…in the aftermath of violent histories, telling stories and listening to stories are acts of peace. ~ Connie Braun, Silentium
All day long these children and I
trade stories
we weave colors and textures
we write together in journals
we tell what it is all about
we trade love for love
I hold their tears
I am the story basket
and in me the stories change
color and shape and sound
they take on rhythm
drum beats
The conversation took place in the home of a woman I was meeting for the first time and included two of her close friends. The occasion was a small, intimate reading from my memoir, To Drink from the Silver Cup: From Faith, Through Exile, and Beyond. As the subtitle suggests, this book is a story about a spiritual journey. What it doesn't say is that the exile and what happens afterwards took place because I was a queer woman. The home where we met was in the Michigan city of my birth, which is the center of the very evangelical, once mainly ethnically Dutch-American church I was raised in. This church, fifty years after my exile began, is still in deep, one could even say extreme, conflict over LGBTQ+ inclusion. All three women had close ties with that church. Our host was Black, the other two women were White, and all three presented as heterosexual. These facts are important because they provide context to the discussion that ensued.
One of the women asked the action question, "What can we do to make it safe for LGBTQ+ people to participate in our church?"
My initial reply was, "Until there is full inclusion, it isn't safe." Then I suggested an intermediate step––something simple, like wearing a rainbow ribbon to let queer people know that it was safe to come out to the wearer, safe to expect support from them. At the same time, they'd be letting other non-queer people know where they stood. Wearing the ribbon would become an invitation to others to join in support of inclusion.
The bottom line, though, as internationally renowned education and racial equity consultant Dr. Muna Abdi said, is, "Inclusion is not inclusion if you invite people into a space you are unwilling to change."
Our host said, "I have a rainbow button that says, 'Ally.' I think I might start wearing that at church."
Then someone raised the question, "Who gets to decide whether you are an ally or not?"
I understood the point of the question. What if the person who says they're an ally sabotages you in some way? What if they do or say something that's counterproductive to the cause? But it was also a question of political correctness.
I come down on the side of welcoming people who want to be allies. Soon after that reading, my friend Monica Friedman, who is Jewish, and I talked about the question. She answered it regarding racism, saying she'd thought about it a lot because, "I've frequently seen people who think of themselves as allies, or who want to be allies, get shouted down or shamed out of the work because they're jumping in from a place of good faith without having read the right books and adopted the right vocabulary and unlearned 100% of systemic racism. And potentially that means that people who could be good allies are excluded from the work and lost to the cause because they're sent packing, licking their wounds and resolving not to try to help people who treat them in ways they aren't ready to parse. Of course, people don't want 'allies' who make them uncomfortable or who don't understand who they're talking to or what they're talking about. But as you say, intention and meaning no harm should count for something, especially if the problematic ally is interested in being educated."
On the other hand, correcting mistakes and educating people who want to be allies can be exhausting, and I have compassion for that, but as Monica added, "I would rather have an imperfect friend in my corner than make enemies of a goodly percentage of the people who think they're on my side, just because they aren't getting it right."
I'm sometimes afraid to step up when I'm needed as an ally, afraid I might say or do it wrong when I witness discrimination. It's because I'm afraid of getting called out for doing it wrong. So I say or do nothing, when something is absolutely needed, and I know it. We who have privilege, whether because of the color of our skin, our gender, or our sexual identity, need to step up and leverage our privilege on behalf of someone who is being marginalized or oppressed. To become what Dr. Bettina Love, in her book, We Want to Do More than Survive, calls "co-conspirators."
There can be a cost for being an ally, a co-conspirator––being called out by the one we're trying to support when we hate to be imperfect; losing status or valued relationships. The woman who followed her intention and wore her ally button to church was asked to stop wearing it or lose her leadership position in which she had formed deep and meaningful relationships with fourth and fifth grade children. She chose to make a stand and ultimately left the church after going through several heart-wrenching processes. She had proclaimed herself an ally and paid a heavy price. She hadn't waited for me or any other queer person to sanction her choice; she made it herself.
There can also be rewards for taking a stand. Just knowing we didn't let something evil go by uninterupted. Knowing we've been a refuge in the wilderness. When a Native friend thanked me for being an ally, that was more than enough.
When have you acted as an ally?
When have you been afraid to be an ally because you might not get it right?
When have you been afraid to be an ally because of the cost?
When have you been an ally and experienced the reward?
Another time, I'll share some of what I've been learning from Dr. Love about being a co-conspirator, which is a step beyond being an ally.
Diné alphabet card
I have a new memoir in the making, a collection of related essays written over a twenty-year period. These essays deal in various ways with my experience growing up in the fissure between Red and White worlds and with how that experience has played out in adulthood. Several of them have been published, and one was recognized as notable in Best American Essays 2014.
Many future blog posts will include excerpts from the published essays, as for example, Monday's post, "Integration Controversy." You can also expect related short essays and stories that will be available only on the blog. I hope these posts will whet your appetite for the book and inspire you to get your friends interested in subscribing at https://www.annaredsand.com/newsletter.htm In other words, this is some advance promotion for the memoir. I'm hoping to get an idea of interest in the memoir, too, from your responses; in other words, you're very important people––VIPs.
What follows today is what constitutes an Author's Note as front material in the book. It's intended to give you, the reader, a heads up about my choice of words and how I use language, primarily Diné bizaad (the Navajo language), in the book:
Author's Note
(From the Book)
Language matters. It especially matters when we talk about contact among cultures and the interstices between them. It matters whether I choose to write "reservation" or "Navajo Nation" or "Dinétah." These three expressions delineate the same locale, yet, on a deeper level, each means something different, and the differences are significant. The language we use to talk about the legacy of colonization––a legacy that virtually no one on Earth escapes––is important. This inheritance carries particular weight in the posts you'll be reading. Accordingly, I have privileged certain words over others, hoping to bring about a small measure of healing by contributing, to a miniscule degree, to the monumental task of decolonization. Thus:
• Diné (Navajos' name for themselves) over Navajo, which comes from the Spanish conquistadors;
• Diné bizaad over Diné language or Navajo language or simply Navajo;
• Dinétah, Navajo Country, Navajo Nation, and the Nation over reservation;
• Indigenous or Native over Indian or Native American;
• Bilagáana (the Diné name for Whites) in addition to White;
• When Black, White, or Brown refer to individuals or a group identified by one of these colors, the words are capitalized as proper nouns;
• Words in Diné bizaad are not italicized, except for emphasis or when referred to as words themselves; this is in a recognition of their legitimacy equal to the legitimacy of English.
Question
• Would you find an Author's Note like this of value in the front material of a book?
Teaser
Here's a short teaser for my next post on allyship:
The conversation took place in the home of a woman I was meeting for the first time and included two of her close friends. The occasion was a small, intimate reading from my memoir, To Drink from the Silver Cup: From Faith, Through Exile, and Beyond. As the subtitle suggests, this book is a story about a spiritual journey. What it doesn't say is that the exile and what happens afterwards took place because I was a queer woman. The home where we met was in the Michigan city of my birth, which is the center of the very evangelical, once mainly ethnically Dutch-American church I was raised in. This church, fifty years after my exile began, is still in deep, one could even say extreme, conflict over LGBTQ inclusion. All three women had close ties with that church. Our host was Black, the other two women were White, and all three presented as heterosexual. These facts are important because they provide context to the discussion that ensued.
One of the women asked the action question, "What can we do to make it safe for LGBTQ people to participate in our church?"
To be continued on Friday. Please stay tuned.
In a post last week, "Defining Events ," I mentioned that I was the first White student to integrate the dorms at Rehoboth Mission, not without controversy. This excerpt from "In and Out," published in Istmus in 2016, briefly tells the story of the controversy and some of its consequences. The full essay can be read at https://www.annaredsand.com/in_and_out_133016.htm and will hopefully be republished in a collection of related essays.
I became the first student to racially integrate a dormitory at Rehoboth. Despite the continued bullying by those Bilagáana (White) boys, it would be the happiest year of my time at the mission school. It was also the year that I became deeply, consciously aware of White privilege and racism there. Not long after the school year began, Bilagáana missionaries in the field got wind of the fact that I was staying in the dorm. They were miffed because as members of the General Conference, they had had no input into this decision. That was when I finally learned the ostensible rationale for the existence of the racially separate dorms. It was so White children wouldn't be taking the places meant for Native children who needed to be saved. I wondered yet again why the Diné missionary kids hadn't stayed in the Missionary Kids' Dorm. I still didn't have the word "racism" in my vocabulary, but I recognized it for sure.
In 1963, the Red Power Movement was rumbling awake. In six more years, Vine Deloria, Jr. a Standing Rock Sioux, would publish Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. But already in 1964, he had become executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, growing its membership from nineteen to 156 tribes. This nascent movement for Native rights had already influenced some of the more vocal Diné missionaries.
The controversy about integrating the dorm was placed on the agenda at General Conference, and I knew I might be sent back to stay at home. However, in the end, those vocal Navajo missionaries won the day, along with some of the White missionaries, including my father. They argued that integrating the dorms was a symbolic gesture of equality, one that could bring more converts into the fold. It was a wise argument, couched as it was in the rhetoric of saving more souls. I was allowed to stay.
Near the end of the year, something happened to validate the Bilagáana missionaries' worst fears. Kee Bitsoi and I were both working on the laundry detail by then and, although he was a class behind me, we were in band and choir together. He asked me to go to church with him one Sunday evening. That might not sound like anything that could possibly threaten anyone, but at the mission it amounted to a very public date. It was like a declaration, and many couples who went to church together on Sunday evenings ended up marrying each other.
I heard audible gasps when we walked down the aisle to our pew, but that was nothing compared to what happened afterwards. The high school dorm had a boys' side and a girls' side with a common living room between. We had two house-parents, Mr. and Mrs. Haverdink. Mister had a nickname—Yogi—because his long torso, and the way he waddled made him look like the cartoon character Yogi Bear. Mrs. Haverdink was so uninvolved on a day-to-day basis that she didn't merit a nickname.
Yogi walked up to Kee and me after the service with fury that had been building during the whole service. Scarlet faced, he pushed us apart and said, "You go this way," to me, "and you come with me," to Kee. As he walked away with Kee, I heard him shout, "I thought you were a nice boy until now."
I was shaking when I got back to the dorm, not in righteous anger, which would have been fitting, but in fear. Yogi had already sent Kee to his room. "Do you want to marry a White boy or don't you?" he shouted at me, so everyone in the living room could hear. To my everlasting shame, I said nothing. I didn't need to because Yogi kept ranting for another five minutes, but I wished I had shouted, "No!" He sent me to my room and told me I was grounded for a week, which basically meant I couldn't go to study hall in the high school library at night. It turned out that Kee had been grounded for the next month, and I was again plunged into shame over the unfairness of it.
Nothing ever came of the incident, except that a week later the principal called me into his office. The only words I remember exactly were, "I guess there's been a storm in the teapot over there." Then he said something to the effect that I should ride it out and maybe not do anything like that again. I nodded miserably and kept my true thoughts and feelings to myself.