Conference hydra::dejavu

1807.0. "Amusing View of Men's Movt from Native Eyes" by IAMOK::BOBDOG::GENTILE (Marketing IM&T - MSO2-2/BB19) Mon Mar 01 1993 15:27

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                  -< The American Indian Information Source >-
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Note: 146.22                    Spirituality for sale                22 of 22
GENRAL::KILGORE "Me, Fire Woman!"                  192 lines  28-JAN-1993 08:20
                            -< Drums and the man >-
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I've moved this and wanted to say I found this article to be very humorous and
serious at the same time.  The author has a great gift to be able to do this.
Thanks for taking the time to type it all in.  :-)

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Note 312.0                "A Native American tells the                No replies
DECWET::GILLMAN "I feel like a tourist in my own l" 186 lines  28-JAN-1993 02:22
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    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 an 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, especially 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 highlights 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
    movement chain stores specializing in portable sweat lodges; the
    "Indians 'R' Us" commodification of ritual and artifact; white men who
    continue to show up at powwows in full regalia 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 men should learn to dance within their own circle
    before they so rudely jump 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"]

    ...it's the value system..

    Thanks for posting this article.

    It left me with a sad feeling.  Men in our so-called mainstream culture
    have lost most of their traditions that connect them with music, dance,
    and art.

    The creative arts have become something we purchase.

    We buy our paintings, our furnishings, our music.

    We feel that our own creations aren't polished and professional enough
    to own and cherish.  We live and move in rooms filled with objects that
    were crafted by hands that we have never seen or known.

    I was fortunate in that I grew up in an East-Appalachian culture
    filled with a rich legacy of music, folklore, crafts, and traditions. 
    The men in our culture would gather together and play music on a
    regular basis.  If you were a boy you were expected to learn to play
    guitar, banjo, or harp (harmonica).

    The men often sat patiently after a hard day's work and "whittled" out
    intricate wood carvings, or crafted furniture from the trees growing on
    their land.

    They told stories...


    I can understand why all these men are flocking to seminars where they
    can sing and dance and drum.  They are feeling their loss and trying to
    reclaim their connection to rhythm and color and feelings.

    -- Ruth
    

    Yeah, most white men trying to drum is almost as funny as David Carradine
    doing combat Tai Chi as a provoked Shaolin monk.  
    
    Then again, let your average Native American try golfing in the suburbs
    in a bad polyester leisure suit from K-Mart and see if he fares any 
    better than the Men's Movt disciples do at NA crafts.  :-)
    
    Hey, considering what merchandizing did to the Asian martial arts,
    Native American spirituality has a bright future ahead of it ...
    
    							todd

    While agreeing that the author is stereotyping, I have to say that I
    fit some of the stereotypes. Especially the drumming part. I drum. I'm
    mostly white. (I have some MicMac ancestry, but can't get a pure trace
    on it) I do not have a strong sense of rythym. No, strike that. I can
    follow the rythym in others and become a part of what is going on. I
    have some trouble going into the flow of the rythym when I join in.
    Mostly for this reason, I use subtle, quiet instruments. A Temponastli,
    a quiet rattle, a small tambourine. Something that compliments the
    rythym, but doesn't compete. The one thing that I have noticed is that
    if I conciously try to join in to the flow, it doesn't work. That may
    be what is happening to others. THey're trying to hard. Just let the
    sounds flow and don't force it. It works for me.
    
    Totem animals. I don't choose them. They choose me. They are not all
    Totems. They are just helpful spirits and the right ones come along at
    the right time. Right now, with my back problems, I need a bear's
    strength and ask for that strength. I went into Silver Hawk for the
    first time on Monday. (A "Native American" store in Ashburnham, Mass.
    that I have no affiliation with) A hand fired occarina with a copper
    bear on it was the first thing I noticed. I am wearing it around my
    neck right now and my back, while achy, is as strong as normal today. 
    
    When I need something else, I expect another animal will come along. In
    the past, Eagles have shown up. 4 at once went along with the car I was
    in, while I was playing a Native American tape. They left when the tape
    was over. Rats have appeared in dreams and reality when needed. Other
    things too. So the totem is not always the largest animal.
    
    
    Maybe, like all stereotypes, some people fit some of them and others
    fit others, but not many fit all of them and some don't fit any of
    them.
    
    Just MHO.
    
    PJ