traditions of assimilation...

[MJ Hardman]

Thank you.  I also am deeply involved in language revitalization and agree
fully, as with the previous post from Phil Cash Cash, the knowledge and
cultural Reawakening.  And I fully agree with the rest of what you write.

My students will be enriched.

MJ

On 2/16/08 3:57 PM, "Richard Smith" <rzs at WILDBLUE.NET> wrote:

> 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
>>>>> 
>>> 
>