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[Richard Zane Smith]

Kweh omateru,
(greetings friends)

oh yeah,this "blood-quantum" issue is bound to come around ...kinda
 like those panicky fwd.fwd.fwd. internet hoaxes that keep returning.

What is said here is true though about assimilation.
Most of our first nations peoples were great assimilators ourselves.
Our ancestors recognized a new useful tool when they saw it,
and even welcomed a good-minded strong young person ,regardless of race.
But then our ancestors lived in an age of gradual change....

Everything has its price
In the past, with a crafted stone tool , a person could fell a tree.
today it takes a million people to fell the same tree....
when using a chain saw.
but the effort and the resulting ease is   ....inescapeable
and such a cost is really ....immeasurable

In the past our adoptees(of other people) were given clan mothers and equal
status
as those "born in". Marrying outside became almost ....traditional, and it
continues....
Today "marrying outside" isn't the same as assimilating into the tribe as it
once was
so...yes, there there is a cost to that too. A "white" spouse is not an
accepted tribal member and as a result there can be a split along a strange
foreign line called "race"
which fractures more and more tribal identity and its own infrastructure.

What would our ancestors think? I guess i like to speculate....
Would our ancestors look at future grandchildren becoming less and less
grandchildren? and measure them by blood? or would our ancestors be more
concerned about grandchildren (no matter their skin) becoming desensitized
about their tribal identity and loss of their language?

Our ancestors might be glad our children are hearing so many stories from so
many people. But they might be upset knowing there are some people trying
to *replace* our own traditional stories with some of those foreign or
dominant ones.
They would probably be glad the children are learning a good universal
language,
but they would be extremely concerned if that language was becoming dominant
and edging out all the languages of the land.

We live on a racetrack of instant and continual rapid change and this is
disconcerting and difficult to study, or make any worry-free predictions.
This plugged in greater society is becoming more and more "world dependent"
 just as it is becoming more and more fragile and delicate in its own
infrastructure
But despite all that...sure,I can make a stone axe
but it sure aint gonna be used for cutting firewood.
I'll grab my chain-saw
and for now
I guess my million helpers around the world will be glad I did.

ske:noh
Richard
Wyandotte Oklahoma




On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Heather Souter <hsouter at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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