Voting as a ‘Weapon of the Colonizer’
An interview with Apache artist Douglas Miles on the Native American vote, disenfranchisement, and using pop culture to reclaim a stolen narrative.
When Douglas Miles embarks on his regular pilgrimage to Trill, a hip-hop and arts supply shop in north Phoenix, spray paint is the primary objective. Leaning against the front counter, the Apache artist scans the eastern wall, where stacked cans triangulate like a Lite-Brite, rippling from skin tones to cool blues to neon oranges. Near the cash register, a sign uses WUTANG as an acronym to encourage Covid hygiene. Miles picks out six cans of peach and six of flat black. “With soft pressures, I can take my time,” Miles says.
But lately, these trips have become even more frequent—even though Miles lives 2.5 hours east on the San Carlos Apache reservation. Miles, 56, is a multi-disciplinary artist, largely known for Apache Skateboards, an art collective that marries Apache youth and skate culture. But in the last two months, murals have dominated his work. Commissioned by the non-partisan group One Arizona and artist coalition Culture Surge, Miles’ three recent murals are largely driven by the same force behind everything else in American life right now: the election.
As historic as this election may feel, for some Natives, it’s yet another. Historically, Native American voter turnout is the lowest in the country, with 34% not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians. “People of color in general, in particular Native American people, they feel like they're not heard,” says Miles. From land rights to the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (#MMIW) movement, the system has failed them so much that voting feels futile. Miles doesn’t blame them.
But rather than dwell on that, Miles wants to empower Natives to fix it. “You’re voting on Native land” is the clarion call of his murals. It’s a reminder that the same society that denied them the right to vote until the 1960’s was built atop their land. Miles wants Natives to use voting in the same way he uses his spray can: a tool that at once defies and revitalizes a structure. And maybe in the process, restore some faith.
“I wanted non-natives to look at and read this phrase as a reminder of the humble origins of America,” says Miles. “For Natives, I wanted the statement to come from a position of power, not a position of lack.”
But Miles’ work is about more than just the election. As America grapples with the reframing of its colonial history in the wake of Black Lives Matter, Miles aims to advance that conversation even further for Native Americans. Standing in the back vinyl room, surrounded by walls adorned with records and microphones autographed by rappers, Miles tells me this is the real treat of these paint errands. Growing up, musicians like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles inspired him the most because they all had something to say. “Some of the best musicians and artists are activists,” says Miles. “It’s not something I wear on my sleeve.” But in his art, the message is clear: social justice.
Miles is bold in his delivery, if not provocative. In a short film he created called “The Mystery of Now,” Miles calls out the American government for “500 years of gangsterism.” When discussing land acknowledgement, Miles calls the practice so deficient it’s almost funny. “That's nice,” he says. “But it's not nice enough.” On what it will take to improve society for them: rebel.
"Apache people and Native American people in general are just naturally rebellious. We are going to rebel against whatever systems turn on us,” says Miles. “And we paid a price for that rebellion. That's why we were rounded up into these reservations. As I studied more, I learned that rebellion is necessary to make a better society sometimes."
Read on for my interview with Miles, who offers a glimpse into what that society might look like. (Teaser: Wakanda from Black Panther.)
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CQ: Earlier on the phone, you were talking about first how your murals were inspiring Native Americans to go vote, but also provoking a conversation about what it really means to vote when that process is a “tool of the colonizer.” Can you elaborate on that?
DM: Native people need to look at voting as adopting a weapon in the colonizer to make systemic change. It's not the only weapon. But definitely, Native people need to look at it as a weapon of the colonizer that they can use to alleviate some of the systemic oppression that we're dealing with.
CQ: With Apache Skateboards, you work with a lot of Native youth. Has Covid prompted a political awakening among them?
DM: For people that were already disenfranchised, [Covid] didn't really teach them anything. Disenfranchised people are already used to dealing with struggle. So when Covid came along it was like, okay, well, we've seen this before. So let's just work together.
But there is a subset of Native people, young people, who don't want to vote. They're completely disenfranchised with politics, for good reason. They can't be faulted, because it's that same political system that gave us Donald Trump. So if they're going to abstain, that's really what they're abstaining from: the system that creates and puts somebody like that in power.
CQ: Your artwork fuses punk and rock with Apache iconography. Tell me about the inspiration behind that aesthetic.
DM: Pop culture is such a powerful language—in particular, American pop culture. As an artist, whether you're a rapper, a writer, a filmmaker, you can't not use it because it's the one product that everyone has access to. So for me, I don't put pop culture into my work. I put myself into pop culture...If I insert myself into pop culture, then I drive the narrative.
But I also know that other people hijacked our culture and our Native history for money and told our story when it's not our point of view.
They told our story for us and told people, "Oh you should feel sorry for them, oh they really suffered, oh they really struggled." So now it's like you can't even talk about Native American people without talking about the excruciating poverty or all of these horrible forms of historical trauma that still visits on them. Still today, when Covid hit, probably 90% of the articles were about the hardship of the Navajo Nation. Well, it's true, that it's very difficult to live out there during a pandemic. But they did it.
My point is, media has this way of always turning Native American people to this tragic, tragic, historic piece. Whether it's a newspaper or a television. I don't feel tragic. My history might be, but I don't feel tragic. I feel good. I feel good when I finish a painting. I feel good when I come here and buy a couple hundred dollars worth of paint.
CQ: Part of the driving force behind this road trip is confronting this reckoning of American identity. Covid has exposed all of our shortcomings, to say the least, when it comes to health care, the economy, and systemic racism. What does this moment mean to you? Has it catalyzed or maybe even reinforced certain viewpoints about what it means to be American?
DM: In a way, being an American, quote unquote, is just a title or label now. But in reality, I am America. I'm what America is built out of. I'm what made America great: me, my family, my tribe, my people, my wars, my losses and my victories. We are what makes America great. Not a title, not a label, not a flag.
CQ: As a Native American, how do you feel about Black Lives Matter? Has it been a positive, inclusive movement? Or has it in a way overshadowed the plight of Native Americans?
DM: I don't feel that it's overshadowed Native people and Native issues at all. On the contrary, I think BLM, Black liberation and the liberation of Native people are intertwined. Because Black people are suffering the same injustices that we suffered and have been suffering for hundreds of years.
One of the greatest things about Black Lives Matter is it shines a bright light on all corners of American society and shows where systemic racism is at. Because it has been hiding in academia, in film, media, fashion. And it's sad. It's messed up. So we support that. I support that because if those rights occur for Black and Latino people, it's going to happen for us, too.
CQ: From BLM to The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” America is confronting a whitewashed narrative of colonial history. Do you anticipate the same kind of reframing of history with Native Americans and that becoming a more prominent conversation in cultural dialogue?
DM: Yeah, of course. Of course I do. I support any kind of reframing of American history and reshaping and retelling. Like I said, it has been taken away from Native American people.
Nobody really knows anything about Native American people. But if they do, they only know it from the movies. I'd venture to say 98% of what people know in America about Native American people is not from a newspaper. It's not even from a school book. It's from movies. Disney, Paramount. So I say Hollywood really owes Native people a big, big debt. That, of course, that they don't even know where to start.
But really, Native people want more and they deserve more when it comes to media. They're consumers of media, too.
My viewpoint is not going to make people feel good. But it's meant to make people think like, “Well, where are the Native people?” I know what I'm talking about because I've read and watched and studied the same artist books, movie stars and musicians that you did. So I know how to talk that language. Pop culture doesn't offend me or scare me, but I know it's also not my friend.
CQ: Growing up, when did you realize that the narrative that you were seeing in movies and books didn't align with what you knew and your own history?
DM: It seemed like early on. It seemed like I was in the third grade and I remember the teacher telling everyone, “Oh, and the Indians sold Manhattan for like twenty dollars worth of beads.” I remember all the kids looking at me. They all had that same kind of saying look like that's either sad or you're stupid.
Now, it depends on who's teaching it right, because some kids say, “Oh, the Indians are so nice. They just traded it for $20 worth of beads.” But for the most part, because America is run on dollars and cents, most people say you're stupid. It's all about the dollar bill.
CQ: For some activists, reparations are the answer to the legacy of slavery. What would be the equivalent for Native Americans?
DM: Yeah. Reparations for Black people, it's overdue. Reparations for Native American people, it would be land, of course. What it would look like: the fabled land of Wakanda from the Black Panther movie. Because everything is so Afro-centric and politically driven around the culture and the beauty and the power of the culture.
No one really knows what it'll look like. But no one really knew a year ago what a pandemic would look like. [Reparations] can be whatever we want it to be. It needs to be done from our point of view. This is what we want. This is what we have to see. We need to see Native American colleges. We need to see Native American museums, schools, galleries, businesses. It's not just, “Here's a bunch of money.” It should be really some gross systemic things.
I like using Wakanda as an example because people say, “Oh, well it's just a comic book.” Not really. You have to envision a society before you can build a new society.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and concision.
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