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Ray Harrell & "Keetoowah of Pomona NY&quo

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educatedindian:
Nuyagi Keetoowah Society of Pomona NY
« Reply #45 on: Apr 18th, 2005, 10:05pm »  Quote  Modify  

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Vance said:  
vii.] you said—This complex situation demands that you understand completely since you have appointed yourselves judges.   Does that not mean that you should at least conduct a “discovery phase??? including witnesses before you hold a trial?  
 
reply—someone placed faulty information online, ie—yall are accepted by the Oklahoma Keetoowah Society (paraphrasing) and that is why yall came up here, I am pretty sure. When you make claims online you might not realize that some people who know of the REAL Keetoowah might be lisnin . . .  In teh big city, in NY and NJ where there are no or few Cherokee, you are far removed and think it is save to talk about a few thousand people isolated in small towns and farms of rural NE Oklahoma, and you can claim to be some of them. Who will ever know?  

REH:  
Vance that is insulting.    Are you challenging me?  

As for the big city.   There are more Indian people in the New York Metropolitan area than in any area of comparable size and population in the country.   And a very large percentage of them are Tsalagi from Oklahoma, North Carolina and Tennessee.   There are so many Cherokee here that a Cherokee desk was proposed in the state capital.    
If they are traditional then they are Keetoowah because that is the name of the religion in English.   I don't know why its OK for people to be Christian and still Tsalagi but urban Keetoowahs can't speak English.    If the folks at home in those little towns give up their Baptist relatives and challenge the culture of those relatives, then I will quit speaking English.  Of course I mean this with a light touch.   Baptists should be Baptist if that is what they have been given and they are family.   The world is multi-lingual and we should be at least as smart as the French who seem to be able to speak other languages and still keep their French culture, religion and art.    

Vance:  
I too am worried about accusing innoscent people, and this was put here is “research needed??? and not immediately on the “fraud??? site.  

REH:  
I would suggest that you remember the old adage about the snake biting his tail.  
 

Vance:  
viii.] You say you are Cherokee. Who are your Cherokee ancestors? Can you prove it or are you claiming it? I trace my ancestors to Brown and Guess (great great grandparents were David B Brown 1822-1865 and Hariet Guess 1818-1886) and no we are not enrolled either, and no, we can not prove they are Cherokee, but he have collected a lot of evidence. Also have evidence of Monacan/Saponi. I’d like to know somehting about the person I am talking to.

REH:  OK, if your family is the reason that you are Cherokee then you are only half way there.     Most of our peoples make a distinction between "two leggeds" and "real people" or principle people.   I was always taught that you have to earn your significance by becoming a member of the principle people.   Coming of Age.   The first stone is blood but that is only a beginning and sometimes people jump over that stone.   There have been some notable exceptions to blood amongst great Indian people.   Many were of other nations that were adopted and some were even European.    Especially women.   By the way I am related by marriage to the Gists.   Maybe we are cousins in-law.   My other cousins are Reynolds, Sullivans, Corn and Rogers by marriage.    I have relatives all over Oklahoma and all over the nation both by blood and marriage.   That is by my natural parents.   My adopted Father and last teacher was a Webber and that is not an unknown name down around Gore.   His wife was Ani-Awi York from Tennessee.   As in Sargeant York who was Tsalagi although like Will Rogers they rarely mention it.   But I know the family.  
Continue to conclusion:

educatedindian:
Nuyagi Keetoowah Society of Pomona NY
« Reply #46 on: Apr 18th, 2005, 10:09pm »  Quote  Modify  

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I hate this geneology thing.   It is one of the things that made me leave home.   My faith is my own and my community is also made up of diaspora Tsalagi and other Indian people who wish to sing, dance, study and grow together.   It is our faith and religion and community.   We do not authenticate people, take money from the government, or claim an inheritance.   We simply love our families, are artists, scholars, teachers, and growers of every ilk as well as ex military people who take the care for our families very seriously.    We have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in American Indian Scholarships in honor of my late Elder in Tulsa.   She too was a scholar who accomplished great things without beating people about the head with her pedigree.  Our Founder was at one time a Wolf Clan Chief and a decorated World War II veteran in three different services, and later was the High Medicine (Peace) Priest.   I am a simple Priest who does his job as I am given to do.     We are artists and other professional people who live in the world as it is but do not give up our faith or culture.   We also practice the traditional crafts but do so as meditation and do not mix that up with Art.   Art is something more important.   It is that great mirror with a hole in it that tell us who we are and looks through to the Creator as to who we might become.  

Most of our community really doesn't want to have anything to do with the internet but I believe that it is a possibility for communication and connection.   I hope this will facilitate that but if it doesn't we are still who we are and will continue on the path given by the Creator of All.  

oneh dodada gohv'i  

Ray Evans Harrell    
 

educatedindian:
Nuyagi Keetoowah Society of Pomona NY
« Reply #49 on: Apr 19th, 2005, 11:01am »  Quote  Modify  

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I realize that Mr. Allen doesn't remember that he told me his PhD was in education and counseling.   If he will remember I mentioned my father as well.   Maybe he has lead damage like those of us from Picher.   The VA has some good drugs for memory and as a Marine he is eligible.   I don't really care what his job is at present.  We all do different things.   I did call him at his home about six months ago on a holiday and he was surprised that I had his home phone number.   I looked it up.    I questioned him about his derogatory Shamanism article which didn't seem to know anything about the seminal work of the Kirkpatricks/Gritts on  "Cherokee Shamanism."    We had a conversation in which I found him rigid, authoritarian and limited in his experience.    

I wasn't in the Marines I was in the Army for six years and I live in New York where conflict is a way of life.   So I too am happy to converse.    Nothing like a couple of old farts trying to remember when their testaterone meant something.    

I tried to call and make it private but he chose this venue.  I'm happy to oblige.   Perhaps we should include our Council and Chief Smith in this as well.   How about the High Priest?  

People whose bottoms are bare should not be so aggressive.   We don't Wannabe anything.   We are who we are.   Wannabe is a vulgar derogatory term that shouldn't be aimed at anyone.     One who does that has a head full of old waste that didn't work then and still doesn't.   I believe it is called a "Trusel".  Sounds good but doesn't work.  

Both Allen and Kirk felt no shame at maligning not only a young organization like ourselves, in existence since the 1978 law made it legal, but an old community resource of Cherokees and Lenape  (the Sand Hill People) that Touching Leaves the great Lenape Linguist scholar paid homage to when she came to New York before she died.    The community historian, who happens to be a member of the CNO,  has carefully documented the history of the community and been peer reviewed and is exhibited in two Museums in New Jersey as a cultural resource.   The community is dispersed with only a few residents now but to deny their existence is criminal.   Where is your head Allen and Kirk.   What tunes are you singing?  

Ultimately It all comes down to government collaborator's descendants being recognized and Oklahoma traditionals being dis-enfranchised.   Ask him why they don't include the traditional Keetoowahs who refused and still refuse numbers in the nation?    What can't the Stone family exhibit their work as Indian or Cherokee?   Why are imitations of old pieces more relevant to life today than work that represents Cherokees today?     That is what we call "trinkets and trash" here in the Art world and what we call "looney tunes" at the American Indian Community House.    I have fought not to allow prejudice in the opera business against Indians, when essentially we are "invading" European cultural territory.   No one says that a painter who paints on canvas rather than wood planks, berry dyes and bird yokes is not a real Indian Artist and that those sacred belts with wire in them are really European.    Suprise!   all of those special symbols that everybody was stealing from you is found almost everywhere but as long as you didn't know different, you could believe what was in their minds.    This is not the way it was when I grew up in Oklahoma.   We had Moscelyn Larkin,  Yvonne Chouteau, Louis Ballard, the Hightowers,  Maria Tall Chief.   All from Indian families and Northeastern Oklahoma.    

As for Mr. Allen and his complaints.   He is still rude presumptious and ignorant and that is all there is to that.  
Ray Evans Harrell

educatedindian:
Nuyagi Keetoowah Society of Pomona NY
« Reply #52 on: Apr 19th, 2005, 2:18pm »  Quote  Modify  

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back for a moment:  

AC quotes me:  
They don't know anyone [who] exists who isn't a part of the Dawes "collaborator's and criminal's" rolls."  
 
That is downright abusive towards people you are related to by blood and culture. Not to mention paranoid and just plain untrue. Very FEW enrolled Cherokees were "collaborators". The Watie/Boudinot faction was just a tiny fragment of the Cherokee nation, less than 10%. And, playing devil's advocate here, many of them felt they had reason for what they did, that they would be removed anyway from the homeland and so they should get the best deal they can. IMO that does not excuse what they did by signing a fraudulent treaty. But they (and their descendants) mostly did not see what they did as traitorous.  

REH:  
Al, I believe you don't know Keetoowah history here.   In 1883 through the turn of the century it was the traditional people, not the Boudinot faction, that resisted enrollment.   In fact Redbird Smith had to be caught, thrown in jail and given a roll number or he would have been in the same boat as over 6,000 traditional people who didn't and don't have roll numbers.   At the time of the Trail of Tears Christians were only about 10% and it had little to do with "blood".   In fact I was taught that a person who was culturally Tsalagi was a full blood and a Christian was mixed.   That is  of course lost with the exception of some very conservative communities.   Traditional Keetoowahs cannot be Christian, it is a different religion and the Keetoowah faith is the original faith of the Cherokee i.e. Anikituwagi.    If Smith had not been jailed, along with the criminals, he would not have had a roll number.    Since it is required that the descendant be direct, I suspect that the current Chief would not have been "Cherokee" had not his ancestor been jailed.   There is plenty of data about this available in the Cherokee Histories.   But remember, because of the "Religious Crimes Codes of 1883" that banned all native religions in America, Keetoowahs basically went underground when confronted by the authorities.    For the government the issue was land, especially for the Sundance peoples and their religious land coops (Tiospayes).   But as the Dawes commission report makes clear, and I quote:  

[In 1883 a small group of Eastern humanitarians began to meet annually at Lake Mohonk, where with an agreeable background of natural beauty, congenial companionship, and crusading motive, they discussed the Indian problem. At their third meeting Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, a distinguished Indian theorist, gave a glowing description of a visit of inspection he had recently made to the Indian Territory.  The most partisan Indian would hardly have painted such an idealized picture of his people’s happiness and prosperity and culture, but, illogically, the senator advocated a change in this perfect society because it held the wrong principles of property ownership.  Speaking apparently of the Cherokees, he said: “The head chief told us that there was not a family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own.  There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not owe a dollar.  It built its own capitol, in which we had this examination, and it built its schools and its hospitals.  Yet the defect of the system was apparent.  They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common.  It is Henry George’s system, and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors.  There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.  Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.??? (36)]

(36)  1900,   pp. 25-32; Lake Mohonk  Conference, Report, 1904, pp 5-6; Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1900, pp. 655-735.


That was the myth told by the Americans  but it was really about closing the Nation down and getting the excess land for settlers.   Redbird Smith and the Keetoowahs as well as the Four Mothers and other traditional societies were dead against that.   I do realize that some traditional families accepted and even pushed roll numbers.   I was told that by an artist descendant, but by and large the "mixed" cultural Cherokees were NOT the ones resisting enrollment, and I'm not talking blood here.  

I know a man who lost a huge ranch and was required to take 160 acres, so he shot the Marshalls and spent the rest of his life on the run.   He went from Prince to pauper.   The ranch was three Oklahoma counties.    The argument that it was going to happen anyway is the same argument made by the treaty party in Tenn.   I don't accept it and neither did my Grandparents.   They just stayed in Arkansas amongst our people there until it was all over.     They resolved to keep their community and family as well as the traditions but elected not to get involved in the fights.   The Civil War had nearly destroyed the family and they weren't going to do that again.  
Ray Evans Harrell  

educatedindian:
Nuyagi Keetoowah Society of Pomona NY
« Reply #53 on: Apr 19th, 2005, 2:51pm »  Quote  Modify  

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AC quotes me  
"There are about 8 million Indian people in America who are culturally NOT European and who don't care now to have anything to do with governments."  
 
There about 7 million with NDN ancestry total in the US, and perhaps half of them say they are "part Indian." They know they have ancestry in a vague way, but they were not raised as such, they aren't treated as NDN by others or think of themselves as NDN other than having a little vague interest in the culture.  

REH:  
Actually, what Garcia Lorca called the "deep springs" are not all that hard to find.   They are vague feelings only if your feelings are vague.   Native studies begins with the clarity of the senses and proceeds to programming and archiving those senses in a systems way that is imprinted on the child very early.    Over forty eight years of teaching in the Arts private performance market, I've found that a serious cleansing of one's perceptual skills and exploration of how one thinks adds up every time to a cultural and linguistic style.   You can see it in the way Indian people use English for example.   Even if they never knew their own language they absorbed the verb process and use that instead of the "object relations" of European noun oriented English.   A serious study of one's expressive modes shows by style where things came from.     I remember a Long Island woman who was doing an exercise in class that included improvisational singing.   She imagined she was her ancestor and began to sing in that spot.   What came out was an incredible middle-eastern mix that made absolutely no sense with who she was in the world.   Then we realized it was Armenian which was her mother's people.    But to her it was unconscious.   I've seen Medicine People recognize "skins" over distances that were far too great for mere recognition.    

My point is that claiming on the census that you are native doesn't necessarily mean that, as we know.   But what does is family style and the systems that are deep within the person.   We say the first bible or "sacred library" is yourself and you must know how that works and where it comes from.   The second is the world that is our teacher and mother.  

There are 30 million descendants of 52 survivors of the Mayflower.    There are more descendants of Jamestown then that.   I suspect that there are more than eight million descendants of those millions of native people but that is at least a little less than there are Moslems in America.   I'm using logic here.  

AC:  
About half the self IDd or otherwise IDd as NDNs in the US aren't enrolled, including me and probably half the NDNs on this board too. So we understand your position, but wish you'd cease your largely groundless hostility towards your recognized cousins. They didn't invent blood quantum, the feds did.

REH  
True but the CNO is not blood quantum but direct lineage.   It has nothing to do with blood.   As for hostility.  I would appreciate it if you realize that I didn't start this, you did.

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