SNL, Frozen II, and Being Native Raised Other
Olaf, Anna, Elsa, Kristoff and Sven from Disney’s Frozen movies
I wasn’t raised as a Native person in the traditions of the Muisca people. In fact that word was never mentioned in my house growing up. I pieced together the clues in my late 20s. It was one thing for my mother to hate Thanksgiving, but Christmas too? What kid doesn’t love presents? Plus my mother never took me anywhere if she could help it (because that would’ve meant braving her hangover and getting out of bed) yet once I got my period it was very important that I get my tea leaves read and my fortune told by a medium. Around the same time it was also important that I put a crystal beside my bed for protection and eat certain food wrapped in banana leaves made by a Latina medicine woman who came to our house.
When I started to get curious and ask my family about what part of Colombia we were from, and how long we had been there, this led to the big question: Was my grandmother Native? Different relatives had different answers depending on who they are and their relationship with assimilation, their own hearts and their Creator. One uncle couldn’t even say the word. It was his wife who chimed in and said yes of course, we all were. Another uncle said yes of course my grandmother was native, but the path was lost. My mother completely and totally denies it. She took a DNA test that said we were half Native Colombian. When she reported the results to my sisters and I, she omitted the word native and just told us we were half Colombian. I’m surprised she took the test at all. The first time I asked her if we were native, she screeched “how dare you ask me that question” into the phone and then promptly hung up on me. Other aunts, uncles, and cousins don’t think about the question at all and just go about their lives. No judgement or shade on my family here. These are very common reactions from Mestizo Colombian families for a reason.
No one wants to admit that Latin American countries are founded on rape and genocide. That the conquistadors were single men who raped, pillaged, and murdered their way through South America. That my ancestors were forced to turn away from their Native ways because within fifty years of their arrival, the conquistadors had killed two and a half million Native Muisca people. The rest were enslaved in gold mines and the fruit of their labor was shipped to the Vatican and the Spanish crown. When the gold ran out, there was more enslavement into local handicraft workshops to create a local trade economy.
This is the history of my people. To remember would be to feel all the pain of the loss of our ways of life. Better to forget. Of course there are lots of Native people all over Latin America who never forgot their ways of life and have remained in Native communities through the centuries. But many of us were forced out and haven’t come home to our people. The Native elders who I follow now have gifted me with a term that encapsulates this history well: Native Raised Other.
I am and always have been a Native person. But in order to survive my mother decided that she was going to raise me in another identity. In my case it was a white dominated Jewish identity that never fit me quite right. As much as the white Jewish community wanted me to be the same as them, I wasn’t. My ancestors have been barging in on my dreams since I was a little girl telling me that I was lost and I needed to come home. This was terrifying to me. I thought that I was crazy and told no one. My mother’s fear of ‘admitting’ we are Native ran deep. In 2016 I went to Bogota to visit my family and found myself at a conference of Indigenous peoples from all over Colombia. I interviewed this one woman and told her a little of my story in embarassed and formal Spanish. Her message to me and my mother about that fear was very clear:
“That fear, she shouldn’t be afraid. Because if you have faith and strength. (As women we need to have a lot of mental strength.) You don’t know any fear... If you have faith in the creator. We believe in Colombia, that one day we will have peace. We have faith that peace won’t just come to us, that we have to make it ourselves. Each and every one of us. We cannot wait for others to do it for us. We cannot be like the bees, waiting for the queen to bring the honey. As Indigenous peoples, all of us: children, elders, young people, and adults, we must all be part of the resistance. If a youth falls, they gave their life defending and demanding peace for their parents and their land.”
As a little girl, instead of being raised in the traditions of my people, I was raised in the great tradition of Disney. Hakuna Matata was the soundtrack of my very young childhood, but Hercules was the movie that (when translated) applied to my life the most. I remember my 11 year old heart beating wildly at the idea that someone else had also dreamed of a far off place where a big warm welcome would be waiting for them, and swearing that I too would go the distance to find out where I belonged. When Disney came out with Frozen, I loved the music and was happy to sing along with my nieces and nanny kids but didn’t think much of a movie with so many white people in it. When Moana came along, I was overjoyed. Here was a Disney movie that was about a Native Raised Native girl. This wasn’t exactly my story but it was a Native story. I cried and watched with my adult friends. (All I'm saying is that I want to be that grandmother when I grow up.)
This year Disney came out with Frozen II, which blew my mind. SNL thinks that it is a boring sequel where nothing happens except Elsa coming out. (Click here to watch.) They say that there is no diversity in the movie except for some random black dude who couldn’t possibly have been in Norway in the 1840s. I will be the first to toast at Honeymaren and Elsa’s wedding, and applaud Disney for finally creating a gay princess, but I think SNL got the rest of it wrong. Frozen II is a movie about two Native Raised Other girls who come home to their people. When the Northuldra realize that the two girls are native, they immediately launch into song and form a circle to welcome the girls back into the communal fold. Ana and Elsa are immediately claimed as part of the people of the sun.
The journey they make after that is a Native story come to life. Where they literally interact with all four elements to discover the Native magic that they inherited from their ancestors has been with them the whole time. Where they are prepared to make sacrifices to repair the mistake of their white/Arendellian grandfather who was afraid, power hungry and attacked his Native allies under the guise of a peaceful gathering.
All of the main characters in this movie are Native people, aka not white. This is what SNL doesn’t understand. They think that because everyone is light skinned, they are white. Native people are not another racial category that exists side by side with Asians, Latinx, White, or Black. All of these racial categories exist within our current colonized system of thinking. They prop up the way things are. Native people exist outside of that because we are sovereign nations unto ourselves. In other words,the Northuldra may have pale skin, but they are not white. They are Native Raised Native people who are based on the Sami people in real life. (For an interesting video about the relationship between the Sami, Norway, and the making of Frozen 2, click here.) Anna and Elsa are not white either. They are Northuldra raised Arendellian, aka Native Raised Other. Regardless of where they end up by the end of the movie, they are and always will be Native women.