Karen Kay

Howdy!

With Christmas just around the corner, my mind goes quite naturally to gift-giving.  With layoffs extant in these united states and the economy in a little bit of trouble, it might be a smiggen tight for the pocketbook this year.  But that doesn’t mean that the spirit of giving doesn’t live in each of our hearts.  Or that it has to take a back seat.  There are other solutions.  Come with me on a journey into Native America and the spirit of giving.  Maybe it will give you some ideas, even if you have a full pocketbook.

In the days of old, before the white man came to this country and influenced the American Indian into other traditions, giving was a point of survival.  No chief could become chief who did not give to the needy and the less well to do.  Often the chief of the tribe was the poorest person in the tribe because he gave away almost all that he had.  However, contrary to a more socialist point of view, this was not pure socialism, because the giving was never regulated and never mandatory.  (Compare that to our income tax system.)  Only the strong, the wise and the kind-hearted could be counted on to give, and it was considered one of the most aspired-to attributes.

Actually, it requires a bit of mind change to grasp the American Indian idea of giving.  If a man attained a higher state or did some great deed, he was not given something by the tribe, but rather, he gave gifts to others.  If a woman attained some desired state (a young girl attaining puberty for instance — or an older woman  attaining praise for her handicraft) she and her relatives worked night and day to give gifts to others.  An example of this might be this:  Say it is your birthday, but instead of you getting gifts on your birthday, you and your relatives would work for months and months in order to have a feast, where one would give to the community in celebration of something one attained.  This was considered the highest honor one might place upon a family member. 

This tradition is still carried on in Native America today.  When a family wishes to honor one of its own, members of the family will work for months and months (sometimes years) to produce goods, not for oneself, but to give away to others — in honor of the family member.  If you ever have attended a pow-wow, you might be struck by the tremendous time spent in give-aways.  It is quite an enriching experience.   And if I might be allow to tell you, a very recent example of this that comes to mind is something that happened to my friend, Patricia, who several years ago had finished a particularly hard course and graduated.  Instead of people bringing her gifts, she sponsored her own give-away and feast, recruiting family to help in the give-away.

The gifts in Native America weren’t wrapped.  Sometimes the gifts were simply in the form of food or clothing or blankets.  Sometimes, in the case of a marriage or some other big event, items such as a tepee were given away (remember Dances With Wolves and the tepee the star of the movie was given?)  When one couldn’t give because one didn’t have the wherewithal to do so, one sometimes still gave what one had by simply giving things that one already had.  That way such articles were kept afloat in the society.  Sometimes one gave the very best thing that he treasured most, especially so if there were a sickness in the family and one wanted to ensure their beloved one’s  recovery.  Sometimes the gift came in the form of service to one’s people.  Certain societies had stringent rules about bundles or other sacred items and most people didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of these items (such as becoming a bundle holder.)  In this case the gift would be in the form of the entire family taking on the responsibility, in order to preserve the spiritual traditions of the people. 

This picture was taken, by the way, at Patricia’s give-away — Patricia is in the middle, although the blond lady’s name is also Pat.  It was considered a real gift of giving if one gave in such a way that the other person didn’t feel they had to return the favor.  This happened to George Catlin in the 1830’s when a young warrior gave back to him a diary that Catlin had lost.  The giving was done in such a way that Catlin was unable to give-back, since he was embarking upon a ship.   There is yet another example of giving by the American Indian comes to us from the Iroquois.  The Iroquois (which was composed of originally 5 tribes and eventually 6) had a system of government that was truly Of the people, For the people, and By the people.  Men served and were never permitted to draw any kind of pay for serving — it was simply considered their duty and their way of giving to the the tribe.  Such service is still in operation today.

I’m not certain if I’ve given you any ideas, but the point is that it doesn’t have to be a material object that one is giving.  (You knew I’d sneak this photo in somewhere, didn’t you?)  When my kids were growing up, they used to give me coupons for Christmas — I still have them to this day — little chores they would do for me upon presentation of the coupon.  Many people still give food as a gift for Christmas, some people give their time to others as a gift.  I guess the point is that one can always give something of themselves to another.  Perhaps it might even be said that this is the most wonderful gift of all.  It might even be said that we as a people might have become too addicted to material wealth and material gift-giving.  Perhaps.  The truth of this I’ll leave you to debate.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, as the people who come here and blog are some of the most kind-hearted people I have known.  But I still thought you still might appreciate this little tour into the American Indian way of giving.  So how about you?  What is the greatest gift you have ever given?  Received?  And what is it that you would like for Christmas this year?

For my own part, I would like to wish this: That reasons for war would perish from this earth.  I’d like to see more understanding between people take place and I’d like the peace that we wish for each other at this time of year become a reality.  So come on in and let’s chat.  Maybe we can give the gift of sharing our thoughts.  Because I’m putting in extra time on a course of study I’m involved in, I’ll be checking in a lunch time and tonight when I finish with course — Eastern Time.

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It’s November, a time when we tend to cuddle up and look ahead to the holidays.  It’s a time of Thanksgiving.

I’m sure all of you know that our Thanksgiving comes from the Eastern Indians, and in particular Squanto — and if you didn’t know about Squanto, I would highly recommend the movie, Squanto, starring a young and dreamy Adam Beach.  Sigh…

But what was this festival called Thanksgiving?  Did it happen just this one time?  Was it due to the Indians’ wishing to acknowledge the newcomers, as I was often taught in school?  Was there more to it?  Well, do read on.

Thanksgiving was one of several festivals amongst the Eastern Indians — in particular I’m talking about the Iroquois because this is a tribe that I have recently studied and so can write somewhat scholarly about it.  But these ceremonies were common to all the Eastern tribes.  There were many festivals throughout the year, and they tended to follow the seasons. 

The Iroquois celebrated six festivals, wherein they gave thanks to the Creator for all they had.  These festivals would open with speeches by leaders, teacher, etc.  And of course there was much dancing, which was done not only for the fun of simply dancing, but it was also a sense of worship.  It was thought that the Creator needed some sort of amusement, thus He gave the people dancing.

In spring — early March — it was time to collect together tree bark and sap — this was needed to repair houses and other things, such as canoes, bowls, etc.   Spring was also the time for planting.  This was the maple festival.  Next was the Planting festival.  Here prayers were sent to the Creator to bless their seed. 

  The Iroquois’ main food source was corn, beans and squash (the three sisters).  Family gardens were separated by borders that were broad and grassy — they would even camp on these borders and sometimes they were raise watch towers.

The next festival of the Iroquois was the Strawberry Festival.  This is where the people gave thanks to the Creator for their many fruits (like strawberries).  It was summertime.  The women gathered wild nuts and other foods, while the men hunted, fished and provided various meats for cooking.  Again, each festival was greeted with much dancing and merriment.  Did you know that the some Iroquois believed the way to the Creator was paved with strawberries?

The next fesitval was the Green Corn Fesitval.  Again, the Creator was thanked for the bounty of food that had been raised all through the summer.  Dancers danced to please the Creator and musicians sang and beat the drum.  Again there were many speeches to honor the people and the Creator.  There were team sports.  Lacrosse was the game that was most admired and it was played with great abandon by the men.  Women played games, too and often their games were as competitive as the men’s.

The next season festival was…are you ready?  Thanksgiving — or the Harvest Thanksgiving.  By this time the women had harvested the corn, beans and squash.  Much of it would be dried.  Much went to feed families.  Husks were made into many different items.  Dolls, rugs, mats.  Did you know that the dolls didn’t have faces?  Now was the time to gather more nuts and berries.  Men were busy, too, hunting far away.  Bear, moose, beaver were all sought after and hunted.  Again, there was much celebration.  Dancing, speeches, prayer.  And of course — food.  It was this particular festival that was shared with the newcomers to this continent.

Can you guess what the next festival was?  Although this is a Christmas tree, it was not a celebration of Christmas — but if you guessed this, you were very close.  The next and last festival of the year was New Year’s.  At this time, a white dog was sacrificed as a gift to the Creator.  This was also a time for renewing the mind and body.  (Does that not remind you of our New Year’s resolutions?)  At this time, the False Face Society members would wear masks to help others to cleanse themselves of their bad minds and restore only their good minds.  There was again much celebration, much dancing, much merriment and enjoyment as each person would settle in for the long winter ahead of them.

The First Americans indeed did give this country very much, not only its festivals which we still remember to this day, but also it gave to this nation a fighting spirit for freedom.  In these times when there seems to be uncertainty ahead of us, there is still much for us to be thankful for.  I know I am thankful for my family and my husband and daughters.  I’m thankful to be able to travel this beautiful country.  I’m thankful to be able to voice my opinions and for living in a country where I am still able to be who I am.

How about you?  What are you thankful for?  What has influenced your life for the better?  And what will you be doing for Thanksgiving this year?

I am away from home and so will be away from family and loved ones at this time of year.  I’ll be celebrating with friends this year.  How about you?

And don’t forget, if you haven’t already done so, to pick up your copy of THE LAST WARRIOR or RED HAWK’S WOMAN today.

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Good Day to you all !

It occurs to me that we are probably each and everyone of us in love with language.  We read, we write, we struggle with that sentence, that paragraph, that scene.  We listen to the words of others, we imitate their speech sounds and imitate dialects, we write them, we say them, we put poetry together so that it moves the spirit of us and our fellow man.  The art of language.  Candidates hope we’ll listen to their smooth talk and not bother to study their voting records too carefully.  Propagandists bank on the fact that we’ll listen and not look — and many of us fall prey to this kind of deceit.  Why?  I think it’s call the art of language.

Gee, I sure do like this the looks of this man.  Sigh.  Okay, enough of that.  In the mid-1800’s, Indian agents began the start of separating Indian children from their parents and taking them far away to the white man’s school.  This was considered by the “do-gooders” (as they are sometimes affectionately referred to in Native America) as beneficial.

But was it?

Let’s have a closer look.  Many of those children had never known the inside of 4 walls.  They were used to the outdoors life, and they were isolated from their families as well (and to many of them, their families were who they were); they were forbidden to speak their language.  They were taught skills that would not equip them to perform well back on the “rez” where they would eventually wind up.  It was thought that they could be made over into the image of the white man — and that this would be beneficial for all concerned.

Many of those children committed suicide.  Some simply faded away or became sick with the startling difference in food, culture, clothing and way of life.   Some  learned as well as they could, only to return to their reservations ill-equipped to meet the challenges that would face them there.  None ever — not ever — forgot their true heritage.  Never.  And when times became more tolerant, these people quickly reverted to their roots, as best they could remember them.

One might think that simply forbidding a child to speak his native tongue, and forcing him to learn another language could hardly qualify as abuse.  But stay with me here.  Let’s look at this more closely.

In Native America, and perhaps in most other cultures, one’s morals and indeed ones idea of what is considered expected of him in the society in which he lives, is conveyed through one’s language.  Let me give some examples here to make this a little more real.  In Native America, there were no such things as curse words.  The name of the Creator, and all concerning that aspect of life was considered so sacred that the very idea of taking the name in vein was entirely foreign.  The way in which one addressed his brothers, sisters, his relatives, his uncles and aunts was all part of the language and gave these kinds of stable datums to children from the very beginning of their life.  The making of clothes, the industry of the women, the differences between the sexes, the way in which one treated one’s mother-in-law or father-in-law, was all part of the language.  If one were to strip one of his right to speak his own tongue, one would also, at the same time, strip one of the moral fiber of the community.

In many ways, taking away the language of the people was as harmful to the First Americans as was the fire-water (and other drugs) brought in by the traders.  It pulled the rug out from underneath the child, replacing it with a different set of values that had little to stabilize them, since most of these children would be returning to their reservation and would not be staying in the white man’s world where the new morals would apply.  Thus, a man would come back to the reservation unable to hunt and fish and make a living for his family.  His family would starve.  A woman would come back not able to cook over a fire or to make the kinds of clothes she was taught to sew in the white man’s school.  Often she was taught to sew on a sewing machine, and there would be none of those on the reservation.

It was a hard time for those children — not only leaving their families, but also in returning to a world that seemed now foreign to them.  Some couldn’t make the change.  But what I find interesting is how the language was used to destroy a culture.  Language.  More examples:  We can often “know” a person by the way they speak (or so we think).  We listen to the slow drawl of a Texan and some of us sigh.  We listen to the fast-paced jargon of a New Englander and our heads might spin just trying to keep up with all they’re saying.  Or how about the Saturday Night Live version of a Samurai in the roll of a food server?  Just the imitation of the speech patterns of the Samurai, combined with the outrageousness of a restaurant setting was enough to set me to laughing.

Language.  It can make us laugh, it can make us cry, it can bring us to our knees.  It can soothe, it can enlighten, it can raise our spirits with the beauty of its prose.  It can also unfortunately be used by those of devious dispostions to hypotnize.  And it can also convey and keep alive simply by its use and its structure, an entire culture.

So tell me what are your thoughts about all this?  I do know that I have been told by more than one Native American elder of the importance of language — and how it alone might keep alive a culture.  What do you think?  Can language do all this?  Can language take us to places we’ve never seen, soothe our spirits, become our friend?  I know I’m talking to many writers here, so please come on in and let me know what you think.

And May your day be filled with love and happiness.

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Howdy!

Thought I’d introduce a brand new topic today — I know that I still have clothing to talk about on the Survival theme.  But this has caught my attention today. 

Now probably the first thing to know about Native American history is that there was very little crime.  Perhaps crime and punishment go with Western Industrial-type nations.  I don’t know.  But this I can say — in all my research, time and time again travelers to the outermost regions of Native America commented on how honest and how little crime existed.

Probably the first thing to realize is that there were no jails.  I once saw a Native American movie where the Indians put a white man in jail for crimes involving shooting and killing and such.  Hilarious!  Sorry, they didn’t have them. 

So what did they do if one of their own committed a crime — like murder? 

All tribes were different, but in matters like murder, the family or the clan usually dealt with the murderer.  Often the person guilty of the crime was “sentenced” to go away from the tribe and try to make it on his own — which in the long ago past, was almost a testiment to a death sentence.  In the Lakota tribe there is a reference in the book, WATER LILY, about the offender having to make restitution with the family by taking the place of the dearly departed.  Usually such people were so happy to not be put out of the tribe, that they became the best family members of all.   Imagine if this were so in our society today?  That the offender had to make restitution with the family for his acts of violence?  What do you think might be the result?  Less crime, perhaps?

This is one of the closest pictures I could get to an actual jail — which Native Americans didn’t have, by the way.   Anyway, there were other punishments, some of them performed by various societies.   In the Creek society, as well as the Blackfeet, the crime of adultery (for women only) was a cut off nose — the tip of the nose.  This was usually performed at the request of the offending husband and was done by the society that he belonged to.   There are several accounts on file of what happened to Indians who were forced into jail for the first time.  Because such things were unknown to them, it seemed unusually cruel to them.

You might ask what in the world does this picture have to do with crime and punishment or even Native America.  Well, not much, except that I believe this man is on the covers of many Historical Indian books.  He sure is terrific, isn’t he?  As far as stealing is concerned, it was almost unheard of.  George Catlin remarked that in all his travels in Native America he had never had one single thing taken from him, or even a hand lifted against him.  In truth, one young man made quite a journey to join Catlin in order to return to him some of his property.  However, if stealing had been done, the offending party again made restitution with the “victim” by supplying them with whatever they needed in return.  Seems a much simplier process, doesn’t it?  Make up the damage one has done to the person who has been harmed, himself.

This doesn’t say that there was not savagery in Native America.  Tales are ripe in the New England areas and Texas areas of the crueltry that can be played upon a victim.  To one’s enemies, honesty, forthrightfulness, integrity was not shown, nor given, nor ever expected.  In truth, fair game might describe the way Native Americans treated the enemy.  Occasionally mercy was shown to an enemy victim and there are many, many stories to this in our accounts of history.  But as far as crime to one’s fellow tribe members or one’s family, it truly was a rare occurrance.  So much so that often such accounts were used to tell the passing of the years.

One more comment I should make before we close this subject.  Besides almost non-existent crime, there was also no poverty.  Some people were more prosperous than others — such has always been the case amongst a people.  But no one went hungry when there was food to be had within the tribe, nor did anyone go without.  And if a culture is known by its humanity towards others and the material condition of its people, then I would have to say that Native America was, indeed, a culture to be proud.

So, tell me, what are your thoughts on crime and punishment?  What do you think of jails?  Of common law?  Of justice?  Can man be trusted with justice?  Oh, and don’t forget, if you haven’t yet got your copy of my latest book, THE LAST WARRIOR, please be sure to pick one up today.  Just click on the link below. 

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