Something Else

 It might have seemed to the newsroom staff an innocuous choice of words.

CNN, in the heat of the 2020 Presidential election season, put up a poll listing racial groups.

In the Native American community, the idea of being “something else” hit a chord. A group of people who have struggled for recognition ever since Europeans’ arrival, “something else” was far more than a grammatical error, a semantic mis-step. It was another blow to a people treated for 500+ years as less-than, not good enough. (Link to local article on the response to the incident)

Indigenous creative minds got to work. There was a call for the Washington Football Team to be named the “Washington Something Elses”. You heard things like, “It’s a good day to be something else.”

I am honored to share an artistic response to this moment. Art as protest. Art as resilience. Art speaking what words cannot.

Mallery Quetawki is a friend, a colleague and an incredible artist from Zuni Pueblo. She shared this piece and her reflections on what was behind the art. Take in the art and let it speak to you for two minutes. Breathe it in. Soak it in. Hear its message. Then, take a look at Mallery’s own words.

Mallery, my sister, like all of your art, this piece is indeed…something else!!! Wow!!!

 

I sit here and think what my feelings were when I created the "Something Else" painting.  I was more amused that folks can still get away with marginalizing our communities even when our presences is ever so loud nowadays.  I felt that there needs to be a reminder of who lived, loved and died on the soils of America before it was America.  Just the idea that our identities and our tight knit societies are so romanticized like it only happens in the movies or when they talk about our people they say things like "were" or "was" in a past tense like we aren't living that way at all anymore, is what sparked the idea of utilizing technology, ancient art practices and a small amount of protest.  We may be assimilated to western society in material manners, education and social systems but we are still very much tied/entwined to the ancient way, which is something embedded in all our circuits and throughout our cells and helixes.  More of a warning shot that we are rising up and being louder and being just as educated as our colonizers that these "something elses" have power to add to the circuits of the American Machine. We are no longer standing idle but taking on endeavors that take us to places such as the Department of the Interior and taking seats and saving the open ones around us one Pendleton (blanket) at a time.