Conference quark::mennotes

22.0. "a different look at new age man" by HANNAH::OSMAN (see HANNAH::IGLOO$:[OSMAN]ERIC.VT240) Thu Jan 28 1993 16:41

This was in a NATIVE_AMERICANS notes conference, which I assume not many
from MENNOTES read.  I enjoyed it, and thought you might all too (I got
permission from poster, who didn't from original author)

/Eric

Here it is...

       <<< GENRAL::DISK$OURDISK:[NOTES$LIBRARY]NATIVE_AMERICANS.NOTE;3 >>>
                     The American Indian Information Source
Created:  9-NOV-1988 16:41         311 topics         Updated: 28-JAN-1993 02:22
                        -< Y�'�t'�eh ....... Greetings >-
Extraction qualifiers: /UNSEEN

================================================================================
Note 146.22                   Spirituality for sale                     22 of 22
DECWET::GILLMAN "I feel like a tourist in my own life" 186 lines  28-JAN-1993 02:22
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       -< "A Native American tells the >-

    To the moderator:

    I could not seem to find an appropriate place to enter this, so please
    move it as necessary--thanks in advance!

    

    I ran across this article in the Eastside Weekly and am entering it
    without permission (Eastside Weekly is a free publication in Western
    Washington, around the Seattle area).

    	Drums and the man
    	A Native American tells the men's movement to find its own beat
    		By Sherman Alexie


    Last year on the local television news, I watched a short feature on a
    meeting of the Confused White Men chapter in Spokane Washington.  They
    were all wearing war bonnets and beating drums, more or less.  A few of
    the drums looked as if they might have come from K mart, and one or two
    men just beat their chests.  "It's not just the drum," the leader of the 
    group said.  "It's the idea of a drum."  

    I was amazed at the lack of rhythm and laughed, even though I knew I
    supported a stereotype.  But it's true: white men can't drum.  They
    fail to understand that a drum is more than a heartbeat.  Sometimes it
    is the sound of thunder, and many times it just means some Indians want
    to dance.

    As a Native American, I find it ironic that even the most ordinary
    moments of our lives take on a ceremonial importance when adopted by
    the men's movement.  Since Native American men have become role models
    for the men's movement, I find it vital to explain more fully some of
    our traditions to avoid any further misinterpretation by white men.

    Peyote is not just and excuse to get high.

    A Vision Quest cannot be completed in a convention room rented for that
    purpose.

    Native Americans can be lousy fathers and sons, too.

    A warrior does not necessarily have to scream to release the animal
    that is supposed to reside in every man.  A warrior does not
    necessarily have an animal inside him at all.  If there happens to be
    an animal, it can be a parakeet or a mouse just as easily as it can be
    a bear or a wolf.

    When a white man adopts an animal, he often chooses the largest animal
    possible.  Whether this is because of possible phallic connotation or a
    kind of spiritual steroid abuse is debatable.

    I Imagine a friend of mine, John, who is white, telling me that his
    spirit is the Tyrannosaurus rex.

    "But John," I would reply gently, "those things are all dead."

    As a "successful" Native American writer, I have been asked to lecture at
    various  men's gathering.  The pay would have been good--just a little
    more reparation I figured--but I turned down the offers because I
    couldn't have kept a straight face.

    The various topics I have been asked to address include "Native
    Spirituality and Animal Sexuality," "Finding the Inner Child," and
    "Finding the Lost Father."  I figure the next step would be a meeting
    on "Finding the Inner Hunter When Shopping at the Local Supermarket."

    Much of the men's movement focuses on finding things that are lost.  I
    fail to understand how Native American traditions can help in that
    search, especiallyl considering how much we have lost ourselves.

    The average life expectancy of a Native American male is about 50
    years--middle age for a white male--and that hightlights one of the
    most disturbing aspects of the entire men's movement.  It blindly
    pursues Native solutions to European problems but completely neglects
    to prove European solutions to Native problems.

    Despite the fact that the drum still holds spiritual significance,
    there is not one Indian man alive who has figured out how to cook or
    eat a drum.

    As Adrian C. Louis, the Paiute poet writes, "We all have to go back
    with pain in our fat hearts to the place we grew up to grow out of." 
    In their efforts to find their inner child, lost father or car keys,
    white males need to travel back to the moment when Christopher Columbus
    landed in America, fell to his knees in the sand, and said, "But my
    mother never loved me."

    That is where the real discovery begins.

    Still, I have to love the idea of so many white men searching for
    answers from the Native traditions that were considered heathen and
    savage for so long.  Perhaps they are popular among white men precisely
    because they are heathen and savage.

    After all, these are the same men who look as if they mean to kill each
    other over little league games.

    I imagine the possibilities for some good Indian humor and sadness
    mixed all together.

    I imagine that Lester FallsApart, a full-blood Spokane, made a small
    fortune when he gathered glass fragments from shattered reservation
    car-wreck wind-shields and sold them to the new-age store as healing
    crystals.

    I imagine that six white men traveled to a powwow and proceeded to set
    up shop and drum for the Indian dancers, who were stunned and surprised
    by how much those white men sounded like clumsy opera singers.

    I imagine that white men turn to an old Indian man for answers.  I
    imagine Dustin Hoffman. I imagine Kevin Costner. I imagine Daniel
    Day-Lewis.  I imagine Robert Bly.

    Oh, these men who do all of the acting and none of the reacting.

    My friend John and I were sitting in the sweat lodge.  No. We were
    actually sitting in the sauna in the YMCA when he turned to me.

    "Sherman," he said, "considering the chemicals, the stuff we eat, the
    stuff that hangs in the air, I think the sweat lodge has come to be a
    purifying ceremony, you know?  White men need that, to use an Indian
    thing to get rid of all the pollution in our bodies.  Sort of a
    spiritual enema."

    "That's a lot of bull," I replied savagely.

    "What to you mean?"

    "I mean that the sweat lodge is a church, not a free clinic or
    something."

    The men's movement seems designed to appropriate and mutate so many
    aspects of Native traditions.  I worry about the possibilities:   men's
    movment chain stores specializing in portable sweat lodges; the
    "Indians 'R' Us" commodification of ritual and artifact; white men who
    continute to show up at powwows in full regailia and dance.

    Don't get me wrong.  Everyone at a powwow can dance.  They all get
    their chance.  Indians have round dances, corn dances, owl dances,
    intertribal dances, interracial dances, female dances, and yes, even
    male dances.  We all have our places within those dances.

    I mean, honestly, no one wants to waltz to a jitterbug song, right?
    
    Perhaps these white ment should learn to dance within their own circle
    before they so rudely junp into other circles.  Perhaps white men need
    to learn more about patience before they can learn what it means to be
    a man, Indian or otherwise.  
    
    Believe me, Arthur Murray was not a Native American.
    
    Last week my friend John called me up on the telephone.  Late at night.
    
    "Sherman," he said, "I'm afraid.  I don't know what it means to be a
    man.  Tell me your secrets.  Tell me how to be a warrior."
    
    "Well, John," I said, "A warrior did much more than fight, you know? 
    Warriors fed their families and washed the dishes.  Warriors went on
    Vision Quests and listened to their wives when they went on Vision
    Quests, too.  Warriors picked up their dirty clothes and tried not to
    watch football games all weekend."
    
    "Really?"
    
    "Really," I said.  "Now go back to sleep."
    
    I hung up the phone and turned on the television because I knew it
    would be a long time before sleep came back to me.  I flipped through
    the channels rapidly.  There was "F Troop" on one channel, "Dances With
    Wolves" on another, and they were selling authentic New Mexico Indian
    jewelry on the shopping channel.
    
    What does it mean to be a man?
    
    What does it mean to be an Indian?  What does it meant to be an Indian
    man?  I press the mute button on the remote control so that everyone
    can hear the answer.
    
    				###
    
    [Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian and the author of 
    "The Business of Fancydancing".  This essay originally appeared in "The
    New York Times Magazine"]
    

    >I was amazed at the lack of rhythm and laughed, even though I knew I
    >supported a stereotype.  But it's true: white men can't drum.  
    
    Uh, SOME white men can't drum.
    
    Some are incredible drummers.
    
    Saw a film of Gene Krupa last week, the man was unbelievable.....
                                                                     
    Aside from that, a good critique.
                             
    
    

 Leave it to Fernie to belabor the obvious.

 Thanks for putting this in here, Eric. Well worth the read.

    Leave it to Levesque the gratuitous insult.
    
    

    As a person who has both native American and European blood I must point
    out that no one culture has a lock on feathers, drums, skins and a lack
    of rythum. I am deeply disappointed that some men here will do and say
    anything to restrict men from reveling in the idea of just being a man.
    They seem to be so tied to women's definition of men that they now
    cannot think of enjoying the world of men. White men may be stumbling
    trying to discover their manhood but at least they are trying, it is
    not tied to a woman's approval or definition. 
    
    			N.O.M. now
    			N.O.M. for tomorrow 

    I agree with you, Wayne. I think romanticizing Native American ways
    isn't the answer, but what is important is that some men are taking 
    a look at how they want to define themselves. The fact that so many
    are interested in doing so shows that the need exists. Some men are
    interested in re-definition, some are not, and it would be nice to
    see tolerance in this community for all points of view. The basis of
    this movement is men defining themselves.