We watched a film called 'Carolina' last night on DVD. It starred Shirley MacLaine and perhaps a few other somewhat well-known names. At first we thought we might not continue with it, but we did and we weren't disappointed. I felt I received a lot of insight into my own family's story by watching this film. I would say that the Mirabeau (pronounced Mira-boo) family would be fairly representative of the people descended from white-Indian-by-choice people - whether through adoption, marriage or just plain free-love - who always had a somewhat different set of values and ran away from becoming a part of the buttoned-down Euro-imperio culture in America, often ending up living on the margins of society.
I think when I was a kid I would not have understood who these people were. They were just some kind of funny people who lived somewhere in America, some kind of dumb-ignorant white people, right out of the comic strip 'Li'l Abner.' But that is just the kind of pejorative language the Euro-imperio-culturists imposed on this group who looked white, were at least part white, but who espoused native american values in which women controlled their own sexuality, were sexually free individuals until they chose a mate after which they were generally monogomous (sp?), animals were a part of the household, elder women kind of ran things, and so forth. Because this group became marginalized and always had to struggle, their culture can't really shine with its own light, although this film tries to give us some bright moments, at least.
In my eyes, this American subculture is a victim of projection. For example, many of the native tribes allowed their young people to experiment sexually with different partners, although after marriage that usually ceased, and in some tribes sex outside of the marriage bond was punishable rather severely.

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