Day One–Notes:
In the U.S., we all grew up with the story of Sacagawea. The noble Indian woman that helped our mighty adventurers traverse unknown and virgin land, the brave mother that hitched that kid up on her back and traveled the world in spite of the odds.
Although at one point, I really admired Sacagawea, now, as a grown woman with two kids of my own, I’d sort of resented her. She was the mother I never could be–young, tough, stubborn, healthy, strong, helpful.
***
As I got ready to go out on this walk, it took me about half an hour to finally get off the computer. Another twenty minutes to decide if I would take a shower before I left or if I could make it unnoticed in the clothes I’d worn for the last three days. Another hour to finally eat, find clean clothes, get dressed.
And finally W* had to pull me out of the couch and almost shove me out the door.
Once outside, I felt very good. Just like I always do. My brain cleared, the fog I that had surrounded me for the last month lifted enough for me to realize exactly how hard it had been for me to see through it.
I vowed as I began to walk, I would not let myself ‘get that bad’ again. I would exercise, I would get strong enough to start running. How many times had I read that a 20 minute hard work out was the same thing as medication? How could I keep doing this to myself when I knew better? How much stupider could I get?
I would not allow myself to fall into that foggy place again. I made this promise to myself over and over again, to the rhythm of my breath, to the beat of my feet on the sidewalk.
***
The outdoors is for the healthy, right? It is where the lithe, the young, the nubile flourish. It is the nectar the sick, the fat, the ‘wrong,’ drink to become right. What is more right than “healthy”?
And just look at this woman! She is young, beautiful, nubile. She is strong, and carries her baby on her back with ease! Look at how her hair gracefully falls around her metal face, look at how much she loved her child!
Look at what a woman she was! Natural, a part of the world that surrounded her, an equal with the men she traveled with–and where she was unequal, fighting for her rights.
Healthy.
Untouched.
A better time, a better woman.
***
While Sacagawea was traversing a world with a baby on her back, she was also in an abusive relationship, physically, mentally and more than likely sexually.
In the Lewis and Clark Journals, Clark writes about a time when he stepped in after Scagawea’s husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, hit her. She was one of multiple very young Indian women her husband ‘married’ over the course of his lifetime. When Sacagawea and Charbonneau left with the expedition, a young Indian woman that was also Charbonneau’s “wife” was left behind.
There is a section in the travel journals when Clark notes that “the indian woman” was horribly sick and says, “if She dies it will be the fault of her husband as I am now convinced.”
A vast part of Sacagawea’s travels were also made while in severe pain–bad enough pain that Clark notes it often in his journals. She had to be bled at multiple points and was often “out of her senses.” I’ve seen speculation that she suffered from birthing trauma, chronic pelvic inflammatory disease, an STD, and a “’serious illness’ that she suffered from most of her adult life,” that may have contributed to her death.
And then when all was said and done, despite the fact that Sacagawea was one that is noted over and over again by Lewis and Clark as being the ‘valuable’ one of the S/C partnership–her husband is given $500 for services rendered–of which Sacagawea sees not one penny.
***
Finding this out about Sacagawea both broke my heart and outraged me. This is not what I learned in school. This is not what the feminist movement told me. Feminists had needed a heroine, and so they forced her body into that role–and the U.S. government was more than willing to play along.
With the “Madonna of her Race” comes story after story of stoic, brave, superhuman qualities–and lost was the humanity of a real woman. “Modonna” effectively denied Sacagawea and other indigenous, Native and Aboriginal women that complexity of humanity, that complexity of living as a gendered person under active colonization.
As Vine Deloria notes, in the book Lewis and Clark through Indian Eyes, French colonization of North America was based on kinship. That is, the French believed that loyalty to a nation would come through loyalty to families–and so they encouraged their ‘explorers’ to mix with Natives–to build communities with them and start families.
Sacagawea was ‘married’ to a man who was half French, half native–and who was living up to the order of his nation/state. Through the course of his life time, he would ‘marry’ several Native women-all of them very young, and many of them at the same time. Although it is not known for sure that Sacagawea experienced explicit sexual violence (my guess is that it is highly probable considering the physical abuse she definitely experienced), the fact that a nation/state ordered the sexual coupling of specifically Native women with specifically French men suggests that Sacagawea’s (and/or other native women) sexuality was considered an entity that must be controlled and strictly monitored–or in other words, indigenous women’s sexuality was considered an *active threat* to existing nation/states. Indigenous women’s sexuality was an intimate part of the colonial project–and as such, the sexuality of indigenous women has an intimate relationship with violence and control.
But we rarely think of colonialism and sexual violence when we think of Sacagawea. In erasing the complexity of her existence, her body has become imagined as a young, nubile, thin, strong body:
hair neatly braided
her nose fine and straight
her skin pure copper like a statue
A body that we imagine must be the kind of body that can hack traveling hundreds of miles with a baby strapped to it. A body that would not submit to sexual violence–a body that would be above rape.
In short, racist sexist ableism is written all over the Sacagawea story.
We do not imagine her as somebody who winced with every step she took. We do not imagine her late at night, crying out from unceasing pain. We do not imagine her as scared to cry out for fear of getting punished. We do not imagine her as somebody who may have had unhealed broken body parts or black and blue marks on her face.
What does it mean that we are unable to imagine Sacagawea as anything less than a goddess of Nature–all while she actually existed as a person who struggled to negotiate the pain her body left her in, the pain of walking, the pain of extended travel?
When we go for walks, how often do we consider whose land it is we are walking on? Or how many brown women were forcibly removed from the land we live on?
How many times do we connect the control of public space as intimately connected to the colonialism that was bent on controlling Sacagawea’s sexuality?
When do we consider that the control of public space becomes justified first and foremost through the control of the bodies of women like Sacagawea (whether it be in the form of active colonization that she lived through or the control of her story–the way the U.S. as a nation/state, forces the subaltern to tell the story *it* wants her to tell)?
***
Oddly enough, the achievement of Sacagawea is not so much that she did what she did–but that she did it while existing at the same place so many of us are at today–disabled, gendered, criminalized, abused, raped, in pain, absent of family and far away from a land that we’ve been forcibly removed from.
She did what I did when I took my first walk–she struggled to stand, she struggled to get her clothes back on, she struggled to deal with the squirmy child in front of her–she struggled.
And then with the help of a friend she did it anyway.
Did she mentally abuse herself the way that I have and often have to fight myself to stop doing (How could I let this get so bad? Why haven’t I worked harder? Why why why am I so stupid?)? I have no idea. I imagine she probably did at some point. She was only 12 when she was kidnapped from her family, and only 14 when she ‘married’ her husband. It’s easy, knowing everything that I know about abuse, to assume that she was probably harder on herself than any member of the expidition was by a hundred percent.
But then again–who knows?
If we allow Sacagawea the complexity of her humanity, we see that the question about her is not so much, was she a heroine (she was) as the U.S. government and many invested in feminist icons would have us believe, but rather instead– in what way was her movement her own? In what ways had her movement been forced upon her–and if she had the power of a respected and honored choice–what would she have done? Would she have gone on the Lewis and Clark journey? What would she say was *her* relationship to exercise, to health, to the outdoors?
Again, we can’t answer these questions using what we know about Sacagawea. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe in allowing ourselves to get caught up in what Sacagawea’s personal answers would be, we forget to ask *ourselves* those questions. We expect *her* body to continue to do *our* work–in the way that *we* demand she do it.
In what ways could we loosen the control we, as a colonial nation/state, had and continue to have over Sacagawea’s body? In what ways could loosening that control over her body allow us, today, to create space and freedom for our own bodies?
If we each had the power of a respected and honored choice–what would we do with our own bodies?
How would we move them?
***
I know only one answer right now…I will never again allow the naturalness of self-abuse to go unchallenged in my own head.
And I will never again assume that the process I go through to get my body up and moving is not normal.
I will rest–for just this moment–knowing that every day for hundreds of years, other women like me experienced ‘movement’ as a fight, as a battle, as a type of violence–and they did it anyway.
On their own terms.
Maybe because they had to. Maybe because they wanted to.
But always on their own terms,
in their own ways.
- Share
January 26th, 2009 at 3:55 pm #
“When we go for walks, how often do we consider whose land it is we are walking on? Or how many brown women were forcibly removed from the land we live on?”
This is such a crucial thing to think about. Thank you so much.
These days I am full of how beautiful the place I live in is, how privileged I am to be able to walk in its forests and by its rivers–at the same time I’m reading A People’s History of the United States and even though it’s a history of the whole country, the name of my state comes up so many times in the chapters on Indian “removal” and slavery. Who loved this place before I did? Whose hands shaped the fields, built the roads and the ancestors of today’s roads? Who wished they owned that field but were never allowed, who were forced to leave–here, in this place I’ve been walking in and loving for so long.
Your essay crystallized those questions for me. Now I know what I am looking for when I learn about my state’s history, and I have more thoughts about what it is for me to walk here freely and freely love this place.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:47 pm #
This made me think about the women who walk everyday across the desert in search of a “better life” these days. Of having to get out of bed to go to a job that you don’t really like with people that annoy you so that you can live. This reminded me of my mom who decided to leave an abusive situation and move her girls to a city where she knew no one.
I’ve always associated movement with stress, work and sadness. Getting up and going out was always a drag for me sometimes because it wasn’t always fun. The outside was always associated with danger. I always see it as work and not just something to be enjoyed.
Jeez. I just had a revelation.
I swear bfp, you’re better than my therapist.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:39 pm #
Beautiful post. I have been reading all of the posts concerning this project with excitement because I have also been thinking lately about the radical potential of everyday life and the possiblilty of a politics that springs *from* our daily lives and realities instead of being imposed on them. I don’t have much about that to add at this point, but I’ll keep reading.
“When do we consider that the control of public space becomes justified first and foremost through the control of the bodies of women like Sacagawea (whether it be in the form of active colonization that she lived through or the control of her story–the way the U.S. as a nation/state, forces the subaltern to tell the story *it* wants her to tell)?”
It’s interesting that you framed that question that way when talking about Sacajawea because there is a *literal* example of this going on in my town:
http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/local_govtpolitics/article/speeding_tickets_utility_rates_statue_marker_voted_on_by_council/23598/
In the middle of main street, there is a statue of Lewis and Clark standing up and Sacajawea kneeling at their side. There have been several protests about the statue, but so far the city hasn’t done much about it. Sacajawea’s body (again, rather thin and frail looking) has been stooped into a submissive position in order to tell history the way the white men who commissioned the statue, and the white man who made it, wanted it to be known. For me, that image just crystallized what you were saying in the post.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:23 pm #
Lovely post!
I read a book and did a project/presentation on her in elementary school. To show my knowledge of Native culture I was the only one to go in depth as I did in elementary school. I definitely did not learn all I know of her that I know today.
While in SD helping with the 08′ election I took this picture and Sacajawea is missing. What are your thoughts on these photos?
Now take a closer look and see the bullet holes on the American Indian Scenic Byway sign.
You ask a very good questions here bfp. “In what ways could loosening that control over her body allow us, today, to create space and freedom for our own bodies? If we each had the power of a respected and honored choice–what would we do with our own bodies?”
To answer those questions I feel we would be free of pain on our bodies. We would love our bodies and there would be no pain, no trauma, no hurt. This is what I feel.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:24 pm #
Does not look like my pictures are showing up. I think I had a problem posting my photos last time bfp. Let me know if they show up!
January 26th, 2009 at 10:20 pm #
emily wrote,
“the possiblilty of a politics that springs *from* our daily lives and realities instead of being imposed on them”
and i realize: we are in a sad, disconnected state if people are doing social-justice movement-making in any way other than *from* our daily lives and realities, if politics/activism is something imposed, if …
emily, i am hope hope hoping it’s more than possibility, and that it’s increasingly clear as the center and the heart.
love to all of you on this thread,
jess
January 27th, 2009 at 5:01 am #
Thank you for writing this.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:33 am #
Well written article. For any history buff and fancier, you can almost conclude that all women of color were raped and forced into these unions. It’s easier to think that they just gave themselves willingly to these foreign invaders. Violence, yes there was plenty of that also. I am working on a book about these “euros” and their relationships with Native and Slave women. Anyone with any first hand accounts, please send them to me.
January 27th, 2009 at 6:39 am #
I don’t often have much to say besides thank you, but thank you.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:39 am #
@andre–I think the the relationship between native and slave women with europeans was way too complicated to say that they were all raped or that they all gave themselves willingly (realizing that you said you can *almost* say…but also realizing that many many scholars/activists have said repeatedly through the years that you *can* say…). I actually wrote my thesis and spent considerable time researching exactly what you’re writing your book about, specifically within the context of Chicanas/mexicanas and La Malinche–I’ve changed my opinion a thousand times as to what is really the important issue when unraveling the relationship between native and slave women and europeans…Right now, I’m of the opinion that it seems more than a bit wrong to finally come to a conclusive answer as to what the women were thinking and doing. It’s assuming that a few words written down about women by a *white* man can honestly reveal an entiretly of a woman’s character. Hell, I’ve been writing this blog of mine for a good four years, and I still don’t think it shows all of me, or could ever possibly give any decent conclusive evidence (without me saying specifically) that the relationship between W* and I is harmonious or violent. People can assume and make some very good educated guesses–but how the hell would they know, really?
what we *do* know for sure is that the french specifically had a colonial project that involved using native women’s sexuality in a certain way. And I think that through that knowledge we can make some very good guesses about what kind of man (and what kind of masculinity) was traveling throughout North America at that time. and we can complicate that buy guessing that not all men are raping assholes–and not all men are good men that respect women. and we can assume that some men raped women, some men did not–but rape in and of itself *was* a part of the colonial project and was justified and legitimated through the need the ‘control’–and what recourse would any native woman have had if she was raped?
It was at that point that native women (and slave women) legally lost the right to control their bodies. *that* is what is iimportant. I mean–it is *100%* important that native women were raped–but getting lost in the question of ‘did they want it or didn’t they’ really, in my opinion, covers up the fact that legally, native women *became rapable*. they *became rapable* through colonization.
Specifically, it became possible to rape a native woman with no repercussions or accountability during colonization–and colonization, as a consequence, became very successful *because* that right to rape native women at will was legal, justified and accepted as necessary.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am #
one other thing–there is mention of the fact that S’s husband actually got cut by a woman before he joined the expedition–why? because the woman had caught him raping her young daughter.
I think we can make a very good educated guess that Sacagawea was sexually violated–but at the same time–I am still so reluctant to start speculating–because that speculation mimics the speculation that happens today with survivors of rape–we all know something sexual happened–did she want it? Or did she fight it?
January 27th, 2009 at 10:59 am #
@ emily–wow. that is some type of shit. and then the “fix it” statue is only 12 inches tall? um…what does that fix? It seems like folks just don’t get it…it’s not a matter of if she was courageous or not, or if she had a huge role to play in the expedition–but that um..it’s OFFENSIVE to represent a native woman kneeling besides two white men (sexual fantasy much? Geez). I don’t care if S. was a traitor and set Lewis and clark’s boats on fire–can we all admit that it’s well past the time that *any* woman should be represented as stooping or kneeling to men???? Geez….
January 27th, 2009 at 11:14 am #
@susan–such good questions/reflections. while every single state in the union has a history of indian removal–as somebody who has traveled throughout the country–I’ve got to say that two states in particular have really got that history swirling so thick in the air, it’s almost impossible to ignore it–Minnesota and South Dakota. Every where you go, there is another memorial, another statue, of places where Native people were slaughtered, forcibly evicted–in places like MIchigan, where the removals absolutely did happen and continue today, factories and warehouse were built over the sites, and you become distanced from that history–from that truth.
When I was in Minnesota last, I spent the first bit of it in my hotel room just sorta stunned and crying–on the way in from the airport, I had seen TWO memorials for native peoples. And then a native woman from the area spoke where I was speaking, and she brought it up again–that the land we were speaking on was not ours. That life had been lost on it.
If we don’t allow that realization to happen–that realization that even if women weren’t killed or forcibly removed from the land we walk on– *literally* so we, as U.S. citizens could walk on it–I don’t really even recognize how we can begin the process of building a new world…
January 27th, 2009 at 11:14 am #
“But we rarely think of colonialism and sexual violence when we think of Sacagawea.” Taking history, taking fact and making it the point of departure for our understanding and action poses a constant challenge. Although I might be more reserved about using that ‘we,’ my own lapses in consistently applying to the events of daily life the premises about exploitation and the interests of the ruling class that I know are true and uninterruptedly at work. That difficulty is only compounded by the everyday response, “You are so cynical.” No, just realistic and aspiring to honesty. Or should we say, talk the talk and walk the walk.
On reconstructing the past, I agree with BfP that there was necessarily a range of behavior. The point is to articulate the social, political and cultural systems that interacted to create the parameters for individual and collective decisions and actions. From that perspective, those systems establish a structure of limits and possibilities. You can bet every structural possibility was practiced. The question to answer is by whom and by how many, with what understanding and what consequences.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:37 pm #
I know I haven’t been commenting on these posts, because I can’t even form anything to say besides “thank you” to both you & Jess. This one in particular, I’m sure you know without me saying how much it means to me to see this specific meditation. So thank you.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:48 pm #
The pictures did not show up! Darn!
But, the picture is the sign of the Lewis & Clark sign with who missing, yes, Sacajewea is missing. The “American Indian Scenic Byway,” sign is on the right of that sign and it has bullet holes in it. That is the sad truth. Honoring Lewis & Clark and not honoring Sacajawea while dishonoring Natives continuously.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:40 am #
If we allow Sacagawea the complexity of her humanity, we see that the question about her is not so much, was she a heroine (she was) as the U.S. government and many invested in feminist icons would have us believe, but rather instead– in what way was her movement her own?
Can we all attempt to ask that question of ourselves too? The process would be incredible.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:50 am #
@ lisa–I think so too. You know–I’ve noticed that for a while now, the majority of my writing seems to be freaking questions. It’s sorta irritating to me because I want to make solid heavy statements–and all I can come up with are 5thousand questions. But I think when I’m at the stage I’m at–when people in general are at that beginning stage–questions are the most important thing we can do–come up with thousands of questions and figure out which ones are important to answer-
EVERYTHING needs to be up to the challenge of questions–if something’s not–then it needs to go, you know?
I don’t know which ways my movements are my own. I’m still thinking that one through. I think it’s the one I’m really working with/meditating with–the one I’m starting with.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am #
Said it before and I’ll say it again right now. One good question is more valuable than ten good answers.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:27 am #
I think questions come not only in the beginning of something, but when you have been through a lot and you need to sift through the heavy layers of the past and choose for yourself what you intend to keep and what you can disregard. Simply put, I think it keeps with aging reflection. You don’t just ask “questions” (who what when where why), I see you as using language as a shovel – organizing, piling, sorting – for all the good soil you’ve seen and experienced.
It’s hard work to ask the strong questions, the ones that lead us somewhere. And when those kinds of “questions” come with life experience, it only makes it all the more arduous.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:04 pm #
thank you for this. so good.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:29 am #
but when you have been through a lot and you need to sift through the heavy layers of the past and choose for yourself what you intend to keep and what you can disregard.
soooo sooo soo true.
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:22 am #
S’ok – I’m uncolonizing Portland, OR. White men may have driven out the brown people, but we’re slowly inching back