Toward Pentecost (10): Vision

Lent Picture A Day (31): Place

Native Dancers in Alabama

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians is the only federally recognized Native Tribe in Alabama. Last weekend their dancers performed at a local art gathering and I made a point to be there. It was fun to see the young people and their amazing dedication to their ethnic heritage and bringing it to the rest of us. I took some video (of course) and edited it into a 3 1/2 minute summary. I am impressed by the regalia (not costumes!) and their energy. Enjoy.

A Video for December: Miracle of Life

(We had a chance to see Brule yesterday. A special and spiritual experience. This is a perfect song for the month of December for it is in this month that the miracle of life is reborn. This song is from their seasonal album, One Holy Night.)

Who Would Have Thought?

Itasca.

The lake that is the headwaters of the Mississippi.

I always assumed that it was a native name.

Wrong. Very wrong.

Believe it or not is comes from a Latin phrase:

Veritas caput.

Let me show you that again:

ver-ITAS CA-put.

Yep. It's a fake name.

Here's the entry from Wikipedia:

The Ojibwe name for "Lake Itasca" was Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Elk Lake); this was changed by Henry Schoolcraft to "Itasca", coined from a combination of the Latin words veritas ("truth") and caput ("head") though it is sometimes misinterpreted as "true head." It is one of several examples of pseudo-Indian place names created by Schoolcraft.

I am crushed.

Wisdom from a Seneca Elder

Life was like water; it flowed on like a river and then entered a great sea and mingled in a vast pool of life.

Old age was like a tree whose branches had been broken by storms and whose trunk had become weather-beaten and decayed.

Good words were like flowers that bloomed and bore seed that lived on after the flowers had withered.

--Seneca archaeologist Arthur Caswell Parker, in his biography of Chief Red Jacket

In Memoriam: Tom Laughlin (1931-2013)

Tom Laughlin was not the superstar that Peter O'Toole was, nor the award winner like Joan Fontaine. He was a scrappy independent film-maker who, in 1971 made a little movie called Billy Jack. As the writer, director and star he sought to portray the Native American hero as a brave, modern character. He was not Native American but had deep respect for the heritage and sadness at the conditions he had seen in South Dakota.

The movie was a fairly typical good guys (Billy Jack and the "hippie" school) versus bad guys (townspeople, police) and had a much-too violent message considering it was supposed to be promoting peace. It was, however, ground-breaking in its independent success and the differing portrayal of Native Americans. Looking back from 40 years later it is even more simplistic than we saw it then; but that is true of many a movie that seeks to only address the issues of its day in a narrow-focused way.

One piece of the movie that garnered a lot of attention was it's "theme" song, One Tin Soldier. The overt message of peacefulness was contrasted with the bloodiness of the day. The chorus:

Go ahead and hate your neighbor; go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven; you can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowin' come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away

Tom Laughlin died last week at age 82.

Here's a video of scenes from the movie with the theme song.

It does capture the spirit of the times. But, oh, how those times have changed.

A Place of Remembrance

Remembering and Honoring Memorial

Fort Snelling State Park

Minneapolis, MN

August 5, 2013