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[Rolland Nadjiwon]

Thanks Jim...this one has been rattling around Indian country for a few 
days. I paid attention at first but the discussion itself is 
paradoxical, so if you read it 30 years ago, it is still the same 
oroboro... Some of the discussions along the lines of cultural alchemy 
are infuriating. Marriage does not threaten culture but what you do with 
culture after you marry can. It is one thing to take a foreign item and 
integrate it attaching our own cultural meaning. It is entirely 
something else when we take in a foreign item and bring with it its 
foreign cultural meaning...one is integration the other is assimilation. 
These are two very distinct and subtle processes. We can have any kind 
of blood that will keep us living but if that living is not the daily 
activities of our people/relatives which keep the living memories of our 
ancestors, culturally we have become something different. Blood be 
damned...it will not give the knowledge of where our people hunt, how 
they hunt, what the hunting medicine/rituals are, what medicines to use 
where, or the ancient knowledge of our own cosmology. All that is only 
possible though relatives and ancestors. What can a narrative, a 
recording, a video, a map tell us of how we relate to the 'little 
people' in ritual and prayer.

Most of the language is gone from the communities where I now live, my 
mother's people. Few people remember the traditional geography of this 
place and the names that tell you what it is all about. Young people now 
go to places with snow machines, ATVs, four x fours and run rampant over 
places made sacred by the generations of our ancestors repeatedly and 
repeatedly doing offerings and ceremonies far beyond a single memory of 
that place. Without that knowledge there is not even the knowledge of 
violation by unknowingly urinating or defecating on a sacred spot where 
our people made prayer and talked with the spirits.

And now we are going to discuss the age old  blood quantum, no longer 
because of the colonizers, but to identify amongst our own people to 
determine who qualifies for the largest payout.... In my opinion, I will 
stop here as I see this discussion having no solution...unless, of 
course, someone else can please post one.

-------
wahjeh
rolland nadjiwon

 
>
>
>   Oregon family at heart of sticky issue: Does intermarriage threaten
>   Native American culture?
>
>
>         By Richard Cockle, The Oregonian
>         <http://connect.oregonlive.com/user/dcockle/index.html>
>
>
>           November 06, 2009, 5:10PM
>
> <mailto:rcockle at oregonwireless.net>
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