DIFFICULTIES

It’s been difficult to maintain momentum in my writing. When the exoticism of my experience lifted, I began to feel like there wasn’t much to say. It’s been a hard eight months. I feel like I’m in a relationship that’s winding towards its culmination and within my relationship to my present experience, I have ceased the intimate dialogues that were so pronounced when I first arrived here in the Central Valley of California.

For me, writing is a way towards understanding, but this is no longer my goal. There is no one to talk about it with as the seeker within me no longer wants for experience. I begin to wonder where this current mindstate might be directing me professionally. I thought for some time that the social services might be a good place, but having felt very discouraged it’s hard to focus on that anymore. I want to stare into a person, into a structure, but to vaunt myself into a position of authority is surreal. I’ve never received professional respect and now I find many of my suggestions taking seed in community leaders on the Rancheria. This is vivifying, but not nearly as much as it should be…

I received my first grant the other day. 1000 dollars isn’t a lot, but with the tribe lacking any non-discretionary funds, I could finally have event support, money to print a resource guide. When I presented the money before the tribal council I found out that I had broken procedure. I was so excited to get the money, because in my previous discussion with the council about opening a tribal account for non-discretionary funds I was told that everything was in place, but I needed money to open it.

In my rush I had not properly notified the council. To be fair, I was not aware of my indiscretion. My on-site training at the Rancheria consisted of C handing me a two inch thick policy binder, which isn’t really conducive to learning. When this realization struck me, surrounded by the council, I leapt into the defensive. It would be so easy for the tribe to reject even this small amount of money devoted to community organization. It is easy for them to reject most anything that requires their involvement.

There is one person who I feel often deliberately works to jeopardize many projects I try and put through. They were quick to recommend the council refuse the money. When I present them with a problem or need, they see only problems, never solutions. This stonewalling has effectively kept the calendar from being printed, despite my work to navigate through R. It is strange, I find this person to work to hinder whatever growth I am trying to foster. They have begun making offhand comments about me when I am in earshot. B told me to watch out and having seen three employees vanish without a word, no ripples or rumblings, I wonder how much power this person has. I don’t think they want me there.

This is unnerving to think about, because I hope I’ve endeared myself to enough to enough people to secure my position there. Neutrality has been an effective weapon, but at the council meeting, I saw it being stamped on. At the end of the day it does not matter that I am there purely to help the community, because many people do not want that help. While I described the grant, J nodded sarcastically. We have a jovial relationship otherwise, but whenever we enter into any kind of official exchange about what I’d like to accomplish, I find that he greets me with a grave swath of suspicion.

B watched me struggle there, trying to convince the council to help me use this money, and pursed her mouth. M took, nodded enthusiastically, but few spoke. E is a professional bedfellow of L and so he was quick to poke holes in what he could find. I was reminded why I had redirected my work away from him, of the time I worked to help define cultural projects with him but found him dismissive. Telling me what I should do, but not why or how.

The word empowerment falls mostly dull, only R seems to understand what I mean.

Perhaps these are white ideas. White solutions for displaced and beaten down minorities. Particularly with American Indians, there is such a resolve against these things, such a struggle to preserve cultural ways of living, and when those ways have been forgotten, to merely preserve that struggle that saw them last through the coming of white yahoos into the mountains. While my methodology might be more effective with an urban minority, here it is often rejected.

I finally convinced B to help me start a youth group. It’s frustrating to know that the tribe may be unable to assist me with community organization, even if I raise the money myself, but perhaps it’s for the better.