Tuesday, April 17, 2012

How Porcupine Got His Quills

I'm going to follow David's lead and put up my creative project too. My kids thought it was clever, so I hope you enjoy it too.


How Porcupine Got His Quills
A long, long time ago, Porcupine didn’t have quills. He only had a thick coat of fur, but that didn’t keep him safe like Skunk’s stink. To protect himself, porcupine hid in holes that he would dig, but this made it hard for Porcupine to see his friends, Skunk and Rabbit.
One day Porcupine was out looking for food when Bear came along. Bear said, “I’m sorry Porcupine but I am hungry. I haven’t come across food for a while. I need to fatten up for the winter, so I am going to have to eat you.”
Porcupine was too smart to just let Bear eat him, so he thought he would try to trick him. “I just came from over there, Bear. There are some berries, and they are Mmm Mmm good. So juicy,” Porcupine said, rubbing his furry tummy. “The best berries all season.”
Bear looked toward where Porcupine was pointing. He knew that berry season was over. “I don’t see a patch of berries,” he said.
“Over there behind that tree,” said Porcupine.
Bear trotted over to get a better look, and Porcupine ran and hid in a hollow log that was close by. Bear looked around the tree, but there were no berries there. Porcupine had tricked him. He turned around and Porcupine was gone. “That ol’ Porcupine,” Bear said. “He’s a tricky one. I should never listen to him.”
Porcupine thought he was safe in the log, and he started laughing at Bear. “Bear is so gullible,” Porcupine said.
Well, that old hollow log carried the sound of Porcupine’s giggles, and Bear heard him. Bear used his ears and his powerful nose to find Porcupine. “Come out of there, Porcupine,” said Bear. “I need to fatten up for my winter sleep.”
“No,” said Porcupine. “I don’t want you to eat me.”
“Alright,” said Bear. “I’ll just sit here and wait. You have to come out sometime.”
Porcupine settled down in the middle of the log. Bear will fall asleep after a while, he thought. And then I’ll tiptoe around him and run home.
Bear sat right beside that log and kept one eye on one hole and the other eye on the other hole. He was determined to eat Porcupine. Once Porcupine tried to sneak a peek out of one side of the log, and Bear was right there. With his powerful claws, he pounced but he missed Porcupine, so Porcupine went back to the center of the log and tried to wait for Bear to fall asleep.
But Bear didn’t fall asleep. In fact, Bear was becoming impatient, and he was looking around trying to figure out how to get Porcupine out of that log. He used his long arms to reach into one end of the log, but Porcupine just went to the other end where Bear couldn’t reach him. Bear also tried to use his powerful claws to scratch a hole in the middle of the log, but that gave him splinters in his paws.
Behind the log, there was big hill. If Bear could roll the log down that hill, maybe Porcupine would fly out. Then Bear would have his supper. Bear began to rock the log back and forth to free it from its resting place. He pushed, and he pulled. He pushed, and he pulled.
Porcupine was inside the log laughing. What did Bear think he was doing? Bear was strong, but there was no way he could move that log.
The log rocked back and forth, back and forth. Bear almost had it over the hump. He gave one, big, long push, and the log broke free. It started rolling down the hill, slowly at first, but then it picked up speed.
Porcupine stopped laughing. He was scared. He tumbled over and over inside the log as it got faster. He didn’t know where he was going. All he could do was hold on.
Bear chased the log down the hill. He was going to grab Porcupine as soon as he fell out of that log, but the log hit a tree at the bottom of the hill. It split open, and Porcupine was thrown into the air. Bear stopped and watched as Porcupine flew in the air and then landed in a patch of thistles. There was no way he was going into that patch of thorns. Thistles hurt. He would just wait until Porcupine came out.
When Porcupine landed he rolled several times through that big thistle patch. Thorns stuck to his thick fur, but they didn’t go into his skin. Porcupine stood up slowly. He was dizzy from his ride in the log down the hill, and he felt sick. He just wanted to go home. Surly, Bear had gone away, he thought. He wouldn’t have followed him into the thistle patch. So, Porcupine waddled out of the thistle patch and headed toward home, but he couldn’t see very well. He was still dizzy.
Bear jumped out at Porcupine and grabbed him with his paws, but Bear threw him back down quickly and ran off crying. Poor Bear. He had many thorns in his paws. Porcupine saw this and laughed. He now had protection. He decided to keep his quills. He didn’t have to hide in holes any longer, and he could come out anytime he wanted to see his friends, Skunk and Rabbit.

Monday, April 16, 2012

On April 6, 2012, I went with my American Indian Literature class to the Qualla Boundary or the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina. While there we visited the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the Kituwah Mound, and the Casino. Each of these places represented history, spirituality, and survival. Representation of all of these things in the museum is not easy, for the Cherokee have such a long history. Without a written language until Sequoyah created a writing system in 1821, much has been lost, but the Indians have found a way to record their history and their culture. Much is found in the museum.
            The museum begins at the beginning. We are led into a small room with bench seats and three screens in the front. This introductory film tells story of how the Earth was created. The story has been passed from generation to generation. The art of oral storytelling was very important to the Cherokee, for earlier, they didn’t have a written language to record their history. Accounts were passed through storytelling.
The lights were dimmed and the film began. Several members of the Cherokee tribe talked about how important oral language is to their history. The myth of creation was displayed on the screen in the form of digital cartoon, and soft white lights lit up at our feet and displayed specked shapes around the room. The next myth was how the first flute was made. Music was added to the surround sound system, and it stayed with us as we walked through the museum and looked at the displays. After we received instructions to walk through the open doors at the rear of the room, we stepped into the display area.
The lighting was very soft in order to highlight the displays behind Plexiglas on the walls and in clear cases on the floor. Still soft lighting was used to highlight the cases as well. I was a little disappointed in the lack of lighting. One had to get up really close to see details, but even then, sometimes that wasn’t even enough. The mood was warm, and the lights invited one to stay and linger a while. The flute played gently and was very calming. Those things were both a plus, but it still hard to see.
The first displays were at the beginning of time, or for as far back as archeologists have found evidence of human existence by excavation and carbon dating. In the display cases were spearheads dating back to the Paleo period (before 8,000 BC). These were from hunters living in the southern Appalachians. The spearheads are lined up neatly, but the directional chart at the bottom was hard to read, for it was close to the ground and was typed in small letters. The elderly would have a hard time ciphering the chart’s meaning.
Beautiful murals were painted on the walls. Some brightly depicted daily life in a Cherokee
camp. One display held Sequoyah’s symbols for the Cherokee language. It would light up and a
recorded voice would say the sound.
Another massive mural showed how one fall turned into a harsh winter on the journey to the Oklahoma territory. The mural came out of the wall with snow covered stone fences and wagons. The wall painting of the Trail of Tears was heart breaking. One display held a gorgeous turkey feather mantle for a ritual dance. Again the low lighting made it hard to see the details of the cape, but I understand that lighting had to be low in order to preserve the artifacts.
Wax figures stood in welcoming poses against the harsh stance of the English. Tension from over 200 years ago still hung in the room. Other wax figures wore traditional Cherokee dress, and wall plaques told of their meaning. There were lots of wall signs in which one could read about this and that, so many in fact; it was hard to read them all. I believe that I would have enjoyed a personal tour of the museum with a guide to tell me about important events in Cherokee history and to tell me how they used to live. That may have given a more homely feel to match the warm lights.
There was so much information that I will have to revisit and spend more time. Going with a class and having an agenda with other things to accomplish that day, one has to follow the crowd. These people are proud. I even met the man who was the model of a statue that stood in the middle of one of the rooms. His name was Jerry Wolf, and he autographed a pamphlet for me. The man was happy to share his time and his culture, and welcomed me to come back.

Monday, March 19, 2012

What I have learned so far this semester is that there is still a vast amount of knowledge about the Native Americans that we haven't discovered yet. I feel that we have only just reached into the prize box and pulled out a few items that might help us understand the beginning of what we need to grasp, but that we've only scratched the surface.



As a nation are still very judgmental. Not only to the Indians, but to other races and each other. When I look at where we have been and where we need to be in order to be an honorable nation, there is a vast meadow that stretches across the horizon to the unseen mountain that we still have to climb in order to reach our goal of being better human beings. Our government is greedy, but men and women whom we call our leaders going to the extent of using eugenics and genocide to abolish what they feel are lesser people or lesser races is disgusting.

The American Indians have such patience and acceptance of other people, and the rest of us need to listen to what they have to say. They could teach us so much about how to love and how to live in harmony with each other. but unfortunately, others have to willing to listen in order to learn. as a nation we are just not ready to do without some sort of intervention. Someone with some gumption and some clout, an activist like George Clooney, needs to stand up and say, "This is what I've learned, and you could benefit from it too."

Maybe one day, when I write the great American novel and be come a famous author, I can do that.

I think that we are a young country, but we are a country of one people. We are all Americans. We may have different cultures and different backgrounds, but we are all Americans. My daughter once told me that she was Irish, German, Cherokee, Black, and British. Now it's true that our ancestors come from all over the world, but I needed some clarification as to why she thought she belonged to all those nationalities. So I asked her to explain to me her reasoning.

"That's where we're from," she said.

"No, that's where our ancestors are from," I told her. "We are from America. We don't belong to those other countries, but our heritage does. What our grandparents taught us about that heritage is what we practice in traditions and values. It's why your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all come together on major holidays because the role of family is an important value."

We also have invented our own traditions and values over time. Change is a natural part of our culture, and adapting to new things is the basis of our world. So, why can't we make a change for the better? Acceptance is the first step. We cannot learn to love one another without accepting others for their differences, and differences is what make us all unique. And uniqueness allows so many perspectives and solutions to problems.

We are all Americans. Can we not make a change for the better and love each other like the brothers and sisters we are? This is a great nation with so many differences, but why do we let those differences divide us. They should bring us together. Look at all the things we could learn from each other. Look at how together we could change the world for the better if we would just take the time to listen to one another.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Yellow Woman

Leslie Marmon Silko
It was hard for me to chose which essays in this week's book to talk about. There is so much information and insight within them all. I didn't read them in order, I skipped around from the back to the front to the middle. There's just something about reading a collection of stories or essays from front to back that makes me want to put them in some sort of chronological order. Reading them in a chaotic fashion allowed me to be able to read each story separately and keep each piece's meaning separate in my mind. Crazy I know, but it worked for me.

The first essay that I turned to was "The People and the Land ARE Inseparable." It was this piece in which I first caught a glimpse of something, but I wasn't sure what it was. There was conflict between the words and the lines, but I was attributing that conflict to the years of fighting over land and boundaries, the Europeans taking over and defining what was right and what was wrong, what was theirs and what belonged to the Indians. Because that was how they had always done it and the white culture was more powerful, that was how it was going to be done, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. On the surface, there was nothing there that we hadn't already learned. But it wasn't until later, when I read "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit," I realized that the conflict wasn't only about whites and Indians. It was about culture, and it lies within each human being.

In this book, Leslie Silko is a odds with herself. She is torn between what was and what is, and her mixed heritage seems to complicate the war. But the thing is, Silko knows that is who she is, and she accepts it and draws from it. And I think that the book is not only about learning Laguna heritage, but her learning to live as an Indian in a white country without loosing her heritage. It's also about what we can all learn from each other. In the video, she continues teaching the difference of then and now, how we as a people need to remember that the earth is a living being too, and our greed is killing our relationship with the earth.

"In the old days," is Silko's favorite phase throughout this book. In the old days, there was acceptance for who a person was. No one judged another based on appearance or sexual orientation. The "live and let live" philosophy made life simplistic, and everybody was happy.

Today, people seem hell bent on telling you what's right and what's wrong. (Sound familiar?) We are constantly plummeted by others telling us how to think, telling us how we should act. Judgments are passed on others in magazines, newspapers, and television. With the advent of Facebook, all of us can join in telling others how to live their lives. With the constant flood of media coming our way, it's amazing to me that each human brain can differentiate one's own individualism from a mass conglomeration of nonsense. But then again sometimes it can't.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Tommy Toes and Cow Manure

Listening in class yesterday, I keep thinking about the number one value that I had written down. I was trying to decide where it came from. Who taught it to me? Did it come to me on my own? This value isn't usually one that we associate with European values. It has only been during the past few years that Earth Day has become the "in" thing to do, but my respect for the environment seems to have planted itself in me from roots branching out all over. And more and more, I see the lack of respect that we humans have for each other; people pushing in line to get to the salad bar quicker. People weaving in and out of traffic on the interstate just to make it to their destination five minutes earlier. Does it make them feel better to be first? Slow down. Just enjoy time.

My grandfather was one of my biggest influences, and it wasn't really anything he ever said that caught my attention. It was what he did. Every year he had a garden. Some seeds he had saved from the last year's harvest, and some he bought. Some seeds he traded with his brothers and his friends, but before he planted those seeds he had to cultivate the ground. He added what he called "fertilize," but in actuality, it was the most terrible smelling cow manure. I don't know where he got it from, but when I would come home from school on one warm day in spring, the entire hill would smell like a dairy farm. "Yeah it stinks," he'd say, "but the tomatoes love it."

And we all loved his tomatoes. They were the best tomatoes in Henderson county. I've never tasted another like one of those that came from my grandfather's garden.

He would take something natural, something considered waste and use it to replenish the materials in the soil that the tomatoes needed to grow, and then he would add his own sweat. 

Pappaw knew that in order to get the best tomatoes in the county, he couldn't just let them alone. They had to be tended. He weeded. He mounded the dirt around the base of the plant. He made sure every tiny plant had a stake or a cage in which to climb. If the sky failed to provide rain, Pappaw would hook up the soaker hose. By June, the plants burst with red fruit, and all summer long we would have fresh tomatoes for our grilled hamburgers and tommy toes for our salads. Pappaw would give away the excess, and Mom and Grandma would can the rest of the bounty. ...And he would just give them away.

That was one thing that took me a long time to understand. How can he put in all that work, and then just give away all that he worked for? And why work that hard in the first place? He could have put in half the work and gotten more than enough for him and his family. He did it because he enjoyed it. He did it because he respected his fellow man, and he understood that others may not have the means to make their own garden, whether the reason be land, physical ability, or time. But I think that he recognized that he had a talent given to him by God, and he used that talent to provide a service to others. He respected them enough not to ask them for a dime.

In writing this piece, I have come to a new realization about my grandfather. He loved his fellow man enough to give them his time and his product, and I really need to strive more to be like him. Providing service to others has never been my strong suit, always claiming that I don't have the time. The Sacred Tree says, "True happiness comes only to those who dedicate their lives to the service of others." 

Every time my grandfather passed a bulging bag of vegetables to a friend in need, he would do so with a big grin on his face, and I know that he was truly happy.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Looking for North

                  (I'm not exactly sure how authentic the music that I picked out is, but it's pretty.)
While reading our new book, The Sacred Tree, I found it fascinating that there are so many links to Indian culture and Western culture. They both have their differences, sure. And they each have their own philosophies. The journey that a human being is to go on around the medicine wheel where he will find who he is, who he is supposed to be, and how he connects with the surrounding universe. This journey is life-long, and the goal is to be all you can be. Western culture has a faster way of getting there with the personality test. You can take yours here.  Below is an example of the tease they give you so you'll buy the 15 page report. Yeah, it's mine.

You Are an INFJ (Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeler, Judger)
INFJs represent between 1 and 3% of the U.S. Population
INFJs inhabit a world of ideas. They are independent, original thinkers driven by their strong feelings, and personal integrity. Sensitive, committed, hardworking, and perceptive, INFJs are often excellent listeners, skilled at generating enlightened and creative solutions to people’s problems. Thoughtful and careful decision makers, INFJs prefer to have plenty of time to let ideas “percolate” before taking action. Because they value harmony and agreement, INFJs like to persuade others of the validity of their viewpoint. They win the cooperation of others by using approval and praise, rather than argument or intimidation.
INFJs go to great lengths to promote fellowship and avoid conflict. They are also often perfectionists highly focused, and driven to accomplish their goals. Rather formal and reserved, INFJs can be difficult to read, but it is critically important to them that their values, needs and concerns be understood and respected.
Personality Type can be a gateway your ideal career, relationship, parenting and even your sales and networking. You can learn more about your personality type by purchasing a Custom Personality Type Report.
There's only 1-3% of the population in the U.S. who are like me. That might be a good thing. Heh. I'm glad I'm original though.
On pages 72-3 in our book, there is a list of gifts for each direction on the medicine wheel. These gifts are learned for a price. "For each of the great gifts of the medicine wheel there is a price. And yet we learn that the mystery of sacrifice is that there is no sacrifice" (58). The book is telling us that through this journey of our life, we are going to have to slowly learn how to be the best person we can be. It is a life journey. So, this little personality test hardly gives us any answers into our inner-selves according to the spiritual Indian. We have to look into ourselves, figure out what's there, and decide on how to become who we want to become. 
Indian spirituality is alive, but it's not well. Tribes are fighting against Christianity's movement to enlighten all the Indians. Our government has taken away unemployment rights from Indians who tried to practice their religious freedom. In 1993, Clinton passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act only for it to be shot down by Congress. Read all about it here.  

A land dispute in Arizona is at the center of religious rights for American Indians. They claim that the San Francisco Peaks are sacred. From our reading, we should be able to see that American Indian spirituality is integrated with the Earth. It is a human connection to all things in the universe.
This country was founded on religious freedom, but when land disputes involve Indian religion, the property takes precedence and the Indians usually lose. 

Monday, February 20, 2012

The Early Years


<< The Oysterband performing "The World Turned Upside Down."

(That's some good stuff right there, and it seemed relevant to our book, The World Turned Upside Down. Lyrics are here if you'd like to sing along.)


While reading The World Turned Upside Down a few passages stuck out for me. The first one was about an Indian named Mittark. He was supposedly "the first Christian Indian at Gay Head on the west end of the island of Martha's Vineyard." Mittark felt that conversion to the Christian way of life was the way too go. I'm sure constantly defending your lifestyle against the English and just embracing their way of life like they wanted the Indians to do was much easier. There is also the desire to have promises fulfilled. Mittark "looked forward to the Christian promise of an escape from the troubles of the world. 'Here I'm in pain, there [in Heaven] I shall be freed from all Pain, and enjoy the rest that never endeth'" (43-4). But with his choice came separation from his Indian brothers.

Mittark reminded me of Seymour (from the film The Business of Fancydancing), for by accepting the Christian faith as his own, he "endured painful separation from his people" (43). The film didn't say that Seymour was a Christian, but he did accept another part of the way the white men do things. He received a white man's education at a university. Because of that, his friends on the reservation didn't trust him anymore, thinking that he sold them out to be more like the white man. Seymour was a very lonely man, and from the dying words that Mittark uttered, he was a lonely man too.

For an Indian to refute the beliefs of his fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and cousins, is no light act. It must seem to this Indian's family like he is turning his back on them and embracing the enemy. The Indian's family looses their faith in their cousin, but is adopting another culture as black and white as that for the one taking on other beliefs? 

We saw the struggles that Seymour went through. One side, his friends on the Rez, pulling at him to come back, and the other side, his partner, wanting him to accept that he is Seymour's tribe now. How hard that must be for an Indian to adopt two cultures. (One of which has been beaten into the dirt by the other for so long.)


The other quote from the book that stuck out to me was from page 21.
Many Indian peoples had, and continue to have, stories of creation and migration that explain how they came to be living in their homelands. Often shrouded in the mists of time, myth, and memory, these legends my strike us as too vague and fanciful to be useful as historical documents, but they convey the peoples' sense of their past and give us a glimpse into the many experiences that shaped American history before Europeans entered the picture.

The piece in red is what floored me. After reading the trickster tales and understanding them to not only traditional and entertaining but based in belief, I don't understand why these legends can't be used. Yeah, they're fun tails, but because they are told in metaphors and not in the way of how the English record history they can't be used? There is belief in them. Some could argue that the creation story in the Bible is too fanciful.  Any man in is right mind should never put his faith into a supreme being that lives in a realm called Heaven in which no human has ever returned to tell what they do up there all day. Do angels in Heaven sing all day or do they play Parcheesi on golden tables with Chex Mix set in the center? Heaven has never been scientifically proven, but people believe in God because they have faith. Faith is something we all need to get through this life on Earth. I know I have to have faith in my God and myself to make it up I-26 everyday. To take these people's beliefs and dismiss them because they are not of like English mind, is arrogant, and the "but" on then end of that sentence only saves a little bit of grace.

I went in search of a little enlightenment on the subject of American Indian beliefs, and I came across a book. Teaching Spirits by Joseph Epes Brown delves into the "religious" lives of Indians in hopes that others can better understand. And I found this link that might help one come to terms that trickster tales do have a religious base.
  1. First, at the time of European contact, all but the simplest indigenous cultures in North America had developed coherent religious systems that included cosmologies—creation myths, transmitted orally from one generation to the next, which purported to explain how those societies had come into being.
  2. Second, most native peoples worshiped an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator or “Master Spirit” (a being that assumed a variety of forms and both genders). They also venerated or placated a host of lesser supernatural entities, including an evil god who dealt out disaster, suffering, and death.
  3. Third and finally, the members of most tribes believed in the immortality of the human soul and an afterlife, the main feature of which was the abundance of every good thing that made earthly life secure and pleasant.
So, not only are they fanciful, but one might put his faith into them.

Book review by The Dirt Brothers
Amazon link

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Business of Fancydancing

I'm enjoying the film so far, but it's not exactly what I was expecting. It's serious. All the talk that we've had in class about the sense of humor of Indians, about how they keep their world together by laughing, isn't in this film as much as I thought it would be. After enjoying the boisterous trickster tales and the incisive humor in Sherman Alexie's book, I miss it. Besides that, though, one thing sticks out in my mind, the scene where Aristotle and Mouse beat up that man on the side of the road. 

There was fear in that white man's eyes when those two Indians got out of the car. He was responding the old stereotype, the one that Hollywood exaggerated and composed the Indians into a great antagonist for the white man to fight and savor victory after victory over. And Aristotle rose to the occasion because when you've been told a lie your whole life, you start believing it too. And there on the screen, Aristotle beat the living shit out of that guy. He took out all of his frustrations out on that man, a representation for all white men. He hit, kicked, punched that man for the years of repression of all Indians, and that man had no idea why he was getting beat.

Do I agree with it? No. But I understand it. A man can only be held to the fire so long before starts fighting his abuser because he's tired of getting burned. 




Monday, February 13, 2012

The New York Fighting Jews

One story in Sherman Alexie's book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, stood out for me, and any questions that I might have pertaining to life on a reservation, I go right back to "The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore." Apparently, the lady who made up some discussion questions at the back of the book felt the same way because she listed at least one question pertaining to it:

                         Question #7. "In 'The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation' Alexie depicts baseball as having extraordinary significance on the reservation. With what meaning(s) is baseball invested? Why?"

Now, I didn't remember baseball being mentioned, so I went back and looked at it again. Nope. No baseball, but of course there was lots of basketball. Someone should slap Carol Rawlings-Miller on the back of her hand.


Basketball is mentioned in several stories, indicating just how important it is to Indians on the reservation. (Shame on you Carol.)  It seems like the game is all they have. It's a ticket to get out and a way to create heroes.


Another sport that is sort of mentioned is football. Now, it wasn't mentioned in the sense that Indians pick up a game in the reservation dirt every now and again, but the team Washington Redskins were brought up with the undertone of  a touchy subject.

Living around Asheville, NC, which is close to the Cherokee reservation, there are (or there used to be) a few high school mascots with Indian names; Students at Erwin High School are called the Warriors, those at Cherokee High School call themselves the Braves, and in Canton, GA, the Warriors still take the court in the winter to shoot some hoops.

When I was playing softball for my high school (a long time ago), I remember playing Erwin High and thinking just how cool their mascot was. I mean the girls' softball team was called the Squaws. Cool right? Apparently not. Shortly after I graduated high school, the Buncombe County Board of Education, in 1998, was pressured into eliminating the term "Squaws" for the girls' teams. According to this, "squaw," in some American Indian languages, can refer to a prostitute or to the female genitalia. Okay, so maybe not such a good idea.

Still the controversy is alive and well throughout the U.S. whether it involves high schools, colleges, or pro sports teams.

What I didn't understand at the time is that using an Indian for a mascot isn't honoring them as great warriors. It doesn't say that our school or our team wants to be fierce and be great victors on the basketball court or the football field. It's depicting an entire people as a cartoon. It's saying that these people aren't people at all they are only a symbol of a feral, savage warrior that got its roots from Hollywood and John Wayne.


One of the points made in my research is that we don't depict other races with mascots. There would be hell to pay if there was a team called New York Fighting Jews, the Chicago Blacks, or the San Antonio Latinos. (Which is a poster in this video on the right that captured these slogans on pennants.) That would be ludicrousness. No other race in this country would accept that. Why do we expect the Indians to?

Yet we do.

My favorite baseball team is the Atlanta Braves. I'd sit in the stands with my dad and we'd do the tomahawk chop and chant with everyone else. The next time I take my kids to a game, I'll be explaining to them why we won't be participating in that ritual any more. I'll miss it, but values are more important. The Braves are still my team...  until they see that it hurts a people and a nation. Maybe one day they'll change it.

And with that I'll leave you this.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Eugenics

As we watched the first part of Smoke Signals yesterday in class, I kept waiting on someone in the movie to mention how Victor's mother was sterilized after his birth in the early 70s, but they never did. (Maybe it comes up later in the film. I don't know.) But it was mentioned in Sherman Alexie's book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven.
Lately, Eugenics has been in the news here in North Carolina, so it definitely caught my eye when I read about Victor's mother in the book.  Apparently, from 1929 to 1974, North Carolina's government decided to adopt a eugenics sterilization program. About 7,600 men, women, and children were deemed unfit to reproduce and their doctors were ordered to sterilize them by the NC eugenics board. One victim was raped at the age of 13, and when she gave birth to the baby conceived from that rape, she was sterilized for the given reasons that she was considered "feeble-minded" and "promiscuous".

You can listen to a report about Mecklenburg County, NC,  from NPR or read it here. "Only NC gave the power [to select who would be sterilized] to social workers. Most states left the choosing up to doctors."

North Carolina wasn't alone in its attempt to sterilize those the U.S. considered to be of lesser means. Thirty-two states in all adapted similar programs.

So, I set out to try and find something pertaining to the forced sterilization of Indian women, but I wasn't able to find a whole lot short of some scholarly articles on JSTOR and one short video on YouTube.

Forced sterilization is only one part of the genocide that was force upon Indians, and it was under the guise of eugenics.

The most upsetting thing about this, aside from Indian birth rates dropping in the 70s leading to a reduced population, is that these women were lied to. Either they were persuaded under false pretenses to sign a piece of paper, giving their okay for sterilization, or it was done to them without their knowledge.

Some women were told at the birth of a child that if they didn't give their permission to be sterilized, they would lose any and all privileges and assistance from the government for them and any older children that they may have. Other women would go into the hospital for another surgery such as an appendectomy only to find out years later that while the surgeons where operating, they performed an extra procedure, like they were running a buy one get one free special at the Rez.

It's sickening the things that I've come across. How can a civilization that claims in its constitution that "All men are created equal" kill off members of its own society? And that's exactly what they were doing. Fewer Indians born mean that their culture dies that much faster.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Wounded Knee... 1973

I had heard about the Wounded Knee incident that happened in 1890. As long ago as high school was for me, I learned about it in my U.S. History class. Our teacher liked to show documentaries, most of which, I slept through, but I remember this one vividly. We also revisited it in my American literature class when I took that a few years ago.

When we watched the movie, Reel Injun, a few weeks ago, they talked about Wounded Knee, and I was a little confused because they were speaking of it like it happened only a few decades ago. Then someone who was actually there was speaking on camera. I was like, “That must be the oldest living dude ever!”

But seriously, I had no idea that there was a second incident in 1973. I wanted to look it up to see what it was about and what happened there, and here’s a little of what I found.

This clip, gives a lot of information in a short amount of time (2:53).I apologize, for the audio is somewhat stat-icy. Pay attention!


So according to our fast paced narrator because Indians risked their lives to fight in WWI along side white men, who stole their land and gave them the sloppy seconds to try and farm, they were given American citizenship. The government just proclaimed that they were Americans. Hmm... Kinda makes you wonder at the irony. I mean the Indians where here first, so why would Indians want to become a part of the society who has done them wrong for so long? And I kinda want to know if the Indians had the right to choose to become American citizens. So, I looked up the 1924 Native American Citizenship Act.

Some Indians had married white people giving them citizenship. Some had entered the military, which gave them American citizenship, but most were still considered non-citizens and were even barred from the naturalization process in which immigrants were allowed. So, an Indian who was born on land within the boarders of the United States was not an American Citizen. 

In order to right this wrong, "Congress took what some saw as the final step on June 2, 1924 and granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States." Now, I don't know about you, but that sentence is full of irony. Really? The U.S. government, an organization formed by immigrants about 150 years before, felt obligated to give citizenship to a group of people, or natives, who had lived on U.S. land since the beginning of time simply on the basis that they were born here? Wow. Talk about aristocratic arrogance.  And, "The granting of citizenship was not a response to some universal petition by American Indian groups." Hmm... Sounds like the Congress has something up its sleeve, and its name is "Manipulative Supremacy."

Now, back to to video. Our stoic narrator says, "Because government treaties cannot exist among people of the same country, all the agreements formed between Native Americans and the U.S. government were voided, and their lands began to be seized." But what he doesn't say is the reason why the government wanted the land in the first place. 

In a PBS' Episode on Wounded Knee one Indian says that his people were tired of giving up their land, giving up the Indian way of life. All they wanted was to be left alone and allowed to live the way they wanted, but the U.S. government kept interfering and taking all that they had left.
However, that seemed to be a little to basic of an explanation. In the continuation of watching the PBS piece, I learned that there was a dictator in office on the Pine Ridge Reservation. This man, Dick Wilson, was an Indian, but he was on the government payroll. He helped whom he wanted and shunned those he didn't like. He favored assimilation of the Indians into the white man's way of life, and he persecuted the traditionalists. Wilson had the reservation under his control and the police in his pocket. 

Evidence was gathered against him, miss use of funds, civil rights violations, but none of it helped. The man intimidated witnesses and paid people off, so his impeachment failed. But the traditionalists didn't give up.

Now, this all seems like an internal argument among Indians on a reservation, so why bring in the U.S. Marshal's office? Why did the government get involved?

And that was because the government supported the assimilation of Indians into the white man's way of life, too. It was on the same side as Dick Wilson and his men. There was also some confusion on whether or not there were white hostages being held within the compound, but these white people told the government that they were free to leave whenever they wanted, but they weren't going to because as soon as they did, the Marshals would kill the Indians. Hmm... sound's like good sense to me.

So, Wounded Knee was held by traditionalist Indians in 1973 because they were tired of their way of life being stepped on by non-traditionalists and the U.S. Government. It doesn't seem like much has changed in the last  250 years. The government keeps bullying the Indians and eventually they get tired of it and push back. Are you still in middle school, Congress?





Friday, January 20, 2012

Where are the Cherokee?

So far, our trickster tales have only given us two stories from the Cherokee, so I went looking for more. Being so close to the reservation, I thought it would be nice to read some of the local Indian folklore. I didn’t find a whole lot in written context on the web, but I did find several books that you could buy, and I know there are a few in the UNCA library like, How Rabbit Tricked Otter by Gayle Ross and Marilou Awiakta’s Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom. 


I scanned through this book, and was enthralled with Awiakta's stories and the modern history of the Cherokee that she recorded as it happened. Awiakta is from east Tennessee, and she has experience with the area and friends and relatives who have told her their stories. One thing that she discussed in her book was the new atomic age. She weaves the Cherokee’s respect and beliefs of Mother Earth, adapting the Cherokee philosophies with our modern way of life. 


Selu is the name of the Corn-Mother. She brought forth out of the corn the humans. Awiakta tells us several creation stories in which she adapted into her poetry, but she also summarizes these stories and includes the Cherokee folklore. 


Without the Earth’s gifts and sustainability, we would be nothing. Without woman man would be selfish and lonely. Without man, woman would have no one to nurture. Without man and woman, the Earth would be overrun with sustenance and life. Each balances the other. The story of Selu, the Corn-Mother, was the first woman. She gave birth to all life. The Creator made her for man who was bored. Something was missing in his life, and he was agitated. So he killed too many of the animals and tore up their dens, and the animals asked the Creator for help. He grew the Corn-Mother, and together, she and the Creator, brought balance back to the world (296-8).


I found Gayle Ross, the author of the other book in our library, How Rabbit Tricked Otter, on YouTube telling a story at Northeastern State University's Founder's Day in March of 2009. The lady knows how to tell a story. (You can find out more about her here.) 


The emotion she brings forth has the feeling of pain and sadness of the Trail of Tears, yet the hope of peace is embedded deep in her voice and the tale. In Awiakta's book she explains that women are nurturers and men are providers. As Ross speaks she reinforces this tradition as she tells about the women on the Trail of Tears who were so sad they lost the capacity to nurture their children. The men prayed to the Creator, asking for help and they said "The strength of the Cherokee nation is the strength of our women." And the Creator gave them a promise. 




In my wanderings around ye ol' internet, I found one site that lists some of the characters from the Cherokee trickster tales. There are also some links to a few of the tales at the bottom of the page, but some of these are out dated and no longer work.


The list shows how the names are pronounced in Cherokee, like  Rabbit (Jisdu, Tsisdu, Chisdu, Jistu, Tsistu, etc.): The pronunciation is similar to jeese-doo. I was disappointed that in our book of  trickster tales, there were only two stories from the Cherokee, but even more disappointing was the fact that Erdoes, and Ortiz didn't use the Cherokee word for rabbit. Oh well, maybe the thought was to keep the stories simple so everyone can enjoy them, or translation just wasn't thought about from whoever (or wherever) their source was for the tales.  Whatever the reason, I believe that something was lost in leaving "Jisdu" out of the story.


Even with all that said, I still have plans for the next time I have a few minutes between classes. I'm going to head up to the third floor of the Ramsey library and look for Jisdu in Gayle Ross' book.  After watching this video and seeing the power she has with words, I'm so looking forward to it.




Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Portrayal of Indians in Film

I remember watching old westerns on Saturday afternoons. The exploding guns were a constant background noise at my grandmother’s house. She was enthralled with those old movies. I don’t remember any of her specific opinions, just that she really like to watch westerns. I didn’t. I would watch for about five minutes, get bored, and then find something else to do. My grandfather would be in his wood shop, so I would either go bother him or get on my bike and ride the countryside.

The bad acting and painted sets did nothing to pique my interest. John Wayne was an idiot. I mean seriously. Who talked like that? I thought something was wrong with him, people felt sorry for him, and that’s why they watched.

The portrayal of the Indians also saddened me. A young child was able to tell that something was wrong with how the American film industry depicted a people whom she hardly knew anything about. Growing up in western North Carolina, my family took us children on Saturday trips to Cherokee. Just for something to do, we’d all pile in the car and visit the shops on highway 441. I’d run in and out of the the tipi in front of the big gift shop, and we’d get our picture taken with the big Indian chief. He had dark skin and wore his long feathered headdress. The Indians I meet were a peaceful. They were so very opposite from what I saw on TV, and I thought that there was no way that Indians could be a savage race and kill just to kill. So, to me, those westerns were hard to believe.

It wasn’t until later in life when I learned that the Cherokee never wore long feathered headdresses. They didn't live in tipis either. These people were accommodating what Hollywood had made them out to be so they could pay the bills. So today, I thought I would try out one of those films again. I wanted to look at those films with an adult eye, to see what I thought I saw as a child, but hopefully, be able to better articulate how it made me feel.

I chose The Last of the Mohicans directed by Michael Mann because it’s not really a western, it was filmed in western North Carolina, and all my friends have seen it. It was all the rage when it came out in 1992, and they said, “Daniel Day-Lewis is sooo hot!”

Yeah well, Daniel Day-Lewis didn’t really do it for me. There were about three nice Indians in the film, and the rest were on the wrong side of any law. This is where the stereotype of murdering heathens came in, and that wasn’t the only typecast.

Even though he was raised by Indians, Day-Lewis’ character, Hawkeye, was white, and that automatically made him the hero. His woman played by Madeline Stowe, was the typical strong and resistant lady to her obedient-to-man woman’s role in life. And of course, the whole movie basically revolved around this couple’s love story, but I never really saw their first connection. All of a sudden they were madly in love.

There was a lot of fighting, blood, and things that went boom. Left is a battle scene where the Huron attack the British. Don't watch all of it. You'll get bored. Just watch until Magua rips the Colonel's heart out. That certainly could have been done better because earlier in the film he promises, "When the Gray Hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart."  Yet, we never see it.

The scene makes me ask, what's wrong with this guy? He's ripping a man's heart out and he's so calm about it. He says in monotone, "Just to let you know before I kill you, I will wipe your seed off this planet." And then he holds the guys heart up and looks at it. Dude, scream, holler, take a bite out of it! Do something! You've just killed this guy and then you're going after his daughters. Be the stereotypical Indian that Hollywood has proclaimed you to be.

All in all, the special effects weren’t bad, but they could have been a lot better. And the plot was the love story anyway. It was like the battle scenes were only put in the to make the movie seem more authentic. The majority of the Indians were there to be the bad guys and to stand in the way of the white guy’s happily-ever-after. (The white guy playing and Indian.)

The music was excellent. (Check out the score on the right.) It brought life to an otherwise dull story. The beating of the single drum hinted at war and Indians. It was dramatic. "The Gael," the name of the musical theme, like a good story, started out slow and built to a climax, yet I don't recollect any Indians playing the fiddle... ever. And not to mention that the word "Gael," according to Dictionary.com, is a Celtic term meaning Scottish Celt or Highlander. Hmm... really?

So how does this movie compare to the old westerns my grandmother used to watch? Well, the acting is slightly better but not much. The use of real landscapes was a plus, but the plot was dry. I’m not an expert in history, so I can’t tell you one way or the other if there was any truth to the subplot. Yes, the French Indian war did happen, but that’s about all I can verify for you. Yet, something tells me that’s probably all there is true in this film.