The Inter-relatedness between Lyons, Silko, and Early African Society

I thoroughly enjoyed the readings for this week. I enjoyed the inter-relatedness of both texts and the relationship the content seems to share with what I have been learning in my Women in African History class as well. For example, both Lyons’s and Silko’s discussion of identity intrigued me, as I have always found identity to be an interesting subject of meditation. I thought Lyon’s differentiation between people and identity to be genius, as well as his explication of identity as a social construct. He writes, “definitions of identity are not people; they are in fact things, things used to describe people, and always the invented fabrications of human beings. They are, to invoke the most ubiquitous of buzzwords, “constructions” (36). I have often thought about this myself, but to see it written is another thing all together; it seems to make it more legitimate in my mind for some reason, haha. I have thought about this when thinking of my own identity. For instance, while asking those age old questions like, “Who am I? What am I? What is my place here?” Whenever one asks themselves these question, they are always confronted by not only their own ideas of who, what, and why they are, but also the ideas of others, which are almost always influenced by the institutionalized societal definitions of those answers based on things like physical appearance, as both Lyons and Silko discuss in their texts.

For instance, according to the social construction of who and what I am, I am defined as a white male who happens to be an American, or perhaps American of Irish descent, or something along those lines. Now, I’m pretty sure I have discussed this before as well, but what if I disagree with this societal definition for myself? Is that even allowed? Well, of course, on a personal level. I can define myself as whatever I want. But as Lyons points out, that does not stop others from judging and defining you based on the hegemonic social construction of who and what you are according to the society, more often than not based on your physical appearance. For example, Lyons presents a story of his daughter being called “white” by another Indian boy who wishes to insult her due to her light skin tone. Similarly, Silko tells a story where she was removed from a picture with her schoolmates by a tourist for not looking Indian enough, again, because of her light skin tone. But this works in other was as well. For example, Africans of all kinds, from various areas, lineages, and cultures were lumped into one massive grouping of people termed as “black” by Europeans. This grouping still exists today and it attempts to define an even greater number of peoples from an even greater variation of places and cultures. For instance, one might be Ibo  Hausa, or Yoruba – three dominant, and distinct, ethnic groups in Africa – but  all classified simply as Nigerians. Or, one might be Nigerian, South African, Ethiopian, or Libyan, but  all classified as African. Still, one might be classified as African, Caribbean, or African American, but all be classified as “black.” And the same is true for any of the other grouping words, such as Asian, “white,” and Indian.

I then like the point Lyons makes when he states that, “Traditional Natives did not distinguish and Indian ‘race’ from other versions, although they did recognize different cultural groups” (56). Cultural is the only thing that I can see that truly sets us as distinct from one another. Race is really just a ridiculous concept. To quickly revisit the previous paragraph, what sets Nigerians apart from each other obviously has nothing to do with race; it is their unique cultures, as it is a matter of Ibo culture and language in juxtaposition with Hausa or Yoruba culture and language. Furthermore, similar to the Native Americans, Africans did not define themselves as either Africans or “black” before the Europeans arrived. There was no need to. They were simply Ibo  Hausa, or Yoruba, to name a few. But it is not just this relationship to identity that the readings shared with what I have been learning about traditional African culture, it is also the social systems that seem to relate. For example, Silko states that, “All food and other resources were strictly shared so that no one person or group had more than another” (65). Similarly, the same could be said of almost all early African societies. They were decentralized matrilineal gathering societies where women sustained most of the people on the food they gathered and thus garnered a great deal of respect. Men and women were considered equal and disrespect to ones fellow community member would anger the ancestors. Resources were widely distributed and shared because in these societies greed and the hoarding of resources were considered evil and offensive to the spirits. Lyons also remarks on this, saying that “Indigenism seeks a life where power is decentralized and people live in harmony with the natural world and each other” (64).

Also in relation to this, Silko discusses how people were judged in traditional Native society, by the elders, and what she says also relates to what I have learned about traditional African society. She writes,

My physical appearance seemed not to matter to the old-time people. They looked at the world very differently; a person’s appearance and possessions did not matter nearly as much as a person’s behavior. For them, a person’s value lies in how that person interacts with other people, how that person behaves towards the animals and the earth. (61)

It was, and still is, the same in the villages of Africa, where respect for the elders, for one’s community, and for the animals and environment that sustained that community were valued above all other things, including physical appearance, wealth, and even position within the community. Obviously, there are many similarities between indigenous peoples, regardless of time, place, distance, and difference, and perhaps this is why the indigenous community is able to incorporate into itself so many various peoples all over the world. But, also as I have said before, I am also aware that the experience and struggles of the various peoples in Africa are not exactly the same as those faced by the Native peoples here in the Americas.

In conclusion, I’d like to end with two more quotes, one from the Leslie Marmon Silko reading, “It is only a matter of time before the indigenous people of the Americas retake their land from the invaders, just as the African tribal people have repossessed nearly all the continent” (185), and one from one of my favorite independent underground Hip-Hop artists, Immortal Technique, “They ban ethnic studies claiming our culture will swallow them/ but you can’t conquer people and build a country on top of them/ and then feel offended when they breathe the same oxygen.”