Look in All Directions

Here's a reflection I wrote today:

I spent most of my younger childhood with my grandmother. My mother was a single-mom, who worked many hours to provide for us. I enjoyed the times I shared with my grandmother, especially when she told me stories of long ago or how things came to be. The traditional teachings she had learned in her life were being passed down to me unlike my other family members. I did not realize this until I was older that she was giving me a special gift that came with an obligation of responsibility. I was now the carrier of our stories. I knew why her relationship with her brother was the way it was, what the leaders from long ago were expected to do, and why I was taught to embroider. She was preparing me to become a strong Ojibwe woman, like herself. Somewhere in me, she saw potential when I was an infant and began fostering it. She taught me with oral tradition and role modeling to be a good productive member of the community and to pass her gift on to my own children one day.

Reading Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions by Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisun, reminded me of things I learned before. They include the very stories I was taught long ago and the references to historical events I learned in my undergraduate degree. It also reminded me of the pain I suffered as I learned the details of the cruelty that my people faced. It is that very pain I see in the people today as historical trauma continues to thrive in forms of poverty, abuse and corruption.

The late Vine Deloria once wrote and was reprinted in this book that:

Crazy Horse never drafted anyone to follow him. People recognized what Crazy Horse did was for the best and was for the people. Crazy Horse never had his name on stationary. He never had business cards. He never even received a per diem….Until we can produce people like Crazy Horse all the money and help in the world will not save us. It is up to us to write the final chapter of the American Indian on this continent.

I pray that our leaders of today and tomorrow will understand and honor the true role of leadership in order to guide us towards healing and a positive future.

I enjoyed the balance that this book provides for the reader. It contains the good and the bad, the past and the future, the slaughter and the survival. It offers a realistic hope for the continuance of culture that has been repeatedly targeted for assimilation, acculturation and termination. With determination, it will not only survive, but thrive into the next millennium.

Stay sweet 'n smile.....................Mz.