Subject: RE: ADD: Brother Warrior (Kate Wolf)
From:
GerryM
Date: 18 Oct 22 - 05:29 AM
Joe, there's an interview with Kate Wolf at https://www.katewolf.com/interviews and there are a few places where she mentions Indian matters (she doesn't use "Native American") and one answer (which I copy'n'paste below) where she talks quite a bit about Indian matters. I get the impression that she didn't have any Indian ancestry but saw some things she liked in Indian ways. Just an impression. Here's the answer:
Interviewer: In the same respect you seem to be connecting into an old way, a very old way with the Indian themes.
Kate Wolf: I am feeling really connected with the old ways. I grew up as a small child in Michigan and I was very much into Indian connectedness to the Earth. I was fascinated by it but at that time I had nothing around me to really explain that. It's probably just an old part of me that is in all of us. I am most happy when I am most connected to the natural world. And the Indian spirituality which is connected to a sense of a Creator and the rightness of relationship in all living things to me is the most important work ahead of us. I mean it's come down to that now we have the capacity to destroy this whole planet, and for me the most comfortable way to work with that is to work on reestablishing connectedness and to write about it and to talk about it because it's something we can all tap into. It doesn't matter what language we speak or anything.
Those of us who live in high-rise apartments or condominiums and don't have any garden space, don't have any feel for the earth anymore, who maybe for a couple of generations lost touch with cycles, lose touch with their own cycles. You don't see very far ahead. You see from paycheck to paycheck or how come I'm not happy. There's such a nourishment in the natural world and it's important to keep it together. So that's increasingly what made me turn back toward that avenue of experiencing that.
I don't think there's anything magical in the Indianness in the sense that the Indian society has been so affected by our world as everything has. But there are pockets of Indian people practicing this, who have never lost touch with that so it's an accessible route. For me, again, I feel there's just something old in me that's real comfortable and has probably always been there and I try to step lightly. I don't want to run around feeling like I'm posturing. It's like the guru movement of the Sixties. Everybody wanted to go to India and study with a guru. Well, everybody wants to go to the reservation and study with a medicine man. When in fact we have our own medicine inside us and it's important to be true to yourself. Whatever amalgam you were put in on this Earth, it's important to take that and use it. Don't go running off. Sure, consult with teachers, but trust your own instincts. Start experiencing yourself.
I've never been much of a joiner. I've gone to a few workshops and gone here and there but I always end up back on my own little path again. You know, weaving in among all these people and there's always reasons but it comes right back down to realizing we all have these resources inside us and that we all grew up as little kids being fascinated by the green growing things and the crawling things. And you watch all that and you learn enormous amounts about yourself. You love your neighbors, you love people, you love life. That's the glue that's going to hold this world together. So that's why I'm increasingly more drawn to it. It's a necessary process for me too.
As it happens, what it's doing is that by writing all these things it's putting me in touch with more Native American peoples. Which is alright, you know. They are feeling connected to the music too which is very exciting to me. There's a wonderful quote from Buffy St. Marie that I will use sometime on an album cover. I think it's "You think I have visions because I'm an Indian, but I have visions because there at visions to be seen." And I think that's just important to keep in mind.
The Indian peoples that I have been in touch with peripherally, not my close friends but some that I've seen have always been angry that the white man is trying to take the red man's road. But we're all trying to take the green road, you know, as far as I'm concerned, and it's simply a matter of everybody learning to trust that that's the common ground. And if we need to get information from the Native Americans who have stayed more in touch with that, then that's what we need to do. And if they need to understand us a little better, that's what will happen. But there's a middle ground. I'm a great one for middle grounds.
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sj
