NAFPS Forum

Beardslee has been selling art for more than 20 years marketed as Ojibwe and Native American art

F’d by the Vagina Monologues - By Lois Beardslee
Archive Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140724134737/http://www.indiancountrynews.info/fullstory.cfm-ID=47.htm

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I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls lately, from the ladies who’ve claimed ownership of the Traverse City contingent of the Vagina Monologues. They put on a show last year, featuring Eve Ensler’s celebrated work honoring women and their anatomy, interspersed with essays by local white women. Ensler’s essays include pieces in the voices of women of color as well, written not by women of color, but by Ensler herself.

The first phone call was from a woman asking me to try out for the part of the Native American woman who would be reading the Native American portion of Ensler’s monologues. It was put to me in such a way that I felt I was expected to prove I was good enough for the distinction of reading the words a white woman had written for me, a Native American woman.

Since I’ve probably had more experience with public speaking than most of the community leaders and staff at my local junior college and university center, it was an odd request, to my mind. And since I’ve probably written and published as much as Eve Ensler, it was an even weirder request.

I suggested to my caller that I might have as much to say about the sexual roles of Native women as Eve Ensler, because I, unlike Ensler, am a Native American woman, and – what a bonus! – I share my strong opinions on the topic through the written and spoken word.

Alas, it was not her job to consider giving me my own voice. She had merely been instructed to invite me to the “try-outs,” as though the ladies were putting on a high school play, and I were one of so many wistful young Native American maidens wringing my hands and hopeful for the part that Ensler, and subsequently my white neighbors, had determined it was appropriate for me to play.

It’s a phenomenon I encounter every day of my life. My friends and neighbors from the dominant culture expect me to live up to their stereotypes of a docile young Indian maiden, not unlike Pocahontas, or perhaps some young, sweet girl in a beaded headband and buckskin fringes who no doubt handed the deserving Pilgrims a basket full of venison tenderloins and wild blueberry corn muffins.

People often get downright huffy if I don’t act that way. So I didn’t join the nonexistent line of Native American women trying out for the part, even though she was a really nice lady.

The second call came from another really nice lady, younger than the first. She’d taken on the task of finding artwork for the back cover of the performance program and thought maybe Native American women could be represented by my contributing maybe the artwork and maybe a little poem for the cover, to show that maybe they had, like, you know, taken Native Americans into consideration.

Suggestions were made as to the nature of the new original piece of artwork I would be expected to create for this volunteer assignment. And so, being the teacher that I am, and having a receptive and intelligent audience, I began to explain why, why, why...

I cannot be Uncle Tom for the women of Traverse City any more than I can for your school districts, your museums, your parks, your churches, your families, your children’s literature, or your fantasies.

And, at the end of it all, I agreed to provide a signed, limited edition print for scanning, and a copy of it to be sold to fund the project, along with a quote from a book I’d written, and a no-way-definitely-not-short poem that would address women’s issues pertinent to the northwest corner of Michigan’s lower peninsula... because, oddly enough, I was as competent as the local white women whose pages were to be interspersed throughout the program. My friend the printer found a male business sponsor for the extra pages I had generated.

But, alas, the poem was left out, and the benign illustration and quote were proudly displayed. I’d been Uncle Tommed, and the white ladies of northwest lower Michigan patted themselves on the back for giving the impression of being culturally sensitive and compassionate and inclusive, while I tried to wipe the experience of my interaction with them from my mind, as though it were offensive goo on the heel of a boot.

A week later, I heard one from that selective group of civic-minded women on the local public radio channel, congratulating herself for developing the ability to say “vagina” out loud. I was saddened, because the women of this region would never know that the Ojibwe have a tradition so respectful of women that we only use anatomically correct terms for human body parts, counter to every European language I have ever learned.

We are genteel, intelligent. We have a wealth of traditional stories that deal with women’s roles, verbal abuse, domestic violence, trans-gender issues, and every other social issue that any society would need to function for millennia... as we did, and still do.

Outside of your public schools, we have our own social institutions that teach mechanisms for avoiding dysfunction, because dysfunction happens in all cultures.

Yet the ladies of Traverse City did not have the opportunity to learn this, because they could not fathom a Native American voice bigger than their own stereotypes of ignorance and docility, perhaps mirroring their own culture’s attitude toward women. Just as importantly, it voiced their culture’s attitude toward people of color.

These women are a few of the thousands of white escapists from Chicago and Detroit who have worked their way up the coastlines and the interstate highways into the ancestral homelands of the Woodland Indians of the northern Great Lakes.

In our neighborhood, the existing sparse populations of whites and Native Americans had begun to make their peace and intermarry one another, just when the white flight began in the 70s, after that messy bussing/integration/poverty-driven-race-riots thing that nobody wants to take responsibility for.

The phenomenon of white flight into this area happened with such speed and intensity that we could not overcome the fear and ignorance you brought with you. Perhaps we should call it “white blight.”

Last week, I was mailed a copy of the part of Ensler’s monologues that are written as the voices of Native women. It was an act of friendship, from one of the women who genuinely wanted to know, after the fact, if the monologues met my approval. No one had originally considered that the monologues might not meet the needs of the Indian women who were “included” as a form of political correctness.

It’s hard teaching you all of this, one at a time, at the expense of many of my own unpaid hours. I would much rather be paid what a white woman with my credentials makes, or better yet, what a white male with my credentials makes – but minority employment in education in this corner of the state runs at, oh... around zero percent.

I would have like to have had the opportunity to have spoken out before the damage was done, before Ensler’s damaging words and stereotypes pertaining to Native American women were performed, celebrated, espoused as the gospel by a white school teacher from Traverse City, who will take those stereotypes back into the classroom with her.

You see, public education is one of the least integrated professions in America today, and the option of educating you in groups is not available to me in the mainstream press, in the public schools, or in any format other than as a token Indian.

So I will be reluctant in the future to let my artwork be used, giving the impression of consensus for the status quo, consensus for the bizarre forms of racism, sexism, and ignorance you have brought with you while you’ve been busy fleeing from those awful colored folks down in those awful big cities you left crumbling. I do not like Ensler’s stereotypes of me any more than I like the ones you brought with you.

Ensler did damage to Native American women. Her essays in Indian voices spoke only about domestic violence, in contrast to the essays in white women’s voices. Ensler did not make clear to her audience that, in fact, the bulk of partners who abuse Native American women are not Native Americans themselves, but non-Indians who have sought out a weaker, vulnerable element of society – as abusers do.

You see, Native American women who are abused – by domestic spouses, neighbors, employers, big business, and even suburban escapees – are not trash deserving abuse as depicted by Ensler and interpreted by my neighbors... we are wasted human resources.

Even worse than Ensler’s stereotypes is the fact that today, in this twenty-first century, when Native American authors, artists, and activists are educated, outspoken and available, she took it upon herself to tell our stories for us, as though she could possibly be a competent substitute for our own voices.

By wearing the hat of a writer rather than that of an open-minded editor of contemporary Native women’s voices, Ensler has trivialized us and presented us as stereotypes within a vacuum. While Ensler and dozens of other non-Indian authors who write about Indians reap the economic benefits of giving the dominant culture what it needs and wants to think about the competence of Native American people, Native scholars find themselves waiting years for the publication of materials contradicting those stereotypes.

Native American women in Michigan have more college diplomas per capita than any other group, yet we have the highest unemployment in the state. Our children’s schools are staffed almost exclusively by whites. Public school administration has become a highly paid white male gravy train that models racism and sexism to our children.

We are followed around your stores by security guards. White women tighten their grips on their purses when we or our family members enter the room. Ears close to our concerns. We fear for our safety, and the safety of our children. All this, because you have found our neighborhood to be more desirable than your old neighborhood, and you have reinstituted the policy of Manifest Destiny.

So I offer up to you the poem that was left out of the Traverse City performance of the Vagina Monologues. (See “A Love Letter To My Community” on page 9.)

Lois Beardslee is an Anishinabe teacher and writer, who is accomplished in basketry, quillwork and birchbark biting. Beardslee is the author of Lies to Live By (grades 7 -up), Michigan State University Press 2003. Her article “Arguments for Integration in the Field of Education” appears in the Spring ’04 issue of Multicultural Education Magazine.

U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016
Name..........................Lois Sonkiss*
Estimated Age..............16
Birth Year.....................abt 1954
Yearbook Date..............1970
School.........................Dearborn High School
School Location.............Dearborn, Michigan, USA

*Page attached to NAFPS post

NMC Harriers Bow

Northwestern Michigan College's cross country team fought a number of foes in Saturday's meet at Lake Superior State College in Sault Ste. Marie and lost to most of them. NMC competed against Ferris State College and Lake Superior in a meet won by Ferris. The Bulldogs compiled 20 points while Lake Superior tailed 47 and NMC 80. Brian Aho won the race, running his home four-mile course in 23 minutes, 12 seconds.

Running for NMC were John Carlson, Mark Stormzand, Ken Smith, Tim Benson and two women, Pam Dalitz and Lois Sonkiss. All the runners were hampered by high winds, cold temperatures and snow. NMC's first home meet will be Oct. 24 against Alpena Community College.

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Source: "NMC Cross Country - Lois Sonkiss" Newspapers.com. Traverse City Record-Eagle, October 16, 1972. https://www.newspapers.com/image/54951268/.

Indian Mound - They Hope To Solve Puzzle With Two Billion Pieces
By SCOTT DERKS News-Press Staff Writer

It's a puzzle with two billion pieces and no guarantee that it all fits together.

Excavating a 2,000-year-old Indian mound has captured the attention of a cluster of college students from Ohio and a dedicated group of Sanibel Island volunteers.

Searching for the tools, pottery and fragments of the Caloosa Indians in the hump-backed mound near the J.N. "Ding" Darlinq Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel, the group members are rediscovering their imagination.

Oberlin College student Amy Davidson is spending her "winter quarter" away from her Ohio campus and deep in a hole at the shell mound, scraping out sand and shells to get a better picture of the lifestyle of the Indians who roamed the area and built the mound thousands of years ago.

"When you are digging, you are thinking, using your imagination. It's not like digging a ditch. You are always looking, using every fact to understand," she said.

It is like reading a mystery novel that has no end. Charles Wilson, a Sanibel Island resident who has been directing the digging of the mounds, said the whelk-stacked hill, rising out of the coastal shelf and topped by a massive gumbo limbo tree "is an interesting site."

Probably a campground that built up over hundreds of years, the mound was being built as that portion of the island was being formed.

In fact, there is evidence from a deep hole that the mound extends below the present water table showing changes in the area and the early appearance of the Indians on the island.

Tugging at his white beard, Wilson watched the groups sifting through the piles of shells in search of archeological treasures. "Caloosa" identifies a type of activity in Southwest Florida, but not necessarily one tribe or group of people, Wilson said. But the Indians "had a highly developed social structure and were a powerful tribe whose influence extended to the east coast of Florida. Apparently they did this without agriculture and remained a hunting and gathering society," Wilson said. Each spadeful of dirt is charted and all finds are noted and bagged carefully so pottery can be related to other discoveries found in the same layer of the mound.

Wilson said he has applied for two grants to have the material studied, but he would not speculate on the chances of getting a grant.

Little work has been done in Southwest Florida, and the lifestyle and most of the habits of the original Indians remain a mystery.

All morning the group worked, all week long. Bucket after bucket was scooped out. Shell after shell was sifted through and examined. The five Oberlin students, under the direction of Dr. Lee High, spend a month "discovering" without the pressure of grades or other studies.

"It is a chance to do something you have always wanted to do," High said.

A scattered collection of heavy, unmarked pottery shards was found in one corner of the mound, hidden for years by a mountain of shells. The entire group came to see the discovery, to hold the clay pieces in their hands and feel the excitement of doing something new, uncharted.

After much puzzling and piecing, parts of the pot were put together, forming a crude half bowl.

Numerous cars stopped along the road to watch. But no one is allowed to dig in historical sites without permission, and Wilson's shell mound work is being done on private property.

Studying the number of whelks, probably used for food, or the differently colored rings on the sliced hillside, student Lois Garcia Y Sonkiss carefully drew sketches of the items found and wondered about the people who left the hill behind.

Amy Davidson picked up a tiny piece of pottery and passed it out of the hole. Removing a heavy glove, she watched Wilson look at the pottery find. "There is so much mystery, your imagination keeps going. Any little thing can mean something," she said.

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Source: "Indian Mound - Lois Garcia Y Sonkiss" Newspapers.com. News-Press, January 27, 1975. https://www.newspapers.com/image/214085550/.

Louis [sic] Sonkiss*

*"Louis" appears to be a typo and was intended to be "Lois." I recommend visiting this link: https://ohio5.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/digtalbks/id/12942.

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Source: New Students, 1975 Oberlin College Yearbook
Direct Link: https://ohio5.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/digtalbks/id/12942
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/wip/4Q6Gd

Lois Garcia Sonkiss, Art History*

*I recommend visiting this link: https://ohio5.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/digtalbks/id/12274.

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Source: Seniors, 1976 Oberlin College Yearbook
Direct Link: https://ohio5.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/digtalbks/id/12274
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/wuOfw

Ecumenical Assembly Plans Meeting

The newly-organized Grand Traverse Ecumenical Assembly has planned to meet for worship, discussion, and a special program on Aug. 9 at 7:30 in the Lounge of Central United Methodist Church, 222 Cass Street, Traverse City.

Lois Sonkiss will be the featured speaker. She will give a slide-lecture presentation on Native American Art, archaeology, and culture, drawn from her personal experience.

Sonkiss has recently been accepted into the master's program in tribal and American art at the University of New Mexico. She has had archaeological field experience in the first systematic excavations of the Pre-columbian Caluse Indian shell mounds off the Gulf Coast of Florida and has been scholar at the University of Michigan museum of Anthropology, setting up an exhibition of Indian ethnographic objects.

The public is invited to share an evening with this creative artist and see the Grand Traverse Ecumenical Assembly in action.

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Source: "Lois Sonkiss - University of New Mexico" Newspapers.com. Traverse City Record-Eagle, August 6, 1976. https://www.newspapers.com/image/55763439/.

Museums Offering Indian Art

Indian art – sculpture, sandpainting, serigraphy, beading, basketry, pottery, prints, collage and photography – will be on view these last weeks of July in two Oklahoma museums.

Sculpture exhibits by self-taught Indian artist Charles E. Pratt will be shown at the Museum of the Western Prairie, Altus, beginning Sunday. A reception for Pratt from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday will launch the exhibit which includes intricate metal works representing animal and plant life. The display will run two weeks.

At the Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, an exhibit is already in progress and will continue through July 31. Titled “Conceptual Art: Four Native American Women Artists," the unusual display focuses on abstraction and reflects the intellect and emotions of Lois Sonkiss Brill, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Kay Walkingstick and Emmi Whitehorse. Viewing hours are 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Ms. Brill is of Lacandon Indian descent, born In Mexico in 1956. She is primarily an art historian and holds a master's from University of New Mexico. Her artistic talents are directed toward quillwork, beadwork, basketry and pottery.

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith is of French-Creek and Shoshone descent. She was born on a reservation in Montana and her name means “insightful awareness." Quick-To-See also has a master's and her painting exhibits have netted her favorable reviews in leading art publications.

Kay Walkingstick is of Oklahoma Cherokee descent. A highly educated woman she concentrates on painting and drawing.

Emmi Whitehorse, who is a poet as well as artist, makes her splash in sandpainting, sculpture, silversmithing, serigraphy, printmaking and photography. Spotlighted will be her painting, “For That, Only Good Indian" created in acrylic and encaustic over ink on canvas. Since showings are limited to two weeks, it’s a good idea to make plans to see them soon.

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Source: "Museums offering Indian art" Newspapers.com. Wichita Falls Times, July 18, 1980. https://www.newspapers.com/image/781426987/.

Lois Sonkiss – (Maya) – artist, painter, reviewer; born in Chiapas, Mexico in 1956; grew up in Northern Michigan; studied art at the University of New Mexico; published in La Confluencia; Lives in Tijeras Canyon, New Mexico.

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Source: The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature –edited by Geary Hobson (1980)
Direct Link: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Remembered_Earth/U9fR_gHTxeUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the%20remembered%20earth%20lois%20sonkiss&pg=PA416&printsec=frontcover

STATE OF MICHIGAN -PROBATE COURT COUNTY OF LIVINGSTON 
ESTATE OF MARY PULTER, DECEASED. FILE NO. 04-06951-DE

TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS:
including Sandra Korycinski, Susan Korycinski, Judy Korycinski, Tammy Korycinski, Steve Korycinski, John Korycinski, James Sonkiss, Tom Sonkiss, Lois Sonkiss, Cynthia Watczak, 3 children of Sophie Ducinski - Names unknown, 4 children of Carol Barduka - Names unknown,
1 child of Stella Gizinski-Walczak - Name Unknown***

The decedent, who lived at 3003 W. Grand River, Howell, MI 48843 died 03/29/2003. An application for informal probate of decedent's will was filed by John D. Sonkiss, 5198 Bradford Circle, Brighton, Ml 48114. On 1/26/04 the Livingston County Probate Court 204 S. Highlander Way, Howell, MI 48843 informally admitted the will. No personal representative has been appointed, and there is no administration of the estate.

ATTORNEY:
James F. Malinowski, P23037, 39111 W. Six Mile Road, Livonia, MI 48152, (734) 420-4170.

***all of whose addresses and whereabouts are unknown.

(2-10-04 DAILY 112122).

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Source: "Estate of Mary Pulter - Lois Sonkiss" Newspapers.com. Livingston County Daily Press and Argus, February 10, 2004. https://www.newspapers.com/image/480675151/.

Lois Beardslee posted a comment critical of Margaret “Keewaydinoquay” Peschel on a blog, “Singing to the Plants.” I was going to share the interesting comment on Peschel’s NAFPS thread but then noticed inconsistencies in Beardslee's own claims of Native American ancestry. […]

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Source: "Hallucinogens in North America" Singing to the Plants - Steve Beyer's Blog on Ayahuasca and the Amazon
Direct Link: https://singingtotheplants.com/2008/02/hallucinogens-in-north-america/
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/9DGIO

Hallucinogens in North America — Saturday, Feb 16th, 2008 — Sacred Plants, Shamanism
In the preceding two posts, I have argued that there is little convincing evidence that shamans outside the extended culture area of the Upper Amazon have ever used hallucinogens in their shamanic work; and, in the immediately preceding post, I argued against the belief that shamans in Siberia used the fly agaraic mushroom Amanita muscaria for shamanizing.

There is also, I believe, little evidence for the shamanic use of psychoactive plants or mushrooms among the indigenous peoples of North America. As among the Khoryaks, non-shamans may attempt to emulate shamans by using psychoactive plants or mushrooms that shamans themselves do not use. For example, among the Chumash and other indigenous peoples in south central California, it can be important to acquire a dream helper, not just for shamans but for ordinary people as well: falcon helps gamblers, bobcat can help hunters, otter can make one a good swimmer, roadrunner helps midwives. Sometimes a dream helper appears in an ordinary dream; this is especially true of shamans, whose powers first appear in dreams during childhood. Conversely, to obtain a dream helper, common people rely heavily on Datura, which plays only a marginal role in the acquisition of shamanic power.

There are similar problems with the claimed fly agaric use by shamans among the Anishinaabeg — often called the Ojibwe — of the Great Lakes area. The claim, first put forward by R. Gordon Wasson in 1978, rests entirely upon the testimony of a single person, an Anishinaabe herbalist and university-trained ethnobotanist named Keewaydinoquay Peschel. She claimed that she herself had been initiated into the shamanic use of the mushroom, and had herself used the mushroom three to five times a year for the past fifty years. She prepared a birch bark scroll containing a legend of how the mushroom came to the Anishinaabeg, which, Wasson said, evidenced its shamanic use.

There are some significant problems with this claim. There is no description of fly agaric use in any detailed ethnography of Anishinaabeg shamanism. When she first met Wasson, Keewaydinoquay apparently was living a solitary and unhappy life, spending much of her time alone on an isolated island; in any event, it is difficult to say to what extent she was, at that time, integrated into Anishinaabeg culture.

Further, Keewaydinoquay admitted that many Anishinaabeg were in fact strongly opposed to the consumption of fly agaric; indeed, her own revered teacher of herbalism, a woman named Nodjimahkwe, apparently knew about the mushrooms and prohibited her student from eating them. Moreover, versions of the legend told by other Anishinaabeg differ substantially from that given by Keewaydinoquay, including versions that prohibit the eating of any mushrooms at all.

Indeed, the mushroom legend itself, even as retold by Keewaydinoquay, contains little that would connect its use to shamanizing. The story tells how the Anishinaabeg discovered the mushrooms, and points out that those who use the mushroom are happy and pure, while those who do not are worried and unhappy. Although the mushroom reveals the supernatural and other knowledge to those who use it, the story provides no reason to believe that those who reportedly used the mushroom were shamans in any sense.

Further doubt is cast on the claim by the fact that Wasson and Keewaydinoquay were, apparently, lovers, or at least enmeshed in a highly charged personal relationship — one that seems, from her letters, to have been deeply important to Keewaydinoquay. And both derived ancillary benefits from this relationship: Wasson helped Keewaydinoquay obtain a doctorate in anthropology, a teaching position, and the publication of her writings on ethnomycology by the Harvard Botanical Museum; Keewaydinoquay gave Wasson an apparently idiosyncratic account of Anishinaabeg hallucinogen use that happened to be consistent with his theories. In the absence of confirmatory evidence, it is probably fair to view this account with caution.