Reader: Lori Gouner  
Respondent: Regina Richardson
Recorder: Robin Stone

02/04/02

Chrystos, "I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government"

(Unsettling America, p. 304)

Biographical Information:  Chrystos is a self-educated writer and artisit.  She is a land and treaty rights activist for Native Americans.  These themes come across in her writing.   She was born in San Fransisco in 1946.  Her father is a Menomice Indian; however, he did not live on a reservation.  She grew up as an urban Indian.  Her poems speak out against the forced invisibility and silence of Native Americans as they are abused by the dominant culture:

Objectives:

Obj. 1 involuntarily joining the US nightmare

Becoming part of socio-economic culture unwillingly.  Change from traditional to autocratic culture.

Obj. 2A yearning to reclaim her roots, turning back to the past, she is 3^rd generation.  Looking

At what america has become and reflecting on what it was for her elders. 

My Interpretation:

Her poems speak out against the forced invisibility and silence of Native Americans as they are abused by the dominant culture:

A culture which is without children, elders, or relatives.  Therefore having no foundation, roots, stability, or promise-a fruitless ghost.  What the United States offers to her people is nothing.  Only meaningless words and ideas.  The United States that she speaks of the US emerges from the backdrop of a nightmarish landscape:

An ugly mess

Toys

Garbage

Bad colors

Lousy food

Bad meat

Ugly clothes

(language of chaos, disorder, decay)

The erection of development.  Houses for paper.  McDonald’s.  Stuck houses.

Yet no landscape, out of place and time.

Last semester someone mentioned on the web that both the language and form of the poem resemble an actual nightmare--- the way in which it works itself out. There are large gaps and spaces between words making it disjointed along with the lack of punctuation and simple language. 

A critique (Maria Kristinna V.) says Chrystos fights the victimization and colonization of minority people in terms of language.  She challenges conventional American genre categorizations of poetry and pros as well as rules of grammar, punctuation, and typography.

Just as a nightmare works as a sequence of images you can’t escape from until you wake up, it feels that the speaker can’t escape all the images of US. Nightmares creep up on you just as the US is a ghost in the wrong place and time.  It offers  a plot line that is haunting.    It is a spell.  It is the color of (nowhere gray). (desolate and dreary a hopeless color). 

 This US is a plague, a virus that has come in and infected her cultural landscape. 

Themes of forced participation/ selling out to what you’ve never signed up for  therefore she is very angry. 

Themes of anger.  Underlying Loss of identity and Control. 

She speaks for all of her people and her ancestors as well she says “take these words back with you”.  She would have the US culture erased from her history.  The US holds no meaning other than exploitation and lies.  Therefore the words and treaties and sorry paper hold no meaning for her.  She’s signed nothing. 

This echoes the several treaties that the United States signed with Native Americans and repeatidly broke these treaties forcing natives onto reservations. 

If the united states is founded on papers, words, and treaties…. building houses to store these treaties and promises….yet break them as well…..

Chrystos says the US stands for nothing.  It is hypocritical, she says “we declare the United States a crazy person”.  A babbling fool scattering garbage around her culture. 

Questions: 

1.  The imagery of this poem is pretty straight forward but I’m sure many of you interpreted it differently from me.  Or entirely different. 

Such as ….your colors hurt our feet….which I didn’t really know how to approach.  Then also the houses for paper….I sort of took that for our complex society of post offices, gov’t buildings, libraries….houses for ideas/ treaties/ 

2.  The reader condemns the US and its ways but she doesn’t say why her anscestoral culture was better.  I.e. what made their food, houses, colors, etc. better.  The native American voice is absent in the poem.  Is this her attempt to show how the US has erased her culture and silenced her people.  

Discussion:

Imagery is straightforward

Unclear on what colors hurt our feet could mean.

Houses for paper are businesses and places of commerce vs. the Indian family and society.

Dr. White pointed out that our biggest buildings are ones no one lives in.

Social security number, license, paper documents, the Internet are all things the Indians must assimilate to

Questions: Speaker condemns US but gives no voice to her culture; Bad mouths US but not Native America voice. Indian Culture erased?

One student pointed out that the author gives the people voice: flipping the coin telling the US to go live on reservation and have rights taken

Lori: return to past. Recognizing how they were treated

Ginger: we came over and were offered all with open arms and we took advantage

Cristel: “Colors hurt our feet” could mean concrete and stones and/or not wearing moccasins.

A student: Soap scrubs feed hard àfeet get white and if you scrub your feet hard enough, they bleed. End up with no feet or hurting feet.

Regina's interpretation as respondent:  Soapsuds assimilate - blending in to woodwork; still separated

Ginger: The Constitution was used against them

Student: Punctuation different such as the apostrophe to stress what she wants and the capitalization of the word “WHAT” while defying our system.

Lori: Another writer uses their own method of writing

Student: Re: tear mess down and go - she was raised suburban so does she truly know about her native culture?

Lori: She was born in the ‘40s in San Francisco. Her great grandfather was on the reservation. She is a political activist for North America for her people to reclaim what was taken from her people.

Dr. White: Sense of immigrants taking something instead of just coming to something; nightmare quality; like a spell commanding something to go away.

Lori: re: last line = she wants to wake up from the nightmare.