not native fruit

primordial fourth of july

my partner, g, and I went for a hike this morning in wildcat canyon park.  i won't name the trail, because i don't want it to be swarmed.  it was pure magic.  the trail was embedded in a tangle of eucalyptus, flowering buckeye, live oak and bay trees, many of them slithering across the ground like mossy snakes.  their ancient boles were twisted, gnarled, buckled, gapped and crazed.  We came upon a large hole in a tree with a shelf of scalloped white tree lichen inside the size of a cake-dish, and the shiny sap-sided hole was abuzz with busy honey-bees. 

As we hiked along the trail with blue sky visible in a thin path directly above our heads, we occasionally noticed brightness in the distances beyond the trees - sunshine on the grassy hills around us, dry in july and brilliant with the sheen of sun on straw.  Under our feet we turned up ocean-rolled black stones and the layer directly below the surface of the trail was pure sand. 

Later on our stroll we came upon a sort of natural amphitheatre on a miniature scale.  The lower half of the terraces were papered in large deep green ferns and black rocks.  The upper layer was dark with criss-crossed and roiling boles and boughs of trees with heavy canopies of leaves.  Through the ferns and boles of the thick tree cover roamed unfettered cows, eight of them, some of them with young.  We never think of cows as primordial, but of course they are - sacred in many cultures - and these beautiful bovine presences, gigantic and rounded, surrounded by forest, ferns and vines, seemed ancient and majestic in my eyes.  Black, chestnut brown with white, golden and pale, they were slowly, gracefully making their way along a narrow switchbacked trail down the sandy slope to the creek below for water.  A community, yet each one clearly individual in its motion and consciousness.

In the warm air above us, buteos hovered for many minutes before flapping briefly to move on in their hunt.  On our return walk we sniffed the sweetly fragrant blossoms of the buckeye tree standing near the short overgrown bridge across the tiny creek near the trailhead.  Our noses pressed on either side of the blossom, it only made sense to kiss beneath the blooms.     

darkness

darkness,
at the hub of things,
don't let me forget you.
darkness,
womb of every thought,
don't let me shut you out
with light.
silence,
in the darkness,
our true home,
welcome me,
comfort me,
center me
in all that we are.

*    *    *

i'd like to say a brief word in prose here about darkness.  a spiritual-minded acquaintance of mine once said that my love of 'darkness' scared her.  her spiritual tradition favored light.  it seems to me now that some spiritual traditions demonize the darkness.  therefore people might get the totally wrong idea that i am somehow singing the praises of evil-doing, which is far from the case.  i do believe that our misapprehension of darkness might be at the root of more evil-doing than we care to admit, since so much of that is done in the shining, blinding light of day, in the shimmer of success, wealth and glory.  we often can't make peace with the darkness and the silence, and seek something else.  but then there's all kinds of wrongness and some of it is darkness-bred, too.  but evil-doing is not partial to either darkness or light, it makes use of both and itself operates on another principle altogether.

some of my happiest memories have to do with darkness.  the darkness of the ocean at night.  driving along the old two-lane road that skirted the beach in south jersey, with the sparse colored lights in the distance, before and behind, of tiny resort towns with their small modest boardwalk piers.  the only sound was the soft soughing of the waves, and the tiny distant lights were white, yellow, occasionally red, green or blue, trailing out into the sea. well, it was another time and place.

the darkness of my childhood garden at night, lit by stars and fireflies, ringed by the black canyon of our brick two- and three-story houses.

now, the darkness resting on the trees outside my bedroom window, their leaves lit only by the moon.

one of the things i particularly have loved about my spiritual beacon, Amma, is that while she can radiate intense decibels of light, she also has a profound darkness about her.  her skin and hair are dark, true, that's part of it.  she is mysterious and unknowable, that's another part of it.  but perhaps especially, for me, it is that her story has so much darkness in it.  she grew up along the seashore in south india, in a place without electricity until perhaps the late nineteen-seventies, and then very little of it. there was the poverty and 'ignorance' of the fishing-folk she grew up among. the 'darkness' of living in a remote, primitive, unknown little place in a swamp.  yet she grew and developed her intensely compassionate and wise spirituality in that desolate marginalized place.

for so many years, she sang devotional songs at night in the family shrine-room, and still to this day, she walks along the seashore there at night singing her spiritual songs.  the workshop of her spiritual life was the darkness of the night and of the vast and unknowable sea. 

when i visited amritapuri during its early days, i too had the chance to experience the qualities of her home-place, and i am sure that this helped me to evolve in terms of my own relationship with darkness.  but that's much more than i can write here, today.

lenape blue jay

Click on the image to enlarge and read.

Tiyas - Blue Jay
Skuk - Snake
Memekes - Butterfly
Kwekwesh - Woodpecker
Papaxes - Red-headed Woodpecker   
Tipas - Chicken
Okwes - Fox
Teme - Wolf, Coyote
Sankwe - Weasel
Malek - Wild Goose
Tamaqua - Beaver
Kawiya - Porcupine
Aiham - Golden Eagle
Nahenam - Raccoon
Pipisilukon - Bat
Amewe - Bee
Amimi - Dove, Pigeon
Makwane - Dog
Ohuntem - Owl
Skikw - Grass
Mekis - Sheep
Talala - White Cedar
Enikes - Ground Squirrel
Oxe - it is light
Xanikw - Squirrel
Kaokche - Black-Crowned Night Heron
Chikenam - Turkey
Askontpat - Mallard
Kwikwinkem - Duck
Winikwes - Mink
Niminees - Osprey
Humukwinunt - Cardinal
Opalanie - Bald Eagle
Senihele - Sparrow Hawk
Maxkalamiat - Red-Tailed Hawk
Chihopekelis - Bluebird
Mochipwes - Turkey Vulture
Wisautayas - Goldfinch
Kukhus - Owl
Kukhutet - Burrowing Owl
Pupukwesh - Bobwhite, Quail 
Chululhuwe - Screech Owl
Hinutet - Wren
Teskemus - Mockingbird
Laxawelanias - Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Wetenteis - Scarlet Tanager
Tanktiyas - Tufted Tit-Mouse
Chichikenemwikenhwis - Meadowlark
Mpiaehela - Waterfowl
Pushis - Cat
Kwuskwtis - Killdeer
Pishkw - Nighthawk
Kaxkhuwe - Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Nehenaonkes - Horse
Palakwenet - Moose
Paphaku - Pheasant
Shewanihele - Snipe
Mamethakemuwa - Mourning Dove
Chingwe - Bobcat
Tulpe - Turtle
Tahkox - Turtle
Pamputis - Snapping Turtle
Chulens - Bird
Chamemes - Rabbit
Sisilia - Buffalo
Weshumwis - Cow
Opaskw - Corn Husk
Lelempelis - Hummingbird
Chiskukus - Robin
Shkak - Skunk
Munhake - Groundhog, Woodchuck
Kweshkwetet - Pig
Wehupotkis - Dragonfly

Note: there are a few misspellings and repetitions, although I did try mightily to avoid both.  For example, I used Pupukwesh twice when I meant to use Pipakeo, peafowl.  Hope you'll enjoy the beauty of Lenape through this small sampling of vocabulary.

blended culture and sequelae

interesting conversation with a friend yesterday. Her family is from Kentucky and Ohio and has no memory of any native american ancestry, but as i shared with her my idea that because our white ancestors shared a history with the native peoples, some intermarriage and also a shared lifestyle, we have a different cultural development from what is euphemistically called the 'dominant white culture.' 

reading about native americans enlightens me as to the values and world-view of my own ancestors who were not primarily european-based in their orientation, neither were they 'indian-haters' or any other kind of 'white-supremacists.'  I still feel the person who has come closest to articulating who my ancestors were is Brewton Berry who wrote, "Almost White."  i see my ancestors as a blend of european-american and native american.  For example, we did not value autonomy as some kind of measure of maturity or character-development, but valued our kinship-based community first.  we adopted people into our families.  I remember a european-immigrant friend becoming absolutely livid that my cousins, aunts and uncles couldn't possibly be my cousins, aunts and uncles because they were not blood relatives.  Hey, we were short of blood relatives, so this seemed good to me, and i just accepted it as the way things were.  Yet something about it really offended my friend.  In her eyes, it was some sort of act of dishonesty.  As for my friend, I think maybe she and her family were confronting their own issues as immigrants, fears of no longer being 'a people.'  Nowadays they make annual trips back to the old country. 

actually, i find that the people most sympathetic with my point of view tend to be african-americans who seem to have no problem 'getting' that i have varied racial tributaries in my background, that I may look white but am not exactly.  even when i was a kid the african american kids would say things like, 'you don't seem white to me,' or 'you look white, but you don't act white.'  anyway, if i deny my native american ancestors it seems disrespectful to them.

i think part of the reason this is particularly a problem for me now is that i live in a different world from the one in which i grew up - and the older i grow, the more i realize i will be living in this world for the duration - a world in which there are a lot of upper middle-class whites, and a large number of asian-americans, hispanic-americans, african-americans, and both immigrants and foreign students (UC Berkeley) in that order.  by default it would seem that i ought to belong with the upper class whites, yet these are people whom i feel i do not understand.  so this is my problem. i'm supposed to belong to a group with whom i have nothing in common - my appearance places me there, and probably also my address.  my original family, both blood-ties and adopted, are for the most part deceased or live far away, so i am struggling to understand myself in this environment.  i feel so fortunate to have my partner who is from a similar background to mine and also from the same regional world.  we've carried our origins with us through being able to share our values, place- and people- memories, and so on.

right now i'm reading 'native american postcolonial psychology' by eduardo and bonnie duran.  they outline the importance of taking culture into consideration when working with native americans, and i find that what they write would apply to our people too.  this book is really helping me understand why i don't connect with so much in terms of the dominant expectations of behavior and thought in our world, even though I am perceived by most people to be white. 

My mother's mother's people were from the mountains of Pennsylvania, a former stronghold of native americans in our region.  I was brought up to believe they were Irish, but there is one of those 'Cherokee great-grandmother' myths floating on that side of the family that there is native blood.  However, I have only the most circumstantial evidence supporting that claim.  there is something to it, but just what, i don't know.

On the other hand, my mother's father's mother was definitely descended from the remnant of the Unalatchtigo Lenape people whose identity was watered down (and disguised) as 'Moor.'  'Moor Indians.'  Apparently the Unalatchtigo dialect was very similar to the Unami Lenape dialect that is currently being taught online out of both Oklahoma (land to which the Lenape were removed) and Pennsylvania (where a remant remained, marrying in with each other and European-Americans, accounting for why these Lenape look less Indian than the ones in Oklahoma who primarily married other native americans of varied tribes).
 
In any case, I am enjoying learning Lenape because it helps me to feel my connection to that land back there where I'm from.  I feel some kind of very deep connection to it, it's sort of like a language in itself to me, and the Lenape language feels to me like the original speech of the world - but maybe it's only like that for me and a smattering of other people, not for the whole world.  hard to believe, but possible.  *smile*

I'm also reading another excellent book called 'Yesterday's Self' about nostalgia, and how it can either hinder or help a person's adjustment to a new environment, as in the case of refugees, immigrants, exiles or people who, for whatever reason, have left an environment and culture that was very meaningful to them, for another new world that offers multiple difficulties in terms of identification and assimilation.  It's just really helpful to me to read a book that addresses issues of identity, since this is so up for me in this lifetime.

metal horse month begins

June 5 - July 6, 2009.   Metal Horse energy will be well supported by Earth Ox, making this a time of change and forward movement.  Some of us will switch direction entirely, some will make life-changing decisions, while others will simply meet with yet another fork in the road.  This is a good time to make the changes we've beeen wanting or needing to make, so take advantage of the supportive energy available now. 

Metal Horse is ambitious, often too forthright in speech, yet always compassionate.  He has a pesky tendency to create more work for himself than is necessary, so try to cull out those distractions during this month and focus on what really needs to be accomplished, especially given the major changes in your life at this time.

As with all Metal Animals, this month gives us the opportunity to seek more diligently the Will of Heaven in our lives, connect with Spirit, and make some time for prayer and contemplation.  We also have the opportunity to express well the energy of Earth Ox, thanks to the mother-child relationship between Earth and Metal, so all of those tendencies to re-trench, to cover your bases, ground yourself and sow the seeds that will increase your prosperity and abundance ought to begin to manifest results during Metal Horse month.

In addition, Metal Horse in combination with Earth Ox ought to bring forth for each of us our unique self-expression, creativity and artistry, make us feel more attractive, and create a subtone of romance in the atmosphere.  Horse and Ox make for a stable, rather than a fly-by-night, relationship, so those of you with compatible Animals may find that a connection at this time could be the start of something good.  

I usually post these on my Birthday Safari weblog, but am including it here today because it seems like very useful and important information to share with as many readers as possible.

embracing my heritage/ a mere strand of culture

when i attempt to embrace my native/moor heritage, i am embracing a lot of pain.  have i already mentioned this?  it means embracing the poverty we lived in, the second-class status among whites - read Brewton Berry's 1961 book 'Almost White' to gain more insight into those cultures and the kind of prejudice that kept them going - not to mention the constant wrangling among all the various shades of peoples with their unique stories of oppression.  a lot of this has not gone away yet. 

yes, i want to embrace all that was really so so good about my mother's values, but i recognize that there was this 'other side' to the whole experience.  it wasn't all about living peacefully, humbly, adopting people into our family circle, being good listeners and pray-ers and having internal and external visionary experiences (spiritual life), and a vivid relationship with nature and place.  there was also the fighting, the hatreds, and the jealousies that I believe my mother tried to protect me from by crafting a 'white' identity for me.  yes, my father was from denmark (from the lower classes in Denmark), but I knew nothing of 'denmark' other than my father, who saw himself as a part of the world, having lived among people of color since the age of fourteen.  i lived in the quasi-indigenous world of Germantown.  Even the Irish immigrant children there seemed to me not to belong, to be very different, and more 'white' than the rest of us. Then there was that stratum of 'our people' who seemed so comfortable there, sometimes angry, sometimes humorous and as accepting-on-the-surface as possible about the situation, and that was my world.

do i fit in anywhere?  no, not really because i look white but don't think white.  or to be more honest, i've spent most of my adult life trying to learn to 'think white' and I make a fair pass today, but feel alienated from most of that culture.  i don't usually 'fit in' anywhere, not even where I grew up either, except with a few individuals who cared for me.  i accept that (for the most part), and am appreciative and grateful towards those who can see me.  aren't we all?

on someone else's blog (2006)  who was saying how hard it is to be native american adopted by white lesbian parents and to be lesbian-transgender herself, a comment was posted to the effect that many people in america are in the same predicament of having lost their 'original' culture.  italian-americans, philipino-americans, russian-americans, german-americans, african-americans...people who have come here from various and varied backgrounds, even within a 'category' such as 'italians,' 'africans,' etc, and have created a 'sub-culture' here, yet eventually even that sub-culture is left behind for something else, and the 'original' culture feels more and more lost.

I guess, in our case, my husband's and mine, we have yet to find another culture to belong to.  we have not successfully evolved, perhaps, who knows?  we still resonate to a culture we have carried with us from our origins into the present time and place.  people meet us and think we are just the neatest white people, really different and grounded, but they don't realize we represent a particular cultural moment in time as it persists into the present. 

it's nice for me to connect, even if only electronically, with the lenape nation of pennsylvania, because i sense our 'culture' continuing on in them too.  in a way, this business of my learning lenape, and so forth, is a way of holding onto this cultural thread, this mere strand of culture, that still exists and is very real for me, yet on the verge of feeling as if slipping through my fingers.  this makes it real at least for a little while longer, perhaps for my lifetime, perhaps longer, as i know we all wish.  it allows me to become more aware of what I already know, sense and have experienced but without the right language to express it.  so for me it's very important.

I will soon be publishing another website that will deal with these ancestral, genealogical, ethnic and heritage issues exclusively, so maybe this blog can go back to being a sort of personal 'literary blog' which is how it started out.  The new blog will be called something like 'Great-grandmother Carney' or 'my delaware moor heritage.'  Not sure yet, but until then you can view the spud of it here.

Also, I recommend here the book "Native American Postcolonial Psychology" by Eduardo and Bonnie Duran, to learn more about native american people and their issues.

wm penn and lenapehocking

The Philadelphia Inquirer has just run an article on William Penn's 'Holy Experiment' aka 'The Peaceable Kingdom,' Penn's name for his vision of a harmonious European-Native American sharing of the land, which you can read here. 

I think this Pennsylvania dyad - Lenape versus Quaker - with all its karma, must have been a very powerful element in my great-grandparents' union in 1872, and perhaps also fueled the intensity of their impression on succeeding generations.  My great-grandfather, Alfred Whittingham, was a descendent of 'First Proprietor' Quakers who pushed the Indians off their land, albeit in a genteel manner. I have not been able to trace his grandfather William Whittingham past a 1759 birthdate, but I know that British Thomas Livezey, a great-grandfather of William's wife Rebecca, purchased his land directly from William Penn, and that he needed to live in town (Philadelphia) for some time before the Lenape - who must have felt most unfairly treated - had finally cleared off land they knew was theirs, but which William Penn believed had been sold to him, and which he in turn had sold to Thomas Livezey.

My great-grandmother was the descendent of Indians (and probably pirates of a Moorish caste, hence the surname Carney) who were known as Moor Indians, and according to Weslager were a remnant of southern Lenapes.  When my great-grandfather, Alfred, decided to 'do right' by Mary, he was shunned by family members, and I would guess also lost status in the community, which resulted in his no longer getting elected as county clerk.  He had lost a leg in the Civil War, but the local folks voted him in to the job of Clerk.  His wife went on record in the Pension File that he had asked her to keep their relationship under wraps until after he was elected the first time, so it is no secret that his liaison with her was unpopular.  They elected him twice more, perhaps out of pity for the poor cripple, but when he made it clear that he was going to live as husband-and-wife with the outcast, the elections ceased.  They had to survive on his pension and perhaps her needlework, which was artistic and expert, yet in the depositions, most neighbors denied knowing the couple 'well.'  They would only aver that they knew Alfred and Mary had set up housekeeping and were living as husband and wife, raising several children, over the course of more than twenty years.

People often say, well, just look at the wedding license to get genealogical information -but there was no wedding license until 1897, twenty-five years after the supposed marriage, and it was issued in Camden New Jersey, capital of government record-keeping known to be sympathetic to the Moors, and on it she was listed as Mary Whittingham. So, Mary Whittingham married Alfred Whittingham.  She wanted to keep her maiden name out of it.  The whole difficulty with her claiming the pension after his death was based on the fact that she was using an assumed name when she met my great-grandfather. She wanted her Moor Indian identity kept out of the proceedings (and out of her life), but she did mention it once in the hundred plus pages of the civil war pension file's depositions. 

Perhaps this is why I feel so driven to write about my great-grandparents, to re-hash so much of what happened, even in my own life, that relates to her presence in the family - because it was a Big Deal Once Upon A Time, although never acknowledged to me. In a certain way, I feel that Alfred Whittingham tried to bridge that gap between 'Quakers' (European invaders) and 'Indians' (in our case, 'Moors').  This couple tried to do the impossible, and faced a great deal of resistance, especially within the family.  My impression is that they were both very spiritual people, and they had that in common.  Yet he was literate and 'pedigreed' (or almost so - there is some question about the 'purity' of his great-grandmother, Lydia Roberts), while she was 'illiterate' and 'peculiar, almost as if she were foreign.'  They were both very formal, almost rigid about behavior.  If that sounds unlikely, in her case at least, I will mention that I recall Meridel Le Sueur described her Iroquois grandmother the same way.  In order to live down the stereotypes, some of these native women became more 'proper' than the 'properest.'  This part of the native-american story is not often told. 

By the time we get to my grandparents, I don't think the 'Indianness' was so much the issue - there are rumors of native blood on my grandmother's side as well, and she did have a traditional Lenape utility basket, although she could have bought that, but I don't think so - rather, the issue may have been that the elder woman, Mary, was from the southern clan of the Moor Indians, most likely Unalachtigo, rather than Unami or one of the more northern clans which were more likely to be part of Katie's family.  Even my husband's father once said, right before we were to be married, that those Unalachtigos were the ones you wanted to keep away from. (meaning me, I suppose)  So all sorts of clan rivalries may have played a role in my grandmother's sense of superiority towards her mother-in-law. 

My grandfather, Joseph, was a man who held within himself the perfect balance of 'exotic' (moor) and 'proper' (descended from Englishmen).  He was adored by his family, but tubercular, and died leaving his wife and daughter to sort out their color-issues without the benefit of his halo of respectability or the warmth and mischievous humor of his native blood, which my mother remembered so fondly. The appellation of 'Moor' implies an African origin, even though most likely it was pirate rather than slave.  There were many many antipathies among these small splintered remnants of conquered peoples mixed with the blood of the oppressor, and with each other.  I think my mother's frustration with these endless divisions were part of what prompted her to try to opt for the white-identity, especially for me.  Just to get me out of it.  It didn't entirely work, however, since I still lived in a mixed-race environment in which I was elected to play the white role, not a very popular part, and  I'm still not sure how successful my performance was. 

The point is, there still seems to be work to be done on these issues that were a part of my mother's family, and it seems in addition that I am the person who needs to do it.

denying our native american ancestry

A number of my friends have said to me things like, 'but you must be three-quarters white.'  I'm sure they, like many native americans, feel that I'm striving to be a wannabe.  But that is not it.  It isn't just a matter of blood-quantum - that's an anglo idea, a governmental standard, anyway.  (The former native people adopted outsiders all the time, for one thing.)  Most significantly for me, the great gift in all of this is that I've discovered the culture I was raised in.  The subtext.  We had a veneer, a surface appearance of white culture we aspired to live up to and embody so that the appearance would be real.  But when it all came down, we banked on a set of values that had been handed down.  I need to embrace this heritage with awareness - that's all I'm saying.

Also, I feel it is important for all Americans, whatever their ethnicity, to acknowledge more all the many beneficial and fun and pervasive influences of native culture on America in general - the debt we 'Americans' owe to native americans, the First Peoples of the Americas.  Our mainstream culture and even the subcultures such as the one I come from tend to pigeonhole the native american history of our country as one of wild acting-out, alcoholism, crudity, violence and massacres, yet that all really happened with partners who were very much equal to the task, ie the invaders of the territory.  In reality, there was also a great deal of gentleness, sharing, interchange of culture and goods, and blood - depending on the part of the country - and let's acknowledge that.

I've been reading C.A. Weslager's book "The Delaware Indians."  In the first chapter, he makes it clear how far into disrepair the branches of our tribe had fallen.  A major study was done in 1907, and Weslager's book (written around 1970) quotes it frequently.  He frequently remarks that "Today, the Delawares and their tribal affiliates, the Munsies, are divided and scattered.  The white man's blood is in their veins; they speak his language and compete in his busy world." (p.8)  Probably even more significantly, he remarks that the sacred Big Houses, built in the new places to which the Delawares had been 'relocated', have all fallen into disuse and their logs hauled off to built farms back in the 1920's and 30's. 

Instead of following the ceremonial traditions of the Big Houses, Delaware/Lenape Indians at one point were practicing Peyotism.  Weslager writes, "This is one of the final stages of acculturation, a process by which native Indians who have lost, or are losing, their tribal distinctiveness, substitute nonspecific cultural elements in an almost futile struggle to keep Indianism alive.  The substitutions may be modifications of old customs; whereas others, like the powwow, may be peculiar to Pan-Indianism." (p.15)

This, I believe, was also behind my ancestors adopting Spanish and Moorish attributes - wearing bangles, carrying small scimitars or kohl cases, and so forth.  I really do believe, at this point, that my Indian ancestors adopted elements from these cultures because they were a part of our ancestry too, due to early 'marriages' circa 1500's and 1600's between members of these two groups (Lenape and other native people of the Chesapeake Bay area with Moors who were either Spanish seamen or pirates).  People of my mother's generation and since then have been too embarassed to want to admit pirate ancestry let alone native ancestry.  They may have felt it made them special, but they were hardly announcing it from the rooftops.  It was their 'secret,' and if at times they wanted to share it, they could easily be cowed by embarassment into silence.

When I read about how much the Delaware/Lenape people sort of turned against themselves, neglecting their own spiritual traditions, letting the Big Houses fall into ruin, letting the language die out (almost) and so forth, I keep thinking we need to claim our heritage proudly and attempt to keep it alive.  So what if it is embarassing that we look white, 100% European?  Yes, it's kind of embarassing to say, 'I'm part Native American' when everyone on all sides wants to ridicule or belittle you for it, and just keep you 'white.' 

It's not like we're making this claim in a void.  We have lived a life based in another culture.  A 'sub-culture' as one of my boyfriends informed me - "You were never a part of the mainstream culture."  I thought he just meant we were poor.  But now I finally get it, I get why I am the way I am, why I often disagreed with behaviors, ideas, and approaches that were supposed to belong to my 'race' or my culture.

You know, in a way, it's just like people say about Judaism - it isn't a race, it's a religion or at the very least, a culture.  Jews can be from all parts of the world, and look like they are from very different ethnicities, but they are all Jews because they share a religion and to a lesser extent a culture (there's more than one Jewish culture, so I've heard tell).  Well, it's like that in our case too.  Yes, we are very much mixed with white/European ancestry (or African in many cases as well), and we've grown up, not on reservations or in Indian Schools, but out there in the American world, but that doesn't change who are forbears are and what they passed on to us.  

We've been through a lot too - not the nightmare of reservation/Indian School native people - but the bad dream of ethnic hiding, lying, secrets, ridicule, denial of our identity or the reactions we got when we revealed the truth - I could tell you some stories about that - trying to act 'tough' because we were supposed to be 'wild Indians,' often spurning literacy if we thought that was the 'white man's' way.  On and on.   

octavian nothing

A friend of ours, who teaches junior high Spanish, recommended this book to us.  I can hardly imagine that this book is intended for kids in that age group or even high-schoolers, not only because of the arcane language and, in some cases, concepts of the books - two volumes - but also because of the intensity, and at times, darkness of the events in the book.  People tell me, however, that the young are getting exposure to all sorts of darkness, so maybe it isn't too much for them after all.

It is seriously a good book, dealing with many things - the underpinnings and implications of 'science,' the differences among literate and illiterate cultures in early America, and I particularly like the parts in volume 1 about the Revolutionary War, and in volume 2 all the material about the community of mixed Africans aboard Lord Dunmore's vessel Crepuscule. 

This latter section reminded me so much of the reading I did when researching my African dna-implied ethnicity.  After all, my grandfather considered himself to be 'a Moor.'  I learned so much by reading Ivan van Sertima, Jose Pimienta Bey, and others about Africa.  A lot of that is present here although expressed in the desultory manner of fiction.  I prefer the straight history myself, but I'm just mentioning it because I know that he has got his data straight.

Worth reading if you're an adult.  I don't know about kids reading it.

One aside: the first person narratives by Octavian Nothing himself are very believable.  I must note one remark he makes about his mother, because I feel this was true of my mother too - the lie she bequeathed to him was his 'great inheritance.'  Too true.

colloquial english

a friend was characterizing what we used to call 'appalachian speech' (not sure if this still exists today) "colloquial."  The example we were using was 'this here' as in 'this here chair," indicating a particular chair.  Well, I have read in various sources that of the original European immigrants, including the British, some were attracted by the native american lifestyle and emulated it, often crossing over through marriage, eventually forming bands and clans of their own, and (famously) moving south and west into the Appalachians.  (Some pretty much stayed put, even when their tribes were 'removed.') Well, I found this interesting when I learned, through my study of Lenape, that there is a word/phrase that means 'this here.'  It's a way of assigning particularity and a kind of inclusiveness.  Lenape has a way of inferring these qualities grammatically, as distinct from the English tendency to use tone of voice.  I just wonder how many other examples of 'colloquialism' might be Indian uses adapted to English.

I grew up in a neighborhood full of immigrants, and I heard them making all sorts of leaps from their own languages straight into English, and getting laughed at for it too.  (It was not a kind environment; the same thing happened to the native remnant too.)  So now that I'm learning Lenape, I wonder how many Native American expressions I will discover in American English. 

I feel there are so many cultural borrowings from Native American into American culture that go unacknowledged.  First of all, many of these borrowings will be found among the descendents of white/European people (in earlier times, not always equivalent terms) and native americans, and these people, from the git-go, have been undervalued.  First called 'half-breeds,' now called 'wannabes,' they don't get much respect on either side.  As far as I can tell, most white-Indians don't want anyone to know, and I can see why.  I'll say more about that later.  First I want to emphasize that while some people may have felt ashamed of their Indianness, I think in most cases silence was meant to be protective.  It had to be kept a secret or the whole family could be stigmatized, and in small agricultural communities this would be quite a serious consequence.  After all, these people were white, too, and usually Christian and wanted to be a part of their community. 

Lots of other people have come to America and gone through a process of assimilation that has been difficult, but few seem to persist in denying their heritage the way the descendents of the early European-Native Americans do.  I include a link to another web-site that shares a family story on this theme as well. 

It would be interesting to see how very very many influences, traits and contributions to American culture have been made by Native American culture, if only we could take the blinders off and start acknowledging the truth. It will be difficult for this to happen, however, because there are plenty of white people who still want nothing to do with Indians, and plenty of Indians who want nothing to do with white people or other immigrant people.  So the rivalry would appear to continue.  I certainly can't blame native people, as their lands and resources are still at risk.  But I would prefer to take a path of friendship and learning about each other, acknowledging injuries but also acknowledging positive cultural contributions.