This image has been with me for several years, coming to me when ending a visit to my mother's grave at the Brush Creek Church in Kenwood.
There is a very dirty, very decrepit filling station/store just as you turn onto the main road and since it's almost always summer and well into the 100's I usually stop to get a water.
It's always bottled. That helps.
Still, there's a Cherokee newspaper, the Eagle, that is usually on display so I pick one up to see what the latest tribal outrage is.
James Earle Fraser's iconic image, "End of the Trail", was once on the front, as part of an editorial. Suddenly I got fed up with it.
The image sees Natives as a vanishing race of noble warriors, the sad losers. That bugs the hell out of me.
The Native culture I know is vital, dynamic, adaptive and stupendously clever. It has a very different point of view from many view points and it has a lot to say to Anglo culture. Hence my addition to the image. (And I like red. Almost as much as blue).
I found this out last night. After yet another panic-stricken tragedy of a tango evening I awoke very tired and depressed. Answering a friend's text honestly (I was being thanked for helping move an office and made the mistake of texting my heart) I got a lovely phone call that mentioned that David Sanipass, the See-er for the Mi'Kmaq (pronounce it kind of "migga-mack" but not really) would be "sharing his culture" at the Luther Bonney Auditorium that evening.
Usually these kind of "cultural sharing" events slide off me like water off a duck but during the day two other people - a teaching client and a photographer friend - mentioned it to me, totally out of context.
Well, I'm not stupid (well, I am) so I walked down and took a seat just as the tall white lady started her introduction - by striking a brass bowl, rubbing it for tone and calling us to "enter into the spirit of the space and leave the world outside". There followed 15 minutes of "context setting".
The evening was sponsored by the "Spiritual Community" of Portland - seekers all.
David, whom I've met and have a great respect for, is the "Sachem" or "See-er" of the tribe. His job - his identity - is to see spirits in the real world, to connect and pray in the old, mountaintop, hard physical way and to share the basis of the Native approach to reality and relationship.
He also is a very good flute maker and player. The tone of his flutes is very centered and he takes great care to make the notes move truly - a lot of flutes can only be played in limited pitch centers - his can cover more ground and that's a good thing.
The premise of his talk was that a time would come when Native people of all nations (tribes) would see the opening of a Golden Eastern Door, would know that the White people would be most needful of hearing Native wisdom and truth. The time was now at hand and the sharing of this knowledge would have a pivotal role in saving the world.
The problem is that the tribes aren't really speaking up. There is so much distrust of white people - no offense if you're white and reading this - (well, maybe a little) that nothing is being said. The odds are very good that it will be used to make money, rather like using water in the desert to make bricks to build casinos rather than raise crops to feed everyone.
So David is on a one-man crusade to share his knowledge with the larger culture.
The knowledge? The message?
My take is "we're all in this together". If a butterfly flutters its wings in Beijing a hurricane happens in Florida - "for want of a nail, the shoe was lost ....". In "Lost Horizon" the Head Lama says the message is simple - "be kind".
It was a very engaging talk, using many different ways of framing the message he feels compelled to share - against the advice of some of his elders, which is saying something.
He worked the crowd well, inviting them to a "tea", a small group gathering of 10 or so to chat and share, held several times a month. He even sat next to me for a moment, a big grin on his face. I greeted him, called him "son" and asked how the hell things were going, all in Cherokee.
All faces turned to see us. They all had expressions of wonder and admiration - also a kind of desperate hope. They were smiling at me. "Look, another Native was sitting behind us all the time. How wonderful, how wonderful."
It was charming. It was scary as hell - and I'm used to crowds.
The crowd itself numbered about 130, mostly women, older - a smattering of grey headed men, some with long hair pulled back. A few younger men with hot dates, surreptitiously checking their phones apparently tolerating the date's interest before heading off for wine and bumpy sex.
One African American lady, and me. Everyone else was white, most everyone, in my opinion, kind of looking for David to provide an answer, an insight, an explanation that would tie everything up together.....
...... except he didn't. He asked us all to just pay attention to what the spirits - or the world, as I would put it - was trying to tell us. To trust intuition more, facts for facts sake less.
And then the questions portion started. "This is where it all goes downhill" I whispered to my companions.
And sure enough it did. Questions about crystals - Indigo children (new to me - that's my biography there and all the interesting people I love) - spirit helpers - re-incarnation - Edgar Cayce, for cryin' out loud.
Most of the questioners were trying to take what David said and integrate it into what they already believed. Ironic, because I think the message was to dynamite your whole world concept and start seeing the world.
So it degenerated, in one way, into yet another crystal-gazing, spirit-chasing, aura-clearing New Age crapfest.
In another, it was a clear demonstration that there is a whole world of people who just don't get it, who can't see each other - or themselves - or the world - with any kind of rational clarity.
And those weren't the people in that room.
I think David has the general outlines of what's needed, he's got it tagged. And I think the people in the room were asking the right questions, which, in my experience, is the first step toward finding the right answers.
The beauty of the world is that we all find the right answers ourselves, for ourselves.
The fun is that we get to share them - by words if needed - but by action best.
And that's as close to a Golden Door as I can find.
Care to step through?
Portland, Maine
2 comments:
Gwendolyn Brooks said it in a poem: "One wants a teller in a time like this." She goes on to exemplify a child's life, told to put on a sweater, to wear boots, to believe that "God's actual."
She doesn't say it the same way you did, but she's a seeker too. She might prefer not to be, on a bad day, but she's learned to live with the ironies of existence. Just occasionally, she wants someone to *tell* her so that she can believe without those nagging uncertainties.
Loved your post, Jim.
Glad you liked the post. My mother was an "ahgehyahgu" of the Cherokee tribe, (hard "g") - a spiritual exemplar, someone who, in this life, achieved a kind of universal spiritual connection. My tribe says only women can do this. The Mi'qmacks have a man. Same thing. Myself, I'm pretty much an atheist, always have been. Doesn't mean mean we're any more capable of understanding anything. I think "acceptance" often trumps understanding. As my mother - and David, come to think of it - would say: "what are you going to do now? What comes next?" Good questions.
Post a Comment