A welcoming space for resistance to the forces of oppression and hegemony.
When greeting the morning
the old one wondered
should she go with the flow
or against the grain?
should she speak from her heart
or lead with her brain?
ah well, she thought
be patient and present
in the moments that appear
and choose what feels right
remembering to consider
which choices add light
on this rainy gray day in December
as the old one walked her morning mile
she experienced a moment of panic
but the creator, ancestors, and wise ones
who have always appeared
in the darkest of times
whispered in her thoughts
“breathe and take time to sip water
see the tension that built up
reflected in your tiny right pinky finger
release it
breathe
relax
keep walking
it will pass”
reminding her
that they’ve always walked with her
especially in the darkest of times
awakening the deep gratitude she carried
for all of those forces and friends
who helped her “stay the course”
in the journey of a lifetime
that brought her to this moment
grateful
even though there’s no inkling
where this journey will take her next
or even how long it will last
Peeking thorough an upper story window, I saw my beloved dog, Cookie, an 80-pound Black Norwegian Elkhound who looked more like a little black bear with some white markings. She was joyfully splashing about in a pond in the wintry scene below. After submersing herself in the water, she surfaced and bounded out to the shore, energetically shaking her head, her legs, her tail, and her thick-furred black coat.
*
*
Suddenly, the scene shifted to a warmer time. I was sitting on a blanket surrounded by a large green field. Cookie ran toward me, smiling as she often did after doing something she seemed to think was clever or mischievous, stopping just out of reach and playfully running away only to return again. Finally she came closer to snuggle and let me hug her, my fingers and face buried in her soft thick fur.
*
*
When I awoke, I took time to remember our time together before opening my tear-filled eyes, grateful for her gentle but protective presence in my life. She was with me when I wrote my dissertation in a little house in a prairie city long ago and then followed me west, then east, and then to the north to her last home.
*
*
She passed away peacefully in my arms on September 27, 2013, before what would have been her second winter here.
Now her ashes rest, buried in a garden where the mountain ash provides shade, covered by a “prayer stone” that came from the shore of the Allegheny River in northwest Pennsylvania. My father found it on the shore by the cabin where my family spent summers when I was in my teens. He gave the stone to me many years later, along with a story. He believed the image on one side was carved by the Seneca people who had once called the northern shores of the Allegheny River their home. [1] As he told the story,
“It was used when people prayed. The face carved on top of the stone shows the reality of life – both happiness and sorrow. On one side of the face the mouth droops with sadness in a frown and on the other, the mouth is upturned in a smile. And if you turn it over, you can see a thumb print on the back, worn into the rock’s surface over the centuries by the those who prayed.”
*
*
I’m not sure if my father’s story about the stone is true, but it has made many cross-country moves with me. I kept the stone, believing it represented my father’s sincere apology for his past abuse which I had forgiven long before.
True or not, we all experience rocky transitions. Maybe we need to know both joy and sorrow in order to respect and appreciate the power of loving connections with all our relations as an essential foundation for a meaningful life.
I’m grateful for Cookie’s dream-time visit in these troubling times. She helped me remember the importance of being gentle and kind especially when it’s hard. That’s when we all need it the most. It seems fitting that her final resting place is covered with a prayer stone to honor the beloved companion who graced my life with unconditional love and whose passing broke my heart open.
*
*
Resource Links:
I admit I was afraid to read the most recent issue of the OffGuardian today
fearing mindless praise for the elected president, but much to my surprise
the analyses were largely astute and elegantly supported
by compelling arguments and credible evidence
revealing some of the puppet masters pulling the strings behind the curtain
while the clowns in the spotlight entertain them by causing misery and mayhem
believing they are all powerful over those who have been taught
to worship individual material success and dressaged (“trained like horses”)
to believe they are powerless otherwise
as the puppet masters sit back and enjoy the spectacles while they patiently wait
to swoop in after disasters to enrich themselves from the spoils
I’m sharing the link here, hoping others find the information interesting and helpful: https://off-guardian.org/
Of course, oppression is nothing new. Although it may appear that it’s the kings, popes, and presidents who hold power, it was more often the puppet masters that pulled their strings in the shadows during past eras, too.
As a historical context, I’m sharing the beginning of a chapter from my manuscript, We Remember: Stories about Ojibwe Welfare.
Chapter Eight – Remembering the Assimilation and Incorporation Years
Present Day Reflections. The tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, shows how profound the impacts of unpredictable life-changing events can be for nations and the world as a whole. No one had time to prepare for the magnitude of those changes beforehand, making it extremely difficult to find a path forward that could lead to peace and healing. I realize now how much that event mirrors the historical context for Indigenous peoples and for many of the immigrants who felt forced to leave the only homes they’d known to come to the U.S. The history of Ojibwe child welfare is nested within that larger, more inclusive context.
Overview of Shifting U.S. Federal/Tribal Relationships with a Larger Context
“In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Europe spun a web about the world, and in the process, the world was remade. During those and subsequent years, various peoples, nations, and ideas would struggle within the grasp of that web… The architects of the web were themselves diverse – Portugal, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands – and they acted far more in conflict with each other than in concert… It became eventually a web of many parts: ideas, cultures, institutions. But most importantly it was a web of politics and markets, a network built to funnel fuel to the thirsty engines of mercantile and industrializing Europe. Over time it captured the human and material resources of much of the world, incorporated them in its emergent system, and bent them to its many tasks.” [132]
The lives of Indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere were forever changed in the process. [133] For thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples in the Western Hemisphere had lived as sovereign communities in their homelands. When European vanguards arrived during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and later centuries, they did so with knowledge that the Papal Declaration of 1493 called for the conquest of all non-Christian peoples and lands. [134] This “Doctrine of Discovery” claimed that the monarchies of Europe and Great Britain had a legitimate right to appropriate all on behalf of Christendom. [135] The European and British monarchies’ claims of dominion over Indigenous Peoples and their lands served to de-legitimize and replace the long-established autonomous governance structures and self-sufficiency of Native peoples. Many cultures and lives were destroyed in the process…
References
Knowledge of the past and present may not be power, but it may help us figure out how to help each other stand together in creative, life-sustaining ways.
in the wee hours of the morning
when the old one awoke
she remembered
her Ojibwe ancestors survived
centuries of oppression
while their memories, values,
and spirits survived
for the sake of all their relations
despite too many losses to recount
Why must we –
digitize,
standardize,
advertise,
popularize,
monetize,
and even
politicize,
polarize,
falsifise,
or
victimize
[1]
with tools that could be used to educate and liberate?
what happened to the goal of fostering meaningful relationships
as a forum for inspiring others’ courage and curiosity
to explore how to use our art to open possibilities
by touching hearts and opening minds
to strategically address the issues
that we are all facing today
collectively
?
many of the problems we’re facing
come from the very forces listed above
as described compellingly in the following sources:
Two movies currently posted on Netflix provide a crucial history of the role social media have played in transforming our world.
The Social Dilemma (2020), directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Davis Coombe, Vickie Curtis, and Jeff Orlowski, “…covers the negative social effects of social media and is interspersed by a dramatized narrative surrounding a family of five who are increasingly affected…” Wikipedia
The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem (2024), directed by Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini, produced by Arthur Jones, Giorgio Angelini, Andrew Fried, Dane Lilegard, and Jordan Wynn “… explores the intersection of internet culture and real-world politics.” Wikipedia
A recent best-selling book by Johann Hari tells the story of the ways new technologies have affected not only our ability to focus on tasks, but also on our relationships with others.
“I found strong evidence that our collapsing ability to pay attention is not primarily a personal failing on my part, or your part, or your kid’s part. This is being done to us all. It is being done by very powerful forces. Those forces include Big Tech, but they also go way beyond them. This is a systemic problem.” (Hari, 2022, p. 12)
“We now live in a world dominated by technologies based on B. F. Skinner’s version of how the human mind works. His insight – that you can train living creatures to desperately crave arbitrary rewards – has come to dominate our environment.” (Hari, 2022, p. 57)
Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why you can’t pay attention – and how to think deeply again. New York: Crown, 2022.
The first step to reclaim our ability to focus and pay attention to the world around us is to understand how we have been programmed and manipulated in ways that are far more effective than those Edward Bernays pioneered so many years ago.
Edward Bernays, an Austrian-American nephew of Sigmund Freud, played a crucial role in the effective development and use of public persuasion campaigns in the US to influence public opinions and behavior. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the “herd instinct” that had been described earlier by Wilfred Trotter, a British surgeon and pioneer in neurosurgery. Wikipedia
Bernays’ impacts were profound as demonstrated in Adam Curtis’s award-winning 2002 documentary for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), The Century of the Self. The first episode of this documentary tells his story…
The Century of the Self – You Tube
Graphic
it’s becoming more difficult to see the world through the eyes of a child
who could penetrate through the masks people put on to survive
during times and places where they had been wounded so deeply
that they paved over the vulnerability of tenderness and wonder
that was the wellspring and conduit for releasing their joie de vivre
*
*
Reasons for word choices
wellspring – an original and bountiful source of something.
conduit – a channel for conveying water or other fluid.
joie de vivre – (French) a feeling of great happiness and enjoyment of life.
These are my way to counterbalance the deep grief I feel knowing that the US is sending more soldiers to slaughter people in another country when there are people in their own country suffering from tragedies who could use their help rebuilding lives and communities instead.
Update October 3, 2024
Good news. At least some state governors are doing what they can to help. The local news, the Duluth News Tribune, just posted an article:
It’s amazing to look back at my past life and remember how much I loved the challenge of teaching. I’m grateful to WordPress for periodically reminding me of old posts where I’ve shared that excitement. The one I stumbled across yesterday seems to fit with these times even more than it did in January of 2018, so I’ve decided to share it again.
Exploring Our Roots
Celebrities have never inspired me. I may appreciate their prowess or art, their courage, discipline or tenacity, but I wonder why that somehow makes them more worthy of admiration than the hard-working people we meet in our everyday lives. Fame-seeking behavior is not the best attribute for those who would be leaders or role models for others. “Making it big,” “being a winner,” in a society that worships status at any cost doesn’t mean one is kind, generous, wise or compassionate. Those are the hard-won characteristics I value far more than media recognition and acclaim.
The greatest gifts in my life have come from thoughtful neighbors, teachers, friends, or random kindhearted strangers who shared their wisdom and kindness because that’s what they do. They give of themselves to others without expecting recognition or fame. I only hope that I can learn from their examples to be humbler, a little wiser, and compassionate enough to do the same. To listen, to care, to give what I can without expecting anything in return.
Yet if I were to choose a role model to admire, it wouldn’t be Steve Jobs, it would be Jane Addams. Steve Jobs made a fortune by developing technological devices that have, over time, increasingly distracted people’s attention away from their immediate surroundings. (In class yesterday, many students pulled out their iPhones or iPads to look at pictures of trees for an assignment rather than gazing out the window at the tree-filled college grounds surrounding us.) Jane Addams, on the other hand, used her inheritance to live among some of the poorest immigrants in Chicago during the tumultuous years at the turn of the nineteenth century to address serious health and social justice issues. She, and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr, wanted to be good neighbors in their new home. They wanted to help build a healthier, more inclusive sense of community.
*
“The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself” (Jane Addams).
“… the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life” (Adams, 1961, p. 76).
“Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself” (Jane Addams)
“Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world” (Jane Addams).
*
*
Addams’ work has been a beacon of hope to many. Following is a poem written by Gwendolyn Brooks, an award-winning poet and author, to honor Addams’ many contributions.
Jane Addams (by Gwendolyn Brooks)
I am Jane Addams.
I am saying to the giantless time –
to the young and yammering, to the old and corrected,
well, chiefly to the children coming home
with worried faces and questions about world survival –
“Go ahead and live your life.
You might be surprised. The world might continue.”
It was not easy for me, in the days of giants.
And now they call me a giant.
Because my capitals were Labour, Reform, Welfare,
Tenement Regulation, Juvenile Court Law (the first),
Factory Inspection, Workmen’s Compensation,
Woman Suffrage, Pacifism, Immigrant Justice.
And because
Black, brown, white, red and yellow
Heavied my hand and heart.
I shall tell you a thing about giants
that you do not wish to know;
Giants look in the mirror and see
almost nothing at all.
But they leave their houses nevertheless.
They lurch out of doors
to reach you, the other stretchers and strainers.
Erased under ermine or loud in tatters, oh,
money or mashed, you
matter.
You matter, and giants
must bother.
I bothered.
Whatever I was tells you
the world might continue. Go on with your preparations,
moving among the quick and the dead;
nourishing here, there;
pressing a hand
among the ruins
and among the
seeds of restoration.
So Speaks a giant, Jane.
Source: neenywritesagain, blogspot.com
*
In these times, US leaders whose ancestral roots originated in other “lighter-skinned” nations around the globe are spreading fear about newer “darker-skinned” immigrants, fomenting hatred and divisiveness. My colleague and I are countering those messages. We are asking our students to learn about their ancestral roots and the historical roots of the profession they wish to enter.
***
Module I – Exploring Personal Roots and the Roots of Social Welfare Macro Practice
How many of us wonder why people behave the way they do? Certainly as future social workers this is an obvious question we must answer. If we’re thoughtful, though, we quickly realize that there is no one easy answer. In a very real sense, how we think and behave depends on when and where we were born, what we experienced as a result of our inherited statuses in our particular social context, and how we have been socialized.
Understanding each client and colleague we encounter is only possible when we understand our own values and perspectives and how they were formed. Knowing more about our ancestral roots and how they have changed over time in response to changing circumstances provides a crucial foundation for beginning the ongoing journey of understanding who we are. The purpose of Module I is to help you begin to explore the importance of your ancestral roots within the context of changing historical environments.
Our work with clients is also influenced profoundly by the dominant values and beliefs embodied in the social institutions that prevail during our life time. Like the lives and circumstances of our ancestors, the values and goals of social welfare institutions have shifted throughout history. Changes in institutional values and beliefs have not always been beneficial from the perspective of social workers or the vulnerable clients they serve.
In order to assess where we are now, it is essential to consider the roots of social welfare and the shifting roles of social work in the US. The course readings for Module I describe the values and institutions adopted by the US in the early years, and the pioneering efforts of Jane Addams and the women of Hull House to address compelling human suffering, exploitation, and marginalization.
Perhaps your ancestors were among the thousands of immigrants who benefited directly from their work. Certainly all of our lives were affected in largely positive ways by the many policy and institutional reforms they inspired. It is our hope that a deeper understanding of your personal and disciplinary roots will prepare you to meet the challenges ahead in creative ways to foster healthy, inclusive communities as Addams and her colleagues did more than a century ago.
***
The work of Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, and “the women of Hull-House” is an essential foundation for understanding how to build understanding and inclusive communities. No jobs were too demeaning.
“We were asked to wash the newborn babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to ‘mind the children.’” (Addams, 1961, p. 72).
Listed below are some of the resources my colleague and I have shared with students in case you are interested in sharing them:
Jane Addams – Biographical by Nicholas Murry Butler that is posted on the Nobel Prize Laureate website in honor of the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1931.
“Publicly opposed to America’s entry into the war, Miss Addams was attacked in the press and expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution, but she found an outlet for her humanitarian impulses as an assistant to Herbert Hoover in providing relief supplies of food to the women and children of the enemy nations, the story of which she told in her book Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922).”
Chicago 1880s – 1930s: A Tale of Two Cities (5.42 minutes)
The Women of Hull House – Part 1 (12.46 minutes)
The Women of Hull House – Part 2 (15.01 minutes)
Although my colleague and I need to rely, to a large degree, on technological innovations Steve Jobs made possible, we are using those tools to enlighten rather than to divide and distract. Our integrated learning hybrid program helps students who work, care for families, and commute to access college education that might otherwise be unattainable. I just wish education was more affordable, or preferably, free. Perhaps someday it will be…
Acknowledgement:
After reading this post, my dear friend and colleague, Cynthia Donner, gave me permission to publicly thank her for being a supportive, inspiring partner in our ongoing experiments to make learning more engaging and relevant.
Afterword:
Tragically, Hull-House finally closed its doors in the spring of 2012. It was a warning sign of hard times ahead without the visionary leadership of gentle and unlikely giants like Jane Addams. (For more information, please visit the following link: World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org)
Work Cited:
Jane Addams (1961). Twenty years at Hull-House. New York, NY: Signet Classic.
hmm –
“how could that be?”
the old one wondered
as she watched herself
travel through time
during her morning meditation
to tenderly embrace her younger self
during difficult and lonely times
sometimes urging an outsider
to reach out in kindness
other times appearing
in a vision as ancestors
alone or en masse
and yet in others,
as an invisible telepathic guide
in vivid living-color dreams
*
*
it is true that she often feels
out of sync with the energy
and times that surround her
as if in times of deep focus
she’s in a protective bubble
that allows her tender heart to survive
even in heartbreakingly violent,
cruel, and genocidal times like these
as she sends out purple light
to enfold all of her relations
in love and healing energy
both those who suffer
and those who harm
for all need healing
and all deserve love and light
*
*
the transition back to “reality”
is not always easy, though …
she needs to accept the fact
that she’s just one form of life
sometimes struggling to survive
in a vast pulsing cosmos
filled with infinite creative possibilities
August 19, 2024
Cherishing the warm sunny days
of cricket-song summer time
signaling harvest is near
as the daylight wanes
preparing for the
coming golden
autumn
*
August 20, 2024
Just Wondering …
is true “beauty”
only “in the eye of the beholder”
or is it the essence of life
which sings out to those
who, at the moment,
are fully present
and pure of heart?
*
Work cited:
According to Book Browse, “Most sources attribute the first use of the modern-day expression to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton) who wrote a number of books under the pseudonym of ‘The Duchess,’ and, in her 1878 work Molly Bawn, wrote ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’”
The state of the country and world today weighs heavy on my heart. In some ways, it’s comforting to look back and feel I did what I could to make a difference during my life and career. But what the world’s future generations may inherit troubles me and it feels there is little I can do to change that.
And yet,
in my morning meditations,
(Nature)
I sense the eternal pulsing energy
of infinite creative possibilities
offering us a chance to choose
at each present moment
what we wish to manifest
(Smile)
it means I need to suspend judging myself
based on what I did yesterday
allowing myself the freedom
to make wiser, kinder choices in each new now
freed from the weight of yesterday’s baggage
(Peace)
it also gives me a chance to grant others
the same freedom from my judgement
that their past choices symbolize
the limitations of who they truly are
and who they can choose to become
(Shine)
as adults we are all able to choose
a path that leads us forward to discover
the miracles of life that bloom
even in dark times – deep listening,
kindness, and resilience
(Bloom)
We can’t look to those who are only interested in power and profit for answers to the challenges we’re facing. But we can look to children and those who live simple, loving lives. I remember the messages shared by children on neighborhood sidewalks when schools were closed at the beginning of the COVID crisis. The art was beautiful, hopeful, profound, and without an artist’s signature asking for personal recognition.
(Love)
The messages were welcoming and free for all to see. They were drawn in chalk which would wash away in the first rain, yet the light and hope they contained were preserved in the photos I took on a sunny morning on May 13, 2020, and still touch my heart with the hope of infinite creative possibilities.
How strange for the old one
to look at her home world
and discover that so many others
who came from elsewhere
are unable to see the breathtaking beauty
and abundance of life blooming
and unable to be silent and listen
to the contrapuntal symphony of life
that brings both joy and deep peace
along with the sense one is embraced
by a sense of belonging – just as one is
with innocent wonder and gratitude
Instead, the old one feels dread and deep sorrow
when witnessing the destruction
others have blindly and deafly wrought
upon the connecting protecting web of life
She fears they may not awaken before it’s too late
yet still her heart sings – she shares what she hears
hoping to touch other hearts – remembering
*
*
“Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.” [1]
Work Cited:
Although I was unable to identify the original source for the quote above from Tagore, I did find a related passage, included below, in a book I was able to download as a pdf file a while ago.
“Last night, in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stood alone and heard the
voice of the singer of eternal melodies. When I went to sleep I closed my eyes with this
last thought in my mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the dance of
life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body, keeping step with the stars.
The heart will throb, the blood will leap in the veins, and the millions of living atoms of my
body will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string that thrills at the touch of the
master.”
Rabindranath Tagore, SĀDHANĀ – The Realisation of Life (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1915), p. 80. Free book available for download from Spiritual Bee: www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/
“Ultimately, the best way to forge a lasting relationship is to create something together. Whether it is a meal, an art project, or a spontaneous dance party, when you create something with others, you build a connection that lasts a lifetime.” (The Social Synapse, by Nora Epinephrine and Sarah Tonin)
Recently, I stumbled upon the quote above, although I honestly can’t remember where. It caught my attention because it fits so perfectly with my experiences during my career. The few friendships that have been with me for a long lifetime have been with people who shared a journey creating something new together – a service like community daycare, a program like caregiver support for men who care, a state policy to improve care for tribal elders, programs and a curriculum to improve support for Native American families and children, or college courses that emphasized knowledge, self-awareness, creativity, compassion, and critical thinking.
Even though I couldn’t remember where I read the quote, I wanted to find the original source. In my search, I found a fascinating blog post by Priscilla A. Jacks instead! I’ve quoted her below.
“I’ll start out by saying that the above quote is not real in the sense that the book and the people; Nora and Sarah are not real. However, the quote is. This past weekend I saw the Blue Man group live in St. Louis. The above quote was displayed on the stage until the show started. It is a play on the words ‘serotonin’ and ‘norepinephrine’ which are both related to the brain. Serotonin is thought to contribute to feelings of happiness and norepinephrine is linked to concentration and one of its functions is to be a neurotransmitter to affect the heart.
“The quote in of itself is a great one. However, when you factor in the authors names it takes it to a whole new level. I understand it to mean that when we open ourselves up to others to create connections and bonds we not only build a relationship, we impact ourselves as well. We are moved and touched and may experience happiness.
“For me, this speaks to being more inclusive, reaching out to others that are different from me to build relationships. When I think about it, the Blue Man group is different from anyone I have ever met…. Yet they have a way of connecting to the audience and relaying such emotion without words being spoken. That is not only art, it is inspiring.
“Have a marvelous Monday.
“Priscilla”
Friendships forged in the process of caring and creating is a gift. Sometimes in life those kind of friends show up at just the right time when all the auspicious ingredients are present. Then, miracles bloom. Yet, like flowers, the momentary blooms sometimes fade, perhaps leaving seeds behind for new growth in another fortuitous time in the future. I met one of those friends, Cynthia Donner, shortly after moving here to Duluth. I’ve shared some of the stories about the classes we worked on alone and together when we both taught for a local private college. Today, I want to share something she created long before we met because I have been thinking about her insights with increasing frequency – the need for everyone to have a “safe space” and “sacred place” where they are able to develop their full potential and share their unique gifts.
At the time, Cynthia was working with youth in the discovery center of a children’s museum. The work she did involved kids whose families didn’t have much. She observed that kids had a difficult time with conflict resolution. Often they resorted to bullying or violence. It gave her an idea to create a “peace camp” for youth to help them understand why honoring “safe space” and “personal boundaries” are important for themselves and others. The kids called her “Space Lady.”
*
*
There are a number of questions she would ask youth to ponder. She asked them to think about a place where they felt totally safe and what that space and those feelings were like. She invited them to share their memories with the group if they felt comfortable doing so. Then, she gave each of them a ball of yarn and asked them to place a strand of yarn it in a circle around themselves to show the space they needed to feel safe. She asked them to think about how to enter other’s safe space respectfully and how they feel if someone enters or violates their safe space without permission. She mentioned other examples for them to think about. How many people can they sit with on a couch comfortably? What about space in school bathrooms, buses, and lunch rooms?
“Sacred space,” from Cynthia’s perspective, is deeper and can be both personal and shared. One of the images of “sacred space” from my perspective is pictured above. Cynthia added that in these times, she often finds herself grieving the loss of easy access to safe and sacred space, as well as the connections to community unity.” I told her that I am missing them, too. We realized that we’re both curious to know how many other people are dealing with similar feelings of grief and loss of safe and sacred places.
I think of people in Gaza and the refugees along the US/Mexican border, and all of the people who have lost their shelter because of war, weather, bank foreclosures, and exorbitant rents that all reflect values that place power and profit before people. Safe space should not be a luxury, and sacred space is a birth right for us all. It’s so much easier to police and control people who have no where safe to take shelter and refuge.
I leave you with a question Cynthia and I continue to ponder. How do we reclaim this universal right to safe and sacred spaces and navigate the world as it is now?
Once upon a time, Cynthia and I worked together to create a safe space for our students to learn, and a sacred space that enabled us to breathe our spirits into the courses we built together. Of course, it came to an end with the changes COVID left in its wake. But a lifetime friendship remains. And who knows what seeds might blossom in the future from our past work and continuing friendship?
Note:
Cynthia gave me permission to share this story about her amazing, grounded, creative insights with others because we both believe that knowledge is only useful if it is accessible to all who wish to learn. Heaven knows we need to learn how to assure everyone has easy access to safe and sacred spaces. And the image of “Space Lady,” originally titled “Ahma,” was created by my granddaughter many years ago during one of our picture-drawing, story-telling days. “Ahma” is the name bestowed on me by my grandson before he could pronounce the “r’s” and “g’s” in the word “grandmother.”
Here’s a link to information about “Blue Man“.
Greeting the morning
grateful for moist green gardens
and lilting birdsong
It’s important to be grateful for one’s blessings, even when they come bearing pain and inconvenience. Repeated unpredictable back injuries from minor movements each spring gardening season or the first deep snow shoveling remind me how fortunate I am to have a place to heal despite the discomfort. So many people in the world do not have this luxury.
I’ve had to discover what I can do when life has me flat on my back – when not even a captivating book will help me escape the pain. There’s only one solution I’ve found – focusing on solving intriguing puzzles that require my full attention – solving cryptograms…
The challenge is engaging and the messages are sometimes poetic and meaningful. Some don’t make much sense, and others make me laugh. I’ve shared puzzles here in the past, but this time, I won’t ask you to solve puzzles. Instead, I have shared a few of the best and cited the original source at the end of the post in case you’re intrigued and want to give cryptograms a try.
“The subject of healing and the mind stretches beyond medicine into issues about what we value in society and who we are as human beings. Healing begins with caring. So does civilization.” Bill Moyers – # 3, p 5.
“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.” Charles Kettering, # 8, p. 9.
“Everybody has the right to express what he thinks. That, of course, lets the crackpots in. But if you cannot tell a crackpot when you see one, then you ought to be taken in.” Harry S. Truman, # 13, p. 15.
“Rudeness, the absence of the sacrament of consideration, is but another mark that our time-is-money society is lacking in spirituality, if not also in its enjoyment of life.” Ed Hays, # 30, p. 21.
“Freedom has never been free… I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart and I would die, die gladly, if that would make a better life for them.” Medgar Evers, # 50, p. 29.
“Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make the instrument stretch – what make you go beyond the norm.” Cicely Tyson, # 57, p. 31.
“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.” Albert Schweitzer, # 67, p. 35.
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down briefly, may alight upon you.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, # 74, p. 37.
“It is a great error, in my opinion, to believe that a government is more firm or assured when it is supported by force, than when founded on affection.” Terence, # 79, p. 40.
“As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.” Marian Anderson, # 82, p. 40.
“If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” Chinese Proverb, # 89, p. 42.
“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.” Henry Miller, #121, p. 52.
“To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.” Milan Kundera, # 125, p. 53.
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx, # 138, p. 58.
“Ultimately there is no way to avoid the hero’s quest. It comes and finds us if we do not move out bravely to meet it.” Carol Pearson, # 161, p. 65.
“My Saturday night is like a microwave burrito. Very tough to ruin something that starts out so bad to begin with.” Michael Chabon, # 172, p. 69.
“If they really want to honor the soldiers, why don’t they let them sit in the stand and have the people march by?” Will Rogers, # 180, p. 72.
“You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.” Anthony De Mello, # 197, p. 77.
“Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your character.” Vince Gill, # 209, p. 81.
“Freedom, the ability to preserve one’s integrity against power, is the basic condition for morality.” Erich Fromm, # 235, p. 88.
“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” Emily Kimbrough, # 265, p. 96.
“Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.” Kathleen Winsor, # 275, p. 98.
“Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way.” Francis Bacon, # 276, p. 98.
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.” Rabindranath Tagore, # 287, p. 101.
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” Walt Whitman, # 318, p. 108.
And somewhere when reviewing my penciled in answers, I missed a quote that seemed particularly relevant so I googled it to find the author and source, perhaps, Henry Ward Beecher. I found an added bonus that is always important to remember when incorporating pithy quotes, a thoughtful discussion about the challenges of discovering the original author.
“Henry Ward Beecher once wrote, ‘There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots…the other, wings.’” Quote Investigator®
I hope these quotes brightened your day as they did mine during a rather long respite as flowers filled knee-deep lawns and unplanted gardens.
Source:
Kappa Puzzles. Cryptograms Special, December 2023.
the morning prayer
that was given to me
has often made me wonder
compassion,
patience,
Integrity
in the vision that brought the words
compassion was located in my mind,
patience in my heart,
and integrity in my center (sacral chakra)
this morning I suddenly understood
compassion requires distancing from emotions
patience requires reflecting to temper our passions
and integrity is the foundation for a healthy life
I am no more worthy of this gift than anyone else
it was a gift intended to help me find my path
today, I felt it was time to share the prayer
in case it could be of help to others
as we all face the challenges
of holding center in these dark chaotic times
Note:
The inspiration to share this prayer today came from a memory that made me laugh during my morning walk. Please know that my decision to share it comes from a place of deep gratitude and humility. It was meant to be shared for the sake of others like me who often need to remember why we’re here now.
The memory – It was the mid 1970s. I was a young mother who just set off to find her way with her year-and-a-half-year-old daughter on a commune. The commune had what I would call now a quasi-spiritual foundation with a leader that most people followed with unquestioning allegiance. Many competed for his attention and recognition. He responded in many ways that encouraged competition among community members to be more outwardly “spiritual” in their dedication to him and his pronouncements. Those who “succeeded” in displaying their devotion were awarded “white sweaters” in recognition of their greater spirituality. Those who did not were given maroon sweaters as an outward display of their failure and inferiority. Thankfully my invisibility on the margins spared me from receiving any sweater. Instead of competing, I watched in amusement from the margins. We stayed there for almost five years as I gradually added skills to contribute in positive ways, hoping there really was a deeper commitment to working together to build a healthier sense of sharing and community. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case. My daughter and I, with a few others, left and went on to the next adventure in Venice Beach, California, described in a previous post.
Sacral Chakra:
https://www.healthline.com/health/mind-body/sacral-chakra#what-is-it
I shall always be grateful
for the morning we spent together
at the annual spring plant sale
watching you explore possibilities
for gardens you’d like to create
in shady deer and rabbit spaces
the years of worry dissolving
in thoughts of what could be
for this fleeting moment
and sharing a delicious lunch outside
the new Palestinian restaurant
laughing as we talked
at a sidewalk table in the sun
as city traffic passed by
reminding me again, my dear daughter,
how much I adore you
*
*
I can’t remember the last time my guide visited me in a dream, but yesterday, I awoke with a memory of walking with my guide through a glade filled with young birch trees in spring, their bright green leaves just emerging. There were open spaces between the trees, giving them each room to grow to their full capacity. I told my guide that I liked the open spaces. My guide nodded and replied. “This is where your spirit name comes from. I’m sure you’re grateful to learn it doesn’t come from some dusty old professor in a university. But you need to realize that trees know how to grow. Those that huddle together know something about the future that people don’t. It’s wise to let them grow as they will. They know more than people do.”
*
*
The tree in my backyard that towers over my house. I think it’s a river birch with bark that is naturally darker.
The dream made me curious about birch trees and I found the following lovely description.
“The birch, the only tree in our latitudes with white bark, has always been considered special. It thrives in sparse forests, is one of the hardiest deciduous trees and defies the frostiest temperatures. It is revered as the bringer of light, which is also reflected in its name: The Indo-European “bhirg” stands for bright and shining. For the Celts, she was assigned to the first month of the year, the month with the least light. After all, its white colour symbolises purity as well as promise, just as only white light contains all colours. Thanks to its resistance to frost, the birch is a symbol of resistance and perseverance.” Saint Charles Apothecary (Germany)
The guide’s message leaves me much to ponder (pun intended). I believe it’s possible for both science and the magic of spirit to contribute to knowledge simultaneously, although science may never be able to understand and convey the wonder of life in a birch tree, “a bringer of light” to end winter’s darkness for a while.
*
Source:
Saint Charles Apothecary (Germany). Retrieved from: https://saint-charles.eu/en/blogs/news/fruehlingsbote-birkenbaum
The third instalment of “history matters” focuses on a review of recently published books that cover some of the central topics discussed in We Remember: Stories about Ojibwe Child Welfare, a manuscript I submitted to a potential publisher. It seems my timing for seeking a publisher presents some unique challenges. Yet as universities are being forced to shut down the chance for new generations of students to learn about the incredible diversity of cultures in the nation and in the world, it feels even more important to share resources that may open up avenues for knowledge.
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Being from a mixed cultural ancestry, I’m not a stranger to feeling as though I was born to see things through different lenses. I often found myself in roles that required me to present those in power with perspectives that were different than theirs. Like a grain of sand that slipped into the mostly closed shell of an oyster, I entered the mostly impermeable systems of bureaucracies and universities. In this metaphor of life, I found that not all oysters (or mostly-closed systems) embrace the possibility of creating pearls by accepting the discomfort of finding common ground and creating inclusion for a broader network of connections. But for me, embracing differences has made life both uncomfortable and fascinating. I’ve had a chance to face the painful past and present and discover pearls of wisdom that might help us create a kinder future, like those contained in the following books.
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New Approaches for Re-viewing Native American History
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Overview – Understanding history and historical trauma is crucial for all of us, and perhaps especially so for Tribal community members as well as the many staff who are working with tribal children, families, and communities. However, I found that some of the community members and staff at the tribal, county, and state levels who participated in the We Remember… study knew very little about Native American history or issues. Reviewing the selected works that follow raises important questions about accessibility to necessary information that people in these positions need to know. While each of the following works makes extremely valuable contributions to the scholarly literature, it is hard to imagine many people outside of a college or university setting actually taking time to read and reflect on some of these important works.
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2012 – Brenda J. Child, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe Tribe and a Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, has won many awards for her books about American Indian history. Her work, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community, provides important information about women’s contributions and leadership throughout history. [14] She also presents crucial information about family and child welfare issues, including a symbolically disturbing discussion of the destructive practice of placing Native American children in institutional “Indian” boarding schools.
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“The Indian Boarding School that opened at Mount Pleasant, Michigan, in 1893 was erected on sacred homelands, a place where the Anishinaabeg had for generations buried their dead.” [15]
.
Boarding schools like Mount Pleasant remained the preferred placement for Native American children for the next fifty years and were among the many oppressive factors that affected the stability and self-sufficiency of tribal communities. [16]
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When the boarding school era ended by the 1940s, “the ‘adoption era’ for American Indian children” began.
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“Reservation hardships and urban poverty had placed a large burden on families; the largely white employees of social service agencies sought solutions to complex problems, including mental illness, alcoholism, and family violence, by removing children not only from the troubled parents but from the Indian community – permanently.” [17]
.
She notes that the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 to end this process by protecting “the interests of Indian families and tribal nations…” [18]
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2014 – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an accomplished professor, scholar, writer, and social justice advocate who champions the rights of Indigenous peoples and women in her books and appearances. [19] Her widely acclaimed book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, presents a breathtaking panoramic view of history that exposes the foundational values and ideologies that undergirded and supported brutal colonial expansion and domination of Indigenous peoples in North America. [20] Dunbar-Ortiz argues,
.
“Everything in US history is about the land – who oversaw and cultivated it, fished its waters, maintained its wildlife; who invaded and stole it; how it became a commodity (“real estate”) broken into pieces to be bought and sold on the market.” [21]
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The evidence she presents to support this thesis is powerful and compelling, and at times, the well-documented brutality and violence Indigenous people continued to experience is truly distressing and overwhelming. She notes that media and books often emphasize a “narrative of dysfunction” when discussing Native American issues which highlights their higher rates of poverty, alcoholism, and suicide and omits the long history of colonial oppression that led to and reproduces “Indigenous poverty and social scarring…” [22]
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2019 – Jeffrey Ostler is a professor in History and Native American Studies at the University of Oregon. [23] He has authored a number of books about tribal history in the United States. His recent book, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas, covers key events from the 1750s to 1860 for tribes in what is now the eastern half of the United States. [24] The purpose of Ostler’s book was to explore the effects of U.S. expansion for tribal nations in the eastern U.S., the level of destruction tribes experienced as a result, and the degree to which tribes were able to survive and recover.
.
Ostler notes that the primary goal of the U.S. was to take the land from Indigenous inhabitants. There were three primary approaches considered: letting Natives die off from “natural” causes, begin an expensive long-term process to civilize and assimilate them, or remove them from their lands using force if need be. The U.S. chose the latter option and “unleashed a variety of destructive forces on Indian communities: war and violence, disease, material deprivation, starvation, and social stress.” [25] Ostler adds that some Indigenous people label this history “attempted genocide,” a perspective that should be taken seriously, but doing so, he points out, threatens the illusion most U.S. citizens have about “… the ultimate goodness of America.” [26]
.
“To the extent that Americans identified specific causes for Native disappearance, they focused primarily on disease and alcohol and contended that inherent racial deficiencies made Indians vulnerable to these forces.” [27]
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2022 – Michael John Witgen, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, is a professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. [28] His recent book, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America, describes the “unthinkable” history of the United States from the perspective of Indigenous peoples. [29]
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“For European colonists and American settlers, …it was entirely conceivable that they had the right and power to claim ownership of an entire continent controlled by the Indigenous peoples of North America. Contemporary American citizens continue to find the idea that this continent already belonged to someone else to be an impossibility.” [30]
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Witgen focuses on describing the dispossession and plunder of Indigenous peoples in what was referred to as “the Northwest Territory” when the U.S. took control of land formerly claimed by the British. [31] He also describes how the Ojibwe People in the western Great Lakes region attempted to shape their own history. Intermarriage between influential Ojibwe women and key business and colonial leaders helped provide a protective buffer from war and land loss for a time, but also resulted in issues surrounding the children of mixed heritage marriages.
.
Despite these efforts to buffer losses, his final assessment of colonial expansion is unapologetically honest.
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“The United States took shape through a political economy of plunder that pillaged Black lives and Indigenous land to institute a republic for white men. We live this history to this day.” [32]
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2023 – Ned Blackhawk, Western Shoshone, is a professor of history and American studies at Yale University. [33] His recent award-winning book, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, presents a valuable and refreshing approach to address the absence of Native American struggles, losses, and contributions in most history texts in the U.S. [34] He begins the book with a crucial question and observation.
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“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy? This question haunts America, as it does other settler nations.” [35]
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Blackhawk interweaves the integral historical connections between the U.S. and Indigenous peoples throughout their five centuries of shared history in an ambitious epic meant to fill in all of the missing pieces. Of particular relevance in relation to We Remember… are the post Civil War years,
.
“… the Reservation Era (1870s-1920s), when federal leaders such as U.S. Army captain Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and architect of its military-style pedagogy, sought to transform Native peoples by removing children from their families and destabilizing tribal governments.” [36]
.
Blackhawk notes that removing children from their families became a cornerstone of federal Indian policies, placing children in institutional boarding schools far from their homes during the 1870s to the 1930s. In the 1950s, Native American children were targeted by a federal adoption program that placed them in white adoptive homes, and as “states gained increased jurisdiction over tribes,” states were also granted authority to remove Native children for placement with white families in foster and adoptive homes. [37]
.
“Adoption, like termination and relocation, haunted reservations. It devastated Indian communities by taking away their most precious resource, their children.” [38]
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Although Blackhawk details these serious child welfare issues and continues his history through the end of the twentieth century, there is no mention of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. Still, his work is a powerful contribution to the historical record in so many other respects.
.
Synthesis – All of the works listed above detail the brutal colonial history Native American peoples experienced. As the authors point out, it is an important story that needs to be known by every citizen but has not been taught to many. The consequences for Tribes are obvious, yet they remain invisible to most people in the U.S. Although the authors all mention collective resistance at key points in history, most give little attention to the cultural strengths that helped tribal communities survive unimaginable violence, hardships, and loss. Child is a notable exception. She describes the crucial roles Ojibwe women played throughout history.
.
“Women worked long and hard, but they could not counter all the effects of colonialism and federal policies that undermined Ojibwe sovereignty and community life… In every journey and story of survivance, women were at the heart of the Ojibwe sense of their world.” [39]
.
She reminds us about the powerful lessons Native cultures have to teach all of us. Rupert Ross, a Euro-Canadian and Assistant Crown Attorney also shares his perspective on why it is so important to acknowledge Indigenous cultural strengths.
.
“… if modern Canadians of European heritage were willing to grant, as their ancestors should have done two and three hundred years ago, that Native American Indian values and institutions are substantive, and have the potential to add to the well-being of this country, then not only would Canadians of European ancestry benefit but everyone would gain.” [40]
.
A key state administrator who participated in the We Remember… study observed,
.
“Some of the values that tribal communities have – environmental, family, community – our nation as a whole needs to be adopting and integrating. Despite all that they have had to endure, tribes are a treasure trove. They have maintained values that the whole society can adopt.” [41]
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This is a message woven throughout the ordinary lives of many people within the Ojibwe community who shared their stories in We Remember… Their resilience and survivance are as important to remember as the long history of violence and heartbreak their ancestors endured. [42]
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Notes
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[14] Brenda J. Child, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival Of Community (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), p. xxxvii. Her previous work also includes Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families,1900-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
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[15] Child, Holding Our World, 121.
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[16] Child, Holding Our World, 128.
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[17] Child, Holding Our World, 150-151.
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[18] Child, Holding Our World, 151.
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[19] Dunbar-Ortiz was born in Texas in 1938 and spent her childhood in Oklahoma. Her father was of Scots-Irish ancestry, but her lack of transparency about her mother’s ancestry resulted in controversy. See Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxanne_Dunbar-Ortiz. Dunbar-Ortiz’s ancestry remains somewhat unclear. This is an important context given the focus of her research. After reading her book, I do not believe this biased her scholarship. If it had any effect at all, it may have added to her meticulous attention to accuracy and detail. One source reported that Dunbar-Ortiz claimed her mother’s ancestry was Cheyenne, which led to questions and controversy. She then admitted her mother was white, but changed it later to say her mother was Cherokee. America Meredith, “Issues & Commentary: Ethnic Fraud and Art,” Newsletter, Art in America, August 15, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/columns/issues-commentary-ethnic-fraud-and-art-63285/.
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[20] Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).
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[21] Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous, 1.
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[22] Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous, 211.
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[23] Jeffrey Ostler – Professor of History Emeritus in History, IRES [U.S. National Science Foundation Award?], Native American Studies at the University of Oregon. See https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/native-american-studies/all/jostler.
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[24] Jeffrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 2.
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[25] Ostler, Surviving Genocide, 380.
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[26] Ostler, Surviving Genocide, 380.
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[27] Ostler, Surviving Genocide, 378.
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[28] Michael Witgen’s work examines “… Indigenous and Early American history with a particular focus on the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi Valley. His publications include An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), and Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America, which was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in history, winner of the James A. Rawely Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the Coughey Prize from the Western History Association, and the state history prize from the Historical Society of Michigan.” Retrieved from https://history.columbia.edu/person/witgen-michael/.
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[29] Michael John Witgen, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America (Williamsburg & Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2022), 33.
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[30] Witgen, Seeing Red, 33-34.
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[31] The map of the “Northwest Territory” at the time included the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the parts of Minnesota and North Dakota east of the Mississippi River. Witgen, Seeing Red, 70.
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[32] Witgen, Seeing Red, 346.
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[33] Ned Blackhawk, Wikipedia, retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Blackhawk ; and Yale University, retrieved from https://history.yale.edu/people/ned-blackhawk.
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[34] Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023).
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[35] Blackhawk, The Rediscovery, 1.
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[36] Blackhawk, The Rediscovery, 10.
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[37] Blackhawk, The Rediscovery, 429.
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[38] Blackhawk, The Rediscovery, 432.
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[39] Child, Holding Our World, xxvii.
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[40] Rupert Ross, Dancing with a Ghost: Exploring Indian Reality (Markham: Octopus Publishing Group, 1992), ix.
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[41] Lance Smith, personal communication, as cited by Carol A. Hand, “We Remember: Stories about Ojibwe Child Welfare” (unpublished manuscript), Chapter Twenty-Three (October 29, 2001), 286-287.
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[42] The word “survivance” is something I discovered in the process of responding to this proposal requirement, although it was applied to Native Americans in 1999 by Gerald Vizenor. He explains,
“Survivance is an active presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.”
Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), vii. For more information, see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivance .
After finishing a proposal to a possible publisher for a manuscript that took me many years to contemplate and write, I can finally look up at what the world has become when my attention was elsewhere. I have to admit it’s a scary sight. It’s hard to know where to focus my efforts in productive ways.
Transitions have never been easy for me, nor has life itself been simple, either. One thing I realized this morning is that being a mother gave me courage to keep going when each venture came to a close because I had done what I could do and it was time to move on.
The memory that sparked these insights today was a dark time when my daughter was six. We were living in one room of a dilapidated converted hotel in Venice Beach with a filthy shared bathroom on the first floor that defies description. We lived there in the mid-1970s when Venice was a forgotten neglected neighborhood of Los Angeles where “two main gangs [were] active.” (1)
Of course, my partner and I cleaned up the room and painted it. But still, the cockroaches fell through a hole in the ceiling, neighbors screamed frequently during their bloody battles, and walking my daughter to and from school taught me how to walk tough, vigilant, and willing to fight to protect her if need be.
It broke my heart to see how others lived. There was little I could do to help them, but whatever I could offer was refused. So I learned to do what I could each day to make things a little better for my daughter despite all of the challenges we faced and all of the things I could not change. My job at an all-night restaurant ultimately helped us survive that year. I still fondly remember the kindness and support of the people I worked with there – the boss who was thoughtful, the waitresses who taught me how to laugh when times are hard, the bus “man” (not boy) who taught me some Spanish, and the tow-truck drivers who stopped for coffee in between jobs and gave me a ride home in the wee hours of the morning when the city buses weren’t running.
Venice was a place of refuge in a time of need. Fortunately, new opportunities opened up and we left Venice to explore other adventures. The next stop was Paul Gray’s farm in Cullom, Illinois, where my daughter completed first grade. But that’s another story, as is our reason for ending up in Venice in the first place. Maybe I will have time now to tell those stories sometime soon.
It’s easy to forget the desperate times and how fortunate we were to find a way through. But spring nature has recently reminded me that flowers coexist with cockroaches.
Perhaps we need both flowers and cockroaches to help us learn and remember both gratitude for our lives and compassion for those who may not have the luxury of looking up from the toil involved in merely surviving moment to moment in communities where cockroaches thrive. If enough of us learn to care, perhaps we can create communities where families and children thrive, instead. That will take a lot of work, but I still believe it’s a worthwhile way to spend our time.
(1) Wikipedia, “Venice, Los Angeles.” Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice,_Los_Angeles#:~:text=Venice%2C%20originally%20called%20%22Venice%20of,of%20Santa%20Monica%20in%201891.
The distance to engage with others
these days
sometimes seems increasingly unbridgeable
There was a time not too long ago
when a group could coalesce deeply
after a tribal elder opened a meeting
with a blessing in Anishinaabemowin
or when a teacher asked her class
“What did you notice today?”
You probably don’t need to imagine
how to respond when a discussion facilitator
begins a staff in-service these days by asking
“If you could only have three (3) apps on your phone,
what would they be?”
Age may affect who can easily answer and feel engaged…
I think of Johann Hari’s seminal study, Stolen Focus…
and wonder if it’s too late for us to remember
the old days
the days before social distancing
the days that forced us to fear and forget
how to really be present where we are
face-to-face with each other in this moment of time
(even in Zoom connections)
sharing the energy we all carry
through a joyful, creative, celebratory process
without the help of AI…
*
Work Cited
Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again. New York: Crown, 2022.
Photo posted to Mark Zuckerberg’s own Facebook Feed https://www.cnet.com/culture/all-the-ways-people-freaked-out-about-this-insane-zuckerberg-vr-photo/
Feeling the years traveled
in tender parts of my aging feet
while pacing my morning mile
remembering some of the journeys
alone with my thoughts and dreams
along ocean beaches and wooded mountain trails
barefooted in summer on marbled Hollywood sidewalks
in sandals on concrete and asphalt in cities
and along the margins of highways hitchhiking
but mostly my feet remember the comfort of forested paths
in the northwoods’ home of my Ojibwe ancestors
booted and snowshoed on cold winter days
where the spirit of the land, water, trees, and animal relations
taught me to be still in deep gratitude and wonder
a blessing too many may never experience
yet there are many ways to journey
lightly and lovingly through life
*
Loneliness is an illusion
when traveling by way of one’s thoughts
*
*
through memories and imagination
carrying you to other times and places
*
*
connecting you to the hearts and spirits
of all those whom you have known and
those whom you are destined yet to meet
connecting to life in all its mystery
*
*
finding a welcome haven during troubling moments
reminding you that you have never really been alone
As I reflect on life I realize
real heroes rarely play the starring role
their purpose seems neither fame nor fortune
but rather serving as a simple caring presence
helping struggling gentle souls find solace
and begin a sometimes long and lonely journey
to discover their inner sense of purpose
and develop the confidence and curiosity
to dare to dream that they can help create a kinder world
by doing likewise for others in times of need
so the circle of those who seek the possibility
of sharing a simple life of connection
grows larger, often unseen, through time
guided by compassion, wonder, joy, and wisdom
*
*In
Inspired by memories of the many kind people who have been, and are now, heroes in my life.
Source:
(1) Carol Hand, Workshop Series: Tools of the Trade for Men Who Care. New Ventures of Wisconsin, 1991.
My father, the second oldest of 7 children, with three brothers and three sisters, grew up on a farm in Kinnelon, New Jersey. I remember visiting my grandfather’s farm as a child and being surprised by the hand pump in the kitchen sink, and the toilet that would only flush if one poured a bucket of water into it.* I was amazed years later when my father told me with a note of pride that his father had worked as a master plumber on high-rise buildings in New York City. I was even more amazed to find out that my grandfather’s farm bordered Smoke Rise, one of the oldest “upscale” private gated communities in the United States. My father left school after 9th grade to get a job. I understood why when I met someone many years later who grew up in Smoke Rise. He told me my grandfather’s many-acre farm was an eyesore. The children who lived on the farm were viewed as untouchable – objects of pity and scorn, and added in his condescending tone, that Smoke Rise residents offered to pay my grandfather any price he wanted if he would sell his farm to them. My grandfather steadfastly refused.
Dancing through my morning tasks
although seemingly mundane
with gratitude and grace
setting a new way to greet the day
aware of presence and attention
*
*
Note:
Inspired by a book I’m reading: Johann Hari (2022), Stolen focus: Why you can’t pay attention – and how to think deeply again. Crown.
Listening to the sounds of the morning,
– the magical music of chimes fills the air
– laughter and chatter as children peacefully play
– church bells ringing in the distance
– traffic gently whooshing by on wet roads
– a crow’s brief call while emergency sirens pass far away
Still,
– the chimes continue
accompanying the merriment of children
as they joyfully greet the new day
May we learn to work together
to create a magical musical safe world
for all children
*
Mining issues are often in the news these days. It’s all about profit. Yet, it’s also about the unwillingness of many of us to change how we view the earth. Recently, it’s made me look at how those who oppose new mining operations still rely on the ores and minerals that are harvested from the earth, resulting in great harm to the health of the planet and all life. I’m certainly one of those who opposes mining and yet benefits in some ways from the current system, at least for the moment. Tribes have often been at the forefront as water protectors, like the tribal community where I’m enrolled, the Sokaogon Ojibwe (1). Those who are already privileged or well organized have a better chance of protecting their own backyards at the expense of poorer marginalized communities here and around the globe.
Yet those whose lives are already bleak in some parts of the world have become harvesters of a different sort. They strip abandoned buildings for copper and other things that can be sold and recycled (2, 3, 4). They remind me of the fact that innovation often comes from the margins. I wonder if the “gleaners” offer us a workable model – they certainly have a lot to teach us. With thousands of dwellings in the US alone damaged beyond repair by storms, floods, and urban or rural flight every year, it seems wise to consider retooling our mining with a different focus that would be a win-win solution on many levels.
This is not my area of expertise. Perhaps this idea has been explored by people who are far better informed. Perhaps I’m just being simplistically naive and romantic. Over the years, the Boundary Waters wilderness in northern Minnesota has been repeatedly engaged in legislative and court battles to protect a crucial watershed environment and is yet again faced by another challenge (5). I wonder if there are other ways to ensure a healthier future.
Wikipedia (6), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=363380
Changing how we harvest would be controversial and complicated. For example, the city where I live, Duluth, is engaged in lead pipe removal and replacement with copper pipes, one of the metals the proposed mine in the Boundary Waters area wants to harvest. If the mining for copper doesn’t endanger our community’s water and environment, I wonder who’s water will be poisoned to supply the necessary materials?
Of course, it’s not a shift that could solve issues overnight. It would require a profound philosophical shift. The global incentive for war to both gain new territories to exploit and reduce the population of people viewed as “undesirables” could be replaced by local efforts to clean up and rebuild communities in more sustainable ways. I imagine that type of job would feel more worthwhile and rewarding for workers and communities.
I’m just wondering if it’s possible. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Some resources to explore:
1. Tina L. Van Zile, “Crandon Mine Purchase Anniversary Celebration Held Last Saturday,” Sokaogon Chippewa Community News, November 2, 2023. https://sokaogonchippewa.com/crandon-mine-purchase-anniversary-celebration-held-last-Saturday/
2. Scott Hocking, “An Observation – Pictures of a City – Scrappers,” Detroit Research, 2004.
3. Jenni Bergal, “An Unusual Crime: Copper Wire Theft Drains State Resources and Costs Lives,” Governing.com. https://www.governing.com/archive/sl-copper-wire-thieves-states.html
4. Verichek Technical Services, SCRAP METAL RECYCLING 101 – A COMPLETE METAL SCRAPPER’S GUIDE, © 2016 Verichek Technical Services.
Scrap Metal Recycling 101 – A Complete Metal Scrapper’s Guide
5. Friends of the Boundary Waters, https://www.friends-bwca.org/sulfide-mining/
6. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Waters
How I prayed for rain during the drought days of summer.
Now that the damp dark dreary days of fall have arrived,
I miss the light and warmth.
Yet there’s wonder and beauty in every season
even though the vagaries of weather may be unpredictably
inconvenient, or as is increasingly the case, devastating.
Perhaps the weather would be kinder
if more of us took time to stop to appreciate
the incredible wonders around us and learned
to love this sacred place enough to keep it safe for all who call it home.
Even on dark days, jewel-colored leaves glow
reminding me to look up with gratitude and awe.
I am grateful to you for requesting to follow Voices from the Margins. Your interest in this now-private site inspired me to begin updating my blog and share this brief reflection to express my gratitude. I have a lot more updating to do before deciding on my future plans, so you may encounter posts marked private or changes in pages.
During the past winter, the snowiest on record here on the southwestern tip of Lake Superior, I spent most of my time editing and updating a manuscript I began writing in November of 2015 for the National Novel Writing Month challenge. I thought it was finished in the spring of 2016. I was wrong. After retiring from teaching in June of last year (2022) I was able to return to editing from the beginning once again. It was a difficult but riveting journey through time that required deep reflection and a large measure of solitude.
The manuscript, We Remember: Stories about Ojibwe Child Welfare, follows my journey of discovery from 2001 through 2003 as a researcher in an Ojibwe community. In many ways, the manuscript defies an easy fit into categories because it interweaves history as a baseline for contextualizing contemporary observations of the community through different lenses. Told in a story-teller’s voice, a younger version of the researcher, me with a new name, tells the story drawing from my fieldnotes. She reveals her struggles to bridge cultures as she shares the stories of elders and community members, both Ojibwe and Euro-American, and from staff in a wide range of agencies at tribal, county, state, and federal levels. Their diverse accounts illustrate the complex legacy of oppression and destruction that have continued to create issues for Ojibwe children, families, and communities as well as for tribes that are trying to initiate solutions which reflect cultural values, resilience, and relevance.
Thanks to the help of a dear friend who accompanied me on the editing journey from beginning to end, I finished editing/rewriting the manuscript in late April of this year. She helped me find typos and address problems with narrative flow and clarity. I’m deeply grateful for my friend’s presence and perspective.
By mid-May, when snow was still on the ground here, I finished a beginning-to-end second editing journey on my own, reading out loud through the entire manuscript – 700-plus pages. It seemed important to finish while snow was still on the ground. Storytelling is traditionally a winter activity for the Ojibwe that ends with the spring thaw.
After assembling a list of required background information, I sent the manuscript off to a potential publisher in mid-June. I haven’t heard from them yet, but while I wait, I’ll be putting together information to mail off to another potential publisher if I don’t hear from them by mid-August.
The manuscript gives voice to the issues community members shared in their own words and describes how they were attempting to address concerns as best they could with little help from outside. Many suggested hopeful possibilities for moving forward despite losses, trauma, and harm that cannot be undone. Many highlighted the legacy of a traditional tribal leader, an ogima, who died decades before my study began. Taken together, their stories offer a wide range of possible solutions for tribes and other communities to consider for improving conditions for children and families.
The study and editing journey helped me imagine a world in which leaders, like the Ojibwe ogima, measure their success by their humility, kindness, generosity, and integrity and do what they can during their lifetimes to protect the environment and improve the lives of all of the children and families for whom they shoulder a sacred responsibility. Friends who have read portions have all commented that it’s an important work. I hope I can find a publisher that agrees!
Despite my long absence from the blogging world, please know that I am grateful to all of you for your support, kindness, and patience. Your work has continued to enrich my life and taught me many things. Your request to access my blog inspired me to post something today. Sending my best wishes to all. Chi miigwetch. (“Big thank you” in the Ojibwe language, Anishinaabemowin).
A memory from the winter of editing…
Editing a manuscript about Ojibwe child welfare that I finished writing almost seven years ago has, in some ways, brought me back to the beginning of my blogging adventure. It reminded me of the first reflection I posted here. And it reminded me of the community of visionary, supportive critical thinkers who greeted me. It felt as though I was surrounded by a creative community.
Over the years, though, most of my original virtual friends left the blogosphere. A few changed focus. And I finally found myself less inclined to blog. I no longer felt like I was part of a community that reminded me of my college days or first jobs when everyone I knew was struggling to make ends meet but was still excited to share with others – to share whatever they had with others in times of need. And eager to share sorrow, joy, wonder, laughter, and ideas about how to create a kinder world. I miss that.
I didn’t realize how out-of-touch I’ve become with the world around me until my grandson’s birthday in early January. The things that interest my family, the mainstream media, and much of the blogging world, don’t feed my spirit, or my sense of curiosity and wonder. Why should they? I’ve learned it’s okay to be different. I have no need to try to make others be like me or think the way I do. We each have our own path to walk, our own lessons to learn, and our own gifts to share.
As I say my final goodbye to blogging today, I am sharing my first post. It describes a choice I made that changed my life. I remain grateful I had the courage to try something I never could have imagined.
Thank all of you who visit this blog on the margins of things. I wish you all a chance to find the path that leads you to the place you are meant to be…
***
More than two decades ago, when my daughter was a senior in high school, she received a commendation notice from her French teacher. This was not the first or last, but it was the one I noticed on a different level. I remember “seeing red” when I noticed the logo on the top, yet I immediately reflected on the message – my daughter had demonstrated excellent work. So I complemented her. Then, I contacted the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (WDPI) to explore what protections they had in place to prevent racial stereotyping of indigenous peoples. The response from WDPI changed my life.
At the time, I was working on a federal grant to address elder abuse in eight pilot counties in Wisconsin. In an effort to promote awareness about the project, I met with a reporter from a local paper. In the process of talking about the project, “Tools of the Trade for Men Who Care,” the reporter and I became friends. We were both outsiders in the largely white, Christian community. She was Jewish, and I was Ojibwe. I mentioned the appalling name and logo used by the local high school, and mentioned that I had been advised by WDPI to wait until my daughter graduated to pursue any action. But, I was told, there was a state statute, the Pupil Nondiscrimination Act that I could use as the basis of a complaint. The WPDI staff added that although the statute had never been tested for its relevance to discriminatory logos and team names, filing a complaint under this statute could set an important precedent. My friend asked me to let her know if I ever decided to pursue the issue.
The months passed and my daughter graduated and went off to a university. I stayed in touch with my friend at the newspaper as the project I was working on gained momentum. Then, I added another job. I was completing my doctorate in social welfare at the time, and began as a teaching assistant in a sociology class on diversity and discrimination. As I faced the 465 students, I realized that ethically I needed to walk the talk and address the discriminatory use of logos by public schools in the state.
My education thus far had taught me two things that appeared relevant to this issue. First, when approaching community change, it is always best to start on the assumption that others may easily agree if approached from a position of collaboration. So I drafted a letter to the superintendent of schools in the district. I asked my diplomatic and thoughtful university advisor to review the letter, and when he commented that it was well-reasoned and balanced, I sent it off. I also sent a copy to my friend at the newspaper.
Second, I expected a thoughtful diplomatic response from the superintendent of schools. If one believes the physics theory that every action results in an equal and opposite reaction, a well-reasoned letter calling attention to unintentional discrimination toward Native Americans should result in the willingness to dialogue, right? That was not the case. The response of the superintendent was to send a copy of my letter to the weekly newspaper in the local community. My friend also broke the story in a larger newspaper on a slow news day. Within a week, I was the topic of hundreds of letters to the editor in local and state newspapers, and featured on the nightly TV news. The community reaction included nasty, degrading personal attacks and threats.
After the initial media blitz, I attempted to reason with the school board at perhaps the best attended meeting in their history. There were at least 100 people in attendance, many of whom were in their 50s, 60s, or older. It struck me as sad that so many elders defined their sense of identity with a high school name and logo. (I had also gone to a school with a winning football team tradition, yet decades after graduation, my identity as a human being had nothing to do with the name or logo of the team – the “dragons.” I already had a tribe to which I belonged.)
I presented my case to the group, and angry community members responded by voicing three recurring arguments: “we’re honoring Indians” (so shut up and be honored); “other schools and national teams do it” (so it’s okay); and “we’ve always done it this way” (so the history of denigrating others and exploiting their cultures makes it acceptable to continue, even when presented with evidence that it causes lasting harm). The most interesting observation voiced by community members – “If we call our team the Red Hawks, the ASPCA will complain about discrimination.” Only one person at the meeting spoke in my defense, a minister who was new to the community. He stated that the entire scene at the meeting reminded him of the civil rights struggles in the South during the 1960s. He added that my position was reasonable, and he was aware that by saying so, he was likely to experience backlash from the community.
It was obvious from this meeting that change would not come willingly from the community. Other change strategies would be necessary if I decided to pursue the issue. So, I undertook a number of exploratory steps. Two brave teachers at the elementary school invited me to speak to 4th and 5th grade classes. My friend from the newspaper came with me, and published an article that highlighted the thoughtful and respectful comments and questions that students voiced.
I spent time perusing the library of two educators who had collected an array of materials about Indian issues and Indian education, copying articles and materials that provided a foundation for understanding the significance of stereotyping for youth, both Native and non-Native. I met with Native colleagues at the university, and they volunteered to circulate petitions to voice their strong objections to the use of American Indians as mascots and logos. And, I reviewed the WI Pupil Non-Discrimination statute, and drafted a formal complaint. I contacted a faculty member in the law school at the university, and he agreed to review the draft and give me suggestions for improvements. (Coincidentally, he had won a Supreme Court case on behalf of the Crow Tribe, asserting the Tribe’s jurisdiction over non-Natives who committed crimes on the reservation, angering powerful forces in Montana. He became a supportive ally for me throughout the legal process.)
The law I was testing required that I deliver a formal complaint to the Principal in person, which meant I had to march into the high school to his office. Two Native friends, both large Indian men, volunteered to go with me. The office was abuzz with activity when they saw us arrive to deliver the complaint. And so began the next phase of what had become both a campaign and a contest.
Because it was clear that the local community was resistant to any change, I decided to take the campaign and contest to a state level. I presented my case to the Inter-Tribal Council comprised of leaders from Wisconsin’s 11 tribes and gained their support. I contacted statewide groups that supported treaty rights and gained their endorsement as well. I put together press packets and met with editorial boards for my friend’s newspaper and the most prominent state newspaper, gaining support from both. And I approached a supportive legislator who agreed to present a bill to the WI legislature to address the use of American Indians in the 60-90 school districts in the state that were then using American Indian names and logos for their sports teams.
The local school district chose to fight the complaint, using educational monies to pay the school district’s attorney thousands of dollars to defend continuing discrimination. The school’s attorney and I were summoned to meet with the Chief Legal Counsel for the WDPI to argue the case. My friend from the law department came with me as support, although I knew that it was my role to serve as the primary speaker on the issue. As the meeting began, it was clear that the Chief Legal Counsel was leaning toward the district’s position. The district’s attorney launched into a loud tirade about how stupid my complaint was, arguing that it was not a proper legal document and my concerns were pointless and silly. I remained calm and focused, and when the attorney finally was silenced by the Chief Counsel, I quietly replied. “I know that I am not a lawyer. But I do know that I am a good writer and I have presented the issue in clear English.” At that point, a major shift occurred. The Chief Counsel looked at me and replied “I, for one, would appreciate hearing a clear explanation of the issues. Please take us through your complaint.” At that point, he became a behind-the-scenes ally. We later found ourselves as co-defendants in court when the school district filed a motion to stop my complaint from moving forward. I was able to secure representation from ACLU, but the district prevailed. The judge ruled that I was barred from moving forward with the complaint. The district celebrated by sending the school band to march in front of my house playing the national anthem and other patriotic songs.
Thankfully, the district’s victory was short-lived. The Chief Legal Counsel took the issue to the State Attorney General who ruled that although I could not move my complaint forward, the statute could be used by others to challenge the use of Indian names and mascots. And despite the court victory, the offensive cartoon that was prominently displayed on the gym wall was removed. (Police cars were parked on the street in front of my house that day.)
The outcome for the community took time, but it was the best resolution. Ten years later, the students themselves advocated to change the name and logo for their sports team – to the Red Hawks. (I doubt that the ASPCA will ever file a complaint.) And every session, my friend in the legislature continued to introduce his legislation to discourage the use of American Indians as names and mascots. It took 20 years for the bill to be enacted. In the interim, he placed a state map with black pins depicting districts with Indian logos and pink pins to denote districts that voluntarily changed to other names and logos as a result of increasing awareness.
As I look back on those years, the most important thing I remember is something I learned from the two educators who shared their library. After I read and copied books and articles for 3 days, they asked me what I had learned. My response was simple. “I have learned that this has been an ongoing issue throughout U.S. history. I am but the voice of the present, and I still have so much to learn. Others who are more knowledgeable than I am will need to follow.”
Many hundreds of friends and allies helped me raise awareness before, during, and after my involvement. In some settings, my voice was perhaps the most effective, and sometimes, others were the most effective advocates. I learned that it is not who serves as the lead spokesperson that matters. What matters is contributing what one can in the ongoing challenge of creating a community, state, nation, and world that promotes inclusion and respect for differences.
Christmas morning 2022 dawned bright and cold
bringing back memories of times in the past
and then I read the news today
about a world that still has so much to learn
reminding me of my grandson
and the song his paternal grandmother
shared on the day of his birth
that I included in an old post (now revised) from five years ago
*
My Grandchildren – Summer 2008
***
***
My grandson and his father, February 1999
*
Carlos Pavon Flores, 42, with 1-year-old daughter Esther, stands outside a shelter that turned them away for not having bus tickets in downtown El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, December 14. Adriana Zehbrauskas for CNN. Retrieved from In pictures: El Paso sees surge in border crossings, CNN
***
We Are (by Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell)
For each child that’s born a morning star rises
and sings to the universe who we are
We are our grandmother’s prayer
We are our grandfather’s dreamings
We are the breath of the ancestors
We are the spirit of God.
We are
Mothers of courage
Fathers of time
Daughters of dust
Sons of great vision
We are …
Sisters of Mercy
Brothers of Love
Lovers of Life and
The Builders of Nations
We are Seekers of Truth
Keepers of Faith
Makers of Peace and
The Wisdom of Ages
We are our grandmother’s prayer
We are our grandfather’s dreamings
We are the breath of the ancestors
We are the spirit of God
We are ONE.
***
Sending blessings of peace to all
We Are – Sweet Honey in the Rock
At this point in my life, I greet each morning with gratitude for all of the gifts I’ve been given and for the ancestors and wise beings who have been a guiding and protective presence. I ask only that they help me hold center with compassion, patience, and integrity in good times and bad as I walk my path, perhaps chosen consciously in a previous lifetime. I try to follow the wisdom conveyed by the Ojibwe principle of “doing things when the time is right,” and I hope that this is the right time to share where I am in my manuscript editing journey.
This morning I awoke with a deep but gentle sorrow and tears in my eyes thinking about what my ancestors endured, and what too many people around the globe are experiencing now because we have failed to learn from the past.
In a few days, November 24, 2022, people in the United States will be celebrating Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday meant to honor the sharing of food and companionship between colonists fleeing from oppression in England and the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (now referred to as North America). But a mere three centuries after that romanticized celebration of unity, the following excepts describe the consequences of hospitality for those who helped the new arrivals survive.
This post will not be an easy read for those with tender hearts. It’s drawn from the chapter that stopped my editing process eight years ago. I often say I stopped because I was too busy teaching. That’s partly true. Mostly I stopped because it was too difficult for me to set aside my deep sorrow each week in order to be fully present for students. Yet my muse tells me it’s time to move on, and time to share these excepts with others.
***
Although centuries of colonial domination affected all aspects of the lives of Native American people, the effects were, in Peter’s* language, “off the radar.” Few outside of tribal communities knew about the dire conditions Indigenous people endured before 1928. That was the year the “Miriam Report” was published, 891 pages in length, documenting the social and economic conditions of tribes. The report,
… revealed an existence filled with poverty, suffering, and discontent. Indians suffered from disease and malnutrition, had a life expectancy of only forty-four years, and had an average annual per capita income of only one hundred dollars. The report reached two basic conclusions: (1) The BIA ** [Bureau of Indian Affairs] was inadequately meeting the needs of Indians, especially in the areas of health and education; and (2) Indians were being excluded from the management of their own affairs. (O’Brien, 1989, pp. 80-81)
The conditions for children and families documented in the Miriam Report have direct links to the present issues that Carrie* [the tribal child welfare coordinator], Peter* [a State regional field representative who worked with countries and tribes], and Karen* [the counselor for the tribal alcohol and drug addiction treatment program] described in their interviews. Given the crucial importance of the issues the Miriam Report researchers covered, excerpts from the report follow. The excepts also illustrate how prevailing beliefs and perspectives at the time the study was conducted influence the interpretations and analyses reported by otherwise highly qualified and objective researchers.
***
Family and Community Development. The Indian Service has not appreciated the fundamental importance of family life and community activities in the social and economic development of a people. The long continued policy of removing children from the home and placing them for years in boarding school largely disintegrates the family and interferes with developing normal family life. The belief has apparently been that the shortest road to civilization is to take children away from their parents and insofar as possible to stamp out the old Indian life. The Indian community activities particularly have often been opposed if not suppressed. The fact has been appreciated that both the family life and the community activities have many objectionable features, but the action taken has often been the radical one of attempting to destroy rather than the educational process of gradual modification and development” (p. 15) …
Strains Imposed by the System of Education. Indian families are subjected to peculiar strains growing out of their relation to the government. Some of the projects of the government, notably the appointment of field workers to deal with home conditions, have tended to strengthen family bonds. But on the whole government practices may be said to have operated against the development of wholesome family life.
Chief of these is the long continued policy of educating the children in boarding schools far from their homes, taking them from their parents when small and keeping them away until parents and children become strangers to each other. The theory was once held that the problem of the race could be solved by educating the children, not to return to the reservation, but to be absorbed one by one into the white population. This plan involved the permanent breaking of family ties, but provided the for the children a substitute for their own family life by placing them in good homes of whites for vacations and sometimes longer, the so-called “outing system.” The plan failed, partly because it was weak on the vocational side, but largely by reason of its artificiality. Nevertheless, this worst of its features still persists, and many children today have not seen their parents or brothers and sisters in years… (pp. 573-574) …
The real tragedy, however, is not loss by death but the disruption of family life and its effect on the character of both parents and children. The personal care of helpless offspring is the natural expression of affection no less among Indians than among parents of other races. No observer can doubt that Indian parents are very fond of their children, and though the care they give may be from the point of view of white parents far from adequate, yet the emotional needs of both parents and children are satisfied… (p. 575)…
Effects of the System upon Children. The effects of early depravation of family life are apparent in the children. They too are the victims of an arrested development. The experience of the white race abundantly demonstrates that institutional children, even with the best of care, have greater health and personality difficulties than children in families. Affection of an intimate sort is essential to development. Recognizing this fact the better societies for the care of dependent white children have for many years been placing their wards out in families as rapidly as the very delicate adjustment involved can be made. Even in institutions for the care of dependent white children the children are there because they have no homes or because normal home life is impossible, and very few are taken forcibly from their parents. But many children are in Indian schools as the result of coercion of one kind or another and they suffer under a sense of separation from home and parents. Since initiative and independence are not developed under the rigid routine of the school, the whole system increases the child’s sentiment for dependence on parental decisions and children in their teens go back to their mother with a six-year old’s feeling for her.
Under normal conditions the experience of family life is of itself a preparation for future parenthood. Without this experience of the parent-child relation throughout the developmental period Indian young people must suffer under a serious disability in their relations with their own children. No kind of formal training can possibly make up for this lack, nor can the outing system when the child is half grown supplement what he has missed in his own family and with his own race in earlier years. (pp. 576-577).
***
This is just an except from one chapter of a rather long manuscript to try to show a small part of the legacy of loss that has continued to affect each generation of Native Americans in the US, as it did for me this morning and many other times in my life. It’s a deep, often unhealed, wound survivors of genocide and colonial domination carry and pass on to the next generations.
I don’t have the answers for resolving these issues. Perhaps I will have a few ideas when I finish editing my manuscript. But for now, I offer this post in hopes that it will inspire others to be both grateful for the gifts they have been given and compassionate for those who suffer.
*
* Note that these are not people’s real names.
** Here’s a link for more information about the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA): https://www.bia.gov/bia
Works Cited
Sharon O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), pp. 80-81.
Lewis Meriam and Others, The Problem of Indian Administration. Report of a Survey Made at the Request of Honorable Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior, and Submitted to Him, February 21, 1928. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1928).
Acknowledgement
In loving memory of my mother, a gentle and gifted healer, who was born on an Ojibwe reservation on March 1, 1921, and died on October 10, 2010, just before what would have been her 89th Thanksgiving.
My mother, age 7, before removal to a Catholic-run Indian Boarding School
My mother on her Confirmation Day. It wasn’t until her later years during the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease that she told me how much she hated the Catholic Church because of what they did to her. She never shared those stories.
My mother at home after Boarding School. She was the first Ojibwe from her reservation to attend the local public high school in the nearby Euro-American border town and, despite discrimination, or perhaps because of it, graduated as salutatorian of her class.
Retirement from the tribal clinic she helped establish on her reservation.
Recently, a blogging friend “liked” this old post. It had been long forgotten. When I read it, it made me laugh just as it had when I wrote it years ago.
I hope it makes you laugh, too.
I think we all need more laughter these days.
***
How I wish I had seen the movie, The Horse Whisperer, before I met Amos! Unlike Sara, I didn’t grow up on a farm surrounded by horses and hogs. I didn’t ride until I was in high school and it was an experience I haven’t been eager to repeat. I honestly can’t remember exactly why I agreed to go riding with classmates on a field trip to a national forest. But here I was, a tiny teenager assigned to Amos, the smallest horse of the group that we would ride along the forest trails. Amos and I were to be first in line behind our guide because Amos had a problem – he bit other horses.
Even though Amos was small compared to the others, he was big and intimidating from my frame of reference, and I’m certain he could sense my fear. But I climbed on his back and off we all went. Things were fine for the first few minutes until we came to a small pond. Amos decided he was going for a drink and left the line to wade into the pond and have a sip. And there he stayed. The guide told me to pull on his reins and gently kick his sides. I did and Amos sat. And sat. And sat. He wouldn’t budge. And the rest of the group gave up on us and rode away! And Amos sat. Finally, a boy scout who was hiking through the forest saw our predicament and took pity on us. He waded into the pond, reached up and took Amos’s reins in his hand, and led us out. I was so grateful. I have no idea how long Amos would have remained otherwise.
When we reached the shore, Amos immediately took off at a gallop to catch up to the rest of the horses, with me clinging tightly to the horn on the western saddle. I’m sure it was a funny sight! (It still makes me laugh when I think of it.) We did catch up and I learned why he was originally first in line. As he passed the other horses, he bit each one in turn as he assumed the lead position again. We made it to the end of our trail with no more stops, but I wasn’t eager to repeat this experience.
It took a special incentive. I didn’t ride again until I was faced with the Physical Education requirement for college. (I stopped playing competitive sports when I was in seventh grade – after being deliberated clubbed in the head by someone on the competing team during a field hockey game. I guess I stole the hockey ball one too many times and outran the other team toward the goal. For me, it wasn’t about beating others. It was about challenging myself.) The other options for PE, modern dance and bowling, were also rather funny. Too uncoordinated to dance, and with wrists that were too small to remain unsprained with the weight of even the lightest bowling ball, the only other choice was horseback riding. It’s when I met Buster.
Like Amos, Buster wanted to be the boss. He was also a biter, yet we did fine on the days when we rode in the indoor arena. But the days on the trail were a different story. Buster was a master at trying to dislodge me from his back, and this time, I was using an English saddle without a horn to cling too. I only had my legs to wrap ever-more tightly about his middle. He could “trip” with his front foot, lurching forward – causing me to lose my balance, and he would rub against tree trucks to try to force me off his back. Yet we both survived the ordeal. While my peers learned to jump, I was content to know that I could simply pass my semesters by staying in the saddle.
It would be decades before I would climb on another horse. And this time I have photos to illustrate my daughter’s amusement as she witnessed my lack of skill riding horses. We were in Maui in September of 1998. My daughter, Jnana, is far more courageous and adventurous than I. Bicycling down the steep winding road that encircled Haleakalā, the volcano in the center, was not my idea of fun. Instead, we compromised and decided to go horseback riding midway up the mountainous heights. I’m embarrassed to admit I only remember the name of my daughter’s horse, Brandy. My horse’s name began with a “C.” It could have been named Calypso (like Sara’s horse, whose story brought back these memories).
We arrived at the riding center mid-morning, after the mountain mists had lifted. Our horses were saddled and waiting. Mine, Ms. C, appeared to be dozing, eyes closed with her head resting peacefully on the split-rail fence. Our guide was of Portuguese ancestry. He told us a little bit about the history of ranching in Maui and the paniolo – the “ new breed of Hawaiian cowboy” that emerged on the ranches that dotted the slopes of Haleakalā.
I must admit I was nervous as Ms. C walked the narrow rocky ridges, or even down gentle rocky slopes. But it was a lovely way to explore and learn about another land and other histories and cultures. I’m grateful my daughter and I shared this adventure, although I haven’t ridden a horse since that time. I doubt that I will again, even though Ms. C was gentle and sure-footed, a welcome change from Amos and Buster.
Photo Credits: Haleakalā, Maui – 1998
***
November 8, 2022 – voting day
for the most contentious race I’ve witnessed
My thoughts are with you, my grandchildren
*
Dear grandson, now the age I was
when your mother was born
you’ve survived the isolation of Covid lockdown,
the sorrow of losses – health, family, friends,
and the angst of peer pressure and teen hormones
*
Dear granddaughter, sweet Little Rose,
now taller than me and fearless as you learn how to drive
stoking my fears that you’ll drive like I once did –
something I’m unlikely to ever tell you
hoping you’ll make wiser and safer choices
*
The only armor I can offer you both
is a simple phrase – SENDING LOVE
dear grandson, dear granddaughter
I voted for candidates I sincerely hope
will prove to be courageous and trustworthy
when it comes to crafting a future world
where your mother and both of you
will find kindness, love, laughter,
and a sense of fulfillment
during long lives well-lived
*
*
What I learned from my research changed me
Everyone I met had a story to tell
but few if any had someone to listen
deeply, intently, without judging
to the fascinating kaleidoscope
of differing experiences and views
And it led me to wonder –
Would the world be different if more people learned to be listeners?
Just curious …
*
I realized, too, that a researcher’s role is to listen
but now, as a writer, I have many stories to share
including my own as a seeker, listener, and recorder –
a sacred re-search for a deeper understanding of our collective journey
and I’m just curious …
Who will listen to the stories – deeply, intently, without judging?
A humble weathered hollyhock – a captured moment in the life of a simply beautiful resilient living being
It’s been almost two months since my last post, and perhaps this will be my last. It’s too soon to tell. I still have to finalize part one (11 chapters), with 3 more parts to follow (51 chapters in all). I feel a sense of urgency to finish. (I even had a dream about a future where a group of people were sitting around a campfire, their main source of light, reading a battered copy of my book. They were looking for ideas about how to rebuild a sense of community. Yeah, sure, I thought when I woke. It made me laugh…)
The world has changed in ways I could never have imagined in the eight and a half years I’ve been blogging. There are still moments of peace and beauty, kindness, and everyday acts of heroism but they’ve not been enough to stem the tide of cruelty, stupidity, and unreason that now dominate almost every social institution.
That’s why I have decided to finally retire from teaching. There’s no longer any wiggle room for me to challenge the oppressive status quo in dumbed-down standardized curricula. Academic institutions have increasingly become solely concerned with their survival, competing to maximize the number of students they can attract while cutting faculty and sacrificing the quality of the education they provide. It’s especially tragic when education fails to take a stand as libraries and school boards are under attack to make sure future generations have no opportunities to learn to think critically, feed their curiosity to learn more, or express their joy and wonder through creative arts.
Now, I prefer to garden,
A gift from squirrel gardeners
*
Potentilla, cone flowers (Echinacea), and nine bark in bloom
*
Carrots, tomatoes, and chard nearing harvest
*
to spend time with family,
My Nephew and his twin sons (3 ½), my granddaughter, and daughter
at the Park Point Beach on Lake Superior
*
Meeting my grandnephews for the first time as their dad introduces us.
*
My nephew and his sons at lunch – Sam (blue shirt) and Ben (black shirt)
*
A family gathering – my granddaughter, grandson, daughter, nephew, grandnephews, and me
*
to dog sit,
Sweet Cinnamon spent a few days with me while my daughter was traveling
*
and to work with two dear friends who are helping as readers for the book manuscript I’m editing, We Remember: Stories about Ojibwe Child Welfare. It’s based on a critical ethnographic study I conducted two decades ago. I had to put it aside many times for too many years in order to teach.
In the process of answering my readers’ questions about things I assumed everyone knows, I find myself having to explore issues more deeply and completely so I can explain them with greater clarity. The process has brought us closer, even though one friend lives in Oregon and the other in Alabama. They both feel the manuscript is compelling and still relevant today, a fact I find depressing. Yet that makes it all the more important for me to finish and share it while I can.
In the process of preparing the manuscript for possible publication, I realized that some of my older blog posts need to be kept private. They’re posts about the study findings. Few people have viewed those posts in recent years anyway. It will take some tedious time to change them from public to private, though. There are at least 30 of them!
I am deeply grateful for the blogging friends I had when the essays were posted. They provided incredibly helpful and supportive feedback, much like my manuscript readers now.
I am also grateful for the newer blogging friends who continue to share inspiration, knowledge, beauty, and kindness. I will try to keep up with your blogs even though I doubt I will post much in the future.
An aside, I’ve had to block comments on all posts older than 45 days because of a barrage of spammers this year – more than 100 a day on some days. The only open space left for comments on my blog will be this post for a short while and on the contact page. Some days, only one spammer finds it…
I can’t make any promises about my ability to respond to comments in a timely fashion, though. I need to stay in my own culture and “language” to be able to keep editing.
Sending my gratitude and best wishes to all. 💜
This morning I open my heart to gratitude
and find I’m not disappointed
witnessing impossibly tiny late bloomers
and those still valiantly emerging
despite too many obstacles to name
https://youtube.com/shorts/ABW4dAqXRkc?
life in living color
despite the illusion of meaningful connections
and forces of darkness
that threaten all of us these days
helping me remember the gifts
that come from being present
Acknowledgement:
Inspired by morning observations and Maria Popova’s depth and eloquence:
“Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? …” The Marginalian
One can’t predict air quality on the southwest side of the city where I live. It depends on the time of day, which way the wind blows, and whether residents decide to build bonfires that smolder during times of thermal inversion when the smoke and smell will continue to linger in stagnant air. Obviously, that creates challenges for those of us who rely on open windows and fans in the summer rather than on air conditioners. But last night after a couple uncharacteristically hot days, the air was clear and sweet. The intake/exhaust window fan worked. But it needs to be removed in the morning before the heat of the day arrives.
This morning, the process of removing the fan provided a vantage point to witness a wee drama unfolding. The raucous calls of crows filled the air. Three crows came into view and landed on the power lines, crying out excitedly as if in warning just as a rather large skunk came waddling across my neighbor’s backyard. The crows seemed to be chasing and terrorizing the skunk, usually a nocturnal animal, perhaps a mother trying to find food for a hungry brood. She briefly disappeared amid the tall weeds behind a shed, and emerged by the left back corner and began digging furiously. She was able to find momentary safety and the crows took flight and quickly disappeared.
The shed sanctuary has been home to skunks and rabbits in past years so I’ve learned to be attentive when venturing out at night, especially when my little dog, Pinto, was with me. His brief encounter with a baby skunk during his first spring here taught me how important that was. Fortunately, the baby skunk hadn’t yet learned how to aim his/her spray but it was still a very stinky adventure.
This may be the last post on my blog for a while. These days, it’s hard to find time to blog, as the following post I began a few days ago explains. Today, I decided to share these brief reflections along with a post from eight years ago. Although most of the links no longer work, the old post still seems relevant now. I truly wish things had changed for the better since then. We haven’t made much progress coming together as communities to work collectively as an inclusive team on the crucial issues we all face. I’m not sure what to do to help that happen.
Mid-June, and the garden plants are still struggling to emerge. May was cold and rainy, and early June was dry. I had to replant bean and cucumber seeds, and I may have to do the same for chard. The weeds have been hardy and prolific, though, covering every inch of soil. But still, I am grateful for the gift of a piece of land once peopled by my Anishinaabe ancestors, and before them, the Dakota. I’m grateful for the chance to try to try to revitalize the soil and provide a safe haven for my plant and animal relations. It’s not an easy undertaking these days when too few seem to understand the responsibility we all carry to be wise stewards for the sake of future generations.
But today, it’s too wet to garden or mow an overgrown lawn.
I need to transition cultures anyway to work on a manuscript I began in 2015 that’s still waiting to be edited from beginning to end. I’ve edited the beginning chapters at least 30 times but I want to revisit the beginning again. I’m not the same person featured in the most recent draft of the introduction. And authentic ethnographic work needs to include an honest accounting of who the author is in order to help readers discern the trustworthiness of what is being presented as “truth,” at least as seen through the author’s lenses.
A few days ago as I was beginning my transition, I noticed something that symbolized differences in cultures. Two plants still constrained in planters that are slowly dying. It hurts me whenever I notice living beings struggling – earth, lakes and rivers, flora, fauna, and humans.
The effects of being unaware of other beings and the metaphor of constrained roots inspired me to venture into my file cabinets to find a paper I wrote years ago. It was about my commune experiences for a course I was taking on organizational theory. I briefly contemplated sharing the paper. It describes how changing positions within an organization, the commune, affected what I saw and understood about being true to one’s roots. It was a descriptive assessment of the impact of power and positionality on peoples’ ability to view “reality” and their consequent responsibility to be aware of how their behavioral choices affect others’ wellbeing.
***
“Is it not right, then, that education should help you, as you grow up, to perceive the importance of bringing about a world in which there is no conflict either within or without, a world in which you are not in conflict with your neighbor or with a group of people because the drive of ambition, which is the desire for position and power, has utterly ceased? And is it possible to create a society in which there will be no inward or outward conflict?”
(Krishnamurti, 1964, Think on these things, p. 52)
*
Living through the polar vortex forced me to question the wisdom of continuing to try to survive on my own. Of course, I am not totally alone. I have supportive friends and family, but this past winter they all had their own challenges to attend to, their own leaking roofs and freezing pipes, icy roads to travel to get places not served by public transportation, and never-ending snow to shovel despite artic temperatures. It has led me to the realization that living the way we do in this neighborhood isn’t wise or sustainable. Each family has its own separate dwelling, heating system, and needs to attend to all of the chores associated with survival on their own.
As much as I would like to head off to an intentional community, I am skeptical. I already tried that, twice. I am still laughing about the second attempt. A group of successful, smart people coalesced to prepare for the end of the world in a small farming community in central Illinois. I wasn’t there because of the nonsense the charismatic leader espoused. I was there because it made sense to share the work of growing food, contributing one’s unique skills to a collective, and reducing one’s carbon footprint on the environment. But the need many people have to follow leaders has never ceased to baffle me. Taken to extremes it is hilariously ridiculous or frighteningly dangerous.
Photo Credit: Carnival Swing – miss-thrifty.co.uk
When I think of collective living, I think of people in my second alternative community experience. The leader organized a community-wide event for members — a chance to raise their IQs, for a moderate-sized fee of course. One of the members offered his large home as the training venue, and many attended the evening event. Attendees were greeted at the door and were given small brown paper bags as they entered. At the appointed time, the lights were dimmed and attendees were told to strip down to their underwear and breathe in and out of the paper bag for 10 minutes. They were promised that this exercise would improve their IQs – it would make them smarter!
(Then, I didn’t have internet tools to research the scientific validity of these claims, but in writing this essay many years later, it seemed wise to give it a try. Breathing into a paper bag for 5 minutes does seem to be a credible treatment for anxiety-triggered panic attacks – it helps rebalance elevated oxygen levels from over-breathing during attacks by increasing CO2 levels in the blood stream. People often feel immediate relief. So in this ingenious money-maker, creating a stressor and then reducing its impact left people with the impression that they felt better and brighter as a result of the exercise! Yet I only discovered wily walnut’s claim that the “Brain Bubbles” created by blowing in and out of a paper bag is one of the techniques one can use to raise IQ.
My partner and I were invited, but we declined. I heard about the event later from a friend who did go and felt even less intelligent as a result. My partner and I decided to leave the periphery of the community soon after.
The reasons for leaving my first attempt at “community” were not as amusing. Like the second community, the first was organized around a charismatic leader. But the followers were much younger, as was I when I first arrived, a single mother with a one and a half year old daughter. We hitchhiked, my little one in her stroller packed with necessary supplies and $20 in my pocket, trusting the kindness of the universe to help us survive. We weren’t escaping abuse, merely a mind and spirit-numbing environment of never-ending criticism and cold indifference — a life lacking warmth and laughter and possibilities for something better than the pursuit of empty material comforts. In the next four and a half years, our lives were transformed.
By the time we arrived, the alternative community had been in existence for more than 3 years and had grown from less than 20 people sharing a treehouse to more than 200 people spread across four towns in northwestern Massachusetts. I willingly agreed to accept the principles espoused by the community, no drugs, alcohol, or promiscuity. Newer arrivals like my daughter and me were initially relegated to live with more than 100 members in a rural setting that included a large house and dormitory with a smaller two-story shed. Despite my battered self-esteem, I looked around the community and noticed more than 25 children under five roaming about who were without care or supervision. With two other mothers, I set out to create a daycare center. We were able to renovate the first floor of the two-story shed, adding a sink that I helped plumb, and a stove and refrigerator we were able to get for free. We scrubbed and painted, and found some furniture and made sure kids had meals and supervision.
During the first few months, there were a number of observations that raised my curiosity about cultural differences. I watched as people pushed each other out of the way so they could be the first on the bus to attend meetings organized by the community leader. They competed for the white sweaters that proved they were more spiritually evolved than others and bullied and demeaned those who were forced to wear brown sweaters showing their lack of spirituality. I pondered the disconnect between the spirituality they gave lip service to and their actions. I also pondered it as I witnessed how mothers who previously ignored their children suddenly were only concerned about their children, stashing private bags of food for their children in the daycare center refrigerator. Unlike other mothers, I felt the need to make sure all children had the best we could provide.
I was also aware of how disrespected and patronized I felt by those who were in the upper echelon within the rural setting hierarchy, explaining it away to myself as another indicator of my many deficiencies. Despite my lack of self-confidence, there was still a noticeable difference between me and most of the members I encountered. I still thought about each of my actions and made my own decisions. I was perplexed by my observations that otherwise smart caring people did whatever the leader told them to do without question, even if it contradicted their deeply held values. Almost everyone else did unkind, foolish or illegal things because the leader told them to do it. Yet I stayed because I genuinely cared about my new friends despite all of these differences.
Slowly over the years, I gained skills and had experiences I doubt would ever have come my way in another setting. I worked outside jobs as a waitress, nurse’s aide, donut finisher, receptionist, and seamstress, and as an attendant for an institution for people with cognitive and developmental challenges. As my status in the community rose, I moved from setting to setting. I travelled to the south to promote the community radio show, served as the booking agent and lightshow operator for a mobile disco, and ended up as the general office manager for the community, a buffer between the leader and ruling elite and the 200 members of the community. As my status in the community shifted, so did my ability to see more of what was really occurring. At first, I had believed most people followed the publicly proclaimed principles. I even believed that when I was the office manager, collecting members’ weekly donations, allocating funds to members to cover their needs, purchasing household supplies and food for twelve different enclaves, and buffering members from the never-ending demands for more money by the elite.
Again I pondered cultural differences. There were members who worked multiple jobs to donate all they could for the well-being of the community as a whole. There were members who never donated anything, but who were exempt because the leader favored them. There were members who were so wounded by life that they were unable to contribute anything but still needed resources multiple times a day every day. My carefully calculated food purchases to make sure each person in each house could have two eggs a day on Saturday and Sunday were glibly blown away by members from privileged backgrounds who thanked me for buying the eggs, proclaiming “I had six eggs this morning and it was such a treat.” I wondered how many children would be denied protein as a result.
But these were minor annoyances. There were deeper secrets I finally discovered – the way people’s hard-earned dollars were used to subsidize the costs of the leader’s alcohol and cocaine addiction. I thought long and hard about whether to stay and try to help someone whom I thought at the time wanted to recover or leave for my daughter’s sake. I came up with an alternative that I felt was reasonable. My daughter’s father agreed to take care of her for the summer. I would stay for that time to see what I could do to help the community get back on track. Two days after my daughter left, the leader of the community accosted me, yelling. “What the FUCK did you DO! Sending your daughter away was SO FUCKED UP!” (Those of you who have read my previous blog posts probably can guess how I responded.) I looked at him calmly and replied in a quiet voice, “If you want to understand why I act as I do, it would be better to ask me. I always consider important decisions very carefully knowing that it is my karma not someone else’s if I make mistakes. It is not your right to question or judge my decisions. And it’s certainly not your right to tell me what to do.” He turned red in the face and screamed “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!!!!” This was the only command I obeyed, but based on my own decision that it was the wisest course of action. It was not until decades later that I learned about the sexual abuse women and children experienced at the hands of the leader and his closest cronies, something many former members still prefer to ignore as they continue to believe they are “more spiritually evolved.”
So as I ponder the wisdom of living in an intentional community, I remember these experiences and ask if it is possible to find people who can really build a community based on comradeship. Can people escape the need to follow a leader? The organizational structure that both communities and every organization I have worked for shared in common was based on hierarchical power distinctions. Those organizations that were the most dysfunctional took oppression a bit further, using the “hub” style of management. The person in charge developed personal connections with each member or employee separately and discouraged the development of inter-collegial relationships by pointing out the deficiencies of all the others, a divide and conquer tactic that isolated people from each other and made them easier to manipulate. A picture is worth a thousand words here.
Photo Credit: Hub-Management Powerpoint slide
The three-dimensional picture of the carnival swing (above) is a more effective illustration. Each person is isolated, reliant on a thin tether that connects them to the power source for their continued survival, a power structure they are incapable of penetrating because of its distance and protective isolation. Each worker or member is easily replaceable, a part of the ride. How can such a structure do anything other than encourage individualism and selfish preoccupation? Can intentional communities undo the unconscious programming of what “leadership” means to those socialized in the dominant culture?
Perhaps I am stuck in my romantic notions of “traditional” Ojibwe culture. In order to become an adult, each individual was encouraged to find his or her own gifts in order to more fully contribute from a grounded foundation to the well-being and survival of the community as a whole while protecting the environment for future generations. I wonder if this ideal is possible. I wonder if the moral of the Sufi story that John McKnight relates is true, “You will only learn what you already know.” Do we as a people already know that our survival really does depend on everyone else who shares the planet? Do we really already know what it takes to live with others in inclusive, respectful, constructive, peaceful ways?
For the sake of my grandchildren and generations to come, I hope we already do know or are still able to learn.
***
Postscript:
Allowing others in power to tell us to do things that we feel or know are harmful was all too common for commune members during my time there. It was something I had hoped to escape, but it seems to be a universal issue regardless of cultural or organizational context. I believe we are still responsible for the choices we make. Those in power are responsible for theirs only, not ours. Our best hope for a healthier future is directly connected to our willingness to make choices that nurture the health of the earth, each other, and all our relations.
I should be editing today, but I promised my granddaughter I would share this story. We didn’t have a chance to work on it together so I’m writing it for her.
More fierce storms rolled through on Saturday evening when my granddaughter was spending the night. She grew frightened as the sky darkened and warnings about severe storms headed our way sounded on the radio.
She was on the verge of tears. “Ahma, where can we hide?”
“I have another idea, Sweetie,” I replied. “Let’s go outside and offer tobacco with a prayer. I’ll teach you how. The lightening and rain haven’t come yet so there’s still time.”
I showed her the garden I had chosen, but she found her own special garden by the ninebark bush. When she finished, she smiled and we went inside and read a story.
When the thunder and lightning ended, and the rain abated for a moment, we took our little dog out. I laughed when I saw the huge puddle in the alley behind the house. It was covered with little popping bubbles.
“Ahma,” my granddaughter joyfully shouted when she saw the puddle. “The puddle is tooting! That’s what happens when people are swimming and toot (fart). It makes bubbles in the water.”
Just then, the rain began again, and bubbles appeared on all of the puddles the whole length of the alley. My granddaughter laughed and danced with delight despite the rain.
The next day, she sang a song about “The Tooting Puddle Bubbles.” (Try saying that fast!) We went outside the next morning to look for the bubbles, but they were gone. The biggest puddle was still there, though, and we took some pictures.
I’ve gone a little overboard posting them…
The illusion of bushes, buildings and fences growing out of the asphalt intrigues me.
May we all find simple moments for gratitude and laughter during and after storms along our path.
***
This weekend, I spent time with my daughter and granddaughter. We laughed about some of our memories. My granddaughter, now 15, said she would like to read stories from the “old days,” so I’m posting one of our simple, joyful adventures.
Six years have passed since this was posted. The storms have been arriving frequently this year but it hasn’t been warm enough most days for “tooting puddles.” Little Pinto is no longer with us, but we’re fortunate to have photos and memories of the love and good times we shared.
on this Sunday morning in May
gray sky is visible through slots
of window blinds still closed
I take a moment to delight and reflect
in wonder at the words and wisdom
synthesized and shared by Maria Popova
traveling from dust motes to galaxies
helping me remember perspective matters
*
*
something this wee break revealed
while tackling deeper levels of decluttering
*
*
and kneeling on earth cleaning and repairing gardens
*
*
taking time to listen with awe and gratitude
to the impossibly lovely serenade
of a tiny finch sitting in the honeysuckle
singing her song in good times and bad
touching those who listen awakening hope
***
These days, we sometimes need to be reminded there’s more to life than most of us realize. Caught up in busyness that binds us to a life spent pursuing the elusive happiness of “stuff,” we miss the beauty that can be found anywhere if we simply stop for a moment and change focus. Look up, look down, gaze into the distance, focus up close, turn around and notice what encircles us. There are so many mysteries we can explore.
I remember the questions I asked as a child. What are clouds made of? What makes lightning bugs sparkle? How can bumble bees fly?
I was never curious about weapons. In fact, I hated cartoons because they were violent. How could hating and hurting others be seen as funny? I tried to avoid the bully boys on the block where I grew up, but my father forced me to fight my own battles. I had to use the only weapons I had – wit and words. And of course, there was always curiosity in things I found far more interesting, like water-striders, pollywogs, and microscopic organisms found in pond scum.
These days it feels as though I am surrounded by people who never learned to see the wonder of life in all of its fragility, resilience, and ultimately, its power to blow or burn or flood us out of existence without much warning. Guns will not save us, but they may just end the lives of people whose intelligence and skills might save our lives and the lives of many others.
“To be human is to live suspended between the scale of gluons and the scale of galaxies, yearning to fathom our place in the universe. That we exist at all — on this uncommon rocky world, just the right distance from its common star, adrift in a galaxy amid hundreds of billions of galaxies, each sparkling with hundreds of billions of stars, each orbited by numberless possible worlds — is already miracle enough. A bright gift of chance amid the cold dark sublime of pure spacetime. A triumphal something against the staggering cosmic odds of nothingness.
“Stationed here on this one and only home planet, we have opposed our thumbs to build microscopes and telescopes, pressing our curiosity against the eyepiece, bending our complex consciousness around what we see, longing to peer a little more deeply into the mystery of life with the mystery of us.” (Popova, 2022, para. 5-6)
Moments in time that I noticed today…
An Indigo Bunting (eager to capture the moment through a window that needs cleaning 😊)
A Goldfinch (through the same window at a slightly different angle)
Ferns and Tulips (and an unmanicured lawn)
Voices from the Margins 