SRS thank you for the links. They are most interesting, at first glance. It will take a lot of convincing for me to study them in greater detail however.

Why? Unfortunately I have been SO turned off by the back-biting and arguing between just about every native group I've worked with over the years that, in my mind anyway, anything ANY of them has to say about the 'old ways' is very questionable.   Their motives may be commendable, but they are a race bludgeoned by European colonialism and imperialism, a race reeling from a few centuries of attempts at cultural genocide. IMO none of them remembers the 'old ways' either accurately or completely. They are doing the best they can to recover.

And I say again, unless you've actually read the book and experienced what lies in those pages, you are IMO in no position to judge it's value. Scholarly arguments debating it's 'authenticity' aside for a moment, the book overflows with wisdom, with spirituality. Over the years I've come to value a work for it's resonance with the HEART, more than with the mind or with the fickle tides of public opinion.

And any work, novel or otherwise, which offers such inspiring and self-empowering thoughts as the following does not deserve to be 'trashed and burned', but treasured, IMO. Because matters of the heart, of the soul and spirit, transcend and outweigh scholastic methods of criticism and analysis.

"Live and appreciate yourself, the grandfathers say. Recognize that your ears grant songs to the trees and to the stream. Soar of the wings of these songs; they belong to you. Use your body for giving growth to the spirit, your spirit. You, who will become Great Spirit.

And so, on the day you chose to drop off your shell, your spirit wil grasp new life. Your spirit, scarely noticing the change, shall go on creating and rejoicing. For the spirit, unaware of start and finish, knows only those restraints your body imposes.

Recognize 'skan' as the life-force, as the uplift power, the power that raises up hills, raises up your heart; skan, the power that keeps this earth alive.

Observe each living thing - grass and all who walk on grass - but know yourself as the one earth-form with the power for perceiving power. Recognize this power as spirit-power. Understand the spirit-power as the creating force. Know yourself as one with the creating force and you will know that truly, you own the earth."

I hope some of you creative 'Catters enjoyed that!

daylia