Idiginaity and Palestine
I never really had a strong connection to my ethnicity. I was proud of it., though. My father is unmistakably indigenous. Dark skin, scared face, an exotic air about him. He's an old street dog from Tacoma, though I know he spent some time on the rez. He met my mother running the streets of Tacoma. They had me and my brother.
Gang violence got too close to home, so we left for the mid west. The moments of my first memories.
Coming into my teens was rough. My father fit all the stereotypes of a "minority" Father— male chauvinist, brown man with a 6th grade education trying to find work, drinking to medicate an undiagnosed mental health disorder that manifested as physical abuse towards my mother.
When my mother left, I was— in her words— expected to be the man of the house I was 9. Not to mention the only role model I really had beat the tar out of her. Having a younger brother, I thought I understand the assignment. Keep him out of trouble, and if he did listen, beat it into him.
I only bring this part of my life up because this might-makes-right style of relating to one another is indoctrinated into young men from a young age. My story expedited my relationship with false authority, but look at what's pushed on boys:
War, contact sports, combat sports
All of these not only normalize dehumanizing the people on screen, but bring a catharsis that only go so far for young men.
None of these thoughts cross my mind before I heard the phone call the Hind Rijhab made to emergency service in occupied Palestine. The pride in my ethnicity returned to my focus. I saw an indigenous people fighting for their land; an indigenous people accosted by white people who arrived by ship.
At that moment I realized colonialism never died. It evolved into genocide. I was awakened to the fact it's going on here, to this day. I was incapacitated for months in a rage. I have stopped look for work in acord with the vow: I will not feed myself to this capitalist system.
Now after the third-year anniversary of the Palestinian Holocaust, I have to find a constructive way of direct action against the state of Israel and their Neo-Nazi, Zionist collaborators.
I've been told the pen is mightier then the sword. I think that comes from a liberal— and, ultimately infantile— mindset.
