Professional Natives

Cliff dwelling, Bandelier National Park, New Mexico (Tanya Photo)

Professional natives

Professional Natives are similar to other professionals except instead of learning a craft or skill such as a “doctor” or “teacher”, they exploit their race or heritage.

Professional natives pretend to “protect” ruins or perform “ancient” dances or speak disappearing languages, but the main connection with the past that they exploit is often simple proximity: they are born near some interesting ruins or some touristic attraction. Sometimes they are also members of a dying race speaking a defunct language: these are their credentials for the exploitation of others--sometimes other native-studying professionals such as anthropologists.

Since the professional natives are the last ones standing they are the people around to tell the stories (and sell the tee-shirts). Fake artifacts from the past are their stock in trade and they would sell their grandmother’s bones for a profit except that then they would have no “treasures” to display to a new generation of the curious.

I think of the post card hustlers at the pyramids, the blow-gun salesmen on the Amazon, the hula girls at the night spots in Hawaii, the “Native American” turquoise jewelry sharks in the “Indian trading posts” of New Mexico. Sometimes these charlatans will even rise to become high-salaried bureaucrats such as museum directors or “living history” actors.

Well, everyone has a right to earn a living if they can and sometimes being a professional native is the only way to survive.

They serve their pathetic function well.

But they really are only the monkeys which inhabit the ruins after the spirit and the creators have gone.

Tomasito, 2008

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