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Throwback Thursday: Defending Chicano Indigeneity! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Excuse me.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_07: And welcome to Tales from Ostlantis, the show where we explore Mesoamerican pseudo history, new age nonsense, and other stories of adventure.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_07: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Ruben Ariano Tla Kateka.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_07: Welcome back, dear listeners, to another episode of Tales from Ostlantis.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_07: We were gone for a couple of weeks, but we have returned reinvigorated and ready to get at it once again, casting a skeptical eye of inquiry on pseudo history and other nonsensical claims within the Mexicayot.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_07: And I just want to say congrats to my co-host.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_07: He just had a paper published in which journal was it?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: The Journal of South Texas out of uh Texas AM, Kingsville.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: What's the name of the uh the article?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the article is called Radicals and Reformers: The Emergence of Ethnic Mexican Politics in Dallas, Texas, uh, from 1969 to 1980.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a very, very specific view on the emergence of large-scale political activism on the Chicano side, and some of it was more on the reformists, and you have competing factions.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I look at.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_07: Nice.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_07: Sounds fascinating.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_07: I will be giving it a read, sir.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_07: Excellent.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_07: And congratulations for getting that published.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: And also I should mention I have an another article that should be coming out shortly that's more related to what we do here on the podcast.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh on dansa, and I look at the deep history of the concerismo and how that leads to the Dansa Stega Chijimeca and to the Mexica, and uh the argument that I'm making there.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not new, but it hasn't been really elaborated enough.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was first uh touched upon in the 70s, and it kind of got left behind, and uh sort of bringing it back.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So uh this is gonna be an open access journal, and once it's uh published, once it goes live, I'll share the link.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Dope.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_07: Look forward to it, man.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_07: The war on Chicano indigenity.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_07: Sadly, the latest trend within the woke and Latin X crowd is to relentlessly attack Chicanas and Chicanos who identify as indigenous.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_07: Now, given the fact that being indigenous is a cornerstone of Chicana Chicano identity, and is manifested in our culture, language, traditions, ancestry, systems of kinship, and our connections to the land, I find such attacks curious, to say the least.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_07: Now, the basic argument goes something like this: Chicanas, Chicanos, and Chican X folks do not grow up in traditional indigenous communities, and therefore can only call themselves indigenous descendants and not actual indigenous people.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_07: Hmm.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_07: Apparently, there is only one authentic indigenous lived experience, regardless of how history has played out for the Mesoamerican diaspora.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_07: This bizarre bit of wordplay ignores the entirety of Chicana Chicano history and reeks of identity policing at its worst.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_07: Interestingly, this assault on Chicana and Chicano indigenous identity is practically identical to right-wing talking points that seek to deny Chicana Chicanos are indigenous cultural inheritance.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_07: It is certainly unfortunate that a handful of Latin Xers and Indigenous gatekeepers have taken it upon themselves to police indigenous identity as it relates to the Chicano community.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_07: In doing so, they are sowing deep divisions among people who should be working together.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_07: And quite frankly, I think their argument just isn't very well thought out.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_07: Here are five reasons why.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, it completely ignores the fact that Chicana Chicano experience is unique to the United States, and that the historical racism and colonialist oppression experienced by Chicana Chicanos has been directly in response to our being indigenous.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_07: The Mexican-American experience in the United States has been largely characterized by our status as a colonized people.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_07: Ever since the United States absorbed, i.e., stole, i.e.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_07: invaded, a large portion of the Mexican Republic as a result of the US-Mexico War, Mexican Americans have been marginalized and ostracized within U.S.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_07: society.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_07: More often than not, our indigenous roots have motivated this racism.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_07: Don't believe me?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_07: Well, let's take a quick look at the historical record.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_07: In trying to come up with a solution to the Mexican problem in the years following the US-Mexico War, Mexican Americans were referred to as half-breeds and mongrels by a press that viewed us as the enemy.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_07: As Mark Reisler pointed out, the perception of Mexican Americans in the American mindset stressed a dual theme.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, he knew how to uh string together some words there.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_07: When discussing the same Mexican problem in 1929, Glenn Hoover said the following.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_07: That report went on to state that the Mexican would forever retain his wild and violent tendencies, no matter how much education or training he might receive.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_07: Now, we should note that the very name Zutsuit Riots is in itself a racist misnomer used to distract from the true nature of the riots and who was responsible for starting said riots.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_07: As my co-host, Dr.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_07: Ruben Arellano Tlacatecat has observed.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this is from an article that was published by one of my colleagues, Roberto Andrade, in the Texas Observer.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what I said there.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: The Zutsuit riots were actually the sailor riots because it was they who instigated them and targeted Pachukos or Mexican American Zutsuiters.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well stated.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_07: Now these are just a handful of examples, clearly showing that our indigenous roots shaped the racist American attitudes towards Mexican Americans.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Point two.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: It legitimizes the racial caste system by perpetuating a racist/slash colonialist mindset in which people are divided by degrees of whiteness.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_07: When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, they established a social program known as the Sistema de Castas, a racial caste system that measures a person's social value in degrees of whiteness.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_07: This system placed Spaniards on top, Africans and indigenous people on the bottom, and mestizos or half-breeds in between.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_07: An entire system was established to determine social class by calculating how mixed you were.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_07: The idea is disgusting and racist, and sadly still holds a place in Mexican society.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_07: Now, proponents of the indigenous descendant argument maintain that mestizos cannot assert an indigenous identity because they did not grow up in traditional communities and are racially mixed.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_07: However, this argument ignores the nature of U.S.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_07: colonialism and attempts to transfer social norms relating to race and class from Mexico to the United States.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_07: While mixed-blood natives certainly experience a level of privilege in Mexico, and I've experienced it myself, such concessions are not given in the United States to Chicanas or Chicanos.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_07: The Sistema de Castas, with its rigid racial hierarchy, associated privileges, and notions of mestizaje, don't really work within the confines of US racial institutions.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_07: It's worth noting that the indigenous descent folks lean hard into the mestizo concept and appear to use it exclusively to describe chicanas and chicanos.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_07: Now I can't help but wonder if they also cling to other hopelessly outdated racist terms such as mulatto or lobo or morisco or chino.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_07: Do they think that African Americans should continue to be identified as mulatos, octoroons, or quadroons?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_07: Or is this aggression confined solely to Chicana Chicanos whom they maintain should only ever be considered half-breeds and never indigenous?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_07: This othering of mixed-blood natives is both counterproductive and quite frankly rooted in colonialist thinking.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_07: By embracing mestizo as a legitimate term, we validate and perpetuate a racist system.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_07: Now, do mixed-blood natives in Mexico hold positions of social privilege?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_07: Well, of course they do.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_07: The entire Mexican social system was set up to work that way under the Spanish.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_07: That's the problem with colonialism.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_07: It's super shitty.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_07: But this isn't Mexico, and believe me when I say that US racist institutions don't care how much indigenous blood you carry or whether you grew up traditional.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_07: As we can see from the examples we gave earlier, mixed blood or full blood, an Indian is an Indian, and Indians are the enemy.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_07: I don't think that promoting a racial caste system implemented by the Spanish is the best way to go about decolonization.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_07: Rather, I agree with Indigenous scholar Jack Forbes who said, To be a mestizo is to cop out.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_07: It is to accept the Spaniards' colonialist, racist ideology.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_07: It is to fall supine before the Europeans' racial grading system instead of struggling for psychological liberation.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_07: It is to deny one's own people's history in order to have a masochistic, obscene relationship with the invaders and the conquerors.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It suggests that there is only one quote unquote authentic indigenous experience in the Americas, despite colonialist oppression taking many forms.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_07: The simple fact is there is no singular indigenous experience.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_07: The violence endured by indigenous people across the Americas has taken many forms, as have our lived experiences under such violence.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_07: Using indigenous identity as a weapon to attack and silence Native people who are struggling to reconnect with their own identities, usually by claiming that they are less than or unworthy of being indigenous simply because they have experienced colonialism differently is a dead-end strategy.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_07: In reality, some full-blooded natives cannot speak their language.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_07: There are adopted natives with no way to reconnect with their traditions.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_07: There are mixed blood natives who are looking for a way to reconnect with their culture.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_07: Some natives are born-again Christians, atheists, Muslims, and there's those who keep traditional ways.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_07: There are natives who grew up in well-off families, natives who grew up broke, natives who go to college, natives who drop out of high school.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_07: There are some natives who have communities to go home to, and some natives who have no idea where they belong.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_07: We all have different lived experiences as indigenous people, and all of these experiences are valid.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_07: To suggest otherwise is surrendering to colonialism.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_07: In a recent blog post attacking Chicana Chicano indigeneity, the author, who I will not name here, stated, It is as though everyone wants some indigeneity to claim without having to face the threats and violence that comes from it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_07: Well, first, claiming that Chicanas and Chicanos have not experienced threats and violence due to our indigeneity is not only ahistorical, it is so tone-deaf that I wonder if the author knows anything about Chicana-Chicano history at all.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_07: Second, making suffering a prerequisite of indigenous identity is a bit too sadistic for my taste.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_07: Shouldn't we be working together to end the suffering of Indigenous people as a whole rather than making it a defining characteristic of indigenity?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_07: For what it's worth, indigenous rights organizations in the United States have a long history of recognizing Chicanos as indigenous people and of working together towards common goals of self-determination.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_07: The following is a 1984 letter written to Henaro Ayala of the La Raza Unida Party from Bill Wapepa of the International Indian Treaty Council.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: The letter states Hello my brother, I'm sorry that we have not been able to meet yet and that our communication with you has waited this long.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Although AIMEITC has had a relationship of friendship and solidarity with LRUP for some years now, I realize that more consistent and formal communications would help to solidify our relationship.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I wish to express our commitment to an ongoing relationship of mutual solidarity with LRUP.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: AIME and the IITC wholeheartedly support the Chicano struggle for self-determination, which the LRUP represents.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: We see it as one of the indigenous struggles for sovereignty and self-determination in this hemisphere.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have deeply appreciated the participation of Antonio Gonzalez, LRUP state vice chairman, in our international work in Nicaragua.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that our organization will continue to work with us in this capacity.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I would also like to take this opportunity to invite you or your representative to participate in the 10th Annual International Indian Treaty Council Conference taking place from June 28th through July 3rd, 1984, in Sicitan, South Dakota.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: The formal participation of La Razonida would be greatly appreciated by the IITC, especially in our consideration of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I hope that the unity between our organizations will continue to grow.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: In struggle, Bill Wapapa, Director of the IITC Information Office.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_07: Snap.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it's interesting that actual indigenous civil rights organizations struggling, that the ones that were actually doing the work, recognized Chicanos as indigenous people and saw that the work should be done together, that there should be, you know, mutual work being put in, that we needed solidarity with each other as Indigenous people.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_07: The idea that Chicanos have never identified as Indigenous people or don't deserve to be identified as Indigenous people, it just falls flat on its face when you look at the actual historical record.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Point 4.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: It conflates asserting an indigenous identity with laying claim to membership in a specific community.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_07: Look, there's a huge difference between identifying as indigenous and claiming to be Hopi, Zuni, or Navajo, etc.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_07: Chicanos asserting an indigenous identity is not the same thing as claiming to be an enrolled member of a sovereign indigenous nation in the United States.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_07: And personally, I find it highly disingenuous when people conflate the two.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_07: My ancestors are Nahuas from the states of Mexico, Puebla, and Tlaxcala.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_07: But I did not grow up in a traditional Nahua community.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_07: Now, does this mean that I can claim membership in a Nahua community?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_07: Well, no, of course not.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_07: Not unless that community recognized me as a member.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_07: But does this mean that I am not indigenous?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I find the question itself to be absurd because of course I am indigenous.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_07: I am an indigenous man of Nahua descent.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_07: My indigeneity is rooted in my identity and lived experience as a Chicano.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_07: Now, this reality may not resonate with those who argue against Chicana Chicano indigenity, and that is fine.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_07: But just know this: we don't need anyone's permission to be who we are.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_07: In fact, if anything, these misguided attacks on Chicano-Chicana identity is starting to lead to a resurgence in Chicana and Chicano pride.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Point five.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_07: Ultimately, the idea that some people are authentically indigenous while others are merely of indigenous descent is fundamentally flawed.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_07: It suggests that colonialism is both permanent and irreversible, and that any effort to reconnect with what has been lost due to colonization is pointless and futile.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_07: Basically, colonialism has won.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_07: Let's just give it up.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_07: It is a misguided idea that denies indigenous people the agency to determine their own identities in a way that is meaningful and empowering.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_07: When we accept the authentically indigenous versus of indigenous descent argument, we actively participate in the very program of indigenous extermination that began with Spanish colonization.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_07: And even worse, we're doing it to each other.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_07: As Gerald Tayake, Alfred, and Jeff Corntassel have so eloquently observed.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: This disconnection from our lands, cultures, and communities has led to social suffering and the destruction of families.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, the real deprivation is the erosion of an ethic of universal respect and responsibility that used to be the hallmark of indigenous societies.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_07: Indigenous lateral oppression is when native people exhibit toxic, harmful, and hostile behavior towards one another.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_07: As long as proponents of the indigenous descendant argument continue to dismiss the lived experiences of Chicanos and Chicanos by writing us off as mere mestizos or half breeds, and refuse to recognize our right to determine our own identities, they are perpetuating indigenous lateral oppression.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_07: Now, I can't bring myself to participate in such self destructive behavior.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_07: My enemies are not my own people.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_07: I remain defiantly indigenous.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_07: Representation matters.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_07: But as indigenous Chigano people, we can't just sit back and wait for mainstream media outlets to make it happen for us.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_07: And nor should we.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_07: We started the Tales from Aclantis podcast because we believe that it is imperative for Chicanos, Chiganas, and Chiganex people to produce our own media and tell our own stories.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_07: And the way we choose to do this is by using BuzzSprout to host the podcast.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_07: Buzzsprout is by far the easiest and best way to launch a professional podcast.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_07: You'll get a podcast website, audio players that you can drop into other websites, detailed analytics to see how people are listening, tools to promote your episodes, and much more.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_07: To start your own podcast and get a$20 Amazon gift card, follow the link in the show notes.
• 26:17
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• 26:22
  SPEAKER_07: Buzzbrout, the easiest way to start a podcast.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_07: Now, on with the show.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_07: Now, I want to end this segment with the following audio clip from the 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee by Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_07: In this clip, a documentary filmmaker approaches a group of Chicanos who are participating in the occupation.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_04: You you are not an Indian, are you?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_04: I mean this is a Chicano.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_04: And why are the Chicanos here?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well so we're all together, see well, Native Americans.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: What Chicano is part Indian.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: They're really involved.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm speaking for the ones that are here, we are and the ones across the country are starting to help us by protesting.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Is this a real gun?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, it's it looks like a toy.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_06: You want to try it and see if it's a toy?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_07: So there you have it.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_07: My little take on what's wrong with this uh assault, this this uh dismissal of Chicanos as indigenous people.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: But Curly, don't you think maybe these people have a point to play devil's advocate?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not really fully versed on on this uh history, but I know that, for example, I think where this is coming from, uh some of these young people are from places like in California where you have communities of like Mysteco and uh Zapotec to a certain extent, but I think it's mainly Mishtecos, right?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Who have we had communities in places in California and I think also in Florida there might be some as well where they've experienced a certain level of toxic behavior coming from what they would call Mexicans or mestizos.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's always been that sort of contingent within our community that even though they acknowledge the fact that they descend from indigenous ancestors, they don't really claim them and they're happy to make fun of indigenous people.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and and they have no desire to reconnect or visit indigenous communities other than as tourists.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I guess what I'm trying to get at is that that experience we cannot disregard it, and I and I acknowledge it.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I think the mistake that is being done here is to then turn around and paint all Mexican Americans or all ethnic Mexican people uh with the same broad brush, whether they want to call them racist or anti-Indian or xenophobes or whatever the appellation they want to apply.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Chicanos, when the term first became popular to self-identify as a Chicano in the late 60s and the in the 70s, the point, as far as I understand, yes, it had a political angle, that's part of it.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: It had a cultural renaissance angle to it, that's also part of it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was a wide spectrum of motivations and interpretations of what the term meant to people individually and as a group and as a community, but overall the intention was that when you were gonna call yourself a Chigano, it was because you not only did you acknowledge that you had indigenous ancestry, but you were committing yourself to embracing that indigenous identity.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And some people like myself and like yourself and uh people within our Mexica communities, they decided to take it a little bit further and say, well, not only do we acknowledge, not only do we accept, but we're going to immerse ourselves in our indigenity and we're going to try to learn from those people whom we have perceived or whom we have been told are keepers of this tradition.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Besides the fact that we here on this podcast, we are critical of Mexicayot and we are critical of a lot of the things that we've learned over the years, it doesn't mean necessarily that we're anti-indigenous or anti-calling ourselves indigenous.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the point that we're trying to make it.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to say, yes, not only is chicanismo part of being indigenous, and I don't know if you might agree or if others disagree with what I'm about to say, but I think that at that moment early on when Chicanos decided to embrace the Mexica identity, you know, embrace Mexica Ayod, embrace Dansa Azteca, that was part of a progression that had started with Chicanidad or Chicanismo, however you want to phrase that.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the mistake was made by our genta here in the US that in their efforts, and myself included, in my effort early on to identify as an indigenous person, a lot of us decided to move away from the Chicano identity to a certain degree and to begin to identify more as Native American or Indigenous or Mexica or whatever specific indigenous identity you were connected to instead of advocating for Chicano indigenity itself.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because in my opinion, I think that to call yourself a Chicano is to call yourself a native person.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the and the term Chicano itself, instead of using the Mexican that we used all these years, I think we should begin to advocate for the Chicano identity to be the indigenous identity of our gente.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_07: I agree, man.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think Chicano is an assertion and declaration of indigeneity.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that once we um realize that, it only helps us.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_07: But it's like you're saying, you know, people are looking at Chicanos, their views are colored by their lived experiences, right?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_07: So I can't blame people who had a hard time to face discrimination from Chicanos, and you know, their instinct is to react by calling out Chicanos.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_07: But like you're saying, they take it to this next level by painting everybody with that same brush and saying, well, you're all the same, and none of you are native.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_07: And it becomes an argument kind of built on colonialism, in my opinion.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_07: Like that's colonialist thinking, saying, like, no, you're not indigenous because your life experience was different from mine, and my experience is the real experience.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_07: Yours was different.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_07: Because in a lot of ways, Chicanos are a displaced indigenous people.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_07: And I could point to the history of my family, the history of New Mexico, where we were taken from our traditional lands, brought to what is now New Mexico in order to colonize, placed here where we are not indigenous to, and then the US-Mexico war happens, and now all of a sudden this is the United States.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_07: So it's like we're almost twice removed.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_07: We've been displaced twice.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_07: But, you know, I don't think that makes that that's just my experience.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_07: The experience of our people as indigenous people is one of colonialism, and it's a different experience in other parts of the Americas, and no one's is more legitimate or authentic as Indigenous people, in my opinion.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, I wrote a piece on indigenity a few years ago, and I think uh It's a good piece.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll probably touch upon that piece on a on a separate episode because it merited some episode.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I just wanted to bring it here into this conversation to point out that when I was doing research for that, for that piece on indigeneity, some of the the scholars that I was looking at were trying to come up with a set of uh like a checklist of sorts that marked someone as an indigenous person.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh if I remember correctly, I have to go back and look at my notes, but some of the stuff that they were saying and and afterwards I was thinking, well, wow, you know, that disqualifies a whole lot of people, even people who are card-carrying members of uh American Indian tribes, right?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of the things that they were saying was that you must have grown up speaking your native tongue.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a lot of native folks, you know, urban Indians that don't speak their native tongue.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna go and tell them that they're not Indian now?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you must have uh going back to this idea of oppression, you must have experienced state oppression from a foreign entity that's non-native, not indigenous.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that you must uh either reside in your native traditional lands or you must have a history of being dislocated and displaced from your original homelands.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And on top of that, that you must also show a tradition of some kind of social, cultural, spiritual, unbroken tradition that just because it's unbroken doesn't mean it hasn't changed, but that it's that you can show a history of it being a continuous tradition.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, well, that's I mean, those are arbitrary checkpoints that someone's trying to make up so it can fit and and conform to their perception of what an indigenous person is.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_07: And they started with probably saying, Well, I'm a real indigenous person, so what was my experience actually?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_07: And they just they just wrote everything.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's very subjective, it's not very objective at all.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think both of those things are happening with this reaction, as you pointed out.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a reaction to Chicano's the lived experience that they had, and to this interpretation of what they think an indigenous person's experience should be.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have that checklist, maybe you might miss one or two, but the preponderance of that checklist must be check, check, check, check.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm an Indian.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like if it if it was that easy, right, to call yourself an Indian.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I say this because there's a very and this is a paraphrase that I'm gonna uh say here, but there's a scholar, I'm not sure what their first name is, uh, but they go by T.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Biolsi, I believe, and in a piece entitled Race Technologies, this is what they say.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: It takes one drop of African blood to be classed black, but a drop of Indian blood has never been enough to make one legally Indian.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a powerful statement.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're they're saying it in reference to the American blood quantum system, but I think if you apply it to this situation here, we have these reactionaries against Chicano indigenity almost uh voicing this same kind of sentiment, right?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying, Yeah, you have indigenous blood, but are you really Indian?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's almost that same kind of sentiment, right?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to parcel out who can and cannot be Indian based on lived experience and based on whether or not they can check off enough marks on that list.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, well, and then there's this other argument that I'm seeing being made that in indigenous is a purely political identity, and that only enrolled members of sovereign indigenous nations are actually indigenous, which is a very, I don't know, that's that's a really weird way of looking at it.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, indigenous nations, sovereign indigenous nations have their own criteria for who can be a citizen, right?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_07: And so I would never go around claiming, you know, like, oh, I'm Apache or I'm Navajo or I'm Lakota or whatever, because those are sovereign nations who have their own rules on what it means to be a citizen of that nation.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_07: But this does not preclude me from saying, well, I'm an indigenous person, right?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's kind of goofy.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_07: They behave as if indigenity is finite, like there's a limited amount of indigeneity in the universe, and whenever a Chicano reclaims or reconnects with who they are, a member becomes disenrolled.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's this weird trade-off that happens.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, uh the way you you presented does sound very comical, but I think part of what's going on there, and I say this because I have, and now this is a very subjective viewpoint, but I have a lot of uh Native American friends and I interact with them on occasion, and some of the people that are against the notion of calling themselves indigenous is like you said, it's political, but it's a political, not in the activist sense, but political in the sense of what it means to be a sovereign nation in relation to the United States.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so for them, if they call themselves indigenous, that's a very uh vague, sort of all-encompassing term that can mean anyone from anywhere who is native to a certain place.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm indigenous to this planet.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's the same thing with the word native.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of I'm Native American.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, you're well, you were born in America, but you're not indigenous, right?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so what a lot of American Indians, that's the term that they prefer, they say I'm American Indian, because American Indian is a political identity that the government uses to identify sovereign uh members of American Indian nations.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so to say Native American, like for example, me and you could call ourselves Native American, and yeah, you might get a few people that might turn around and go, You're Indian, you know, give you that uh quizzical look and that question.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not the same as saying I'm uh American Indian.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: American Indian is specifically a term that is used for people who are, like you were saying, enrolled members of a tribe.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where you get the difference between people who prefer to be called Native, people who prefer to be called American Indian, or just Indian.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or and and and you will find that a lot of American Indians don't really they're not very um partial to the word indigenous because to them it it sort of muddies the waters for them a little bit.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_07: I could see that, yeah.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_07: Because I I see it online, people saying, you know, white people coming out and saying, Well, I'm I'm indigenous too.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_07: I'm I'm indigenous to the planet.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_07: Like, wow, good for you.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_07: Such a stupid argument.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_07: And one of the, you know, the word that I like is masewali, right?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_07: Because masewali just it just means native person in Nahuatl.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_07: And it's not used exclusively by Nahuatl speakers.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_07: Not all indigenous people in Mexico use that term, macewali, but I do know that it is used by others than Nahuat speakers.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_07: And, you know, there's like 68 indigenous languages spoken in Mexico, so everybody has their own words for their own identities.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_07: And I think you you brought up a good point, man.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_07: I think we should focus on Chicano as being the that declaration of of who we are as an indigenous people because our our you know we're talking so much about lived experience.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_07: Our lived experience as Chicanos is very unique.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_07: It is.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_07: And it's tied to colonialism, it's tied to the land, it's tied to, you know, our culture, our history.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_07: And I think uh a mistake that the Chicano movement made uh was to really hitch their wagon to the mestizo thing.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_07: And that was just part of, you know, the nationalist narrative being pushed by Mexico, right?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_07: So Chicanos, you know, we're not, you know, Mexicans don't want us, Americans don't want us, Native people don't know who we are.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_07: And it's funny because the the gatekeepers are always saying, like, you know, you're you're not indigenous.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm like, I'm s you know, do you think you're the first person to disown us?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_07: I'm sorry, get in line, man, because that's kind of like the the hallmark of being a Chicano, is we are the unclaimed, right?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_07: We are the disowned, nobody wants us.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: But it's interesting to me also the the whole idea of the term Chicano.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Here we are.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's been 50 years since the uh beginning of a lot of those Chicano studies programs uh during the the heady days of the Chicano movement, and I find it fascinating, and I use that word kind of loosely here, that just as recently as last year, uh while doing research, I came up across an um article.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's um a thesis written by a student who just recently graduated from an ethnic studies program, and in their very first paragraph, when they're talking about the word chicano, the term chicano, they say no one really knows where this word comes from.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, what are you learning in school?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: What are they teaching you in this ethnic studies course that not even the basic term chicano is properly identified for you and defined?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Someone is doing you a disservice and you need to go and get your money back because we know what the word chicano means, we know where it comes from, we've known this for 50 years.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it still a question I do not understand?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, man.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_07: Well, these kids don't like the truth.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_07: You know what I like to say.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_07: What's that, girl?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_07: The truth is like medicine, my homie.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_07: It doesn't always taste good.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_07: But it's always good for ya.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_07: I hope uh everybody's enjoyed this conversation about Chicano identity.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_07: I hope that everybody uh keeps an eye out for Dr.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_07: Arellano's uh paper and his upcoming paper.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_07: And uh it's good to be back.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_07: We took a couple of weeks off, but it's it's good to be back.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_07: Good conversation, my man.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_07: Chicano Brown and Brown.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_05: Is this a real gun?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_05: It looks like a toy.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_06: You want to try and see this toy?