¡Colores!; Colores 514 False Traditions, False Idols; 514; False Traditions, False Idols

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She's been called the Rosa Parks of the American Indian Movement, Charlene Teeters, as an artist and on the front lines, she challenges us to look at the impact of Native American stereotypes. Next on Colores. I grew up in Spokane, Washington and married a callville man. I often say that at that time I was a good Indian woman. My whole lifestyle was around my children, around my family,

around doing traditional art forms. And there was a lot of support for women to do that type of work, very little support to do anything but that. As I began to experiment and do more painting and do more other kinds of work, there wasn't the support there. In fact, it was beginning to kind of trample on what was traditionally a male domain. So it was, you know, the beginning of beginning to sort of trample, you know, and go into other areas that I wasn't welcome. Welcome to the 1986 graduation ceremonies. Really, I left Spokane on the callville reservation to, I wish I could stay away to get an education, but it was more about escaping, you know, and happy, home life. Just completely removing myself from the conditions that are on the reservations, the high alcoholism and alcohol and drug dependencies and related deaths.

And when I look back at the time, it's like I could very easily become part of the statistics that we all quote. I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1984. The transition was not difficult for me. I went from Indian community to another community where there was a large population of native people. And it was very comfortable and it was very nurturing place to go. My work was really a concentration in painting and actually the very romanticized images of women as a center of the culture, the keeper of the culture. That it was a way of retaking and reclaiming my identity as a native woman and to give some integrity back to that identity. From there, I

was recruited by the University of Illinois to participate in their program. And they recruited three of us, myself, an OSH man and a Choctaw man. So we thought this is a great opportunity and it was really with a great deal of excitement that we had began this journey to the Midwest. And we all got there and immediately we were looking for our community. You know, Indian people do that. You look around and say, well, where are the other Native American students? Well, they weren't in. This is a community that was very, very white, very elite that there was very few people of color a little on Native people. The three of us going to a community of 36 ,000 people would have been culture shock in itself. But to be one of three Native American students on a college campus that used as their athletic identity, a chief mascot, made it even more difficult for us. They had so

much invested so much of their own identity in this chief mascot, a very, very stereotypical romanticized image of Native people and really resented Native people even challenging their idea of Indians. You know, their idea of who Indian people are. The catalyst for me getting involved in challenging the stereotypical image of Native people, what in this community was my children. They wanted to go to the basketball game. And so

I said, certainly we can go. You need to know though that people will wear paint, people will wear feathers, people will dress up like Indians. Acting out there, they're negative stereotypes. I work very hard to instill a sense of pride in my children and who they are as Native people. And so they have a real core of understanding of what it is to be a Native person and what those things mean, those things that are central to our identity, paint, feathers, dance, the drum. So I thought that they were pretty secure in their identity. They were in junior high and high school at the time that we were in this community and at the University of Illinois. I tried to prepare them for what they would see. But when the halftime event came along and Chief Alina what came out, I'd never seen him before and neither had my children.

And he came out and he was wearing a full buckskin regalia. He was wearing 90 eagle feathered headsets and he began to do what was built as an authentic Indian dance. He began to do what was more like a gymnastics routine, jumping and twirling in the air, touching his toes. The people began to holler and went into this frenzy, you know, around the whole Chief Dance. And my kids the sank in their seats because they were just so embarrassed and humiliated by that activity out there. I remember that it was a sadness that still won't leave me. What I witnessed in my children was a blow that I could see physically in their face

and in their body. They tried to become invisible. They became ashamed, you know, who they were. They were hoping nobody would know who they are. My son tried to laugh. I think you laugh when you're the butt of the joke. And you don't want people to know that you're hurting. That was a catalyst for me because I knew that it couldn't be

there in that environment and not address it. That it's important to protect the integrity of our cultural identity. That if I didn't stand up and say something, do something, then how will my children know that it's important to protect? That's all I say to America. I want you to remember our past. This past will give you direction for the future. Just as our people in our past, we are the spirit of the future. I did it in the only way I knew how, which was to stand there with a sign that said, American Indians are human beings, we are not mascots. When I was standing

out there, I was afraid, you know, and people did come up and spit on me. People did come up and throw things at me. People did come up and ridicule me. Try to make me feel like I'm the one that there's something wrong with. It's fear because you know they don't care, really. They really don't care about you and somehow they don't see you as full -fledged human beings. I think that's dangerous. And if we allow this group of people to be singled out for any kind of treatment, then we're all at risk, all of us. Also, it being our turn, somewhere down the line, to be targeted. Okay, now how do you want me to help you? The work that I've been doing in the last five years has been extension of the work that I've been doing on the front lines of the struggle to remove stereotypes and symbols

that reinforce the stereotyping of native people out there. So in the same way that painters use paint or stone if your sculpture, popular culture is my medium. Installation is a very contemporary form. Basically what you're doing is taking a room, an environment, and then transforming that. So the space itself is the work. It's important for me to have the viewer be part of it. So in that way they can enter the space and not just view it as they would view a painting or sculpture but become part of the piece and interact with the piece. What I do is collect these things, put it in a context for people to examine them. I think that we become so desensitized to them that we don't really see them for what they are. And so what I'm doing is putting them in a very concentrated

space for people to feel the bombardment. The purpose for me is to create a form for people to debate the issue. And I really don't care which side of the debate they come down on. That people feel like they need to look at it. Even think about it for a moment. Then the pieces are successful to me as an artist. If people can think about it while they're in the space, then it's important. I think that every group of people in the country have to deal with their stereotypes. There are stereotypes of them as a people, a stereotype of women, a stereotype of even white men. It's kind of human nature in a sense to kind of buy into it or to fall back on these monolithic images of people. As we're talking about

the other group of people. And I would say that those images are never positive. Even if they intended it to be some kind of positive presentation of those people, to reduce an entire race or group of people to a monolithic image is to devalue that group of people, no matter what. But we are the best representation of ourself. Whenever you have a misunderstanding or misperception of a people that does nothing but to build walls. Because those people have a struggle to try to tear down those perceptions in order to just be heard. The real people aren't seen as real people because the images in popular culture are just so powerful. And

completely make us invisible. So I've got the real people in black and white and then the images from popular cultural and these very bright, shiny, candy coated color images. In putting things over their faces, I am making people look past these objects, past them to see the real people. So in a sense it's very painful for me to do this, but I'm trying to get the viewer to feel what it is that we have to overcome in order to be seen and heard. The term red skin is the most erogatory term that you could call native people. This term is equivalent to nigger. This term has a very violent historical reference to native people. At a time when the United States government had a

bounty on Native American people. You could earn money by killing Indians. The Tomahawk was the tool that was used to collect the bounty to scalp native people. And was in fact issued by the United States government for the purpose of scalping Indians so they could collect bounty. And if you brought in the bodies of Indian people, you could collect your bounty. And when it became too cumbersome to bring in the bodies, they would bring in the heads. When it became too cumbersome to bring in the heads, they would bring in the scalps or the red skins of native people. And that's where this term comes from. This is the image used by Cleveland Indians. And

again, I take something that's a direct use by a team and is imposed on a group of people despite their objections. This image should have gone by the wayside along with Little Black Sambo and the Frito Bandito. That this image honors neither Indian or non -Indian people. And that I think anyone who looks at this can recognize it as a blatant racist caricature. And tells you, you know, really again, our place in the society. The car gets from the American Indians. Sure, I love you people. You're blood. You're blood is the same blood of mine. I don't have nothing against you. I'm not making fun of it. Today, you know what? The only for that. Hey, darling, the dollars is what I'm concerned with. The dollars is what I'm concerned with, darling. I'm not tired. I'm not tired of doing this. It comes down to one simple thing. Dollars on it. Money, you know it. You

know it. I'm not a friend. Hey brother, please. Cut the cameras off. Cut the cameras off. God should do this. Often the argument in terms of, you know, changing these images is that it's an issue of money that somehow they're going to lose support or that it's going to cost too much to change these images. And I just don't believe it. I really don't. I think that they could make a lot of money out of changing these images and that they're if it is trivial as they like to say, then why is there any objection whatsoever to changing these images? I really feel it has more to do with power than it has to do with money. This piece is

really a layering of information on the walls, almost invisible to the naked eye. I have the names of tribes that were terminated and are exterminated by the United States government. I bought this toilet paper when I was a student at the University of Illinois and I put and installed these rolls of toilet paper on the wall that has the names of the exterminated tribes. The title of the piece is called Wipeout and what I'm doing basically is just taking things, you know, from popular culture and then making the connection with the real historical events. This piece is called Her Story, which was a recreation of

my grandmother's space. My grandmother had 12 children in this house and this tar paper house and only four lived to be adults. And that was not unusual for Indian people at that time. To me, it symbolized her will to survive. I wanted to, you know, refer to the portrait of my uncle. He served as many of our young men served in World War I and World War II for a country where they had no rights. It wasn't until 1954 that we were given the right to vote. We're talking about Native people still fighting for very basic rights that other Americans take for granted. We've built this whole

mythology around America. It's about some of the qualities that we all want to have. It's about being honorable. It's about standing alone. It's about standing for truth. It's about standing for human rights. That's the myth that we are. I think when we take a really harsh look at who we really are, that America has to come to terms with its history and terms of its relationship to Native people. That they completely disregarded a continent of nations that occupied this land. They had to dehumanize those people in order to remove them from the land and they did that through genocide. This piece is called American Holocaust. It's meant to be a visual reference to the wounded Neem Memorial in South Dakota where over 300 mostly women and children were killed at the hands of the

Seventh Calvary. And we are told and taught within the school system and constantly reminded to remember the Holocaust that went on in Nazi Germany. But my point in the piece is that we should also remember the Holocaust that happened in America. The genocide that happened on this continent is the most complete and continued process of genocide that's ever happened in the history of the world. The two million Native Americans were killed on this continent. I think it's closer to 20 million and that may still be on the low side. Millions of people who no longer exist,

whose nations were completely wiped out, they most complete genocide, the history of the world, happened on this continent. Right now it's super beautiful, right? Ignorance is our biggest enemy out there. Out there I mean everywhere. The battle used to be on the battlefield. The battle today is in the classroom. The battle today is in the courtroom and the thing that we're fighting over is our own self -image, our identity. I think it's amazing to me that the battle today is over our image, that we are really trying to reclaim our self. We are trying to reclaim our history, our culture, our spiritual items, and our images.

We are... It's about self -determination. It's about self -identification and you respecting us on our own terms. Until we have that, we will never have equal voice or equal rights in this country. I think in order to begin to heal ourselves and we're going to survive in this planet to come to some basic understanding, you know, how can we understand people when we don't listen, when we aren't hearing them, or when we

try to trivialize what it is that they are trying to communicate or say. You know, our elders talk about that as part of our prophecy that there has to be a respect. And once we lose that, it begins to be a process of destruction. Even the smallest voice, we must pay attention to that voice and respect them because maybe within them there is some information that we need to survive as a people. As humankind, that it's not easy. It really isn't, so we have to consciously be aware of those things. Consciously do that and remind ourselves and remind those people who kind of step out and are disrespectful. That it may be the end of humankind if we don't pay attention to those voices around us.

I don't think that any one group has all the answers to anything. You know, basically we've been operating as if one group of people has all the answers. I think we have to see each other as the same thing. We have to all realize that we all have a responsibility to begin to deconstruct these things that separate us. And that it's all our responsibility. It's not just a Native American issue. It's not just those people's issue or those people over there deal with their issues. That we all have a responsibility to not just hear it, but to act on it. It's Eastern Cherokee made. We see examples of Indian people acting out the stereotypes in order to have some kind of acceptance. People participating in their own oppression, we have to first

challenge the confusion within our own communities in order to be healthy again. We have people who are suffering from internalized racism and internalized sexism and all the other stuff that we're all dealing with. And have basically taken what is reflected by the dominant society or the expectations. And if you can't meet that, that's something's wrong with you. And so we have a lot of people who are doing all kinds of things to try to overcome, you know, so -called their weaknesses because they don't measure up somehow. The first thing you need to do is to accept yourself as who you are. I think it's key to being just healthy if we're talking about the health of our larger communities, self -acceptance is key. Those things that are unique to them that make them human are important

and that it's important for them to stand up for that. The massacres that happened to us, the army that came took our lives and killed our people. They did not destroy our vision for a strong future. Originally the stand that I took was, it was for my children and it was from a very personal place that I began to take that stand alone because I felt I had to. That stand has grown into a national movement to remove these mascots and images and stereotypes of Native American people out there. So the work is how I empower myself. I've seen people who have never been involved in anything political come and experience my work and walk away empowered because

it has a way of reversing the roles of those who have power and those who do not. And they come away feeling empowered by experiencing that and encourage that they can make a difference. That one person can make a difference and I think that that's important. We're a copy of this colores program sent $35 which includes shipping and handling to KNME TV, 1200 University Boulevard Northeast,

Albuquerque, New Mexico, 8 -7 -102 or call 1 -800 -328 -5663. You