Coming to understand where Wilderson's head it at with my deeper dive in his book Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S Antagonisms...He's on to something. But I'm not here to give an evaluative opinion of this work. I'm here to read it and apply it to my greater needs and purposes, which is to graduate from OU with a masters in Film Studies LOL. But, real quick, cause I have A LOT of opinions, I will say this: This book is WILD. Now he's talmbout Native's Negrophobia as learned from their sovereign 'equals' the Settler.

Do I agree? Maybe. I've gotta read more. Can I see where he's comin' from? Certainly. Here are some notes from chapters 5 - 7 of Red, White and Black

Notes on Red White & Black Chapters 5 - 7

Wilderson will situate the Savage on the spectrum or “modality” of the “Settlers/Master's grammar of suffering, exploitation, and alienation” (p.150)

• But Savage films do not attempt to situate themselves within the “modalities of the Slave’s grammar of suffering, accumulation, and fungibility” (p.150)
• Which means that the suffering the Savage experiences relates to the Settlers/Masters differently than the Slaves
• Sovereignty!
• The struggle (for lack of a better word) for land, to reclaim the land violently stolen and the displacement of the Savage defines their relationship to the Settler
• The Slave also raises a “threat to sovereignty” (p.152) which creates an “anxiety” or “Negrophobia” in Savage films (a point that Wilderson posits has never uttered discussion until now!)
• So, Wilderson is positing that Black people pose a threat to Native Americans purely because 1. White people brought them (Black) to their (Native) lands and 2. The Native does not want to be associated with the subspecies of the Negro
• Cool.
• Connecting this author with Baucom, Wilderson basically, in so many words, illuminates the melancholic nature of the Black/Slave, a position of trauma so deep it escapes words and representation (although film and novels with certain attention to details can bring this positionality to light i.e: Bush Mama, Spook Who Sat by the Door et.al) and in the passage on p. 154 Wilderson points out the cinema produced by the Savage almost lets the Settlers/White's off easily by not associating their genocide with their current positions
• There is one director that does make the distinction (somewhat, according to Wilderson), Chris Eyre
• First in Smoke Signals Wilderson speaks on the two Native women who drive their car backwards through the reservation
• Funny, but mostly just a reflection on how a symbol of mobility (in civil society) functions within a community of socially dead people as a reminder of the the outside, a reminder of the Settler
• Eyre’s Skins questions “genocidal or/and sovereign dilemmas”
• First the film deals with genocide and the Savage through the injection of a (fictional??) visit by President Clinton to the Pine Ridge Reservation
• In the scene Clinton declares “we’ll give you the tools and the support to get done what you want to do for your children and their future!” (p.157)
• Seeing that the Reservation has unrivaled levels of poverty and alcoholism, we can see the genocide of the Native is not yet finished
• And through Rudy, the main character’s Mogie police brother, and his vigilante moonlighting (he puts on blackface and burns down stuff???)
• Wilderson believes that if Skins along with other Native American filmmakers and “ontologists” would recognize themselves first as a product of genocide instead of a group of persons whom’s land has been taken away (and not cozy up to the Settler’s suffering; also not to align themselves ‘against’ Black people) then there would be a “Red rage...which could not be contained through analogy to postcolonial anger” (p.161)
• What I said before, though still true for the Slave/Black, is also true of the Savage/Red, for, even if the Savage/Red is the middle (if you will) of the antagonistic relationship with the Settler/White then to understand the scope of loss of culture would be just as devastating, as melancholic
• Opening chapter 6, Wilderson says: “Kinship structure and naming practices, religion and spirituality, governance, and land are key elements that scaffold the ‘Savage’ narrative of sovereign loss” (p.162)
• Leading indigenous scholars work, like what was assumed in reading the description on Rudy’s actions, to preserve and pass on the Culture
• One scholar, Vine Deloria, wants to build a per-counter-history, one that is divorced entirely from White ideals. It’s one that other contemporaries have a wide spectrum of opinions on ranging from optimistic to no support whatsoever
• “All the metaommentators on “Savage” ontology attribute the destabilization of energy (power) in the universe to the coming of the haole, the destroyer or predator: the White, the Settler” (p.164)
• Power has been regained, however, particularly in the 1960s and 70s (especially in Hawaii) and it is no coincidence the rise in power is “coupled with the reinvigoration of tribal customs” (p.165)
• Wilderson points out White or Sovereign powers are both spiritual (Christianity) and secular (civil society/”money, civil rights, force of arms” (165) and those powers do not harmonize they dominate. Period. (There’s a question in there somewhere, I’ll think on it and come back)
• AH! The divorce from the concrete...Wilderson quotes scholar Taiaiake Alfred: “power flows from respect from Nature. In dominant Western philosophy, power derives from coercion and artifice--in effect, alienation from nature” (165)
• Same ideals from Baucom, in that, the White man through novelization and speculative thought creates, makes us respect and reputations
• Wilderson employs Haunani-Kay Trask to explain how Native power and Settler power can exist: There can be only one
• In order for someone in Native governance to achieve top leadership, this person must put all needs for the Native persons first, before all other constituents, not for the greater good, but only for the good of the Native and their tribe (p.166)
• In short, the Settler would have to die” (166)
• But the conflict remains in the realm of the Settler, as the spiritualism of the Native has no place in White hegemonic civil society
• And to make Native communities function in this quagmire has damaged them, like, in their soul as Wilderson pointed out that tribal elections (a White ideal) are “one of the dirtiest forms of human activity in existence” (p.168)
• Tribal elections have been taken out of their native spiritualist world and placed into the secular/Settlers world, one that has no bases in respect for nature
• Going back to how Wilderson described the Savage’s relationship to the Settlers, it was like that of a feudalism where the peasants were almost seen as child-like
• So to say that contemporary tribal elections that have been (re)created in the realm of the Settler is “dirty” then what does that say about the Settler’s?
• Wilderson, in a discussion about Native religion, turns to highlight two ontologist: Ward Churchill and Vine Deloria Jr.
• They both defer to their elders from which their knowledge came from (quite like leading black scholars/ontologist)
• Reiterated by Wilderson’s continued use of the films Skins and the way it reflects Native culture/customs, the only way for the Savage to escape his position is to “restore” the culture and by proxy, religion ○ Religion functions differently in a Native American’s life than that of a White person; religion is everywhere as Deloria through Wilderson put it “a force of ‘undetermined intensity and unsuspected origin’” (170).
• Both “modalities” (of suffering/antagonisms) of genocide and sovereignty appear in Deloria’s text (p.171)
• Noting how Deloria cites Jungian psychoanalysis as having an “ethical capacity” along with the “structure and practice of Amish and Jewish spirituality” (p.172)
• The Amish forms relationships with/to their land, it trumps its “commercial value for its ontological value” (p.172)
• “Language, then, is a temporal capacity, the power to transpose meaningless and unspecified time into the meaningful and specific ‘event’ known as the tribe” (173)
• From Baucom I know that the event is made when it is distinguished as so, typically through language. Curious to go one step (fore)back-wards and create the event with the advent of shared language. (There’s a question in there, I have to find it)
• Deloria points out that Native religiosity is communal, a relationship with everyone, everything, every time (past/present/future), an all encompassing relationship with yourself in this time and this space; also nothing is written therefore not up to multiple interpretations therefore apart of life and living
• Even I have known, for some time now, that the Native’s relationship with land (and why sovereignty did become a primary modality of antagonism) is vastly different than that of White people
• Stewardship vs. Ownership (p.176)
• Natives persons borrow the land, as it was not created by them, also there are the inanimate things on the land that deserve dignity
• The White Settler sees capital gains, “nature” or a “resource” rather than a “source” (p.176)
• Even so, if capitalist plans for the lands suddenly turned into Marxist plans for the same land, the land would still be last on the list as an entity to restore dignity to (besides, of course, the worker)
• Land, for Wilderson, connects the Savage to the Settler/Master, for they both understand there is land and there are occupants of such land: Them (Savages) or US (Settler)
• Wilderson setup the two antagonisms earlier as sovereignty and genocide
• As a displaced people from a land, the Savage and Settler have conflict
• But as an object of genocide, then the relationship between Savage and Master (and Slave) becomes antagonistic ○ Wilderson, however, does not have a lot of source material for the type of ontological position for the Native
• He attributes this absence to a bit of “Negrophobia”
• Skins, he believes, through formal elements and not the script, knows the “quintessence of ‘Savage’ ontology” as genocide, the script’s focus on Rudy shifts the ontology back to sovereignty
• But Skins can not help itself, for the idea of sovereignty (a Settler’s ideology) has become “indigenized” (Wilderson quoting Audra Simpson (p.187)
• Making distinctions using author’s relationship to sovereignty and their origin (whether it be Hawaii, Canada or US), Wilderson claims that the same hatred of the state, capitalism and colonialism is less than those ontologist from the contiguous 48 states
• This is due to the legislative gains and the substantial presence of the Indigenous in Canada (somewhat also in Hawaii)
• This still does not explain the absence of comparison or intertwining of the Slave and the Savage in these ontological studies of the Native

Tags

• Blackness
• Whiteness
• Nativism