Reflections on Patriarchy
Reflections on patriarchy from Cannupa Hanska Luger, specifically in relation to being an Indigenous man called to investigate patriarchy through RTM cohort participation.
Before I share I would like to note that all information stated here are my own reflections, opinions and experiences. I share this under the prompt to investigate patriarchy as part of my work in participation as a cohort member in Readying The Museum.
I have investigated patriarchy in my personal life and as noted privilege as a male body and perceived privilege as an Indigenous man. My perspective is not representative for all Native Americans, as we come from over 500 diverse nations with completely different cultures and lived experiences. I was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and am an enrolled member of The Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold. I have heritage and cultural ties to the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota people. These are my personal reflections of the process of acknowledging and unpacking patriarchy over the course of two years through RTM.
Supremacy and Colonialism
What I have come away with in relation to the work to look at patriarchy, is deep internal reflection and the need for larger understanding regarding the various cultural lenses through which this term (Patriarchy) is enacted and maintained. Through my lived experience as an Indigenous man from North America, I conduct this labor of looking at patriarchy and see it clearly and explicitly as a byproduct of colonialism as enacted through white male supremacy, which I understand and believe to be the root cause in how patriarchy continues to play out in our society.
In working to uncover tangible ways to acknowledge, pinpoint and dismantle patriarchy, I note settler colonial supremacy towards dominion as the larger goal of patriarchy in our society and in this country historically, which must be acknowledged. Patriarchy is nestled within this monster - subjugating the land the first people of this land through genocide of people for control of resources. Dominance is the trigger and within this lies supremacy, which justifies the mechanism of patriarchy. We must continue to ask; Who benefits from these systems?
The power shift from feminine power to masculine power as inherited privilege is enacted in order for male supremacy to maintain dominance and control of land and resources and this supremacy is perpetuated in the fabric of our current Nation/American society as a map to maintain white male power and dominance, which this country is built upon. We all use this system in various ways to control and dominate each other, learned from the fabric of our nation’s becoming, including our own ancestral traumas as oppressor or oppressed.
Settler colonial supremacy and patriarchal hierarchy together shaped forms of domination in America. To dismantle power structures such as patriarchy, it is necessary to acknowledge their interconnectedness with white supremacy and settler colonialism used to maintain forms of supremacy and dominion over people and land.
We must acknowledge these larger systems of power at play so that as we address patriarchy we may also attack tactics of white supremacy and not ourselves enact systems of lateral violence which supremacy also has in place to maintain power over, and keep us small and separate. Knowing the root of this power can afford honest and transformative solidarity and community building as we work to dismantle these systems.
If we practice this awareness we can be mindful that power systems, such as patriarchy ,can often become replaced with other tactics of dominance or supremacy, perpetuating harm laterally, and that patriarchal systems are not actually being healed/ dismantled. I have worked to maintain this awareness and reflection as I look at patriarchy and how it exists within and around me - the larger systems of supremacy are points which I work to be mindful of and see play out as a means of control in various ways.
Cultural Reflection
To share personal/ cultural reflection in developing a way to explain the process of uncovering how patriarchy exists in my person, life and larger community interactions as an Indigenous man, I find myself tasked to take on individualism in a way that is not representative to my cultural upbringing and protocols.
I have felt the act of unpacking patriarchy to find a definition and solution to feel ingenuine, performative, self deprecating and often confusing as a needed deliverable, or completion of a task within the context of my participation in Readying The Museum. Yet I continue to look into how to accomplish this and to address why I feel this frustration and even loneliness in this task. I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to find quick resolve in such a multifaceted issue, which is refracted through time, class and culture, and sits within a system of colonial supremacy which benefits from the grotesque privileges of white male patriarchal settler colonialism, dominance and supremacy as systems of dominion.
This oppressive systemic issue has been and continues to be enacted through governmental land theft, genocide and seeded lateral violence in Indigenous communities. This is in fact the lens through which I exist on this planet at this time as an Indigenous community member. I have reflected on my internalized notion of how each culture’s men are shaped by this term (Patriarchy), and how power has shifted in Indigenous community due to colonization, who (my ancestors) have had to shift their power dynamics to patriarchal rule due to white settler patriarchal systems pointing to our male community members as leaders to communicate with and not the true matriarchal leaders or communal counsel we upheld (struggle to uphold) in a holistic way since time immemorial.
How has colonialism played out in my person as a male body benefiting from patriarchy in contemporary America - acknowledging that I also hold deep understanding and living ties to matriarchal ways of my ancestral knowledge within my community?
I come from such a culturally specific tribal nation, from such a specific place, first people of this land, river people of the Missouri River, and I can only reflect on my experience with patriarchy from this place as my core. I cannot be accountable to the perceived power others may give to me from outside, as that is not my privilege to carry, yet participating in contemporary society as a male artist in America, I reckon with privileges that I may benefit from or have the perceived benefit of as a male body. I acknowledge I must be accountable to this nuance, even if it is not the full truth of my lived experience as an Indigenous person in the 21st century who comes from a reservation and an experience drastically different than most American males. I reflect on how the Indigenous women in my life, specifically my mother, perpetuated patriarchy, and reinforced its model in order to survive in a patriarchal state. Simultaneously I have witnessed the women in my life become victims to settler patriarchal abuse cycles in our communities including domestic violence and worse.
As Indigenous men are stripped of community value due to the prohibition of right of passage ceremony, and other deeply important cultural protocols and ceremonies illegal for decades, due to colonization (made legal again in 1978) we have suffered our communities break in connection to the meaning and place of men as part of the larger holistic community network. Simultaneously we are told through white male settler colonialism that as men, we are superior with inherent privilege under patriarchy, yet how does this operate in our bodies as our ancestral wisdom is still carried with us and we know otherwise.
In our ancestral pre-colonial existence as Indigenous community we were - and are to this day, unless by force - not societies practicing life and culture based on dominion. So as Indigenous men, how do we engage in a healthy way with our communities, who did not engage with each other historically in this way of dominion and supremacy? How does this seed of self hatred and violence of patriarchy impact Indigenous communities? How are we rejecting this notion of patriarchy as a system to perform under as we acknowledge the privilege American society bestows on our male bodies and masculine identities while we as Native Americans are continually considered “something else'' in restructured systems of power and even through DEI efforts, where we are rarely afforded a seat at the table, regardless of our patriarchal privilege as Indigenous men and when we are present, we are looked at as one dimensional characters, asked to represent over 500 diverse nations, and become a token.
This is an impossible task for any human being, yet here I am in this position of toxic privilege continually in my practice as an artist. How does this affect our mental health and our self worth as Indigenous men, when we have been stripped of our land, culture and our own rights of passage ceremonies in tandem with this perceived privilege of patriarchy that goes against our cultural values - and yet this privilege for Indigenous men, is often conditional or one dimensional so we may support to check a box of inclusivity for a larger agenda that does not really care about our communities or ancestral values, nor give us any leverage in shifting out of perpetual harm of settler colonialism playing out in our communities.
To consider defining loosely patriarchy, buttoning up a tragedy that has enacted genocide on my communities through settler colonialism and dominion, to understand my space in accountability to the women, femme and queer communities in my family and those I am accountable to daily and those I have yet to meet, has proven very difficult under the pressure of a deliverable or a performative act of my place as an artist in contemporary culture, or working within the framework of the Readying The Museum cohort set into academic standards of deliverables. Culturally, I find it difficult to consider myself as an individual or apart from the community in my life, those who came before and those who will come after, yet to uncover patriarchy in my person, I am tasked to pull apart core values of my traditional upbringing, to become outside of the women and LGBTQ+ identified community to reflect on how my existence is separate from them and can be oppressive towards them. This is not a cultural norm, identity is not constructed/ deconstructed this way for my people. This is a difficult task culturally and something I have grappled with in the call to unpack patriarchy, and perhaps why it has not been a quick fix or something I can even begin to have a formulated reaction to, even after some time.
I keep wondering who's reflection of the term patriarchy do I determine a neutral point to work from? Do I dismiss my values and cultural upbringing for the sake of being an American man, even though that is an identity forced upon me, where I reject notions of supremacy enacted on my people through that term? Do I maintain a center within the authenticity to my traditionally matriarchal culture to define patriarchy, and how does this distill or reflect the power given to men in American society beyond my own cultural values? Can it even be in the same conversation, can it exist in me and also harm me? How can I use the space in between the two points of my lived existence to aid in recognizing the toxic shift forced upon Indigenous people and how we have been harmed by settler colonial supremacy and enacted this harm on ourselves and others, benefited from patriarchy and rejected patriarchy all at the same time.
Patriarchy & Considerations of Indigeneity in spaces of change - in relation to Readying The Museum
In reflecting on the task to look deeply at patriarchy as my role as a cohort member for RTM. I continue to examine how to be honest to this complexity without bypassing the need for accountability in doing this work. How can I project honest accountability to others in this cohort, as we all are working towards deliverables along the lines of institutional and academic standards, which I have a poor relationship with, and which I often reject or find ways to creatively bypass.
Within this work I often admit to feel that I don’t believe in the structure of museums, or that they have any hope to support or could sustain Indigenous communities and our culture in any viable positive way - when looking at their benefit from cultural theft historically - and this brings me to a place of distrust for my participation in RTM work overall. Yet, I continue to bring my effort and capacity to learn and grow how I am able, to be present with this work, and find how my voice may fit into the larger picture to aid in Readying The Museum.
So how can I honor this radical nature of my way of life without bypassing labor that has been asked by me as a participant in a group such as RTM, noting I've been clear on labor I am able to do and what I am not. As I reject supremacist power systems that I have undermined in my own practice as an artist from the beginning of my career, as an Indigenous man, I find my lack of participation in assumed normal participatory tasks, such as writing and reading, and my lack of enthusiasm or understanding on how to participate in an academic space, noted as patriarchal. Although this is not the intention of my life, practice and participation, this has been passively and not so passively noted within the Readying The Museum work, regarding the distribution of labor and the work of producing deliverables between genders.
Having a lack of skill on this front, and considering this lack of care to be patriarchal, is a sentiment I continue to grapple with and reflect on. In my heart I often reject the institutional way to communicate information, this is a thread throughout my practice and always was. I acknowledge that cultural upbringing, undiagnosed learning disabilities and the lack of capacity for compassion and belief in institutions and museums as valid forms of authenticity and cultural continuum- have all aided in my lack of compliance with delivering RTM tasks based outside of collective visioning and verbal communication, which is how I am able to operate at full capacity, and which I have expressed since the first moment I began working with RTM. I state this also to acknowledge the length of time it has taken me in completing a written reflection around the work I have been doing to unpack patriarchy - writing which I have done here, with much apprehension.
Final Thoughts
There is a layered context to the request to look deeply at patriarchy, and the contexts with which I reflect are in all aspects of my life and practice as an Indigenous man. I aim to be accountable to the various communities who claim me, so in these reflections I also react to the work which has called this introspection forward through RTM, in these reflections I aim honestly to meet and respect the women’s labor in this cohort. With this laid out, I wonder how men can acknowledge their benefit of patriarchy in tandem with the need for us all to acknowledge how it will not be a small group of men reflecting on the negative aspects of being men in this day and age, but how collectively we must address patriarchy as one aspect of a larger monster and together we may acknowledge that to really create shifts in these systems of supremacy we must dismantle replacing these systems with similar toxic systems - may we collectively participate in dismantling hierarchical power dynamics, instead.
I feel strongly we must reinvent and remember ways of existing that reject supremacy models of dominion. We need to work towards systems where men may be able to see themselves as valued community members who after great effort and accountability may share space to uplift and support those who may not inherently benefit from structures of patriarchy in the supremacist structure we all exist within today.
I have been present in silo'ing off with the men of this group to uncover what patriarchy means to us outside of the space of the full cohort, yet this feels like an extension in itself of patriarchy, to divide and conquer, so to speak, and it is not the way in which I was raised, not the way in which I practice my family values or create my artwork.
One of the largest hurdles in unpacking patriarchy has been a perceived pressure to shame myself as a man in order to feel that I am doing the work, and that feels inauthentic and performative, and outside of my cultural protocols. I have learned greatly from reading (listening to) podcasts and publications which have shared insight on a myriad of past and present forms of power enacted and upheld by white supremacist patriarchy and what has been shifted in the past 400 years through the labor and care of women, men and LGBTQ+ standing up to dominion and supremacy, including patriarchy. I have also appreciated the holistic approach to community healing from these toxic structures noted by scholars who have dedicated their lives to transformative justice work including Richie Reseda, Bell Hooks and Adrienne Maree Brown (noting there is little resource to this point from an Indigenous perspective, possibly due to cultural aspects as noted in my personal reflections above).
I have looked for the places in which my male body benefits from systems of male supremacist power or patriarchy. I think about terms like harm and violence and how women and LGBTQ+ community on my reservations are being abused and murdered, primarily by Indigenous men, and wonder how white male settler colonialism shifting power within our Indigenous communities has left us in a cycle of violence that I witness or hear about every single day. I think about the work I have done in my own community and family and even as an artist and how culturally we do not talk about our efforts of care and support as a point of acceptance or credentials, how our actions reflect our care, culturally. When I think about patriarchy, I reflect on being continually asked what have I done as a man to combat this term and ideology, and I hope my actions and life work will show the effort, without the need to speak on it.
In my culture you take the power away when you boast or list such labor. And so does it exist, for a deliverable? I know in my heart, before during and after my time in community with RTM I have committed my life to my community, to my mother, to my wife, to my relatives and those who are chosen family, that I will support all efforts for the people around me to feel safe and visible, not above or below me as an Indigenous man, but with me and I with them, to dismantle even new systems that seek to upend toxic systems, which may end up replacing them, enacting the same harms. I will continue to learn and acknowledge my shortcomings and how I have benefited from and been harmed by patriarchy.
My intention in participating in this subgroup around patriarchy for Readying The Museum is to be accountable to the women who lead this group and maybe to support in long term repair tactics beyond this moment, across/ between cultures. To hear their need for this repair, and to do what I can, within my relationship to them as peers and friends, to hear the greater need for accountability for men to do better, to be honest with my intentions and reflections always, and here I am.
Am I extractive and oppressive because I do not at this point admit to understanding how to define patriarchy in the way as to operate in the fashion with which I can produce an academic paper or thesis to express my experience? What I am able to do is share here how my experience was non linear, stressful on my wife and children and has caused me some deep mental health experiences as I worked to be accountable as a man - this work is not easy, but I do believe in the power of introspection and reflection.
How do I define patriarchy, and how is patriarchy defined by others affected systemically by supremacy, and how do I sit within these frameworks and definitions as an Indigenous man? After much time working on this effort, I have no deliverable, that is my honest answer. I will continue to do the work, to counsel with community and listen and learn, but I will not pretend I alone can produce a full solution and because I am a man, I acknowledge I am a part of the problem, I benefit every day from my identity as a 6’3” male body, and this is how I am perceived by the outside world. I can navigate spaces from a position of physical safety, I understand that is a position of power from the stance of patriarchy. I benefit from the system as a male body without any effort to invest in the system, due to patriarchy. Am I comfortable with being reduced to my gender as a tactic to dismantle patriarchy? No. It makes me very uncomfortable. I have to disassociate myself from my community in order to take on patriarchy and acknowledge my benefit from patriarchy through the lens of individualism which we operate from in our systems of repair at this point, outside of my own culture.
The benefits of patriarchy come to men because it is systemic. I am here as a male body to support real shifts in societal values, away from supremacist modes of operation through an outmoded system which I do not believe in, even if I benefit from. I would like to support decentralizing power and working towards holistic approaches and interdependence for true repair and I cannot do it alone, I need to stand with you all in order to enact new modes and dismantle these toxic systems. My final reflections are riddled with more questions.
I believe patriarchy is the reason why there is no longer male ritual or rite of passage on this continent, men don’t have to prove themselves to be seen as a man. As Americans we have made no sacrifice to the community or committed ourselves as men to the greater good of the community through ritual or ceremony. In my Indigenous upbringing you have to sacrifice yourself for the whole, it is part of your duty as a human being and a man, from when we are young we learn this. This sacrifice is missing in settler colonial white supremacist male patriarchal society, which dominates our values as a whole and is destroying our ability to heal. Dominance and dominion define white supremacist patriarchy - those who suffer greatest from this system are those closest to this power - as it is reinforced in popular culture, schools, prisons, etc. Who has power? What is supremacy? Who enacts it when the paradigm shifts? Are all male bodies supremacist under patriarchy? Where is the line and how may we mend from this the trauma of settler colonialism?
Basic recollection on process and learning
Beginning in the inception I have committed to personally reflect on my part in a society that upholds privilege through a patriarchal lens. In tending to this work, I have investigated my own cultural relationship to patriarchy, and the larger impact of a society based on white supremacist patriarchy forged through settler colonialism and upheld with capitalism. I have listened and communicated with the women and men in the collective and sought counsel from my queer community and family around cultural protocol and reflections.
Collectively as men inside of this specific cohort, we have benefited and been negatively impacted by social implications based on race, class and gender engaging with our privilege as men who have benefited from patriarchy. We have examined patriarchy Internally/individually and via weekly zoom calls (with INSITE consultants and then within our own collective of RTM men.) I do not believe the way in which patriarchy was addressed was the healthiest for the men in the group, and I don’t think we have met the standards to the women of the group, but I am not sure I have had capacity or support to meet the expectations outlined, or understood in clear form what the expectations are, given what I am capable of at this point in my practice, participation and mental wellbeing and family needs.
Resource List:
Resource I have looked to, listened to, read and shared with group including emotional lexicon strategy research:
Dismantling the Patriarchy inside of us by Phillip Agnew and Marcus Littles
Ending ‘Gender Wars’: Why Dismantling Patriarchy isn’t Anti-Male
Redefining The Patriarchy and Building Next Gen Men With Jake Stika Ep. 33
Relinquishing the Patriarchy Resource List - Adrienne Maree Brown
Accountability:
In full transparency, this document was transcribed by Ginger Dunnill for Cannupa Hanska Luger, to maintain the deliverables requested for participation in the Readying The Museum Cohort.
Ginger Dunnill has been financially compensated by Luger for her time and labor in transcription of this document. Ginger Dunnill is Cannupa Hanska Luger’s wife and Studio Director who often dictates documents as needed to maintain this type of need for the studio practice.
