more welcoming.

Post up images of BIPOC leaders, educators, business people and scientists in your classroom.

Talk about the racist attacks that are ongoing with your students.

Honor their feelings and ask them to express themselves--to provide counter-narratives to the racist narrative that is ongoing.

Build trust with your BIPOC students.

Demand excellent work from your BIPOC students.

Buy this book and learn more about culturally responsive teaching and the brain!

Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain by Zaretta Hammond

Cultural Appropriation is Inappropriate!

There is currently a discussion on the librarian Facebook group ALATT concerning cultural appropriation.

You should hear some of the rationalizations!

Everything from the insulting: "Let me tell you a secret: All Culture is appropriated!"

Then people go on to say, "Yes--like agriculture, rock n roll..." and other absurd comparisons.

This seemingly funny statement, is passive aggressive to the extreme.

These statements belittle people's feelings about their heritage and culture.  This is especially true then aspects of their culture are used in inappropriate manners such as when White people run 'Native American' sweat lodges that allow anyone who pays to come sweat and pray--that is fucking absurd and spits in the face of indigenous tradition!

You may be asking yourself, "Why is Max getting all bent out of shape about this?"

Please watch this video for a better understanding:

I hope more librarians become more empathetic and will listen to people when they say to stop doing things that hurt them, or are offensive or insulting.

Book Review: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)

Buy this book for your Library

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)by Benjamin Madley is a book that should be in every library in the US.  This book covers an essential history that has heretofore been neglected save for a few works such as Murder State.

• Series: The Lamar Series in Western History
• Hardcover: 712 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (May 24, 2016)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300181361
• ISBN-13: 978-0300181364
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.8 x 9.2 inches

The book covers the history of the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the state of California from 1846-1873.  During this time, the book traces the beginnings of the genocide from scattered massacres to full scale state and federally sponsored militia and military massacre campaigns.  The sheer brutality and callousness against the indigenous people of California is stunning and hard to read.

CA Indian Population 1845-1880 Genocide in Numbers

This book shows how the pattern of forcing Indians from their home hunting grounds and by the removal of game due to large numbers of immigrants--beginning during the Gold Rush.  The indians then could not feed themselves, so they stole cattle from White ranchers.  The White ranchers would then raise a posse, or a militia force to go "teach the indians a lesson."  The lesson would entail murdering every man, woman and child of the first indigenous village happened upon.  No matter if they were 'guilty' or not.

Vigilantes were supported by the local government and the state. 

 The combination of vigilante massacres with state sponsored militia killing campaigns and the military murder expeditions was lethal and decimated the Californian Indian population.  The Indians had nowhere to hide except high in the mountains, where there was little food.  This forced them to steal from White people, which led to more murder expeditions against them.  It was a cycle that was lethal and effective in 'eradicating' the indigenous people of California.

If you were lucky enough to survive a massacre, you would not have any food, clothing or shelter to help you live.  Many survivors died from exposure or starvation.  As I was reading this, I thought of Ishi--his story is heartbreaking.  You can read about it here: http://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html.

The brutality of the immigrants is mind-boggling. 

The killing was relentless.  The Indians sometimes fought back and killed whites, which raised even more ire and retribution.  The murder unmerciful and was encouraged by California Newspapers.  These papers called for total annihilation of all Californian Indians.  

Slow death at the  reservation.

You may be thinking, "Why didn't the Indians just go to a reservation.  When Indians fled to reservations starved the Indians.  They didn't provide the promised supplies.  Many starved to death. 

This brought about the horrible choice of leaving the reservation and facing:

Enforced slavery.  There were vagrancy laws that stated an Indian had to prove they were not in debt to someone.  This entailed the possession of a certificate that stated they were not in debt.  If the Indian could not prove this, then they were arrested and put up for auction.  They were sold to someone for a period of time, usually years.  During this time they were charged for food and clothes and were never paid enough money to pay off this debt.  Therefore, they could never get their certificate of no debt.  They would be stuck in perpetual slavery.



Or

Being tracked down and murdered by a posse of citizens or a state sponsored militia.  After a theft, they would hunt down and kill any Indian they encountered.  They used this as a chance for "pedagogical violence."  Violence that would teach anyone who heard about it that they should not steal from White people or they would face utter annihilation or slavery.  They often collected scalps and brought them back as souvenirs.  Some local country stores had Indian scalps nailed to their walls well into the 20th century.


The state paid well for militiamen to track down and murder Indians in CA.  They they sought reimbursement from the the federal government.  The federal government paid for the genocide of California Indians and it paid well.  This pay, in itself, was a reason to form a militia and make some money.

State sponsored Genocide in CA.

Sometimes the children and women were kept alive, but sold into the california slave system.  Women were sold into sexual slavery and other forms of bondage.  Children were often sold to estates where they remained the rest of their lives as chattel.



Some Indians turned to gold mining when their territories were impinged upon. Once there was an influx of White immigrants into CA though, there wasn't enough for everyone and the White miners simply murdered the Indian miners and claim jumped their claims.

There is a timeline at the end of the book that tracks the murder of indigenous people in CA according to state historical record that includes body counts.  This is the most well-researched and comprehensive information on this subject to date.

US genocide has yet to be covered in any manner similar to the Holocaust in Europe.  The time is coming though.  The cat is out of the bag.

Other important books on this subject:

Churchill, W., & Mazal Holocaust Collection. (1997). A little matter of genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas, 1492 to the present. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Lindsay, B. C. (2015). Murder state: California's native american genocide 1846-1873. Place of publication not identified: Univ Of Nebraska Press.

Stannard, D. E. (1992). American holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Book Review: The Other Slavery

The Other Slavery:  The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement In America by Andrés Reséndez is an important book that you will want to add to your library collection.

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 12, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0547640986
ISBN-13: 978-0547640983
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches

It is important in several areas:

• History
• Economics
• Law
• Political Science

It sheds new light on so many areas. It shook my understanding and revitalized my resolve to learn as much as possible about the history of our country and of the genocide that took place and in many ways is still taking place against indigenous people.  For instance, I had no idea that smallpox did not hit the Caribbean until a full 26 years after Columbus' invasion.  This gives new light to the claim that the majority of these Indians died from disease.  These people were murdered or worked to death.

The book covers the rape of the Caribbean and how, once the local population was exhausted, the need for more slaves drove the Spanish to raid nearby lands and import slaves.

Map of slaving expeditions in the Caribbean 1510-1540

The first part of the book begins by looking at the Spanish system of indigenous slavery.  It has a fascinating chapter that covers the fate of many indigenous people who were sent to Spain to become slaves.  

Image from The Other Slavery

 Slaves could be captured in war.  Meaning--if the Spanish raided your village and you resisted in ANY manner--you would be deemed a violent enemy and could be captured. 

Image from The Other Slavery 

 

 

 Slaves could also be purchased from other Indians who had captured them.  This provided an incentive for Indians to slave raid other tribes an expanded market for slaves in the Americas. 

The Spanish soon discovered Silver in Mexico and this caused the need for massive amounts of slave labor.   The from Northern Mexico were used in massive numbers for this purpose.  Mining, smelting and other labor was done by these slaves.

The system slowly turned to one of peonage.  This new version of other slavery lasted well into the 20th century and probably exists today as well. 

Indian peons in Guanajuato mining for silver.  1905

There are also chapters that inform the reader of how tribes such as the Utes were able to build slave empires by raiding other tribes and selling their captives to the Spanish and other tribes.

There is also an excellent chapter on the Navajo tribe's destruction and removal which led to massive amounts of Navajo being enslaved in the Southwest--particularly in New Mexico.

I am hooked on this topic and will be researching extensively for years thanks to this wonderful book.

Ute territory in SW North America

There is also a great chapter on the California Genocide and Slavery starting with the Spanish and then carried on by the Americans.  If an CA Indian was not 'employed' they could be arrested and then auctioned off to the highest bidder for labor.  Once indentured like this, they could not leave their place of employment without 'certificates' which were almost never granted.

Passage describing the plight of CA Natives.

The plight of indigenous slaves is little known and fascinating.   This book is seminal and creates a new field for study that can help us understand where we are today and how we arrived here.

Indian Slaves in the Americas 1492-1900

 

If you are even remotely interested in this topic you will appreciate this book.  It is well written, extensively researched and is a new instant classic.  Professor Reséndez has done our country a great service by writing this informative book.  Get it now!

Colonialism and Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality

Colonialism and Whiteness

This is the first post in a series of blog posts that seeks to understand the development of Whiteness in the Americas from colonialism to today.  These blog posts are short necessarily short and are not meant to be exhaustive, but to give the reader an idea of where Whiteness comes from and how it appears in our culture. The need for these posts came out of the backlash against Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College this April, 2016. 

Casta Painting

A Casta (Spanish: [ˈkasta], Portuguese: [ˈkastɐ, ˈkaʃtɐ]) was a hierarchical system of race classification created by Spanish elites (españoles) in Hispanic America during the Spanish colonial period. The sistema de castas or the sociedad de castas was used in 17th and 18th centuries in Spanish America and Spanish Philippines to describe as a whole and socially rank the mixed-race people who were born during the post-Conquest period. These unions produced in the process known as mestizaje. A parallel system of categorization based on the degree of acculturation to Hispanic culture, which distinguished between gente de razón (Hispanics) and gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives), concurrently existed and supported the idea of casta.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta 

Whiteness

Whiteness has been with us since the beginning of European colonialism.  When Europeans conquered what was to become the Americas, they also established a racial caste system based on skin color.   The darker one was, the lower they were on the social scale.  Whiteness is a concept that describes the cultural, lingual, institutional beliefs, practices and behavior that maintains access to power and reinforces power for White people and people of lighter skin tones.  This colonial system was created for and by Europeans for the benefit of Europeans.  Everything was in relation to the European--this is a hallmark of the concept of Whiteness--that everything is judged in relation to Whiteness and not something else.  

Españoles (Spanish) [White people]

Peninsulares (Spaniards) [White people]

Criollos (Spanish Americans) [White people]

Indios (Amerindians)

Mestizos (Amerindian and Spanish mix)

Castizos (Spanish with some Amerindian mix)

Cholos (Amerindian with some Spanish mix)

Pardos (Spanish, African, and Amerindian Mix)

Mulattos (African and Spanish mix)

Zambos (Amerindian and African mix)

Negros (Africans)

Source: https://goo.gl/IFq1Lq 

This is, in a nutshell, how the European imposed hierarchy in the Americas looked.

This system was brutally enforced.  There were strict rules about who could do what with whom....This system was directly related to slavery and servitude.  The people higher up (Whiter) the hierarchy were granted more privileges and rights than those in the lower section.  Consequently, the amount of distance one could put between oneself and the lower states of the hierarchy, the better chance one had of making a living, or even succeeding in the European (White) dominated world of the Americas (Whiteness).   

Another casta painting

     

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     Casta paintings

The casta series represent different racial mixtures that derived from the offspring of unions between Spaniards and Indians–mestizos, Spaniards and Blacks–mulattos, and Blacks and Indians–zambos. Subsequent intermixtures produced a mesmerizing racial taxonomy that included labels such as “no te entiendo,” (“I don’t understand who you are”), an offspring of so many racial mixtures that made ancestry difficult to determine, or “salta atrás” (“a jump backward”) which could denote African ancestry. Source:https://goo.gl/O9DdUP

 These paintings show us the importance of Whiteness to the Spanish from the very beginning of their conquest of the Americas.  The resultant mixture with indigenous, African and Asian people led to a complex hierarchy of racial superiority that was adhered to and, in many ways, is still upheld today.  These notions permeate our society, but in a different guise.

High Civilization (NOT White)

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 Indigenous People and Whiteness

In an idealized Mexico where people of African, European and indigenous heritage were intermingling in seeming harmony, the paintings were a reminder to Spaniards that there was still a strong hierarchy of racial purity — with Europeans on top. Source: http://goo.gl/y1mAZQ

On the social scale indigenous people are close to last.  It was a survival strategy to distance oneself from anything that is indigenous.  Choices like adopting the god of the Europeans, to using their script instead of the indigenous forms of writing,  and becoming as Guero (White) in dress, speech and color if possible.

They had been here thousands of years and had established societies, cultures and hierarchies.

Once the casta system was imposed by invading Europeans they concept of Whiteness became increasingly important.  The abandonment of their culture, their languages and their identity is what was required, at baseline, if one wanted to survive or even advance in the new hierarchy that had been established by bloodthirsty conquerors. 

Up until recently, skin color has been a defining factor in Latino life.

Are you:

Guero?  (White, or Whiter Than)

Maron?  (Brown)

Negro?  (Black)

The answer could be a determining factor in your life....

Spanish burning indigenous books/knowledge/culture

          

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          Cultural Genocide

The racial hierarchy in combination with the destruction of the indigenous cultures by book burning, destroying cultural monuments and using them to build churches (Whiteness), and the enslavement of the indigenous people did much to reinforce the casta system.  Our (Latinos) indigenousness had been written out of the history books, it had been derided and our people discriminated against and persecuted (according to their skin color).  Whiteness can be uncovered when one thinks about how the descendants of European immigrants want to persecute indigenous people from Mexico and other parts of central America for wanting to migrate on their own continent.  Even Latinos are hesitant to use this argument against immigration restrictions on Latinos.  I can only imagine that the bias against Indios still permeates Latino culture and prevents this strong argument from being presented. 

Contemporary Latinos and Whiteness 

As always, this is not a sweeping generalization, but a description of a large part of Latino society in the US that I have been witness to my entire life.

Latinos in large part lost their indigeneity by distancing themselves from their indigenous heritage and appropriating the European religion and culture as much as possible.   It was advantageous to do so, economically, socially and health-wise, it was advantageous to be as European (White) as possible.  This is where we see Whiteness beginning in the Americas.

Since the 1990's there has been a resurgence of interest in indigenous culture by Latinos who want to claim that part of their heritage.  It had never really been a option before--now we see Aztec dancers, and other parts of our indigenous heritage celebrated and exalted by some Latinos.

An example of contemporary Whiteness 

When I pick up a book entitled, American Ethnic Folklore and I open it up and it is really about Indigenous mythology.  I then realize that this is whiteness.  The fact that this book has been written for White people by White people without regard to any other readership uncovers Whiteness in this particular context and moment.  This is Whiteness.  These kinds of subject categories still permeate education and information in general.

We must seek to uncover Whiteness where it is, when it appears.  Whiteness is not a stable, abstract concept.  Whiteness changes according to setting, in shifts it's mode of providing access and maintaining power for White people.   We should and help our allies see and explicate Whiteness when it appears in our institutional and social contexts.

Whiteness displayed before the Irish were considered White

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One other thing about Whiteness is that it can be adhered to by non-white people.  Many people of color and those who purport to want to help People of Color adhere to the system of Whiteness that the educational system upholds, supports and requires of POC who want to succeed.  I say that this is why we have made little to no progress in equity, diversity and inclusion in our school systems and our society.  

The brutalities that were used to enforce the racial hierarchies of yesterday are still with us today.They used to come in the form of lynchings--back in the days of Jim Crow.... Now they come in the forms of Police shootings of unarmed African Americans and Latinos in far greater numbers than Whites.  They come in vigilante shootings of unarmed African Americans, for example--the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  

Colonialism is still in full effect....

I appreciate any and all comments (except spam).

Next Post:  Slavery and Whiteness in the Americas