Humbled by a Hummingbird

I have been working recently on a collaborative project researching a local Native American tribe, the Amah Mutsun. Our aim was to gain insights into the impacts of the tribes’ relationship with nature on their cultural identity. I personally struggled with the significance of the project. I knew that Native Americans had been historically mistreated by various invading forces, stripped of their lands, denied the right to practice their tribal customs, and in some cases subjected to near total genocide. But I just did not get how any of that was relevant now. Hadn’t all the Natives been fully assimilated into our melting pot society? Hadn’t we all become an amalgamation of ethnicities, various religious beliefs, and for heaven’s sake- I knew we had all agreed that we had to care for the Earth. If you think my attitude sounded a bit ethnocentric, you’re right. Ethnographic exploration often reveals the hidden biases and ignorance of the researcher, and this was no exception. How, you may ask, did I come to this deep personal insight into my own arrogance? I was humbled by a hummingbird.

One afternoon I was sitting on my back porch congratulating myself for successfully foisting the boring historical parts of our project off on my fellow researchers. They could spend hours in the library reading about all that stuff we learned in grade school. All I wanted to do was see some cool tribal dances, snap some photos, and chat with some “real Indians.” I had recently discovered that the hummingbird was the symbol for our subject tribe and was trying to come up with some way to make all of that boring history somehow interesting by spinning it in a magical totem animal theme.  So there I sat with my laptop, conjuring up idealized Indian medicine men adorned in hummingbird regalia. I was not having much luck because every time I tried to create a hummingbird man I broke out into a hysterical fit of laughter. I just couldn't seem to take this seriously. So I took a break and researched hummingbirds in general thinking that would somehow stimulate the creative process. What I learned did not take on significance until later in the project. Hummingbirds are not supposed to be able to fly. Yet they defy gravity by hovering and even fly backwards. About then a hummingbird buzzed into my backyard, hovered directly in front of me, and then flew off.

Like the hummingbird, the Amah Mutsun are small. Currently there are only around 600 members.  They have yet to be recognized by the federal government as a “legitimate Indian tribe,” which means that they have no official rights or authority in the eyes of the government beyond that of any other U.S citizen. They may not make any claims on ancestral lands, or even have any say in how those lands are managed. Yet they have created partnerships with the UC Santa Cruz arboretum in the form of a Relearning Garden aimed at reintroducing and cataloging the nutritional and medicinal properties of Native plants. They are working with anthropologists at Ano Nuevo State Park studying the role of fire in Native land management techniques. These small hummingbird people have even convinced the National Park System to grant them exclusive access to an area of the Pinnacles National Monument  where culturally significant Native grasses are growing.

At this point in the project, I began to get an inkling that perhaps these Natives possessed some historical knowledge that was relevant to modern life.  But it was not until I discovered that not long ago our own land management technique had been to simply throw a fence around an area and let it grow. This resulted in catastrophic forest fires that sterilized the soil. And that it was the traditional Native land management techniques, like controlled burning, that improved our land management policies. Slowly, it dawned on me that I had been  arrogant, and misinformed, about the significance of Native history in modern times. 

I did not get to see any tribal dances with medicine men dressed up like hummingbirds. 

But I did see “real Indians” defy gravity.