Kawlija
Shared on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 16:56 This past November, I had the good fortune to meet a very charming and attractive young lady. Many things about her appealed to me; she was a smart, professional woman, divorced, but was well established in her life. I think we found it very comfortable in each other’s presence and candor and straightforwardness if anything, made us closer. After just a day or two though, I got caught up in some work and while she was around the whole time, I was much too busy to be able to spend as much time with her as I would have liked.
It’s hard to be delicate about this, but I was very attracted to her. Unfortunately, my feelings for her would change drastically by Wednesday night. The problem was that this woman was Indian. Normally, this would be a clinching factor (ha!), had I not found out something else about this woman: she was a traditional.
Modern life for Native Americans is tough. The biggest factor we have to deal with in our every day life is a duality that most other Americans know nothing about. This duality is the burden on Indians to try to maintain the old ways. Live according to the life-ways of our elders, practice our religion and ceremonies, and pass this and the knowledge of our culture on in perpetuity to our children. We affectionately call this following the red road.
The red road is a hard one if you’re an urban Indian like myself and grew up in the city. While my belief structure and outlook on life is very Native in context, actually living up to that is extremely difficult. For one, I’ve moved away from my reservation and the tribal groups which nurtured me. I often feel abandoned and alone in a way that being surrounded by everyone else where I live cannot placate. I am lost to my people.
I was washing dishes one night and my daughter was drying. Out of the blue, my daughter asked me, “Dad, how come you never go to church?” (My wife is a practicing catholic and our children, when they were younger, attended catholic schools.)
This one cut deep because it brought to the forefront of my mind how separated I am from everything that made me Indian. I told my daughter that since we moved away from home, there was nowhere for me to go and attend any kind of services (actually, ceremonies), in order to be with the people that practiced my religion. Since she had not seen me praying or going to church with her and her brother, she was curious about what I thought about religion.
I reminded my daughter that when we last lived home nine years ago when her and her brother were much younger, I took them along with me whenever we visited the reservation or went to pow wows. She recalled how she had seen me dance before and we went on to have a nice talk about the longhouse traditions.
The burden of this duality then, I have been unable to pass onto my children. They have grown up and come of age without any real Native-centric exposure or participation. They only know they’re Native because I told them so.
In the Iroquois culture that I grew up in, women were very much the equal to men. Their good counsel was sought on every important issue and traditionally, the elder women were the ones who picked the wives for the young men in the tribe. Women are revered as birth mothers akin to mother earth.
So this issue of duality came back to haunt me. As much as I was tempted by this other woman and found her so attractive, I found out she was a traditional when she appeared in full dress at a Native celebration held Wednesday night.
She was beautiful. I think I was actually speechless when I saw her dressed for a night of traditional dancing. I was wondering if she caught me staring at her at one point.
From that moment on though, I could not think of her in the same frame of mind I had just earlier that day. In her own way, she was doing something that I have been unable to do and that just seemed so much more important to me than any hormonal imbalance I may have been having up to this point. I found myself respecting her to an extent that I had not before.
Our conversation that night turned to dancing and her following the traditional pueblo ways. Listening to her, my thoughts turned to feelings of my own worthiness in her presence. She was living as I hoped I could live and once again, I felt lost.
About 20 years ago, I was riding the bus home from work one night when another Indian got on. As he walked past me, he said something to me in Mohawk. He was much younger than me, but when I greeted him in English, he just frowned at me and said, “You don’t speak your own language, do you?”
I still don’t. I still battle each day with duality and it’s effects on me. I try to stay true to the path. I try to preach to my children and keep the Good Mind.
The red road though, it’s hard.
"Do you know or can you believe that sometimes the idea obtrudes...whether it has been well that I have sought civilization with its bothersome concomitants and whether it would not be better even now, to return to the darkness and most sacred wilds (if any such can be found) of our country and there to vegetate and expire silently, happily and forgotten as do the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. The thought is a happy one but perhaps impracticable."
Ely S. Parker
(1828-1895)
Seneca
Iroquois Confederacy sachem, and
Brigadier General, U.S. Army
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Comments
Submitted by Paulpapagoat on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 17:30
Submitted by J-Cat on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 18:00
Submitted by Kawlija on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 19:32
Submitted by UnwashedMass on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 23:21