BS: Every Wonder?

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: JennyO
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 11:53 AM

Well, just for the record, Daylia - I liked it.

BTW, I haven't forgotten I was going to PM you. I just need a bit more time to get my thoughts together, but I will soon.

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 11:31 AM

SRS let's let it go ok? You obviously just don't want to see my point, and that's okay too. We are approaching the book from entirely different perspectives, that's all. And I do recognize long-winded, tedious, second-hand scholastic arrogance when I see it. I avoid it like the plague whenever possible.

They say that Canadians have the tendency to respect diversity, to harness discontent (and use that energy to create the new), to agree to disagree. So I agree to disagree with your assessment of this book as 'trash'. If you choose to base your views of the world on other people's opinions instead of on direct experience, that's your 'sacred' choice. I choose differently, that's all.

PS you don't know me AT ALL, and I'm not fond of blowing my own horn or name-dropping, by the way. I have no reason to explain who I am, what I've studied, who is in my family tree or who I've worked with to someone who can't resist attacking everything I say. Why would you believe it anyway? Just a waste of time, IMO.

What I've said comes from the heart, and it is my truth. And now I'm off to enjoy my day!

Peace

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Schantieman
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 11:23 AM

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd rather that a light-hearted thread on amusing everyday conundrums (conundra?)wasn't hijacked and turned into an academic political discussion.   Not that I have anything against such discussion, you understand, but why not put 'em in a different thread?

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 11:12 AM

Henry David Thoreau accomplishes the same thing if you read Walden but he isn't playing god with other cultures. The European and Asian traditions have fine sets of environmental and spiritual ideas and documents, on a par with what you'll find in American Indian lore. They just aren't as popular right now.

Meanwhile, you can stop with your belittling pronouncements that if anyone has an opinion that differs from yours they are long-winded, uncreative, unimaginative, insensitive or ignorant. If I know how to use evaluative tools and choose my texts accordingly and choose not to waste my time with one like this unless it adds to scholarship, that's my gain. Is your repetitive blugeoning of the thread about this book and how you know "real" Indians supposed to prove that you understand this topic beyond the context of this book?

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.

What hubris! You can evaluate better than the people themselves? Based on this novel? You won't believe what Indians say about this text because they're not capable of intellectualizing their way out of this "plight" (you've missed that hackneyed word in all of this, I think). You completely ignore a huge body of work consisting of a viable oral tradition and for the past 300 years the written works by American Indians. But this discussion has nothing to do with literature, and everything to do with politics, so drop the call for "peace" and offering an insult at the close your remarks. You've done that every single post on this big-time thread-creep topic, so no more scolds to me please for arguing passionately about a topic as equally important as a BS thread about whether Dubya gets us into a shooting war or if Bill Clinton was a good president or not. You're egging it on. This novel is just another excuse to keep Indians in their place, as artifacts. It is unfortunate that people read it and think it is real. The ideas are all appropriated and scrambled and put into a mythical unreal context. And by doing this you've rhetorically cast modern autonomous Indian people into the same childlike government ward status that the government and others who got rich off of Indians would like to see them remain in. Go read Custer Died for your Sins if you want to see what "real" Indians think.

Do you know what Sitting Bull's favorite photo of himself was? He was sitting in his automobile with his wives in the car with him. But the photo was never published in his lifetime or for a long time after, because people couldn't accept the idea of Indians actually knowing something about modern day equipment (guns excepted). In Black Elk Speaks one of the lines that Neihardt edited out was when Nicholas Black Elk talked about hearing voices "like a radio." That "radio" had to go because it tied Black Elk into a modern western world. Yes, there's a lot of infighting going on. It is intentional, it keeps Indians from making much progress forward if they're too busy squabbling over the scraps the U.S. government doles out while mismanaging billion$ of Indian dollars. So Alonzo Blacksmith made a few bucks for himself by selling out to Beebe Hill. It's his right, and hers to publish. But don't expect any positive American Indian reviews of the book. The Google search I posted had no evaluative remarks in it. I used "Indians" and "+"Chunksa Yuha". The bad reviews by Indians came through on their own.

I'm sure by now everyone else who was following Pushkin's whimsical thread has thrown their hands in the air and logged off. My apologies to the others who were participating in the silliness of the thread to have to encounter my inability to let these insults go unanswered.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 10:04 AM

Sorry, forgot to credit Ruth Beebe Hill's 'Hanta Yo' with the above quote.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 09:44 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 11:15 PM

The following search on Google gives quite a number of explanations of the problems with this book. Of particular interest is the issue of Studies in American Indian Literature (SAIL) because it has several reviews by big names in the field of American Indian Literature. As a disclaimer, I will note that I have published in this journal several times and am a member of the parent organization ASAIL. I was not publishing back when this issue came out.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 05:30 PM

Where's your nose bin lately GUEST? Tucked snugly between your thighs?

((((((((( ;-) )))))))))    Just funnin'...

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 05:28 PM

The breeze yer fanning smells like a big fart, Daylia-girl!

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 05:22 PM

SRS - according to the Newcomer's Guide to Mudcat, BS means 'breeze-shooting' as a more polite way of saying b******t. Even the average 3-year-old can distinguish a 'breeze' from a 'long-winded gale'. (the latter reminding me of one of Spaw's latest witticisms - 'lobotomal trots'!)

Yes, check out SRS' posts above for the scholarly disputes (if anyone still cares). And for a social/spiritual perspective that invites willing minds to contemplate even deeper truths, the words of Ruth Beebe Hill and Chunksa Yuha are posted there as well.

'Every Wonder' why peace is such a difficult commodity to come by? Hmmmm
CUZ I'M STILL CONTRIBUTING TO THIS SILLINESS?   Maybe!

Peace and hope

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 05:13 PM

I'll drop it, too, SRS, but scholarly or not, imo you more than stated your opinion and made an unfair assumption. No one said the book in question was the be all to end all.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 05:03 PM

So is "BS" as the title of a thread synonymous with the term "lowest common denominator?" Heaven forbid anyone learn anything when reading one?

Kat, as you see, there is no point in discussing this. We're coming from positions too far apart. I have posted citations and anyone wishing to know more about the academic view of this text can go read those. I rest my case.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 04:43 PM

SRS - The only 'make-believe world' I see here is the one you've built around ME, and around light-hearted Mudcat BS threads as an appropriate venue for venting your second-hand 'scholarly' (???) opinions and arrogance. Why don't you save it for your students? At least you get paid for it, and they are FORCED to listen to you!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:37 PM

We're back to this? I would recommend wider reading than this one flawed novel if you want to learn about American Indian history, let alone the culture today. If the text is called into question, then defend it by looking for other sources that support it. I know of none, but that doesn't mean they don't exist--but it's the part of the supporter of the novel to find them. The single-minded defense of the novel allowed the observation I made above. The book in question does not represent American Indians accurately.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:20 PM

Sorry I have missed this thread until now.

SRS, seems to me you've made some pretty big assumptions with this statement: I'm sorry you have spent so much time and energy with this single text, and have developed an entire make-believe world about Indians as a result.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 09:39 AM

Interesting, Graham! Thanks for you insights. I posted the list above as a light-hearted invitation to ponder how different life would if those concepts were not part of our world-view. I found it almost impossible to imagine, and I find it fun to wonder about such unusual ideas. There's as many notions of 'fun' as there are people, it seems.

My intention was certainly not to start a scholarly discourse or argument about the book or it's author - just some whimsical entertainment - inspired by a thread called 'Every Wonder'. But I have discovered as a new member of Mudcat that not much can be said - or wondered about - on this forum without someone jumping on an unforeseen soapbox (or jumping down my throat!) Oh well, c'est la vie. Soapboxes can be fun too, at times. Arguments? Not fun, and usually a big waste of time and energy, in my experience.

By the way, here's a picture and some information about another so-called Indian Weed. native to Australia, India and Asia. Doesn't look like our Aussie friends smoke it though!

Happy wonderings!

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Grab
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 09:03 AM

Daylia, where would we be without the White Man's contribution to vocabulary?

One answer: we'd be in the position of having no basis for scholarship. The words "because, how, expect, could, should" are all required for logical discussion of concepts, to represent cause and effect. If you can't represent cause and effect in your language, you either invent words to do that or you can't discuss those concepts.

On another theme of the language, I agree with Mudlark: Indians were *tribal* (as were Europeans, just a bigger tribe). If you have a tribe, by definition your language requires words for "those belonging to the tribe" and for "those not belonging to the tribe". Even if the "not belonging" words are specific in identifying which tribes the other people *do* belong to, the words are still there to represent the concepts of "those like us" and "those not like us". The words could only be absent from the language if the Indian tribes had no concept of this, and we know from historical evidence that this isn't the case.

And as far as "it" goes, that word is also missing from French and Romance languages. It doesn't mean that those people do not have the concept of "inanimate object", it's just that the language has assigned a gender semi-randomly to these words. German and Germanic languages are similar - they have three genders, but inanimate objects are semi-randomly assigned a gender.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Pushkin
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 08:42 AM

Ever wonder why some people have hairy nipples?

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Pushkin
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 07:59 AM

I love the way threads go.......

This one is certainly getting interesting.

Why do men always buy women chocolate and underwear for christmas/birthday presents?   I hasten to add that my SO, StevetheORC, would eat the chocolate himself!!

Pushkin

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 06:00 AM

why there isn't mouse-flavored cat food? ...How do you know, have you ever tasted it?

why women can't put on mascara with their mouth closed? ...I can!

why lemon juice is made with artificial flavor, while dishwashing
liquid is made with real lemons? ... Ahem!! My juice is the REAL thing!

I wonder why we can't eat a doughnut without licking our lips, and I wonder why we can't brush our teeth without wiggling our bums!

Sal

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 08:04 PM

Ahhhh ... pleasure! Indeed, that's the BEST reason, Dylan!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: boab d
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 07:59 PM

the thing about nipples is the same answer as the females its nothing to do with the fact or fiction of male lactation its because when you are being a little romantic with the opposite sex its nice to have them played with.
Dylan

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 06:44 PM

Exactly what I thought you'd say!

I'll borrow a soto voce tool from Gargoyle and observe that one shoud Never duel with an unarmed combatant. . .

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 06:16 PM

PS - university degrees are very nice for the mind and the paychecks (if you're lucky) but they are certainly no guarantee of wisdom, tolerance, compassion or humility. I'd feel like a fool if I tried waving mine around as some kind of 'proof' that my views are any more 'worthy' than the next person's. But that's just me ...

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:59 PM

SRS - "methinks thou dost protest too much?" Take a look at the comparative length of the epistles you've just vented out above! WOW!

To offer an old 'Indian' adage - (oops, there's that I-word again!) -

When you point your finger at someone else there's always three more pointing right back at you!!

(That's NOT from 'Hanta Yo' BTW)

Please use the privacy of a PM to insult me further, if you really need to continue venting whatever you're so upset about.

Your friendly neighbourhood 'trash'.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:43 PM

In answer to the original list of questions...

No.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:39 PM

Sorry, Daylia, but I have a master's degree in English specializing in American Indian Literature, and am near finishing a second master's in philosophy. I've given this topic a lot of thought for many years now, and read many books and essays on the subjects of American Indian literature, spirituality, and cultures. When you are confronted with sound reasoning, with complaints lodged against the work by the very people it is supposed to represent, and by similar observations from other list members, you continue to press forward with no new information, no support for your argument. It's like using the word in the definition--it just doesn't get you anywhere, and an evaluation of the book as "trash" is quite a valid one. It wasn't leveled at a person, but an object, in this case, an object that was (to borrow from Carl Sandburg) "a great waste of paper." I'm sorry you have spent so much time and energy with this single text, and have developed an entire make-believe world about Indians as a result. You're not alone in that mistake.

The only one you're hurling insults at on this thread is the one who has offered up citations and literary criticism as part of a frank intellectual debate regarding this text you've quoted several times here at Mudcat.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

- Shakespeare, Hamlet

Perhaps next you'd like to argue about the wisdom of spending this much time in graduate school in what is essentially the expensive hobby of collecting degrees.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 03:21 PM

Wolfgang I don't think it's available in bookshops anymore. I really regretted lending out my original copy - it was never returned and I searched used bookstores for a couple years before I found another. You can find it in most university and public libraries though. And probably on-line too, if you're willing to pay some astronomical price for an original hard-cover copy. (And by the way, Hill is deceased so those prices are not her idea!).

greg - right on! I know I'm pretty sensitive about anything that appears to denigrate either 'Indians' (gads, I've used the I-word again ;-)!) or tobacco. I HAVE ISSUES ok? *sniff sniff* I'm workin on 'em ...

daylia

PS would that be 'white trash' SRS?? ;-) Or are other people's opinions 'trash' only when they differ from your own? Hmmmmmmmm how colonial!!

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 03:08 PM

You make it perfectly clear, Daylia, that you have been deeply impressed by that book and that's fine. I also have been deeply impressed by many novels I have read.

But the book is a historic novel and should be sold in that section of bookshops.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 03:07 PM

Well I've read Hanta Yo twice and thought it was wonderful. But it certainly didnt lead me to suppose there's anything offensive in the predictable but quite witty 17th century sentiments of Tobacco is an Indian Weed. The song has nothing to say about Indians(or Native Americans) or indeed about weeds. It is just a string of thoughts occasioned by considering the life and death of a plant, the fact that smoke rises towards heaven,the fact that burning leaves ash and tar behind and so on.
   I don't think "weed" is offensive anyway. It is an ironic use of a word habitually used to describe a useless plant, recognising how extremely useful tobacco is. The same term is used for matijuana for the same reasons.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 03:06 PM

You protest too much. I wouldn't waste my time with this trash.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 02:49 PM

SRS as far as I know, "Hanta Yo" was the only work Ruth Beebe Hill ever published. It was a life's work - a labour of love that took her 25 years. So it's VERY unlikely that money was her motive.

There is so much in-fighting, back-biting and quarrelling among the native peoples today regarding the authenticity of teachings and ceremonies that if one takes seriously ALL one hears or reads, (even if it is proclaimed by one of their own), then one can't believe that ANY of it is true. "Hanta Yo" is a truly exceptional, unique, beautifully written and authentic translation of that original Mahto document. No wonder it's drawn so much flack! The truth always does, it seems. Jealousy, perhaps?

Anyway, if you could be bothered to actually read the book, and thus have anything original to say about it, I'd be happy to discuss it with you via PM's.

In the meantime, here's some wisdom to ponder, if you wish ...

"But that which moves different persons, they decide and not I. Each man owns a reasoning power and so he dares to choose and to act, dares to use the life-force as he sees fit.

Nevermore shall I try to influence in any direction. I only harm those persons I desire to protect if I interfere with their power for identifying truth, for making a choice."

                  Ruth Beebe Hill - "Hanta Yo"

And now if I could only apply that truth consistently to my life, I'd be wasting a lot less of my precious time here. *sigh*   

See ya - daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 01:49 PM

Indians call themselves Indians, Daylia. It's expedient, and they recognize the usefulness of it. I have Indians in my family who call themselves Indians. The link I posted back to the other thread was simply to take readers to the remarks posted there by Ward Churchill about Ruth Beebe Hill and the novel that so many people fell for back when it was first published. It's like that Chief Seattle Speech. It was a hoax intended to deceive. All of this stuff you're reporting in defense of Indians, against the song, against Euramerican interpretations of Indians present and past--it's nonsensical.

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
NOT FOR SALE

SPIRITUAL HUCKERISM
BY
WARD CHURCHILL


"I know of Sun Bear, He's a plastic medicine man."
Matthew King...Oglala Lakota Elder

The past twenty years have seen the birth of a new growth industry in the United States. Known as "American Indian Spiritualism," this profitable enterprise apparently began with a number of literary hoaxes undertaken by non-Indians such as Carlos Castaneda, Jay Marks (aka Jamake Highwater, author of the Primal Mind, etc.), Ruth Beebe Hill (of Hanta Yo notoriety), and Lynn Andrews (Medicine Woman, Jaguar Woman, Chrystal Woman, Spirit Woman, etc.). A few Indians such as Alonzo Blacksmith ( aka "Chunksa Yuha", the "Indian authenticator" of Hanta Yo), "Chief Red Fox" (Memories of Chief Red Fox), and Hyemeyohsts Storm (Seven Arrows, etc.) also cashed in, writing bad distortions and outright lies about indigenous spirituality for consumption in the mass market. The authors grew rich peddling their trash, while real Indians starved to death, out of sight and mind of America.

This situation has been long and bitterly attacked by legitimate Indian scholars from Professor Vine Deloria, Jr. to Bea Medicine and by activists such as American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Russell Means, Survival Of American Indians, Inc. (SAIL) director Henry Adams and the late Gerald Wilkerson, head of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). Nonetheless, the list of phoney books claiming alternately to "debunk" or "expose" the innermost meanings of Indian spirituality continues to grow as publishers recognize sure-fire money-makers when they see one. Most lately,ostensibly scholarly publishers like the University of Chicago Press have joined the parade, generating travesties such as University of Colorado professor S. Gill's "Mother Earth: An American Story".

The insistence of mainstream America upon buying such nonsense has led Deloria to conclude that, "White people in this country are so alienated from their own lives and so hungry for some sort of real-life that they grasp at any straw to save themselves. But high tech society has given them a taste for the "quick fix". They want their spirituality prepackaged in such a way as to provide instant insight, the sensational and preposterous the better. They'll pay big bucks to anyone dishonest enough to offer them spiritual salvation after reading the right book or sitting still for the right fifteen minute session. And, of course, this opens them up to every kind of mercenary hustler imaginable. It's all very pathetic, really."

Oren Lyons, a traditional chief of the Onondaga Nation, concedes Deloria's point but says the problem goes much deeper. "Non-Indians have become so used to all the hype on the part of imposters and liars that when a real Indian spiritual leader tries to offer them useful advice, he is rejected. He isn't "Indian" enough for all these non-Indian experts on Indian religion. Now, this is not only degrading to Indian people, it's downright delusional behavior on the part of the instant experts who think they've got all the answers before they even hear the questions."

"The bottom line here," says Lyons, "is that we have more need for intercultural respect today than at any time in human history. And nothing blocks respect and communication faster and more effectively than delusions by one party about another. We've got real problems which threaten the survival of the planet. Indians and non-Indians must confront these problems together, and this means we must have honest dialogue, but this dialogue is impossible as long as non Indians remain deluded about things as basic as Indian spirituality."

Things would be bad enough if American Indian realities were being distorted only through books and movies. But since 1970 there has also been a rapid increase in the number of individuals selling "Indian Wisdom" in a more practical way. Following the example of people such as the "Yogi Ramacharaka" and "Marharaji Ji," who have built lucrative careers marketing bastardizations of East Asian mysticism, these new entrepeneurs have begun cleaning up selling "Native American Ceremonies" for a fee.

As Janet McCloud, a longtime fishing rights activist and elder of the Nisqually Nation puts it, "First they came to take our land and water, then our fish and game. Then they wanted our mineral resources and, to get them they tried to take our governments. Now they want our religion as well. All of a sudden, we have a lot of unscrupulous idiots running around saying they're medicine people. And they'll sell you a sweat lodge ceremony for fifty bucks. It's not only wrong, it's obscene. Indians don't sell their spirituality to anybody, for any price. This is just another in a very long series of thefts from Indian people and in some ways this is the worst yet."

McCloud is scornful of the many non-Indian individuals who have taken up such practice professionally." These people run off to reservations acting all kind and hopeless, really pathetic. So, some elders nice enough, considerate enough to be kind to them, and how do they repay this generosity? After fifteen minutes with a spiritual leader, they consider themselves "certified" medicine people and then run amok, "spreading the word" for a fee. Some of them even proclaim themselves to be "official spiritual representatives" of various Indian peoples. I'm talking about people like Dyhnani Ywahoo and Lynn Andrews. It's absolutely disgusting."

But her real disdain is for those Indians who have taken up the practice of marketing their heritage to the highest bidder. "We've also got Indians who are doing these things," McCloud continues, "We've got our Sun Bears and our Wallace Black Elks and others who'd sell their own mother if they thought it would turn a quick buck. What they're selling isn't theirs to sell, and they know that too. That's why you never see them around Indian people anymore. When we have our traditional meetings and gatherings, you never see the Sun Bears and those sorts showing up."

There is a great deal more to this essay. I posted the part most germane to this discussion. Find the rest in various places, including here. As you can see from this, it's a complicated issue, and there are opportunistic Indians who have played a role in leading along gullible individuals just as there are opportunistic non-Indians participating. One hopes these same individuals who bought the novel Hanta Yo would have been just as interested to have learned the truth, were it presented. It is my opinion that many well-meaning people have simply never had a chance to get past the gloss of Madison Avenue, the high-dollar publishers, and the hucksters to see what life is really like in Indian Country today.
SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 01:22 PM

Just not acceptable for me to sing, Wolfgang. Like I said, it took a bit to even convince myself to type it. But other people have different sensitivities, I guess. I wouldn't use the word 'nigger' in a song either.

Anyway, let's just drop it okay? You people probably already know all you want to know about it anyway! And so do I.

Peace

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 01:15 PM

Daylia, do I understand you correctly that you say the word 'Indian' in a book written in the late 70s is acceptable but in a title of a song written before that time isn't?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:58 PM

The book was published in the late 70's, when the word was still considered acceptable. It's not considered acceptable today. I used it above for the sake of convenience - and I apologize. I did think twice about using it at the time - now I know why!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:50 PM

Well, I noticed that you used the word "Indian" in a previous posting yourself, quoting from "Chunksa Yuaha, the Mdewakantowan Dakotah", and also from the author of Hanta Yo. So I presumed you thought that was OK.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:38 PM

It's the title, greg. I could barely get past that insulting title to even look at the lyrics! First, the word 'Indian' is an example of colonial ignorance - the people of NA are not from India (obviously).

Second, the natives of North America had neither the concept or word 'weed' in their vocabulary. All plants and animals were considered 'relatives' to human beings, and all were useful.

And third, the song denigrates Tobacco, a sacred ceremonial herb used healthfully and respectfully by the native peoples for millenium, until the arrival of Europeans turned it's use and cultivation into a recreational, commercial enterprise. The sentiments expressed in that song are about as attractive as a song denigrating the Christian 'breaking of the bread', in my opinion.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:25 PM

How did "Indian Weed" turn up here, I'm mystified. But as it has, what is ignorant and bigoted about it? The song I vaguely recall is just stuff like "itshows our decay, we are but clay, think on this when you smoke tobacco"...sort of religious/philosophical ramblings. is there another song?

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:08 PM

PS your link took me back to the 'cigarettes - what brands?' thread anyway, SRS. Is that what you intended?

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: MMario
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:07 PM

well - since 'Indian weed' is credited to D'urfey - it would be an example of BRITISH colonialism and bigotry - because the US did not yet exist - but that's bside the point.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:02 PM

I'm not the least bit interested in "succinct and negative evaluations' of this or any other work which is indeed of true historical, literary and spiritual importance, SRS. If you haven't bothered to read it yourself, I've no interest in your uninformed opinions either.

And I wouldn't be caught dead singing such an glaring example of American colonial ignorance and bigotry as the song "Indian Weed". Such things are better left in the past, like smallpox and burning people at the stake IMO. But, to each according to their needs ...

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 11:44 AM

They're not as rare any more as one might think. I have a friend who developed breast cancer in his 20's. After a lumpectomy he's fine now, but it was a shock and a scare.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Schantieman
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 11:35 AM

Male nipples are indeed the vestige of the embryonic female, prevented from developing by testosterone from the foetal testes. I believe there are even (rare) cases of men developing breast cancer!

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 10:59 AM

Visit this thread for a succinct and negative evaluation of the novel "Hanta Yo." It is well-known in literary circles as bogus scholarship.

Hill made it up and got rich, turning Indians into pan-Indian museum pieces, misrepresenting language, culture, history, tradition, and certainly any connections to modern people. I'd be happy to post a few citations, if anyone needs convincing that this was a scam, and I'm sorry Daylia finds herself in a position of defending this novel. Publishers are rarely willing to label their books as bogus, even when they know better, if the sales are good. The Education of Little Tree (been there before, talked about it several times on Mudcat, so do a search if you're curious) is a classic example. U of New Mexico still publishes it without a disclaimer because it is one of their biggest sellers.

To tie the discussion of lactating males to real Indian literature (in the form of a novel that makes no claim to be anything but a novel) see The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich.


SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 10:57 AM

Rapaire the book 'Hanto Yo' is a novel, a work of fiction based on a Mahto document discovered in 1865. In the introduction there is a section by Chunksa Yuha , who assisted her translation of the document and describes himself as "a Mdewakantonwan Dakotah, grandson of Wapasa and brought up speaking the archaic language"

He says "Forty years ago I began my serach for a writer, for someone willing and eager to learn my language, to hear the ceremonies not as misinterepreted by missionaries, soldiers and drifting mountain men but as spoken in the old Indian tongue and without need for interpretation.

During my search I was approached by journalists, published authors, professors, and students ... none agreeing to take the time - years if necessary - to enter into an understanding of the Indian as a man of habitual spiritual consciousness."

Then he met Ruth Beebe Hill - a person he describes as " a geologist, a descendant of a Jamestown colony family, a person who had sustained an interest in the American Indian from her childhood. She had read on the western tribes for ten years, and for seven more years had lived, intermittently, on reservations in the midwestern US and Canada, an invited guest of Indian families. Finally she had considered herself mature enough to begin the construction of her story on the Siouan peoples before white influences. When I met her she had completed the second draft of a two thousand page documented novel but was far from satisfied with her work."

Her goal was to translate that 2000 pages of material - which was supported by perhaps 1200 references (nonfiction books and pamphlets on the plains tribes) - into the archaic Dakotah/Lakotah language and back to English again and "so assure herself of no loss of Indian idiom. Or heart. Or truth."

He told her that she needed to approach her story from the viewpoint of Indian philosophy; she needed to check her premise. And so they began a ten-year study of the ancient Siouan language and translation of her original document, sometimes spending weeks or months on a single sentence, "searching out the root, the prime word, the etymon, before contraction".

He says "Soon her book began to acquire substance, a vitality that flowed through each sentence, revealing tremendous concepts. And as I reviewed the written words, I visualized a bridge across a gulf, something to bring together two races of entirely different natures."

I particularly like his concluding sentences - "I am the Dakotah so I know this book stands alone, a book that will survive the generations. For within it's pages flows skan, taku skanskan, something-in-movement, spiritual vitality. I, Chunska Yuha, am but a messenger from my people, all Isanyati Dakotah visible and invisible. But they and I know that the importance is the message, not the messenger...Ruth Beebe Hill wrote the book ... made that bridge out of an enduring substance, something furnished by the consciousness of a race that, in truth, no longer exists, a race of individuals who recognized man as owner of the earth, who regarded nothing more sacred than the right of choice.

"Now, after twenty-five years in construction, that bridge, created out of skan, the life-force, is herewith opened, a two-way bridge that spans a gulf two hundred years wide.

I, Chunksa Yuha, grandson of Wapasa, say so, say so."

The book was required reading for a Religion and Culture course I took at WLU university in the 80's. As was James Clavell's novel "Shogun" required reading for an anthropology course I took the year before. Just because a literary work takes the form of a novel does not mean it loses credibility as a valuable source of cultural (and colorful!) truth.

It is hard to find 'Hanta Yo' these days, except in university/public libraries . Novel or not, it is a unique, educational and inspirational source of truth. IMNSHO. And I highly recommend it to anyone interested in spirituality or the way of life of a long misunderstood people.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 07:33 AM

I've always wondered about things like why, when the package says that no purchase is necessary to enter the contest, the details are inside. Does that mean that if you rip up the package to read the details you don't have to purchase it? And what would the shopkeeper think about that?

As for the book "Hanta Yo" -- one reason the list of words is there is because it's a novel -- a work of *fiction.* Made up from the researchs, knowledge, and mind of Ruth Beebe Hill. This is not to say that the ideas aren't valuable or meaningful -- just don't quote it in a dissertation or assume that it is a significant, primary source to Lakotah thought and culture. (A Google search of "Hanta Yo" turned up lots of martial arts links and more than a few tattoo parlors as well as a few links to the book.)

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Gurney
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 04:05 AM

Why it is only software writers and drug-pushers who call their client 'users.'

What they make baby oil from? I know what they make olive oil from. And why 'Virgin olive oil.' The tree is already breeding.

Why doctors say "I wouldn't worry if I were you." I wouldn't worry if I were them!

What washing machines do with all those odd socks?

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Jan 03 - 11:20 PM

daylia, I read somewhere that the only treaty that was *not* broken between the white man and the native people on this continent (or maybe just what became the United States(?) was the one that William Penn made.

As for surprising lactators, I have read that even 'old' women will lactate when nursed long enough. I know that it's true in the canine world- my old poodle adopted a sickly kitten. In due course, she gave milk and the kitten thrived. Amazed me. I had to break a full grown cat of the nursing habit eventually but that's another story.

Subject: RE: BS: Every Wonder?
From: kendall
Date: 15 Jan 03 - 10:18 PM

At the risk of pissing off any homophobe who might be lurking, the reason that males of every mammalian species has nipples is simply because all primate eggs start out female. Even after they are fertilized, they continue as female until the male hormone kicks in. When that happens, the embryo becomes male, and, if that doesn't happen, it continues to develope as female.