Fitting the Mold
April 12th, 2009Easter is coming…. and tulips are nice… but I dont celebrate Easter. I quit celebrating alot of holidays for commercial purposes, even though I like chocolate. But then when I say this people get all in a tizzy because its somehow so offensive to tell people. Easters a White Holiday what does it have to do with being Mohawk….. um Nothing….
Oh I’m sure I’ll get a rash of comments on that one….
But before you go on comment festival and get all wound up and write about my first statement. Lets ask ourselves a honest question, and this doesnt apply for all. As some peoples answers will be greater in quantity than others.
Lets ask the question… If I stripped all the White holidays and white things from you besides work, shopping for food and living in a Modern Match Stick house. What the hell would most people have that would even make them considered practicing any amount of Native culture. What would people be doing on weekends if they didnt watch TV, go drinking, movies, go to hockey, and we eliminated every theoretical non-native activity from our lives. What would we as Mohawks be doing during the day that would consist of a Diet of Mohawk Activities?
And this is the part where comments come in, how I’m trying to make myself better than everyone else.. Its usualy the case, which this is a question, its not about me, its a question about the fabric of our mostly non-existant culture in our everyday lives. Which yes is not true for all?
I would like to know how did we re-invent everyday Iroquois Culture into our extremely modernized daily lives. Which we have re-invented some of it, but I think vast portions of Iroquois re-invention are missing. I think we could as individuals and as a society of people, do a much greater job at exploring the limits of Iroquois life and re-inventing it in the 21st century. Why?
Well I think we can do a much greater job because if we dont, were treading on the verge of cultural take over. The best and most ironic part is, were assimilating our own people now. Its like wow we bitch about genocide, assimilation and governmental policies. Yet tell someone to stop celebrating xmas… they will defend it like the taliban loves AK’s they wont give it up.
Then the most ridiculous argument ever comes…. You expect us to live in the bush and plant corn? Which is the most stupid, ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, because even that can be said about white people.
People use that argument because people in this modern society dont want to change shit. Like yeah were going to go back to the bush and plant corn, well you know we should still plant corn…. Because if this society fails, were all going to starve….
I look around everyday and think where are these Mohawks we talk about everyday. I know we have ceremonies, we have a culture, we have longhouses and a language. Its great but I think we need to take our culture back out of the longhouse closet and bring it back into our daily lives. Some will argue its in their daily lives, which maybe true but I want to see Mohawk Culture everywhere. Not just a few days a month, or on Wed on the radio… or in someones grand idea that a wampum belt on the bumper is being Mohawk.
I want to see a Emersion school that abandones English completely. I want to see Mohawk signs, and english ones. I want to see the Great Law taught in schools, and what it means for our people to hold clans in clases along side standardized Math and Language arts. I want to see weekend cultural programs for everyone along side the abundance of white cultural activities.
I want to see our children being taught our stories, our songs and our ways of life before we teach them about computers, engineering and social studies. But thats just me….
So yeah this are sloppy ideas, just hastly pasted up here, but there just words, and with peoples other ideas they will change…
k - thanks
Note: If your going to leave comments, fine leave them, but if you want to personally attack anything other than the ideas set forth in this note, prepare to have your comment deleted. If you cannot leave some kind of coherent comment that doesnt either agree or disagree with the ideas in any of my notes, delete the comment yourself and spare me the waste of one click. These are discussions of ideas and if you want to discuss them, make comments, ask questions or simply add to them, disagree with them in anyway, do it, but try doing it in a constructive manner….. as personal attacks, name calling and insults only show me one thing, they show me, people still havent learned how to agree to disagree, it shows me people still cannot sit down and discuss things like human beings…. its hard to do, but it is possible….