Ishi’s Brain

Abstract

A new telling of Ishi, Gerald Vizenor’s post-Indian, a model of survivance, Ishi a trickster, a joker, an Ishi who might have been.

Keywords

post-Indian ethics justice indigenous museum moral code

(10/12/20; Bryant 1.02)

A new telling of Ishi, Gerald Vizenor’s post-Indian, a model of survivance, Ishi a trickster, a joker, an Ishi who might have been.¹

Stage

A courtroom scene is projected on a drop-down screen. As actor, dressed as Ishi in suit and tie, wearing judge’s robes, presides over the courtroom scene. An exhibit table showcases artifacts made by Ishi and exhibited in the Hearst Museum. The exhibit includes primitive tools, arrowheads, arrows, bows, and spears. In the center of the table is a tall jar, holding a faux brain, labeled Property of the Smithsonian: vat number 920050. It plays on a 40 × 60 foot drop-down screen above a long table. On the table are additional specimens from the Hearst Museum including native bones, masks, clothing, and skulls. Stage Left a spot light shines on life-size posters of Ishi.

ACT 1: Scene 1: What’s in a Name Anyway?

Narrator:

Ishi’s story continues, even though his body and soul have been returned to his homeland. His ghost continues to speak out, exploring different models of ethics, justice, healing, and forgiveness.

Ishi as judge:

We are here today to explore what would be learned by placing Judge Kroeber on trail.

Alfred:

Give me a break Ishi. I apologized for the mix-up with your brain and ashes.

Boots:

Not good enough Alfred! When you were dressed up as a Judge you said you’d send me back to the wilderness if I don’t get a real name.

I like being called Boots.

Ishi Two:

He kind of did he same thing to me.

Thanks Boots. There is the

issue of my name..

He has this thing about calling me

the Last Wild Indian

in North America. He insists on using the

Yahi word for my name.

Alfred:

Ishi calm down. We can change your

name.

ACT 1: Scene 2: Ishi’s Moral Code

Coyote:

Tell me again, how Ishi’s story happened. It is such a painful story. Is it all about his name? Was there even an ethic in place? What kind of ethic of care was operating?

Cliff Christians:

Tough question Coyote. Ishi is right, it started with Kroeber giving him a name, when Ishi refused to reveal his Yahi name in Ishi’s day anthropologists could pretty much do what ever they wanted to do. Remember, Ishi was a ward of the state, placed under Kroeber’s supervision.

Boots:

Ishi the trickster had a sacred moral code involving honoring the dead, family, and life itself. This is why he would never reveal his Yahi name to a stranger. He did not want an autopsy, or cremation when he died. His sacred code prohibited these practices.

Ishi:

When I died I wanted to take a journey to the land of the ancestors.

Gerald Vizenor:

They denied Ishi and the members of his tribe participation in that ritual, with co guilt whatsoever.

Coyote:

This is why we raised all the fuss about his brain and his ashes. We could care

less about the Berkeley anthropologists. Our ethic of care forgives.

Ishi:

I was taught to forgive. To have compassion, to have a strong moral commitment to healing, not punishing.

Cliff:

Only in the past decade has an ethic of care, and healing connected to indigenous models of restorative justice. been given attention. Rather than searching for neutral principles to which all parties can appeal, like justice, indigenous ethics rests on beliefs about the sacred, no punishment, but about transformation, empowerment, social justice and human rights.

Coyote:

Right on Cliff. There is more, involving empowering methods of inquiry and a model of justice as healing.

Ishi:

Yes, healing the wounds of injustice, healing the pains of loss, and physical punishment, restoring human dignity.

Roy:

Is this all about white guilt.

Yahi Chorus:

Hey, as far as we can tell, neither Alfred, or Theodora felt any guilt.

Coyote:

This is all about indigenous persons creating a moral space framed by

indigenous values. Pure. and simple.

Ishi:

Yes, Yes. Each tribal community has its own sense of the sacred, of justice, of

healing.

ACT 1: Scene 3: Decolonization and the Sacred

Claudio:

Sometimes the word decolonization is used in this context. It is a metaphor for change.

Roy:

Ideally it is nothing short of a call for the repatriation of indigenous land and life, a demand for indigenous sovereignty, a dismantling of the colonial apparatus.

Yahi Chorus:

It is also a call for restorative social justice, for justice as healing, not justice as punishment.

Boota:

It is more than the application of critical indigenous pedagogy to the problems of colonialism. Most critically, it uses the facts and experiences of oppression to correct the damages of colonialism.

Marcelo:

It signals an end to innocence, Yet it is always utopic, a “call to work toward healing, unity, and cooperation”.

Sandy Grandy:

The central crisis in the world today, as defined by a Red Pedagogy, is spiritual, “rooted in the increasingly virulent relationship between human beings and the rest of nature” (Grande, 2004, p. 354).

Linda Smith:

As a Maori woman from New Zealand, I understand decolonization and spirituality within a moral view of the person. The essence of a person has a genealogy which can be traced back to an earth parent. A human person does not stand alone, but shares with other animate beings relationships based on a shared “essence” of life . . . [including] the significance of place, of land, of landscape, of other things in the universe.

Ishi:

I understand this. This is why I could never reveal my sacred family name, why my ashes needed to be returned to my home in the mountains.

Coyote:

Spirituality is a critical site of resistance. It is one of the few parts of ourselves which the West cannot decipher, cannot understand and cannot control . . . yet.

Linda Smith:

A respectful, radical performance pedagogy must honor these views of spirituality.

Boots:

This pedagogy demands a politics of hope, of loving, of caring nonviolence grounded in inclusive moral and spiritual terms. Yet it will not do to simply fold radical indigenous discourse into critical theory and performance pedagogy.

Margaret Kovach:

Graham taught me that key terms in critical theory like emancipation must be fitted to the values of local indigenous communities. Terms like respect, mutuality, and honor must become part of the researcher’ moral fiber, not just scripts to be read and performed. By proactively framing participatory views of science, democracy, and community, indigenous people can take control of their own fates and not be sidetracked by nonindigenous others’ attempts to define their life situations (G. Smith, 2000).

Yahi Chorus:

Go Graham!

Act 1: Scene 4: Repatriation. Healing. Returning What Was Stolen

Gerald Vizenor:

The Repatriation Act reflects a desire to heal,

to honor the sacred, to acknowledge

the damage that has been done to the person, to the earth,

to the community, to return what was stolen.

To get beyond guilt.

Boots:

About time.

Coyote:

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPA) moves in several directions at the same time: it protects and requires the return of sacred objects including those stolen or excavated from grave sites or native lands; vests the ownership of these objects in the tribal community where the objects were located; prohibits the sale, display, or marketing of such objects.

Ishi:

They did not have this Act when I was placed in a museum,

forced to live along side skeletons and bones. They had the nerve to exhibit objects—clothing, blanket, tools-they stole from my campsite. They insisted I perform for school children, and church groups, and make objects that could be displayed for sale, marketed as authentic objects created by the last wild Indian in America.

Yahi Chorus:

Ishi, don’t forget Ishi, they cremated you, stored your brain

in a jar and mailed your brain to a museum.

Judge:

Hear, hear. Silence in my court!

Boots (to A. Kroeber):

How do you heal Ishi? Ishi died from

the disease created by your colonial practices.

His wounds could never be healed. This is

your legacy.

Gerald:

Hear Hear!!!

Claudio:

Can these damaged bodies

of decolonization:

ever be repaired?

Can you me give a cured Ishi?

Marcelo:

I have the duty

to manipulate and transform

the tale of colonization

Using my life as a resource to show

with a political propose

an experience

to expand the sacredness of life.

Ishi Two and Three:

Is it too late to do this with me? Am I beyond help?

Will NAGPA save me?

Would it have saved me?

Coyote:

Probably not. After all we are dealing with the anthros!

Marcello and Claudio:

We are all betweeners

Us, betweeners

Them, betweeners

You, betweener

EveryBody, betweener

Writing from the flesh

Exposing the vulnerability

Of our branded bodies.

We are

Not ready to settle

For a world without Them

Where everybody is

And should be

Us.

Ishi:

Is there a space here for me?

Can I be an in-betweener?

Amen

Curtain lowers, lights dim:

A courtroom scene projected on a drop-down screen. As actor, dressed as Ishi in suit and tie, wearing judge’s robes presides over the courtroom scene.

Ishi:

Let me remind you. We are here today to explore what would be learned by placing Judge Kroeber on trail?

Coyote:

What have we learned?

Boots:

There is no justice in this morality tale; we can only pray for the willingness to forgive.

The End

Spotlight shines on a tall jar, holding a faux brain, labeled Property of the Smithsonian: vat number 920050.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Communications, Sociology, and the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. One of the world’s foremost authorities on qualitative research and cultural criticism, he is the author or editor of more than 30 books, including The Qualitative Manifesto; Qualitative Inquiry Under Fire; Reading Race; Interpretive Ethnography; The Cinematic Society; The Alcoholic Self; and a trilogy on the American West. He is co-editor (with Yvonna S. Lincoln) of five editions of the landmark SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, co-editor (with Michael D. Giardina) of 17 books on qualitative inquiry, co-editor (with Lincoln) of Qualitative Inquiry, founding editor of Cultural StudiesCritical Methodologies and International Review of Qualitative Research, editor of four book series, and founding director of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

References

Denzin

N. K.

(2020). Re-reading Ishi’s story: The three worlds of America’s last wild Indian. Taylor Francis.

Grande

(2004). Red pedagogy. Rowman and Littleman.