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[Heather Souter]

Taanshi, hello....

Rolland, your words are very powerful!  Thank-you!  (I hope you will allow
me to quote you....)


I am presently trying to work out my dissertation proposal and am struggling
with issues of identity, relation to land and language for our people.  Many
in positions of power focus on genealogical connection and acceptance in a
"community" as the most important markers of who we are.  However, as
indigenous peoples we did not come to be except through our relationship
with the land and the practices that are based on that relationship.  Our
languages express that relationship in their
processes/structures/content....   The land is the place from which our
languages spring forth and through our connection/symbiosis with (and/or
impact on) the land  and then develop, change and--in many important
ways--help reproduce the relationships many of our Elders enjoy and our
ancestors before them.  I see the need to speak our languages, to practice
the ways of our ancestors and to renew our relationship with the land while
incorporating---when and where appropriate for our collective survival as
distinct peoples-- the new technologies of the modern/digital age.  How do
we promote co-present learning from/with Elders and other knowledge keepers
as well as best use digital technologies to promote the
maintenance/stabilization/revitalization/renewal of our languages and
communication practices? Can we do both?  Are they mutually exclusive?  How
do digital technologies affect our relationship with the land and with the
others (the plants, the animals, etc.) who inhabit it with us?  How does
digital technology--especially computer mediated communication--effect our
relationships in our emplaced human communities?  With Elders, family and
friends who live near us?  Does digital technology promote the
decontextualization of our relationships and therefore fundamentally change
them and who we are as peoples?  Is there a way to balance the present-day
"need" for digital technology with our need to be co-present with with
others in order to maintain a sense of who we are as Indigenous peoples?  I
have so many questions and no answers....

Thanks for listening....
Eekoshi pitamaa.  That is all for now.
Heather


On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Rolland Nadjiwon <mikinakn at shaw.ca> wrote:

>  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 <rcockle at oregonwireless.net>
>
>
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