ble for what happened to them. They left. It wasn’t about not wanting no pictures because Red and them had their own photographer who had grown up with them. Red and them just never had no eyes for appearing on a poster in an airport somewhere advertising for tourists to come to New Orleans. Red says though, even behind all they be doing, dealing with the kids and all, and trying to keep in the real way, they still see the Indian culture changing as the city changes around them, as Mardi Gras becomes more commercial. What is hip is how Red and Jerome and them have the insight to hook up this culture with the youth and the black consciousness without having to label it in an intellectual way. “They gon take it and run with it ’cause they like it and later on they will understand it,” is how Jerome sees it, and so as to insure that “understanding,” he also sees it as his vocation to keep the culture alive. The recognition of Africa be shooting all throughout this stuff. They be talking about African beadwork and designs, they be talking about apartheid. Anybody even faintly familiar with traditional West Africa can see the African-ness in what Jerome and Red and them do, and can see the Mardi Gras Indian gang like a society—except in 20th century New Orleans, unlike in traditional Africa, the women don’t have parallel societies. On carnival day, you be seeing all them Indians, it seems like the most natural thing in the world. Seems like they will always be there. Indians have been there since anybody alive today can remember. But no, like any life, like anything beautiful, it is a struggle to stay on the scene. For instance, just the money it now costs to do up an Indian suit right has put it all on another level. Some Indians can’t come out every year ’cause they don’t have enough money. And some Indians be selling they colors to white people who come round looking to buy an authentic Indian costume. Spirit Red spits on the ground when he talks about Indians selling they colors. Even so, all the changes ain’t necessarily for the bad. Red remembers when the Indians used to be about fighting each other, using guns and knives on each other. Over time, the fighting became more ritual than real, the costumes became the battleground. More emphasis was put on the sewing and the design and creativity an Indian would put into his suit. Me and Jerome were talking once about the hidden meaning the creativity involved in Indian sewing had for him. “I was real young, maybe five or six,” Jerome’s eyes were dancing as he said that to me, even though he was relaxing in a comfortable chair. His voice was strong and low, pride in every syllable. For him seeing those costumes and knowing th e men who made them was a gultural grounding that could never b l shaken. “Imean, after 1seen the chief and all that, I knew there wasn’t nothing that Rex or none of them others could do that could match that. They wasn’t nothing. They could never be as pretty as the Indians.” The gang gave pride to young men who were, more likely than not, destined for a life of underpaid, hard labor at best and equally likely to spend some time in the parish prison, if not on the state farm at Angola. Being an Indian didn’t always keep you out of jail, but it did give you a reason not to go to jail, if you could help it. Everybody in the neighborhood dug it when you was an Indian. “Chile, my lil cousin (“lil cousin” be thirty- some years old), he coming out Indian this year, yeah. Gon be pretty and I’ma gonna be right there.” Respect. After all, what else could a New Orleans public school educated, unskilled or semi-skilled black laborer get respect for doing? Especially since most of your waking hours was spent up under some yoke as Mike or Fred— "the freight boy.” Even when you were fluidly tossing boxes of merchandise from the back of a truck straight up into the hands of Rufus standing on the balcony of a second story store in the French Quarter, an unlit cigarette stuck behind your ear, even then you weren’t “a freight boy,” though that’s the only way your boss identified you. Red was laughing loud one time, talking ’bout how, come Mardi Gras, he could strut up in his boss’ face and the man wouldn’t even know it was him dressed out in a handmade outfit whose beauty his boss would be admiring. Boss man wouldn’t know it was Red’s steps danced in the middle of the street that he envied and wished he could do. Animated, Red bent at the waist laughing about the blindness of his boss. “When boss look at us, he don’t see nothing but dumb boys with strong arms he pay four-fifty a hour. That man will never understand what it means to be Indian.” I looked at Red laughing. Even black folks from away from here sometimes cannot understand why a poor man would invest so much into being an Indian. Somebody from Chicago who had never seen none of this before freaked out. “Why Indians with them wigs and shit? What that got to do with being black? What all that mean?” Obviously, on one level, literally it doesn’t mean much of anything. Literally, it's &6ut costuming during a business- blessed, church-sanctioned pagan holiday. But on another level, Ri?d: and; some i f them others n escapedf he Indians! Iwonder how many more Mardi Gras mornings will come and go before the Indian thing is no more. I see Red crouched in the street, hollering a chant, scurrying back and forth, moving on feelings and attitudes transferred down to him. His eyes intense, possessed in a ritual ecstasy. A knee bent, a foot raised, and his body swaying almost like it’s falling, but it’s dancing in tune to a deep drummer with an ancient beat. Red shakes his head, his feathers rustle, his costume makes sounds. A smaN child is running in circles, an old woman is dancing in the gutter in extreme slow motion, hiking up her skirt with one hand and, at the same time, covering her mouth with the other hand, it is that time. “EEEEEE-YAAAAA!” Goodness. Spirit Red runs about twenty feet up the block. Runs back. Shouts. Looks through us at something. There is something heavy going down. So heavy. Can’t say nothing. We don’t say no, don’t say yeah. We just dance with it, and if our ear is good or if we’ve been doing this a long time, we sing the chants. But at that moment in the street, in the sun, it’s totally something else. Spirit Red by his slave name is gone. This is not him whirling in your face, shaking feathers, shaking your unbelief in magic. > At the point when you can no longer rely on your sense of anything to t ^ j f j 1 you what is really going on, people screaming, you are screaming. A” small child is running in circles, an old woman is dancing in the gutter i extreme slow motion, hiking up^h skirt with one hand and, at the sa time, covering her mouth with ^he other hand. It is that time. At that time, the being standing in front of you, leaning into your face, his breath shooting hot into your nostrils you •closer, a hot closer. Are you breathing? You must dance. Something inside you knows what to do. You do that. You dance to the shaking sound in front of you, to the feathered form leading you past anything you know about. You do not know if Red wants to possess you but you want to be possessed. The you that is singing back those sounds ^ y unds, they are not eveifwqp^g—theydii thatjs danc- ing, the vou tha ying to match Red's au ^feyou kne "At that - monfefit” YAAAAAAA!” (Wl^o madi You made that soBhd. C SA nd Red is not Rea. IElaWomra? ^ ^ y o u hat moment, whate'ter it is is not V■$' -OS \ •• ■ent, you not' you Atthat moment, Spirit Re _ man. He is not a reveler. At that lam e n t , as ydu gasp for breath, as with every syllable—you do not even god. back up, do not even think about backing away, don’t want to njdve, **1 want to be closer to this force. At that * time it is not even Spirit Red hollfring / to live gn y he ian and folk histo- L rian Danny Barker points out that the Indians used to hide out in the black community from the federal marshals who were looking for Indians to ship out to reservations. Danny recalled federal marshals would come around looking for Indians and would say “Who’s that, who’s so and so?” And our people would protect the Indians, say, “Him, oh he ain’t Indian, he colored.” ot a isp for understanding, y< Fhat is not an Indian. T are h5 * “EEEEEEEEErYAAAAAAA!” v Got among us. And at that moment, all sacred. but perfectly ints into your e the force j ider- _ — - --------- f -----mg intestines is SQ strong seems dull and told. You in the aHernoonfunlight nit it is likSsometh^g’s shadow has swallowed you. Something uqcontrolWriter Kalamu i lives in New Orleans. The above is “one chapter in a six-chapter work entitled BANANA as your fear of this wildness pushes your body away and your right mind recoils before it. Still, you are stone still—or so you think, so it seems. Still, you stand your ground and start dancing and singing. Red has not touched you. Red has touched you. At that moment. Yes, whether you believe of not, if you are in it, if you are singing, if you are dancing, the ancient aura pulls REPUBLIC: Black in New Orleans." Clinton St. Terri A. Mim photographer living She is currently d length documen Indians entitled Flame. This is her Clinton St. 'ulture tory in in rst is a writer/ ; in Newjprleans. eloping ^eatureon the Mardi Gras uardians o f the 26 Clinton St.—Spring 1990
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