Today’s New Verse News: HOW TO ERASE
by Ron Riekki
Sacheen Littlefeather
“Indigenous identity is complicated.
What I do know is that the impact that Sacheen had on myself was very real”
—“The Sacheen Littlefeather controversy highlights a
debate over what it means to be Native American,” CNN, November 5, 2022
“I like you the way you are”
—Avril Lavigne,
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Sacheen Littlefeather’s sister says that Sacheen talked about being native in order to get fame. Yet her sister is having no trouble denying being native in order to get fame. Why wait until someone is dead to have the conversation about their identity?… I know someone who’s native. Her brother denies being native. & in his denial, it furthers his belief that he’s not native. Whereas, his sister—who is native— goes to native events, is deep friends with native people, & so she learns more & more about her native heritage, but when she tries to explain those connections to her brother, he has no interest… If Sacheen Littlefeather’s sister wanted to understand her sister, then she would have needed to talk to her sister to find out what her sister knew, knows, will know. Native is narrative. It is the stories we unearth, how we grow by unravelling what is unknown. A CBS News article I read on Sacheen Littlefeather said it reveals the reality of her her- itage, but it misspelled her name twice in the article, listing her as: Sacheen Littlefather & Sacheen Littlefield (since corrected), but it made me think how the cloud outside my window right now is a dog, no, it’s a c a t .
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Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).