Metapolitics

Saturn Devouring His Son

Artist	Francisco Goya
Year	circa 1819–1823
Type	Oil mural transferred to canvas
Dimensions	143 cm × 81 cm (56¼ in × 31⅞ in)
Location	Museo del Prado, Madrid

"Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth ofCronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that his children would overthrow him, ate each one upon their birth. It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823."

This picture always reminds me of the good people who start out in tribal politics/organizations- wanting to do god things- often accomplishing good things...  only to fall victim to their own lust for power.  Power can be utilized to enact positive change, for certain, but it can also poison people negating their own good intentions.  No good comes from going after people also trying to do good, even if they disagree with you.

Politically correct is meaningless without being tempered by empathy.

Being Enlightened doesn't mean you are not a part of the problem, 

and being problematic doesn't mean you are not a part of the solution.

So why is it ???

"The Cultural Defense of Hooty Croy On the night of July 17, 1978 dozens of police officers engaged in a gun battle with five Northern California Indians who had a single .22 rifle. More than a hundred shots were fired. Three Indians were wounded. A policeman was killed. 
After spending eight years on Death Row for first degree murder Patrick “Hooty” Croy, an Indian of Shasta-Karok descent was granted a retrial. His new defense team, headed by J. Tony Serra, argued Croy acted in self-defense and gave supporting evidence of the genocide against California Indians that has continued since the 1850’s. This strategy, known as a cultural defense, was used to explain why Croy feared for his life when he returned fire."

---http://www.shenandoahfilms.com/reasontofear-theculturaldefenseofhootycroy.aspx

So why is it no one seems to know the history of brutality in their own backyards?

The public schools teach Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, while genocide in Northwestern California remains taboo.

People watch Lakota Woman & Pow-wow Highway for entertainment without doing anything to try and reverse the systematic oppression of native peoples everywhere- be it government enforced, or capitalism imposed; the creation of a go-road, or the subjegation of a race of people via boarding schools.

Liberals read native american spiritual biographies, while simultaneously not loving the marginalized drunken indians in their own backyards (and they don't even notice the irony).

Com'mon people!  We must educate ourselves.

The Basket...

the basket used to be a metaphor 

for local indian families it was the shelter from the storm

when the visitors came 

slowly but surely

we lost our everyday weavers 

one woman at a time

today some no longer value our baskets

people pawn their grandmother's regalia 

without the blink of an eye

younger generations don't gather or weave as often as those that came before,

some don't understand the value of baskets or the value of tradition itself.

when i was in high school my mother was learning to weave

i would drive her from gathering site to gathering site 

her basket teacher used to say i was lucky to be growing up around all the women

mom used to make me crawl around on the river bar and get her roots

"Boy's have to be good for something," she'd say.

(laughter)

now, my mother's basket teacher has become my daughter's basket teacher

i'm still surrounded by women

still driving from gathering site to gathering site

still good for something-

and continuity can exist...

so when i look around the world

when i see the pots and pans that have replaced our baskets

i look to the local indian families

and hardly wonder how our community has come to be in the state its in.

we are still here, because of people like my mother...

and yet we are barely here because of the lack of value placed on things that bring us

instant gratification

store bought pots and pans do not endure

they are replaceable

they are abusable 

they hold campbell's soups, and commodity pastas

but act as a colander when we try to place our families inside

some of us have become confused

we think our family members are replaceable

are abusable

for those of us who have forgotten the importance of our baskets

its time to remember.

 

Chance

this weekend i was at the beginning 

of what could be a new beginning.

i found myself bearing witness to a woman 

with a chance in front of her.

there was a room full of people who care.

a young mother sat in the center of all her children.

surrounded by cultural items, indian wealth all carefully laid across tables...

hands, heads, backs-

the regalia danced in healing circles around a room full of song

learning

laughter

and the big cousins taught the babies how to dance themselves into existence 

as indian people

and the children had pride, showed strength

wore resilience

it took the form of abalone,

feathers...

i hope the mother gets her children back.

i hope Del Norte works with the family to facilitate a culturally appropriate plan of care.

i hope the family gets to keep teaching it's children how to dance...

Pow Wow... the best of times, the past times.

A hara-hara time ago, there waz pow-wowing in Humboldt & DelNorte counties...

It was a simpler time.  

People who never knew their local cultures came together from intertribal walks of life to 

PowWow up,

and dance

Dance

DAnCe ! ! !

there was fry bread and salmon, local vendors and people from a thousand miles away

there were elders and youngers gossiping, 

gentleman's choice, ladies choice, couples dancing, potato dancing, competition dancing

and money prizes.

i heard tell of one of our local girls

who participated in California Pow Wow Competitive dancing 

and she ran seven miles a day as a part of her stamina training

and won $4,000.00 a summer to put herself through school...

but what has happened now?

at the recent elders dinner in Eureka, as i sat listening to a young fellow educate me about Leonard Peltier and i wondered why he wasn't talking about Hooty Croy?

later, as people that didn't look ndn to me danced to guitar music waving thier taffetta scarves...

i kind of missed the PowWows,

at least then lots of our people participated

and new unions were formed 

new alliances between traditionalists and other kinds of traditionalists

between fancy dancers and jinglers

and our local religions remained private

intimate

closed to the pub...

i know, to a certain extent some of our culture has to be shared to prevent pangeaNDNism...

and some of our friends have to be from outside of our culture in order to encourage dialouge and cross-cultural education-

all i'm saying is times have changed...

and perhaps i'm missing the potato dance.

Veni, vidi... vora (Devourer of WoRLdS !!! )

"I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend--to grasp what was happening around and within me....Theory is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. It fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so and direct our theorizing towards this end."

-B. Hooks (1991, pp.1-2)

This excerpt preceded the chapter on "Theory-Based, Model-Based Community Practice (Hardcastle, Powers, 2004, pg.33)" It came right before the HOW TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER: 101 instructions to social work in practice. The opening of the chapter talked about group risistance as a difficult concept, how as social workers if we can identify a "opinion leader" we should isolate them from the group and convince them to join us/follow our lead-

so that later, the rest of the group will be more "receptive to change"...

Well, talk about fighting fire with fire-

Am I to understand that, in order to fight generations of shady happenings, broken treaties, and historical trauma in NDN country

creating secret alliances at "special meetings"

is going to help gain the trust and cooperation of the clients that I work with/for???

If the "opinion leader" pulls a Anna Mae Aquash and refuses to cooperate, then what, brute force?

Would Dickie Wilson qualify as an "opinion leader"???

How do such techniques of mental gymnastic prowess usually work, besides allowing us as social workers to consider our client bases as- not as smart as us, since we can apparently get them to "behave" however we see fit using undergraduate level phycology...

Furthermore, Indigenous people have been fighting with scientist for generations, all but screaming from the rooftops: We have a right to practice our religion, our medicines, our wholeistic ways of life and reacting to it!

Our religions were outlawed, our medicines were sprayed with pesticides, our ways were stolen as we were robbed of our children, and they were robbed of themselves...

In the aftermath of all these bad feelings,

in a book intended to educate me on Community Practice

I am reading about X and Y if E-I-E-I-OOOOO!

The reality we are facing here people is this:

1 nation divided by another nation= dead indians!!!

Same old recepie here folks.

If an NDN said:

"I came to Ceremony, desperate. I wanted to comprehend--to grasp what was happening around and within me.... Indian medicine is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. Ceremony fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so, and direct our people to this end." B. Pihnêefich (1995, Spiritual Biography, p.17)

Such an NDN would be hailed as a bullshit-o-logist, a plastic medicine man, a new ager! He would be seen as someone too fake to be a real NDN, and too published to be ignored. In short, he would be eaten alive by apples, book ndns, traditionalists, & white people alike. He would also recive fan mail, have several blondes trying to date him, he would receive invitations to speak at universities & hippy elementary schools during November (and his short, mediocre book would probably receive several pristeigous awards simply because his family survived long enough for him to become a published indian).

After receiving his awards, Mr. Pihnêefich would die penny less and alone in a tragic farm accident on his homosexual cousin's dude ranch in Arizona (alas, this would be all B. Pihnêefich was remembered for).

And yet, the same statement using "Theory" instead of ceremony is considered a heart-felt exploration of one social workers quest for the truth?

What it is, is mental masturbation

made valid

by virtue of belonging to the system

the same system that has attempted to invalidate

Indigenous Knowledge

& Indigenous Truth

for centuries.

In short, "resistance can take many forms and can be explained in many different ways (Hardcastle, Powers, 2004)." But, you know what???

Sometimes, RESISTANCE IS JUSTIFIED.

Think about it.

Let's talk about... Church !!!

"By definition, 'communities are composed of people who have relationships that are systematic, interactive, and interdependent' (Smith, 1997, p.14). Rural communities are characterized by multiple primary relationships and interdependence. Citizens are likely to have gone to school together, attended the same church and community activities, and shared the same doctors and other professional and service persons(Scales, Streeter, 2004, pg. 65)."

When it comes to rural NDN country today, we are still dealing with the aftermath of missionaries who tried to convert us to death. "Kill the Indian, save the man... (or child)."

Here in Northern California (on reservation row), from one corner to the next a person can literally count the amount of churches boasting various Anglo-faiths on two hands.

In addition to the usual suspects: baptist, jehova's witness, mormon, non-denomonational, evangelical, pentecostal, etc.; there are also several hybrid religions that emerged when Native Self-Sacrifice for the Fixing of the World hooked up with the Cross and gave birth to "all sorts of jumpin and jiving."

That is how powerful our native religion is, when the most powerful churches & country alligned themselves against our cultural selves and cultural salvation; our religions did not die.

When driven between four walls, Earth religion simply began to dance between pews!

Thus we began to stomp dance, while wearing crosses-

speak in tounges while receiving visions from god at public ceremonies that happened to be held on Sunday to the rhythm of a steel guitar-

Thus we received the gospel of snake handlers, and we handled native snakes ourselves-

Thus we bought pictures of Jesus and marveled about how much he looked like our cousin down the road, you know- the one with long hair & a beard...

Our Native religions were so strong, when it became safe to come back in their traditional forms, our dances were born again!

...and yet, the only ones who had seen the dances in their oldest & purest forms

were elders

members of a stolen generation

converts by force

by osmosis

by proximity

show me who your friends and neighbors are faithful too...

and i'll show you your religion-

well, during the time of revival it is said that the misfits of a generation embraced the indian identities that made it impossible for them to assimilate-

and so the spiritualists put down their liquid medicine and took up packing obsidian instead- and so the spiritualists took up dancing basket, again...

the young were hungry for a religion that belonged to them,

instead of religious figure heads that simple shared a similar haircut

but in a world post-christian influence

where the native religion had so strongly influenced the various forms of christianity in NDN country...

as the traditional elders taught us how to be,

their peers showed up to ceremony to socialize

and many of them were still more afraid of hell then they were of the earth not being fixed-

post boarding school, post-attempted genocide, post-traumatic-stress-DISorder...

christian values, the mean and undermining ones

the anti-love socialization practices

began to trickle into Native Religion.

And so we have reached a time of Neo-Traditionalism where Eurocentric rural thinking is tampering with Earth based ancient belief systems and the results are having troubling effects on Native community mindsets...

" 'In rural areas, more than any other geographic setting, conformity is strongly urged, if not demanded. Deviation from the 'traditional way of living' is strongly discouraged(Foster, 1997, pg.24)' This has positive & negative consequences. Well-established behavioral norms provide clear guidelines in many areas of life and reduce the incidents of deviant behaviors, such as alcohol abuse. On the other hand, those individuals who are 'different' may be stigmatized more than in diverse urban environments. Unfortunately racism, sexism, and homophobia may be tolerated in this conservative context (Smith & Mancoske, 1997). "

Add this reality to the confusion of Indigenous Wealth, and European monetary value and the result is a troubled time on the rivers. A time where how you conform is more important then how you treat others, a time where sometimes who you know is more important then how you live...

But, in the words of Bobby Dylan, "the times, they are a' chang'in."