(fwd) Mahsie

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Hi.  I received this inquiry and wondered if someone might be able to help 
Mr. Groth.  I have his permission to forward this to the list.

Regards,

Jeff

On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 14:06:10 -0700, Jackie Groth <jg at viclink.com> wrote:

Dear Jeffrey Kopp:

I am a student at PSU trying to complete a play that features two
characters - a father and a son who are northwest Indians.  Their family
history is complex and in the play, several generations (5 or more) are
spoken of or shown onstage.  The majority of the dialogue takes place
between an estranged father and son in about 1960 somewhere in a
dilapidated longhouse in the northwest (probably southwest Washington?).
Their conversation is meant to show how the Indian families went through
centuries of degradation and disintegration to the point where a father
and son might have conflict, and an unbridgeable gap between them.

I am trying to make the old man's dialogue (he was born in c. 1900, went
to boarding school, worked in shipyards in the war, and then worked in
the woods.) representative of the traditionalist trying to understand
this white culture but unable to find sense in it.  I am trying to put
Chinookan dialect into the script.

Also, cultural aspects are so far impossible to determine.  I have a
scene in which the old man's wife (who has been dead about a year) comes
back in spirit, or ghost form in a dream to scold him and try to get him
to come with her. That same scene may or may not involve old ceremonial
songs, or chants, or something that would appear in the dream with the
wife to remind the old man of how the longhouse was in winter in the old
days - even before his time.

Another scene involves the son trying to find out what the old man did
with the body of his wife when he took her from a funeral home (she had
declared herself to be Christian and raised her son that way) because he
would not allow the white man to bury her in a casket  "like Hanford
nuclear waste, and hope it doesn't leak."
Many people have told me that it is taboo to discuss such things, but
how would a father talk about it to his son after a year had passed?

And in the last scene a modern father and son (descendants of the old
man and his son in the former scenes) are getting ready for the 16 year
old boy's naming ceremony in the year 2000.  Now, I would like to know
what music might be heard in the great hall as, in a private room, the
father tells his son the story just seen in the first act, and gives to
his son the great grandfather's tools to carve wood (that go back to HIS
great-grandfather) and what would be appropriate for a dying old man to
leave to his great grandson?  Could he send him his name in a letter?  I
would like the letter to be in the dialect of the Chinook (or other
tribe used in the play), and have the father read it to his son.  The
name (that goes back to the Beginning of Time) can remain a mystery.
The father could read the letter and translate, showing that future
generations are reviving the old ways and trying to restore the culture,
and that the circle is continuing.

I need someone to authenticate this for me.  Would you be able to do
so?  Or do you know someone who will?
Do you have any comments for me?

Thank you (mahsie)
Jackie Groth
jg at viclink.com

or 503-864-9505