Charlotte

siman贸-li: letters to my mother: a b(l)lackstory

Letters to my mother: Hybridity and diasporic writing Moments of note in coming to this work have me riddled with ambiguity in the telling. This piece is intended as a collection of experiences, images, words, and re-membrances connected to being and becoming Indigenous. I story in thinking about Black and Native relations in the Americas, local and diasporic. I speak, too, about water, keepers of water and drowning.

Conceptualizing resurgence reaches through ancestry for me and begins, always, as do all my stories, with my mother. I have dreamt my mother resurfacing from underneath turquoise salt only to be dragged down again. There doesn’t seem to be any logical or reasoned place to start, other than where I am, which becomes the beginning. In living and embodying re-surgence, re-membering and re-storying, the ongoing conversations with my mother, ones I could only have with her after her death, are barometer and compendium. Only in the journey back is there any coherence in thewhatcomesnext to the work of living into the story without shame, so that I can continue to tell it, so that others - like me - can tell their own.

I am concerned with what sparks the debate about who is Indigenous, to which place, belonging and then, nationhood. The discourse of extinction is insidious, powerful, and thriving. It’s an ironic position to be, in-between, when who you are is so intimately involved with what you do.

I find a requirement of this work is suspending the need to be certain, paradoxical in a world of scholarly analysis and supported statements. Indigenous scholars/tellers, are expected, in academe, to back it up, explain our perceptions, theories and conclusions.

Indigenous Methodologies re-story our intuitions. Still we fight the perception that these same knowings, ineffable and refusing quantification, are wannabe reconstructions of a disappeared past. I have always been interested in untold stories and entirely alienable hidden truths. My mother was the truth-teller in our family. She said she hated secrets, yet lived a life replete with them. She hinted in painful fragments, talked about obscured origins, left out the details. My thoughts and ancestral connections are scattered across continents and generations. I collect these stories, here, to reach back into a tribalography. 1 The wind is howling outside. I have to struggle with it to remember. Moments ago the thought was at my fingertips, waiting for the page. Erased before it found breath. Absence is prevalent in this work, a function of existing on the peripheries of essentialized understandings of nation, Indigeneity, and Blackness, a feature of in-between that is wholly here and justwhoIamnow.

These words are born into the process of navigating Indigeneity as contested, twisted in the recounting of land and labour at the root of settler colonialism. My stories pay attention to how being and becoming catch us up in our own webs, ogre-faced spiders waiting to drop an inextricable weaving on the unsuspecting, each other.

1- LeAnne Howe. 2002. “The Story of America: A Tribalography”, in Clearing a Path: Theorizing the Past in Native American Studies, edited by Nancy Shoemaker, 29. New York: Routledge

i look for you everywhere in Elders and teachers and friends in faces of women I do not know seeking i look for you across oceans and mountains in sloughs and puddles ponds anywhere there is water i look for you to hold me and cradle me i understand pain it calls me in strangers do you look for me? i am here waiting

On Passing:

What’s your name? Where you from? Who your people?

My name is Charlotte Henay, my mother’s name was

this story unfurls from my fingertips like the touch of my mother’s hand. calyx of the flower i named my son for grows in

Naomi Louise Black, my grandmother was Elizabeth

the backyard at my auntie’s blooms at night unfolds in the

Jane Black. I come from a long line of strong women.

i am reading to you words that speak spirit for me unpracticed

We are Black and Seminole, settler and Heinz 57 – a spicy mix of less-than-determinate ingredients. We have moved and been moved, from Creek to Seminole homelands – distilled from coastal hybridity – to Red Bay, Andros to Nassau, New Providence to this territory I do not recognize as Canada. Names filled with colonial promise and being there. Being there means, for me, the knowledge of a place as our place, a relationship with it on a daily basis, the absence of question as to whether or not we, Indigenous to it, belong. I understand that I am a visitor in the Chippewas of Mnjikaning Anishinaabe territory, where I live and work. In this space, tracing belonging to a place, to a Nation, to a territory is a requisite tie to Indigeneity. I marvel at the certainty this can afford my relatives here, a spoken pedigree that has ever been elusive for me and mine. In this dispossession, that I have come to understand as a fundamental piece of who I am, I position myself firmly as a Black Seminole woman of mixed ancestry and piecemeal story. I am an outsider with-in Indigenous community, an identity I carry into academe.

winter at my own ways just as i write everyday affirmations to remind myself i am enough i am enough i am enough charlotte henay naomi louise elizabeth jane black my identity lies on a spectrum of representation denial obfuscation assimilation disappeared diminished between black and NDN heinz 57 soaked in whitewash in the middle space i walk in through the power of story memory spirit guides me through mutually CON-stitutive lives twenty five thirty two sixteen half a quarter i am not whole i stand holes that pepper our peoples’ children’s children’s places times faces memories which sister cousin grandmother auntie will stand for me now stand for my refusal to be ignored avoided eraced extinguished stand for anguish screaming in a dragonfly’s lifespan come on out of that closet did we have those before the master’s cupboards politics covert divide us like King Philip Came Over From Great Spain’s evolutionary scales for everything the songs i hear in my head the food i give to my children this skin not primed in oil the eyes your antediluvian road blinded shhhhhhhh the NDN in the cupboard is not this NDN long lost women some discarded arbiters of identity gatekeepers everyday ceremony in dreams of empty beaches i walk alone ghosted by stingray is medicine is spirit rooms full of my people wait for me in other places the next place do they wait for me to join them there are they my stories breathing reading speaking i have looked beneath souls tears and mantras in smudge bowls and prayerbooks and only in my son’s eyes is there ever a vestige of my mother’s people i don’t know tell me i must be naomi’s daughter

It is my song My voice is my power it is my song that voice it bubbles up unapologetic underground gurgles rushes blushes burbles over boundaries and into rivers sings purple blue midnight that cannot be contained by banks it is honour stepping up stepping out from sisters mothers grandmothers the strength of women gone before they could tell the stories that are gift and calling blight and resistance grieving and joy stories of stolen names and babies thrown over fences in the dark warm night fragrant cereus and circle of hibiscus i step into surround me this is who i am this is home this is tobacco box of cedar sweetgrass wood feathers that may have been mangrove mango palm frond if not for those damned stories stories that contained us and pushed us out at the same time silenced and faded the colours of ocean and cinder block bush and sky where are you, mothers, now that i am home? that voice it gurgles rushes blushes burbles over boundaries and into rivers sings purple blue midnight that cannot be contained by banks

A hybrid is a cross between two species, such as the mule and the hinny, which are female-male and male-female crosses between horse and ass‌both the mule and the hinny are infertile, which results in the species remaining distinct, held separate by an apparent natural check.13 - Robert J. Young

Š2013 C. Henay This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Aboriginal and Tribal Nation News https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151489892311368&set=a.330776471367.196302.327603401367&type=1&theater

Crossing B(l)ack: Mixed Race Identity in Modern America http://www.tower.com/crossing-black-mixed-race-identity-in-modern-american-sika-dagbovie-mullins-hardcover/wapi/123561038

bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and 5 ultimately in themselves.”

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

If you are silent about your pain, They’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.6 - Zora Neale Hurston

Edit by Sonali Ghosh

I am c onc erned w i t h t he oversi ght of I nd ige n o us f utu res i n dec olo n i zi n g projec ts in ac ade m e. I n de bu nk i ng approa ch e s to d ecoloni zati on t h at d ece n te r settle r objec t i v e s, Tu ck and Yang c aut i o n a g ain s t t he co nfl ati on o f co lon ia l re al it i es , ‘dec o lo nia l desire s of w hi te , n on - wh i t e , i mm igrant, pos t c o lo n i a l a nd oppres sed pe o p le , ca n sim ilarl y be ent an g le d i n reset t l em ent, reo c c u pa t ion , and re i nhabi tat i o n t h a t actu al l y furthe r s e t t le coloni al i s m .’ 7

Before Native peoples the future of their nations, they must ask themselves, who is included in 8 the Nation.

Andrea Smith

how far did that get us five civilized tribes prolonged the journey from head to heart i didn’t set out to become a target of colonial violence shrink wrapped fast food for thought speaking the healing for ruptured power relations walking out the dead instead of pleading innate servility hoping if i just keep talking with you the fingers piano keys on words will write us into commensurability co-construction collective storying in spite of crimes against humanity there is no turning back rather inward do not get lost know the road stone marks the way call out maps and trails telling others how to get to heaven

My mother passed away shortly after I began to dream of two people, a school, a road, a longhouse. In retrospect, with the comfort of hindsight and the privilege of reflection, it seems easy to see through.

The figures in the dream are siblings, spirit halves, energies that have not been balanced. Intuition denied, selves in need of nurture, the openness of thought and evolving positionality, all are there. The dream is etched into the lining of my memory. I can’t always keep track of the longing it evokes. I ignored it for so long, while rereading my own story from pages of journals I had thought discarded. The complexities and weavings of story without boundaries to tell where it ends and I begin is where I have come from. I am schooled to write papers when what I see are pictures. In my lover’s head, the tiles on the bathroom walls, in the soap scum in shower stalls.

So long I lied them.

In studying memory, one should pay attention to… absence, distance, witness, testimony, tradition, nostalgia and forgetting.

- Anh Hua, Diaspora and Cultural Memory

The Road to Letting Go when i first lit the sweetgrass i was lazy smudge bowl littered with leftover prayers and whispered conversations matches and ash it’s cold outside can’t see the base of the tree cushioning my falls from grace briefly smoking ceremony protests reticence begin anew speaks the wind in a language i do not remember what to keep what to throw away strategic decisions made in ship holds cast aside decolonizing moves that pimp peoples in fetishized re-collections of desires re-settle re-inhabit re-package re-move traces of indigeneousness the only good indian dis-appear in homo-gene-eye-ity my self determination dis-engages with piecemeal cobbling of methodologies and alliances creeping up on you in a rhetoric of in-collusion give back my belief in this waste-land along with that moral rectitude in my hunger for the past i encounter my ancestors they name me stranger decolonizing is an English word inextricable bonds between means and ends ask me when have i ever felt safe implications of both question and answer bear the stickiness of my insides draped across my head and through my hair how will we recognize ourselves in this garb who will we become spitting images of forced negotiations questioning the imposition of colonial histories on our communities my mother’s specter rises from the ocean springing forth in a spray of turquoise and salt, eyes open. she is talking to me though i can’t hear her she is frustrated she can’t get my attention it’s important why was i never a listener? i hear her voice calling me from the nether parts of the house when i am alone chaudy cha-u-ddddyyy chaaaaaaaudyyyy shoddy makeshift booty refusing to stay buried bodies hefted overboard into the channel can it be about mothers and not mothering this taking apart of the pieces of my soul repair them make them whole living into the story is this how i am to remember bridges scare me clench teeth squeeze eyes shut unnatural seeing spirit called to meet when we listen to you my voice is not always my own

when i am an old woman i will steal cereus blooms from my cousin’s garden to comfort me in my exile these days i am looking for compassion and equanimity rooted in my spirit you know the stuff that lets you breathe

our lives belong to us they tell me so do our decisions i am assured not long after i deleted it, erasure being my wont, i missed it the familiarity of the boundary realized i should have left it there to speak for itself the deprecatory racialist keepmeinmyplaceandletallmyfriendsknowitcomment i snuffed out along with the pieces of me pickaninny-ish and wrong somehow the smile and the honour gift abalone and coral pieces of soul from the next place in her name when another came despite my poorer judgment that had hoped re-consideration might follow i left it there alongside the afro and the defamation that is especially where we belong lye it can wash you clean of your ancestries dilute your hair hide the people from themselves and from each other transcendence is aided and abetted confirmation of what i remember i don’t know how from where or just why yet through histories and sociological examinations under the microscope of these writings i don’t answer to hybrid historiansethnographersanthropologists chronicling ethnogenesis colonial tribes in the language of spatial dislocations my intergenerational distrust breeds resentment i know who i belong to that’s something i guess purpose different than ambition or a skylight tour tell a story come late to not much practice i have been stooped and mired trying to tell others’ stories when i had forgotten my own buried along with the boys and grandmother’ bones alongside aspirations they had those once prayers too those and the apathy are all i can find

Derailment Bingo http://wileywitch.com/2013/feminism-and-feminist-issues/handy-charts-derailment-bingo/

maybe I got ahead of myself throwing down poetry tracing ancestries brokering divisions trading truisms for credit matrilineal kinship considered in a language all its own de-spite not being sheltered in mountain ranges having found refuge in caves and coral for the lack of a better face always negotiated renditions in everyday story someone sees fit to represent you would think these words would speak to me of home find me grateful salt scrub sloughed off my thankfulness in AA meeting himynameischarlotte andimanempath witnessing imeananamerindian big book piles other people’s words just don’t interest me much anymore in the name of progress I call truce between transculturation and syncretism I give in muffled silence of cold blankets maybe it’s all just too far gone hicharlottewelcometounbelonging

Because the material without the spiritual and psychic does not a dialectic make.12 - Toni Cade Bambara, the Salt Eaters.

My Grandmother’s Garden endlessly self renewing thinkings doings what do my dreams mean even that seems obscured by the self-control i must be lacking recalcitrant reluctant remiss resurgent restitutive restorative don’t figure in the disciplines i am expected to master the way we were and are is there no desacralizing the wind blows tunnels through my memories and haunts my disconnection i remember i was supposed to talk to other indians except we passed each other unrecognizing and ashamed diminished by the disciplinary demands my notradicalenough friend ask me if i’ve seen her mother suicide visits me in unnamed spirit on this borrowed deck i don’t know much about being or becoming blind-igenous i know about the depth of never enough it crawls into your belly meanttobethereness hiding it for almost as long as you can remember i know about believing i don’t have anything of any consequence to say despite papers i have written speeches i have given i know about not making a difference after all i don’t really exist today we theorize the politics of revolution apathy brown black babies mothers as long as i can’t remember and they are not my own resocializing and reeducating ourselves tired frightened look away fast fast paddles hit water quick before the monster eats you that man, he knows about water, too cliff-jumping shorts play in black and white across my forehead sapodilla drops fruit in my bed tied up in someone else’s dreams how far must you have gone to have forgotten your own dead get UP child no time now for gardens underground i can’t get hibiscus to bloom here what do i do with this longing for my own soil ephemeral return to land i never left

there is a myth that orchids are inordinately fragile susceptible to the smallest shock exotic grandma said they were tough and best left alone aside from some selective pruning sovereign they know their own earth enjoy partnerships symbiosis syncretism hybridity words they may be familiar with having survived exportation transplantation artificial cultivation and resale i am come lately to their care have found frank conversation helpful they respond to our language sing song tones early in the morning reward me with echoes of grammies’ chiding othermothers’ remonstrances mind doan touch ’em too much dey independent wid long memories reckon-eyes foolin’ come now, you all got dem in pots up deer i have found they don’t do as well inside there isn’t much else here save for those few months a year perhaps the climate has also contributed to their vitamin d deficiency washing them out passing for fragile instead of deprived muffled screams anguished and indignant at overzealous cutting impatient redirection of roots into wood chips charcoal remnants of incendiary deforeststayshun forgive them its inexplicable after all farming bones marrow sucked out for fertilizer every flower needs its time in the dark revelling in saltcoatdulled shimmer of their flesh holding breath and thought in case of new growth miraculous every time they return hardy insatiable hunger for daylight draws them groaning out from beneath see them turn their faces up to their sisters and gossip about the neighbours while the trees celebrate their children luring them into the dawn fragile finds no purchase here it is re-served for arid reproductions requiring close examination to establish they are for real

Where do I begin miscegenated into dominance creolized touristified craving childhood reminiscence glue repels worn out even my own veins are anathema they itch on the inside i can see them stretched out over continents and honeycomb rock beach. ocean. building. limestone stair draped pulsing over canopy beds and louvered windows in their imaginary absence i feel the ache nostalgic of a lost limb i want to toy with the stump of my identity before i am snuffed out whooooooooshhhhhhh into extinction recognition and repair for stitched arteries leak into the in between time space place mothers’ land-ed periwinkle ackee johnny cake flickering across world views is a wake for my grandmothers they come when I call nighttime vigil for my child wrapped in bright made from anguish transmuted hatreds bred into coffee cream set aside the gin in a heartbeat burn for spirit breathe for mothers is there another story for me in there? sick handed down healing policing ourselves so industrious we are relieved even of our own agency tired I ride bitch alongside my own freedom wordsajumbleofprogress in my mouth teeth unbound i come to meltdown silver shackles molten anger and memory I want those trees and degrees very badly discovered bags of Bacardi caps and beetle runs no exception to the craving that has powe-red this reconstruction resurgence becoming i don’t need you to tell me this is my inheritance i recognize it on the death certificate floating i have never lived Arawak Pequot Taino Creek Seminole ways spinning through blue holes lickuhduhtarbrussssssh waiting under water eyes open sucker fish hitches onto my hips i don’t see the barracuda until the only recourse is to scamper leaping snagged propellor bleeds diluted ancestry into salt uncle not my uncle spear his only companion down down down no breath dancing with our mother for dinner trailing fingers in night sea skimmed by hungry mouths yellowtail come up half gone disappeared by the tickle beneath my fingers over gunwales rocked by waves headless snatched back i cradle what’s left my cousin swims with sharks guffaws at my foreign sensibilities settles

almost went back but for intergenerational manferrence hisfatherandmymother gave a whole new meaning to us callineachudduhsistabruddah love affairs marred by cockroaches and vegas showgirls widely available blackness be-come home legacy insufficient to repatriate me singlehandedly i caught tossed fruit drove drunken revels home to gunpoint encounters under lamplight and thought this was ancestral practice well by that time that’s what we had left my mother capers beneath liquid merciless thieves of our children’s bones you can drink these finite ripples in a land where i keep dogs’ and white folks’ secrets swallow the lost escapees diasporic neocolonial self-mutilating nation states hand over heart we are all punishing each other believe it is a form of love will my hands cramp with arthritis jagged with dysplasia tongue twisted with acculturation and appropriation soaked in an inland sea of lies genetically marked into authenticity on landscapes of souls spill that milk don’t touch each other love each other know each other sever rightfromthegetgo filth reprobates ancestry to cut your teeth on my that looks lovely better i watched that bird flip broken wing longer than i could bear couldn’t leave it couldn’t help it called in a rescuer provided a box cold as shit why daydream about faraway folks who look like me smell like me come on brown emergent from purulent chrysalis no iridescence here it’s a bat looks like a moth excruciating stretching wet wings spitted roasting someone lickitup there’s a piece stuck between your teeth eyes close hold my belly trees fall spirit walkers culled not indigenous to this land decisions made by creole bankers developers citizens related to me by choices some others made now i understand what she meant said she came to realize she lives in a black country home not her own since she don’t belong the way they say we ought to since she won’t crawl into the skin they’ve stretched out for us a moulted remnant of my-the-ological proportions can i get an amen