aleuniaillustrates-blog

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The Spanish Influenza

If you remember from the previous works, it starts off with this vibrant, super colorful, very cultural piece. The second includes some cultural pieces but is more simplistic and casual, and portrays the disease more than the culture. Finally, this one has no cultural elements, and is simply the representation of a plague. I did this for a reason. At the beginning of the semester, we started with basic history. We learned a few cultural pieces and how previous actions effected the lives of Indigenous peoples before progressing into new issues such as Standing Rock. 

I remember studying over and over again about how many people wanted to crush the Indigenous peoples, how many wanted their culture gone and to be “civilized”. The texts this class has given me has been both heartbeaking and eye-opening to this. I researched the Spanish Influenza and found that a lot of topics relating to this disease tied in with the material that we learned in class. The government ran boarding schools for Indigenous children from 1860-1978, which was mostly ran by Christian missionaries and the federal government. The idea was to “introduce them to civilization” by cutting off their braids, forbidding their native language, and even forbidding them from speaking to family members.

This was already a really difficult situation to live through, and completely destroyed some cultures. The Spanish Influenza made a disaster worse. Due to tight spaces, it was the perfect environment for the Spanish Flu to run rampant. Boarding schools even had their own cemeteries where they would bury the children that passed away. Sometimes, Indigenous parents were not told of the children’s death or illness until after the child was buried.

This particular drawing struck a chord with me. There was a boarding school in Brantford, Ontario for Mohawk children. It’s not labeled as such, it’s labeled as a history museum to honor Indigenous peoples, but it doesn’t say why we got that museum in a weird part of town or the history behind it. Nobody speaks of the trauma. I think that this course has definitely made me think about all the things that we’ve learned, and proving with this projects, the many things that we haven’t. Indigenous history isn’t taught thoroughly, and that it’s best to always keep learning and keep questioning things. One article about the pipeline sent me into researching so many other things that were covered up, and I appreciate that opportunity to the fullest.

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Smallpox

“They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot. I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing...” - Sherman Alexie

The idea of smallpox blankets is debated, many aren’t sure that the blankets truly worked as spreading the disease effectively, others have fought for and seen this as truth for decades. However, it is widely agreed upon that they at least tried to inflict this disease on Indigenous peoples.

This is really the idea as to why I chose to study epidemics in the first place for this course. When I learned that the government slaughtered buffalo in order to harm the Indigenous peoples, I thought of this. That wasn’t the first, nor the last, that they’ve tried to bring harm. 

In Amherst’s July 7 response, he cold-bloodedly saw an opportunity in the disease outbreak. “Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.”

This was was incredibly difficult to illustrate, but I decided to go with the standard blanket wrapped around the shoulders with some smallpox scarring. Once the disease was over, if had the opportunity to leave some nasty scarring. I’ll save you the google on what full blown smallpox looks like, and say that I’m happy there is a vaccine now.

The bearprint has significance as I learned that many different clans saw the end of their days following pandemics. Bear still seems to be resilient, but it is something new that I learned from this project and seemed to strike some significance.

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Cocoliztli

The epidemic of cocoliztli from 1545 to 1548 killed an estimated 5 million to 15 million people, or up to 80% of the native population of Mexico.

“The symptoms included high fever, severe headache, vertigo, black tongue, dark urine, dysentery, severe abdominal and thoracic pain, large nodules behind the ears that often invaded the neck and face, acute neurologic disorders, and profuse bleeding from the nose, eyes, and mouth with death frequently occurring in 3 to 4 days.” -Francisco Hernandez 

This was something that was incredibly hard to portray given the amount of damage this disease caused. I didn’t want to go with gruesome, but wanted to portray the beauty of the culture that was lost during this pandemic and many other events that would follow this. People lost more than their lives, they were already at war in fear of losing their homelands and culture while they were battling a disease with no cure. 

There’s no way to describe some of the horrors that came with the many pandemics that Indigenous peoples have suffered, so I will end this post with a quote that describes the disease in addition to my artwork that describes the culture.

In regards to this class, I specifically chose this because it is felt like a starting point in all the events that would follow. The Spanish came first, and they brought an onslaught of problems that had never been seen before. While Cocoliztli wasn’t one of the diseases brought to Indigenous tribes, it was made significantly worse and made it very hard for those tribes to recover, and they never did. I chose this to mark the beginning of the end in terms of culture loss. 

“There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of it. No longer could they walk; they only lay in their abodes, in their beds. No longer could they move, no longer could they bestir themselves, no longer could they raise themselves, no longer could they stretch themselves out face down, no longer could they stretch themselves out on their backs. And when they bestirred themselves, much did they cry out. There was much perishing. Like a covering, covering-like, were the pustules. Indeed many people died of them, and many just died of hunger. There was death from hunger; there was no one to take care of another; there was no one to attend to another.” -Aztec Source