The Wisdom of Others - History, Identity, Words (rant warning!)

This post was first published on one of my other blog, Gender Irrelevant. It has meaning to the topics addressed here, though, so I include it here also. (This version has been editted in order to improve it's relevance to this blog).


Gary Bowen, (writing in Feinberg, 1998:63-66) offers the following observations on where we should draw from in our struggle to identify ourselves:

"...Spirit gives to each of us Visions of who we are which we must manifest in the material world to the best of our ability. (p64)

"Spirit is not divided in itself, but is an integrated whole... there are seven cardinal directions: east, west, north, south, up, down and center, as the Native viewpoint embraces dimensions not normally noticed by the dominant [white and westernised] culture. (p65)

I am grateful to Bowen for these insights. I am less impressed, however, by the undertone his writing has of counter-bigotry.

Bowen says:

"There are many 'magpies' who are drawn to latch onto the bright, shiny aspects of Native culture, who misappropriate Native culture, customs and artifacts in the belief that they are 'honouring' Native people by imitating them without understanding them. It is better for non-Native people to follow our example by looking to their own ancestors and reclaiming their own transgendered spirituality... white people need to reclaim their own sacred people instead of appropriating ours." (p66)

Bowen's choice of 'get your hands off my culture' language, whilst understandable, is unhelpful, I feel. So too is his assumption that his own Native culture holds exclusive rights to certain spiritual insights, such as the above described view of the cosmos.

I feel that Bowen is belittling pink-skin culture and the historical experiences of us pink-skins here. It is a fact that the majority of 'white, westernised' peoples abandoned their heritage long before they endeavoured to impose their mish-mashed culture(s) on others. Tracing our ancestors is a very difficult task for most of us pink-skins. Understanding them is even harder.

I believe, because Spirit tells me so, that I am Celtic in origin, yet science tells me I am Viking by blood. Parts of my spiritual community attempt 'Reclaiming' - but so fragmented and distorted are our pink-skin histories that it is unclear whether what they come up with is anything like that which they seek. Too, I partially subscribe to the 'Seven Daughters of Eve / seven tribes' theory or societal evolution, and know full well that the colour of my skin has more to do with the climate of where my, originally nomadic, ancestors settled than who I am and how I identify myself. Where am I to look for my ancestors, my language and my sacred Trans people?

I reserve the right, then, to collect those bright and shining terms and ideas which call to me in Spirit, which come to me in my own Visions, and to consider them to be my very own because of the Truth they speak about Me and who I am.


Bibliography

Fienberg, L. (Ed.), (1998), Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue, Boston (USA): Beacon Press

Sykes, B. (2001), Seven Daughters of Eve: the Science The Rveveals Our Genetic Ancestry, New York: W.W.Norton & Company Inc.
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