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catsnuggler · 1 year

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I really don't think about my childhood enough.

Until I moved where I live now, I lived in a suburban town that was just on the other side of a highway from a reservation. I've mentioned that before, I think. I lived in the town, not on the rez, but the part of town I lived in was a little doughnut hole that was in the county, even though it was smack dab in the middle of town.

Whenever we went on the highway, I saw the signs for their casino, and for the reservation. We never went there, though, except to buy fireworks for the Fourth of July. Many people bought fireworks from them; I don't know why, but my best guess is that it was cheaper due to a tax exemption. Funnily enough, illegally large fireworks were sometimes sold, despite the presence of police, and I think the police were even right there sometimes when sales were made. In retrospect, that's kind of hilarious.

Due to the proximity, I'm pretty sure the town and reservation school districts were one, although I later learned there are some schools for the reservation only.

I don't know how many Indigenous kids went to elementary school with me there. The kids weren't all white, but, Hell, I was a white kid from a family that wasn't Racist with a capital R, so, unlike kids of color, I didn't know racism existed yet. There didn't seem to be much Indigenous influence, just standard white suburbia elementary school.

My old neighborhood was pretty much all white. A block or so away were some neighbors who, iirc, were Latino, but most everybody was white. It wasn't even a rich neighborhood, either. My dad had a 9-to-5 office job, and he had to bust his ass to keep us in a small 3-bedroom house. Even then, he couldn't have done it without the vigilance of my mom in finding the right deals, cutting coupons, the whole 9 yards. So, I'm not rich, never have been rich, certainly wasn't rich then, but our little suburban neighborhood, complete with turns everywhere and cul-de-sacs, pretty much only had white people.

I forgot to mention up to now that there's at least one Indigenous state senator in my state, and one of them was from that very reservation. Might have been in office when I was a kid, too, not sure. You know, little white boy, politics didn't exist to me yet.

I lived in a small town of maybe... fuck, I don't remember the population, maybe 30-40k? And the population - you know what, fuck it, it was Marysville, and the reservation was the Tulalip Reservation - had some thousands of people. Shit, I'm going to look this up. Okay, I had a good guess for Marysville's population back then. 30,000 was probably nearer the mark. It's over 71,000 now, but, again, maybe 30,000 back then. The Tulalip Tribes had like a couple thousand or so enrolled members.

Right next to the Tulalip Tribes, but separated. Two opposite communities, brought together, it seemed, only by buying fireworks to celebrate a country built on their land.

It's haunting, in retrospect. It's haunting. It's like a Victorian ghost story, where the phantoms can be seen only during "the thinning of the veil", except these were real, living people, and the "thinning of the veil" is, theoretically, a celebration of propertied white men's refusal to pay taxes to the government, and practically, a celebration of land theft.

Having lived next to people, except not really, barely ever having seen any - and even then, only at an annual market retail sale function.

"All My Relations" is a phrase I've often heard from Indigenous speakers and writers, some of whom explained that would include white people, if we'd only treat them like family, in turn, and, as family, share all things, including land stewardship. Anecdotally, as a white person, I've noticed we still keep Indigenous people at arms length.

Things haven't changed much since I was a kid. When I was a kid, occasionally, an elder would show up and we'd have an assembly, there'd be some kind of speech, and then maybe a dance, like a ring dance. Then we just, you know, went about our day. All nice and sweet and everything, but, eh, back to suburban, non-Native schoolchildren stuff. There was also a pioneer days thing here where they also had Indigenous people talk about their history, but, like... these were just one-day deals, and, again, mainly single elders. Not to imply they weren't wise - they were wise, great, a good joy to listen to. But seeing only one old man - we never saw old women - at a time, and no young people, and whatever Indigenous history in our curriculum only going up to the 1800s, with no mention of the Yakama Wars, treaties, or even the Fish-Ins/Fish Wars, which received national and even, iirc, international attention, and led to the Boldt decision - still left us rather ignorant of Indigenous existence and resistance. I guess knowing they hadn't died out, and there were at least a few happy elder men, was better than being led to believe there were none left, but still, the state grossly deprived us of the historical knowledge we should have learned.

The state and Indigenous nations now collaborate on providing culturally-appropriate, region-specific education to all students on the history and cultures of Indigenous peoples here, but that only begun implementation in 2016. Apparently it's supposed to be all grades, but I have no clue how far that actually extends in practice. I hope these entire curriculums are taught, in-depth, with the proper attention they deserve. That being said, I suppose I shouldn't have hope in the settler-colonial state to teach that its own existence is unjust and must be dismantled.

Enemies: suburbs, capitalism, colonialism, apartheid, the state.

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