The Colby Echo

Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Rob Kievit Bobby Gonzalez

I walked into Lovejoy 100 and was immediately greeted by Bobby Gonzalez from behind his podium. He went around the audience inquiring about each member's individual heritage. Growing up in the projects in the Bronx, Gonzalez said he has noticed that it is part of the human condition to always feel the need to pick on someone. For that reason, he said that he was "here to dispel stereotypes about natives" with his slideshow on misconceptions of "red, black, and brown." Like his own identification with both Native American and Latino heritage, many individuals identify themselves as multi-ethnic and multi-racial. For example, more than 90% of Native Americans come from Latin America.

A member of the Tainos, Gonzalez reminded his audience of the common misconception among non-natives that the Native Americans, or "Indians" as the lost Christopher Columbus called them, originated in Central Asia, and migrated to North America by way of the Bering Strait. Rather, he said, Native Americans believe "we came from this land and nowhere else."

Gonzalez emphasized throughout his presentation the difference in cultural conception of women, and 'minorities' between the European settlers and his native Taino people. For example, he said that at the time Columbus arrived women held leadership positions among his people because men and women were considered to be equal. This is unlike the culture of the 'white men,' who believed they were be superior not only to the native peoples they encountered and enslaved, but also to the white women in their own culture. In Taino culture, for instance, only the women would farm because they were seen to have a much stronger connection to their mother earth. Gonzalez says that white men have mainly written our history books. Thus, in accordance with their own personal interests, women and any non-white male must be portrayed as subordinate.

While the European settlers enslaved those individuals unlike themselves, Tainos considered them equal, and sometimes even sacred, as in the case of homosexuals in their culture. The Taino, Gonzalez said, got along well with almost everyone, including the African slaves brought to North America-unlike the white men, who merely enslaved everyone.

These sentiments are still present today. For example, Gonzalez brought up Americans' attitudes toward Mexican migrant workers who are unable to receive financial aid for farming in Mexico. They are thus forced to come to America, where $100 billion in subsidies is given to United States farmers because they simply cannot compete in their country of origin. This has led to resentment in the U.S., where the Mexican worker presence is portrayed as more of an invasion, but Gonzalez says these people have lived freely, trading and traveling on the entirety of North America since the beginning. It is only the recent white presence that has confined them to borders.

Rather than condemn Native peoples as Illegal Aliens and continually consider any amount of non-white as a problem, as in the case of a half black Mrs. Navajo Nation, we should recognize the multiethnic nature of every American. We should "value cultural and spiritual diversity," he says, so he is "proud to be red, black, and brown."

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