Nuyagi Keetoowah Society of Pomona NY

[educatedindian]

Oh brother.

"This is very flattering, my very own thread in the archive section and in so short of a time."

This was done to prevent you from deleting the evidence of your inconsistencies, refusals to answer questions, and childish behavior. It's not "flattering", it's done to expose you.

"I would suggest that the name of that be changed to the community that I belong to."

No, the name stays.  

"If you wish I will consult the Council as to what we can share on the internet with people outside the  community."

You just don't get it, do you? It's the opinion of all the Cherokees on this board, and myself as well, that there are some serious problems with what your group does. All the Cherokees on here believe your group to be disrespectful wannabes.

And one of the central beliefs of this group is that there are some things which are not right to talk about on the net. Esp when we have doubts about the value of what your group claims to teach and who you in particular claim to be. Joseph called you a white posing as Cherokee. I don't go that far, but I do think you're someone who both does not know what is right and traditional and often does not care.

[JosephSWM]

Al,

This is what I said concerning the blood quantum. Its kinda funny to be quoting myself;

"And for this Blood Quantum thing, to me it is important. I don't care who calls me a bigot. If you have 1/32 or 1/64 blood you are not an Indian in my opinion. I have know idea what you look like or what your blood is. You have danced around that issue quite well. I do know what David Michael Wolfe looks like though. He's the other head of the Nuyagi Keetoowah. He's a fat, pink skinned, balding, white man claiming to be Cherokee. Maybe we'll all be lucky here and he'll start to post too. "

Joseph

[DIGOWELI]

Oh Man, are you a drudge.   I just come home from doing a ceremonial out on the Island with the Montauks for their children and Elders.   Was on my feet with the spirits giving names for five hours and came home happy and positive and I run into someone that sounds like a preacher demeaning Secular Humanists.    Lighten up.   Also talk to Joseph.   He said no such thing to either me or my wife in private.   He was quite human.    

As for your board, I did the same.   I copied the whole thread and e-mailed it to several chiefs and councils around the country.   They weren't all that impressed with you or your site.   In fact they suggested that I was idiotic not to know whether you were a teenager or not.  

You really should read that Warfield book.    It would explain what I have not been able to get across to you.   Also they didn't have a problem with what I said because they are artistically motivated while you seem more regular school.    You can't learn to sing from a book.

Well that's enough tit for tat.    Can't we just get over this head butting?     You don't know me and my writings are only clear to those who do.   The same is true for us about you and your group here.      

It's embarrassing to wear a tuxedo and have no pants.  

Don't take yourself so seriously.   The world gets along just fine and you shouldn't be so manipulatable   by people who do not have your best interests in mind or care one whit about you.    

Sorry, I tend to be overbearing at advice.   Just forget that.   But do tell us something about your life just as I have done with mine.    Consistency is the land of bores.    Don't be consistent.   The doorway to real learning is often found in the mistake and not the consistent.  

Ray Evans Harrell

[educatedindian]

"You don't know me and my writings are only clear to those who do."

That'd be sad if true, because then no one could ever possibly understand anything you've written here. Which is true about half the time...

For all your repeated claims to not care about what we think, you're going to a lot of trouble trying to convince us you're legit. Even trying to get alleged others across the country to wade through this thread of over 70 posts. And most of them were written by you and very long winded. I wonder if that could be called cruel and unusual punishment.

Who I am is all over this board, and I've said as much during replies to you. I suppose if you really wanted I could send you my CV and list of publications...

"they didn't have a problem with what I said because they are artistically motivated while you seem more regular school."

Oh those poor misunderstood artistes! Always spelled with an e in it of course...

"It's embarrassing to wear a tuxedo and have no pants."

Insert Mel Brooks routine here...    
 
"Sorry, I tend to be overbearing at advice."

You tend to be overbearing, period, esp since no one asked for your advice.
 
"Consistency is the land of bores."

Bad metaphors are sure boring...

"Can't we just get over this head butting?"

Sure, just don't be so demanding. We've been pretty gracious to you in here, considering.  

[DIGOWELI]

Still not specific Al,

Still quoting people instead of letting them speak for themselves.   That is not traditional or Indian.   It is without honor.

Just put a Bio on the list.   Put your bio on the list and encourage the others to do the same.   That is what any professional list does and builds trust.  

As for "insecurity".    Being transparent is not being insecure.   You be transparent and not off list but on.   That would show your security and honesty.

CVs are much too long.   I haven't been able to get my documented CV down below fifty pages and six CD recordings.   I do send one out to universities and business people with the recordings.   The board of Advisors to MCORE, my company, would knock your eyes out.   All of these things are available and corroboration is on the internet as I said.  

Allen at least stuck his name and title on his letter.   He took the heat.   You are just a gossip.

One of the ways in which people like you are so destructive can be illustrated with Disney's current Carib cannibal reprise of their Pirates of the Caribbean movie.   It goes back to Pocahontas which was going to be a movie in that spirit.   The production team called the American Indian Community House and my old student Jane Lind to recommend Indian people who were professional singers to come down and read a new script and make a first take recording of the music.    

The words were by Steven Schwartz, a sweetheart of a guy and a first class lyricist.  ("Godspell",  "Moses, Prince of Egypt" etc.)     The music was by Allen Menken the award winning writer of projects going back to "Little Shop of Horrors" and forward to Beauty and Beast and the Little Mermaid.    David Friedman was the third member of the team.   Friedman is one of the most respected composers on Broadway and wrote the music for "King Island Christmas" the story about the Inuit on King Island.    

Enter the Indians.   We walked into that project and it was filled with stereotypes although the team was very open to trying to do away with them.   They were talking to Indian composers Dennis Yerry  (Black Elk Speaks) and Joan Henry about these issues and eventually to me and Russell Means.   They moved from a typical horror stereotype show to a children's show that I was proud to have my daughter see.    

Disney was the most sensitive of corporations that I had ever worked with and the production team was not only open to Indian opinion but when I discovered they were doing "Hunchback of Notre Dame" I gave Steven Schwartz all of my Gypsy research that I had gotten from Ian Hancock the Romany rep from the UN and the Holocaust Museum.    (Hancock had worked with us to remove the historical stereotypes from Carmen, a production we did at La Mama E.TC. in New York.)

continued

[DIGOWELI]

The Pocahontas team moved almost 180 degrees from their original stereotypes.   The story by Schwartz was not historical, it was an animated movie for kids.   A fantasy on a historical theme for children.   If it had been historical Pocahontas would have been topless and a nubile 13 years of age.    Also the name Pocahontas would have been translated and you know the translation as well as I.    Not for children in the Bible Belt.

The English were portrayed, for the first time, as the goons that they were and the Indians even had a provincial idiot in the boyfriend.   He was the typical character that we used to call a "looney tune."      In this production he died.    

Pocahontas also had her "medicine" in the animals and the trees.    The production team was introduced to and consulted with a Powhattan family of Elders from down South and the Disney team studied hard and listened to what we had to say.    I believe Joan Henry set that up but I could be wrong.   They still missed the oratorical style of the Southern tribes and went for Northern Plains as more commercial and recognizable as "Indian".    They also gave Pocahontas a Hopi top to cover what would have scandalized the movie.    In the end, instead of "Sioux Me"  we got a sympathetic but stylistically flawed, movie that did not hurt Indian people and set a tone for reconciliation in the children.    Even Russell was proud,  and he had given them dung from the beginning about his quarters.   We were happy just not to have payed for the tickets.   The room was fine.  Russell was the prettiest NDN I had ever seen.

Well the movie was released and all of a sudden everything went wrong.    Even on our Nuyagi Keetoowah Council we had a writer writing a book about stereotypes (that I didn't know of) who was collaborating with academics from Oklahoma to tear the movie down.   People who hadn't seen and refused to see it, wrote the most awful things.   One of my board members is a Wall Street Entertainment Guru who was familiar with the stats on the Disney "hit" on Pocahontas and he said they "took a bath."     The sequel was made and they refused to have anything to do with Indians and now we have cannibal Caribs.    Pocahontas was the last straw for these folks on the Council who moved their office to a members house in Pomona.   The traditional wing that built on the Founder's library and oral teachings stayed in New York City with the community, the charters and the Stompground.    The story is much more complicated than that but Council business is private by law and I won't discuss that here.

We thought we had built a relationship with Disney that would bring more sensitive movies for our children and supply jobs for Indian people in the future.   Jim Fall, Joan Henry, Russell Means and myself, wrote extensively to Indian groups on the internet but the negative far outweighed the positive and we just could not fight it and live our lives.   We don't make a living being Indian.   We are Indian.      We live where our communities are.   We have daily connections with them and we provide services without government help or request.    

Life is like with Pocahontas where they initially heard many Indian people,  it all came down to people who were trained and could do the job, no matter what their ethnic background.   The Indians in the cast ended up singing British parts as well.   We liked that.    

It was not art but commerce and that is what they are.    Those writing half-baked books on stereotypes were also about commerce.   They had their opinions and their salaried jobs for publish or perish and they were not going to talk to anyone else.  

People in New York art circles know my reputation on stereotypes.    I've fought them for 48 years working on projects about many peoples.   In each case we have gone for truth and beauty.   The beginning is to tell the deeper truths that make us all who we are.   I took the heat on Carmen because I said the Gypsies had a culture and fifteen years later everyone agrees, but I got hit by the Times for such an absurd proposition.   The same was true of the Spanish life of Garcia-Lorca that we did and the Aztec Quetzalcoatl Lord of Dawn that we did as well.   People came into the projects with stereotypes and we replaced those stereotypes with research and the development of a performance skill.   I am proud of the members of those companies now developing other projects with the same aesthetic and sense of balance.  

Ray Evans Harrell

[JosephSWM]

Ray,

It doesn't matter what anyone's intent was or was Disney's intent was with the movie Pocohantas. It was the end result. My son was was in preschool when that movie came out. All the children were 'playing' the movie. And they designated him to play the 'savage', a term used in the movie. And of course the teachers thought this okay, since they were children. The teachers even went as far as having a project where the kids gave  themselves Indian names. Didn't matter that I complained to them, they were the teahers they knew more than me.

I am a storyteller, I do many programs thorughout the school year in schools, mainly K-6. After that movie came out I would have kids argue with me that I was not an Indian because I did not look like one in the movie. Where was my bow and arrows and knife. Why did I have a shirt on. The list goes on.

What that movie did was re-enforce stereotypes for yet another generation of children. Forget all the adults, the movie was for children. And I truly believe that Disney's intent was one thing and one thing only - $$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Joseph

[DIGOWELI]

Joseph,

Did you see the movie?

The Savages were the colonists.  

It was about stereotypes.   Was the audience so dumb that that obvious point went over their heads or did they have a conflict of interest?

My problem with the use of the word "savage" is that its actual meaning is the opposite of city dweller.   Farmers are the original European savages.   But Disney was not interested in that but the common meaning with Americans.  The greatest Savage of all according to them was the fat Englishman with the little cute dog.  

I certainly used the movie in my community to remove stereo-types.   By the way, convention is the term we use in opera and it means tradition and stereotype comes from typesetting and means the type that stays in place each time the newspaper is printed.   The header.

We need to diminish the complexity around this word and return it to its meaning.   The word conservative comes from the same meaning.

Good to hear from you,

Ray

[JosephSWM]

Ray,

I saw the movie. I think the target audience were children and so many things go over thier heads.

I think that since none of this has much to do with the original topic, and if you want to keep the thread about the movie going, maybe move it over to Etectera. Can't think of where else. Just an idea.

Joseph

[VHawkins]

Well this thread has grown, and I think it has outgrown me.

I don't know or care much about dancing or singing in operas & such, and I don't hold Hollwood or Broadway as any better than any place else. And Ray, I doubt you know or care much about partial differential equations or fourier transforms . . . so there, we're even.

You never made any effort to answer my questions, so there was never an need to respond -- still isn't.

however . . .

When you put Waite and Ross both as part of your NJ group founders I'm perplexed as they fought on opposite sides in the Civil War. I find it hard to believe they'd have been "buddy-buddy" in NJ -- oops --Elias Boudenot didn't live that long, did he? Ya think his ghost mighta' "spirit travelled" up to NJ?

And I suspect others here might have some gray hair, too -- for the last 3 or 4 years my temples seem to be spreadng grayness to the rest of my head almost daily it seems worse -- not that I'm lookin' that close.

Vance

ps -- Ray, if you were more respectful to Dr. Allen or were humble enough to make an attempt to communicate your group to better known Keetowah in Ok or NC or if they'd talk to yall, I'd be more willin' to give yall the benefit of the doubt, but right now your refusal to answer simple questions makes that not very likely.

I'm nobody special, and I make big blunders that I'll always regret -- I'm not like you, perfect & all -- I guess that's another reason you irritate me just a little bit . . .

[VHawkins]

I meant to say it is not likely I'll believe you at the end of that comment, not the Keetooway Society. I am not qualified to know what they'll do or think.

Alos I noticed you mention that you speek "Cherokee English". Does that mean you go around sayin' " Osiyo yall" and "howdy u-na-li-i" a lot? Just curious . . .

vance

[educatedindian]

Got a new report on Harrell.

"My friend was talked into going to one of his teaching workshops held annually. She was told he was fluent in Cherokee, was a great teacher and that he was traditional. She is Cherokee and wanted to learn.
Well, nothing was as it was supposed to be. The places to stay were not ready and she had to find someone to stay with as she doesn't have lots of money. An elder lady offered to let her stay with her in exchange for help getting around. My friend said that was a saving grace as she got to leave early when this lady tired.
Ray is not fluent in Cherokee. His "ceremonies" are written down and he reads from them as he does the ceremony! And he sings the ceremonial songs in OPERA.
She said that was rather comical, actually. She said he asked on the first day, what people knew and then incorporated their answers in his handouts!
She came home in disgust at their "medicine chief" as he called himself. She said what little she knows, it is still more than what Ray knows. She also said he is a white man.  
She was told not to say anything bad about him or his teachings when she got home. And has since
received emails with glowing reports about how wonderful it all was."

[JosephSWM]

As all of you can see, Vance and I got this thread started quite a while back. At the time I wanted to expose David Michael Wolfe for the fraud that he is, still is. But during our postings Ray Harrell replied.

Last year I was invited by the Nuyagi Keetowah to come to their week long workshop to judge for myself. I did this. I had a great time and was satisfied with how everything went including ceremony. I went again this year. I know for a fact that the only expenses anyone had to put out was for their travel.

And so I was livid, to say the least, when I read the second hand (not directly from the accuser) comments in Reply #86. I know who this woman is. She informed us all that she is Mohawk not Cherokee. But before I go on I want  to make it clear that I will not go tit for tat with replies about this. This woman is a liar and I want to set the record straight.

The fact that she makes a judgment on anyone ethnicity is amazing, considering she looks as white as snow. Good thing the Cherokee Nation did not use this basis to judge Will Rogers.

As for a place to stay, the cabins were ready when they arrived. The Clan Mothers, at their own expense, bought mattresses, feather beds, pillows, throw rugs, etc. For this woman to say there was no place to stay is an insult to the Clan Mothers. Not very Indian-like.

This woman, along with two others (there were 15 people in all) never attend the morning ritual of going to water. Yet another insult.

They never shared any meals with us except the one when we all went out to eat. The communal evening meal, they were never there. Yet another insult.

As for Ray singing opera, well this woman needs to check the definition of opera. Perhaps cultural events are at a minimum in her part of the country and she has no clue as to what opera is. Or perhaps like a lot of newly-discovered-that-they-were-Indians, she expects Indian singing to sound like a powwow.

I get the feeling that this woman is gunning for her own tribe and is taking target practice here. She has a bone to pick with her tribal leadership and she should do that privately. As for the glowing reports, I was the only one that had a positive report to send to her Chief.

Before hearsay is put on the internet you should check your facts. And maybe this woman should have the guts to post her own ramblings, or better yet face the person she is belittling and make her accusations. But alas, like so many on the internet it is easier to hide behind the keyboard. By the way, that’s why I went up, to stop hiding and see for myself.

Joseph

[Moma_porcupine]

I am confused . I know next to nothing about Cherokee culture , and I have no idea who any of these people are , but reading through this thread I see ;

Reply 23 , from a letter from Wyman Kirk Cherokee Nation Oklahoma

"While the Nuyagi Keetoowah Society website I saw last year is no longer in operation, I do not think that they have desisted in their claims of being "acknowledged" or somehow validated by the Stokes Grounds Keetoowahs. On that specific point, I can completely and wholeheartedly state that they have no authorized, valid, or legitimate association, connection, or affiliation to the Keetoowah Society. From my research I found that the Nuyagi Keetoowah Society (Nuyagi, as an FYI, means "New York") calls their grounds "Stokes" as well." ( continued ... )
 
"The Nuyagi Keetoowah Society, in my opinion, practices cultural appropriation at its worst; it is cultural theft, cultural abuse, and highly offensive to those who had to fight to preserve the traditional religion, traditional medicine, and traditional ways of life." ( continued....)

reply 24 , more from the letter from Wyman Kirk

"I'll state once again, for the record: The Nuyagi Keetoowah Society is not recognized in any way, shape, or form as a legitimate Cherokee organization in terms of a connection to the Oklahoma-based Keetoowah Society. Any claims that the Nuyagi Keetoowah Society makes about being "recognized" (or any language to the similar) by the Cherokee Nation, by any of the "real" Keetoowah Society fires in Oklahoma, is blatantly false and wholly untrue. " ( continued ...)

Reply 25 another letter from Wyman Kirk .

"I will also note that I am not an expert of any kind, and that while I stand by what I said, I am certainly willing to listen to others much wiser than me on this (or any other topic). All of which is to say that if my friend and colleague Richard, or someone who does have recognized/valid authority on the matter (someone like Crosslin Smith for example, an Oklahoma Cherokee medicine man connected to the ceremonial grounds), has something different to say, then I would defer to their expertise."  (continued ... )

Reply 30 , from a letter from Richard Allen of the Cherokee Nation Oklahoma

Hello Joseph

We are familiar with this fraudulent group ,one of more than 200 with which we are familiar through our own research, the research of certain colleagues regarding these fraudulent groups or through inquiries such as yours. The so-called Nuyagi Keetoowah Society has no relationship with any of the legitimate Cherokee entities as they suggest." ( continued... )  

Contiued into reply 31, the letter from Richard Allen

"I believe that Wyman Kirk has already addressed the Keetoowah issue completely and with more information and comprehension than I could provide.
 
Dr. Richard L. Allen
Policy Analyst
Cherokee Nation "

So coming back to the more recent posts concerning this group and someones reports of what  their friend says happened ; Maybe what this person is saying their friend experienced is incorrect , and I can't comment on that either way,  but what I am confused by , is what Joseph is saying .

Joseph , when you say  ;

Last year I was invited by the Nuyagi Keetowah to come to their week long workshop to judge for myself. I did this. I had a great time and was satisfied with how everything went including ceremony. I went again this year. I know for a fact that the only expenses anyone had to put out was for their travel.

Am I understanding this to mean that now you ( Joseph ) feel there is no problem with this group , as "the only expenses anyone had to put out was for their travel "?

I agree charging money is one of the most degrading types of cultural exploitation , and it shows at least some respect , if nothing like that is happening here , but claiming to be someone you are not , or to know something you do not , and then to become an important part of peoples lives , on the basis of this , is also wrong .

Are you satisfied that this group is who they say they are , and they do know what they claim to know , even though the policy analyst of the Cherokee in Oklahoma wrote you and said , "We are familiar with this fraudulent group ..." ?

As I say I am confused ... Is the Nuyagi Keetowah Society that David Michael Wolf is involved in , a false one , but the one that Ray Harrel is involved in for real ?  I had not seen anything in this discussion that gave me that impression .

Have I missed something  ?

[debbieredbear]

I am also confused.