White People at Pow Wows

[Christelle]

Hi !
I do not have personal relationship with anything but I try to have relationship with everybody LOL
and I would like to share with you all if you agree. I excpect nothing from you except what you are able to give. I offer my friendship if you want it.
I have nerver gone to a Pow Wow (except Ornans France) and if I do so, one day, it would be only to look and to listen, not to participate and disturb because I am not native and I think it is not my right.
I think I am open minded and undestand quite well each point of view but I am also very sensitive and when I read certain posts, wonder if I am in a wrong way.

[HunterSS]

Old...white...and Cherokee

When people look at me...they see white. My grandfather used to take us to pow wows when we were 5-9 years old. I learned to dance among our friends and cousins. My great grandfather and grandfather look Native American. Sadly my grandfather passed away when I was younger and we lost touch with all of our Cherokee family. Now that I am the grandfather of my family and the oldest person in our family as well.....I want to take my grandson. But as I stated earlier...my skin is white. I was rasised to never judge a book by it’s cover or a man by the size of his wallet. What is in my heart has always been there and always will. Next spring...2018, I plan to attend the first pow wow I’ve been to in 47 years. I want to dance one more time....and show my grandson his heritage, begin to teach him about the real world.
Should I therefore anticipate hatred and rejection because my skin is lighter? When I was a child, it was a magical time. The food, laughter, friendship has been some of my fondest memories. I hope that some of the younger dancers will read this and know that a lighter pigmentation cannot change your heart. I hope that our children will judge men and women by their actions.....not their words or color.
Probably said way more than I should have but I hope to see some friendly faces in Cherokee NC next year. Gives me a whole year to practice...lol.
Best of wishes to all.....Mike. Grandpa used to call me rabbit boy. Oh...my first post here too!

[wardancer]

welcome to powwows.calm ! I would think they would welcome you and your family at any powwow ! Now days folks are fairly accepting......why ? Because the full bloods are fewer and the mixed are everywhere. Just my opinion ! I used to dance. Now I'm just too old and fat ! LOL

[ches]

Dance, pray, dance, pray I look ScotsIrish there is some Native in there. Jesus,my savior keeps me spiritual. That and talking to trees.

[wardancer]

Dance, pray, dance, pray I look ScotsIrish there is some Native in there. Jesus,my savior keeps me spiritual. That and talking to trees.

So who is Jesus ? Mexican gardener ??? What did he save you from ? Do the trees ever answer ?

[ches]

Sometimes, they answer. It is hard to understand their language.

[wardancer]

Sometimes, they answer. It is hard to understand their language.

I have no problem understanding. I don't mess around with those cult religions though.......

[joythirstpop]

interesting thread.

I think it might be difficult to understand the intense need for belonging that some people experience, especially by those who weren't born with a sense of it predefined easily for them and passed down through their family. Like with a lot of things, you don't realize how important something is until it's gone missing, and for some people it is never missing from the beginning - and they are lucky! - while other people, it's been missing from the start and it may even take them a long time to realize it (if they ever do). They have the feeling of emptiness and may inevitably gravitate emotionally (wisely or unwisely) towards certain topics/ideas/ and sometimes identities which feel like they are guiding them towards a more whole sense of being.

I also think that what a lot of people don't realize about white people is that they ALL - bar none - had indigenous/tribal(?) ways in the distant past, however far back. There is undeniably a lot of animosity towards white people by others races, but in more recent years it's more noticeably also being stirred up by whites towards themselves. I don't think the fact that much of imperialism and imperialistic attitudes historically has been enforced by white people is proof in and of itself that white people by blood are defective in some crucial way, as much as I continue to see this sentiment implicitly AND explicitly suggested in the world. Forgive me if this is really ballsy to say, but if any other races had been living in closer geographic proximity to Rome in the past 2000 years, that would've very likely become the people that would constitute our modern "white" people. It's not an issue of blood but an issue of philosophies of life, view of reality, and mode of government - all which were used as tools of dominion by a new (at the time), highly effective, centralized and organized power structure.

European tribal peoples were forced at the edge of a blade (just like everyone else later on) to accept the rule and gradually the philosophy of their conquerors. They were just conquered a longer time ago, over a longer period of time, by people who looked more similar to them (one less barrier to assimilation - forced breeding laws with foreign occupying soldiers helped, too). And it wasn't just a forcing to accept authoritative rule and obey orders... their native religions were COMPLETELY wiped out, Christianity made sure of that (a tool of conquest? a lot of people think so) - being mandatory for conquered peoples to accept, also at the edge of a blade. It is wonderful that a lot of native american tribes have retained their beliefs and customs. White people TRULY do not have ANY of that which has survived for them from pre-christian times - except through movies, books - not firsthand, and not even from reliable sources.

White people in america really have no home... even if they could afford to go back to europe and attempt to assimilate, it would probably prove to be too troublesome and lonely for most. It's not even their culture anymore- and the culture that they DO have has been totally manufactured.

As for me, I only have one great-great grandfather of full native american blood, who was an orphan and I don't know what tribe he was. I heard about him as a kid and this lead me to have more curiosity as I got older - though as for his tribal customs, beliefs, sense of community- none of that was passed to me whatsoever. I am now 26 and tomorrow I am planning on going to my first powwow just to check it out and see how it feels. I am kind of nervous about it so with some google searches I found this thread and read the whole thing.

Long before I first started reading books about native american ideas and religion, I could easily have seen myself possibly over-hyping my native american ancestry- because all of the things that native americans represented to me in my head aligned so much more truthfully with the way that I felt about things (felt right)- in comparison to the world view being shoved down my throat through school and television. It seemed like something to be proud of. I never had much direct interaction with more full blooded natives as a kid, but I could've easily have seen myself acting in a way or saying something that would have possibly been offensive to them.

I really wonder, what is more significant when determining what constitutes a people? Is it genetic, is genetics even important whatsoever, or is it more importantly about shared values and shared destiny?

I think these are questions that are going to be more and more significant in the future, and not just for whites and natives specifically. All I know is that people divided cannot work together. Maybe we can learn from the past and the future can be brighter. I really believe that deep down. Hopefully we can all have more sympathy for each other. Seems to be the only way to bring us closer together.

thanks for the thread and thanks for reading, hope I didn't sound like a douche, and I hope I didn't waste your time

[OLChemist]

To demonstrate my total geekiness. Let me mutilate a line from a favorite Star Trek episode: "A good post. Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a good post." LOL.

Long before I first started reading books about native american ideas and religion...

Plural, please. There are 500+ cultures in the US alone.

I think it might be difficult to understand the intense need for belonging that some people experience...

I think, many do understand the intense need to belong, the intense need to satisfy the itch inside oneself. This intensity and the fate of other things non-Indians have wanted has taught Indian people to be, at best, cautious and, at worst, frightened.

My years in academia and then in industrial labs working with young people from the dominant culture has exposed me to many non-Indians with just this emptiness. I see several factors at play in producing this hunger.

1) Alienation from family. Something about the dominant culture model of adolescence seems to require conflict with parents. The process of transitioning from child to adult creates a distance that for many never heals. Maybe, the base familial unit is too small? Maybe, the fact that the industrial and post-industrial economic system has rendered adolescents unable to usefully contribute just when the Creator has programmed them to start trying out adult roles? Maybe, it's the radical individuality of a culture steeped in two millennia of the Christian idea the individual before a wrathful God on Judgement Day? Who knows.

As a result, many members of dominant culture American society have few connections to relatives and few connections to the larger social institutions the provide meaning. Further, the current generations seem less likely join or form voluntary social support networks. They live in tiny nuclear families, expecting to get all their social needs meet by their partner, children and pets.

2)Near total ignorance of and contempt for their cultural heritage. Let me take Christianity as an example. In my experience, those professing religious alienation know little about the breadth and depth of the many Christians traditions. Usually, they simply know they don't like it. They are similarly ignorant and scornful of their artistic, literary and philosophical traditions.

Rather than honor what they have received from their ancestors and learn from the good and the bad in their history and culture, they disown their past. Rather than alter and adapt what is theirs, they become voyeurs. Then, they mistake exoticism for meaning.

3) Romanticism. Especially since the 1960's Native people have become wrapped in a Billy Jack, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dances With Wolves veil of dominant culture projections. These are just as distorting as the John Wayne captivity narrative tropes of prior generations. Indian people and their cultures become vehicles for dominant culture desires. Natives are a magic mirror, telling them they are just who they want to be.


Which brings me to the other half of your sentence.

...especially by those who weren't born with a sense of it predefined easily for them and passed down through their family.

No disrespect intended but... Easily?! Did you miss the zombie apocalypse? Language loss. Disintegration of the family. Destruction of traditional economies, educational systems, governmental structures, epidemics, war, institutionalized deculturation.... Native people have been a bit busy in the half a millennium since the Lost White Guy washed up in the Caribbean.

Transmission of identity isn't easy for any culture living submersed within another. You make a passionate case for the travails of the Gaels, Saxons, Cimbrians, Teutons, etc under the Roman Empire. Can't you see the same forces at work today? Can you understand why people might be less than willing to accept the child of the invader, when their own children need all the energy they have to give?



Maybe when I'm not nursing a migraine, I'll be a tad more positive and we can discuss some of your other points.

[wardancer]

Dang , Billy Jack was my hero ! I suddenly feel so lost !

[OLChemist]

Dang , Billy Jack was my hero ! I suddenly feel so lost !

Great, I'm going to have an entire day with the image of you kicking redneck as -- uh -- aspirations across the courthouse square. Just don't do the hollyweird ceremony vision thing....

Dang, now we're back to snakes. I still miss JD, LOL.

[wardancer]

JD's busy retiring ! He's so retired it makes me tired ! He's a coast to coast kinda retired now !

[joythirstpop]

Can't you see the same forces at work today?

absolutely. I see it as exactly the same force that is attempting to bring all peoples and cultures under its thumb until they have no memory whatsoever of their past, until the lifeblood and energies of all people only feed one power structure. Then the work that began thousands of years ago will be complete. The work is at varying levels of completion with different peoples- some way more, some way less.

You bring up a lot of really good points, all of which I agree with, I apologize for misspeaking anywhere - instead of easily I should've said maybe "more" easily - but comparing I suppose can be pointless without real understanding to begin with. Things seem a certain way on the outside to outsiders, in any case. I think there are a lot of things just as someone who didn't grow up in the *white* culture can't understand, a white can't understand what it's like to grow up indian. From the outside I can see how certain aspects of white culture would be difficult to comprehend - and because they are difficult to understand, easier to result in judgment (and of course, vice versa- same would be likely to happen with any cultures or peoples who seem opposed or different in some way from each other). I know overall in my posts I am sounding like some kind of a white apologist which is the most uncool thing in the world right now. I'm just trying to promote more understanding on both ends I guess

About family- again, I don't know what it's like growing up indian, but I can say that all the white people I know who want to get away from their parents (myself included) had parents that treated them like total crap. And likely, these parents were treated that way by their parents, too - so it's developed over generations and generations. I think it's something to do with the power structure itself which discourages empathy and tells you that the way to get things to happen is to force and coerce people - authoritarianism - and have no mercy - almost like your children are soldiers or something. In a lot of these families there is very little warmth whatsoever, and the expression of authentic emotion or intimacy is completely absent. On top of that, there is this huge collective abstract authority that society represents for white families it seems... and parents sometimes will even compete with their own children for the imagined approval of that society- so sometimes you can feel like you are completely on your own. It can make you completely crazy.

About not appreciating the christian religion handed down... yes, there are definitely some admirable pieces of christian history/tradition/philosophy, really interesting christian mystics... but, for most of us that grew up with our parents trying to "bring us up" in that religion, forcing us to church on Sundays- it felt totally fake, the whole thing. Most or all of the people going seem to be there for show, and in my family personally as well as other families I know, the most vocal "christians" were also the most disgusting, self righteous and judgmental people you could ever meet. The experience of church for many provides nothing authentic to hold onto, and even the people who identify as christian who might seem to have something legitimately spiritual about them would've anyways whether they were brought up christian or not. It's not very encouraging to really want to investigate more about christianity for most.

On top of that, in more modern times, the culture is dictating and has been dictating - atheism is cool, christianity is not. Family is also "uncool".

Most modern christians belief seems to hinge upon this whole thing that believing that Jesus died for your sins is the most important thing in the universe and all you have to do is believe that and you will go to heaven when you die, nothing you do actually matters. It's really nuts. It makes you feel nuts going to church and having this crap hammered into your head over and over.

We could also get into a whole historical debate about whether institutional christianity was completely manufactured intentionally as a tool of dominion from its inception. Whereas celtic, norse, germanic or any native culture grew on its own, fermented in a way for thousands and thousands of years - christianity was created (its beliefs and practices arbitrarily decided by committees) and forced up hordes of conquered peoples. And if it was based on completely fake suppositions- as many feel - where does that leave us with it?

I think a really crucial question is - what are a people who have completely lost their own native history and culture left to do? Create a new one, I guess is the only answer, but then how do you go about doing that? Sorting the things out that are on the table for the culture I guess is also the only logical answer- but also, that is difficult to do when the culture has been completely hijacked - when most of the people living in the culture aren't even the ones creating it anymore. Just like with christianity, a lot of the beliefs and viewpoints that are getting pushed on television have been arbitrarily decided by people who don't have THE people's best interest in mind or at heart. It's impersonal.

I know white people seem silly or out of place approaching native beliefs/customs - but honestly they almost seem the same level of silly or out of place trying to re-approach their own heritage which they've been alienated from by a gap of hundreds or thousands of years. You may not have been exposed to the communities of people trying to revive pagan beliefs and customs - but I think there is some crossover in the particular way of going about it. I think it may have to do with growing up heavily on movies and television, and NOT receiving ANY traditions handed down from family - not even having any offered in the first place to either accept or reject. Many or most families let the TV and the school system raise their kids - that is, they give their kids up to the abstract authority to raise, and whatever version of history those forces decide to give those kids, is the version they get.


I think white people are just hungry for something true and authentic because everything they grew up with has largely been manufactured and felt fake or forced. Hopefully no other cultures get destroyed to the same extent before we can really begin rolling up our sleeves and reversing/undoing/healing thousands of years of spiritual, social and psychological damage. We are all going to need help from each other, that is for sure.

[OLChemist]

Wow, someone who likes the sound of their own voice as much as I do, LOL. j/k


First, how was the powwow?

I know overall in my posts I am sounding like some kind of a white apologist which is the most uncool thing in the world right now. I'm just trying to promote more understanding on both ends I guess.

Second, no you did not sound like a white apologist. You sound like many on the lost or befuddled I've met from the dominant culture. You sound like some of my own non-Native kin.

But, too often the demand for "more understanding" is actually code for "you must give us your cultural and intellectually property." It also discounts the fact that Native people live immersed in the dominant culture, were educated in dominant culture institutions, consume dominant culture media, and have friends and family within the dominant culture. They may understand full well.

I see it as exactly the same force that is attempting to bring all peoples and cultures under its thumb until they have no memory whatsoever of their past, until the lifeblood and energies of all people only feed one power structure. Then the work that began thousands of years ago will be complete.

Have you read Silko's Ceremony? If not, do.

Ceremony on Amazon

I think there are a lot of things just as someone who didn't grow up in the *white* culture can't understand, a white can't understand what it's like to grow up indian.

Sure the fish is the wrong one to explain water. Unaware, he is immersed in it. But, the frog goes from air to water and needing both is able to. The word in Lakota for mixed blood is iyeska or i'eska depending on the orthography de jour. It's not the nicest word you can have directed at you. Literally, it means speaks white. The image it conjures is the antithesis of Lakota values. Yet, in ceremony it is also a term for interpreter. There is a perspective that comes with being iyeska.

From that vantage (and that of the fine liberal arts undergraduate education my parents insisted upon), I want to approach this:

I think a really crucial question is - what are a people who have completely lost their own native history and culture left to do? Create a new one, I guess is the only answer, but then how do you go about doing that? Sorting the things out that are on the table for the culture I guess is also the only logical answer- but also, that is difficult to do when the culture has been completely hijacked - when most of the people living in the culture aren't even the ones creating it anymore. Just like with christianity, a lot of the beliefs and viewpoints that are getting pushed on television have been arbitrarily decided by people who don't have THE people's best interest in mind or at heart. It's impersonal.

In your earlier post, you spoke of how the dominant culture was detached from this land. Do you think a borrowed or stolen culture would fit better?


"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world." -- John Milton (1608 - 1674)

"For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people. And I will hope in your name, for your name is good." -- Psalms 52:9


Offering gratitude to the Creator, the Earth, ones ancestors and the powers is a significant part of Native lifeways. Once it was part of the ways of your ancestors. This is what I see a missing from so many in today's dominant culture. They can look with the eyes of science upon the amazing mechanism of the living human cell, watch the dance of subatomic particles, peer into the heavens and back into time, yet can only see the half-full glass. And like a child they obsess over what they don't have. As Milton says, without gratitude there is no sense of transcendence. There is no sacred without the transcendent. How can an person nurture the relationships with kin, "tribe", place, and the Creator in a perpetual sense of deprivation?

Native people often have an enormous amount of dysfunction, death and destruction in their lives. There is a lot to mourn. There are many reasons to be angry. There are many reasons to throw yourself into a whirlwind of self-destruction. In my experience, traditional healing always begins with an expression of gratitude. You offer a little tobacco and pray that these people might live. Hecel lena oyate kin nipi kte.

In my culture, your relationships with kin are most important. Whether your parents were parents of the year or not, they conspired with the Creator to give you life. For that they deserve your gratitude and respect. This does not mean get sucked into pathologies, should they exist. But it does mean acknowledging the gifts they gave you, however meager. This you do because you are human and this is what civilized humans do. For how can you hope to maintain a healthy relationship with the people, land, plants, animals, and powers that surround you if you can't honor your responsibilities to your own family?

Gratitude takes the focus off you. As my mother would say: "Stare into your navel long enough and you're likely to find some pretty nasty lint." It seems to me those, within any culture, who are the most fulfilled -- and do not confound fulfillment with happiness -- are those who work that the people might live.

Maybe a start in your search is not to look to another people's cultural patrimony but to find the reasons for gratitude within your own. I doubt you need to go into a potentially unrecoverable past to find gratitude, beauty and truth. Trust the many iyeska who have wept over the world we could have built together had we just gone about our past differently, your history, original instructions, philosophies, and arts contain what you need.

[ches]

Howesha very good. Faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. I love you all just the way you are. I hope you have a howesha kisheki wonderful day. Take time to talk to a tree today.