For most NAPF participants there is so much in common, and also so little in common to the life goals and the family histories of the 2012 hosts in South Dakota.
To help make sense of the events and ideas important today and before, here are several ways to build a little background to the Lakota and related Plains people (Dakota and Nakota).
I offer these as an expert on culture and society, but with very little experience of Plains history and lives. My professional life is linked to East Asia, but with help from colleagues and the Internet, I can suggest these source for starters. Please use the comment feature to add others.
- G P Witteveen at First Congregational Church of St. Johns, Michigan
<>Overview of these 500 years since Chris Columbus started the intersection of Old and New Worlds
-Charles Mann's book, 1493, tells all that unfolded ecologically and socially starting *after* Columbus (follow up to his book, 1491, about life before)
<>Visual introduction
-The maps.google.com "street view" lets you move and rotate the view as if you are there. Here is Rapid City, SD (click the yellow man on the zoom bar) to begin with
-"geo tag" at flickr.com lets you see pictures pinned to a map spot: RC, SD [pin your own pics to flickr maps]
-The searchbox for keywords "rapid city sd" at flickr.com shows lots (push 'view slideshow' at top right)
<>Movies (see also netflix and http://imdb.com for more titles linked from these gems)
-Smoke Signals, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_Signals_(film)
-No More Smoke Signals, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1339133/
-Incident at Oglala, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Oglala
-Dances with Wolves is also a very good movie if for no other reason than it seems to take the Lakota seriously and presents the "Wild West" with at least some modicum of sympathy for their plight. (Notwithstanding, my good friend...'s reference to the movie as Lawrence of South Dakota [too much about white guy]).
-[short) Cowtipping: The Militant Indian Waiter. Funny and packs a powerful punch --even if a few white folk "aren't amused" because they see themselves in the "wrong" role in this short movie.
-Tricksters, Redskins, and Puppy Stew. The subtile is something like "the healing power of Native humor." Again, very funny, but humour with a point.
At Youtube "lakota" gives 15,500 videos: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lakota&oq=lakota&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_l=youtube.3..0l10.1181.2174.0.2341.6.6.0.0.0.0.96.423.6.6.0...0.0.quCLzIp8a0g
At Vimeo "lakota" gives 467 videos: http://vimeo.com/search/videos/search:lakota/st/4d86b62b
<>Books
-Historian and tribal member Jos. Marshall III (author website) recorded his book Crazyhorse in a book-on-CD to combine oral history of his people with the document-based history of other (mainly non-Indian) observers.
-Welcome from Joseph Marshall III: Cante wasteya nape ciyuzapelo. I take your hand in friendship. This is a common Lakota greeting. The literal meaning is with a good heart I take your hand. <>Read on...
-Huffington Post (article) Lakota Wisdom: Why Native American Truths Can Heal the World. <>Read article
-Novelist Gerald Robert Vizenor (GV/wikipedia; GV/amazon; official) richly tells the important difference between "victimry" and "survivance" (his words) as life experience that often affect outlook on and off reservations.
<>Web-based projects
-Language, Our Mother Tongues.org has Lakota segments here, http://ourmothertongues.org/language/Lakota/6
The homepage of all the languages is http://ourmothertongues.org/Home.aspx
-Indianz.com (blog-site)
-Indian Country Today, "traditional" newspaper approach to stories
<>Photos
-NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian) exhibits showing some prominent parts of the permanent display: treaties, guns/swords accumulated across the generations of conflicts (pdf set of pictures).
=-=-= Suggested background to non-Indian intersections with diverse nations
"disclaimer": My opposition to monotheistic religions is NOT to be taken "personally." I know many, many very good and good-hearted Christians (and I was raised as one). But, my discourse is NOT directed at individuals, not even one denomination over another, but it is directed at the underlying "ideology" of the "organization" segment of "organized religion." At the root of all of it, in my opinion is the line out of Genesis --"be fruitful and multiply and go forward and subdue the earth." While it is obviously important for each individual to find their own path in life, if the individual is searching for that path and still blinded by the false ideology that resticts that search to something that is "supernatural," the choices available to the individual are severly restricted, essentially because the entire "social system" is flawed, as it is based on exploitation of other human beings and the planet itself (it's that "subdue the earth" stuff tht gets me). That is, the individual is not the problem, the "system" is. Therefore, if we're to correct the problems the world finds itself facing, while enlisting the individual in the stuggle is is necessary, it is not sufficient --the system must be changed.
One example, perhaps. In Capitalism, everything is done for "individual" profit. In Monotheistic religions, the goal is "individual" salvation. And so on down the line. For the rest of us, "community" is the most important thing --and "community" includes everything in the Natural world (the "individual" means very little in the Big Scheme of Things).
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QUESTION: Because of sheer ignorance, I'd like to gather a few recommended things to read or websites to visit so that the young people coming together in June (between 100-200, I am guessing) will have some understanding of prominent themes and experiences for individual lives and community, shared memory.
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REPLY (to be read with the disclaimer, above)
...I do not want to offend you, so please do not take offense at what I'm putting into this reply --it is simply me being brutally honest.
I'm going to assume that the Church group you mention is Christian, and that they're going to SD to truly be helpful to those in the Native Community. But, from my very narrow and prejudiced perspective, the "helpful Christian" is the one, and most damaging, "interaction" that any Native person has ever encountered throughout all of written history.
I'm sorry, but this "mandate" was used by Columbus --and every other "explorer"-- to inflict genocide on Native people around the world. And, in today's world, I assume that these well-intentioned people haven't the slightest idea that their ideology and predecessors essentially killed off these once proud, independent, and prosperous people (the Plains Indians were hit especially hard through the deliberate, genocidal slaughter of the buffalo).
And I use the term "well-intentioned" deliberately. There's no doubt that your daughter and the hundreds of others who will be in SD this summer haven't the slightest idea about the genocide that the people they will be interacting with have suffered for the past 500 years.
In fact, I suspect that many of the Native people of SD haven't a clue either. This is not to lay blame on anyone, or to put a huge "guilt trip" on them, but it is the reality of the situation that we all face today, and have faced for centuries.
Here's my not-very-nice summary: The "invention" of the monotheistic, patriarchal, vengeful God is the biggest disaster that has befallen the human race in its 2 million year history.
It's quite literally impossible to undo the damage that has been done, both to people and to the planet, that has been spawned by this ideology.
I know I'm rambling, here, but I can't help myself --if we, as human beings, don't immediately start treating each other and this planet as if we were all "Traditional Indians," then we as a species are doomed, And it may be too late, already. And the first, very uncomfortable step in that process is that we (all of us) have to completely disregard the "supernatural" and fully embrace the "natural." It can't be explained in an email, sorry to say.
But, back to your question --if I had only two hours, what would I do? Well, given that they'll be in Rapid City, I'd show them the video "Incident at Oglala," surrounding the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation (Leonard Peltier is in prison for those murders) --much of the video is set in Rapid City, and the courthouse where Leonard's two co-defendants were tried --and acquitted-- of the same two murders.
The video is horribly "political," but so am I. Where the issue of "Christian" religion may be addressed in the video is everything that happened on Pine Ridge --and other places, too, I might add-- was essentially a war between the "Traditionals" and the "Progressives" --and the political here mirrors the 'spiritual" (for many of us there's little difference).
I'm sorry that I'm being so polemical about this, but, as I said, I truly believe that its a matter of life and death (but not "spiritual" "supernatural" death --but real-world physical death).
I hope I haven't offended you, but, I do see a sense of urgency on all of this.
Phil Bellfy, White Earth Anishnaabe
Michigan State University, American Indian Studies Program, WRAC Department
Co-director of the Center for the Study of Indigenous Border Issues, http://www.csibi.org
Editor, Indigenous Policy Journal, http://www.indigenouspolicy.org
Anishnaabeg Joint Commission University Liaison
Member of the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College Board of Regents
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