Standing Up Against the Giant -- some great writing from Diane Benson

[Blue_In_AK]

This is long but very thought-provoking.


http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2009/11/pa-arts-sunday-part-three-standing-up.html

(This article first appeared in the American Indian Quarterly's Winter/Spring 2003 edition, published by the University of Nebraska Press. This is the first time the article has been made available to the general Alaska public. It is reprinted here with full consent of the author, as a response to inaccuracies and omissions from an article that appeared in the Saturday edition of the Alaska Dispatch, titled Censored on Campus? http://www.alaskadispatch.com/features/arts/3064-censored-on-campus. Some formatting changes and HTML link additions have been made by PA)


Standing Up Against the Giant


The Anchorage Daily News' top three headlines on the front page on December 12, 2000, read "High Court Ruling Awaited" (regarding the Florida recount in Bush vs. Gore), followed by "Top School Post Goes to Comeau," and, finally, centered lower on the page, in equally large font, "Student Attacks Professor's Poem." The subtitle read, "'Indian Girls' described as racist, insulting." Two primary photos on the front page garnered attention, the larger being that of Elvis impersonators shoveling snow for a hockey game promotion. The other photo was the beleaguered look of a challenged local university professor postured amongst her books.

Somehow, what seemed like a rather normal school semester and typical enough poetry class ended with a tidal wave of divisive controversy and inflamed a community already teetering from volatile race relations. I was central to the controversy. I was the student.

We Tlingits have a story about the Cannibal Giant who at one time preyed on the people when they were weakened. The Cannibal Giant was once a woman but through evil became a monster. Even when she was seemingly destroyed by fire, the flame transformed her carnivorous essence from cannibal to mosquito, and thus she continues to plague the people to this day. Some say it is a metaphor for those things that would devour our sanity or our spirit. A University of Alaska classroom became another breeding ground of racial tension, an ostensible haven to a literary cannibal that feeds on the weakness of racial hatred. Like the young hunter, upon shoving the cannibal into the fire in an attempt to save the people, I watched with dismay the spread of stirring lies--the mosquitoes we must swat in futile swings of reason.

I had the audacity to defend my tribal clan through e-mail by directing the attention of family and friends to a published poem I found particularly insulting if not libelous. Much to my surprise, a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) contacted me two days after I sent the email. Therein began the very public battle I would have for a year with the University of Alaska-Anchorage (UAA) and with my Department of Creative Writing and Literary Arts (CWLA) poetry professor. The entire experience would cause me to postpone my long sought after master of fine arts (MFA) degree and the complete and painful alienation from my classmates. In addition would follow a public protest on campus; grade retaliation (prompting further disputes); a flurry of newspaper articles, endless letters to the editor, online hate mail, and threats; spurious charges by national, extreme right-wing, anti-multicultural media; a futile human rights grievance; and, ultimately, not only a complete change of my thesis committee but an agonizing self-evaluation and question of self-worth.

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Diane's PBS documentary about Native civil rights pioneer Elizabeth Peratrovich is airing Tuesday night in Anchorage. Check your local listings.