Tonight we kick off Episode 21 of the weekly Guest Post series: Medium Cool with BGinCHI.
In case you missed the introduction to the series: Culture as a Hedge Against this Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We’re Living In
You can find the whole series here: Medium Cool with BGinCHI
Tonight’s Topic: Native America Culture
Take it away, BG!
Since I was a kid I’ve been interested in Native American culture. I grew up very near an 18th-century trading post on the Wabash River, which has a yearly festival called The Feast of the Hunter’s Moon. In the ’70s there were lots of Native Americans who came and played drums and sang. Every year we’d sneak down there and hide in the woods nearby and listen long into the night. It made a huge impression on me. I always rooted for Indians in movies, and have read many, many books (fiction and non-fiction) on Native American culture.
As a professor I occasionally teach some Native American lit, which I love. The novels and stories of Louise Erdrich, James Welch’s fabulous novel Fools Crow, Tommy Orange’s recent, brilliant novel There There, and Layli Long Soldier’s terrific book of poetry Whereas. There are others, but these are the ones on my mind right now.
For this week’s Medium Cool, tell us about your experience with Native American culture. It could be literature, or history, or perhaps something personal. If it’s part of your heritage, tell us about it.
*****
Now that we are past 20 episodes of Medium Cool, I am going to stop counting! Thanks so much for Medium Cool, BG! ~WaterGirl
zhena gogolia
When I was a child, the Nelson-Atkins Gallery in Kansas City, MO, had a magnificent exhibition of native American art from all over North America. I can’t find any reference to it online, but it was huge for me. It has stuck with me all these years.
https://www.nelson-atkins.org/collection/american-indian/
I also took a great Anthropology course in college called “Indians of North America” (it was a long time ago), and it opened up the enormous, varied, fascinating culture. Just the diversity of languages alone is mind-boggling.
BGinCHI
@zhena gogolia: I wish I’d taken a class like that!
Speaking of anthro and history, anyone here read 1491, by Charles Mann? I think someone on here recommended it. Read it in March. Super fascinating.
FelonyGovt
We’ve spent time on the Navajo reservation and at some of the pueblos in New Mexico, including Zuni, Santo Domingo and San Ildefonso. We also attended Indian Market in Santa Fe one year. The history is appalling (in terms of how the Native Americans were treated) but the art is spectacular.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
It was unusual for my small liberal-arts college, in that there were 100 students and it was conducted exclusively as lecture, with big old multiple-choice tests (maybe with an essay at the end of each one, I don’t remember). The guy was such a good lecturer and the readings were so great that it didn’t need any new-fangled pedagogy. I was so into it that I did really well, and when I went to pick up my last exam, he said, “I hope you’ll consider majoring in anthropology.” Alas, I was a graduating senior. I’m glad I didn’t go down that road, because anthropology isn’t what it used to be. But I’ll never forget that course!
BGinCHI
@zhena gogolia: It’s pretty easy to imagine an intro course, required as a gen-ed, that explores the origins of America without the lies and distortions.
–early settlement, the cultural variety Native American peoples, etc. (1491 is good at this, and college students would eat it up)
–followed by white settlement and its effects
And so on and so on. Lots of books on all this (Takaki, Loewen, the amazing work of David Treuer).
senyordave
In about a ten year span I went to the Southwest seven times. I visited a lot of the ruins, several pueblos and the Navajo lands. Of my ten favorite places I’ve been to in the world, three are on Native American lands or are Native American ruins: Chaco Culture NHP, Monument Valley, and Mesa Verde.
If you ever go to Monument valley consider taking a sunrise tour. It is an awesome place, and the sunrise makes it that much better.
BGinCHI
@senyordave: Some grim news reports lately esp about the Acoma Pueblo and the terrible toll Covid is taking on native people.
Treuer’s amazing piece here.
EthylEster
In March the secondary PBS channel MHz changed from international mysteries to FNX content (First Nations Experience). It’s about indigenous peoples all over the world. Very interesting. Lots of stuff about language but also programs about hunting with a bow and gathering. These folks look at the world differently and I find their view extremely appealing. Worth a look if you watch TV.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
Great idea!
BGinCHI
@EthylEster: WHOA. Very cool. Will check that out.
Kent
I spent a decade of my life working for NOAA doing commercial fisheries management in Alaska and during that time ended up doing a lot of coordination with native groups and native corporations on joint fisheries management programs. Most specifically the community development program which sets out a certain percentage of groundfish quotas to be caught by native corporations. And subsistence fishing for halibut which was a giant and controversial issue.
In terms of culture, most of my reflections are about the slower pace and more consensual way of decision-making in native culture compared to what I was used to. And also the food. I got to try ‘stink eggs’ which are fermented salmon roe and utterly unpalatable. Also one thanksgiving I was invited to a thanksgiving dinner in which seal meat was served. It was grilled seal ribs that were so pungent I could barely keep them down. Now that I’m away from it I wish I had bought more native art. But my meager salary at that time was mostly going towards ski and dive vacations and all the associated gear.
SFBayAreaGal
@EthylEster: our local PBS station shows First Nation Experience. I love it.
ryk
For some great insight into modern Native American experience, read pretty much anything by Sherman Alexie
raven
Getting rid of the Chief at the University of Illinois was a huge deal and lots of people haven’t let it go. It was a tradition that I really enjoyed but it seemed to me the argument was the same as that for the confederate flag so I was ok they retired him. It’s funny how invested people are in it, it didn’t seem to hurt Stanford to change their name from the Indians and have a tree as their mascot. I have to admit I didn’t think I’d be as moved as I was when he had his last dance.
BGinCHI
I’m glad everyone is out enjoying the summer instead of being glued to a screen.
evodevo
@BGinCHI: Yes…the sequel is 1493 – equally good, but very depressing.
BGinCHI
@evodevo: No spoilers!
japa21
@BGinCHI: Excellent book.
dexwood
Books – Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko, a distant cousin of my Pueblo Indian wife. House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday, who taught a class I took and who my father-in-law knew when they were young men. Then we have United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, who I knew when we were students at UNM. Also, you can’t go wrong with Sherman Alexie.
Two movies we love are Smoke Signals and Pow Wow Highway.
I met my Pueblo Indian wife on the night of July 4th, 1975. I’m still mad about her. So, this old white guy has been a member of a Pueblo Indian family since then. It’s been interesting, not always easy, but enlightening.
ETA; A book of short stories by Native writers, The Man to Send Rain Clouds.
Kent
@ryk: I like Sherman Alexie’s works but understand he is something of a lightning-rod figure in native culture. He’s had his own #metoo issues and has taken some controversial positions that haven’t been universally received.
https://www.indianz.com/News/2018/03/06/sherman-alexie-caused-hurt-even-before-s.asp
Eunicecycle
When I was growing up there was a live action drama nearby about the Shawnee general named Tecumseh. I was probably in high school the first time I saw it, and it was the first time it dawned on me, I’m ashamed to say, that we had treated the native people horribly. It definitely changed my whole outlook on North American “exploration” and made me question a lot of what I had been taught.
evodevo
@evodevo: My grandmother grew up in Pawnee, OK and her tales of life in a frontier town in the Indian Territories fascinated me. I’ve been interested in Native American culture since i was probably 4 or 5 years old. Took a survey course in college – Indians of North America – taught in the Anthro dept. – the one thing that stays with me is the language array…virtually ALL the languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau and northern India are in one language family. Native American languages encompass THREE language families that cover the polar regions all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Wow. And their material culture, as usually portrayed in early movies, is such a hodge podge (usually some combination of Lakota and Cheyenne costume elements) – your average person doesn’t realize how many cultures there were.
Frankensteinbeck
Story. Back when I was newly published and my publishers couldn’t figure out why my books weren’t selling, they got me a deal to co-write (I would do all the work) the third book in a horror series by an established author who hires a lot of ghost writers. I’d get half the royalties attention, because it was a guaranteed fan base.
The first two books were godawful bad, but I figured hey, I could certainly make something better, and I’d been assured I would be free to write what I wanted. Not so much. The author came back and said who he wanted the ghosts to be and he wanted some specific (and horribly unlikable) characters from the previous books in it, and the main character in this book and going forward in the series would be the Cherokee shaman park ranger.
Yes, you read that. I cringed at the stereotype. I did my best to look up as much as I could about Cherokee culture and particularly its mysticism, and lean away from the stereotypes as hard as possible. I learned a lot of neat stuff. First, of course, I learned that Cherokee don’t have shamans. Sigh. But Cherokee mythology is AWESOME. All the stories start with a ritual sentence that translates closely to “Once upon a time.” The whole ‘apologize to an animal you hunt and explain why you killed it’ isn’t out of reverence for nature and living at one with the environment and all that noble savage stuff. It’s because Once Upon A Time all the animals got together because humans were getting way too good at hunting and had to be stopped. So all the animals had their unique curse ready, but after talking about it they decided that look, everybody hunts, it would be fine to make a treaty that limits human hunting. So, that’s why the apology thing. It’s humanity’s side of the treaty to avoid getting a hundred curses.
Bears refused to join the treaty, so kill all the bears you want.
But the COOLEST thing was the Cherokee philosophy on guardian spirits. When you want a guardian spirit, you don’t call up a good and kind spirit. You summon the meanest bastard spirit that you have a way to control. Why? Because you don’t want a healer. You want a fighter who will beat the shit out of whatever spirits are threatening you.
I got utterly screwed over wasting six months of miserable writing without seeing a dime from that mess, but that’s no fun to talk about. Studying Cherokee history and storytelling? AWESOME.
raven
This is good if you can find it,
The West, sometimes marketed as Ken Burns Presents: The West, is a 1996 television documentary miniseriesabout the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives and featured Ken Burns as executive producer. It was first broadcast on PBS on eight consecutive nights from September 15 to 22, 1996.
JCJ
@BGinCHI: I always enjoyed the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon. Haven’t been for a while. The Eiteljorg Museum of Native Americans and Western Art in Indianapolis was quite nice when I visited. Worth a stop if you are in the area.
WaterGirl
@raven: The chief was definitely revered and was not seen as a mascot.
MomSense
Growing up we had cousins who lived in Perry Maine, near the Passamaquoddy Tribal Government. Then as an adult I took my kids there every summer because it was near the place we rented. The museum is wonderful and they have been doing an ongoing project of trying to record their elders speaking their language and writing a kind of dictionary to preserve the language. I used to donate to the project. I should probably try and donate again. The Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary project is also online. On one visit with the kids, one of the elders was there and he was very gracious to spend some time talking with us. We learned that they have different words for animate vs inanimate objects. For example, snow falling is a different word from snow on the ground.
https://pmportal.org/browse-dictionary
MomSense
@MomSense:
There are videos with written translations beneath the videos. I don’t remember if there is poetry on the site, but I’m going to check. I remember beautiful poems at the museum.
Ladyraxterinok
Nakotah LaRance, world champion Navajo hoop dancer died within past week
Indian Country Today has article with video of one of his dances
Google has many sources about his death
I discovered there are youtube videos of hoop dance competitions
BGinCHI
@dexwood: These are favorites as well. Momaday the classic (Way to Rainy Mtn). Harjo and Silko must-reads.
The work of Gerald Vizenor as well. Pioneer on NA subjects.
Salty Sam
Charles Frazier wrote “Cold Mountain”, which was made into a movie in 2003. His second novel is (from Wikipedia): Thirteen Moons is a historical novel published in October 2006 by American author Charles Frazier, his second book after the award-winning Cold Mountain. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the novel is loosely based on the life of William Holland Thomas, a Confederate Army officer during the American Civil War and Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians—the only white man to ever hold that position.[1]Thirteen Moons depicts the social and political climate preceding and following the Cherokee Removal from the ancestral homeland of the Cherokee Nation in what is today Western North Carolina.“
A good, long, richly detailed read, highly recommended by Salty Sam…
Salty Sam
#31 in moderation… what’d I do?
BGinCHI
@Eunicecycle: The Battle of Tippecanoe (the Prophet f’ing up his brother’s army….) was fought right outside my hometown. My cousins’ house was at the edge of the battlefield and I grew up tramping all over and around it (Burnett’s Creek, to be exact).
SFBayAreaGal
If you love mysteries and want to learn about the Navajo culture, read Tony Hillerman mystery series that follows the lives of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Skinwalkers is my favorite from the series.
BGinCHI
@evodevo: Yes, yes, yes.
BGinCHI
@Frankensteinbeck: Great story.
Time to name names!
BGinCHI
@raven: I’ve never heard of that.
BGinCHI
@JCJ: I haven’t been there in forever! That’s a nice museum.
Tom Levenson
My first real experience of Native American culture came from Theodora Kroeber’s kids book, Ishi: Last of His Tribe. That tells the story of the last survivor of a band of the Yahi-Yana, a people that ranged through the Mill Creek area (east from just above Red Bluff and Chico all the way to Lassen National Park). I spent all my summers growing up on the edge of the national park, and right around the time each of my siblings and I hit about eight, Mum would start us off on Kroeber’s book. Sometime after that we’d be taken to the Ishi collection at UC Berkeley–and at some point, we would go camping at Black Rock, on Mill Creek down in the hot foothills–so that the physical setting of the story would become part of our memory of the story. California’s Native genocide is less well known than some of the other aspects of that wretched history–but the Ishi story captures that in one man’s life. Never forgot it; still go back to that country (not this year, alas.
To add: Theodora Kroeber was the wife of A.L. Kroeber who was the anthropologist who built Berkeley’s department, and was Ishi’s host/protector/interlocutor for the brief time between when he came out of the hills into Oroville and when he died (of TB, I believe) in San Francisco. A. L. and Theodora are, in turn, the parents of Ursula K(roeber) LeGuin.
Salty Sam
Charles Frazier’s second novel (after “Cold Mountain”, which was made into a movie in 2003) was (from Wikipedia): Thirteen Moons is a historical novel published in October 2006 by American author Charles Frazier, his second book after the award-winning Cold Mountain. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the novel is loosely based on the life of William Holland Thomas, a Confederate Army officer during the American Civil War and Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians—the only white man to ever hold that position.[1]Thirteen Moons depicts the social and political climate preceding and following the Cherokee Removal from the ancestral homeland of the Cherokee Nation in what is today Western North Carolina.
Good long slow read, and richly detailed- very satisfying. Highly recommended.
debbie
I’ve read pretty much everything Louise Erdrich has written (not the newest one yet), and though some think she’s less than authentic, her characters Nanapush and Fleur mean as much to me today as when I first read of them in the mid-80s (“Tracks”). What I wouldn’t give to have Fleur’s fierceness and Nanapush’s silliness!
Ladyraxterinok
Read a bit about Ghost Dances in college anthro class in late 50s. Eeri li y fascinating
Find the Northwestern potlatch intriguing. Seems to indicate an interesting culture. Also the NW totem poles.
And did/do women elders run the Iroquois groups?
dexwood
@SFBayAreaGal: Tony Hillerman was a damn good guy, too. He taught Journalism at UNM. I took two of his classes. Later, as his writing was taking off, I enlisted him to do a book signing event at a very large, locally owned book store. Further, he interviewed Studs Terkel for a locally produced PBS special in 89. I talked my way into being the still photographer for the shoot. I arrived early and found Mr. Terkel seated in the lobby. I introduced myself and chatted with him about 20 minutes before Mr. Hillerman arrived. We sat there another 10 or 15 minutes, talking, before being called to the set. Magic.
Delk
My first experience and probably most Chicago kids of my generation was the Standing Rock Ceremony at the Dells. Followed of course by the obligatory Tommy Bartlett Water Show.
jame
I grew up on the Gulf coast, but now live in “Indian Country”, in New Mexico. I can’t say I love the High Desert, but I do love that out here you can meet the creators of all the art, jewelry and stories you can only read about elsewhere.
I was, and still am, repulsed by what the Spanish conquistadors and priests did here. The descendants of the Pueblos, Zuni, and the Navajo are so inextricably entwined with the descendants of the invaders from Spain and Mexico, it makes for a perilous balance, especially when you add the Anglos into the mix. This is where I first became aware of the generations of loss after loss after loss the Native people have suffered through, and the damage that has caused.
The first major cancellation here due to covid-19 was Gathering of Nations, a huge powwow held every Spring in Albuquerque. That’s an event I love attending – singing, dancing, gorgeous regalia (and the ubiquitous beauty pageant). I love beadwork, and turquoise and silver, so another loss was when Indian Market was also cancelled. Many of the trading posts and Indian arts dealers are online, but it’s not the same as getting to meet the artists.
Being in NM has been a great learning experience, not least because there’s a different sense of time here. There is a long, long view, and the past is not that long ago.
dexwood
Very well put with much truth. Dinner calls, outa here.
MoxieM
I am interested in stuff about New England Native cultures. I know a bit, scraping along. I know the people still live around here, and not just on reservations. Oddly, John Demos’s book The Unredeemed Captive has some insights into French Catholic somewhat pan-Indian culture (Kanawageh, or Ganawage, or other better representations, village in Canada.) (It’s also a lovely book.) I’d be very interested in anything written by Abenaki authors. Thx.
zhena gogolia
@dexwood:
Momaday gave my commencement address — it was wonderful. We lucked out — I’ve heard many commencement addresses since then, and it was special.
prostratedragon
@Ladyraxterinok:
Very sad. He’s great, and so young! Here’s a shorter one, but I did indeed see much longer videos.
Fun with topology:
SFBayAreaGal
@dexwood: Fascinating. Thank you for sharing this.
Frankensteinbeck
@BGinCHI:
I’ve always been reluctant to shit on other authors in public, unless they’re so famous (like Rowling) that they don’t need to give a damn about what I think. Besides, the only thing I know for sure about this guy is that the two books completely sucked. I never communicated with him in person, and who knows how much of that bad situation was Curiosity Quills lying to me? This was early on when they seemed to be treating me very well, but I’ll never know how much of the dishonesty started on day one.
MomSense
If anyone here is a knitter, weaver or crocheted or if you have one in your life, you can gift them peace fleece yarn. Most of the fiber is now sourced from Navajo ranchers. Harrisville designs has pictures and a blog post about their trip last year to buy wool. They couldn’t go this year because of COVID so they’ve been fundraising to support the ranchers.
Ladyraxterinok
There were 5 Native American women from Oklahoma who became internationally famous ballerinas in the 20th century. They have become known as the Five Moons. See Wikipedia article
As a girl I was fascinated by ballet and Native Americans. The only dancer I remember hearing anything about was Maria Tallchief, so for some time I did not realize there were actually five.
I believe there is a documentary about the five
Salty Sam
I was involved in a men’s group that developed ritual ceremony based on First Nations customs. In the early years, we faced some stiff opposition from Lakota groups, charging us with cultural appropriation, specifically around our sweat lodge ceremony. Not wanting ruffle any feathers, we worked with some Lakota elders to develop “our” version- and we were very strict about sticking to the “approved” ceremony. There always remained a bit of resentment around the issue on the Lakota side, but we received permission to carry on.
Fast forward a few years, and we were going to do one of our retreats on the Pine Ridge rez, with Lakota members joining our group. It was a big deal for us. During a conference call to plan the weekend, I remember one Medicine Woman letting us know that, “I know that you have “your” ceremony, but just know that when you come up here, we’ll be doing it OUR way, and if you have a problem with that, check out right now.”
One of the bitter disappointments of my life is that a late spring snow storm rendered the dirt roads on the rez unpassable, and the retreat was cancelled as we were about halfway there from Texas. The opportunity did not come up again before I left…
Kent
Weird. It was on Neflix last year. I watched it then. But it’s not there anymore. I hate when they do that, seemingly at random.
MomSense
@Ladyraxterinok:
One of my teachers was very close with Maria Tallchief. They were at NYCB at the same time.
WaterGirl
@Salty Sam: More than 7 links!
Hungry Joe
“Fools Crow” is a VERY good book.
Salty Sam
@WaterGirl: got it, thanks. I can edit it…
WaterGirl
@dexwood: That’s a great word for it.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Great story.
I read that in grade school, out of the library, where I was captivated by the cover photo. I think about that book a lot.
BGinCHI
@debbie: I could NOT agree more.
I wish she’d get mentioned for the Nobel.
BGinCHI
@dexwood: WOWZERS.
Two of my favorite people. Three including you.
BGinCHI
@Frankensteinbeck: I hear you. Was kidding (kind of). And you’re right to wonder whether it might be the publisher…..
BGinCHI
@Hungry Joe: It’s a masterpiece. Really.
I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Ladyraxterinok
Places I’d like to know more about—Cahokia Mounds near East St Louis and the Anasazi Indians
In high school I had the chance to go to NM with a group. We spent a miniscule amount of time seeing a bit of the Native American culture there. I saw just enough to become fascinated by the Kachina Dancers and their costumes.
And I also have read a few Hillerman books. I found the concept of the Navajo Ways fascinating
The science fiction author Alan Dean Foster combined the Navajo Ways with internet technology of the future in his fascinating book Cyber Way.
Laura Too
When I was maybe 5-6 at my grandparents cabin on Big Sandy lake in McGregor, MN we watched all day as canoes crossed the lake. That night we got to listen to drumming and singing all night long. It was so very powerful, I still get chills. We would mention it once in a while but no one ever believed it so I started to doubt it was real. In college I was assigned a book that described the pow wow, it was between MN tribes and Canadian First Nations tribes. It was really cool to see an account of it. And my one brush with greatness is getting a hug from Winona LaDuke, pre Covid. She is amazing!
WaterGirl
@Salty Sam: No need to edit it! I approved it so all is good. I approved both of them, in fact.
It doesn’t hurt anything to have more than 7 links, it’s just that a lot of SPAM has a ton of links, so you have to draw the line to keep SPAM out.
BGinCHI
@Laura Too: This matches my experience. It’s hard to describe how moving it is.
Ladyraxterinok
Near Tulsa is the Gilcrease Museum. It has the world’s largest collection of the art of the American West, including 18 of the 22 bronze statues by Frederic Remington. The collection was begun by Thomas Gilcrease of the Creek tribe. He was an oilman and started collecting before there was much interest in western American art.
The museum also has a large and growing collection of Central and South American art and artifacts,
The museum holds (according to Wikipedia) over 100,000 books and manuscripts, many from the era of the Spanish exploration/conquest. Its holdings have made it an important research center
J R in WV
Wife and I spent a week at Taos for our 35th anniversary, and learned a lot then. Art, Kit Carson, the genocidal warrior who chopped down Navajo peach orchards in Canyon de Chelly, etc.
I think our earliest trip into Indian country out west was a trip we took starting in Glia National Forest, where we visited a small ancient stone pueblo that was only lived in for a few decades… there was a thought that these were a small group of families who left a larger pueblo due to a family feud or some sort, and once everyone related to the disagreement had died off, the remaining members traveled back to their original clans.
We drove all the way north to the Painted Desert, north of Petrified Forest National Park, briefly visited the Hubbell Trading Post National Park, a small but fascinating facility not far from Chinle. Interestingly, US 191 runs through the Sulfur Springs Valley in SE AZ, near our small house, and up through Navajo Nation… eventually all the way to the Canadian border.
Then some years later we spent a week in Santa Fe, and spent a lot of time at the Native American Art show on Museum Hill…there were members of tribes from all over North America, doing music, dance, and showing off every kind of craft and art you can imagine. It was stunning to visit.
We stayed in Farmington, NM while we visited Chaco Canyon, and enjoyed seeing many Navajo families doing their business in town, old ladies dressed to the nines wearing the family fortune in silver and turquoise jewelry, chatting with each other while grand daughters and nieces did the family laundry,
Then we visited Two Grey Hills trading post, and bought some hand made rugs, with photos of the weavers, and spent a lot of time studying the little weaving museum they have in the old trading post. The trading post was abandoned for a while, and then a rug collector reopened it, and makes a point of supporting the local weavers.
Then we drove drove to Chinle, where we visited Canyon de Chelly with a great Navajo guide.We also spent most of a day at the Hubbell Trading Post, which was very much more enjoyable with the greater knowledge we had of the whole turn of the century historic reality.
That same trip we went to Monument Valley, which is a truly remarkable place. They were building a hotel on the south rim in which every room was to have a direct view over the valley floor, with all those spires of rock reaching into the sky.
We did buy some hand made sliver things for wife, who enjoys that, and at times elderly Navajo men would ask where we got this or that. It may have been guys working to support each other, but I prefer to think we made some wise purchases while we toured from Sante Fe to Monument Valley and through Gallup back to Albuquerque to fly out home.
Driving around Navajo Nation and in Arizona, we listened to the Navajo Nation radio station, which was mostly in Navajo, but also had news partly in English, and in many Navajo language stories, they used many English words for which there was no equivalent Navajo word. This was especially true broadcasting the news of the death of a famous Code Talker hero of the Pacific war of WW II.
The Navajo people don’t do funerals, and don’t speak of deceased people at all, death is taboo. But this guy was a highly decorated war hero, and the political reality was that the white culture insisted on a hero’s departure. So those news stories were a somewhat tortured mix of Navajo and English, but the broadcasters handled it very well, dropping in the necessary English words in the middle of the Navajo news item.
You can pick up the Navajo Nation Radio over much of Arizona. I can’t really tell which of those trips came when… dates don’t stick with me very much. I have yesterday, today, and sometime yet to come.
But we learned a lot about the native cultures. As a kid my folks took us to Cherokee NC where we saw the outdoor drama about the Trail of Tears, so I knew about the abuse of Native folk from a young age. I hate to think of how the Navajo Nation is suffering from Coronavirus. One thing we learned is that there are no commercial drug stores in Navajo Nation… they are limited to Indian Health Care. So if you run out of a medication, Gallup is your closest bet for a refill.
BGinCHI
@J R in WV: Wow, this is GREAT!
So many places I still need to get to! Gonna squirrel away this post for future touring.
Red Cedar
I teach theology at a small college in Minnesota, and over the past several years our department has been working to incorporate Dakota history into our classes, esp. the 1862 US-Dakota War that resulted in the largest mass hanging in the US (38 Dakota men hanged in Mankato) + mass death at the concentration camp at Fort Snelling (right here in the Twin Cities) where all the women and children were held after the war. Several of us faculty have been on the Sacred Sites Tour run by Healing MN Stories (Jim Bear Jacobs and Bob Klanderud), and one of us even managed to organize things for an entire class to go on that tour, which is incredibly powerful and transforms the way you see the Cities and the rivers here.
I’m a big fan of Vine Deloria’s work—God is Red; Custer Died for Your Sins; and For This Land: Writings on Religion in America. He’s a powerful voice, completely fascinating. I heard him speak at an American Academy of Religion meeting years and years ago, and he just took us (white scholars) apart for our ignorance and refusal to really look at Native religious claims. We deserved it.
Current folks I’m reading include Nick Estes, Kaitlin Curtice, and Steven Charleston. Charleston is a citizen of the Choctaw nation and a retired Episcopal bishop. His book The Four Vision Quests of Jesus is amazing. I’ve taught it several times, to both undergrad and grad students, and students are totally blown away.
Laura
I used to work in a Native community. The Puget Sound area is dotted with small reservations, many so small that they amount to a single town. Many have casinos and have socialized the tribal businesses to build up the community. It is not uncommon for a Native community to be better off economically than neighboring white communities.
The community that I worked in was not one of the prosperous ones. As far as culture– I’d say that to a large extent the community had the same patterns of behavior in any area of rural poverty, regardless of history. The religion is Shaker mostly. There is a cultural center and a revival of foods and crafts. Community members participate in the annual canoe trip for the return of the salmon. There is a small attempt to keep some of the language going. The community is divided between the “good” members (law abiding) and the “bad ones” (drugs alcohol and crime). I didn’t see a lot of neighborliness but possibly because my client, tho law abiding herself, came from a family of alcoholics and drag addicts.
I don;t think I got much more than a superficial understanding of the community, but to tell the truth, other than being mostly Democrats the community doesn’t seen much different than the adjacent white community.
billcinsd
My families association with Native Americans goes back to around the 1870s/1880s when my great great grandfather moved to Omaha and then to Niobrara, Nebraska, where he set up a photography studio. Between there and Hot Springs, SD after he moved there, he took many photos of various Natives. His most well known photos are of Sitting Bull and family. He is said to have ice skated up a river to get to the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. In general, his compositional sense wasn’t great, but he liked to use the latest technology so some of his photos turned out great, others faded quickly. There is a woman who did her master’s thesis on him, and wrote the accompanying article
https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-20-2/william-richard-cross-photographer-on-the-nebraska-south-dakota-frontier/vol-20-no-2-william-richard-cross-photographer-on-the-nebraska-south-dakota-frontier.pdf
More recently, I have an NSF grant in which we have Jhon Goes-in-Center give a talk on Lakota art and the spread of metal working into the Central Plains and the art work that goes into this, including Ledger Paintings, too. This video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq6phRVDMx4, contains a somewhat similar talk
billcinsd
@Ladyraxterinok:
Cahokia Mounds is pretty cool. Monks Mound is a pretty good hike and you can see the Gateway Arch from the top
Tehanu
@Tom Levenson: The thing I always remember from Ishi’s story is that when he was asked if he was impressed with the height of the skyscrapers in San Francisco, he wasn’t. He’d lived his whole life near Mt. Lassen, a 10,000-foot peak. That was tall.
mizpurple
@Ladyraxterinok:
I was fortunate enough to spend a day at the Cahokia site as I was driving cross-country. It’s an amazing place, and they have a great interpretive museum. I was particularly interested b/c a friend of mine, Alan Smale, wrote an alternate-history trilogy focusing on Cahokia and the surrounding Mississippi River cultures. His premise was: what if the Roman Empire had reached North America back in their heyday? Really entertaining.
BGinCHI
@billcinsd: This is really fascinating. Thanks.
BGinCHI
@Red Cedar: This sounds like amazing work. Glad to here this kind of thing is finding its way into the curriculum.
J R in WV
There’s an old fashioned museum — the Amerind Museum — in northern Cochise county, south eastern AZ, right off I-10 at the Dragoon exit. Its big, with a great collection of later Indian material from the Old Western era, as well as a large collection of archaeological material from all over the SE AZ area.
I ran into a young woman at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show who had a connection to a privately-owned ranch and restored really old ceramics, the interior showed the restoration in white connecting the potshards, but the exterior looked like the object just came out of the fire, pristine. Very reasonably priced, all the stuff in her hotel room [the show is so huge many of the big hotels are sold out to dealers who fill rooms with their material] was already sold.
It’s perfectly legal to dig ancient material on private property, and she was a local with connections to some of the old ranches with thousands of acres of badlands and ancient ruins and artifacts… I’ve read stories of people who explore up into those badlands finding pristine ceramics sitting on a sheltered ledge for 800 years, leaving it there because it seemed so sacred to them.
The artistic ability of the pot makers from the long ago is amazing… I have a lot of books with great photos of great ceramic art from hundreds of years ago. When we visit a place like Chaco Canyon or Monument Valley or Canyon de Chelly National Park [that’s a Navajo Nation national park, by the way!] I hit up the books in the gift shop, lots of scientific literature you don’t see on the shelves anywhere outside of a college textbook shop or a museum shop.
Same at Volcano in Hawaii, there it was geology books….
Some fascinating comments, thanks to everyone for participating in this thread, and Watergirl and BGinCHI as well!!
ETA: and in the East, there were / are mounds and effigy structures all over the countryside. We have done long weekends driving from mound to museum to mound, some of which are amazing. Unfortunately, the farmers who settled that countryside plowed so many of them flat, now archaeologists use ground penetrating radar to ID flattened mounds.
But some still exist, In Newell Ohio, just east of Columbus and north of I-70 there’s a huge ring mound in town, and an octagonal mound on a golf course. That mound is oriented to show moon rise locations, northernmost, southernmost, etc. and other astronomical events. The ring is hundreds of yards across, and still quite high after a thousand years. There’s one opening with parallel straight walls on each side and a tiny town operated museum.
One of the strangest effigy mounds is in rural mountainous S Ohio, Serpent Mound. It isn’t tall, but is quite large squirming over hundreds of yards of ridgetop above a creek. It has a ovoid object in its mouth, perhaps a large egg. The construction of the low mound is sophisticated, with layers of creek gravel buried in clay, covered by soil. There’s a little tower you can climb to look down on the whole eerie thing.
Not close to anything, out in the country, there is evidence of a meteorite strike multiple of millions of years ago impact shocked microscopic quartz crystals…