not native fruit

native american language idioms

i've been studying lenape, the indigenous language of my area of origin, the Delaware River Valley, as it has been preserved in various sources.  i've been studying on the lenape nation of pennsylvania's site www.lenapenation.org where there are lessons designed by Chief Shelley de Paul. 

anyway, two of the 'idioms' i've noticed and found interesting in lenape are that 1) one can say 'this squirrel' (na hanikw), or, in order to be more specific as to the exact squirrel one is referring to, 'this here squirrel' (wa she hanikw).  now doesn't this sound familiar?  isn't that the way the so-called 'mountain people' used to talk?  ("This here road, this here knife' etc -) it was considered substandard English.  i always thought people who talked like that were supposed to be 'white people,' but it turns out, according to my research into their history, that i was mistaken.  maybe that was why it was okay for them to be the object of humor by the dominant culture for so many years.  just something to consider.  

and 2) that the lenape had a way of saying 'you all' and also 'you' (but including me too).  For example, let's say a group had set out on a journey but decided the weather was so bad the group had to turn back and go home.  Someone might wish to say 'you all are going home now (but not me, i'm not going home, i'm going forward)' - this is the 'exclusive' form of 'you.'  On the other hand someone might want to say in a rhetorical way for the sake of argument, 'you are going home now, and in the subtext, i am going home now too, but for the sake of argument let's just say that 'you' are going home now.'   in other words, i'm not arguing with you here, but i want to make a point about this plan to go home.  of course, if you go, i will go with you, but first let me present my ideas about going forward instead of going back.  This is the inclusive 'you' which is more of a 'we.'  I really 'get' the difference here, and when I first discovered this grammatical form, I got really excited about it.  so here is how it looks in lenape: we are going home, nemachihena; you (excl) are going home, kemachihemo; you (incl) are going home, kemachihena.

there is nothing like studying another language to clue you in to completely other ways of thinking about things, about life. A whole other approach to life.  it is really sad that the early explorers, friars and so forth did not have a better grasp on the cultural dimensions of the new languages they were struggling to learn and to teach.  i wonder how that might have influenced the outcome of things.

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.

vanity

Vanity is supposed to be one of the characteristics of the Fire Rabbit.  From the Judeo-Christian point of view, this sounds terrible, because Vanity is one of the (evil) passions.  Perhaps this is one of the pitfalls of mixing yr metaphors, and trying to talk about Chinese Astrology and Christian Moral Theology in the same breath.  But wait a minute!  Doesn’t vanity serve a purpose?  Is all vanity harmful to others?  In one of the Christian traditions, the problem is not so much ‘the passions’ but the excess of passion that is the problem.  In that case, an excessive display of vanity might be harmful to others and even to the person all caught up in vanity.  But a certain healthy dose of vanity can be a protection, too.  Sidney Poitier seems to feel it served that purpose in his own life, and it brought him to a better place.  He needed a little ‘vanity’ in order to keep believing in himself when times were tough.  I think we all need to trust the process a little more.  One thing can transform into something else.  It doesn’t mean that the ancient ethical wisdom found, for example, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, can’t act as a guideline, but getting all excessive about it just doesn’t do.  It seems to me that moral rectitude can turn into one of those trouble-making ‘passions’ too.