traditions of assimilation...

[Richard Smith]

Yes , I'd be honored
sorry if it seemed out of context from "language" issues here.
But i'm convinced that knowledge and cultural REawakening are key
to making true language revitalization efforts a success.
An awakening to what was lost and what one has been "plugged into"
is often a frightening experience ..but it is very motivational !

Like Neo in "the Matrix"  :-)

Rzs


On 2/16/08 10:39 AM, "MJ Hardman" <hardman at UFL.EDU> wrote:

> Thank you very much for this.  Would you allow me to share it with classes?
> 
> MJ 
> 
> On 2/16/08 2:57 PM, "Richard Smith" <rzs at WILDBLUE.NET> wrote:
> 
>> sorry for it's length
>> but this is a response to those who feel "Christianity" was the best thing
>> for Native Americans...
>> this is from my point of view (a Wyandot tribal member)
>> 
>> How Christianity affected the Wyandot people in Ohio in the early
>> 1800's is an interesting story. There are the journals and historical
>> accounts still available, often kept by missionaries themselves.
>> With careful reading one can read between the lines, to understand the
>> conflict of two very different ways of understanding reality.
>> 
>> An African American Methodist missionary (Jonathan Stewart) came from the
>> east with the call to spread the gospel where he encountered the Wyandots
>> in central Ohio when they had been backed into small reservations.
>> Using an interpreter he called meetings and told the story of the cross.
>> For many Wyandots who were stressed from white settler encroachment,
>> a black minister was different and revival flooded the whole reservation.
>> Many traditionalists destroyed their medicine objects and stopped dancing,
>> bowed their heads to King Jesus Christ as their Savior.
>> 
>> A church was hand built of limestone rock that still stands today in Upper
>> Sandusky, surrounded by a cemetery of those pious converts.
>> Hair was cut to the proper length for men and soon the little church was
>> filled to capacity. European songs were rewritten using Wyandot lyrics and
>> the people began to learn a different way of singing...and seeing.
>> When this man spoke the story of Jesus and the message of salvation from
>> their wicked sins, they were moved to tears and walked the sawdust trail.
>> 
>> They began to see through a very different LENSE for the first time in
>> their lives...and conversion was widespread through the reservation.
>> Soon government schools were built and the new stories, Adam and Eve,
>> the tower of Babel ,the story of Moses in the bulrushes ,the stories of
>> David fighting the Philistines, the mighty Samson, could be taught to the
>> children as historical fact . Many felt that if they embraced the settlers
>> ways, they might be accepted by the encroaching ones who were also
>> building churches and schools for their children on their old hunting
>> grounds.Fear drove many Wyandot people into a survival mode of conformity.
>> 
>>  This new paradigm (LENSE) soon began to replace all original paradigms.
>> Conversion was complete and men began to take more authority over
>> property and took charge of tribal business, women and family.
>> Some Wyandot men were buying African slaves to work their fields.
>> Steel plows were pulled by oxen and mules. Crops were being harvested,
>> a mill was erected, and every Sunday the men and women would go to the
>> little stone church and sit on the hand sawn wooden pews, listen to the
>> gospel and sing new Hymns. More missionaries soon came to teach.
>> Wyandot men became more patriarchal, became farmers, blacksmiths,
>> and even disciplined soldiers for the British, or for the Americans, which
>> ever they preferred. But settlers kept coming
>> and still Wyandot hunters were being shot for being "Indian" .
>> 
>>  When forced out of Ohio, by the Indian Removal Act, Wyandots left as Bible
>> believing Christians. We have a copy of the final farewell speech given
>> before they left. White settlers lined up on the streets of Cincinnati to
>> see these last Ohio "Indians" passing on their journey to the west.
>> Settlers might have been disappointed by the "parade" because they saw
>> only men in common long coats and women who looked like their neighbors.
>> Wyandots were mixed in race and accounts were they looked like "gypsies".
>> They held their heads high as they passed these staring crowds.
>> The ones without livestock boarded new Steamboats and made their trek by
>> Ohio River to the Mississippi, then the Missouri to be forced off in the
>> middle of a severe downpour of rain, there where the Kansas river flowed
>> into the Missouri.
>> 
>>  Some determined to build a new church before they even built their own new
>> homes in Kansas. These were total converts and believed every word.
>> They bought the land that is now Kansas City, and after almost half the
>> nation died of starvation, diseases, they built two Methodist churches and
>> two towns were formed. One was Quindaro one was Wyandotte City.
>> Quindaro soon became a safe haven for the Underground Railroad,
>> was aided by both Wyandots and Whites....This town was razed and destroyed
>> by pro-slavery groups and the Methodist church was burnt by mobs.
>> (The ruins still exist today) The other town thrived to become Kansas
>> City.The KC Methodist church was also burnt to the ground. The Christian
>> Indians were divided...just like the American nation, family against family.
>> 
>> Did replacing original Wyandot lenses with Christianity help the people?
>> Did putting aside the old and adopting new foreign paradigms,
>> Middle Eastern creation stories, blood sacrifice cultural understandings,
>> give them an advantage in their new Kansas homelands?
>> Did replacing Spring Seed blessing ceremonies with Easter
>> give them a better life? Did replacing the Green Corn Ceremonies with
>> American Thanksgiving help them to better fulfill themselves?
>> Did replacing Midwinter Ceremonies with Christmas create wholeness?
>> 
>>  ALL of the land allotments (except our cemetery) of Kansas City, were lost
>> by fraud and poverty. Most Wyandots were reduced to another group of poor
>> Indians destitute and even dependant on the Fed. Gov. to keep promises.
>> Traditional Wyandot infrastructure survived when the last vestige of the
>> traditionals headed to Oklahoma and tried to keep the circle together.
>> Once again a pipe was passed at monthly meetings and traditional prayers
>> were prayed, and ceremonies began to have a small comeback.
>> The Methodist church followed them, and more missionaries came,
>> and soon the Christian boarding school era began, enforced by the US
>> Government educating children in service jobs, proper religion and
>> punishing Wyandot language out of them while rewarding the children who
>> yielded most to the system.
>> 
>>  There exists not far from here a circle of old weathered cedar trees
>> where native kids during school would secretly gather to speak their
>> language. But on weekends they'd be sitting on pews in starched outfits
>> singing hymns about fountains filled with blood, King Jesus, the Good
>> Shepherd, America the Beautiful, and gold crowns awaiting them at a
>> Throne.They would learn to make Pilgrim hats with big buckles of paper in
>> class during Thanksgiving, and make paper cut outs of Santa Claus and
>> reindeer in school, and learn the art of dyeing eggs and making Easter
>> baskets. Any traditional thanks giving ceremonies were taught as pagan
>> ritual.Ceremonies were still held in secret and shared with the
>> Seneca/Cayuga and Shawnee. Less and less attended as Christianity took
>> control and spread its fear of a devil lurking everywhere.
>> 
>> Today, few Wyandots are active in traditional ceremonies, though a Wyandot
>> presence survives among those intermarried with the Seneca/Cayuga.
>> Most Wyandots are totally assimilated ,Some participate in Intertribal
>> Pow-wows and find connection , a shared pride among other Native
>> Americans. There is a small but growing presence of Wyandots attending
>> traditional ceremonies shared with the Seneca/Cayuga, and I'm proud
>> to join them in the longhouse every ceremony I can attend.
>> Today many of the elders who preside over traditional ceremonies are
>> also Baptists, Pentecostals and Methodists as well, feeling no
>> contradiction,never giving in to the notion that these things were evil.
>> 
>> This is our Wyandot Christian conversion history
>> and someday our own people will awaken to see what happened to them.
>> This is my hope anyway,and with this awakening will come the hunger
>> for language and culture - distinctly Wyandot.
>> 
>> Richard Zane Smith
>> Wyandotte, Oklahoma
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 2/16/08 9:29 AM, "MJ Hardman" <hardman at UFL.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>>> "Assimilation" is a mild way to say it.  And as to Republican candidates --
>>> the drop-out -- that religion does indeed hold as a dogma that the US was
>>> founded in order for the true church to be reestablished & thus, yes, the US
>>> belongs to white people, who have come to bring the Native Americans back
>>> into the fold, after they transgressed (explained in one of their sacred
>>> books) and thus were made dark -- the fold of the white folks, of course.
>>> The Native Americans aren't as dark as blacks, whose transgression was
>>> worse, being descendants of Cain, though they have now been forgiven and can
>>> be brought into the fold.  Since Native Americans are all from the lost
>>> tribes of Israel, they have been rapidly welcomed into the fold, including
>>> by adoptions whenever possible.
>>> 
>>> And if what I wrote above sounds psychotic -- well, Mia, it's what they do
>>> indeed believe.  They soft-pedal a lot of it for outsiders, they are *very*
>>> concerned about 'image' -- they are, after all, selling a religion.  It was
>>> scary.  And what scares me now is the vice-presidency.
>>> 
>>> MJ
>>> 
>>> On 2/14/08 3:08 PM, "Mia Kalish" <MiaKalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> There IS a tradition of "assimilation," usually no matter what it takes to
>>>> get there. There was a story . . . Carolyn, Harrington's ex-wife, found
>>>> papers in California that demonstrated the Indians were being "baptized" by
>>>> 1st, clubbing them over the head until they were senseless and couldn't
>>>> protest, and 2nd, being carried to the baptismal ceremony by their guards,
>>>> who also functioned as the witnesses or whatever they call them.
>>>> The whole purpose of the boarding schools was to take children away from
>>>> the
>>>> influence of their families and cultures so they would grow up "white."
>>>> I think the fact that they wrote this is very Freudian: People are
>>>> admitting, albeit subconsciously, that they are deliberately interfering
>>>> with the lives of others.
>>>> 
>>>> I heard a speech the other day by one of those Republicans who dropped out
>>>> of the presidential race, and he actually seemed to believe that this
>>>> country "belongs" to white people. He had no understanding or recognition
>>>> of
>>>> the fact that colonizers engaged in active and sustained genocide to kill
>>>> the people who were living here originally. And by the way, he had all
>>>> these
>>>> statistics of the number of "out of wedlock" births by people of color.
>>>> Implicit in this is the cultural moré that womens' only function in life is
>>>> to take care of men. (NOT.)
>>>> 
>>>> Mia  
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
>>>> [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
>>>> On Behalf Of Richard Smith
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:40 PM
>>>> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>>>> Subject: Re: [ILAT] traditions of assimilation...
>>>> 
>>>> yeah,
>>>> did you catch that....?   "a Tradition of Assimilation"
>>>> wow...amazing... we have traditionalists in office!
>>>> By the way...who's "tradition of assimilation?"
>>>> 
>>>> richard zane smith
>>>> Wyandotte, Oklahoma
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 2/11/08 8:55 AM, "phil cash cash" <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Momentum Building for Oklahoma Official English Bill
>>>>> 
>>>> 
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-1>>>>
1
>>>> -2
>>>>> 008/0004753576&EDATE=
>>>>> 
>>>>> ~~~
>>>>> 
>>>>> While there seems to be  respect for Native American languages, these are
>>>> the
>>>>> words of legislators behind the English-only bill in the Oklahoma state
>>>>> legislature:
>>>>> 
>>>>> "...maintain a tradition of assimilation through our
>>>>> common language of English."
>>>>> 
>>>>> It seems hard to reconcile this position with Native American language
>>>>> preservation.  Though I imagine the architects of such legislation view NA
>>>>> languages as "preservation at a distance".
>>>>> 
>>>>> l8ter,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Phil
>>>>> UofA
>>>> 
>>