As head of Montana Peoples Action and Indian Peoples Action, Janet Robideau is determined to help not only American Indians but all people who need it
Prague 2007: Common Ground
Janet Robideau is a Northern Cheyenne from southeastern Montana. “I was born in San Francisco,” she says, beginning her life story. “People still ask me and I have to tell them that I was not born in a teepee down by the river. My mother was in the Army; my father was in the Air Force."
Robideau spent her school years in a boarding school. “Everything became a sin; even bubble gum was a sin. And I love bubble gum to this day!” Her family moved to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana when Robideau was 10. And about the time she was 12, she started to learn the Cheyenne language. “My grandfather told me: ‘You are a Cheyenne. And you need to know your language.’ And he stopped talking to me in English. And that is how I learned. I would listen to him and go and point things to find out what he was talking about.”
Her Cheyenne name is “Hatha-o-hio”, Standing Out Woman. Her daughter is 36 years old and her name is a Lone Pine Tree Woman; Robideau’s son is 32 years old and he was named Little Wild Wind by his father, James Robideau.
Urban Indians just no longer live on their homelands, says Robideau. ‘Urban Indian’ does not mean ‘assimilated Indian.’ “We know we are different,” says Robideau. “We are proud of that.”
Robideau chose, and still chooses, to live off the reservation. “I didn’t want to live at home in Lame Deer, because there is no place to work, no place to live.” Reservations have the highest unemployment rate in the state. If people do not leave, they usually have to choose between working for the BIA or for the tribe. “And you know, with tribal politics, sometimes that can be really insecure, depending on who runs for office and who gets elected,” she says.
Life on the reservation
“My reservation is so small,” says Robideau. “Everybody knows everybody! And you are either related by marriage or by blood. When I was growing up, my grandfather always said: ‘No, you can’t go with him, no, you can’t go with him… And I was always like: ‘Is there anybody I can have as a boyfriend?’”
Janet Robideau moved to Missoula to go to college. When she graduated, she stayed here. “My kids were at school and I did not want them to pull them out and take them back.” She has been here since 1984. “I really didn’t care about small-town living. I never did. Although it is odd now, because I live in Lolo which is a small town… Everybody knows everybody and that is what I left.”
“I came to Montana Peoples Action in 1980 as a member,” she says, and adds that she has been with the organization ever since.
Indian Peoples Action was formed in 1997. “We found,” Robideau explains, “that people were focusing on the tribes, but only on reservations issues. People looked at us and said: Oh, Janet, I really support sovereignty, water rights, hunting rights… And I said: ‘All right and where do you stand on affordable housing, what about public education, why are we building more prisons than schools…?’ People were really surprised that we cared about that.”
Misunderstanding kills Indian women
Women’s lack of understanding is a problem, Robideau says. Some are afraid to seek medical treatment out of fear that they’ll encounter someone who is not respectful to them. Sometimes they delay a doctor’s visit until it’s too late, she says.
The gender of the doctor can be a problem. Robideau says some Indian women ask to see a female doctor instead of male one. “Sometimes it has to do with their spirituality,” she continues. “In some tribes if a woman is married to a medicine man --- no other man can touch her. And then she goes in for an exam and there is a male nurse… Then she has to say ‘No’.” But sometimes this is all the clinics have and the woman’s option is to get examined by a male or not get an exam.
Robideau cites two surveys done in Missoula that suggest the importance of better informed Indian women: “The first one is that Indian women 18-24 years of age who become HIV positive in Montana often get it from their boyfriends and husbands.” The second study found that Indian women age 50 and over were contracting and dying from treatable cancer: breast cancer, cervical cancer and colorectal cancer.
How such information is communicated is very important, Robideau said. “Cultural traditions are so important. And it is not just about Indians. We have other large minorities here. Fair and equal treatment of everybody—not just us. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination. And it is wrong.”
Does she still feel like a member of the tribe?
Once she left the reservation, Janet Robideau says, she didn’t stop being an Indian. “I use the term Indian, because that is how I always used to call myself. I heard people said: Native American, American Indian, indigenous … I am an Indian. You can call me whatever you like as long as you do it with respect.”
“Before my grandfather died he told me: ‘Whatever you do, wherever you go, always remember, that you are a Cheyenne. Don’t ever forget that.’” Her grandfather was to Robideau the one who really pushed for education.
Indian people in urban areas, says Janet Robideau, often face poverty and unemployment, the inability to get a good job, and racial discrimination. They encounter stereotypes—people think that Indians do not pay taxes, get everything for free, sit and wait for their welfare check, or are rich because they have casinos.
One of the most poorly understood complaints has to do with Indians getting free health care, says Robideau. “God! Who wants it! It is really, really bad.” Moreover, once Indians leave the reservation for 180 days continuously, unless they are in the military or in school, they lose access to the services provided on the reservation. “You have nothing; you just have to hope you don’t get sick,” she comments.
“If I broke my leg or had a heart attack, I would jump into my car, drive eight or nine hours to my reservation, and stay there for six months to get access to healthcare,” says Robideau. “This idea of ‘free’ health care is all about people who think there is somebody else eating a bigger piece of pie than they are. We are not even getting a pie! We are all getting crumbs. It just turns us against each other.”
Racism is still here
Decades ago, one of the defining moments of her life was when Janet Robideau and others met with a company that wanted to mine coal on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.
“I was young, about 20, and I was at a meeting with this coal company and we came there with Crow. I was smoking in a corner and I overheard a meeting with these guys and the Crow leaders, and these guys from the company told them: We really want to talk with you, we think that Crow people have an understanding what we are trying to do, we think we can really do that thing with you, we are going to form this committee and we want you to lead this committee, we will work very closely with you… And later that afternoon, the same place, the same men came to talk to our Cheyenne leaders. And they said exactly the same thing…. ‘We’d really like you to lead this committee, but these Crow think that they should have it… And that effectively broke down everything. And that is what they wanted. They do not want to deal with us as combined entity. It is easier to divide us and deal with a separate group. I did not say anything, but later when we got home, I told my uncle. And he just smiled…”
Indians can be racists, too
Racism can go both ways, says Robideau. “We were once in D.C. and about twenty of us, Indians, were there. This one guy was talking and joking about Columbus, in a comical way. I was laughing and then I saw this couple, a white couple. The look on their faces was not anger, but confusion and their faces were asking ‘Why are you saying this?’ I was among elders, so I wasn’t allowed to say anything. But if I said nothing, I would be a hypocrite! So I said: ‘I am really uncomfortable with the turn this conversation has taken. What we are saying is really hurtful and if the situation was different and we were sitting around the table of white people who were saying the same things about us, we would be outraged. Why is it okay for us to say that?’ Then it was just dead quiet. And actually the guy who had been speaking spoke up and said: ‘You are right. We can’t do this.’”
Fighting racism is, according to Janet, “like trying to put sand of a beach with a teaspoon.”
Turn your back on me
Leaving the reservation does not mean that everybody there wishes you luck. “Sometimes people on the reservation say: ‘You turned your back on your own people; you are trying to live in a world that doesn’t really want you.’ And they are partly right, says Robideau. “We are trying to fit in a world which actually never let us forgets who we are.” If an urban Indian wants to be again part of reservation society, he has to doubly prove himself. Once I graduated I went back to Lame Deer and went to a shop there. I saw my old friend, we used to party together, we had babies at the same time… She looked at me and she ignored me. So I went to her and told her ‘Hi, how are you?’ And she was like: ‘I didn’t think you would talk to me. I heard you are white now…’”
This is good!!
Pe Va
Posted by: Floyd J. Bearing, Jr./Nightwalker/LooksBehind | September 26, 2007 at 11:01 PM