Tag Archives: Indigenous Voice

Bruce Albert is Not Like the Other Girls

Posted on by under Yanomami

This book has taken us in an interesting turn, and I see why it’s last on the syllabus. It parallels almost every. other text in a very intriguing way, opposing Guaman Poma and mirroring Rigoberta Menchu. What is most interesting to me, though, is the conversation about translation. Specifically, how Bruce Albert wrote the book by listening to Kopenawa and translating all of it into French. As my late French immersion didn’t do me much good, I read the book in English, and hence lies another layer of translation. In this way, I’m reminded of the Popol Vuh, and questions are raised about the complete authenticity and accuracy of the writing. Based on how blatantly anti-white people it is, there is a sense of the faithful meanings and proper translation being done. As well, it is reminiscent of Yawar Fiesta in its use of words in their original language to convey their exact meaning.

Another thing to consider in this book is how Albert’s background as an anthropologist influences his research. There is a deep-rooted history of anthropology looking at Indigenous people as damaged individuals to solve and document, ignoring their own agency. The ‘story of Indigenous deficiency’, as Daniel Heath Justice calls it, implies that Indigenous people’s beliefs and traditions have led them to a state of moral lacking, and that is what causes all of their distress. This ignores, oh I don’t know, colonizers colonizing. Often anthropologists come at oppressed cultures with a damage-based research lens. What’s interesting here is how Albert learns to use a desire-based research lens, documenting what Kopenawa wants to pass on to the white world. He even goes so far as to adamantly distance himself from other anthropologists, claiming this is no longer his work but really his way of life. He is not like the other anthropologists, he’s so different.

This ties into something Kopenawa talks about, which is how white people need their knowledge written to be passed down and remembered. This contrasts greatly with Yanomami culture, where their knowledge is ingrained in their thoughts and their speeches. This means that Albert is then coming in as a knowledge translator, taking the white man role to write down his white man words. As much as this accomplishes Kopenawa’s goal of spreading knowledge, how effectively does this contribute to the continuation of needing to—for lack of a better term—Westernize Yanomami life and Indigenous knowledge in general?

Menchú’s Guide to Representation

Posted on by under Indigenous Voice, Rigoberta Menchú

In the book, I, Rigoberta Menchú, Menchú describes her life and experiences as a Quiché woman in an Indian community in Guatemala. Her co-author, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, describes in the introduction how she aimed to listen and document all that Menchú talked about in order to help reflect the Indian experience in Latin America. She recounts that as Menchú told stories from her personal life, she became “self-assured and contented” (p. xvi), and that Menchú found relief in becoming a voice that had gone so long unheard. The beginning of the book immediately confirms this, Menchú stating that her testimony is “not only [her] life, it’s also the testimony of [her] people” (p. 1). This idea made me wonder: Where do we draw the line between experiencing something as an individual vs. as a community? What makes this line different for colonial peoples compared to Indigenous peoples?

“My personal experience is the reality of a whole people” (p. 1).

Menchú forms a collective Indigenous voice through only her own narration, as her experience comes from being so deep within her community and living life as an undeniably Quiché woman. This is interesting in comparison to authors like Guaman Poma, who in his mestizo status has to justify himself in describing the Indian experience. Menchú’s experience is different, she has learned from a lifetime as an Indigenous woman, and importantly, she “didn’t learn it alone” (p. 1). Many parts of the book are dedicated to her personal experiences, but they are entangled with her community.

I believe that a lot of the reason her story is so personal when it is meant to represent a community is because of how rightfully distrusting the Indigenous peoples are of the people outside of their community, being “very careful not to disclose any details of their communities” (p. 9). The colonizers have already taken so much that traditional knowledge and information must be held onto tightly, so Menchú works around this by telling her story in personal anecdotes.

There are portions within the novel—like that of the birth ceremonies chapter, the nahual, and the marriage ceremonies—that are kept objective, where Menchú acts as a narrator. In the nahual chapter, Menchú maintains her narration while reminding the reader of how personal these traditions are:

“We often find it hard to talk about ourselves because we know we must hide so much in order to preserve our Indian culture and prevent it from being taken away from us. So I can only tell you very general things about the nahual. I can;t tell you what my nahual is because that is one of our secrets.” (p. 22)

I believe Menchú finds a healthy balance in her objectivity and personal experience, but it does open further questions towards how Burgos-Debray contextualizes her own involvement and where she personally finds the line in being the pen for a community she is not a part of.

How to Catholicize the Already Catholic

Posted on by under First New Chronicle and Good Government

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala retells the history of Inca lifestyle and government in the context of its relation to Christianity in the first half of “The First New Chronicle and Good Government”. He comes from a background of both Indigenous ancestry and Catholicism, meaning that a lot of the information he provides is soaked in a Catholic lens. As much as he dives into the historical aspect of Inca life and government, it is overshadowed by a view of it as inherently religious in a Catholic way. For example, when he discusses Indigenous rulers of what is now Peru having descended from Adam, it is a comparison of the two ways that he knows, Indigenous and Catholic at the same time.

This is interesting as it is his conjoined view of Catholic and Indigenous history coexisting at the same time. In this way, he could be considered an unreliable narrator for this subject. At the same time, his two opposing backgrounds provide a book which has been studied dutifully for many centuries afterwards. It is noted by many who have studied it that a lot of the facts are not entirely accurate. For example, he writes of the conflict between Wascar Inca and Atawalpa Inca as lasting 36 years, when in fact it was less than five. Is this meant to portray the Inca as more combative, or is it simply a mistake of memory? These questions will perhaps always remain unanswerable, but in analyzing them we can ask how and why these mistakes were made, and how his cultural background may have influenced them.

Something else to keep in mind is the audience of the book, which he starts by addressing “Good Christians” and declaring that his writing is a service to his god. By addressing the Christians, the audience is set, and it influences a lot of the choices in length and form of description for Catholic circumstances—e.g., the first generation—and Indigenous circumstances, like the fifth age of Indians. What exactly is this book then? It may a tutorial manual for Christians, as well as a source of education, but it is a faulty one. The lessons are only partially formed, full of errors and biased opinions. How well does it really describe the Inca world in the so-called, “fifth age”?

What I suppose I’m asking, in a roundabout way, is how does this book function as a voice for Indigenous culture when the author is writing it with a skewed pen? While he is criticizing the Spanish colonial process, he is the number one advertisement for Catholic conversion. No matter how he believes he may be telling his truth, it does not translate to the unbiased, historical background that he may have intended.

The Popol Vuh (feat. Roman Catholicism)

Posted on by under Popol Vuh

In reading the Popol Vuh, something I found myself thinking about over and over again was the connections in certain events between the Mayan stories and modern Christian stories. As the Popol Vuh has a complex and lengthy history with translation, especially with that of a Roman Catholic friar involved in one of the main translations, there is the question of whether or not all the tales were properly understood in the translation. I am not Christian or Catholic myself, and thus have only a basic understanding of the Catholic religious texts, but both the flood to destroy the people made of wood and the tale of Lady Blood and her want of forbidden fruit connect back to stories I have heard before in Catholic settings.

There are, obviously, important distinctions, like that of Lady Blood being the daughter of a lord from Xibalba rather than the creation of God, and the flood leading to the creation of monkeys. Still, the connection is undeniable. This asks the question of how well the Popol Vuh acts as a voice of Indigenous myth. The friar, Francisco Ximénez, was accredited with both transcription and translation of the Popol Vuh, as him and his parishoners worked together. This implies, of course, that the Mayan parishoners would have been deeply entrenched in Catholic and Christian narratives, and this also could play a role in the inclusion of Catholic themes within these stories. Of course, the Ximénez translation works off of an original manuscript, one no longer accessible. Something mentioned in class is how many cultures in Latin America believe in the idea of reviving the spirit of ancestors by speaking their words. If a friar speaks for “those who cannot speak themselves” is it the act of a saviour, or the act of a colonizer? Especially when the words spoken are related to religion and creation myths.

As far as other things I found interesting in the Popol Vuh, I think the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque are a very interesting look into what is deemed important in one’s character—the boys tend to work from a duality of taking justice into their own hands while working with the higher powers at the same time. It does quite a good job at establishing how important singular identity and judgement is away from the influence of god-like figures, and I think that could contribute to the culture of identity in Latin America. It is also a lesson to not always trust authority figures, like the grandmother who kicks them out. This proves to me, at the very least, that there is a semblance of the original Indigenous voice through the possible-colonial editing job.

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