In the days following the shootings at Red Lake High School, a disturbing media portrait has emerged of the youth of Red Lake. Numerous articles and opinion pieces have cited suicide, depression, deprivation, poverty, despair, and hopelessness as the reality of everyday life for our youth. In one writer’s perspective, Jeffery Weise epitomizes the “self-hatred that exists among so many American Indian youth.”
Those of us from Red Lake will not deny problems exist. Gangs, violence, alcohol and drug abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse are a part of life on the Red Lake reservation. The lives of many Redlakers have been affected by these problems. Indeed, many of these problems are generational with roots in the boarding school era. The generational trauma of one generation has been passed to the next.
However, the problems facing our youth are not exclusive to Red Lake; we know these problems exist beyond the borders of our land. These are problems that thread through all communities regardless of race, culture, or ethnicity.
Yet, in a time of great grief and sadness, some in the media have chosen to single out and essentially condemn the youth of Red Lake. In doing so, they are condemning a way of life.
A pertinent point that many in the media miss is Redlakers, including our youth, choose to live in Red Lake because it is our ancestral home and the conditions of life, though difficult they may be at times, are accepted. In the Ojibwe way of life, one lives within nature not outside it. Unlike the Westernized sense of nature, nature is not conquered for the sole purpose of habitation and dominion.
To outsiders, Red Lake may seem like a bleak and harsh environment. But they don’t feel the richness of life that exists within the boundaries of Red Lake. They do not hear the songs of our trees. They do not draw spiritual strength from our lake. And they do not understand the relationship with the animals and birds that roam freely, a relationship that borders on the biological. Sadly, in their quest for dominion, they have lost the understanding of what it means to live within the Four Orders of Life.
The value system of mainstream America is based on materialism. According to Western linear thinking, to live in poverty is to be deprived of those values. In turn, deprivation leads to depression, despair, hopelessness and, assumingly, suicide. It is a typical knee-jerk equation to help understand the tragic event in Red Lake.
But this equation is too simplistic. It can be applied to youth on other reservations, to the inner city, and, indeed, the rural areas.
The real problem for our youth is learning to incorporate and balance our traditional values within their everyday life. This does not mean they have to reject the modern world. Rather, it means the core of their identity remains rooted in the morals, norms, and values of Anishinaabe culture in the mainstream world they co-exist in.
It is, admittedly, a difficult task to live in two worlds. Our youth live in a world infused with real and imagined violence fed by the media, video games, T.V., and movies. In this world, respect has become an antiquated value. Some, like Jeffery Wiese, become so desensitized and dehumanized that they are consumed with a self-hatred that all too often leads to horrific acts.
However, self-hate is not the norm of Red Lake youth. And to generalize self-hate, or, for that matter, despair and hopelessness, as the roots causes for this tragedy places a burden of blame and guilt on our youth.
Unlike the media portrait, our children do not walk around with clouds of despair and hopelessness hanging over their heads. Their beautiful faces are not marred with scowls of self-hate.
Certainly, they need our guidance in these tragic times. We as elders know that what occurred at Red Lake happened for a reason. It is our wake-up call. We need to counter the condemnation of our youth by striving to work together to bring our youth home – home to the spirit from whence they came. The time of their healing, renewal, and awakening is now.
Red Lake and the Stereotyping of Our Youth
In an interview I did with the Minneapolis Star Tribune (3/22), I was quoted as saying “on one hand there is a Columbine pattern in this…Gothic, a loner, this Nazi stuff.” Unfortunately, what I said “on the other hand” didn’t make it to print. In my addendum, I said it would be wrong to assume that the Gothic lifestyle, in general, fit the Columbine pattern. In other words, Gothic does not, in and of itself, imply a lifestyle founded on violence nor does it lead to violence. To do so would assume a stereotype.
We, as Indian people, know about stereotypes. Our varied indigenous cultures and identities have been seeped in stereotypes ever since the first Europeans stepped ashore on Turtle Island. We react strongly to any form of stereotyping that continues to imprint us today; Indian school mascots and Indian team names are but two examples. Ironically, we, who are stereotyped, have stereotyped our own youth.
In the aftermath of the Red Lake High shooting, we now know that Jeff Weise was not the Gothic loner as he was first portrayed in the media. There are other Red Lake youth who, in varying degrees, have adopted a Gothic lifestyle. And, by implication of that lifestyle, some Red Lake members, and the FBI, have assumed there was a larger conspiracy afloat.
Two such Red Lake youth, Cartera Hart and Alyssa Roy, were quoted as saying they were getting strange looks from people and that more and more people would be tormenting them and thinking they were involved in a conspiracy.
For these youth, one’s manner of clothing has assumed the burden of a stereotype, one that differs little from the 1880s imagery of Indian people as an ungodly, pagan people lacking family skills and social values and to whom violence was a way of life.
But the stereotyping of our youth doesn’t end there. Should a youth dress in hip-hop clothing and listen to rap music, he/she is invariably pegged as a gang member. In doing so, we, as a tribal community, assume a stereotype. In doing so, we are committing something that we so strongly condemn – a form of racial profiling.
And, the stereotyping goes much further. The color complex is deeply ingrained in our communities. An Indian youth of an interracial marriage may lack the physiognomy usually associated with Indian features. The disturbing stereotype that emerges of such youth is that because they don’t look the part, they can never be useful or accepted members of the tribal community.
We often talk about how lost our youth is but how lost are we to reach a point in which we stereotype our youth? Who are we, of all people, to do so? Are we giving vent to yet one more form of internalized oppression?
It is clear that the stereotyping of our youth threatens to tear our community asunder. The arrest of Louis Jourdain as an alleged co-conspirator had led some Red Lake members to assume guilt before innocence. Some have shamelessly used the arrest for political leverage in that Floyd Jourdain should be held accountable for his son’s assumed role and therefore resign as tribal chairman. They seem to overlook the fact that we, as parents, are not accountable for our children’s actions once they leave our homes. We can only hope they make wise decisions. Indeed, were we to be held accountable for the all the actions of our children, we would have lost our parental rights long ago and our children would be living in non-Indian adoption homes.
Rather than creating animosities, we need to stay focused on healing our community and helping our youth. To condemn our youth for the way they dress, for the music they listen to, or for the way they talk only increases their alienation. And, in doing so, we invariably place the blame on our children.
Where does this end? Sadly, we know where it can end. We witnessed one such ending on March 21. We now know where the stereotyping, and the resultant alienation, of our youth can lead. It is time for us to come together to show our youth the way. Not through animosity, but by reasserting an Anishinaabe value handed down to us by our elders - respect for our children.