ᎤᏬᎯᏳᎯᏍᏓ ᎠᎵᎢᏗᏍᎩ: the obedient traitor
Reflections and Meanderings on the Indian
by Kilo
Image from Nithin P John
My grandma left behind a heavy, black, hard plastic suitcase full of photos. The earliest, I believe, is penciled with the year 1940 and is worn soft from time. I’ve sifted through the mix of photos more times than I can count. Each time I dug between captured time and space, I was looking for pieces of stories that might emerge. I was hoping for something that could give me an answer to who I was.
Who were the people that made up my existence? How did I come to be?
I think my whole life I’ve been enamored with the past. And even more so, the imagination of the past. What existed beyond the confines of the image? Who stood behind the camera? Was it humid that day, or did the air smell of fresh laundry? There are countless scenarios, with limitless musings, on things that cannot be confirmed other than in the fringes of my own wonder.
original artwork by author, A Bastardized Title For A Fit Existence
I must be honest in why journeying through the past has felt more comfortable than exploring the messy tumblings of who I am, as I am. The past is accessible only through the mind. Fractions of the time can be caught through recording devices: written work, photos, videos, and other reproductions, but these things are only capable of holding whatever is in scope at that moment in time. Memory though? It is much more sensational, colored with emotion, the entire landscape of the past can shift and morph to that of the ruminator. And still, the understanding attached to a reflection of the past cannot be separated from that of the present, and all that has led up to the current timescape. Just as we cannot separate ourselves from our histories, we cannot separate ourselves from our understanding of our histories. The two points oscillate each other, influencing how each travels through the endless progression of time.
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Dr. Thomas Belt, first-language Cherokee speaker, explains that time is conceived as “infinitely inflexible” in the language. In a chapter discussing the connection between Cherokee worldview and well-being, Belt and co-author Heidi Altman, posit that language-based cognitive structures must be considered when approaching solutions for intergenerational trauma and grief. The two explain that the complex morphology of the language allows for speakers to conceive of the past as ongoing, in rich contrast to the linear evolution of English conceptual spatial metaphor.
Rather than seeing events as beads on a string or points on a line that must always occur in the same order with the same distance between them, Cherokee speakers conceive of time (or life) as a room one enters by one door at birth and leaves by another at death. All of the possible events that have happened, are happening, or will happen exist in this room. Over the course of one’s life one may interact with the various events that have transpired, or those that have yet to do so, in various ways. We have discussed the process of reading the past elsewhere (Altman and Belt 2008); in short, Cherokee speakers have the conceptual ability to move about in the room and pick up and examine events at any point they wish. So when a Cherokee speaker talks about the Removal, she or he can do so with a sense that the events of that time are still here with us, immediate and ongoing. (Altman and Belt, 4)
Following suit of the “big room of life,” once the door to leave is opened, it surely cannot just be an exit. I think that the door leads to another room, and again, and again. The house of our families, our histories, the collective makeup required to have birthed us, makes up the very reason for the room itself.
I believe Dr. Belt envisioned “the room” as a helpful articulation and a beautiful metaphorical representation of spatiotemporal reality. Within our rooms, comes the breadth of what will come to pass and what has. The black suitcase leans against my wall and all those memories are embedded in my progression towards the future. What of the past as it is with me, present and evermore.
Altman and Belt continue to connect metaphor with language, explaining that the concept of “forgetting” in Cherokee is used as a metaphysical representation of an action.
To say “I am forgetting,” a Cherokee speaker says agikewsga. [ᎠᏋᎨᏫᏍᎦ; awvkewsg] This verb shares its root with the word dikewi or “blind.” So for a Cherokee speaker, forgetting is literally not being able to see something that has happened in the past. Events become forgotten to a speaker because his or her heart/mind cannot see them in the big room of life. (Altman and Belt, 6)
It is not without question that we, Cherokees (Natives broadly), have forgotten many of our ontological beliefs and epistemological frameworks that govern and rule our conscious experiences and intrapersonal deictic foundations. While this forgetting was not voluntary, nor consensual, the presence of such an absence requires a hollow space that cannot be filled. A hunger, a cancer, an (un)real beast that is the persistence of whiteness. And where whiteness is adjoined, an untethering must have transpired.
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Mose Killer’s narrative speaks to a displacement of self, within the shifting tides of time and how we have become a changeling thing. Published in 2018, Cherokee Narratives: A Linguistic Study compiled numerous stories across genres to document and offer linguistic analysis on Cherokee language and culture. One story included is Mose Killer’s narrative “Reminiscence” that offers a window into his view of the world.
ᏂᎯᎾ ᏱᎬᏯᏛᏛᎿ what has happened with our Cherokee people ᏍᎩᏃ ᎠᏂᏲᏁᎦ ᏄᎾᏍᏛ the influence a lot of it ᎦᏣᏄᎵ ᎠᏂᎩᏍᏗ ᎨᏒ ᏃᏊᎴ ᏩᏥ ᏂᎪᎯᎸ ᎾᏅ ᏂᏕᎩᏅᎿ ᏩᏥ you know this what runs our lives anymore ᎩᎳᏊᏅ ᎢᏳᏍᏗ I’ve got to go ᏓᎬᏲᏎᎵ ᏂᎴᏱᎩ ᏍᎩ ᏂᏓᏍᎩᏪᏎᎵ I have got to go and start something else five o’clock ᎠᏟᎢᎶᏢ ᏃᏊ it is time to go ᎥᏍᎩᏃ ᎠᏂᏲᏁᎦ ᎢᎬᏱ ᏧᏂᎷᏤ ᎠᎹᏰᏟ ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ ᎠᏁᎲ ᏍᎩᏅ ᎢᏳᏍᏗ ᏚᏂᏲᏞ we did not sunup to sundown ᏱᏧᎦᏌᏔᎾ ᏅᏙ ᏱᏙᏧᎴᎿ ᏗᎦᎸᏫᏍᏓᏁᏗ ᎨᏒ ᎤᎿ ᎠᏓᎴᏂᏍᎨ ᏱᏭᏕᎵᏣᏅ ᎢᎪᎯᏓ
Cherokee Narratives: A Linguistic Study by Durbin Feeling, William Pulte and Gregory Pulte.
The University of Oklahoma Press, 2018.
Killer laments on the white man’s influence, particularly how time itself has been colonized: “ᏂᎪᎯᎸ ᎾᏅ ᏂᏕᎩᏅᎿ ᏩᏥ — these watches — you know this is what runs our lives anymore.” Killer expresses his contentment, disappointment, and frustration for how life has seemingly shifted into something he doesn’t recognize. Interestingly, Killer locates his point of reference to “what was” as somewhere far enough back to first contact. Although left untranslated, the line “ᎠᏂᏲᏁᎦ ᎢᎬᏱ ᏧᏂᎷᏤ” says, “when the people first came,” referring to when the “Indians of America” were “untouched” by the gargantuan hunger of whiteness.
So, what about you, I’m asking you, what has happened with our Cherokee people? A lot of it has to do with the white man’s influence. The everyday fast pace — and these watches — you know this is what runs our lives anymore. In a little while I am going to tell you I’ve got to go, or you are going to tell me that. I’ve got to go and start on something else. When five o’clock comes, it’s time to go. That’s what the white man has brought to the Indians of America. We didn’t have anything like that. Our ancestors didn’t. Sunup to sundown; when the sun came up, the work began until it went down. (Killer, 161–62)
Killer states with certainty the small differences in social manner that represent very large shifts in public belief and custom. At one point, he directs a rhetorical question at the listener: “What has happened with our Cherokee people?” And yet, it seems that in part, his own answers lie in the way he is speaking. Fascinatingly, Killer maintained a speech cadence and framing aligned with Cherokee syntactic structures, while he chose English words that helped to articulate his scathing opposition towards the nation state. It is not that the Cherokee language is unable to encapsulate this feeling, but rather, it requires a disembodied use of the language. Cherokee is not spoken objectively, nor are semantic elements something of an isolating, demarcating machine. The language is concerned with the nature of phenomena, causal agents, and subsequent effects. Syntactic axioms are constantly moving, true for a moment, and forever shifting as time marches on.
Interestingly, this is where the bulk of Killer’s English use appears: where time is concerned. Even the word for watch — ᏩᏥ — is just a loanword from English. The concept of fractioning time in order to monitor it is a foreign one to the language itself. This shift towards individualism seems inextricably tied to industrialization, says Killer. An effect of the ongoing colonization of the Cherokee. His immense sense of grief and confusion, using both Cherokee and English, embodies the very loss he critiques.
Killer’s code-switching serves as evidence of the forgoing of a life way, of an identity, of the pain of memory, and the passage of time. While the degree of separation between languages allows for Killer to maintain his position both as a “real Cherokee” and as an oppositional force towards American individualism, he simultaneously seems unaware of his own hypocrisy. While his English is Cherokee-like, his Cherokee is tainted by the presence of the colonizer’s touch.
The pervasiveness of such a beast is something Killer recognizes he cannot escape and, too, is complicit in its progression.
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In his seminal work, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, Vine Deloria Jr. names this very sickness, the ongoing turmoil the Indian faces:
White culture destroys other culture because of its abstractness. As a destroyer of culture it is not a culture but a cancer. (Deloria, 182)
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria.
The University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
It is both that we have been robbed and displaced from our own worldviews and, too, that we are blind to many facets of our own histories. Our gradual blindness was required to ensure the rapid progression of the settler state. While I doubt that the “founding fathers” placed much stock in whether or not Native people would be living in the twenty-first century, the creation and sustaining power of whiteness requires exploitable parties. Without other cultures to decimate, dispose of, and devour, whiteness is nothing.
And yet, here we are. Ꮟ ᎣᏤᏙᎰ “we’ll always be here,” but it is not without loss, or having changed. While many people have moved beyond tribal prints to “decolonial” T-shirts, choosing to shop at Eighth Generation as opposed to Pendleton, and tease each other about being a bepsi Native or not, the irony is not lost. In reality, none of us alive know a time without capitalism, nor the jagged mirror of our existence. The two are contingent upon the other, as Deloria wrote,
Because people can see right through us, it becomes impossible to tell truth from fiction or fact from mythology. Experts paint us as they would like us to be. Often we paint ourselves as we wish we were or as we might have been. The more we try to be ourselves the more we are forced to defend what we have never been. (Deloria, 8)
How different is the jean jacket–ribbon skirt combo from a headdress printed T-shirt? Or huge back-post earrings from the inaccurate beaded headbands? Great allyship will say, “They’re Native made and you’d be supporting a Native artist, which you know is protected by P.L. 101–644!” Right, right. Of course.
I’m sure that I am not alone in hearing other skins look wistfully out into the woods, or aligning oneself with the wind, you know, just free like that. I’m sure I am not alone in having been forced to reckon with the fact that this behavior is woefully embarrassing, considering that terra nullius helped to validate the logic of our inhumanity. If we are of the land, literally and figuratively, then it’s free for the taking, right?
I’m sure any Cherokee, any Native, would tell you no — but then, why is it that the narrative is consistent with aligning our value systems, capital investments, and social order towards what was? No matter which way you look at it — connected, traditional, urban, or even pretendian — no sliver of the Indian can be considered without and beyond the scope of the colonial imagination.
Sophisticated structures of oppression and subordination would not be very good if it were too easy to reckon with and give name to, now would they?
Perhaps this is why the contemporary Indian is so confused, ridden with inconsistent arguments and defenses of what it means to be Indian. We have systematically been taught to view ourselves within the scope of whiteness without a means of articulating an identity beyond the nature of such. My people, my people! How can we exist in the same way as our ancestors, when our very lives are tied to the existence of capital?
Remember, forgetting was not a choice, but a forced reaction to survive. Our survival means we have changed. And my people, equating our existence to who we were, how we were, or what is right cannot stay the same. Whether it is consuming media, forcing signifiers, or wearing your identity, we must acknowledge that we are performing against the idea of what was, by performing for what we ought to be, when the entire conception of an identity cannot be realized without acknowledging the wide gap between the past and the future.
We live in that absent space.
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People still know the grounds at their place of worship, practice medicine, and carry pieces of our tongue throughout the home, but it is not the universal Cherokee experience, nor are any of these facets of the Cherokee identity unchanged. To think as such would be disrespectful to the degree of perseverance of those who came before all of us. What a slap in the face, to disregard choices necessary to make it towards another sunrise. And yet, in our confusion, we position having connections to pieces of communal and individual identity as contingent to the separation of our people. Or so it seems, as people born and raised in the twelve county jurisdiction hold themselves closer to the real way, compared to the city dwellers and go-getters of the rest of the country.
To misalign oneself with consumerism is unattainable, and yet, is enforced by way of transacting learned maladaptive behavior as cultural protocol.
A T-shirt, jeans, and assuming glare for those kinds of Cherokees. Instead of critical contemplation on why things appear as they do, we align ourselves with the people of the past, as if the way we live is anywhere close to what they would recognize. While the divide seems easy enough, wouldn’t it just put a stick in your spoke, to unravel the messy connection between it all?
Poverty, domestic violence, addiction, mortality, and illiteracy are high across the rez and those at-large people, well they boarded those trains in the ’50s and the workforce plummeted. We say don’t be all dressy, don’t question authority, don’t value money, don’t pose critique, don’t involve the eyes of those outside the circle, don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t step out of line. These lines only serve to keep suffering at bay.
But you won’t get it unless you grew up here, you know just raised in a way with respect, cause we just got talked to like that, and that’s how it is. Funny, for Cherokee citizens in 2025 to be hellbent on protecting their territorial domain as grounds for hierarchical claim to identity in a doghouse pen we got forced into.
No matter who lives in a holler, or practiced from moonlight to sunrise, the absence has grown. We cannot escape the truth of history. Anti-Blackness is alive and well, misogyny and homophobia breathing since contact, and self-sabotage grows each day. The walls have been erected and yet, the entry point is more like an irregular oscillating frame, with the only purpose to exclude connection, unless the requirement is met.
And what are these you might ask? A steadfast commitment to a massive load of cognitive dissonance. Oh, the it? Funny you ask, because it’s a hell of a doozy to explain it.
Is it being Cherokee, is it being poor, does it mean to be uneducated, is it a self-policing pseudo-transgressive-scarcity model to survive, or is it a self-colonizing intergenerational spatiotemporal device that ensures our demise? Is it whiteness?
The presence of such absence, such declaration of an otherwise, that serves to bar one’s own people from another, sure seems like a great tool.
No missionary, no teacher with a ruler, no need for a totalitarian ruler, nor reestablishment of prohibitory laws, we do it ourselves. The wild animal turned into a house pet, barking at his own shadow, scared of what happens if the lights go off.
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While our family members made choices to survive, we have the gluttonous pleasure of scrolling across the greatest sea of text, and the immense responsibility to free ourselves through critical thought.
Let us look towards examining the why. The why of now and of then; of here and there. Not the easy fruit of the eye, but the systems that work in the background of every facet of our reality, to situate our imagining of the future.
Kilo is an artist, educator, Cherokee language preservationist, and writer. Exploring the politics of belonging, they engage with language both as medium and muse—as an entity, as incantation, and as the transformative source of all change that may occur. Their work examines the intersections of Cherokee identity, language, and contemporary Indigenous experience through both creative and critical lenses. Each piece is an attempt to create nuanced dialogue, to make visible the complex realities of Indigenous experience in contemporary America. Currently based in Oklahoma, their work is not about presenting a simplified narrative, but about embracing complexity—showing how identity is simultaneously performed and challenged. Stories that teeter on the line of nuanced reality, a funny and confusing contradiction that couldn't be better explained than by their own position. Is and is not.
