What's
going on.... What the hell is going on in my home rez?
About ten years ago we took the first tentative steps back toward our own Ojibway spirituality. We left Christianity behind and built ourselves a beautiful powwow grounds, a lovely arbor to shield the sacred fire and another one for the drummers and singers.
Unfortunately, that appears to be as far as we went.
The site sits there empty and abandoned except for the one week of the year that we play at being Indian. Abandoned except for the thugs who use it as a drinking spot and the vagrants who vandalize what little there is to vandalize. Broken bottles and used condoms litter the site.
What happened? Is this our idea of something to replace Christianity and their once a week notion of keeping in touch with God? We used to laugh at the few Christians and their once a year "midnight mass" attendances, but really, are we any better?
Whatever happened to the long house we were going to build on the site, a place of teaching and learning, a place to hold community gatherings and feasts and a place to heal ourselves? We should be be using such a place throughout the year, including the deep of winter. In the old days winter was a time for story-telling and being together. The place should be alive and living, like us, and not just sitting there quietly rotting away.
I really don't know what to make of this. People learn of two or three old time medicines and all of a sudden they're medicine people. People go out a buy a pipe and all of a sudden they're pipe-carriers. Are we taking shortcuts back to our Ojibway past? Band office types are using Ahnee and Meegwetch ( Hello and thank you in Ojibway) in their infrequent letters to band members.. Is this all there is to the new Ojibway spirituality? Is this all there is to reclaiming the language? The chief says Ahnee and Meeqwetch in his infrequent and flatulent speeches. Big deal!
One of the natural laws in life state that what you get out of anything is roughly equivalent to what you put into it. Have we shot our wad on this matter? Is that all there was to it? Is this the very best we can do? Gimme a break, please!
What's wrong with the notion of taking stock now and then, stopping for awhile and evaluating our progress, if any? Why can't we do it? Why can't we even discuss it occasionally? Too dumb? Too shy to talk with each other? What's going on? Hello, anybody out there? Hellooooooo!
Maybe it's the old reserve thingy about not getting involved, not speaking up, leaving it to the band office or chief and council or someone else to make things right. Jeez, sometimes Indian Country really pisses me off! Maybe we'll just leave it at that, to Gib and his "bad attitudes" about everything.
Something else is bugging me. I think the death penalty should be brought back for adults who kidnap and hurt children. Watched a TV newscast the other day and a distraught mother pleading for the return of her child. Broke my frigging heart. There should be a special consequence for adults who kidnap and harm children. To hell with the notion of society growing up and abandoning capital punishment for better things. Hang the guilty buggers. They deserve no less. If you have children of your own then think about it for a second, if you don't, then try to imagine the parental pain surrounding the loss of any human child.