Winona Linn is an impactful spoken word poet. In her poems, she highlights the struggles she’s faced as a Meskwaki woman who appears white. Linn speaks passionately and calls out the harmful stereotypes indigenous people have been pushed into; the same stereotypes that affected her and many other young children, leading to complicated self-identity issues. She takes aim at racism. Her poems point to people with outdated and racist belief systems who have eroded the diverse traditions, languages, and identities of indigenous people. The content is dark, yet Winona remains relentless in her attitude, infusing in her listeners an empowering determination for change. She asserts that indigenous people are not helpless victims of colonial violence, but they are resilient and fight for their identity. They have self-worth, and that self-worth is not determined by people’s uneducated and uncaring comments.
That being said, Linn’s journey toward self-acceptance was far from straightforward. She outlines her struggles with her heritage and identity in the poem “Grey owl”. In this poem she takes an introspective look at the way she tried to find acceptance by fervently rejecting her white heritage, and attempting to identify solely as indigenous. Winona saw herself from the outside, as a stranger desperately trying to fit in: “When I met her I kept trying to introduce myself but she was to busy sliding her thumbs along the edge of my history hoping for paper cuts to prove that she could bleed red too”.
Wiona’s story is not unique. In fact, there is an entire field of study on the social development of biracial children. Jamie Weaver’s Identity Development in Biracial Children: Contextual Factors from Social Work, examines the challenges faced by those with a mixed heritage. The paper highlights the importance of supportive parenting in encoueraging mixed race children to internalize both of their heritages. When people are uncertain about their racial identity, it leads to feelings of deep shame as children are pressured to align with a particular racial group. This results in inner strife that eventually causes young children to abandon part of themselves. Lastly, Weaver contends that this conflicted identity follows them into adulthood. However, Linn’s poetry brings these feelings to life, “I tried to tell her that diving blindly into someone else’s story can only leave you drowning under the weight of your squahh blossom necklaces. But she didn’t want to listen, because even the bones of her inner ear embaressed her“. Throughout her adolescence and young adulthood she too, felt ashamed that she didn’t fit into the perceived stereotypes of an indigenous person. This led her to feel ostracized from both parts of her heritage. It wasn’t until she accepted herself for who she really was that she was able to find that self-confidence and assurance that she displays at the end of her “knock off native” poem.
According to the 2012 census summarized in the table below, the population that reported identifying as multiple races grew by 32% from 2000 to 2010. With this level of biracial population, we need to ensure that support systems for people with mixed heritage are in place. These issues are systemic and start from a young age. A positive, accepting attitude toward a child’s heritage is thought through conversations about racial identity, and those must be had in safe, nourishing environments. The problems don’t only lie within biracial households, but also within the racist stereotypes that are systemic and perpetuated throughout society. Entire social systems, for example, the education or mass media system often leaves biracial people feeling like they need to fit in a certain box to be accepted as they are. However, over the last couple of years there has been an increased presence of indigenous and mixed race people in media. Media is so crucial to our lives and it cannot be ignored, especially as it is often a formative influence for young people. Therefore, it is so powerful to have people like Winona sharing their stories and messages, and reminding people that they are not alone.
Image Sourses:
Resherch paper:
Identity Development in Biracial Children: Contextual Factors from Social Work
Videos of Pomes: