Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
This film affected me remarkably. As an individual of mixed races, I am all too familiar with the dilemma of being caught between cultures and I thought that Imitation of Life captured the failure of American binaries perfectly. It was only by overcoming my desire to be stereotypically beautiful (read: white), was I able to recognize my own place independent of racial expectations. The unresolved ending between Lora and Susie in the 1959 version seems to represent the lack of resolution regarding race. Although troublesome endings may have been a convention of postclassical films, [Douglas] Sirk forces the audience to consider the future of Lora, Steve and Susie, and, in the process, alludes to the unresolved issues of Sarah Jane’s existence. Annie’s death may have forced her to recognize her misgivings as a daughter, but her life as a light-skinned young woman has only begun, just as our battle with civil rights.
[Gabriel] Galanda’s own ancestors were Native American, Scandinavian, Portuguese and Austrian — a mixed heritage that caused him to question his identity during his formative years.
“Before I undertook this work,” Galanda says, “I was really caught up in blood quantum.” Now, he says, “I don’t really care.” He has settled instead on an expansive, evolving notion of “belonging” that takes into account lineage without precise blood calculations or federal documents.
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DEMING, Whatcom County — In his big gray truck, Gabriel Galanda makes a notable entrance into a Nooksack tribal-housing development of a couple dozen modest homes, set on a winding road about a half-hour east of Bellingham. Many of the residents, members of a sprawling clan who move easily in and out of each other’s homes, appear with platters of fry bread, chicken adobo, baked halibut, salads, cupcakes and pies.
It’s a feast befitting their biggest defender, one who has made their small tribe of a couple thousand members well-known throughout Indian country, and not in a good way. The Nooksack tribal government for the past three years has been trying to disenroll the clan in this housing development and its extended family — which would strip all 306 of tribal membership.
And for the past three years, Galanda, a Seattle-based Native American lawyer, has been fighting it. The cause has taken the 39-year-old Galanda on a journey, personal and professional, that taps into the heart of what it means to be Native American…
…Galanda’s own ancestors were Native American, Scandinavian, Portuguese and Austrian — a mixed heritage that caused him to question his identity during his formative years.
“Before I undertook this work,” Galanda says, “I was really caught up in blood quantum.” Now, he says, “I don’t really care.” He has settled instead on an expansive, evolving notion of “belonging” that takes into account lineage without precise blood calculations or federal documents…