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Maddie Ile

Prof. Philipsen

Com 202

5 February 2019

Identity in ​Half of Anything

In the film ​Half of Anything​, four Native American individuals (lawyer Christina

Entrekin, poet/filmmaker Sherman Alexie, PhD student Deborah Bassett, and activist John

Trudell) discuss their own identities and how the world perceives them. Their

meta-communicative statements, identity claims and given context provide content for the

audience to analyze and create identity profiles for each individual.

Entrekin discusses native identity as it relates to enrollment frequently in the film. As she

puts it, “enrollment doesn’t make you a ‘real’ Indian...you’re either Indian or you’re not.”

Entrekin “appreciates that enrollment serves purposes” in the context of social services and

“hunting and fishing treaty rights”, but is likely an extermination policy as there will be

“intermarriage...and then no more enrollable Indians”. In one respect, enrollment is useful, and

even necessary: however, it could be a sign of a greater problem that the government has with

Native Americans. She uses multiple meta-communicative terms when speaking in this video,

indicating that her “train of thought gets lost as I’m telling you this story”. Entrekin also speaks

about communication when addressing the question “what is a real Indian?” at the beginning of

the video. She states, “If you would say ‘what’s an Indian’, that would be easier to answer.”

When considering what a real Indian is “metaphysically, politically, economically”, Entrekin

concludes that she is “indeed a pile of categories, if [she] had to think about it that way”.
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Entrekin therefore connects her identity to these multiple categories instead of government

classification.

Sherman Alexie speaks a great deal about the aesthetic identity of being a Native

American in ​Half of Anything,​ stating that “Indian identity has almost exclusively become

something physical”. Concerning his own identity, Alexie gives a thorough explanation of the

importance of his hairstyles over the years. He “wore a mullet for a long time” even though he

“knew it was out of style...in [his] class, in what [he] did for a living...but [he] wore it because

it’s a reservation hairstyle”. The mullet was Alexie’s effort to stay connected to the reservation

and keep that part of his identity alive-as he puts it, “I don’t speak my language, I don’t dance,

but I’m from there.” Out of its normal context, his hair was unusual; it would have been normal

on the reservation. When he started wearing it all one length, “people loved it”. When Alexie

later cut his hair because his father passed away, “it became such a subject during the book

tours”. His readers did not understand why Alexie chopped off his long hair, which they

interpreted as more “Indian”, to a shorter style which seemed to be an effort of assimilation. In

Seattle, a completely different context than the reservation, Alexie’s current short hair makes

him racially ambiguous. The most notable meta-communicative phrase Alexie uses in the film

concerns his current view on his identity, and how he interacts with the world around him. He

states that he is “not interested in sending obvious and shallow signals to people about who I

am”. This has obviously changed since his younger years, as Alexie is no longer interested in

communicating his identity through his physical features, most notably his hair.

Deborah Bassett considers her heritage and how it relates to her current identity in ​Half

of Anything​. She has “struggled with identifying as anything”, and “never gave [her identity]
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much thought growing up”. At school, kids didn’t know her race, and asked about it. The way

Bassett expressed her identity changed as she spoke to different people; “Nobody knows what

Creek is...so I told [kids at school] I’m American Indian”. Others would protest, saying that

“‘Native American is the correct way to call yourself’”, and Bassett’s grandfather insisted that

she call herself Creek. In different contexts, and therefore with different people, one expression

of identity was more acceptable than another. Bassett used meta-communicative language when

retelling her family history. She states that, “I talked with my grandfather, and he never liked to

talk much about it...he would say things that didn’t really make sense”. Bassett’s grandfather told

stories of her great-grandmother being afraid to tell anyone that she was Creek for fear that

“someone would take her to Oklahoma”. After researching the history, Bassett discovered that

Creek tribe members who did not go to Oklahoma “were forced to assimilate”, and future

Oklahoman Creeks denied their existence because the ones left behind hid their identity.

Through this research, Bassett better understood the context of her grandfather’s hidden identity;

this culture of “guilt, fear and shame” ran in the family. At the end of the film, Bassett addresses

her own identity by insisting that she “doesn’t fit neatly into any category”, referring to the fact

that she is Jewish and Native American.

John Trudell focuses on the history of injustice against Native Americans in ​Half of

Anything​. His own identity statement is that “we are the victims of genocide”, and that Native

Americans “exist with fragments of our whole [identity]” because “Western civilization erases

ancient tribal memory”. Trudell takes issue with the phrase “real Indian”, citing that “real Indians

live in India”. He also mentions that indigenous peoples are not “Native Americans” because

they have been in America longer than the concept of America has existed. When speaking about
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indigenous peoples in different contexts, Trudell mentions that “as human beings...our history

goes back to the creation story. As Indians, our history starts at the arrival of the Europeans.” In

short, Native Americans have different identities depending on who’s telling the story. Trudell

uses some meta-communicative language, stating that “Indians quarrel...don’t get along. When

we were our own people, human beings, by our own names, we cooperated. Weren’t kept apart.”

The word “quarrel” is the meta-communicative term in that phrase, which also addresses how the

context of interacting with other indigenous people post colonization is different than a few

hundred years ago. Trudell sums up his main argument in the video when he says that “the

identity of the Indians was indoctrinated into us, through basically terrorism...a lot of the

negative traits that we exhibit is because of that”. Modern native identity is reduced, essentially,

to the “fragments” of what the colonizers left of their history, as well as the atrocities that have

happened to them since.

There are quite a few similarities and differences that exist between each person’s

identity in ​Half of Anything​. One notable similarity is the mention of the US Government’s

involvement in Entrekin and Trudell’s identity statements. Both paint negative images of the

impact that the United States has had on native identity, from enrollment cards to genocide.

Trudell covers more of the history of identity theft and how that impacts native people now,

stating that “terrorism had been imposed upon [us]”. Entrekin, however, focuses on modern

enrollment and how she believes that it is not a definite statement of identity: “enrollment

doesn’t make you a ‘real’ Indian”. As for the other two members, Alexie and Bassett focused

more on the physical aspects of native identity. Alexie spent a great deal of his section of the

film describing how his hair had changed over the years, and what that meant for his identity and
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how people interpreted it. Bassett did not spend quite as much time on her physical appearance,

but did mention it as children growing up “didn’t know what [she] was”, based on how she

looked.

The main difference between each person’s identity is their opinion on what it means to

be a “real” Indian. Everyone used the word Indian at one point or another to describe

themselves/the group of people they identify with, so it is really the word “real” that created

differences in their responses. Entrekin did not fully answer the question, saying that the word

“real” implies that there is an invalid or incorrect way to be Indian, which she does not agree

with. Alexie stated that it is “someone who at some point didn’t want to be Indian”, as well as

cultural knowledge. Bassett answered very personally, stating that her grandfather instilled in her

that she did not “need to defend [her]self to anybody”. Trudell simply stated that “real Indians

live in India”. All four of these individuals come from such diverse backgrounds, but share a

common ethnic identity which can be expressed in so many different ways.

As a whole, the lesson to learn from this video is that identity is important, and can be

calculated. Meta-communicative terms, identity statements, and context can all be figured out

through analysis, as I have done with this essay. They all fit into the bigger definition of who a

person is and how they see themselves as a part of the larger group with which they identify. I

was not surprised with how different every person’s identity statements were, because although

they all identify as American Indian, their own tribes, personal experiences and worldviews

shape who they are much more specifically. It was easier than I thought it would be to piece

together the profiles, because all the information was given to me by the individuals-all I had to

do was organize it in a way that makes sense and put pieces together like a puzzle to connect
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various details into one identity. An understanding of someone’s identity profile would be

immensely useful in communication, because the way that someone views and presents

themselves has everything to do with how they communicate; if one can understand someone’s

way of communication, then communicating with that specific person would be much easier.