October 10, 2022 • 56 mins
“White people passed laws specifically in order to take away this land from our people. And then we did these other things in order to try to survive.” ALLOTMENT STORIES is a volume that collects more than two dozen chronicles of white imperialism and Indigenous resistance, highlighting how Indigenous peoples have consistently engaged creativity to sustain collective ties, kinship relations, and cultural commitments in the face of land privatization. Two contributors to this volume, Sarah Biscarra Dilley and Joseph M. Pierce, are here to share their pieces of this history.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini) is an artist, educator, and PhD candidate in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, nitspu tititʸu tsʔitɨnɨ patwin, in the unceded homeland of the Patwin-speaking people (unratified Treaty “J” region).
Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation) is associate professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890–1910 and, with S.J Norman (Koori, Wiradjuri descent), cocurator of the Indigenous-led performance series Knowledge of Wounds.
ALLOTMENT STORIES: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege is a collection of essays edited by Daniel Heath Justice and Jeani O’Brien. More info: z.umn.edu/allotmentstories.
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Joseph M. Pierce (00:07):
How do you begin things, and how do you
start something where it seemslike there's actually a break, a
rupture, where there isn'tnecessarily something to go off
of.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (00:19):
What we're doing right now will also
someday be a story. And thatthere will be a time that what
is happening now is one of thoseold stories.
Narrator (00:33):
Land privatization has been a long standing and ongoing
settler colonial processseparating Indigenous peoples
from their traditional homelandswith devastating consequences.
Allotment Stories is a volumethat collects more than two
dozen chronicles of whiteimperialism and indigenous
resistance. Volume contributors,Sarah Biscara Dilley and Joseph
(00:54):
Pierce are here to talk abouttheir pieces of this history.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (01:54):
Yaqui Sissime, Yaqui Tanaasmo, while
University of California Davis,me and Native American studies.
I'm letting you know first, I'mthanking the people, the Allelo
speaking people, and I'mrecognizing that I'm returning
to their beautiful homelands, toour beautiful homelands. I'm
letting you know that my name isSarah Biscardelli. I'm speaking
(02:15):
the language of the people ofTahini, also known as San Luis
Obispo, California. And I'mletting you know that I come
from good villages, from goodpeople, from good villages
throughout the region of theCentral Coast Of California,
from Sipahala, which is nearCayucas, California, Sitokawayu,
which is near Cambria,California, Etzmal, which is
near Lucia, California, Sitokayanear Bryson, California,
(02:39):
Sitokaca near San Marcos Creek,El Owej in Paso Robles,
California, Assaram, which is inBlocking, Sweden.
That's why I'm a foot tallerthan everyone else in my family.
Casas Grandes, which is inChihuahua, Mexico. Xenapequero,
which is in Michoacan, Mexico.Santa Catarina, which is in
Baja, California. Sicpats nearCalifornia Valley, California.
(03:01):
Silcochoio near the Cuestagrade. Waimea, which is on the
Big Island Of Hawaii, andSitokawa, which is, near Morro
Bay, California. I'm letting youknow that my home is in the of
Maku'u on the Big Island OfHawaii in the land of the
Lualalo speaking people. And I'mletting you know that I listen,
learn, and know in my homelands,through our family, through our
(03:22):
kinships, our language, and I'mcurrently a PhD candidate in
Native American studies at UCDavis.
Joseph M. Pierce (03:28):
That was wonderful. Oh, oh, oh. So
Joseph, Corpus Christi, Hello,everyone. My name is Joseph
(04:00):
Pierce. I'm a citizen ofCherokee Nation, and I'm telling
you that I'm a language learner.
So please forgive me if I makeany mistakes, But that I grew up
in a town called Corpus Christi,and I currently live in Brooklyn
on the, homelands of the Lenapepeople. And I work at Stony
(04:20):
Brook University in thedepartment of Hispanic languages
and literature where I'm aprofessor of Latin American
studies.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (04:29):
Oh, thank you for your word. I love that,
you know, in the the lead up andnot necessarily knowing how we
wanted this conversation to bestructured, that this just got
to be a really beautiful openingfor the conversation to give
context for ourselves and ourfamilies and the places that we
have relationship to throughlanguage. Thank you for sharing
(04:49):
that context.
Joseph M. Pierce (04:51):
I have a I have a question that maybe maybe
we could use to start off with,which is a question that I often
ask myself, but it has to dowith the beauty of the beginning
and how in many of our ways oftelling stories, there are
poetic elements or they arethemselves poetry or song or
(05:12):
storytelling is all of thosetogether, and that seems to
contrast the loss or the traumathat often comes with a topic
like allotment. And then in mycase, allotment and adoption,
which I write about in in thepiece that we can talk about
(05:33):
later. But I I wondered if ifmaybe we could start off talking
about why why talk about beautyat the same time, or how do we
talk about beauty and and thepoetic at the same time as we
talk about these challenging,histories?
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (05:52):
I really appreciate that question.
Something I've been thinkingabout quite a bit for the last
handful of years, especially asI've had the privilege of really
immersing myself in some of ourfamily stories, not only
through, you know, developingcartographies or doing the kinds
of research that I've that I'vebeen able to do, but also
(06:14):
through the work and theresponsibilities that I fulfill
in my community. A lot of thework that we do, whether that's
working language, whether thatis being part of our social or
ceremonial singers, is aboutkeeping our worlds in motion.
That's how a lot of our youknow, the timing of certain
ceremonies or communitygatherings is really aligned
(06:36):
with this idea that I guess Ialways turn to language to
express it. It's like worldworld place.
It is in continuous motion. Ourword for land or earth literally
means land, world, mountain,year. So it's already marking
this kind of passage of time.How it's been explained to me is
(06:57):
that when we stop doing thosethings, that has direct impact
on the worlds around us. Thathas direct impact on our
homelands.
That has direct impact on ourfamilies. When I make a decision
to, like, include poetry or likeas you offered in the beginning
and then as, like, a kind offormal beginning and ending of
your piece, it's this way ofeven if we're using different
(07:19):
language or if we have differentpoints of access to certain
kinds of cultural knowledge or,you know, right now I'm having
this experience of, you know, myfamily has connections to this
place, but it feels very new inmany ways, like our family was
separated from our from ourrelatives here, That there is
this process of of learning howto engage more clearly with the
place, right? My prayer isdefinitely informed by the
(07:42):
places that I that I live andmove through. So the inclusion
of poetry or the inclusion ofkind of creative forms of
marking time in our work is away to practice that with the
tools that we have. I'm I'mcurious about hearing more
about, like, how the way youstructured your piece is very
clearly laid out.
(08:03):
Like, you have these differenthighlighted segments. And to me,
I see that as an extension ofthe poetics that you're that
you're putting into the pieceand also as a visual artist. I
really appreciate having thiskind of visual marker of, like,
a transition into discussing anew discussing a new topic?
Joseph M. Pierce (08:19):
I mean, I'm a literary scholar originally, and
and so I try to be very attunedto language. And sometimes, I'll
be reading something, and all ofa sudden, it just gets stuck in
your head. And this Linda Hoganline, at the beginning, there
was nothing, and something camefrom it, is so simple, and yet,
(08:40):
because of its economy, is ableto really condense a really big
idea, which is about origins,and it's a cosmological
beginning that she's describing.And I had been turning that over
in my head for a number ofyears. When it came time for me
to really sit down and thinkabout my relationships with
(09:05):
allotment, I started thinkingabout how do you begin things,
and how do you start somethingwhere it seems like there's
actually a break, a rupturewhere there isn't necessarily
something to go off of?
And I try to narrate this in thepiece, but I we have to turn to
our stories, because encodedwithin that language and encoded
(09:29):
within our stories are theanswers to how do you start
something, or how does somethingbegin, how do you relate to
something in spite of differenceor in spite of the breaking
apart of kinship, the breakingapart of relationship to land. I
thought for a long time that Ihad to kind of make it up
(09:49):
myself, that there was no map orno guide. With time and a little
bit of talking it out with otherpeople, I realized that, no,
it's it's actually there fromthe beginning. Right? Like, the
original stories are alsolessons about how to negotiate
these challenging issues.
In my article, I I tried to talkabout how my own family has a
(10:14):
relationship with allotment andthat that is a juridical, a
legal relationship, but it'salso a spiritual relationship.
And that that is very much tiedto the legal and the spiritual
maneuvers, the legal maneuversthat were also connected to my
father's adoption. So my fatherbeing adopted away from Cherokee
(10:38):
community and is is, in a sense,just an extension of the rupture
of allotment. And so whenconfronted with these
challenges, I think it makes alot of sense to me to turn to
poetic language that can bringtogether disparate elements or
that can combine unexpectedimages in ways that allow us to
(11:03):
make connections beyond anarrative framework or across a
narrative framework. And sothat's something that the poetic
allowed me to do.
Thinking of it now, it's alsothis is how we do. Like, I don't
need an excuse. I don't need anexcuse to turn to the poetic.
That I think that's the thingthat I learned also.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (11:24):
Mhmm. Something that is feeling very
resonant with me is when youtalk about this kind of rupture
or disconnect that you're rightresponding to, like, what is the
story beyond allotment? Lookingat that as a beginning, right,
that, like, a rupture is also anopening, but thinking about how
intentional that divide is. Youknow, when I think about how
(11:44):
like, I I was very fortunate togrow up very close with my my
great grandmother. She was apart of my life into my twenties
because, like, being the one ofthe queer kids, right, I, like,
broke a family record by nothaving kids at 24.
And everyone is our generationsare quite close for some time.
The my relationship with her andher stories is the only entry
(12:05):
point that I had to kind ofdeepening this documented
history of our family. Butsomething I always noticed is
that she would, you know, shewould refer to us as Chumash.
She would name this the townsthat where some of our key
villages are, like, repeat themover and over and over again.
She had lots of stories aboutthe I Love Lucy esque hijinks
(12:26):
that our family tended to getinto.
Right? Like, multiple peoplewere in parades and had their
wardrobe malfunction that led topublic nudity. When she was
speaking to people from outsideof our family and our community,
she would use the term MissionIndian because it was legible in
this context. And one of thethings that that I really
tussled with was this idea thatand even when we're working
(12:50):
language, right, it's it'sreferred to in documents as old
Espanol. It's named after themission that incarcerated us or
some of our families.
My family was was mostlyrelocated to missions further
north, because we're kind ofpart of the northern kinship of
our area. But what the kind ofrepetition of these kinds of
names does to I I I refer to itas trying to create a new
(13:13):
creation story. I think for alot of us, that pain that is
associated with those storiescan become a barrier. And for
many of us, it also galvanizesus to kind of move through that
passage, right, and to seewhat's beyond it. I just think
it's very strange, like, in thesense that settler time and
space is very fixated on this,like, linear, very tidy division
(13:37):
of things.
But one of my grandmothers,Crispina, was nine years old
when the Portola expedition camethrough our village. Like, we
were in a village where we wetried to give them a bear. Like,
we really could have changed thecourse of California
colonization if they had takenthe damn bear, but they didn't.
When I think about, like, thisis within our memory. Right?
(13:58):
We remember when you wanderedthrough sick, no idea where you
were, and we fed you becausethat is what our cultural
protocol is. Right? We're notgonna let you just, like,
struggle out there. If you'recoming through our area, we're
gonna, like, give you acorn mushand share fish with you and do
what we would want to havehappen with us if we were to
pass through another person'sterritory. It's also grounded in
(14:19):
this idea that we are trying tobuild good relations every step
of the way.
But I think about the thingsthat she witnessed just in her
lifetime and how recent thatstory is. So how can this be our
beginning when that was only twofifty three years ago?
Archaeologists like to say thatwe've been in our area for a
(14:39):
minimum of fifteen thousand. Ourstories tell us we've been here
forever. And like mostindigenous people, we're waiting
for scientists to come becausethey're the last ones to the
party.
If there could be a panel ofantis and researchers alongside
one another, it would just be aa symphony of what I tell you.
We've been telling you. We'vebeen telling you where our
(15:01):
beginning is, and I I reallyappreciate the directness of the
the line that you included fromLinda Hogan, because it mirrors
how a lot of our stories start.When I think about how
indigenous people exchange withone another, oftentimes, that's
like, okay, I don't want to jumpinto a story halfway. I want to
start when the world wasdarkness.
Like, we need to go back to thevery beginning, and then we'll
(15:21):
work our way back from there.Right?
Joseph M. Pierce (15:25):
I I had a conversation one time with
Cannupa Hanska Luger, theartist, and Cannupa was saying
he likes to ask people to tellthe origin story of their people
as a way of getting to know eachother better. We were having
this conversation, and I and Itold him a little bit about the
(15:45):
story of the water beetle, whichI tell in the article. And, the
thing about the water beetlestory for me is that it's a
story of emergence. The waterbeetle dives to the bottom of
this primordial ocean andemerges again with land that
then becomes Turtle Island, butit's also a story that's
(16:08):
predicated on the liminal space,the traversing of the water
beetle. So, like, the waterbeetle is a very queer figure.
It's a figure that Daniel KeithJustice would call an anomalous
being Mhmm. Who can exist inmultiple worlds and, in fact,
creates the world. And that alsowas really important to me. I
(16:30):
don't know that I reallydescribe it as such in the
article, but the fact that thatEunice, water beetle, is also a
queer figure, or I can imaginethat they're a kind of queer
figure, they're a non binaryfigure, or they're a liminal
figure, or they're transitingacross dimensions, worlds. For
me, as a queer indigenous personwho grew up kind of disconnected
(16:53):
in many ways because of thisstructural violence, because of
allotment, because of adoption.
That actually allows me a pointof entry into repairing that
harm or that that structuralharm, based on the lessons that
Dionysus is giving us becausethey are a figure. They are a a
(17:17):
a relative, an ancestor who is,in a sense, was unassuming, like
a little tiny water beetle, andat the same time, isn't only of
one world, is definitively,like, constitutionally of
multiple worlds. I've beenthinking about that again for
years now, and I feel likethere's not just a lesson there.
(17:38):
There's permission there.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (17:40):
Mhmm.
Joseph M. Pierce (17:40):
There's permission for you to transit in
ways that are grounded, butwhich are also speculative in
some sense or, like, or aboutcrossing in some sense. And in
my mind, it's an origin storythat's not exclusively about
being grounded in place, buttalks about relationships with
place that are about being inmovement. I don't know if
(18:03):
everyone would agree with that,but for me, like, the my my,
like, queer indigenous selfreally identifies with that. And
I think that there's also apoetic gesture in that story
that is about making kinship notexclusively as biological
reproduction, but asrelationship building, and
(18:26):
that's the thing that has reallyallowed me to situate allotment
and adoption as, yes, these arecolonially imposed structures
meant to displace indigenouspeople from our kinship
networks, and yet Mhmm. Ourorigin story actually also
provides for connections acrossgaps that seem incommensurable,
(18:49):
land, water, sky, all of thesethings.
Like, it's it's there. You justhave to kind of key into how to
listen to it.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (18:58):
Yes. I really appreciate what you're
offering here. There's so many,like, threads that I wanna pick
up on in what you were saying. Iguess something that that I've
been thinking about and havingconversation with, relatives,
particularly those of us whowork within, like like, our our
cultural practices and work withlanguage. I'm very lucky to have
a cousin, an older cousin who'smore like an auntie, but she's
(19:20):
cousin.
I got she's my cousin. You know,I was having a conversation with
her recently about just themoment we're in and how
overwhelming it feels to be inin the world in this time.
Something that I've been doingto kind of make sure I have from
footing is turning to ourstories. Because, like you're
(19:42):
saying, those provide us theroad maps on how we as, like,
whole people, as good peoplewith, like, distinct
relationships to place areinherently mobile because we
carry them in our bodies. How wecan approach the challenges that
are happening here.
One of the things that I've beenkind of puzzling through in my
(20:02):
writing is how to acknowledgethat just like those old stories
were told so intentionally, andcontinue to be told so
intentionally to provide us thatguidance, that what we're doing
right now will also someday be astory, and that there will be a
time that what is happening nowis one of those old stories.
(20:26):
What kind of guidance orinstruction or advice do we
wanna cultivate right now? Thereare people who were consultants,
in the various, So, like, theChumash areas in the Central
Coast Of California, oftentimes,they get looked at as these
distinct areas, but we are wefunction more like a
confederacy. There were at 1.12different language groups. We
(20:49):
are of a language isolate, sothere are, like, no other
languages in the world relationrelated to our languages.
But a lot of our languageswithin that confederacy are very
closely related. So when I havebeen given permission from
people in some of the otherareas, from family to look at
the notes that their relatives,had transcribed for them, which
(21:11):
is really how I look at thatanthropological exchange was
like, thank you for being asecretary, JB Harrington. There,
I mean, there are justphilosophers in every corner of
those narratives, and the peoplewho chose to come forward and do
that work. But there's agentleman whose work who's no
longer with us, who I refer tooften, named Fernando Liberado.
(21:33):
He was born on Limu, Santa CruzIsland and was, removed to the
Ventura area.
So he's, in relationship with,like, meets Kanaka'an people in
that area. Shared this quotethat, my cousin shared with me
when I was starting to travelmore, and going to the other
side of the ocean and wasfeeling very nervous about
moving through those spaces. Theline that she was sharing was
(21:57):
from, mister Liberado. The worldis like a great winnowing tray.
There are grains and chaff mixedall in with it.
Some people move up and down thebasket, and some people move all
around. And she was sharing thatwith me to to just affirm, like,
you don't need to worry. Like,you were just one of those
people who is moving all around.Some people, their work is to to
(22:19):
move in very close relationshipsin our territory. For some
people, it will be to kind ofsuture kinships between
different areas.
And for other people, theirtheir work is to is to roam and
to build relationships all overand for us to have those
exchanges that happen in thatarea. And just being able to
hear that, it took away all ofthe anxiety that I was feeling
(22:43):
about the kind of newness ofthis movement. Just like, oh,
just like what my great grandmaused to say, there's nothing new
under the sun. In two months,you're not even gonna remember
what you were so upset about,which was often true. But I
appreciate the weight of thosestories and that that, you know,
this is not necessarily one ofour old old stories.
This is what a gentleman shared,you know, around the turn of the
(23:04):
last century. But that is how itkind of comes to step in and
start to move in that way.Getting back to what I was
sharing about the movement ofthese stories and how
understanding the work thatwe're doing as an extension of
those knowledge systems thatwill be those old stories down
the line, what kind of guidanceare you trying to provide in
(23:25):
the, like, generosity of thestory that you're sharing about
your family? We alwaysgenerosity of the story that
you're sharing about yourfamily?
Joseph M. Pierce (23:30):
We always knew that my father had been adopted.
That was always part of hisstory. He was raised by a white
family in East Texas, and mydad's very dark, and it was
always very clear, and they werealways very open with that. But
we never knew, like, who hispeople were. And we went through
the process of opening thesealed adoption records, and I
(23:50):
say we because my father didn'treally want to do it.
He he he took some encouragementbecause for him, he was already
in his fifties. He didn't needto go through all that, but he
did. And he had to go to a judgeand get a judge to open the
sealed adoption records, and itwas a whole big bureaucratic
process. And I was in my firstyear of graduate school, so I
(24:13):
was maybe 21, 20 two when thisall happened. I didn't know what
to do.
What do you do with that? Youknow, how do you start to retell
the story of who you are in amoment where you're still trying
to figure all of this out. Ididn't have the language really
back then, but we were able togo to meet his mother, Ada. And
(24:37):
when we got to meet Ada, it wasin a hotel lobby in Amarillo,
Texas. Like, so in the middle ofnowhere, and it's this hotel
lobby, and in walks this kind ofpetite Cherokee woman with a big
perm and and her her daughter.
(24:58):
So my dad, we learned that hehad a a half sister at this
time. And what do you do? Whatconversation do you have in that
moment where you're trying tosay, I care about you or I want
I want to extend myself towardsyou, but I don't know how to do
it. And it was slow, and it wasquiet, and it was unassuming,
(25:22):
this meeting. It was there wereno fireworks.
It was just it was very small.And then another opportunity
happened, and we all went up toOklahoma. And so we went to
Oklahoma, and we met all therest of the, you know, the
relatives. And slowly, it becamepart of our lives to talk about
my dad's mother, my grandmother,to talk about our Cherokee
(25:43):
relatives. And then there wasthis sort of the legal procedure
of, like, becoming enrolled.
It's curious because becoming acitizen of Cherokee Nation was
really important to me, but Ialso recognize that that's not
the same as being involved incommunity. Mhmm. And so the
being involved in community wasthe hard part. That was what we
(26:04):
didn't have. So Yeah.
Allotment, adoption created thiskind of structure, and these
are, again, legal maneuvers thatthen were followed by another
legal maneuver of citizenship,but it wasn't actually
surrounded by a way of engagingin community except for having
to have conversations with theserelatives that were now your
(26:25):
relatives and reaching out toother Cherokee people and trying
to build community in ways thatyou could because I never lived
in Oklahoma. I never lived inthat place, and I doubt I ever
will. Mhmm. This is a long wayof saying that I thought I was
the only one. I thought I wasthe only one who grew up not
knowing about this relationship.
(26:48):
And come to find out, allotmentcreated a whole generation or
more of people separated fromtheir communities, and adoption
created yet another wholegeneration of people, of
children separated from theircommunities. And I realized, in
fact, that in certaincommunities, it's actually the
(27:09):
norm for you to be separatedfrom your community, that that
is the statistical norm. And sowhen I was able to realize that
that it is a quintessentiallyCherokee story, the one that I'm
telling, it may not be atraditional kind of grew up on
the rez stereotype, if if wewanna call it that, or or
(27:29):
reality. Right? Like, I don'twanna say that that's a
stereotype.
It is a reality. It wasn't myreality. But my reality is also
a Cherokee reality is what I'mtrying to say. And when I
realized that, I had what I feltlike a responsibility to try to
figure out language to describehow we put these pieces
together. That's my place.
(27:50):
That's my role. That's how I seemyself as an academic, as a
writer, as a queer person, as aCherokee person. Those are the
tools that I have. That's thelife that I've had. And me using
those tools to help find newways or find language to
describe not just the rupture,but also the way back or the way
(28:10):
to I'm gesturing with my arms.
It's it's like a weaving gesturethat I'm making to to bring
ourselves back together, to putourselves back together. That's
what I hope. That's me using myabilities and my story in a way
that I hope makes sense to otherpeople. And it is by sharing
that story that I think I'm alsodoing, enacting the lessons that
(28:33):
we're supposed to learn and thatI did learn, but that I also had
to very conscientiously learn.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (28:38):
I think what you're sharing about just
recognizing the story of yourfamily as, like, a
quintessentially culturalexperience, a quintessentially
Cherokee experience is such acritical offering. You know, I
actually wrote Daniel and Jeanwhen I was responding, you know,
to seeing the whole manuscriptof the book, and just having
(28:58):
this moment of appreciation forthe way that it allowed me to
really trouble through some ofthe ways that I was trying to
write this part of our familystory and, like, really
interrupt this language that hadbeen so passive but so insidious
in how our family spoke aboutthings. So our relatives, it's a
(29:21):
very unusual story. We did notget land through the Allotment
Act. All of our land was securedthrough cash sale entries that
was bought by our Kanakagrandmother, Luisa, who was
recognizing her responsibility.
And, you know, she was removedfrom her homeland on the Big
Island and Maui when she wasaround 10 and brought to
(29:42):
California. And then marriedinto her oldest son married into
into our California nativefamily, into our Yatitu family.
You see her observation of ourprotocols through how land was
purchased. So the first parcelsof land are bought for my
grandmother Leonora and herhusband Dionysio. And those
(30:04):
parcels are on opposite sides ofthe mountain, which speaks to
not only how, you know, ourcommunity views, like,
partnership.
Right? Like, I look to ourrelatives for my models on, you
know, how I wanna be in moreexpansive relation through,
like, polyamory. Like, our wordfor marriage just means to live
with someone. And most of thewomen in my family had four or
five different people that theywere in partnership with, and it
(30:26):
wasn't because they passed thatthey moved to another
partnership. Right?
They were just done with thatrelationship, and they were
moving to a different space. Butshe's buying parcels of land, my
grandmother Luisa, for first themother of my grandmother Mary,
who her son married, and thenher father, and then all of our
kind of extended relatives. Andso at one point, we had
thousands of acres of titledland all over the county. And a
(30:50):
lot of those parcels werepurchased at the juncture of
streams or along river systemsthat are very important to our
families and to our foodways.You know, within twenty years,
those lands were gone.
Some of them were floodedthrough the building of a dam.
Some of them were seized throughimminent domain to build a
national guard outpost, whichwas then used to support
(31:12):
military incursion in placeslike Hawaii and The Philippines.
The way that this story had beenkind of spoken about in my
family was, first of all, veryquiet. And then when people
would talk about it, they wouldsay things like we lost our
land, which is such a painfulway to internalize what happens.
One of the things that that Ishared with Daniel and Jean was
(31:35):
just thanking them for theopportunity to really interrupt
that way of speaking aboutthings.
It's not without acknowledgingthe responsibility that we have
that I hear you reflect in yourresponse to my last question.
Right? It's like we do have aresponsibility to figure out how
we want to move through thesestories, how we want to engage
the stories we want to see moveforward in the world, but just
(31:58):
in a space to interrupt the waysthat we have internalized the
violence that was committedagainst us as if it was somehow
our fault.
Joseph M. Pierce (32:07):
There's something about that passive
voice, you know, like, thisthing happened, and then this
thing happened. Right? Like,that narration of history as if
it were inevitable. No. Like,people did that.
White people passed lawsspecifically in order to take
away this land from our people,and then we did these other
things in order to try tosurvive. I think that's one of
(32:27):
the the sinister aspects oflinear historical storytelling.
It it almost makes it seem as ifit were inevitable that
allotment happened, and thenpoverty happened, and then
removals and all kinds ofthings. Right? Like, no.
No. No. That's not a passivevoice situation. That's a white
people did this situation, and,like, we need to name that. I
(32:50):
was gonna ask if you wanted toread some of your work.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (32:55):
Sure. Yeah. Thank you. I'll start from
the beginning. I feel like it itspeaks most directly to some of
the things that we've talkedabout thus far.
Where are you from, and whereare you going? Strange weaving
of wood, cattle, iron, oil, fat,or fur imagined a world in
(33:21):
pieces. Fat. Ranches, missions,candles, cattle. Where we dipped
candles for forced prayer, theygave us new names.
Often referred to as Obis BenioChumash, we are baptized with
words again and again, anattempted transfiguration of the
(33:43):
complex and layeredrelationships that make up Yakti
Chukchi Chukchi, the people,into the perimeter of a mission,
an assistant, or a ranch.Mission documents used as
legible forms of verificationfor recognition, but also as the
source of an unstable identity,decide our presence or absence
in the eyes of the settler statewithout accounting for the
(34:05):
complexity of our experiences orthe inherent contradiction of
requiring existence to beverified by the same mechanisms
that dispersed, dismembered,displaced us. Written into words
and maps that remain fixeddespite the life and all things,
the systemic disordering of ourworlds has been suspended across
generations, attempting to makesuch violence a new creation
(34:28):
story. But our self determinedidentities have the exponential
capacity to exist beyond thecodified, grounded within our
realities as indigenous peoplesand speaking from our respective
centers of the world. Whilesettlers imagine their
possession, indigenous peoplessimultaneously deepen our
connections, navigatingnarrative and physical
(34:50):
confinement by maintaininglongstanding relationships and
challenging generationaltensions to maintain survival.
This includes relationships withother than human beings, places,
and waterways, each of whichcontributes to a living sense of
place making, of movement, andof alliances. Though plot maps
display the world in flat,quantified dimension, it is our
(35:13):
stories and relations thatawaken the images and texts that
imagine the disparate, a worldin pieces. Our world is one of
expansive whole, citing riversand places with perspective in a
language of family, a culturalprotocol of inspired
determination. Elizabeth,Louise, Marie, Martha, Ignacio,
(35:33):
Lizzie, Mary, Maria Luisa,Lorenza, Leonora, Jacinta,
Crespina. Our cascade of nameshas always held multiple
meaning, marking relation andcontinuum in place, a recipe, a
middle name, the margin of acertificate of birth, an
argument between new parents.
Like our continuance, our titledland came to be through
(35:56):
relationship, only possiblethrough my grandmother Luisa,
the Kanaka Oivi daughter ofJoaquin, son of an unbaptized
Indio from Veracruz, born atMission San Diego and coming of
age at San Carlos Borromeo nearMonterrey. Like many other
displaced, dispossessed, ordiasporic peoples bound up in
the mission system and itssubsequent enclosure of the
(36:18):
land, Joaquin became a renownedhorseman working in the eighteen
thirties and early eighteenforties for Kawi Keauli,
Kamehameha the third, herdingferal longhorns into makeshift
corrals along the slopes of holymountains and valleys of Hawaii
or coastlines of West Maui. Herfather, as imbricated in
colonial industry as he was,represents the bridging of
(36:41):
indigenous practices and manyemergent paniolo traditions, a
quickening movement betweenCalifornia and Hawaii, a symbol
of both innovation and fracture.This moment of imperial
expansion is ongoing anditerative, manifesting as
shifting colonial occupations inCalifornia, land grants and land
loss traced on yellow and paper,while continuing to be echoed in
(37:04):
United States military violenceacross the one ocean. Deepening
further dispossession needs toteach you through use of eminent
domain to build military bases,extract oil, flood valleys, or
enact armed training.
It reflects connections betweenpeoples of saltwater and
(37:25):
archipelagos existing longbefore colonial imposition, but
also the dire choices indigenouspeoples have had to make to
ensure our survival, includingthose that further distance us
from who we are, ourresponsibilities to our own
land, water, protocols, andlifeways, as well as respect for
those of other indigenouspeople. What do you call a
(37:46):
moment that never stopped? Anendless stretch of changing
realities. Place is in each ofus. Each scene is unending.
A point of occurrence impliedbut unsuccessful. Of Camille
O'Fayal, the royal road, animminent domain.
Joseph M. Pierce (38:06):
There was something when you talk about a
moment that never stopped. Whatdo you call a moment that never
stopped? And I think in mychapter, I ask a similar
question. How do you claim landthat is underwater? These are
some of the questions that we'reforced to confront.
You know? Like, how do you notstem a tide, but how do you
(38:28):
engage with the ongoingness ofsettler colonial occupation
because it hasn't ended and doso in ways that are responsive
to our communities?
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (38:40):
I would love to hear you read some of
your work, especially if thereare points of connection that
you're seeing. I always lovehearing the writer read their
own work. It does somethingdifferent than seeing it on the
page.
Joseph M. Pierce (38:53):
What I'm gonna do is read from the second
section that starts withallotment. So this is allotment
speculations, the emergence ofland memory. Allotment.
Allotment aimed to assimilateIndians into American society by
isolating individual landowners,promoting patriarchal
(39:16):
domesticity, and encouragingcash crop farming. In the case
of the Cherokee Nation of theoriginal 7,000,000 acres held
before allotment in IndianTerritory, individual Cherokee
citizens retained only a 46,598acres in 1971.
(39:38):
Through coercive deals oroutright fraud, Indian land was
drastically reduced. Familieswere dispersed, forced to
relocate, to start over againand again. This loss is both a
point of departure and arequirement for existence within
settler colonialism. Let meprovide an example. Lot 5 In
(40:01):
Section 6, Township 11 NorthRange 18 East, was allotted to
John Rock in nineteen o threeafter the completion of the
Dawes Commission's enrollment ofCherokees in Indian Territory.
In the years following the DawesCommission, many native
families, such as the Rocs,found themselves unable to
(40:23):
retain the lands they had beenallotted and either sold or were
forced to abandon them. In March1952, in fact, the state of
Oklahoma served notice to Rock'sfamily that their claim to this
land was to be legally quietedforever in court. The notice
(40:43):
reads, quote, to the unknownheirs, executors,
administrators, devisees,trustees, and assigns, known and
unknown, immediate and remote ofJohn Rock, Cherokee roll number
16.933, deceased, and JeanneRock, Dan Rock, and Lee Rock, if
(41:07):
living and if deceased, then theunknown heirs, executors,
administrators, devisees,trustees, and assigns, immediate
and remote, of any such deceasedperson or persons. Defendants,
greeting. End quote.
The public notice stipulatesthat if no heir defends the
(41:30):
allotment in court, all rightsto it will be permanently
eliminated. Here is theconnection. I am one of those
unknown remote relatives, thoughI did not know this until
somewhat recently. Because as Inoted earlier, my Cherokee
father was adopted by a whitefamily as a newborn. In fact, my
(41:52):
father was born and adopted inJanuary 1952, only two months
before this notice waspublished.
Allotment and adoption are twointerlocking techniques of
settler colonial dispossessionthat converge in the body of my
grandmother, my father, and mein our shared flesh and in the
(42:14):
land that is our kin. How doesone claim unclaimable land? My
great aunt Carolyn told me thatthe family left that land
because it was about to beflooded. An infrastructure
project that dammed the CanadianRiver would create Oklahoma's
largest man made body of water,Lake Eufaula. The Eufaula Dam
(42:37):
turned Indian allotments intorecreational facilities and
profitable lakefront housingdevelopments as it provided
hydroelectric power andirrigation for industrial cotton
farming.
It provided capital for whitebusinesses at the expense of
native life, but the Rocks hadleft their allotment land and
(42:59):
moved to the Oklahoma Panhandlein 1951, a year before the
lawsuit. Carolyn's father, mygreat grandfather, told her
once, the place where I was bornis under the water. How does one
claim land that is underwater?And that is the question that I
(43:22):
was wrestling with in thispiece, and it all crystallized
when I was talking with AdrianKeane, another Cherokee person,
about the creation story. How doyou claim land that is
underwater?
And in fact, the Earth, theworld, is created from land that
(43:42):
is brought from under the water.It's not inconceivable. In fact,
that is the original way thatEarth was made, and so I don't
know if this chapter can be akind of testament to that, but I
imagine that part of what I'mtrying to do is describe the
possibilities of claiming landeven if it is underwater,
(44:04):
because that's also part of theway that we imagine cosmic
belonging.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (44:10):
This question about the water and how
you're relating it to not only,you know, the submersion of
family allotment, but also asthis connection to our, like,
long history, right, our longstories, this memory that we
have. Because this is somethingI see echoed in a lot of our
communities. Right? I can't,tell our story right now. It's
(44:32):
not the right time of year.
But, you know, there's lots ofechoes in in how we we
understand these differentcycles of the of the world.
Something that I that I thinkabout is this understanding of
time that I learned from ourstories and that I learned from
the prayer work that I do and isalso connected to the intention
(44:54):
that I have with the researchthat I'm doing. Like, I hope
that this can kind of present aconnection or an opening into
this deeper understanding andhopefully a point of resonance
for other people who have liveda very similar Cherokee story. I
believe that and this was taughtto me, so it's not just my
singular belief. Right?
That until things get kind offixed, that story is happening
(45:17):
somewhere else simultaneously.That also means that the good
and the beauty that we bringinto the world has an impact on
those other places in our in ourtime and in our places. That is
the work that I think a lot ofour peoples try to do with
prayer is this recognition thatthe healing or the change or the
(45:37):
doctoring that happens in thisworld has an impact on all of
the worlds. And when I hear youtalk about how this, like,
moment of devastation alsoprovides this insight into some
very original instructions that,like, make you and your people
who you are. I think aboutsomething that my cousin shared
(45:59):
with me about, like, our one ofour rivers.
Right? So we're Steelheadpeople. And in a lot of our
areas, though, steelhead doesn'trun anymore because their rivers
have been diverted frommonoculture farming or they've
been dammed or things like that.You know, I was taught to go to
those places and still interactwith those beings because
somewhere, they're still there.Somewhere, they're still
(46:21):
swimming those rivers.
Somewhere, they're still at thatpoint where the Spaniards that
came through wrote about theriver being so thick with fish
that it just looked likerainbows. Somewhere that's still
happening, and that means thatsomewhere it can still happen
again. I think about that wateralso potentially as a protection
of that place, that it's beingheld in that place. And then
(46:44):
through that water, thatmovement still gets to happen in
a way that might not be as aspossible in the the kind of
settler conditions that you'retalking about.
Joseph M. Pierce (46:56):
I think about that too is, water beetle, when
Dionysi emerges from the water,they have to have created these
waves, right, like ripples. Andis it not also possible, if not
likely, if not has to be true,that the waves that we see today
are still those waves? Right?Like, that movement is cosmic
(47:18):
and physical at the same time,and so we still have a
relationship with that story.Like, those waves, I can still
imagine.
Right? Those waves are are stillhappening, and maybe those waves
are also interacting with theriver when it flows to the
ocean. And maybe that's how theycommunicate, and maybe their
(47:39):
stories that they're sharingthere. You know? I've been
thinking about that too becauseI live in New York, and, you
know, the East River is a amess, but it's also a sacred
waterway.
And there's lots of sacredwaterways in this part of the
country that are kind of coveredup by streets or covered up by
developments and stone, and andit takes a little bit of work to
(48:03):
think below your feet in a bigcity. But it's worth doing,
right, to to ground yourself notjust to the cement, but below
the cement, to the earth itself,and to the rivers that are
flowing underneath. That'ssomething I learned from my
friend Devon Emery, who's aLenape, artist and
choreographer, And I think thatthat's also a way of being a
(48:26):
good relative to this place isresponding to the lessons
learned from Lenape people abouthow we relate to these to these
relatives, these ancestors thatare all around us.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (48:38):
I think about that kind of embodied
protocol that you're sharing asan extension or a really
incredible practice. Somethingthat I experience a lot with
when I speak with otherindigenous people is that
there's almost a lack ofrecognition of how much
knowledge we do have. I thinkthere's a part of it that comes
from, like, deeply embodiedcultural practices of humility
(48:58):
and, like, a recognition of thework that that many people have
done before us to hold that kindof knowledge with
responsibility. And I also thinkthat there is, like, a part of
it that is this action ofdistancing where it can have
that that potential. Theconversations I've had with my
ipo, my nam tayupa, my my love,you know, I would hear them
often mention that, you know,oh, they didn't know how to do
(49:20):
this thing or they didn't knowhow to engage in this way.
But when we go out and praytogether every morning, we're
both speaking language. Right?We're both speaking language
into the world. And sometimeswhen that language isn't there
or that that knowledge or thatexchange that has been handed
down directly from other peoplein our lineage or other people
in our community, that what youjust described, that desire to
(49:43):
listen to and acknowledge theplaces where we are, is, like,
such a foundational part of howwe are taught to live as
indigenous people. And so thatknowledge is there, and it is in
practice and that the practiceof that protocol, kind of like
what I was talking about in mychapter, like this is something
that when we fail to do this,this is something that further
(50:03):
distances us from who we are.
But when we engage in this withintention, even if our methods
are haphazard, that we'rereaching for this this
understanding of the world thatis, like, inherently grounded in
our cultural practices.
Joseph M. Pierce (50:19):
I've thought about this a lot. The difference
between having a memory of whatmy great grandparents look like,
which I don't have because Inever met them, and the
opportunity or the reality of mehaving to imagine what they look
like. That's one of the thingsabout, you know, my case is I
don't I never met them inperson. And as far as I know,
(50:42):
there aren't photographs ofthem, and so I don't know what
they look like. But I want to,and I can try to invoke them.
I can try to create them. I cantry to pray and imagine them.
That's also, I think, repairwork. That's living in the
(51:04):
rupture of settler colonialism.That's living in in that
violence while also not lettingthat violence be the determining
factor in how you exist in thisplace.
So listening to the ground orgrounding yourself is one way,
and I think for me also istrying to imagine back into the
(51:25):
past as I'm trying to do some ofthis work that I'm grateful for
the reminder too also is echoingor is projecting into the
future. Right? Like, it's doingboth of these at the same time.
We gotta we gotta always operateon these multiple temporalities.
You know?
It's like like Right.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (51:44):
I really appreciate the space of
generosity that this that thisconversation has really allowed.
Yeah. It's giving me a lot to tothink about and reflect on and,
yeah, just really appreciatewhat you've been sharing. Oh,
no. And my invitation to share.
Joseph M. Pierce (52:00):
Yeah. I learned so much. I the gratitude
that I have is is, I think, Iwould like to express that
gratitude for the way thatyou're approaching language and
memory and history and care. Ithink there's so much of what we
do as indigenous people that ifit is not grounded in care, can
(52:23):
distance us from our kin andfrom our from our people and
from our ways and from whatmatters. So I always try to
think about, like, not just howam I a good relative or how am I
trying to be a good relative,but how am I centering care as
part of my everyday practice?
If I can do that, then the restof it is gonna be okay. It's a
(52:45):
kind of embodiment and enactmentof the lessons of care that make
our lives expansive. And I seethat in your writing, and I
wanna highlight that becauseit's really it's really great.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (52:59):
Oh, oh, for that reflection. I really
appreciate that. Yeah. It'sdefinitely a characteristic that
I'm grateful to have hadnurtured in many relationships
in my in my life and also, youknow, can feel like a bit of a
vulnerability in in a worldthat, yeah, it really goes off
on some care for yourself and noone else kind of understandings
(53:21):
of the world. And it's somethingthat even when it feels painful
or it is experienced as thatvulnerability, that it's
something that I, like, I seemirrored in our old stories that
this is, like, such afundamental characteristic of
who our people have always beenand that survival has made it so
(53:41):
we felt like we had to hidethose parts of ourselves.
You know, I really recognizethat the generation that I'm in
and the generations that arecoming after, like, I have two
younger cousins, one of whom Igot to work with and support as
she was writing herundergraduate thesis, the
capstone project at II, NaomiWhitehorse, which is getting
(54:04):
such a strong feeling ofexcitement for all of the
softness that, like, gets tocome now, that so many so many
of our relatives did not havethe privilege to be able to be
in that place. It gives me a lotof hope to see that experience
of connection and softness as,like, such a deep strength that,
(54:28):
like, gets to shine again feelsreally important, you know,
because we're very good at beingprickly.
Joseph M. Pierce (54:35):
No. It's it's I think that one of the
beautiful opportunities thatDaniel and and Jeanne are
providing us is a space in whichwe can be vulnerable telling our
own stories. Just as a note, forall of the people, Joseph's
computer crashed as we weretrying to sum up and and talk
(54:57):
about tenderness and care.Daniel and Jeannie, like, made
it possible for us to bevulnerable because we could tell
our own stories. And then mycomputer crashed, and maybe that
is my computer saying, don'ttell him everything.
So things we can we can tell tothe people and some things we
(55:18):
don't have to tell to thepeople. But I'm really grateful
for this opportunity to be indialogue, and I really wanna
thank Daniel and Genie forallowing us to to have this
conversation. Sarah, I wannathank you for being vulnerable
and for, like, reminding me ofwhere that comes from, that
(55:40):
there's an ancestral strength tothat vulnerability, and there's
a future that that vulnerabilityis calling into being. Like,
that vulnerability is alsoendures and is part of our
survivance or is part of ourthriveance or, you know,
whatever the kids are sayingthese days. It's part of our
fabulosity.
(56:00):
Yeah. Too.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (56:08):
Thank you for your words. They're they're
strong. And our word for meansbeautiful. It means balanced. It
means good.
And I really appreciate thespace of exchange and and
connection through, what hasbeen a very strange section of
(56:30):
years where a lot of us havebeen very separate, and it feels
really lovely to to really getto experience what Daniel and
Jean were doing with bringingall of us together in this
really beautiful text.
How do you begin things, and how do you
start something where it seemslike there's actually a break, a
rupture, where there isn'tnecessarily something to go off
of.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (00:19):
What we're doing right now will also
someday be a story. And thatthere will be a time that what
is happening now is one of thoseold stories.
Narrator (00:33):
Land privatization has been a long standing and ongoing
settler colonial processseparating Indigenous peoples
from their traditional homelandswith devastating consequences.
Allotment Stories is a volumethat collects more than two
dozen chronicles of whiteimperialism and indigenous
resistance. Volume contributors,Sarah Biscara Dilley and Joseph
(00:54):
Pierce are here to talk abouttheir pieces of this history.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (01:54):
Yaqui Sissime, Yaqui Tanaasmo, while
University of California Davis,me and Native American studies.
I'm letting you know first, I'mthanking the people, the Allelo
speaking people, and I'mrecognizing that I'm returning
to their beautiful homelands, toour beautiful homelands. I'm
letting you know that my name isSarah Biscardelli. I'm speaking
(02:15):
the language of the people ofTahini, also known as San Luis
Obispo, California. And I'mletting you know that I come
from good villages, from goodpeople, from good villages
throughout the region of theCentral Coast Of California,
from Sipahala, which is nearCayucas, California, Sitokawayu,
which is near Cambria,California, Etzmal, which is
near Lucia, California, Sitokayanear Bryson, California,
(02:39):
Sitokaca near San Marcos Creek,El Owej in Paso Robles,
California, Assaram, which is inBlocking, Sweden.
That's why I'm a foot tallerthan everyone else in my family.
Casas Grandes, which is inChihuahua, Mexico. Xenapequero,
which is in Michoacan, Mexico.Santa Catarina, which is in
Baja, California. Sicpats nearCalifornia Valley, California.
(03:01):
Silcochoio near the Cuestagrade. Waimea, which is on the
Big Island Of Hawaii, andSitokawa, which is, near Morro
Bay, California. I'm letting youknow that my home is in the of
Maku'u on the Big Island OfHawaii in the land of the
Lualalo speaking people. And I'mletting you know that I listen,
learn, and know in my homelands,through our family, through our
(03:22):
kinships, our language, and I'mcurrently a PhD candidate in
Native American studies at UCDavis.
Joseph M. Pierce (03:28):
That was wonderful. Oh, oh, oh. So
Joseph, Corpus Christi, Hello,everyone. My name is Joseph
(04:00):
Pierce. I'm a citizen ofCherokee Nation, and I'm telling
you that I'm a language learner.
So please forgive me if I makeany mistakes, But that I grew up
in a town called Corpus Christi,and I currently live in Brooklyn
on the, homelands of the Lenapepeople. And I work at Stony
(04:20):
Brook University in thedepartment of Hispanic languages
and literature where I'm aprofessor of Latin American
studies.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (04:29):
Oh, thank you for your word. I love that,
you know, in the the lead up andnot necessarily knowing how we
wanted this conversation to bestructured, that this just got
to be a really beautiful openingfor the conversation to give
context for ourselves and ourfamilies and the places that we
have relationship to throughlanguage. Thank you for sharing
(04:49):
that context.
Joseph M. Pierce (04:51):
I have a I have a question that maybe maybe
we could use to start off with,which is a question that I often
ask myself, but it has to dowith the beauty of the beginning
and how in many of our ways oftelling stories, there are
poetic elements or they arethemselves poetry or song or
(05:12):
storytelling is all of thosetogether, and that seems to
contrast the loss or the traumathat often comes with a topic
like allotment. And then in mycase, allotment and adoption,
which I write about in in thepiece that we can talk about
(05:33):
later. But I I wondered if ifmaybe we could start off talking
about why why talk about beautyat the same time, or how do we
talk about beauty and and thepoetic at the same time as we
talk about these challenging,histories?
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (05:52):
I really appreciate that question.
Something I've been thinkingabout quite a bit for the last
handful of years, especially asI've had the privilege of really
immersing myself in some of ourfamily stories, not only
through, you know, developingcartographies or doing the kinds
of research that I've that I'vebeen able to do, but also
(06:14):
through the work and theresponsibilities that I fulfill
in my community. A lot of thework that we do, whether that's
working language, whether thatis being part of our social or
ceremonial singers, is aboutkeeping our worlds in motion.
That's how a lot of our youknow, the timing of certain
ceremonies or communitygatherings is really aligned
(06:36):
with this idea that I guess Ialways turn to language to
express it. It's like worldworld place.
It is in continuous motion. Ourword for land or earth literally
means land, world, mountain,year. So it's already marking
this kind of passage of time.How it's been explained to me is
(06:57):
that when we stop doing thosethings, that has direct impact
on the worlds around us. Thathas direct impact on our
homelands.
That has direct impact on ourfamilies. When I make a decision
to, like, include poetry or likeas you offered in the beginning
and then as, like, a kind offormal beginning and ending of
your piece, it's this way ofeven if we're using different
(07:19):
language or if we have differentpoints of access to certain
kinds of cultural knowledge or,you know, right now I'm having
this experience of, you know, myfamily has connections to this
place, but it feels very new inmany ways, like our family was
separated from our from ourrelatives here, That there is
this process of of learning howto engage more clearly with the
place, right? My prayer isdefinitely informed by the
(07:42):
places that I that I live andmove through. So the inclusion
of poetry or the inclusion ofkind of creative forms of
marking time in our work is away to practice that with the
tools that we have. I'm I'mcurious about hearing more
about, like, how the way youstructured your piece is very
clearly laid out.
(08:03):
Like, you have these differenthighlighted segments. And to me,
I see that as an extension ofthe poetics that you're that
you're putting into the pieceand also as a visual artist. I
really appreciate having thiskind of visual marker of, like,
a transition into discussing anew discussing a new topic?
Joseph M. Pierce (08:19):
I mean, I'm a literary scholar originally, and
and so I try to be very attunedto language. And sometimes, I'll
be reading something, and all ofa sudden, it just gets stuck in
your head. And this Linda Hoganline, at the beginning, there
was nothing, and something camefrom it, is so simple, and yet,
(08:40):
because of its economy, is ableto really condense a really big
idea, which is about origins,and it's a cosmological
beginning that she's describing.And I had been turning that over
in my head for a number ofyears. When it came time for me
to really sit down and thinkabout my relationships with
(09:05):
allotment, I started thinkingabout how do you begin things,
and how do you start somethingwhere it seems like there's
actually a break, a rupturewhere there isn't necessarily
something to go off of?
And I try to narrate this in thepiece, but I we have to turn to
our stories, because encodedwithin that language and encoded
(09:29):
within our stories are theanswers to how do you start
something, or how does somethingbegin, how do you relate to
something in spite of differenceor in spite of the breaking
apart of kinship, the breakingapart of relationship to land. I
thought for a long time that Ihad to kind of make it up
(09:49):
myself, that there was no map orno guide. With time and a little
bit of talking it out with otherpeople, I realized that, no,
it's it's actually there fromthe beginning. Right? Like, the
original stories are alsolessons about how to negotiate
these challenging issues.
In my article, I I tried to talkabout how my own family has a
(10:14):
relationship with allotment andthat that is a juridical, a
legal relationship, but it'salso a spiritual relationship.
And that that is very much tiedto the legal and the spiritual
maneuvers, the legal maneuversthat were also connected to my
father's adoption. So my fatherbeing adopted away from Cherokee
(10:38):
community and is is, in a sense,just an extension of the rupture
of allotment. And so whenconfronted with these
challenges, I think it makes alot of sense to me to turn to
poetic language that can bringtogether disparate elements or
that can combine unexpectedimages in ways that allow us to
(11:03):
make connections beyond anarrative framework or across a
narrative framework. And sothat's something that the poetic
allowed me to do.
Thinking of it now, it's alsothis is how we do. Like, I don't
need an excuse. I don't need anexcuse to turn to the poetic.
That I think that's the thingthat I learned also.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (11:24):
Mhmm. Something that is feeling very
resonant with me is when youtalk about this kind of rupture
or disconnect that you're rightresponding to, like, what is the
story beyond allotment? Lookingat that as a beginning, right,
that, like, a rupture is also anopening, but thinking about how
intentional that divide is. Youknow, when I think about how
(11:44):
like, I I was very fortunate togrow up very close with my my
great grandmother. She was apart of my life into my twenties
because, like, being the one ofthe queer kids, right, I, like,
broke a family record by nothaving kids at 24.
And everyone is our generationsare quite close for some time.
The my relationship with her andher stories is the only entry
(12:05):
point that I had to kind ofdeepening this documented
history of our family. Butsomething I always noticed is
that she would, you know, shewould refer to us as Chumash.
She would name this the townsthat where some of our key
villages are, like, repeat themover and over and over again.
She had lots of stories aboutthe I Love Lucy esque hijinks
(12:26):
that our family tended to getinto.
Right? Like, multiple peoplewere in parades and had their
wardrobe malfunction that led topublic nudity. When she was
speaking to people from outsideof our family and our community,
she would use the term MissionIndian because it was legible in
this context. And one of thethings that that I really
tussled with was this idea thatand even when we're working
(12:50):
language, right, it's it'sreferred to in documents as old
Espanol. It's named after themission that incarcerated us or
some of our families.
My family was was mostlyrelocated to missions further
north, because we're kind ofpart of the northern kinship of
our area. But what the kind ofrepetition of these kinds of
names does to I I I refer to itas trying to create a new
(13:13):
creation story. I think for alot of us, that pain that is
associated with those storiescan become a barrier. And for
many of us, it also galvanizesus to kind of move through that
passage, right, and to seewhat's beyond it. I just think
it's very strange, like, in thesense that settler time and
space is very fixated on this,like, linear, very tidy division
(13:37):
of things.
But one of my grandmothers,Crispina, was nine years old
when the Portola expedition camethrough our village. Like, we
were in a village where we wetried to give them a bear. Like,
we really could have changed thecourse of California
colonization if they had takenthe damn bear, but they didn't.
When I think about, like, thisis within our memory. Right?
(13:58):
We remember when you wanderedthrough sick, no idea where you
were, and we fed you becausethat is what our cultural
protocol is. Right? We're notgonna let you just, like,
struggle out there. If you'recoming through our area, we're
gonna, like, give you acorn mushand share fish with you and do
what we would want to havehappen with us if we were to
pass through another person'sterritory. It's also grounded in
(14:19):
this idea that we are trying tobuild good relations every step
of the way.
But I think about the thingsthat she witnessed just in her
lifetime and how recent thatstory is. So how can this be our
beginning when that was only twofifty three years ago?
Archaeologists like to say thatwe've been in our area for a
(14:39):
minimum of fifteen thousand. Ourstories tell us we've been here
forever. And like mostindigenous people, we're waiting
for scientists to come becausethey're the last ones to the
party.
If there could be a panel ofantis and researchers alongside
one another, it would just be aa symphony of what I tell you.
We've been telling you. We'vebeen telling you where our
(15:01):
beginning is, and I I reallyappreciate the directness of the
the line that you included fromLinda Hogan, because it mirrors
how a lot of our stories start.When I think about how
indigenous people exchange withone another, oftentimes, that's
like, okay, I don't want to jumpinto a story halfway. I want to
start when the world wasdarkness.
Like, we need to go back to thevery beginning, and then we'll
(15:21):
work our way back from there.Right?
Joseph M. Pierce (15:25):
I I had a conversation one time with
Cannupa Hanska Luger, theartist, and Cannupa was saying
he likes to ask people to tellthe origin story of their people
as a way of getting to know eachother better. We were having
this conversation, and I and Itold him a little bit about the
(15:45):
story of the water beetle, whichI tell in the article. And, the
thing about the water beetlestory for me is that it's a
story of emergence. The waterbeetle dives to the bottom of
this primordial ocean andemerges again with land that
then becomes Turtle Island, butit's also a story that's
(16:08):
predicated on the liminal space,the traversing of the water
beetle. So, like, the waterbeetle is a very queer figure.
It's a figure that Daniel KeithJustice would call an anomalous
being Mhmm. Who can exist inmultiple worlds and, in fact,
creates the world. And that alsowas really important to me. I
(16:30):
don't know that I reallydescribe it as such in the
article, but the fact that thatEunice, water beetle, is also a
queer figure, or I can imaginethat they're a kind of queer
figure, they're a non binaryfigure, or they're a liminal
figure, or they're transitingacross dimensions, worlds. For
me, as a queer indigenous personwho grew up kind of disconnected
(16:53):
in many ways because of thisstructural violence, because of
allotment, because of adoption.
That actually allows me a pointof entry into repairing that
harm or that that structuralharm, based on the lessons that
Dionysus is giving us becausethey are a figure. They are a a
(17:17):
a relative, an ancestor who is,in a sense, was unassuming, like
a little tiny water beetle, andat the same time, isn't only of
one world, is definitively,like, constitutionally of
multiple worlds. I've beenthinking about that again for
years now, and I feel likethere's not just a lesson there.
(17:38):
There's permission there.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (17:40):
Mhmm.
Joseph M. Pierce (17:40):
There's permission for you to transit in
ways that are grounded, butwhich are also speculative in
some sense or, like, or aboutcrossing in some sense. And in
my mind, it's an origin storythat's not exclusively about
being grounded in place, buttalks about relationships with
place that are about being inmovement. I don't know if
(18:03):
everyone would agree with that,but for me, like, the my my,
like, queer indigenous selfreally identifies with that. And
I think that there's also apoetic gesture in that story
that is about making kinship notexclusively as biological
reproduction, but asrelationship building, and
(18:26):
that's the thing that has reallyallowed me to situate allotment
and adoption as, yes, these arecolonially imposed structures
meant to displace indigenouspeople from our kinship
networks, and yet Mhmm. Ourorigin story actually also
provides for connections acrossgaps that seem incommensurable,
(18:49):
land, water, sky, all of thesethings.
Like, it's it's there. You justhave to kind of key into how to
listen to it.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (18:58):
Yes. I really appreciate what you're
offering here. There's so many,like, threads that I wanna pick
up on in what you were saying. Iguess something that that I've
been thinking about and havingconversation with, relatives,
particularly those of us whowork within, like like, our our
cultural practices and work withlanguage. I'm very lucky to have
a cousin, an older cousin who'smore like an auntie, but she's
(19:20):
cousin.
I got she's my cousin. You know,I was having a conversation with
her recently about just themoment we're in and how
overwhelming it feels to be inin the world in this time.
Something that I've been doingto kind of make sure I have from
footing is turning to ourstories. Because, like you're
(19:42):
saying, those provide us theroad maps on how we as, like,
whole people, as good peoplewith, like, distinct
relationships to place areinherently mobile because we
carry them in our bodies. How wecan approach the challenges that
are happening here.
One of the things that I've beenkind of puzzling through in my
(20:02):
writing is how to acknowledgethat just like those old stories
were told so intentionally, andcontinue to be told so
intentionally to provide us thatguidance, that what we're doing
right now will also someday be astory, and that there will be a
time that what is happening nowis one of those old stories.
(20:26):
What kind of guidance orinstruction or advice do we
wanna cultivate right now? Thereare people who were consultants,
in the various, So, like, theChumash areas in the Central
Coast Of California, oftentimes,they get looked at as these
distinct areas, but we are wefunction more like a
confederacy. There were at 1.12different language groups. We
(20:49):
are of a language isolate, sothere are, like, no other
languages in the world relationrelated to our languages.
But a lot of our languageswithin that confederacy are very
closely related. So when I havebeen given permission from
people in some of the otherareas, from family to look at
the notes that their relatives,had transcribed for them, which
(21:11):
is really how I look at thatanthropological exchange was
like, thank you for being asecretary, JB Harrington. There,
I mean, there are justphilosophers in every corner of
those narratives, and the peoplewho chose to come forward and do
that work. But there's agentleman whose work who's no
longer with us, who I refer tooften, named Fernando Liberado.
(21:33):
He was born on Limu, Santa CruzIsland and was, removed to the
Ventura area.
So he's, in relationship with,like, meets Kanaka'an people in
that area. Shared this quotethat, my cousin shared with me
when I was starting to travelmore, and going to the other
side of the ocean and wasfeeling very nervous about
moving through those spaces. Theline that she was sharing was
(21:57):
from, mister Liberado. The worldis like a great winnowing tray.
There are grains and chaff mixedall in with it.
Some people move up and down thebasket, and some people move all
around. And she was sharing thatwith me to to just affirm, like,
you don't need to worry. Like,you were just one of those
people who is moving all around.Some people, their work is to to
(22:19):
move in very close relationshipsin our territory. For some
people, it will be to kind ofsuture kinships between
different areas.
And for other people, theirtheir work is to is to roam and
to build relationships all overand for us to have those
exchanges that happen in thatarea. And just being able to
hear that, it took away all ofthe anxiety that I was feeling
(22:43):
about the kind of newness ofthis movement. Just like, oh,
just like what my great grandmaused to say, there's nothing new
under the sun. In two months,you're not even gonna remember
what you were so upset about,which was often true. But I
appreciate the weight of thosestories and that that, you know,
this is not necessarily one ofour old old stories.
This is what a gentleman shared,you know, around the turn of the
(23:04):
last century. But that is how itkind of comes to step in and
start to move in that way.Getting back to what I was
sharing about the movement ofthese stories and how
understanding the work thatwe're doing as an extension of
those knowledge systems thatwill be those old stories down
the line, what kind of guidanceare you trying to provide in
(23:25):
the, like, generosity of thestory that you're sharing about
your family? We alwaysgenerosity of the story that
you're sharing about yourfamily?
Joseph M. Pierce (23:30):
We always knew that my father had been adopted.
That was always part of hisstory. He was raised by a white
family in East Texas, and mydad's very dark, and it was
always very clear, and they werealways very open with that. But
we never knew, like, who hispeople were. And we went through
the process of opening thesealed adoption records, and I
(23:50):
say we because my father didn'treally want to do it.
He he he took some encouragementbecause for him, he was already
in his fifties. He didn't needto go through all that, but he
did. And he had to go to a judgeand get a judge to open the
sealed adoption records, and itwas a whole big bureaucratic
process. And I was in my firstyear of graduate school, so I
(24:13):
was maybe 21, 20 two when thisall happened. I didn't know what
to do.
What do you do with that? Youknow, how do you start to retell
the story of who you are in amoment where you're still trying
to figure all of this out. Ididn't have the language really
back then, but we were able togo to meet his mother, Ada. And
(24:37):
when we got to meet Ada, it wasin a hotel lobby in Amarillo,
Texas. Like, so in the middle ofnowhere, and it's this hotel
lobby, and in walks this kind ofpetite Cherokee woman with a big
perm and and her her daughter.
(24:58):
So my dad, we learned that hehad a a half sister at this
time. And what do you do? Whatconversation do you have in that
moment where you're trying tosay, I care about you or I want
I want to extend myself towardsyou, but I don't know how to do
it. And it was slow, and it wasquiet, and it was unassuming,
(25:22):
this meeting. It was there wereno fireworks.
It was just it was very small.And then another opportunity
happened, and we all went up toOklahoma. And so we went to
Oklahoma, and we met all therest of the, you know, the
relatives. And slowly, it becamepart of our lives to talk about
my dad's mother, my grandmother,to talk about our Cherokee
(25:43):
relatives. And then there wasthis sort of the legal procedure
of, like, becoming enrolled.
It's curious because becoming acitizen of Cherokee Nation was
really important to me, but Ialso recognize that that's not
the same as being involved incommunity. Mhmm. And so the
being involved in community wasthe hard part. That was what we
(26:04):
didn't have. So Yeah.
Allotment, adoption created thiskind of structure, and these
are, again, legal maneuvers thatthen were followed by another
legal maneuver of citizenship,but it wasn't actually
surrounded by a way of engagingin community except for having
to have conversations with theserelatives that were now your
(26:25):
relatives and reaching out toother Cherokee people and trying
to build community in ways thatyou could because I never lived
in Oklahoma. I never lived inthat place, and I doubt I ever
will. Mhmm. This is a long wayof saying that I thought I was
the only one. I thought I wasthe only one who grew up not
knowing about this relationship.
(26:48):
And come to find out, allotmentcreated a whole generation or
more of people separated fromtheir communities, and adoption
created yet another wholegeneration of people, of
children separated from theircommunities. And I realized, in
fact, that in certaincommunities, it's actually the
(27:09):
norm for you to be separatedfrom your community, that that
is the statistical norm. And sowhen I was able to realize that
that it is a quintessentiallyCherokee story, the one that I'm
telling, it may not be atraditional kind of grew up on
the rez stereotype, if if wewanna call it that, or or
(27:29):
reality. Right? Like, I don'twanna say that that's a
stereotype.
It is a reality. It wasn't myreality. But my reality is also
a Cherokee reality is what I'mtrying to say. And when I
realized that, I had what I feltlike a responsibility to try to
figure out language to describehow we put these pieces
together. That's my place.
(27:50):
That's my role. That's how I seemyself as an academic, as a
writer, as a queer person, as aCherokee person. Those are the
tools that I have. That's thelife that I've had. And me using
those tools to help find newways or find language to
describe not just the rupture,but also the way back or the way
(28:10):
to I'm gesturing with my arms.
It's it's like a weaving gesturethat I'm making to to bring
ourselves back together, to putourselves back together. That's
what I hope. That's me using myabilities and my story in a way
that I hope makes sense to otherpeople. And it is by sharing
that story that I think I'm alsodoing, enacting the lessons that
(28:33):
we're supposed to learn and thatI did learn, but that I also had
to very conscientiously learn.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (28:38):
I think what you're sharing about just
recognizing the story of yourfamily as, like, a
quintessentially culturalexperience, a quintessentially
Cherokee experience is such acritical offering. You know, I
actually wrote Daniel and Jeanwhen I was responding, you know,
to seeing the whole manuscriptof the book, and just having
(28:58):
this moment of appreciation forthe way that it allowed me to
really trouble through some ofthe ways that I was trying to
write this part of our familystory and, like, really
interrupt this language that hadbeen so passive but so insidious
in how our family spoke aboutthings. So our relatives, it's a
(29:21):
very unusual story. We did notget land through the Allotment
Act. All of our land was securedthrough cash sale entries that
was bought by our Kanakagrandmother, Luisa, who was
recognizing her responsibility.
And, you know, she was removedfrom her homeland on the Big
Island and Maui when she wasaround 10 and brought to
(29:42):
California. And then marriedinto her oldest son married into
into our California nativefamily, into our Yatitu family.
You see her observation of ourprotocols through how land was
purchased. So the first parcelsof land are bought for my
grandmother Leonora and herhusband Dionysio. And those
(30:04):
parcels are on opposite sides ofthe mountain, which speaks to
not only how, you know, ourcommunity views, like,
partnership.
Right? Like, I look to ourrelatives for my models on, you
know, how I wanna be in moreexpansive relation through,
like, polyamory. Like, our wordfor marriage just means to live
with someone. And most of thewomen in my family had four or
five different people that theywere in partnership with, and it
(30:26):
wasn't because they passed thatthey moved to another
partnership. Right?
They were just done with thatrelationship, and they were
moving to a different space. Butshe's buying parcels of land, my
grandmother Luisa, for first themother of my grandmother Mary,
who her son married, and thenher father, and then all of our
kind of extended relatives. Andso at one point, we had
thousands of acres of titledland all over the county. And a
(30:50):
lot of those parcels werepurchased at the juncture of
streams or along river systemsthat are very important to our
families and to our foodways.You know, within twenty years,
those lands were gone.
Some of them were floodedthrough the building of a dam.
Some of them were seized throughimminent domain to build a
national guard outpost, whichwas then used to support
(31:12):
military incursion in placeslike Hawaii and The Philippines.
The way that this story had beenkind of spoken about in my
family was, first of all, veryquiet. And then when people
would talk about it, they wouldsay things like we lost our
land, which is such a painfulway to internalize what happens.
One of the things that that Ishared with Daniel and Jean was
(31:35):
just thanking them for theopportunity to really interrupt
that way of speaking aboutthings.
It's not without acknowledgingthe responsibility that we have
that I hear you reflect in yourresponse to my last question.
Right? It's like we do have aresponsibility to figure out how
we want to move through thesestories, how we want to engage
the stories we want to see moveforward in the world, but just
(31:58):
in a space to interrupt the waysthat we have internalized the
violence that was committedagainst us as if it was somehow
our fault.
Joseph M. Pierce (32:07):
There's something about that passive
voice, you know, like, thisthing happened, and then this
thing happened. Right? Like,that narration of history as if
it were inevitable. No. Like,people did that.
White people passed lawsspecifically in order to take
away this land from our people,and then we did these other
things in order to try tosurvive. I think that's one of
(32:27):
the the sinister aspects oflinear historical storytelling.
It it almost makes it seem as ifit were inevitable that
allotment happened, and thenpoverty happened, and then
removals and all kinds ofthings. Right? Like, no.
No. No. That's not a passivevoice situation. That's a white
people did this situation, and,like, we need to name that. I
(32:50):
was gonna ask if you wanted toread some of your work.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (32:55):
Sure. Yeah. Thank you. I'll start from
the beginning. I feel like it itspeaks most directly to some of
the things that we've talkedabout thus far.
Where are you from, and whereare you going? Strange weaving
of wood, cattle, iron, oil, fat,or fur imagined a world in
(33:21):
pieces. Fat. Ranches, missions,candles, cattle. Where we dipped
candles for forced prayer, theygave us new names.
Often referred to as Obis BenioChumash, we are baptized with
words again and again, anattempted transfiguration of the
(33:43):
complex and layeredrelationships that make up Yakti
Chukchi Chukchi, the people,into the perimeter of a mission,
an assistant, or a ranch.Mission documents used as
legible forms of verificationfor recognition, but also as the
source of an unstable identity,decide our presence or absence
in the eyes of the settler statewithout accounting for the
(34:05):
complexity of our experiences orthe inherent contradiction of
requiring existence to beverified by the same mechanisms
that dispersed, dismembered,displaced us. Written into words
and maps that remain fixeddespite the life and all things,
the systemic disordering of ourworlds has been suspended across
generations, attempting to makesuch violence a new creation
(34:28):
story. But our self determinedidentities have the exponential
capacity to exist beyond thecodified, grounded within our
realities as indigenous peoplesand speaking from our respective
centers of the world. Whilesettlers imagine their
possession, indigenous peoplessimultaneously deepen our
connections, navigatingnarrative and physical
(34:50):
confinement by maintaininglongstanding relationships and
challenging generationaltensions to maintain survival.
This includes relationships withother than human beings, places,
and waterways, each of whichcontributes to a living sense of
place making, of movement, andof alliances. Though plot maps
display the world in flat,quantified dimension, it is our
(35:13):
stories and relations thatawaken the images and texts that
imagine the disparate, a worldin pieces. Our world is one of
expansive whole, citing riversand places with perspective in a
language of family, a culturalprotocol of inspired
determination. Elizabeth,Louise, Marie, Martha, Ignacio,
(35:33):
Lizzie, Mary, Maria Luisa,Lorenza, Leonora, Jacinta,
Crespina. Our cascade of nameshas always held multiple
meaning, marking relation andcontinuum in place, a recipe, a
middle name, the margin of acertificate of birth, an
argument between new parents.
Like our continuance, our titledland came to be through
(35:56):
relationship, only possiblethrough my grandmother Luisa,
the Kanaka Oivi daughter ofJoaquin, son of an unbaptized
Indio from Veracruz, born atMission San Diego and coming of
age at San Carlos Borromeo nearMonterrey. Like many other
displaced, dispossessed, ordiasporic peoples bound up in
the mission system and itssubsequent enclosure of the
(36:18):
land, Joaquin became a renownedhorseman working in the eighteen
thirties and early eighteenforties for Kawi Keauli,
Kamehameha the third, herdingferal longhorns into makeshift
corrals along the slopes of holymountains and valleys of Hawaii
or coastlines of West Maui. Herfather, as imbricated in
colonial industry as he was,represents the bridging of
(36:41):
indigenous practices and manyemergent paniolo traditions, a
quickening movement betweenCalifornia and Hawaii, a symbol
of both innovation and fracture.This moment of imperial
expansion is ongoing anditerative, manifesting as
shifting colonial occupations inCalifornia, land grants and land
loss traced on yellow and paper,while continuing to be echoed in
(37:04):
United States military violenceacross the one ocean. Deepening
further dispossession needs toteach you through use of eminent
domain to build military bases,extract oil, flood valleys, or
enact armed training.
It reflects connections betweenpeoples of saltwater and
(37:25):
archipelagos existing longbefore colonial imposition, but
also the dire choices indigenouspeoples have had to make to
ensure our survival, includingthose that further distance us
from who we are, ourresponsibilities to our own
land, water, protocols, andlifeways, as well as respect for
those of other indigenouspeople. What do you call a
(37:46):
moment that never stopped? Anendless stretch of changing
realities. Place is in each ofus. Each scene is unending.
A point of occurrence impliedbut unsuccessful. Of Camille
O'Fayal, the royal road, animminent domain.
Joseph M. Pierce (38:06):
There was something when you talk about a
moment that never stopped. Whatdo you call a moment that never
stopped? And I think in mychapter, I ask a similar
question. How do you claim landthat is underwater? These are
some of the questions that we'reforced to confront.
You know? Like, how do you notstem a tide, but how do you
(38:28):
engage with the ongoingness ofsettler colonial occupation
because it hasn't ended and doso in ways that are responsive
to our communities?
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (38:40):
I would love to hear you read some of
your work, especially if thereare points of connection that
you're seeing. I always lovehearing the writer read their
own work. It does somethingdifferent than seeing it on the
page.
Joseph M. Pierce (38:53):
What I'm gonna do is read from the second
section that starts withallotment. So this is allotment
speculations, the emergence ofland memory. Allotment.
Allotment aimed to assimilateIndians into American society by
isolating individual landowners,promoting patriarchal
(39:16):
domesticity, and encouragingcash crop farming. In the case
of the Cherokee Nation of theoriginal 7,000,000 acres held
before allotment in IndianTerritory, individual Cherokee
citizens retained only a 46,598acres in 1971.
(39:38):
Through coercive deals oroutright fraud, Indian land was
drastically reduced. Familieswere dispersed, forced to
relocate, to start over againand again. This loss is both a
point of departure and arequirement for existence within
settler colonialism. Let meprovide an example. Lot 5 In
(40:01):
Section 6, Township 11 NorthRange 18 East, was allotted to
John Rock in nineteen o threeafter the completion of the
Dawes Commission's enrollment ofCherokees in Indian Territory.
In the years following the DawesCommission, many native
families, such as the Rocs,found themselves unable to
(40:23):
retain the lands they had beenallotted and either sold or were
forced to abandon them. In March1952, in fact, the state of
Oklahoma served notice to Rock'sfamily that their claim to this
land was to be legally quietedforever in court. The notice
(40:43):
reads, quote, to the unknownheirs, executors,
administrators, devisees,trustees, and assigns, known and
unknown, immediate and remote ofJohn Rock, Cherokee roll number
16.933, deceased, and JeanneRock, Dan Rock, and Lee Rock, if
(41:07):
living and if deceased, then theunknown heirs, executors,
administrators, devisees,trustees, and assigns, immediate
and remote, of any such deceasedperson or persons. Defendants,
greeting. End quote.
The public notice stipulatesthat if no heir defends the
(41:30):
allotment in court, all rightsto it will be permanently
eliminated. Here is theconnection. I am one of those
unknown remote relatives, thoughI did not know this until
somewhat recently. Because as Inoted earlier, my Cherokee
father was adopted by a whitefamily as a newborn. In fact, my
(41:52):
father was born and adopted inJanuary 1952, only two months
before this notice waspublished.
Allotment and adoption are twointerlocking techniques of
settler colonial dispossessionthat converge in the body of my
grandmother, my father, and mein our shared flesh and in the
(42:14):
land that is our kin. How doesone claim unclaimable land? My
great aunt Carolyn told me thatthe family left that land
because it was about to beflooded. An infrastructure
project that dammed the CanadianRiver would create Oklahoma's
largest man made body of water,Lake Eufaula. The Eufaula Dam
(42:37):
turned Indian allotments intorecreational facilities and
profitable lakefront housingdevelopments as it provided
hydroelectric power andirrigation for industrial cotton
farming.
It provided capital for whitebusinesses at the expense of
native life, but the Rocks hadleft their allotment land and
(42:59):
moved to the Oklahoma Panhandlein 1951, a year before the
lawsuit. Carolyn's father, mygreat grandfather, told her
once, the place where I was bornis under the water. How does one
claim land that is underwater?And that is the question that I
(43:22):
was wrestling with in thispiece, and it all crystallized
when I was talking with AdrianKeane, another Cherokee person,
about the creation story. How doyou claim land that is
underwater?
And in fact, the Earth, theworld, is created from land that
(43:42):
is brought from under the water.It's not inconceivable. In fact,
that is the original way thatEarth was made, and so I don't
know if this chapter can be akind of testament to that, but I
imagine that part of what I'mtrying to do is describe the
possibilities of claiming landeven if it is underwater,
(44:04):
because that's also part of theway that we imagine cosmic
belonging.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (44:10):
This question about the water and how
you're relating it to not only,you know, the submersion of
family allotment, but also asthis connection to our, like,
long history, right, our longstories, this memory that we
have. Because this is somethingI see echoed in a lot of our
communities. Right? I can't,tell our story right now. It's
(44:32):
not the right time of year.
But, you know, there's lots ofechoes in in how we we
understand these differentcycles of the of the world.
Something that I that I thinkabout is this understanding of
time that I learned from ourstories and that I learned from
the prayer work that I do and isalso connected to the intention
(44:54):
that I have with the researchthat I'm doing. Like, I hope
that this can kind of present aconnection or an opening into
this deeper understanding andhopefully a point of resonance
for other people who have liveda very similar Cherokee story. I
believe that and this was taughtto me, so it's not just my
singular belief. Right?
That until things get kind offixed, that story is happening
(45:17):
somewhere else simultaneously.That also means that the good
and the beauty that we bringinto the world has an impact on
those other places in our in ourtime and in our places. That is
the work that I think a lot ofour peoples try to do with
prayer is this recognition thatthe healing or the change or the
(45:37):
doctoring that happens in thisworld has an impact on all of
the worlds. And when I hear youtalk about how this, like,
moment of devastation alsoprovides this insight into some
very original instructions that,like, make you and your people
who you are. I think aboutsomething that my cousin shared
(45:59):
with me about, like, our one ofour rivers.
Right? So we're Steelheadpeople. And in a lot of our
areas, though, steelhead doesn'trun anymore because their rivers
have been diverted frommonoculture farming or they've
been dammed or things like that.You know, I was taught to go to
those places and still interactwith those beings because
somewhere, they're still there.Somewhere, they're still
(46:21):
swimming those rivers.
Somewhere, they're still at thatpoint where the Spaniards that
came through wrote about theriver being so thick with fish
that it just looked likerainbows. Somewhere that's still
happening, and that means thatsomewhere it can still happen
again. I think about that wateralso potentially as a protection
of that place, that it's beingheld in that place. And then
(46:44):
through that water, thatmovement still gets to happen in
a way that might not be as aspossible in the the kind of
settler conditions that you'retalking about.
Joseph M. Pierce (46:56):
I think about that too is, water beetle, when
Dionysi emerges from the water,they have to have created these
waves, right, like ripples. Andis it not also possible, if not
likely, if not has to be true,that the waves that we see today
are still those waves? Right?Like, that movement is cosmic
(47:18):
and physical at the same time,and so we still have a
relationship with that story.Like, those waves, I can still
imagine.
Right? Those waves are are stillhappening, and maybe those waves
are also interacting with theriver when it flows to the
ocean. And maybe that's how theycommunicate, and maybe their
(47:39):
stories that they're sharingthere. You know? I've been
thinking about that too becauseI live in New York, and, you
know, the East River is a amess, but it's also a sacred
waterway.
And there's lots of sacredwaterways in this part of the
country that are kind of coveredup by streets or covered up by
developments and stone, and andit takes a little bit of work to
(48:03):
think below your feet in a bigcity. But it's worth doing,
right, to to ground yourself notjust to the cement, but below
the cement, to the earth itself,and to the rivers that are
flowing underneath. That'ssomething I learned from my
friend Devon Emery, who's aLenape, artist and
choreographer, And I think thatthat's also a way of being a
(48:26):
good relative to this place isresponding to the lessons
learned from Lenape people abouthow we relate to these to these
relatives, these ancestors thatare all around us.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (48:38):
I think about that kind of embodied
protocol that you're sharing asan extension or a really
incredible practice. Somethingthat I experience a lot with
when I speak with otherindigenous people is that
there's almost a lack ofrecognition of how much
knowledge we do have. I thinkthere's a part of it that comes
from, like, deeply embodiedcultural practices of humility
(48:58):
and, like, a recognition of thework that that many people have
done before us to hold that kindof knowledge with
responsibility. And I also thinkthat there is, like, a part of
it that is this action ofdistancing where it can have
that that potential. Theconversations I've had with my
ipo, my nam tayupa, my my love,you know, I would hear them
often mention that, you know,oh, they didn't know how to do
(49:20):
this thing or they didn't knowhow to engage in this way.
But when we go out and praytogether every morning, we're
both speaking language. Right?We're both speaking language
into the world. And sometimeswhen that language isn't there
or that that knowledge or thatexchange that has been handed
down directly from other peoplein our lineage or other people
in our community, that what youjust described, that desire to
(49:43):
listen to and acknowledge theplaces where we are, is, like,
such a foundational part of howwe are taught to live as
indigenous people. And so thatknowledge is there, and it is in
practice and that the practiceof that protocol, kind of like
what I was talking about in mychapter, like this is something
that when we fail to do this,this is something that further
(50:03):
distances us from who we are.
But when we engage in this withintention, even if our methods
are haphazard, that we'rereaching for this this
understanding of the world thatis, like, inherently grounded in
our cultural practices.
Joseph M. Pierce (50:19):
I've thought about this a lot. The difference
between having a memory of whatmy great grandparents look like,
which I don't have because Inever met them, and the
opportunity or the reality of mehaving to imagine what they look
like. That's one of the thingsabout, you know, my case is I
don't I never met them inperson. And as far as I know,
(50:42):
there aren't photographs ofthem, and so I don't know what
they look like. But I want to,and I can try to invoke them.
I can try to create them. I cantry to pray and imagine them.
That's also, I think, repairwork. That's living in the
(51:04):
rupture of settler colonialism.That's living in in that
violence while also not lettingthat violence be the determining
factor in how you exist in thisplace.
So listening to the ground orgrounding yourself is one way,
and I think for me also istrying to imagine back into the
(51:25):
past as I'm trying to do some ofthis work that I'm grateful for
the reminder too also is echoingor is projecting into the
future. Right? Like, it's doingboth of these at the same time.
We gotta we gotta always operateon these multiple temporalities.
You know?
It's like like Right.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (51:44):
I really appreciate the space of
generosity that this that thisconversation has really allowed.
Yeah. It's giving me a lot to tothink about and reflect on and,
yeah, just really appreciatewhat you've been sharing. Oh,
no. And my invitation to share.
Joseph M. Pierce (52:00):
Yeah. I learned so much. I the gratitude
that I have is is, I think, Iwould like to express that
gratitude for the way thatyou're approaching language and
memory and history and care. Ithink there's so much of what we
do as indigenous people that ifit is not grounded in care, can
(52:23):
distance us from our kin andfrom our from our people and
from our ways and from whatmatters. So I always try to
think about, like, not just howam I a good relative or how am I
trying to be a good relative,but how am I centering care as
part of my everyday practice?
If I can do that, then the restof it is gonna be okay. It's a
(52:45):
kind of embodiment and enactmentof the lessons of care that make
our lives expansive. And I seethat in your writing, and I
wanna highlight that becauseit's really it's really great.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (52:59):
Oh, oh, for that reflection. I really
appreciate that. Yeah. It'sdefinitely a characteristic that
I'm grateful to have hadnurtured in many relationships
in my in my life and also, youknow, can feel like a bit of a
vulnerability in in a worldthat, yeah, it really goes off
on some care for yourself and noone else kind of understandings
(53:21):
of the world. And it's somethingthat even when it feels painful
or it is experienced as thatvulnerability, that it's
something that I, like, I seemirrored in our old stories that
this is, like, such afundamental characteristic of
who our people have always beenand that survival has made it so
(53:41):
we felt like we had to hidethose parts of ourselves.
You know, I really recognizethat the generation that I'm in
and the generations that arecoming after, like, I have two
younger cousins, one of whom Igot to work with and support as
she was writing herundergraduate thesis, the
capstone project at II, NaomiWhitehorse, which is getting
(54:04):
such a strong feeling ofexcitement for all of the
softness that, like, gets tocome now, that so many so many
of our relatives did not havethe privilege to be able to be
in that place. It gives me a lotof hope to see that experience
of connection and softness as,like, such a deep strength that,
(54:28):
like, gets to shine again feelsreally important, you know,
because we're very good at beingprickly.
Joseph M. Pierce (54:35):
No. It's it's I think that one of the
beautiful opportunities thatDaniel and and Jeanne are
providing us is a space in whichwe can be vulnerable telling our
own stories. Just as a note, forall of the people, Joseph's
computer crashed as we weretrying to sum up and and talk
(54:57):
about tenderness and care.Daniel and Jeannie, like, made
it possible for us to bevulnerable because we could tell
our own stories. And then mycomputer crashed, and maybe that
is my computer saying, don'ttell him everything.
So things we can we can tell tothe people and some things we
(55:18):
don't have to tell to thepeople. But I'm really grateful
for this opportunity to be indialogue, and I really wanna
thank Daniel and Genie forallowing us to to have this
conversation. Sarah, I wannathank you for being vulnerable
and for, like, reminding me ofwhere that comes from, that
(55:40):
there's an ancestral strength tothat vulnerability, and there's
a future that that vulnerabilityis calling into being. Like,
that vulnerability is alsoendures and is part of our
survivance or is part of ourthriveance or, you know,
whatever the kids are sayingthese days. It's part of our
fabulosity.
(56:00):
Yeah. Too.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (56:08):
Thank you for your words. They're they're
strong. And our word for meansbeautiful. It means balanced. It
means good.
And I really appreciate thespace of exchange and and
connection through, what hasbeen a very strange section of
(56:30):
years where a lot of us havebeen very separate, and it feels
really lovely to to really getto experience what Daniel and
Jean were doing with bringingall of us together in this
really beautiful text.
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