Of ‘Lox’ and other bagels: Remembering the River of Turtles

I am positively impressed by our new neighborhood: When introducing ourselves, everyone went great lengths to get our names right, asking twice for pronunciation, apologizing beforehand for probably getting it wrong next time we met, and calling for patience. This is more than a European family with Turkish and Portuguese names could have expected, especially in a culture that cherishes abbreviations and acronyms (“Ped Xing” being my personal favorite). Our experience in the past two years has been rather the opposite, with people urging you to offer a short version of your name, or radically mutilating your original name by calling you by your initials.

However, I had to face my own ignorance over place names: Driving along the Loxahatchee every day, a road alongside a canal dividing Broward and Palm Beach County, I was laughing hard when someone told me a friend called it ‘Lox and Bagels’ road. The conversation triggered my interest in the name itself, which indicated a Native American language. Digging online, I soon discovered the charming meaning, and much more for what the “River of Turtles” stands for, namely Seminole resistance in The Battle of the Loxahatchee in 1838: In view of the US government’s disavowal of treaties granting Seminoles land in Florida, Black and Native American Seminoles fought side by side near the headwaters of the Loxahatchee River, the former resisting recapture into slavery and the latter resettlement to Oklahoma.

Humbled by my own ignorance, I have a New Year’s resolution: A little more effort on my own part to respect and appreciate the historical paths I am treading on …

Sources:
Richard J. Procyk, 1999. Guns across the Loxahatchee: an archaeo-historical investigation of Seminole War sites in Florida, with special focus on the Battle of Loxahatchee, January 24, 1838. Florida Historical Society Press.

Kathleen Chaptman. “Artifacts found, collected from forgotten Loxahatchee battle from 1838”. Palm Beach Post. Sunday, March 15, 2009. [Online] at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/03/15/a1a_riverbend_0316.html.

Children's books and the Politics of Naming

Coming from the public library a couple of weeks ago, I started reading to my five year-old what appeared to be a most inconspicuous picture book: “Franklin’s Canoe Trip” by Sharon Jennings.
The impression that this was another literary misdemeanor (the list of children's fiction considered 'canon' and written from a colonial stance is oh so long) started on the very first page, where Franklin voices his excitement about the trip because he “wanted to be just like the explorers he had learned about in school”. My reserved suspicions were confirmed when on the way to the river, Franklin discusses the trip with his friend bear in the anticipation that they might “discover a whole new country”. After a long paddling trip with their fathers, they encounter a crowded campsite; they roam the surroundings and end up finding a secluded cove. And then comes the oh-so-familiar colonial gaze:

“Franklin and Bear … explored the beach. They drew a map and named everything they found. ‘Let’s call this Bear’s Lagoon,’ said Franklin. ‘And this is Franklin’s Shore,’ decided Bear.”

Invoking the infamous politics of ‘naming’, a process in which dominant cultures attempted imposing their cultural framework onto Indigenous spaces, this seemingly innocuous children’s book emulates an imperialistic, colonial attitude, inexorably transforming the cultures and territories it met with – to say the least.1
Speaking from a non-aboriginal perspective, one should not tire to unambiguously acknowledge the need for redress and re-assertion of Indigenous status, cultures and peoples. And despite some success at re-naming and re-inscribing an Indigenous social reality within contemporary modern societies, we still encounter remnants of a politics and ideology that seeks to silence the ‘Other’ voice. But, of all animals, the author chose a turtle that sets out to discover part of Turtle Island …
Next time at the library, I’ll definitely circumnavigate the Franklin books, and rather go for a Robert Munsch!

1 For a discussion on the intricate process of naming, by colonial powers as well as by Indigenous peoples, see Rebecca Ann Bach, 2000. Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World. New York: palgrave.

A manifesto of ignorance

Meticulously organizing my precious time each week in the mornings to get some work done before spending quality time with my family, batendo papo with friends, or enjoying a good book, you would think that e-mail newsletters were the last thing to subscribe to. Alas, given the propensity to have first-hand information on the latest publications, I tolerate the occasional bookstore-newsletter. Only, it got me all riled up recently, recommending among the bestselling non-fiction works Liberty and Tyranny by Mark R. Levin.
‘Oh well,’ you might say, ‘just another partisan-inspired manifesto’, and you sure are right about that. His diatribe against liberal policies was almost fun to read for revealing the preconceptions and bias of his conservative argumentation. However, what drew my ire was the fact that the book presents a cacophony of oh so bigot, colonial, imperialist deliberations. The reader is impressed upon with the thought that America, prior to founding, was settled by people mostly from Europe – and that pertains to the matter of Native America so benevolently obnubilated in Levin’s tirade. For all that he is so concerned about America’s civil society, he disregards his own standards and duty as an individual of that society, to “respect the unalienable rights of others and the values, customs, and traditions, tried and tested over time and passed from one generation to the next, that establish society’s cultural identity.” (3) Of course, he is only talking about settler-colonial identity and European values in this context.
‘Ah, but that was to be expected from such a writer’, is what you interject, and I agree. But when I read such a testimony of essentialist doctrine, calling for an end to “multiculturalism, diversity, and bilingualism”, I do think it is time to unsubscribe from those convenient email newsletters …

Oh no, not again (what they call) ‘Columbus Day’ ...

Squeezing into the tight schedule of a working Mom a quick stop at USPS to get a quite urgent package on its way to Europe – in between picking up my youngest and hastening to his swimming lessons – I was quite annoyed when standing in front of closed doors: Columbus Day!

Not that I don’t grudge them their day off, but that was just the last straw – I could take no more of this ill-named to say the least, National Holiday that at its very core is aimed at silencing the indigenous voice: With my 2^nd grader coming home from school with a self-drawn picture of Columbus – that he intended to pin to his wall to his Mom’s horror – and my Kindergartener asking questions whether Indians still ‘lived in teepees’, I knew it was time to take drastic action. So, I grabbed my copy of Rethinking Columbus, and read to them Tina Thomas’ “The Untold Story”. Oh for sure, it was a harsh fall for them to the bottom of reality (‘Columbus was just SO MEAN’) but I got the reaction that I wanted: I had them thinking of the underlying ambitions (gold, gold, and gold) as well as the consequences (oppression, murder, enslavement) of that oh so brave venture-voyage, and induced them to take the perspective of the people WHO WERE THERE BEFORE, in the so-called ‘New’ World.

I know I will have succeeded when they don’t put up with the glorifying, cliché-prone version of Columbus Day in school, and start thinking and talking in class about the Other voices, peoples, that still today, continue to be silenced.

Happy Native American Day!

Sources:

Tina Thomas, 1998. “The Untold Story”. Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, eds. Bill Bigelow & Bob Peterson. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.