Montana Standish 2

It’s Not A Cookie, It’s Our Culture

My first act of vandalism took place when I was five and my family had just moved into our new house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was in my room and decided to hold my own house warming party by using a metal screw I found to carve the word home into the wood siding of the window. The next day my father discovered the caveman letters cut deep into the wood of his new house and asked me if I was the “artist”. Always one to be proud of my work, I took full credit for the carving; not even aware that it is typically a bad idea to take responsibility for destroying property. Unlike future clumsy accidents such as breaking the front door, I was not punished after I explained myself. I think my dad saw past the number of dollars needed to be spent at Home Depot to replace the wood and instead recognized my carving as some kind of grand sentimental statement. Unfortunately, my work to come involving a blob of melted crayons on the carpet did not prove as intellectually stimulating.

To this day I can’t say I knew the motives behind my scribbling of “home”, or what it exactly meant to me when I was so young. I can only imagine that I was identifying my house and yard as my home. In the beginning, this is all we understand the word home to be. For me, home was the sharp scratch of falling into a yucca, the eerie sound of coyotes yelping at night, and the smell of refried beans heating on the kitchen stove. Then, I began to get out more. Home became more than just the place I sleep every night. Home broadened itself and encompassed the arroyos I used to gallop my pony through at dusk, the first tender bites of a fajita from the Fajiata Man’s stand at the plaza, and the sound of the aspens rustling in the fall as their leaves change color. I became aware that I was a part of some place, some city, my city. Then the realization that I was not alone in these feelings and ideas of home began to surface. I became part of a culture; a group of people who live in the same place and share similar experiences. It seems that my home has just been getting bigger ever since.I spent the first few years of my life in California, though I have little to no recollection of my time there. My family decided to move to Santa Fe where the cost of living was even higher, and the taxes haunted us ever since. Our first year there had its ups and downs. Most people were friendly but occasionally our California license plates elicited vandalism in the grocery store parking lots. My blonde, fair skinned sister went to the public high school where there were frequent stabbings and bomb threats. She handled it quite well however, and when asked how she managed not to get beat up by the gangs she said she just made sure never to look anyone in the eyes. Making sure not to piss anyone off seemed to be the way to get along peacefully in New Mexico but there was an instance in which my father accidentally caused some trouble. Like most Anglo newcomers, he made the mistake of sounding like a dumb gringo.

One year we were at a Christmas party and they were serving the usual holiday foods of posole, green chile, tamales, and biscochitos. I was scampering around the room, no doubt eating things I found on the floor as little kids tend to do when my father called me over. He held up a sandy brown, cinnamon smelling treat and asked me if I wanted to try a “cookie”. This gruff, older native New Mexican man somehow heard my father use the word cookie and whipped his head around. He scowled at my father and me for a moment as he sized us up.

“It’s not a cookie, it’s our culture!” he barked at my father in his heavy accent.
The idea of culture as an object which could hypothetically be dipped in a glass of milk and eaten was new to my family. I was too young to realize the meaning of the metaphor. Thinking of the biscochito man getting angry over a baked good induced an outbreak of laughter from me for some time. Aside from being entertaining, this incident also supports Santa Fe’s motto of being “The City Different”, a slogan which is written all over signs welcoming people into our weird little city. More often than not it is used by locals to describe strange behavior characterized by wearing lethal amounts of patchouli, attending “spirit quest” workshops by day, and fire walking seminars by night (all of which are questionable, but very typical).
When we moved to New Mexico we entered into a borderland world of cultural tradition combined with new age hippy antics that would take years for the rest of my family members to fully adjust to. In this way, I suppose I was the lucky one of my family to be raised in Santa Fe and have a native upbringing. I didn’t cry the first time I
ate green chile and seeing grown homeless men walking down the street in women’s dresses never seemed to phase me. The first time I ate salsa I reported to my dad that it burned, but I wanted more. Thus I began my love affair with spicy foods as a slobbering toddler with an appetite for enchilada plates instead of the standard American chicken fried steak. I would have been confused to hear that most American kindergarteners did not sing De Colores daily. And, until recently, I never questioned the fact that hundreds of people gather each year in Santa Fe to burn a giant puppet named Zozobra. While flipping through a local magazine I recently discovered that my middle school track coach, a white middle aged man named Mr. Hicks, changed his name to “Raven”. “Raven” has been living in a twig hut in the woods for the past year where he runs spirituality powwows. Growing up I just assumed that it was the same everywhere. The unusual was usual to me, and only now have these eccentricities become funny in their strangeness.

My parents never came right out and explained this to me. They didn’t sit me down and warn me that I would experience culture shock later in life. The realization that New Mexico was different from other places came slowly. It came from watching movies and wondering why all the houses had pointy roofs and none of the towns had Spanish names. It came from cross country road trips and observations of the greenness of the grass (they don’t even have to water it?!) Most of all, the realization of being different came when I started interacting with people from other areas. I never noticed the unique aspects of living in the Southwest until I had them pointed out to me by foreigners. Slowly I began to piece together an understanding of my home based on my own experiences there and the perceptions of others.

What makes my own journey to understand and define the place I call home so confusing at times is that the Southwest is both a real and imagined place. It has inspired some of the country’s most fantastic misperceptions and myths to the point where truth and fiction bleed into one another. Foreign ideas about New Mexico have mixed with the desired image of the natives to create the place that I live in. My experiences growing up there and the public perception of what it means to grow up there are equally important. More often than not, depictions of the Southwest have grossly exaggerated the idea of a wild frontier where the barbaric natives are so backwards they still live in mud huts. I once heard a young tourist boy ask his parents where all the cowboys and “injuns” were as they strolled along downtown. At first I couldn’t believe the little boy actually said that. I was disgusted to think there were people in this world who believed that New Mexicans still lived in that era. But then I had to stop myself and consider the image that Santa Fe puts out. A store called “Yippi Yi Yo’s”. A restaurant called “The Cowgirl Hall of Fame.” An “Indian Market.” We are just asking for it.

In contemporary times, the Southwest has been highly romanticized as some kind of desert utopia full of open minds and the real issues of racial tensions, poverty, and drunk driving are glossed over. I learned just how far off most of the country is when it comes to understanding New Mexico when I moved to the Midwest for college. Until I left my home, I was unaware of all the mystery and confusion that surrounds my home. It seems that many Americans have yet to even recognize New Mexico as an actual state even though the United States claimed the territory in 1912. Nearly a century later and people are still under the impression that New Mexico is just a cleaner, fancier part of Mexico. When I was working at a cafeteria in Illinois, an older woman asked me where I was from. I told her New Mexico to which she said “Oh Mexico must be real hot this time of year.” When I corrected her, adding in the “new” part, she shrugged and said it was the same thing anyway. A large percentage of people who do accept New Mexico as a state have completely vague perceptions of its geography and culture. In the minds of these folks, New Mexico is some indistinguishable chunk of hot desert located near Texas where we ride around on horseback slaying rattlesnakes all day.

Yet the cafeteria woman wasn’t completely wrong in her comparison. While New Mexico doesn’t belong to Mexico anymore, it can’t exactly be called the United States either. The fact that the American government never thought up a more creative name to set the state apart, and instead just tacked a ‘new’ on to an already existing country could also explain why New Mexicans themselves don’t fully accept their place in America. We are a relatively new state and changing into a completely assimilated culture takes time, assuming that we would even want to become the same. The native New Mexicans are in no rush to become a clone of Maryland and so we grip to old traditions and ways of life, and outsiders who move there do so because they want that way of life as well. For many people, my state is as close as they can get to escaping modern corporate America without fleeing the country. I have never lived in a house with adjustable heat; we use a wood stove.

Much of New Mexican identity comes from cultural and geographical distinctions. Sometimes the distinctions are real differences and sometimes they are just misperceptions, but New Mexicans thrive off them either way. We need people who don’t know about our culture for us to feel that we are part of a unique community. A certain amount of exclusion must occur if our culture is to stay alive and ours. On certain days, I catch myself getting angry at tourists who don’t understand my home for what it actually is. I see them walking around the plaza in cowboy hats wearing gaudy turquoise jewelry that they probably bought here and will never wear anywhere else but here. Yetthese people, these tourists that we so despise, are also our source of identity. We depend on their foreign perceptions to fuel our tourism industry and our own native pride. I may not like the pasty white guys in moccasins asking where to get some good “tay-cos”, but I am always flattered that they chose to visit my home.

When I describe New Mexico to my Midwestern friends, I play off the already existing clichés which make the state seem far more romantic and mysterious than I typically see it as being. Instead of a snake, it was a rattlesnake, and we were drinking tequila not Coors Light. My friends walk away from the story thinking New Mexico is as exotic as they imagined, and I trick myself into believing, if only for a moment, that New Mexico is a mythic place where I just happen to live. Of course, not all details need to be embellished. There is really no way I could describe a New Mexican blood orange sunset or a summer lightning storm and make it sound anymore beautifully thrilling than it already is. The truth about New Mexico is usually more interesting than anything bullshit I could come up with.

A truth that few people know about New Mexico is that it is always being tugged back and forth by different groups who want to call it their home. The space is shared but not always by choice, and coexistence is often less than peaceful. From the time when Spanish conquistadores first fought Native Americans for the Southwest, to Anglo America’s war for the land, there has always been a struggle for ownership. There has been conflict over land, but more importantly over culture. Whoever posses ownership of the land, also dictates what the culture surrounding that land will be. This is where the clear definitions of culture in the Southwest begin to get as messy and muddled as the Rio Grande’s water. Land in the Southwest has been stolen, given back, sold again to different people, and infringed upon by outsiders like my own family all throughout history. At this point, no one group of people can claim the history, geography, and culture of New Mexico as their own creation. That is not to say that any group should try either. Even the oldest families of New Mexico had to move to there at some point. People don’t remain outsiders forever once they assimilate into the shared space. New Mexico is the product of hybridity in which Native American, Mexican, Spanish, and Anglo culture and tradition have all fused into one.

Since New Mexico is a combination of all these influences, the issue of cultural ownership comes into question. There are some who believe that ethnicity is the only way that a person can claim ownership of a culture. If that is true, then it would seem nothing separates me from any other Anglo kids living in Americaville, USA. I know this can’t be true because there are abstract and physical differences between myself and an Anglo from anywhere else, as I discovered living in Galesburg, Illinois. Once I stepped out of my room wearing a summery little dress, nothing real flashy, but still flattering. I had just bought it and I was excited to wear it out. I thought it was a completely appropriate choice for the spring weather, and it was actually quite modest with a high neckline and a hem that hit well into my middle to lower thigh. The first person I encountered was a girl from Iowa, who took one look at me, said “What are you wearing?!”, and proceeded to call me a floozy. I ran into another friend of mine that day, a boy who said “Geez Montana, leave something to the imagination.” Considering that I was only exposing my calf, some lower thigh, and my arms, I thought I was leaving plenty to be imagined.

I tried to explain to them that New Mexico is in a hot, desert climate so of course we wear less clothes, but it didn’t stop them from insulting my character and demanding that I had done something wrong. They believed that I should fit in with their culture and I tried to resist. Once I start fitting in to the place I am living, I won’t fit in at home when I go back. I didn’t wear that dress for awhile after that day, which only made me angrier that I had wasted money on something I liked and couldn’t use anymore. But soon my anger at wasting money overcame my fear; I put the dress back on. As soon as I lose my culture, I lose myself. And one thing I hate even more than losing my identity is losing money on a perfectly cute dress.

Since I am an Anglo New Mexican, there is some debate over what I can rightfully claim as my culture. I can’t point to Mexican, Native American, or Spanish culture as mine because I am not any of those ethnicities, and it would be wrong to do so.

What I can call my own and identify with is the culture of New Mexico, because that is where my home is. Not everyone claims their culture in the same way either. I have white friends who have not adopted and embraced New Mexican culture to the extent that I have. These are the undeniably WASP-y kids who could be dropped into the suburbs of New England and no one would know the difference. My friends sometimes tell me I’m not white, I’m New Mexican. That’s only half true though; while I am white by default, I am New Mexican by choice. Culture is not something that necessarily just falls in our laps. As technology and globalization begin to bridge the physical gap, we have more access to cultures outside our own than ever before. This increased exposure to other ways of life turns culture into an available commodity. Culture is not an all or nothing concept anymore. We have the choice and ability to seek our culture and other cultures out and decide how much of them we want to incorporate into our own identities.

Since I grasped on to New Mexican culture so tightly, I knew it would be difficult to leave my home. I have always placed a great deal of importance on saying goodbyes—to people and places and even things. I see goodbyes as a kind of ceremony. I hate the idea of leaving without first spending time to reflect and make peace with the place and people. On family road trips I was always adamant about saying goodbye to each hotel by collecting the little soaps and on vacations I had the impulse to remember a place by taking dirt samples with me. I procrastinated and put my goodbye with New Mexico off until my very last night there.

That night I sat in my backyard under the heavy blanket of a thunderstorm. It was late summer and there was a chill in the air but the rain was warm, like fresh tears, on my face. Lightning struck the mesas in the distance, illuminating the desert landscapes in bright flashes that faded as quickly as they came. My view of the land was fleeting. I saw everything but only for a few seconds. Those few seconds were long enough for me to remember how much I love New Mexico and need it. I always told my parents that I would never live in New Mexico as an adult; that I would find some place else. My sister said the same thing growing up. She was dead set on moving to New York and becoming an important big city girl. Years later and she is now looking for her own house in Santa Fe. I may wander around for awhile but I will always end up back home.

The next morning, sitting in the backseat crammed with my belongings, I took off across the country on my way to Illinois. It was just after dawn, and the pink sky reflected off the wild sunflowers scattered all along the highway. I had not been up that early in a long time so I had almost forgotten the magic of a New Mexico sunrise. In the summer, the early morning is the only time when the grass is fresh with nighttime moisture before the harsh wind and sun dry everything out. With my knees pushed up against the seat and my luggage piling everywhere blocking the view out one window, I settled in for the trip. My dad usually sang some horrible trucker song like “On The Road Again” at the beginning of any family road trip, but on this morning the car was silent.

I have been on too many long cross country road trips to count in my life, mostly because it took my parents awhile to discover airplanes. I have driven from Santa Fe to Michigan, to Florida, back to Santa Fe a number of times. I have driven to North Carolina and back when my family decided to move there with a U-Haul truck and everything. We spent one night at the house we were going to rent and then turned right back around and came home. Most of what I have seen of this country has been out of a backseat window.

One thing I always noticed about these trips was that leaving home had a very different feel from coming back home. Hearing the driveway gravel crunch under the tires as we set out signified the beginning of an adventure. Feeling the car turn on to a dirt road late at night meant relief that I was home at last. But knowing that I would not be returning home this time gave the drive its own, completely distinct mood.

When you know you won’t be seeing any of the scenery again for a long time, you have to try even harder to see it all as you leave it behind. I made sure not to sleep too much so that I could catch one last view of the land roll by. I watched as the scrubby piñon and juniper trees disappeared on the horizon, turning into the flat plains of Texas. By noon we were driving through the Panhandle and the sour smell of a thousand cows was wafting in through the air conditioning. I slept through most of Texas and woke in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has road kill all of its own. Instead of the remains of scruffy rabbits that litter the roads of New Mexico (they jump right out in front of cars at night transfixed by the light, and there’s no way to avoid hitting them), Oklahoma is splattered with possums and armadillos. Reading Steinbeck made me think of Oklahoma as a dust bowl, but the part we stayed in that night was lush.

The next day we snaked through the rolling hills of Missouri, which would be the largest hills I would see after moving to Illinois. We drove by pastures of grazing horses, forests, and lakes. We were entering a new town every few minutes, unlike in New Mexico where you can drive for hours without noticing any signs of civilization. We were in Illinois by night and I rolled down the window to let the warm, sweet air in. Some of the towns we drove through were so small, so ancient, that it made me shiver. In the dusk lighting these places looked beautiful and creepy. My mother made us stop by the side of the road so we could spot lightning bugs in the grass. She grew up in Illinois and was dead set on seeing the tiny spark of one of these bugs again. From the way she looked out the window, I could tell she was home here. Finally we were out on a stretch of highway cutting through cornfields and farmlands and the first few stars appeared, almost as bright as the ones I see at home where the air is clear and the elevation is much higher.

The next day, when we were driving through the quaint main street of Galesburg, I started crying. The shops, the people, the trees; everything looked so different. I didn’t know how I was going to survive here. I was sure that no one would understand me. But after the initial shock wore off, I started surviving. I began to learn my way around the town and figure out how to interact with which people. I began to take comfort in finding out some things were the same, and those that were different excited me. I am beginning to see why being a tourist appeals to the people that visit my city. Being a foreigner can be fun.

I enjoy the humid mornings here and the way the grass is everywhere, green and natural. Winter was interesting for me; I wore layers of sweaters and had never before seen ice cling to tree branches and power lines. ‘Freezing rain’ made its way into my vocabulary. Most of the food I eat here is in one way or another fried, and then covered in think orange cheese sauce as opposed to the green chile that is offered as a condiment on any New Mexican menu. I actually like my new all-American diet but I still call home requesting bottles of chipotle salsa that I later hoard for months at a time. My life is very different here, but I still have all the same tastes and cravings. I want what I always want, and right now that’s a tattoo.
I want to place New Mexico on my body forever. I’ve been playing with the idea of getting a Zia sun symbol tattooed somewhere on my body, perhaps tucked away secretly in the groove of my hip or displayed proudly on my shoulder. The Zia symbol is
a circle with four sets of four lines each coming off the sides. Originally an icon designed by the Zia Indians of New Mexico, it has been adopted for use on the state flag which features a red Zia symbol on a background of yellow. The Zia appears everywhere in New Mexico plastered on license plates, tourist shot glasses, and business cards. A favorite downtown restaurant among locals is even called “Zia Diner.”

During my time in Santa Fe, I have not gone a single day without seeing the Zia symbol in some form. The symbol’s beauty is found in its simple use of the number four. The four sun rays which radiate from the circle represent the four points on a compass, the four seasons in a year, the four periods of each day, and the four phases of life. Most importantly, the Zia believe in the importance of having four sacred human attributes: a strong body, a clear mind, a pure spirit, and a devotion to the welfare of others. Because of the symbol’s ability to represent universal human ideals, it comes as little surprise that the state of New Mexico thought it would be an appropriate icon for our flag. In 2001, the North American Vexillological Association voted New Mexico as having the best flag in the United States.

Yet the use of the Zia symbol on the flag and for other commercial purposes has been the cause of much controversy. The Zia sun only appeared on the flag in 1925 when an Anglo archeologist named Harry Mera from Santa Fe submitted it in a competition for designing the new flag. Mera copied the symbol from a pot found in Zia Pueblo and the state adopted the icon without ever notifying or asking the Zia Indians. Having their cultural property used without consent did not sit well with Zia Pueblo. The indigenous peoples of New Mexico have had their land stolen, their way of life stolen, and finally their symbol stolen. The first thieves were the conquistadores of Spain, then came the American settlers, and now the very country in which they were forced to become apart of, has robbed them. They have been subject to violence and oppression and an attitude that told them they were lesser, worthless. Now that same government of oppressors chooses to steal a sacred symbol of those they oppressed and wave it proudly in the air on their flag. By making the Zia sun belong to the state, the Zia people no longer have ownership of it in the same way. It seems that nothing could bring that ownership back. The Zia Pueblo has no sun, only darkness to fill the space.

The Zia Indians are trying to make things right again; to place the sun back in their cultural solar system where it belongs. In 1994 the Zia Pueblo demanded compensation for the state’s use of their symbol, and by 2001 the demand grew to $76
million dollars. Anger from Zia Indians was justified by accusations that using the symbol on the flag was not only religiously degrading, but also morally disrespectful. Along with the flag issue, there are also various instances in which the Zia symbol has been used without permission by businesses in New Mexico. A Santa Fe company called American Frontier Motorcycle Tours attempted to register a logo featuring a version of the Zia symbol as a trademark. The company eventually withdrew this request after negative response from the Zia community. Most recently, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has turned down the registration of the Zia symbol to a software company and a cocktail mix brand.

At a hearing about the use of the Zia sun symbol, Amadeo Shije, the governor of Zia Pueblo, spoke on behalf of his people and their cultural property:

I will say that the injury that my people have suffered from the disrespectful use of the Zia sun symbol has been very, very deep. The history of the European in this continent has been a long history of unauthorized taking. We are in the beginning of, I hope, a different frame of mind. I do not see how the Trademark Office in good conscience, can give a person, foreign to our nation, the right to use our symbol on a chemical fertilizer or a porta-pottie or whatever business or
service he is peddling. Under the existing law, other governments in this country are protected from such an affront. I understand that there are separate statutes protecting the Boy Scouts' insignia and the Red Cross. Even using western logic alone, without using any kind of compassionate understanding of our culture and our way of life, the official insignia or symbols of the sovereign tribes should be protected as much as the symbol or insignia of municipalities, states, foreign states and so forth. (Brown 82)

When it comes to the use of the Zia symbol, the ethics most usually stressed by Zia Indians are not based on religious overtones of identifying the symbol as sacred (which it is) but are merely expectations of common decency. It shouldn’t matter whether the symbol has a sacred meaning or no meaning at all. The Zia people simply don’t want others to take from them without asking. The concept of cultural ownership is rooted in the notion that culture is property and it is wrong to steal any form of property from anyone. However the Zia Pueblo feels that cultural property can be used by people outside that culture if they have permission. This attitude was evident when Southwest Airlines contacted Zia Pueblo asking if they could use the Zia sun symbol on a new aircraft called “New Mexico One”, to which the Pueblo agreed. It seems that the issue has less to do with the Zia Indians anxiety about commercializing the symbol, and more with their right to make the choice of who can use it in the first place.

In 2001 the negotiations over the use of the Zia sun symbol ended when the New Mexico House Bill 423 lost its priority and funding. Zia Pueblo is still pushing to resolve the issue, but for now the state of New Mexico still salutes the yellow flag with the red Zia. For now, I don’t know whether or not I should get a Zia tattoo. I want to make my home a part of my body and carry it with me wherever I go. I see the Zia sun as a symbol for New Mexico and my life there, even thought that is not its original meaning. But I also don’t want to steal. At this point, I can’t decide if marking my body with this symbol that belongs to the Zia Pueblo is stealing. That’s the problem with culture—it escapes from its inventors—and then no one can ever really take it back. Perhaps we belong to culture rather than it belonging to us as an entity that we can control. Right now I’m going to wait on the tattoo because I’m afraid I don’t know the answer, and I’m even more afraid of bald, bearded men with needles. Besides, I don’t want to vandalize my home anymore.

I suppose getting a tattoo is motivated by my desire to ensure that I always remember where I came from. So far I haven’t forgotten. Living in the Midwest, I am homesick always. I can spend months at a time in a foreign place, but I can’t spend one day without thinking of my home. When I think of New Mexico, I think of pressing my face against the sun warmed brown stucco walls of my house and walking barefoot through the garden after it has just rained. I think of that man who says the cookie is his culture. I’m beginning to think he is on to something, in a sense. Culture is as abstract as it is real. It’s like a cookie you can crumble in your hands, and it can fall apart or be created just as easily. I’m starting to realize that my home is the same—it’s a place on a map (somewhere near Texas?) I can drive to and it’s a feeling. My home is the choice I make of where to return to. I was in a cab one afternoon in Galesburg, Illinois when the driver, who was sporting a combo mullet and John Deere hat, asked me where my home was. I braced for it and told him, to which he said:

“Ahh, you must talk pretty good Mexican then, huh?”
I just smiled, told him sure I did, and looked forward to telling that story back home.