Will you be an Indian Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, as well as weekends?
Will you take the hatred and misunderstanding along with the mystique?
Will you honor other people's sovereignty and protocol as well as your own?
Will you confront bigotry or hide from it?
Will you believe books and paper or oral tradition and stories?
Will you check the "Indian" box on forms and documents or be a "part-time Indian"
Will you continue to learn or perpetuate the mockery?
Will you declare yourself to your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors?
Will you promote unity or disunity among Indians?
Will you take responsibility for your daily cultural maintenance?
Will you let others tell you who you are?
Will you object to racist jokes, textbooks, Indian mascots and commercial rip-offs, or let them go?
Will you endeavor to profit from it or accept poverty and loneliness as the Indian's traditional lot in life?
Will you question other Indians or show them answers?
Will you tell your employer you are Indian? Your minister? Your doctor? The government?
Will you follow your head or your heart?
Will you listen to elders and ancestors or to authorities and officials?
Will you nourish your culture or deny it?
Will you pursue honor or compromise?
Will you call yourself Indian or "part-Indian"?
Will you judge others by their words or by their actions?
Will you give prayers of thanksgiving or bargain for more?
Will you honor women for being women and men for being men?
Will you enjoy your earth walk or go in bitterness?
Will you protect the spiritual life of your circle with your own life?
Will you?
-author unknown-
For Pensmoke's previous contribution on the subject, see Are You a Reeeeeeal "Part" Injun?
3 comments:
I have met Indians who appeared to be white, but who were far "more Indian" by culture than I could ever be. In San Francisco, I was a resident at the old Friendship House of the American Indian in the Filmore District (where the program was located in 1979), and it was there that I encountered a most unique and unusual person. His name was Robert and he claimed to be exactly one-half Blackfoot Indian and one-half French.
He looked like a red-haired version of Bluto (from "Popeye") and he spoke the Blackfoot language with a fluency that was most impressive. He could recite the history and traditions of his tribe going back to their inception, and he was also an artisan beyond compare of Blackfoot beadwork.
I remember thinking then that this person looks like a 500-pound heavily bearded white man, but compared to him in the cultural sense - I am the "white man!"
Robert showed me a picture of his younger brother who was indeed a full-blooded Blackfoot. The photo was taken when the brothers were "farmed out" to an older white couple in Montana to pay off a family debt.
Robert said that he and his brother had never eaten so well prior to living with the white couple. He also said that he and his brother were physically forced to attend church, and if they had to be disciplined they were punished with a cat-o-nine tails.
"He looked like a red-haired version of Bluto (from "Popeye") "
Sounds just like Fat Bastard from "Austin Powers".
"and if they had to be disciplined they were punished with a cat-o-nine tails."
If that didn't work, they probably fed a sailor some spinach and sent him after them for a whuppin'.
I am thinkuing from experiance there are all kinds of native Americans, theres the city kind, that thinks western. Theres the kind that was born n bred upon the Rez n drinks deals drugs and generally raises hell at the thought of acting like white folks whilst destroying the next generation by example.
There's the halbreed that was raised traditional and lives it while being put down as "not enough" NDN in looks.
There's the college educated that started out NDN then became western in thinking.
The list of "DIFFERENT" kinds of native americans goes on n on.
just my own opinion, the heart of the problem is folks looking fer differences amongst all peoples especially by color.
Historically the people on this turtle Island did not think in terms of color. But as to how people think. Was why it was so easy ta adopt people of other races into tribes because we did not think in terms of differences but in how we are alike.....
So yeah iffin yer racist, perhaps a person might be what in Tligit we call Tleit-Kaa, a person thinks like the "Boston Man" or western thinking in the negative, that bein folks who are greedy n selfish, who are always looking fer differences and categorizing, there is two "real" kinds of thinking, one is "WE" the other is "ME" thinking............
Post a Comment