Where I Come From Is Like This (blog entry 3)

                 "Nowhere in my mind is there a foolish woman, a dumb woman, a vain woman, or a plastic woman, though the Indian women I have known have shown a wide range of personal style and demeanor," Paula Gunn Allen writes in Where I Come From Is Like This. She is an American Indian who sees two different cultures: Her American culture of the western industrial and postindustrial societies (patriarchy system), and her tribal culture. Within each culture the way women are seen and treated are conflicting, which causes contradictory identities that she and other American Indians are forced to live by. Partying, drinking, moving around a lot, getting a good job then quitting, violent exchanges, and even suicide are results of having two conflicting identities. "We act in these destructive ways because we suffer from the societal conflicts caused by having to identify with two hopelessly opposed cultural definitions of women."
                She had a white Christian education where she heard stories about how her tribe "supposedly" treated women. For instance, non-Indian women were taught stories that Indian women who were menstruating were segregated from everyone, indicating that a menstruating women were unclean and not fit to be of company of men. This information startled Paula Gunn Allen because if anything this was opposite of how menstruating women were treated in her tribal culture. When a woman was menstruating in her tribe they were thought to possess such power that it threw male power completely off kilter. The "stories" that the western culture told about Indians were absurd and completely false. These stories benefited the way the patriarchal societies of the industrial and postindustrial culture were seen, which made them the better way of living. If societies knew there was a more equal way of living, where gender did not matter, then we would want to change our culture from a patriarchal structure to a more fair society. Change scares people, and it threatens the way privileged people, white men, live their lives and therefore these "stories" are kept intact to avoid our society from change.
                 In the end she writes how the industrial and postindustrial cultures are affecting the tribal cultures, even with the oral tradition that adapts to the flow of the present while never losing its connection to the past, the present culture is changing drastically as the present day western culture seeps its way into the tribes."Of course the ravages of colonization have taken their toll; there are orphans in Indian country now, and abandoned, brutalized old folks; there are even illegiti- mate children, though the very concept still strikes me as absurd." Acts that never would have been happening nor thought about in years past are now an occurrence in the Indian world. "Proximity to the 'civilizing' effects of white Christians has not improved the moral quality of life in Indian country." If anything these culture changes need to be flipped; If only we, the western patriarchal culture, could observe, listen and then follow some of the Indian tribal ways that Paula Gunn Allen grew up with, we could make our societies a better place by going against the norm. It would help immensely with the  "opposed cultural definitions of women" that she and other modern American Indian women face.


                Questions that were raised for me as I read Where I Come From Is like This, how can a culture who is based on respect and equality within gender, not patriarchal, be labeled (by a corrupt patriarchal culture) as howling, blood-thirsty beings? This concept I am unable to grasp, and it makes me wonder where on earth did these stereotypes begin and why are they believed? Are their sole purpose to keep things in the industrial and postindustrial culture from changing? To keep us in a patriarchal system? Is it fear of us becoming an equal society like the Indian culture in which Paula Gunn Allen knew?

               This reading connects to bell hooks' book Feminism Is For Everybody, specifically chapters seven and ten. In those chapters she discusses how class and race were another oppression among women. For instance white upper class women were the most privileged of the women in the western culture. All women were not seen as equals to men, but if you were a woman of color or a woman of lower class you were not as privileged as white upper class women. In Where I Came From Is like This, Paula Gunn Allen was a woman, but also an Indian. She had the stereotype of "savage people" which came from her Indian culture as well as being oppressed for being a woman. She did have her tribal culture where she was treated an equal to any man or woman in her tribe, but that fact did not make it okay for the way she was treated in the industrial and postindustrial cultures. No matter if you are an Indian woman, a woman of different race, or of a different class, you should be treated equally with men, and all society members, and this way of living would be supported by bell hooks and Paula Gunn Allen and all the feminist activists across the world.