[ches]

Originally Posted by Joe's Dad

Yup. You'll make a good Traditional dancer.

Niawe nichenina thank you brother.

[OLChemist]

Originally Posted by Chalako

The whites used it but is it an Indian word or something the whites invented?

Ives Goddard, Letter to the Editor, News From Indian Country, 1997

Ives Goddard Home Page

ICTM article on the origin of the s-word

[ches]

Go to

thepeopleofthehuntingground

Story of Corn Blossum lady warrior yahoo falls massacre

[Chalako]

Originally Posted by OLChemist

Ives Goddard, Letter to the Editor, News From Indian Country, 1997

Ives Goddard Home Page

ICTM article on the origin of the s-word

Thank you, this was very interresting.

[OLChemist]

With all respect due to a gentleman of your age @ches, I'm really not sure what to make of some of this stuff you're throwing out on various forums. I'd like to think you're not being deliberately provocative. Instead having reached the age where connection to the ancestors and community becomes quite important, you are seeking to reconnect to a lost and clouded past. Or maybe you're just a pot stirrer.

I would caution you that Native ways involved a deep a lasting commitment to the community and your kin. Learning the ways takes a lifetime. There is always some further understanding that one gains only by spending years observing and serving. We're just humans with tiny human minds in the Creator's magnificent, incomprehensibly huge and complex universe. The minute one presumes to have it all figured out, the Powers will serve you giant helping of humble pie. Usually by tripping you up with your own tongue. In Native communities the most knowledgable people are generally the most humble.

I recognize a fellow sufferer of the disease of academia -- being the expert. (Really, Siri I want to say expert not sport.) I can tell you from painful experience that throwing out the gems from those beloved treasures of the dominant culture -- books -- will get you handed your head. Our history and culture isn't in books and journals. Native people by and large don't much like being told what they say isn't true because some book written by an outsider says otherwise. If you want to play Indian culture expert, you're going to need to spend your time with the hobs, because Native people won't put up with it.


As for women warriors... Well of course, our ancestresses fought. They loved their families and lives. They lived in a world that was dangerous and unforgiving in ways we denizens of the 911 age can't understand. They were trained from childhood to be good daughters, sisters, wives aunties, and grandmothers -- sometimes this meant fighting. Some lived in cultures that granted great status to honors earned in combat and they choose that route. Some lived in cultures that fostered incredibly strong bonds between siblings and fought to defend or save their brothers. Others fought to protect their children, homes and home lands. All the reasons any human fights. And modern Native women fight for all the same reasons as dominant culture men and women.

I've never understood why the dominant culture fetishizes the idea of the Indian warrior. They seem to see acts of combat committed by Native people in a different way than they see those committed by their own people.

[ches]

Thank you, I think you are correct in every respect. I know nothing, but I read to seek knowledge which is not wisdom. Forgive me for being offensive. I apologize.

[OLChemist]

Ches, I am going to recommend a book to you.

Roger Welsch, Embracing Fry Bread: Confessions of a Wannabe, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

Mr Welsch is a folklorist who has a long involvement with several Native communities and is an adopted member of several families. He is also an unabashed wannabe who has some great insights not on Indian people but on the process of being assimilated and enculturated into Native communities. Instead of speaking for Indian people, who he points out can speak quite well for themselves, he speaks to people who want to connect with Native communities. There is wisdom in what he says for those us who are urban mixed-bloods.

[wardancer]

I wanna embrace some frybread !

[Joe's Dad]

Originally Posted by wardancer

I wanna embrace some frybread !

I embraced one yesterday at the Santa Ynez Chumash powwow. Honey, powdered sugar and cinnamon. I was all sticky!