"Urban" magazine attracts Native youth

Wannabe Gangstas: A Cautionary Tale

By Cedric SunrayIf you are more familiar with Native Peoples and This Week From Indian Country Today magazines than XXL or The Source, you may want to take a closer look. After facilitating workshops for tribal teenagers this past month, as I have many days and weeks throughout my life, the issue of older family and community members being out of touch with youth realities was once again enforced.

During workshops I typically lay down numerous contemporary magazines at the tables where the youth congregate in order to facilitate discussions on the power of media within their lives. Ninety percent of the time, the latest issue of XXL (which can be picked up at any Wal-Mart) or another similar “urban” magazine, is immediately reached for by those assembled. Native Peoples and This Week From Indian Country Today don’t stand a chance.

XXL’s July/August 2012 issue features on the cover the snarling face of rap’s current king, Rick Ross, decked out in his platinum links, diamonds, and trademark “angry at the world” facial expression. He hails from the Opa Locka communihood in South Florida where my family once lived prior to moving down to the Florida Keys final stop. When I picked up the issue I recalled his song “Everyday I’m Hustlin” where he spouts “most of my niggas still deal cocaine…still b***ches and business…mo cars, mo hoes, mo clothes, mo blows….” Now this guy is a class act, notwithstanding the reality that he was formerly a corrections officer who took the moniker “Rick Ross” from a notorious drug dealer in the community to falsely project a gangster image. I recall seeing my first threat of gun violence vividly while standing near my father in Opa Locka. I was four and beginning to learn that “these here streets” and their nouveau misogynistic, violent, and abusive media forms which are glorified and financed via corporate America, were here to stay.

The 108-page XXL magazine that had seized the attention of the youth who were gathered contains 152 images of males with angry faces, 18 with smiles, 7 with faces that don’t show any emotion, and one sexualized image in a personal ad. There were 23 pictures of females dressed in panties and bras, with two wearing faux plains Indian headdresses, 12 wearing extremely tight sexualized clothing, and three smiling. Forty-eight advertising pages comprised clothes/shoes (13), liquor (5), car rims (7), music industry related items (10), hair products (3), jewelry (1; though every page with a man on it was a non-stop jewelry ad), sex services and products (5), and, for good measure, a tobacco ad. Add in foul language in every other sentence of every article and everyone gets the picture—there isn’t enough empowerment or cultural workshops in the world that can hold at bay the onslaught.Comment:  I wonder how XXL compares to the possibly defunct Redskin Magazine? They sound similar.

I wonder if there's a distinction between the Native and non-Native attraction to the "thug" life. Maybe any minority without enough power is attracted to the outlaw mentality. That would be good to know.

Someone on Facebook wrote:Interesting. As for your question on the attraction, there have been a number of sociological and human behavioral studies. It seems to be a hard wired natural sexual selection for aggressiveness in males, a remnant from our more brutish origins as a species. That in modern times it leads the father to prison or an early grave rather than success in providing for the offspring has not caught up with the way some females may still be biologically programmed in selecting a mate. There are other takes on the subject but this is the one that makes sense to me. It's all subconscious, just as are many other elements of attraction. We don't give it thought. We are still "animals" in some ways and some of the time, acting on wired instincts without knowing it.To which I responded:

I believe males are programmed to be aggressive, but why the thug life? I'm aggressive about debating politics, culture, and religion, so I'd be drawn to a magazine about that. Guys who look brawny and brain-dead don't interest me.

For more on America's violence, see Sikh Shootings Reflect White Supremacy and Aurora Shooting Shows America's Pathology.

Guardian Angels = Sioux tradition

Charles Trimble:  Guardian Angels come to Indian CountryWhen I read the Indianz.com article that the first Guardian Angels chapter in Indian Country is starting on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana, my reaction was, “How appropriate; a traditional Akicita approach to the problem of policing Indian country.”

In Sioux camps in olden times, the police that kept order were the Akicita (pronounced ah-KEE-chee-tah). These were men who were selected for their generosity, leadership, and most of all, their bravery. These men were of the warrior societies, the elite among the men.

Life in the camps on the Plains required much discipline on the part of individuals and families. There was no place for troublemakers who disturbed the peace by their behavior and by their disrespect for laws and authority. With families that were troublemakers, we are told, akicita warriors might call out the male head of the tiospaye, and humiliate him, sometimes whipping him from their horses with their quirts. A family that persisted making trouble, or trashing the campsite, would be ostracized to live away from the camp, and sometimes even to be expelled from the camp completely. This would doom that family because other camps would know that they were forced to wander because they were troublemakers, and nobody wanted troublemakers.

As with much of our traditional cultures, that discipline has been lost. There is little respect, even for elders. Neighbors’ yards and gardens regularly are trashed. In one village on the Pine Ridge Reservation, gangs are mounted and do their mischief on horseback, causing much damage to property. Gangs and drugs are a growing problem on reservations all across the Northern Plains.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Guardian Angels on the Rez.

Guardian Angels on the rez

Guardian Angels starting first reservation chapter

By Matt VolzFed up with growing gang violence, Montana tribal leaders this weekend will start the first-ever American Indian reservation chapter of the Guardian Angels.

The new chapter of the citizens' crime-watch group—whose members are known by their red berets in New York, Chicago and other U.S. cities—will begin training about 50 recruits on the rural Fort Peck Indian Reservation. The sprawling reservation on the plains of eastern Montana is home to 6,000 of the approximately 10,000 enrolled members of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.

Chauncy Whitwright III, vice chairman of the Wolf Point Community Organization, said the children of the 3,200-square-mile reservation are vulnerable to gangs that have crept in from the outside.

Other Montana tribes, including the Blackfeet, Rocky Boy, Crow and Northern Cheyenne, report the same problem, Whitwright said, and he hopes the new Guardian Angels chapter will eventually expand its programs and patrols and give teens there an alternative.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Gangs, Suicide, and Stereotypes and Gang Culture in Indian Country.

Gangs, suicide, and stereotypes

National gang expert: Gang life, reservation suicides linked

By Dirk LammersGang activity and teen suicide on American Indian reservations need to be addressed together, according to a national gang expert who says there's a strong connection between the two problems.

Christopher Cuestas with the National Violence Prevention Resource Center spoke Thursday to a gathering of tribal members and legal and law enforcement officers during a "tribal listening conference" hosted by U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson.

Cuestas said that once a gang emerges in a community, the group establishes itself by recruiting and indoctrinating members. A gang during this stage will dovetail the community's risk factors, which for Indian reservations include drugs, alcohol, poverty and unemployment--the same ones linked to teen suicide.Comment:  I think stereotypes are connected to both gang activity and teen suicide. First, there's the culture-wide pressure to achieve: to keep up with the Joneses, to be no. 1. Then there's the particular Native pressure to be a man and a warrior: strong, proud, stoic. This is stoked by countless media stereotypes portraying Indians as mighty chiefs and braves.

To prove your toughness, you join with a gang. Gangs practically exist so youngsters can flaunt their machismo to each other. And if you can't prove yourself in a gang, you give up. You commit suicide because you feel worthless and hopeless.

For more on the subject, see Tribalism = Solution, Not Problem and Gang Culture in Indian Country.