A few days ago, Governor Kate Brown issued a proclamation designating November as National American Indian Heritage Month in Oregon.  With that proclamation, she urged citizens of Oregon to join in observances of the vast contributions of American Indian peoples to the well-being of the state and country.

Essentially, this is a reminder.  Each state’s governor may issue state-specific proclamations related to designations of months to honor groups of people.  November has been recognized at the federal level as National American Indian Heritage Month since 1990.  That’s 25 years.  It’s also not very long.

Most people in the United States think November and Thanksgiving in practically the same neuron firing.  U.S. citizens tend, nearly as quickly, to associate Thanksgiving with the indigenous people of the lands composing our nation.  Non-Native Americans are exposed from early childhood to some version of the story of the generosity demonstrated by the residents of what we now call New England.  The people who provided newly-arrived (and hungry) Europeans with food and counsel on how to thrive with the land they’d entered.

Appreciation of the heritage and living cultures of the many peoples of this country is core to our integrity as a country.  At the same time, I take pause at the designation of a month as the time for appreciating a specific group.  In part, this is a result of my knowing that since 1980, March has become the month I’m recognized as a woman.

So, here’s the list.  American Indian Heritage (November, since 1990, G.H.W. Bush), African American History (February, since 1976, Ford), Women’s History (March, since 1980, Carter), Hispanic Heritage (September 15 – October 15, since 1988, Reagan), Asian-Pacific American Heritage (May, since 1992, G.H.W. Bush), Jewish American Heritage (also May, since 2006, G.W. Bush).

As it turns out, the designation of a single month for thinking about the contributions of any group can only happen if there is a single group doing the designating.  A group that has the greatest access to defining what is and isn’t most normal, and understands itself as the standard next to which all other groups are compared.  At the same time, it is both reasonable and empirically sound to conclude that every month is for everyone drawing breath.

Still, in the 200+ year conversation that is the United States, the current practice of designating months may be a step in the right direction.  That is, a public conversation opens with the formal recognition of the many groups of people who have always contributed daily to the well being of this nation – people who have historically been less apparent in government, in business, and in the media they generate.

In turn, this opening calls forth a next step.  To celebrate cultural integrity, to honor cultural boundaries, and at the same time, to see and investigate the power structure that underlies the very act of designation.

I know.  It can sound stultifying.  Especially to the people who have grown up as part of the standard without ever seeing either the standard or its implications.  On the surface, both appear optional for the people in the center to consider.

Two things:

1. What appears annoying to insiders is actually vital because, over time, being blind to power imbalance backfires. Check history (i.e. don’t believe me; investigate this for yourself).
2. And whether the next step is obvious in formal public/political investigation or not, it is underway. And it is robust.

This brings me to Halloween.

For time immemorial, people have had rituals to help them with the reality of death.  Some of these rituals have taken the form of celebrations of the lives of ancestors – loved ones who have died, forebears known and unknown.  Many of these emergent cultural traditions have taken place in autumn when the natural world is slowing its above-ground operations.  For the northern hemisphere, that’s about now; for the southern hemisphere, around April or May.

Nearly 120 years ago, in a book called The Worship of the Dead, John Garnier considered rituals in countries throughout both hemispheres.  Across the globe he found no identifiable cultural or ancestral line that did not include rituals for living with the fact of death.

The point, however, which we have to consider at present is this:  that the similar religious rites and beliefs of different nations so widely separated from each other … could not have been a separate invention of each race. (p. 8)

Just now, a Google search of Halloween History gave me links that either go to references to the “All Hallows Evening,” an outgrowth of the ancient Gaelic observance of Samhain, or to advice on costuming and candy.

“All Hallows Evening” is credited to Irish and Scottish immigrants to the U.S. in the 19^th century.  Not altogether a welcome bunch themselves, their cultural ritual was taken on and shows up now in the trick-or-treating hubbub around October 31 in the U.S.  According to reports dated 2015, the global presence of American culture in recent years (via TV, internet and other media), is now showing up in trick-or-treating through eastern Europe and even in parts of Saudi Arabia.

There’s nothing wrong with trick-or-treating, with costuming, with revelry. But there is a great deal wrong with stealing and trivializing culture.   And, in the end, the current renditions of Halloween seem a long way from their cultural origins in the Gaelic ritual for assisting the living with the fact of death.  Strong and vital inquiry, of the kind that represents that ‘second thing’ above, has been happening at the intersection of culture and death.

Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican celebration observed each year on November 1 & 2.  It is a vibrant and longstanding ritual for remembering the lives of family, friends who have died.  In a recent essay, Aya de Leon, a self-described “writer, performer, mom, activist,” elaborates the holiday and speaks powerfully to issues of cultural appropriation, alongside the powerful human need for death ritual.

Let me begin by saying it is completely natural that you would find yourself attracted to The Day of The Dead. This indigenous holiday from Mexico celebrates the loving connection between the living and our departed loved ones that is so deeply missing in Western culture.

And in the tradition of indigenous peoples, Chican@ and Mexican-American communities have not told you not to come, not to join, not to celebrate your dead alongside them. In the tradition of indigenous peoples and of ceremony, you, in your own grief and missing your loved ones have not been turned away. You arrived at the Dia De Los Muertos ceremony shipwrecked, a refugee from a culture that suppresses grief, hides death, banishes it, celebrates it only in the most morbid ways—horror movies, violent television—death is dehumanized, without loving connection, without ceremony. You arrived at El Dia De Los Muertos like a Pilgrim, starving, unequal to survival in the land of grief, and the indigenous ceremonies fed you and took you in and revived you and made a place for you at the table.

De Leon continues with an invitation that, for me, ties back to Garnier’s findings in 1909.  And from there both forward and back in time.

Halloween has a rich history as an indigenous European holiday that celebrated many of the same themes as Day of the Dead, but you have let it be taken over by Wal-Mart. Now it’s about plastic decorations and cheap polyester costumes and young women having permission to wear sexy clothes without being slut-shamed and kids binging on candy. November first finds piles of plastic and synthetic junk headed to the landfill to litter the earth. You have abandoned Halloween, left it laying in the street like a trampled fright wig from the dollar store. Take back your holiday. Take back your own indigenous culture. Fight to reclaim your own spirituality.

Please. Stop colonizing ours.