Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson
College
Before-and-after photographs of White Buffalo
(Cheyenne) upon his arrival at
the Carlisle Indian School and one year later. Cutting students’ hair and
forcing them to abandon their tribal clothing were two ways the federal
government controlled Indigenous identity and forced young Native people to
assimilate into white society.
In Ancestors Know Who We Are, we see how Native
feminist art and
theory engages with Black feminist art and theory. For example, as a
Black-Native artist and citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi, Monica
Rickert-Bolter expands the concept of Indigeneity by marrying Potawatomi
and Akan (Ghanaian) textile designs, motifs, and symbols in her digital
work Hair Stories. Moreover, the subject of the work—the artist’s
relationship to her hair—is one that is loaded with cultural, racial, and
gendered meanings for both Native Americans and African Americans. Hair
plays a significant role in the cultures of both peoples. It’s not only a
form of individual self-expression but also a signifier of group identity
and, for some Native people, a source of spiritual connection.
Historically, schools,
businesses, and state and local governments have
used hair to police and control both Indigenous and Black peoples. During
the 19th century, Indian boarding schools cut students’ hair short in an
attempt to remove their tribal identities and assimilate them into white
society. Attempts to control African Americans by restricting displays of
hair began even earlier with the passing of tignon laws in Louisiana in
the 1700s, which required Creole women of color to cover their hair.
Smithsonian National Museum of African American
History and Culture
Sarah Ann Crowley wearing a white tignon, 1884.
Crowley was born into
slavery around 1820 in Maryland and then sold to other slaveowners in
Louisiana and Georgia. After emancipation, she moved north to Massachusetts.
The policing of Native
and Black hair continues today by schools and
private businesses. At present, only eight US states have passed the
Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act, first
introduced in 2019, which protects people of color in the workplace and at
school from racial discrimination based on hairstyles. In addition, there
are cases of violence centered around hair. Recently in Oklahoma, students
pinned down a Cheyenne and Arapaho fifth grader and cut off his long hair.
Artist Moira
Pernambuco’s series Black Boy Beautiful, Black Boy Vulnerable also
envisions a joining of Native feminist theory and Black feminist theory.
Black-Native feminist artists recognize that “patriarchy knows no gender,”
as feminist theorist and cultural critic bell hooks has famously stated. In
other words, issues of gender oppression are not solely limited to women,
genderqueer,
and nonbinary people. Pernambuco’s photographs of two Black youths offer commentary
on how Black men are treated and their futures limited by the judicial and
prison systems. The black-and-white images are sparse and their settings
nondescript,
though they seem to reference institutions such as prisons and jails—sites
of extreme gendered and sexual violence, oppression, and exploitation. This
series offers a visual convergence of Native feminist theory and Black feminist
theory in the struggle for abolition, which demands an end to surveillance,
policing, and systems of punishment and instead advocates for massive investments
in the communities most harmed by these forms of violence.
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
Agostino Brunias (ca. 1730–1796), A West
Indian Flower Girl and Two Other Free Women of Color, ca. 1769. An 18th-century
painting depicting Creole women and women of
African descent with their hair wrapped in fabric coverings called tignons.
Ancestors know who we
are is a meaningful affirmation of kinship and
belonging for those of us whose lineages are hard to trace in the written
records, for those of us who no longer speak our mother tongues or know
the names of our ancestors, because ancestors know who we are.
Ancestors know.
Ancestors know who we are is a rallying cry for unity, for
collective
thought and action.
Ancestors know.
Ancestors know that the time is always now, and they are
watching to see
what we do with all that we’ve inherited.
Photo by Aja Grant
FARI NZINGA is
the teacher-scholar in residence at the bell hooks
Institute at Berea College in Kentucky. She graduated with a BA from Oberlin
College in 2005 and went on to earn both her MA and PhD in cultural anthropology
from Duke University. Nzinga uses object-based learning to engage in conversations
about contemporary culture and politics and to hone observation and critical
analysis. Her research on Black cultural production, visual and expressive culture,
and sexual politics relies on hooks’s analysis of power and forms of domination.
Hooks’s emphasis on love, care, and the construction of homeplaces are values
that animate Nzinga’s pedagogy, research, and curation.