Showing posts with label Deborah Miranda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deborah Miranda. Show all posts

Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging


Edited by Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez 


Unpapered is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship. 
 
Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to “pretendians”—non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits—and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples’ professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.

How the Land was Lost: El Potrero

By Deborah Miranda, author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

At the end of June 2012, I traveled back to my homeland in the Carmel area of California. My goal was to discover more about Rancho El Potrero, the piece of land that was awarded to my 5x great-grandfather, Fructuoso de Jesus Cholom Real by Governor Alvarado of Mexico soon after secularization (when Mexico, then occupier of California, closed down the missions). 

Read more How the Land was Lost: El Potrero

River, Blood, And Corn: A Community of Voices

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