Apple: Skin to the Core

“As he built up his resistance to new diseases, he also

developed resistance to walking away from the world

where his roots lay, growing deeper and tougher with each

trip back to the homestead.”

Gansworth’s grandfather escaped the full effects of the residential schools because he spent so much time at home, recovering from illness. As a result, the school was never able to fully cut him off from his culture, as they did so many Indigenous children.

“After you had been wiped clean of the only name

you’d ever known, next came your clothes and your

hair, your language, then your religion, your way of

understanding the world, your culture, your self.”

Residential schools aimed to completely erase everything Indigenous about the children who attended them, from their names to their language, religion, and clothing. This is one of the major forms of cultural genocide in North America.

“She studies, and waits for the world to change,

with no knowledge of how she might be

a part of that change, beyond the background

singer life, echoing or harmonizing with the white

voices who have all the access to the microphones

and cameras, and transmitters, sending signals out

into the world, demanding the change we all know

would come at some point, maybe in our lifetimes

if we were lucky…or if we were not.”

Gansworth dreams of a better future for his sister, who is studying hard to fit into a world that does not want her to succeed. He imagines a future in which Indigenous voices are not in the background, but rather at the forefront of change.

“(You can see here that no matter how hard they tried,

I was always going to have a different orientation,

that my antenna was tuned in to a more obscure channel.)”

Gansworth feels alienated and completely different from his family members. The reference to having a different “orientation” alludes to Gansworth’s sexuality.

“Maybe his family’s super

power is that his mother is not romanced by a white man and then

murdered a couple of years after they marry, once the oil shares

are considered her widower’s property.”

This quote refers to the Osage murders that took place from 1918 to 1931, a series of murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. Oil had been discovered on the Osage reservation. Because the Osage Nation had retained mineral rights to their land, several members of the nation became very wealthy; however, they were killed by white Americans who wanted the rights to the oil.

“It’s 1971, and anyone able to ignore the targets

that appear on our backs is a fool or has already

had some kind of brain damage.”

In 1971, Indigenous protestors occupied Alcatraz Island to protest the treatment of Indigenous people in America. Other protests took place across the country the same year. While many were successful in gaining civil rights for Indigenous Americans, they also resulted in heightened tensions between Indigenous groups and law enforcement.

“As we stare at this static image, we realize that even on color TV,

Indians are frozen in the past, designed for a black-and-white world

instead of the brightly colored one where we live together, and breathe

current air, feeding trees and taking oxygen from them, an exchange

we did for centuries before others arrived, claiming new borders,

and driving us away because we didn’t use land the way they did.”

Gansworth notes that representations of Indigenous people in America are rooted in the past, effectively saying that Indigenous people are not present in the modern world. Relegated to the past, Indigenous people are stripped of agency, their colonization “justified” because more modern people have come to take their place.

“You know already that to be different is to be separated, set apart

from others, no matter how minor and insignificant the difference.”

Gansworth keenly feels all of the little things that set him apart from those around him. He and his family are outsiders on the reservation because they are Onondaga. Even within his own family, he is an outsider.

“But we didn’t want to be considered

equal and included, didn’t want to be considered American.

We just wanted to survive, practice our beliefs

as we saw fit.”

The idea of equality means different things to different people. According to Gansworth, equality for Indigenous people does not mean assimilation into American culture. It means the ability to self-determine.

“What happens when you’ve been chosen to receive a message, but there’s no one to help you translate it?”

One of the ways that Gansworth feels cut off from his history and culture is through his lack of knowledge about traditional practices. He does not know how to take part in certain aspects of his culture, and no one can help him connect to or understand them.

“They wanted

Ted to use their mirror, but he peered in

his own, instead, and his was long and wide,

and the mercury on its back surface shone

clear, or maybe its imperfections were ones

he knew best because they were his own.”

Ted C. Williams’ book The Reservation is an autobiography about his experience growing up on the same reservation Gansworth grew up on. Many people on the reservation have not read it because the book does not reflect their personal experiences; this is one of the challenges of autobiographies.

“I ask why they still use the pan, repaired handle offering

a second chance to strike, at best, and she returns

that you can’t let fear run your life, so you accept

the aerodynamics of nature, appreciate the clear skin

you have, and know, for its finite hunger, you should thank the fire.”

In this poem, Jaboozie’s sister tells Gansworth that they cannot allow fear to rule their lives. The metaphor here goes beyond the grease fire: She is telling him that the things that scar him have limited power. Fire, though destructive, is also transformative.

“Even when we look like we are doing

the same thing you are, we are really

doing our own thing in the same space

you do your thing, so you won’t try

to tug us further into your world with

some other idea. Some of us master

this camouflage easier than others.”

Gansworth explores the differences between Indigenous and white American courting rituals: Indigenous people must camouflage their actions in order to maintain independence. By “doing [their] own thing” in the same space as white people, Indigenous people attempt to maintain their culture while also blending in with broader American society.

“Not demanding that I rise or fail to meet expectations, the places I know best

have no room for me. No map points me in any direction beyond Dog Street.”

After high school, Gansworth feels directionless and lost. He does not know where his future will take him and cannot imagine a life beyond his home on Dog Street.

“Some people grant inexplicable value or judgment

on saturation levels of either melanin or anthocyanin,

but once the skin is flayed, the insides are remarkably similar.

It’s good to know some things stay the same.”

Gansworth addresses the arbitrary values assigned to skin color, noting that skin color is determined by melanin and nothing else. Beneath a layer of superficial skin, he argues, all humans look the same.

“For these two, and for the history of Hollywood, we remain

props, segues, or obstacles to the hero’s next conquest.”

Representation in Hollywood has historically relegated Indigenous people to background props or else enemies to white heroes. Thematically supporting The Impacts of Colonialism, this observation notes how Hollywood contributes to the American project of cultural genocide that refuses to see Indigenous people as fully developed people with their own identities and personhood.

“But you and I find each other and know

we will stay together in a world that doesn’t

especially approve of us and the ways we love,

and maybe when my mother claimed

there was no word for love, she was

really saying that no word could encompass

all the different ways we find it.”

Gansworth and his partner, Larry, stay together despite all the challenges they face as an interracial gay couple. Gansworth notes the limitations of the word “love” when it does not fully encompass all the ways that people experience the emotion.

“We still need to sing the blues

but in the intervening years

we have forgotten the chords

that would take us home, so

if you did commit them

to memory, even a couple,

could you pass them on?”

Gansworth questions how people can pass on knowledge when memory is such a fragile thing. Even when knowledge is gained, it can be lost before it is passed on.

“In his eventual book, he can find no true place

for my voice, because as an Onondaga in my

family, I am forever from Tuscarora, but also

eternally not of Tuscarora, as if my life lacking

symmetry did not truly exist, as if mine was

the voice of a ghost, since he could not find

a place to file it, in the real world of his ordering.”

The ethnographer does not know how to categorize Gansworth because he does not fit into a box. Categorizing human beings is rarely a neat, clear-cut process; people often exist outside the classifications that white anthropologists and ethnographers devise. These attempts to classify ironically are sometimes even used to support the racist views that many of those who devise them intend to quash.

“When we are born outsiders, we sometimes

find bridges we can make with our own stories

embracing the ways they are connected, instead

of pointing out the gaps between the two sides.”

Although Gansworth has felt like an outsider for much of his life, his nephew’s marriage is a bridge. He feels that he has gained a sense of belonging in his community. He begins to see the connections rather than the differences.

“She fans

the tobacco smoke, and what rises

to circle the moon, head home

to the Skyworld,

is our loss,

your spirit,

some smoke,

a little ash.”

When Gansworth’s mother dies, his family ushers her spirit to the Skyworld via tobacco smoke, an Indigenous practice in Nations across North America. Gansworth has always associated his mother with the smell of ash and smoke; in this send-off, the comparison comes full circle.

“I don’t know why I read them. Anything I’ve lost

is never coming back and I already know that.”

Gansworth has lost many things over the course of his life. He reads the lost and found section of a newspaper, as if some of the things he has lost could show up in the “found” section, but he knows that everything he has lost is gone for good.

“I

think of what the minister said when my brother died: “The rain

comes and washes away his prints, so we can move on.” I wished

for drought instead, so we wouldn’t lose every trace, but it rained

for a week straight, and despite it being April, three feet of snow

landed to make sure the job was done for good.”

Gansworth does not want to “move on” when his brother dies. He wants his brother’s footprints, his memory, preserved forever in this world. Instead, it rains and then snows after his brother’s death, forcing him to look toward the future.