MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2021 EZ RE KK APHOTOS BY BRIAN ADAMS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
still here’
Southcentral Alaska. Colonizers have historically ignored
Indigenous place names to their detriment, Leggett said. For
example, developers in the 1950s built a community of high-end
homes in Anchorage on an area that in the Dena’ina language is
called Nen Ghiłgedi — “rotten land.” The homes were destroyed
in a 1964 earthquake because they were on unstable soil. Seen
here from Cook Inlet, Leggett hopes to soon have a place marker
for Dghelishla (“Little Mountain”), or the mountain known as
Sleeping Lady. A new place name for Chanshtnu, meaning
“Grass Creek” in Dena’ina, was installed in August and was one
of the first to be displayed in Anchorage as part of the project.
Artist Melissa Shaginoff, who is Athabaskan and Paiute,
helped design the place names, drawing inspiration from the
Dena’ina fire bag that was used to carry a fire starter and other
objects. “It’s very much digging deeper than just renaming a
place. It’s about this sort of reclamation of an incredible,
incredibly old and relevant information system that is
Indigenous languages,” said Shaginoff, 34. “Our language is
the most perfectly designed language for that space, for that
area, and there’s so much knowledge embedded in that.”“Now people are learning and asking,” Lane
said.
The Lummi reservation sits just off Lummi
and Bellingham bays, about 10 miles outside of
Bellingham. Lane said he recalled growing up
there and how people made a living fishing
and catching crabs. To keep his cultural tradi-
tions alive, Lane said he participates in his
tribe’s canoe races, where teams compete in a
long-held tradition.
Lane said he’s most concerned about Native
Americans “finding ways to deal with the
generational trauma that dates back to the
beginning of our relationship with the federal
government.”Joseph Connolly
HAUDENOSAUNEE
(IROQUOIS) AND A
CITIZEN OF THE
SIX NATIONS OF THE
GRAND RIVER IN CANADA
When Joseph Connol-
ly tells people he’s an American Indian who
works as an aerospace engineer at NASA, they
usually react with shock.
Then out of awkwardness, he said, some
people respond that their great-great-grand-
mother was Cherokee or that they had a cousin
who was a Blackfoot.
“It seems to be a unique thing that happens
with Native Americans where people try to
connect, but they have no idea what that
identity really means,” said Connolly, 40, who
lives in Cleveland. “It’s not about checking off a
box on the census form.”
Sometimes people will ask him how he feels
about the former Cleveland Indians mascot,
Chief Wahoo, a caricature of Native Ameri-
cans. Other times, he gets asked if he lives in a
teepee. His tribe traditionally used longhous-
es, not teepees.
A longhouse is a rectangular-looking home
that’s made from trees and bark and built by
American Indians in the Northeast, particular-
ly those from the Iroquois nation. The Haude-
nosaunee name means “People of the Long-
house.”
Connolly and his family participate in cer-
emonies at longhouses with the Six Nations in
Ontario. He said he also takes his children to
powwows at his wife’s tribe, Little Traverse Bay
Bands of Odawa Indians in Harbor Springs,
Mich.
“A lot of times, people want to put Native
Americans in historical context only,” he said.
“We’re always trying to get to be that modern,
visible person.”
As a kid growing up in Niagara Falls, N.Y., he
said he became hooked on working at NASA
after he saw a rocket launch on TV. Working at
NASA became his “impossible” dream job.
“Growing up, I didn’t know any Native
American scientists,” he said. “We just didn’t
have any stories of people going off and doing
these types of things.
When he got to Ohio State University, he
said he was one of few Native American
students in the engineering program. He
started a chapter of the American Indian
Science and Engineering Society at Ohio State
and met Native American professionals at
conferences who served as mentors to him. He
said meeting Native American scientists was
“really life-changing.”
He now works on making hybrid electric
aircraft at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in
Cleveland.
Connolly said his experience of trying to
become an engineer has led him to work as a
recruiter and mentor to young Native Ameri-
can students, encouraging them to go into
math and science careers at NASA or other
science facilities.
“I want to make a strong foundation for the
next generation.”Jae Littlebear
YOUTH ORGANIZER OF
THE SANTA ANA PUEBLO
IN NEW MEXICO
Jae Littlebear, 20, was
at an airport departure
gate, heading to the na-
tion’s capital for a climate protest, when the
woman checking her bag remarked: “You’re
really pretty for a native girl.”
Littlebear, of Santa Ana Pueblo, didn’t want
to say thank you. She knows all of her people
are beautiful. So she let the airport worker
finish talking, asking stereotypical questions
like: Do you speak your language? Do you live
in teepees?
Finally, Littlebear had enough and asked the
worker: “How long have you been in New
Mexico for?”
“She said her whole life,” Littlebear recalled.
Littlebear is a youth organizer with the
Pueblo Action Alliance, but said she doesn't
usually speak up like this in public. On this day,
she felt the need to push back:
“How do you not know what my people’s
culture is?” she asked the airport worker.
Littlebear then said she gave her a brief
lesson, pointing out how the state flag is a Zia
sun symbol, representing one of the pueblos.
The experience reminded her how she wished
people knew more about her people, about
their resilience and smarts.
Throughout high school, Littlebear, who
also speaks her native language of Keres, had
tried not to “act too rez,” referring to living on
the Santa Ana reservation.
She stopped wearing her favorite native-de-
sign clothing because she was bullied, and she
remembers how scared she was after hearing
that, at a neighboring school, a teacher cut a
native student’s braided hair.
When Littlebear finally stood in front of the
White House last month, joining hundreds of
other Indigenous protesters calling on Presi-dent Biden to stop approving fossil fuel proj-
ects and declare a national climate emergency,
she felt proud, her hair in two long braids.
Natives had to learn how to abide “by a
White man’s world and still learn our cultural
ways, and as a youth, that’s hard,” Littlebear
said in an interview at the rally. “And you have
to be very smart, you have to be very strong to
do that. And that’s what our people exactly
are.”Sierra Teller
Ornelas
MEMBER OF THE
NAVAJO NATIONOrnelas is best
known for being the ex-
ecutive producer and
co-creator of the com-
edy “Rutherford Falls,” which is streaming on
NBC’s Peacock. The half-hour series focuses on
two best friends, one White, one Native Ameri-
can, who find themselves on opposite sides of a
debate over the history of their small town.
Originally from Arizona, Ornelas is also an
award-winning sixth-generation Navajo tapes-
try weaver. Weaving is a long-held Navajo
tradition.
Ornelas, who lives in Los Angeles, said when
she tells non-natives that she’s Native Ameri-
can, the reaction is usually curiosity. Some-
times, she said, people express “apprehension
that they’re going to say the wrong thing.” But
she said she’s not fazed by it because she grew
up working at exhibits and art shows with her
mother, who is an artist.
“It’s rare that I’m in a non-native situation
and am not educating folks about my culture.”
Ornelas, 40, said a common myth about
American Indians is that “we’re no longer
here,” that “all Native people are in the past.”
She said many non-natives also don’t think
about the “variety and diversity of who we are,”
adding, “They see us as a monolith based on
outdated history books.”
Ornelas said she believes many non-natives
think of American Indians “only through the
lens of a ‘trauma narrative’ ” of stolen lands,
disease, servitude and death. She’s trying to
change that with her work as showrunner for
“Rutherford Falls,” which has won praise for its
fresh take on the lives of Native Americans.
She said she’s trying to depict the concept of
“Native Joy” on the show.
“Native people are so funny and so funny in
so many different ways,” Ornelas said, adding
that “comedy has an incredible ability to
quickly connect people and to really educate or
at least open people’s eyes to different ways of
thinking.”
Ornelas said her show is a “real opportunity
for people to see us as we see ourselves.”Nicholas Galanin
TLINGIT AND UNANGAX ANCESTRYNicholas Galanin wanted to make sure
passersby didn’t miss his recent art display, so
he chose the same lettering used for the iconic
Hollywood sign to spell out his message:
“Indian Land.”
The 45-foot-high installation titled “Never
Forget,” which was erected in Palm Springs,
Calif., from March to September, was primarily
“a call for settler landowners to return land
back to Indigenous communities,” said Gala-
nin, 42, who is of Tlingit and Unangax ancestry
and lives in Sitka, Alaska.
Visitors to the “Never Forget” installation
were asked to contribute to a GoFundMe that
has raised about $50,000 for the “Land Back”
movement, a group that calls for returning
lands to Indigenous people both literally and
as a symbolic reclamation of stolen lands.
“The Land Back movement is not about
removing anyone who lives here from this
land,” Galanin wrote in an artist’s statement.
“It’s about recognition of, and respect for
Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty, and
returning what was violently invaded and
occupied.”
Galanin used the Hollywood sign as a
reference point because it was initially an
advertisement for a White-only community,
put up in the 1920s by a real estate company.
And he hoped it would draw attention.
“Obviously, I expected that there would be
more selfies taken than contributions,” Gala-
nin said. “But part of this work was infiltrating
social media algorithms.”
The installation exemplifies the work that
the artist, who uses music, video, wood, jewel-
ry and more in his art, is known for.
Galanin, whose father and grandfather
were artists, were both master carvers. “It’s
embedded in my culture,” Galanin said.
Galanin hopes that, through his work, he
can challenge incorrect assumptions that
some make about Native Americans — that
they are long gone.
The assumptions, Galanin said, “come from
years of institutional whitewashing of history,
years of erasure of our history, of our commu-
nities, our stories, our place names, our knowl-
edge.”
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