P.S. Comments

Please feel free to comment. My remarks of a few blogs ago were directed at a comment that I immediately took off the site. I now see them before they are posted.

This is Why They Call Them Morning Glory(s)

c Joy Harjo September 6, 2006 Please ask for permission for any reproductions

LIMUW: In The Sea Lies the Meaning of the Language Spoken

Some inspiring words from an email from Angela Mooney D'Arcy, who is one of an up-and-coming generation of tribal thinkers, philosophers and writers:

"I just returned from Limuw, which means "in the sea lies the meaning of the language spoken," in Chumash. Every year Chumash from all of the bands--Santa Ynez, Barbareno, Ventureno, Coastal Band-- gather on the island (along with cousins from the north and south) for the weekend to celebrate the return of the crossing of the tomols from the mainland to the island, which is the birthplace of the Chumash in their creation stories.

It is always such an incredible experience and a key model for how we can begin to generate a positive storm...a whirlwind that will clean the air and move us in the right direction. As we sat around the fire one night discussing the state of the world and the massive environmental changes occurring all around us, an Elder said that the biggest mistake Europeans made when they came to this land is that they came with their shoes on. Thus, their connection to this land was severed from the beginning, which is why we are witnessing the destruction and environmental and cultural devestation taking place right now."

Mvto Angela

from The Reservation by Ted C. Williams

One of my favorite memoirs is THE RESERVATION by Ted C. Williams, Tuscarora. I have a copy I've managed to hold onto for awhile. I usually lend it out and don't get it back. It was published in 1976 by the Syracuse University Press. Don't know if it's out in a new edition.

I included a chapter for my memoir-writing class to chew on and enjoy. There's nothing like those old-time storytellers. Even in print in Williams account you can hear the nuances of the voice, see and hear the gestures. And you laugh along with everybody else in the pages.

Here's an excerpt, about gift-giving near the holidays as everyone is gathered in the church, from the chapter "The Feast". The best part in the chapter is the account of the hunting contest and the debate at the feast. Maybe I'll try and scan and include later. We need some laughs, and to learn from this talented storyteller how to tell a real story.

"..Next came the giving out of the presents and here's how that was done. Every present had to have the name of the person of who it was for, shouted out, before it could be taken to that person. So two women were appointed to yell until their voices gave out. The some man referee let in a substitute.
It was my habit as it was most others, too, to give trick presents. Like, I might transfer the label from a tin can of peaches with the pretty pictures of the peaches on it to a can of surplus meat and give that away. Once I found a lead brick that weighed seventy tons and I painted it gold and put a red ribbon on it and gave it to Jumbo. I had to have Ju-gweh carry it up the back stairs, it was so heavy. Or, for instance, I happened to have a look up as the names were being called out and Goth-hoff (give me) was holding up a toy bugle and yelling, "Lye Man." Lye Man had just been in a car accident and had all his front teeth knocked in. Another time Mars was holding up a pair of four-runner kids' ice skates and yelled out Annie Dink's name. Annie Dink could hardly walk because she weighed, maybe, two-fifty. Naturally, it was late by the time that these mountains of presents were given out, even though there was a steady stream of kids taking arm loads 'round and 'round the church..."

Just a bite.

A fine up-and-coming writer Eric Gansworth from up that direction reminds me of Ted C. Williams in style and humor. He's Ondondaga, raised in Tuscarora country. I believe his last book was MENDING SKINS.

Still in the War Years

Thanks to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for reminding me that Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight boxing championship title and imprisoned for five years (instead of the normal eighteen months) for refusing to report for induction into the army for religious reasons. I had forgotten the weight of his sacrifice.

And for this note on shameful President Andrew Jackson:"....the slave-owning, Indian killer general/president had become an early American success story. Penniless at twenty, Jackson saved his money and bought one slave, and struck out over the Cumberland Mountains for Tennessee. He squatted illegally in Cherokee Territory, and because he couldn't afford to buy more than one African slave, he bought a fifteen-year-old girl and sired his own slave laborers."

from OUTLAW WOMAN, A Memoir of the War Years 1960-1975, City Lights Books, San Francisco 2001.

Seems to me like we're still in the war years.

Storygathering and Be Nice to Animals

I can’t help but think of all the animals getting together to decide who was going to finally take care of Steve Irwin the “Crocodile Hunter”. Irwin seemed like an otherwise good soul whose obsession with harassing animals finally did him in. He was stung in the heart by a stingray while he was filming out in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. Stingray killings are rather uncommon. It was a direct hit. Irwin’s face always betrayed a possible death via his heart. I figured it would be a heart attack. Guess it was.

I know this isn't anecdote isn't poetry, literary or musical but Irwin is part of the cultural weave bred by television. I'm a sucker for stories and characters, just as anyone else, be they on tv, in the movies, other oral stories or literary. And we humans will always hunt and search for stories, no matter the medium. My story sources of the last few days include primarily: person-to-person, via cellphone and telephone (the family stories that lately are very disturbing and involve drinking incidents, cataracts, husbands who refuse to go to work, low fishing quotas and excessive gambling), a Netflix movie, the tv news one night this week, a couple of tv shows, newspaper, online news, memoirs, an autobiography, text messaging, a butterfly, cricket, geese flying overhead, dreams, student stories and other modes. It's what we do.

So enjoy your storygathering today. And be nice to the animals.

Suspended c Joy Harjo

Once I was so small that I could barely see over the top of the backseat of the black Cadillac my father bought with his Indian oil royalty money. He polished and tune his car daily. I wanted to see everything. This was around the time I acquired language, or even before that time when something happened that changed my relationship to the spin of the world. My concept of language, of what was possible with language was changed by this revelatory moment. It changed even the way I looked at the sun. This suspended integer of time probably escaped ordinary notice in my parents’ universe, which informed most of my vision in the ordinary world. They were still omnipresent gods. We were driving somewhere in Tulsa, the northern border of the Creek Nation. I don’t know where we were going or where we had been but I know the sun was boiling the asphalt, the car windows open for any breeze as I stood on tiptoes on the floorboard behind my father, a handsome god who smelled of Old Spice, whose slick black hair was always impeccably groomed, his clothes perfectly creased and ironed. The radio was on. I loved the radio, jukeboxes or any magic thing containing music even then.
I wonder what signaled this moment, a loop of time that on first glance could be any place in time. I became acutely aware of the line the jazz trumpeter was playing (a sound I later associated with Miles Davis). I didn’t know the word jazz or trumpet, or the concepts. I don’t know how to say it, with what sounds or words, but in that confluence of hot southern afternoon, in the breeze of aftershave and humidity, I followed that sound to the beginning, to the place of the birth of sound. I was suspended in whirling stars, a moon to which I’d traveled often by then. I grieved my parents’ failings, my own life which I saw stretched the length of that rhapsody.
My rite of passage into the world of humanity occurred then, via jazz. The music made a startling bridge between familiar and strange lands, an appropriate vehicle, for though the music is predominately west African in concept, with European associations, jazz was influenced by the Creek (or Mvskoke) people, for we were there when jazz was born. I recognized it, that humid afternoon in my formative years, as a way to speak beyond the confines of ordinary language. I still hear it.

c Joy Harjo Reprint or copy with permission only

Stink Comments Not Allowed Here

I recently configured the blogsite for comments. So far so good until someone sent an unnecessary stink comment. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but no one will be allowed to use this site for their small-mindedness. (This isn't most of you, thank you.)

Right now I'm so pissed I want to punch out the person leaving the comment. I keep remembering that old story about Rabbit and the Tar Baby. If I throw a punch then I get stuck in their nastiness. And they get a hit of power which feeds the nastiness. And this grows monsters. That's how it works.

Sending out nasty comments about others is not going to help any of us on our journey. In fact, it just makes another boulder in the bag carried on the back of the speaker, and can bruise and make the journey of everybody a little more difficult. We have evidence all around us to attest to this in all the world wars and in our tribal governments. Let's try some kindness. The golden rule was on the slate of the original teachings of all human beings.

So, peace. And keep moving.

After School, and Remember Charlie Hill will be on David Letterman Tomorrow Night

After School: Tayo and Desiray at Hurricane's

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Don't forget. CHARLIE HILL, Oneida Comedian, will be featured on David Letterman tomorrow night!!!!


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On the Other Hand, We Humans are a Gambling Sort

Coming out of the Route 66 Casino at Rio Puerco, we're attacked by giants.