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A couple of months ago……. on one of the native boards…… after seeing all eastern tribes (lumbee especially), all mixedbloods, and all whites totally trashed by the rez boardies…….. I made the following post ( It was my last post to that board)
(Lumbee poster)
>and realize that my people took a four hundred year beating before the
>cavalry got to your people for a mere forty years.
(my reply)
Well said. I chose not to post on this board (though I still read) because of this rez pride. I am proud that my people chose to stay by any means necessary. The ability to adapt and survive should be an admirable trait. If that means take a white name, assimilate, obey new rules, be treated as and called mulatto or worse…. so be it. I live with the bones of my ancesters, seeing the sun rise over the same hills my people have always seen it rise over. WE ARE STILL HERE!! I’m not talking from one minor red branch of my white family. All my branches have red roots ….. because we married within certain families for hundreds of years. We lost much of our culture but we never lost our land or our spirit. We never forgot who we were. We kept the faith, baby. And we ain’t sitting in a concentration camp waiting for a handout. WE ARE STILL HERE!!! We kept what was ours. We were not moved or removed. I know who I am and I am proud to be Sappony.
peace
Well said, Dreaminghawk. I went to an old board myself the other day and thought for a moment of re-posting what I said here, then realized one of those phony Wannabe baiters was omnipresent there, someone who had thoroughly trashed me back when I was a newcomer.
I found out later he first came into his Indianness through the Boy Scouts. He bemoans how he’s always being disrespected because he looks like a white guy. Maybe that’s because he IS a white guy from the suburbs. He may have a thread of noisy native Ancestors calling to him, but if you go around diverting attention away from your own vulnerabilities by abusing others, you’re still a charlatan in my book. God, how he enjoyed playing Holy Man to the whole crew until someone actually got to know him.
Well none of this answers Vance’s questions!
Iam hoping to hear from anyone on this board, about this.
Also I did not mean to disrespect Vance if I did, my aplogies to Vance.
He asked a real question but a very explosive one, he did not ask for the verbal stew he got handed to him and I know Iam sorry if I have caused him any grief.
He asked if their was a way to bridge the gap between what we see as state vs Status people, any input folks?
I hesitated to comment here, knowing the explosive nature of the topic. However, it occurs to me that in this arguement people lose sight of some things. Don’t native American cultures respect and acknowledge ancestors for generations back? Does this not seem then that those who disrepect me by calling me a wannabe, are disrespecting my native ancestors who are also the native ancestors of my cousin who was raised on the Colville reservation and can carry a card?
It further occurs to me that if these types of arguements were put aside and cohesion replaced it, what a voting bloc that would be and what could be accomplished then.
Cindy
hello Ladies, I hope that we can turn this around, so far we’ve had a pretty good forum, not much to get really upset over.
I think that in the future if we are replying to a post we should first make the quote we are replying to and then post the reply, I certainly will, all the best Tom
Techteach, those are EXACTLY the points I was trying to make, and I think they do answer the question at hand — how do we respond to the put downs carded Indians have for so-called wannabes?
I think it will be enough to name the person in specific we’re addressing, if in fact we are addressing a specific person in the thread. If we try grabbing a quote all the time, we’ll be doubling the size of our threads, and it will cost me more in server space. It’s fine if it’s necessary to pinpoint a specific idea, though. I’d just prefer if it doesn’t get out of hand.
Linda. This is wasted space but I second that.
No one should be offended by another’s opinion. That is the principle of the council. Everyone has a right to speak. Let’s cut to the chase.
I would also add, that this may be the kind of subject best discussed on the EBD association section of the forum. (?)
i think that any more posts on this is a waste of time and this is my last post. I will be deleting my posts from this thread in the days to come.
We can’t talk about our feelings on this most places because we get shouted down and ridiculed. If we can’t talk on our own turf, then it ain’t ours. I am mystified by all the uproar. If I have offended anyone, please let me know in a private email.
I rarely make a post because I lack the ability to express myself with the personality that Linda or Brenda can do. I appreciate the things that Bill, Vance, Tom, Linda, Brenda and others post. I read the new posts every day if possible; I agree with some, disagree with others. I have read and reread all of these posts here and even asked others to read it to see if I have missed something. All that I came up with at first was confusion and then a lot of questions. Now like a vision, I see that the “red road” is filled with a lot of potholes, which are placed there by the whiteman/government? I do know that the whiteman introduced our nations very first confusion. We lived in perfect harmony killing each other in raids and steeling other tribe’s women. That would be a walk in the park compared to what the whiteman has given us for our land.
John Ross was only 1/8 Indian blood. How could he have been Chief? What compelled him to be Indian instead of white? How could Germany have a pow-wow of 10,000 German people who don’t have any Indian blood?
I don’t believe in reincarnation. But what if it is so? Could we currently be treating our reincarnated ancestors with unforgivable humiliation because of blood quantum? How did our people get here? Where did the blood in the “whiteman” come from? Has there been a “whiteman” world on another planet or is his blood some how aboriginal in origin also? I do understand that for federal recognition blood is important and I would like it to be kept strong in our tribes. It seems like that the true requirement to be Indian is to have an Indian heart, blood excluded! I have known (near) “full-bloods” that act whiter than anyone else and are a disgrace to our ancestry. They simply have a “white heart” (spirit).
Culture is another thing; if we would adhere to our original culture of 10,000 years ago we would probably still be grunting and pointing a lot. Probably with less misunderstanding I would hope! Culture throughout the years slowly progresses (or digresses as the case may be) as all things do. That maybe where the dissension is coming from. Outsiders read of someone’s culture and become an authority on it then try to teach it to the original people. That has happened to my people and me so I know from experience. Culture changes! One part of our culture that has NOT remained strong enough is to NOT accept outsiders. When you do you gradually start gaining culture (ideas) from the outside destroying your own original culture. All of the tribes have done this. If we had not broken this one rule we might be extinct now or we might be ruling our own county. We can’t change what has happened but we should be very careful who we hurt. It might be the “spirit” of one of our ancestors and they may be our judge when we walk on.
The word “wannabe” was given to us by the whiteman just like chickenpox and measles.
Wannabe? Wannabe a whiteman or wannabe a human?
Hey y’all,
I am back from Florida where I presented at conference and am paying for the trip with 0 degree weather here in WI.
Anyway, I also hope I did not offend anyone with the comment I made before leaving for the conference. It was not my intent nor were my comments directed to anyone in particular on this forum. I hoped that I worded them in such a way that I consider us all ultimately connected, if not in direct cousin relationship (I have yet to find a Collins in my genealogy, but I have found a Hardin and a Harris and a grandmother and grandfather were McCartneys.), at least in our mutual interest in exploring our native American ancestry. I had hoped that that was what my comment conveyed and that I did not offend anyone.
If anyone needs to reply to me privately feel free to do so. However, I hope that people will accept my apology if I offended them. My hope in even making the comment was to be conciliatory and was not directed at any specific person. The difficulty with online forums is that print words are only half the meaning. They lack the body language that would clarify them and can be so often misinterpreted. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could meet one another face to face?
Cindy
Greywolf, it’s so good to see you online. I owe you an email. I keep forgetting, you know me. I appreciate your words. You used the right word — humiliation. A lot of people are being humiliated, and it is a disgrace to the Ancestors who move them to do the very things that are being ridiculed.
I hadn’t heard that before about a 10,000 strong pow wow in Germany. That is quite a phenemona. To think that just 60 years ago the same people were so caught up by fascism.
Yes, TechTeach, I’ve been thinking about the same thing. We’ve been having our Annual Campout for about four years now. I want to start talking it up now so that people can be thinking about it when it comes time to sign up for vacation time and make plans. It’s the last weekend in June.
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