Author: clswartz

Throughout my time at Cultural Survival, I have learned a lot about the realities of day-to-day work at a non-profit organization. One thing that has been reassuring to realize is that there are so many kinds of jobs one can have and still support social justice work, depending on your interests, strengths, and preferences. If you would rather work with numbers and money, you can. If you prefer to do event planning, you can do that too. 

Since Cultural Survival is a fairly small organization, with less than ten full-time staff working in the Cambridge office where I worked, I got to observe how each person was in charge of a different section of the organization on a daily basis. But there are also times where everyone came together as well. The bazaars, which occur in the summer and winter, are events where numerous indigenous artists from around the world fly into New England to sell their work. They are big, all day events, so it’s essentially all hands on deck. Even people who don’t do much work to prepare for the bazaars during the rest of the year still go and help out and do whatever needs to be done those few days. The bazaars are a real team effort.

During my internship, it has been an honor to be able to dedicate my time to researching and learning about all different groups of indigenous peoples and individuals doing advocacy work to benefit their particular part of the world. I then got to report back on what I learned and write articles about these news stories. I also got to lend a hand at the bazaar in Newburyport (on a 100 degree day no less), helping to set up and helping the vendors with whatever they needed, and making sure everyone got the water and breaks they needed. 

As a result of this internship, I have realized that I prefer doing work where I get to interact with people more, with more of a local focus. I enjoyed the work I did all summer, but the most meaningful moments for me were definitely attending and testifying at the hearing for the bill that would ban Native American mascots in Massachusetts public schools, and working at the bazaar and helping out the vendors. In the future, I definitely see myself pursuing more opportunities that allow me to work hands-on with people in my local area.

The advice I would give to other people interested in this field of indigenous human rights advocacy, and human rights advocacy in general, is to be open to any and all opportunities for connection with other people who share similar passions. There is a lot to learn from people who have been doing this kind of work for years, and they are usually also the people who would love to share a connection with you. I think another good rule of thumb is to focus on centering and lifting up the voices of people who are more marginalized than you. And only then, when the circumstances are appropriate, go ahead and don’t be afraid to speak up and use your own voice to support marginalized peoples.

In the class “Anthropology of Power and Violence” with Professor Ferry, we learned about various sociological theories about power, violence, and how they materialize in the real world. Some of these theories and terms included intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, and structural violence, from Johan Galtung’s work.

Intersectionality is a crucial aspect of any social justice work since acknowledging that each person has interconnected identities and experiences is one of the first steps toward effectively supporting that individual. An indigenous woman is both a woman, and indigenous, so the marginalization she experiences would be informed by both of those identities simultaneously. This is a concept commonly used at Cultural Survival. Most of the interviews conducted with indigenous people invite the individual to discuss how their other identities intersect with their indigenous identity.

Indigenous men and women are both indigenous, but women are bound to have different life experiences because they are women, and acknowledging that with the tool of intersectionality makes it possible to adequately get indigenous women the support they really need. Even when a group shares something in common, like being indigenous, respecting differences within that group allows each person to feel fully seen for who they are.

Structural violence is another incredibly relevant concept to the work Cultural Survival does. It is violence that is embedded in government policies and practices, where a social institution prevents someone from getting their basic needs met. Colonization brought with it structural violence toward indigenous peoples. Some examples of violence are requiring indigenous children to enroll in schools where they must learn English and are not allowed to speak their native languages, and also governments forcing indigenous peoples off their lands and onto new lands that do not provide the same resources that the community would need to sustain itself. Another example is the use of caricatures of Native Americans as mascots for schools and sports teams. On June 25, there was a public hearing at the Massachusetts State House where one of the potential bills was one that would ban the use of Native Americans as mascots for public schools. This is an issue that Native American communities have been fighting for decades, but the governing structures have yet to enforce this ban. 

Generations of structural violence have led to many indigenous communities struggling with poverty and unemployment. One thing Cultural Survival does is provide small grants and assistance for communities that submit project proposals. The aim is to help provide indigenous peoples with the monetary support that structural violence has prevented them from accessing. Lack of funding is a major problem communities face when they are the victims of structural violence. Cultural Survival also helps provide monetary support for community-led radio programs that are trying to get off the ground. The purpose is so the indigenous people concerned have full control over their content, and they can discuss topics that are relevant in the language that is most fitting for their community. Cultural Survival is there to help the community get access to equipment and get on the air, which are things that structural violence can prevent. 

You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand, and social problems are generally bigger than what any one person can solve. Conceptual tools like intersectionality and structural violence help us understand the large-scale issues so that we can better address them.

-Christy Swartz

Cultural Survival is an organization that advocates for indigenous people’s rights to their cultures and self-determination. It works to support indigenous communities internationally by supporting community radio programs, hosting bazaars where artists can sell their work, and publishing articles about the work indigenous people are doing in a quarterly magazine and online.

This organization addresses the systematic oppression that indigenous peoples have continuously experienced worldwide by helping to support avenues for indigenous people to express their voices and protect their right to live, and doing so in the ways that indigenous peoples choose.

One project I’ve done so far is to write a short article about the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, which, once a country ratifies, is a legally-binding law that protects the rights of indigenous peoples. In addition to this, I have been transcribing interviews with indigenous people talking about the work they do, so that articles can be written about them. I’ve also been doing some data entry for applications for the small Keeper of the Earth Fund [KOEF] grant.

The KOEF is a fund Cultural Survival uses to support indigenous-led advocacy and community development projects. The projects are submitted by indigenous-led organizations all over the world, and address a range of topics such as land rights, food sovereignty, and language revitalization. The KOEF provides grants between $500 and $5,000, and there have been over 150 applications. Reading through and doing data entry for all these applications, although a small step, is a necessary step to provide funding for these projects. I am learning a lot about the kinds of projects that indigenous communities are working on around the world.

Since I am working in the research and publications department, a lot of what I will be working on this summer will revolve around helping to amplify the voices and stories of different indigenous people and the work they are doing, mostly through doing interviews and publishing articles. Indigenous voices have been systematically silenced over centuries, so writing articles and using Cultural Survival’s platform works to amplify those stories. This helps spread information about the work indigenous people are doing to advocate for themselves and resist oppression, both to non-indigenous people and to different indigenous communities internationally.

These projects and articles are all relatively small steps that are working toward larger change. Ideally, in the future, an indigenous community that is looking for funding to develop a food sovereignty program for their community will eventually not need to look externally for support, because they will have the resources they need already. Hopefully, one day, indigenous voices will not be silenced by governments and corporations. But for now, it is possible to organize, to provide financial support to marginalized communities in a way that works for them, and to amplify the voices of indigenous people.

-Christy Swartz