Two Very Different Stories About Being Isolated From The Rest Of Society

My thoughts on The New York Times's Op-Docs How to Be Alone by Sindha Agha and A Conversation With Native Americans on Race by Michèle Stephenson and Brian Young.

"Op-Docs" are short documentaries presented by The New York Times. The series began in 2011 and consists of hundreds of videos covering a wide variety of topics, opinions, and stories.

How to Be Alone (Agha, 2020)

The Op-Doc How to Be Alone, directed and produced by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Sindha Agha, portrays with almost painful accuracy the dreariness of a day stuck at home during the Covid-19 lockdown. It was published on May 21st, 2020, just a couple of months after quarantine began in the US, but the experiences described in the video still feel all-too-familiar today, almost nine months into quarantine. There's nothing to look forward to and very little structure outside of what you impose on yourself, and all the days begin to blend together into one big, unending blur of loneliness. Agha compares the psychological impacts of lockdown to what astronauts in space and scientists in Antarctica experience, and she talks about how their experiences helped her to cope with isolation. 

Being alone with just your thoughts and your phone to keep you company also means there's lots of time to let your mind wander freely. Agha captures that feeling perfectly in this six minute video, with her voice-over monologue jumping from thought to thought & topic to topic without many pauses along the way. Sometimes it seems like she just goes off on a completely unrelated tangent, but she always ties it back to the experience of being alone during quarantine in a way that makes the whole Op-Doc just flow when you watch it. It's certainly fast-paced but not unbearably so, and in some ways it feels similar to the way my own ADHD mind works.

Agha's description of her own personal experience in quarantine is extremely relatable, seeing as how most of us are still stuck in quarantine with seemingly no end in sight. However, it's not all doom and gloom. She uses the last few minutes to remind us that after this is all over, humanity will emerge stronger, and we'll all certainly have a greater appreciation for the people around us. I would highly recommend setting aside a few minutes to watch How to Be Alone just to remember that none of us are alone in this struggle, if nothing else. (And if you're reading this in some wonderful time in the future when the pandemic is over, it's still a good reminder of what we all had to overcome. If you'd rather forget it though, I don't blame you.)

The next Op-Doc, A Conversation With Native Americans on Race, was directed and produced by Brian Young, a Navajo filmmaker, and Michèle Stephenson, a Haitian filmmaker and former human rights attorney. In it, we get to hear parts of interviews with Native Americans, who share the stories of their struggles. The video itself doesn't even reach the six and a half minutes mark, but I learned more about the hardships that Native Americans face from watching it than I did from 12 years of taking social studies in school, and I'd be willing to bet that most Americans would say the same. Did you know that Native Americans are required to carry ID cards that "prove" their "nativeness"? I didn't, and to be honest I was in disbelief when it was mentioned in the video. I did some quick research on it, and unfortunately that is exactly the case. Below is a picture of what one of these cards looks like.

CDIB Card (Kane, 2017)

From what I understand, Native Americans must have this card in order to be officially considered members of a Native American tribe or nation. The card states the person's "blood quantum," which is a fancy name for a construct that defines what proportion of your blood is "Indian Blood.".

"Indian Blood? Don't you mean Native American Blood?" 

Unfortunately, no. You would think that at the very least the government would try to pretend to respect Native Americans, but they can't even stop calling them Indians. That card, that every Native American carries, is called a CDIB Card: Certified Degree of Indian Blood. That fraction on the card is their blood quantum, which is calculated depending on what fraction of their ancestral lineage is made up of "Indian Blood" (Chow, 2018). One of the interviewees described it like this:

"...imagine a pizza with different slices, and let’s say 32 slices. Of the 32 slices, I’m 28 Apache. That’s my particular blood quantum."

The minimum blood quantum to be eligible for tribe citizenship differs from tribe to tribe, and if yours is too low, you're out of luck - even if you've grown up with the tribe, even if you're an active member of the community, legally you will not be considered a member of that tribe (The Oneida Trust and Enrollment Committee, 2016). This matters because the US has treaties with the various Native American nations that live inside US borders, and if you're not legally considered a member of your nation, then those treaties won't apply to you. At first, that kind of seems to make sense - after all, what if you're only, say, 1/100th Cherokee by blood? But there's a lot of reasons why this system is problematic.

For one thing, Native Americans are the only group of people in this country who are required to do anything like this. I can't imagine how I'd feel if the government told me I had to prove that I was 100% Chinese in order to be treated a certain way. And imagine if white people were required to prove what fraction of their blood originated from whichever European country, and they were treated differently depending on their results? The American people would never stand for it, so why is it ok to do it to Native Americans?

Another problem comes from the fact that the US didn't use blood to define just Native Americans. As recently as the 20th century, several states used the "one-drop rule" to define someone as African American. The rule stated that a single drop of black blood made you black, at least in the eyes of the law. This statement from another one of the interviewees sums it up quite well:

"The one drop rule, meaning that one drop of black blood makes you black, that was to keep as many people oppressed or legitimize their oppression as possible. But on the other side, one drop of anything else completely dilutes you as a native person. So if you’re a native person, you have the one drop of something else, then suddenly you’re less native. So it’s the opposite."

Basically, the one-drop rule is exact opposite of a blood quantum in terms of function, but they both are rules that the US used to discriminate against and take advantage of people by their race. It's almost as if the US just used these rules as excuses to get away with oppressing a race of people... which of course is exactly what's happening here. But it continues to happen, because Native Americans have been pushed so far into the sidelines of society in so many different ways. Even today, this system means that tribes will slowly begin to shrink as more and more people marry outside of the tribe, "diluting" the bloodline. The interviewees in the Op-Doc compare it to being treated like animals, which isn't far off from the truth.

When we think of the genocide of Native Americans, we normally think of what started when Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World. We all know the sad stories of how entire nations were wiped out by disease and conquest. But that was all so long ago, right? Except it's still happening through this system - only now, it's a slow, painful demise. Tribes are slowly being erased from being forced to set unreasonable limits on who can be a part of their nation. The smaller they get, the quieter their voices become, and soon enough the US won't have to worry about those treaties anymore because the people they made the treaties with will be gone, mixed in with the rest of American society, and their cultures and heritage will be lost forever. But of course, they're still here, and while they are there's still ways to prevent them from disappearing.

As Americans, it's our core duty and responsibility to fight for equality, for the rights and liberties of every human in this country. Native Americans face so much hardship, and the government isn't on their side. They need more people to learn about their plight and to add their voices to their cries for equality. Watching this Op-Doc won't tell you the whole story, but it might open your eyes like it did mine. Understanding the situation is the first step to creating change, so I highly recommend you take the time to watch A Conversation With Native Americans on Race by clicking the link and then doing your own research to learn more about what Native Americans face and how you can help.

Sources:

American Indian Enterprise & Business Council. "Blood Quantum." www.aiebc.org, 2020, aiebc.org/blood-quantum/.                Accessed 13 Dec. 2020.

Chow, Kat. "So What Exactly Is 'Blood Quantum'?" Code Switch, NPR, 9 Feb. 2018,                                                                             www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum. Accessed 13 Dec.             2020.

Kane, Maeve. CDIB. 2017, SUNY Albany. maevekane.net/ahis300-2017/lectures/sept6.html. Accessed 13 Dec. 2020.

The Oneida Trust and Enrollment Committee. "Article #2: What Is Blood Quantum and What Does It Mean for the Future of     Oneida?" 2016, oneida-nsn.gov/dl-file.php?file=2016/03/Article-2-Blood-Quantum.pdf. Accessed 13 Dec. 2020.