Oregon artist embraces her complex Black and Native American identity Starks works against white supremacy, lateral oppression

BY KATHRYN STYER MARTINEZ

Amber Starks, 42, owns three pairs of roller skates; her favorites are blue suede with turquoise flowers. When she glides around on eight wheels, she says, she skates in a dancey kind of way she adapted from her brother’s swaggy style.

“Roller skating is like my go-to. I love to roller skate,” said Starks, who was born in the ’80s and thinks she might have learned to walk and skate at the same time.

What she loves about skating is how connected it makes her feel to her Blackness.

Starks says at times, she has felt like she was not Black enough and sometimes, not Mvskoke enough.

Now, Starks is trying to dismantle what she calls internalized boundaries that separate her Black and Indigenous identities, things that might cause a person with intersecting identities to feel not enough.

“Like, if you didn’t grow up on the rez, you’re not Native. …That’s a very singular narrative,” she said. “Or if you grew up in the suburbs and not the ’hood, you’re not really Black.”

Starks says she wants it to be OK to exist in multiple identities, but when it comes to being Black and Native, “There are a plethora of identities and plethora of lived experiences.” She wants them all to be enough. She wants other Black Native people to feel enough.

Starks is a community advocate and artist. Since the pandemic, she works to create space for herself and others to embrace their Black Native identities through art.

A core aspect of her work is pushing back on lateral oppression within communities of color, conflating community identity with a singular experience.

While useful in helping communities create a shared connection, she said,

“Those shared experiences don’t have to exclude other people who are also from your community but experienced oppression in a different way.

“My hope is that we’ll find a way to shift that projection and do work that sets us all free and doesn’t create boundaries.”

Skating is an escape from that serious thinking. When Starks is skating, she said, “I don’t think of any of this stuff. I tell people that all the time...I’m not thinking about sovereignty, liberation, none of that. All I’m thinking about is rollerskating to my favorite songs and just being present in the moment.”

Born in Los Angeles, Starks moved with her family to Portland, Oregon, at age 10 where she still lives today. Growing up in Portland was a struggle, she said, but there was enough of a Black community to make her feel comfortable, safe and seen.

“I’m so very glad to be Black,” she said. Still she struggled.

Being seen is part of what Starks’ work is all about. She is an enrolled member of the Mvskoke Nation and a descendant of Cherokee, Shawnee, Quapaw and Yuchi communities. Her work affirms her Black, Native and Black Native identities. Her hope is that others will feel affirmed as well.

“I do work that I hope makes room and space for people whose background is both Black and Native and or Black or Native,” said Starks.

Starks said she regularly asks herself what it means to be Black and Native.

There were times when she said she didn’t know if she was allowed to be both Black and Native. She is both but she didn’t grow up in Mvskoke culture. She said it was expensive for her parents to take the whole family to Oklahoma to visit their Native family.

But she has always known where she comes from.

“I come from two great peoples, both who have identities outside of our oppression outside of colonialism and white supremacy but have often been shaped by the trauma of both of those very real projects,” Starks said.

The federal government forced Native Americans from their homelands across the eastern and southern regions of Alabama and Georgia in the 1830s in order to cultivate their homelands. The Indian Removal Act signed by Andrew Jackson forced Choctaw, Creeks (Mvskoke) Chickasaw and Seminole to Oklahoma in what’s known as the Trail of Tears.

“I think about how my Mvskoke ancestors were forced off of our traditional homelands in Alabama and Georgia,” she said, “... and then my Black ancestors are displaced from Africa and forced on the middle passage onto the lands of my Native ancestors, right, and how that very real violence has affected both of us.”

Starks said she feels like the personification of her parents, “not only hopes and dreams, but fortitude and resistance and willingness to see themselves as worthy of being free, right? Worthy of being more than just defined by the systems.”

Starks reluctantly identifies as an artist. Her work challenges and tries to dismantle white supremacy, settler colonialism and racial capitalism, she says. On Instagram, that looks like an image taken in outer space of stars, nebulae or galaxies and a message overlaying the image.

Her handle “Melanin Mvskoke” on social media is an embrace of her identities but also a way to stay safe from internet trolls, she said in an interview on the “All My Relations” podcast.

Her content is pro-Black, pro-Indigenous and pushes a discourse of dismantling white supremacy and lateral oppression.

From July 28 to Sept. 2, Starks will be part of the “Black History IS History” exhibit at the Multnomah Art Center in Portland.

Starks’ piece will be a self-portrait with a poem, “Little One, Black and Red,’’ overlapping the image. The portrait wears a red and black earring she beaded with accents of iridescent silver beads around the edge.

She shared a passage with NABJ Monitor.

“And though your two peoples come from [a] continent separated by oceans and currents, distance and chance, languages and customs, they are united in you by destiny and purpose.

“Remember, Little One, Black and Red, your existence is as important as the heart’s beat and the lungs’ breath. As the sun’s rays and the moon’s beams. As yesterday’s hope and tomorrow’s prayer.

“So be brave little one! Know that you never have to hide who you are, take sides, or abandon either of your peoples.”

The exhibit celebrates Black artists in Oregon, and they’re given free rein.

Starks hopes her piece will help Black Native American people give themselves permission to exist fully as both Black and Native and Black Natives, as she has given herself permission.

“Being Black and Native, is an honor for me. There’s so much potential in that identity for me, right,” said Starks. She adds that she’s no longer skeptical of who she is, if she’s enough of either. But even still, she said she struggles with being Black.

“In a white supremacist world, I struggle with what it means to be Black and who gets to define that, right? But I don’t let the systems define me. I let my peoples and cultures and my histories and my future define me.”