Yakama Rising: Indigenous Cultural Revitalization, Activism, and Healing

4. Take Care of Your Past: Building a Theory of Yakama Decolonizing Praxis

104 chapter four Take Care of Your Past Building a Theory of Yakama Decolonizing Praxis Whip Man: An Ethnographic Introduction to Intergenerational Cultural Teachings * * * The children stand still and quiet; they halt their usual squirming and chatter, demonstrating their focused discipline of stillness, attentiveness, and patience. They know what is expected of them, a result of the many hours of instruction they have received from elders and adults. The children ’s faces become serious as they wait to hear the elder’s voice. After a long pause, a flute plays, loudly, beautifully; it is a suspenseful kind of noise. The children, dressed in their traditional regalia, remain still and focused, almost like statues. Then, after another pause, the elder’s voice booms throughout the room. He is the Whip Man, a traditional figure in Yakama villages, who is responsible for disciplining the children. The Whip Man’s voice becomes the center of everyone’s attention. He instructs the people about the importance of discipline, respect, culture, and community. The children, in unison, begin their sign language performance that honors the Whip Man’s sacred teachings. The Whip Man is a special teacher who instills a strong sense of purpose and communal pride into the children. He knows that if the children learn these important lessons, then they will be strong individuals who ensure a strong community well into the future. He also knows that the children, often so Take Care of Your Past • 105 present—and future-moment oriented, must be taught to respect the past, to learn from it, and to care for their ancestor’s most sacred teachings. He repeats his strongest message several times, loudly, in his booming voice: Take care of your past, Take care, You, you, you, Take care of your past. The instruction is firm, disciplined, but caring. One can hear the intensity in the elder’s voice. The children embody his teachings as they point to their audience while the Whip Man states, “You, you, you. Take care of your past.” In this way, the children are learning to be culture bearers . Through their performance they become teachers and messengers of Whip Man’s traditional teachings. * * * Embodying Whip Man’s Teachings and The Emergence of a Yakama Decolonizing Praxis Children who performed the Whip Man routine with the Wapato Indian Club remember the basic teachings of responsibility and discipline that the elder’s voice instructs. The poem, originally written by Phil George, was gifted to the Wapato Indian Club in 1989. The poem celebrates traditional figures (Whip Man and Whip Woman), who are responsible for disciplining children. Yakama elders Pauline Miller and Frank Gopher were so moved by the poem’s message that they gifted background music and a vocal audio recording to the club, to be used in sign language performances (Wapato Indian Club 1994). The poem contains a powerful message that reminds young people to engage in an indigenous cultural practice of “heeding the voices of our ancestors” (Alfred 1995). In his interview , Haver Jim (whom readers met in chapter 1) talked about his memories as a participant in the Wapato Indian Club, and about needing to uphold the expectations of discipline and respect for the group. I asked if Sue’s teachings about discipline had anything to do with his actions. He confirmed that it did. He agreed that club members needed to show discipline: 106 • Yakama Rising You had to. It is kind of a, living up to her expectations! You know she had a certain [way of expecting us to be], you had to have good grades, you had to show up to school every day. You had to behave yourself on the bus. I asked Haver to say more about Sue’s way of teaching discipline to the children. In his response, Haver reflects on why Sue was able to be strict yet still garner so much popularity and affection from the children. He points to her ability to communicate and positively reinforce the many good things children do, and an overall gentler style of discipline than what Haver had previously experienced: I think it had a lot to do with her ability to communicate. Because of her training as a counselor, I know she did a lot of positive reinforcement . She was strict, but in a more modern way. During his interview, Haver acknowledged that, as a child, he had a track record of...