Julia Sanchez's Story

An Indigenous Woman between Nations

The Mexicans in town would say that we were Indians and the Indians would say that we were Mexican. It was very confusing. . . . I felt ashamed of being Mexican and Indian. You would see these pretty blonde girls with these dresses. You would wish, Why could I not be born blonde and light [skinned]? You know that image. You want to be white.

Julia Sanchez, Interview, 26 April 1995

Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the questions constantly: "In reality, who am I?"

Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

This essay will examine the complex life story of a Native American/Chicana, Julia Sanchez, whose identity revolves around her experience as a person of mixed heritage.1 She inhabits a blurred zone outside the United States, Mexico, Aztlan, and her own tribal community but not fully belonging within any of these national/cultural identities. According to Renato Rosaldo, cultural citizenship includes the right for people to be different and still belong to the nation.2 It also involves the cultural processes by which subordinated groups interact with dominant notions of belonging. This view of cultural citizenship, the anthropologist Lok Siu argues, has been dependent on the assumption that people participate and are subjected to one cultural and political system.3 Sanchez's narrative enriches and extends Rosaldo's notion of cultural citizenship because her life is shaped by more than one nation-state. Citizenship has also been assumed to be a white male enterprise where women are subservient to men.4 With support from other Indian women, Sanchez becomes empowered and able to claim her Indian identity, subverting the dominant constructions of identity in both the United States and Mexico. Her story runs counter to citizenship scholars like T. H. Marshall, Stuart Hall, and David Held, whose theories emphasize political and social participation within the nation-state and leave out the importance of women's relationships in the private sphere.5 This essay argues that transnational as well as gendered perspectives must be considered within notions of cultural citizenship in order to create a world where women like Sanchez, who live between nations, can one day belong.

Before I tell Sanchez's life story, I must first discuss the relationship between cultural citizenship and Native Americans. Native Americans question prior notions of cultural citizenship because they are often fighting to assert their sovereign rights as tribal citizens within a colonial context rather than fighting for membership within the dominant nation-state. However, cultural citizenship, I argue, is still relevant for Indian people. For example, Annette Jaimes-Guerrero examines how tribal governments, altered by federally imposed governmental structures, have denied tribal enrollment to Indian women and their children.6 Cultural citizenship is thus relevant to Indian women's struggles to belong in all community contexts and must be fully explored as part of an enlarged notion of cultural citizenship that includes the particularities of Native American experience.

Sanchez grew up as a migrant farm worker in central California and lived on the Tule River Indian reservation outside of Porterville for a few years in her early teens. Her mother is Mexican and her father is Yokut from Tule River Indian reservation.7 Her family followed the crops around the Central San Joaquin Valley in California. She now lives in San Jose, California. She begins:

I was born in Tulare, California, August 23, 1953. My parents were both migrant workers, so we moved around a lot. At first we used to go out in the fields to help them out, me and my brothers, but then as more kids came along, there were seven of us. I am the oldest of all seven. The more kids that started coming into our family, being the oldest, I had to stay home and watch them. I did not get to start school until I was already eight years old. My parents kept me home that long. We moved around a lot. We moved around the San Joaquin Valley, following the crops to Orange Cove, Reedly, Dinuba, Sanger, and Selma. I remember the grapes and peaches. My dad, during the off season, would do pruning.

I just remember wasps and black widows when we used to do grapes. I was never afraid of black widows. I mean it was this thing you learned. You took it like routine. You saw one and then you would brush it off. And my mother would always say to make sure your sleeves are real tight and you would wear gloves. After I got bitten I was deadly afraid of black widows. I could not even see a picture of one. When we moved to Fresno, my garage was full of them. I had chills for a half-hour when one fell on me. It used to be scary. You adapt, I guess, [when you work with them], but when one actually bites, and you are at your death, it is a different story. I have been bitten by wasps, and once I was so angry at my brother that he was not doing his share of the work. I was so mad that the sting did not do anything to me. When I told my grandmother about it she said, "It was probably because you were so angry that it probably did not take hold." I think I was more afraid of the wasps than the black widows. I guess because they could come at you at any place and sting you. It was always so hot. Really hot. When my parents had me stay home with the kids, at least I was not out there doing all that stuff, that work.