Sedrick

[Sedrick]

Hello everyone. My name is Sedrick and I am 40 year old African American Indianapolis resident. I hope to be able to network with people, give and receive constructive dialogue and overall just be a positive element of this community.

[Sedrick]

Being African American at the age I am the institutions of America and religion and other mitigating politics made it easy for me to be narrow minded.

I have read a lot of Posts on this site about the misappropriation of Native American culture and spirituality. It would be easy to say that being African American and being raised in the community I have been in that...I have had similar and worst experiences.

Yet that is an insult to all the Native Americans who don't have a plush life on the reservation. Some of which are the poorest and highest in death in disease in all of America.  I can only state that I understand.

It is my hope that this same understanding will find the people who reply to this post. My African American experiences within the Protestant church...in addition to my own eccentricities is what led me to life on my medicine wheel.

Having a past and present within a medicine culture from my renowned grand mother and brother...I approached Native American culture and spirituality like your average groupie. I thought this First People culture was everything that it wasn't.

So as time went on and with constant rejection from the letters and calls to just about every Lakota reservation in South Dakota I was forced to learn.

In my pursuit of wanting to be like my brother who has an extensive oral traditions education in medicine from our grandmother and countless people in Sumner County...I had to earn the same thing about him as I did about my approach to the idea of being adopted by a Lakota tribe and obtaining the power to live in my purpose and potential.

Sadly the world and people are not based on the fairy tales we create in our minds I  order to deal with horrific "right nows". So after a lot of rejection I met a woman I knew that worked at Ebenezer who was an adopted daughter of a Lakota woman.

She grounded me. Gave me the fundamentals and it changed my life. Finally I had something that was my own, but more than that I always knew that despite my child like eagerness to learn and that not being something a Native American teacher would coincide with...I knew one day I would acquire a traditional way from being properly taught.

Unfortunately my timing always seemed to be off. After doing with John Crowdog, Facebook insults, stringent responses from the American Indian Center on East 10th Street and losing the friend who gave me the authentic fundamentals in the first place...

After reading about the Five Civilized Tribes and the role these tribes played in the domestic and commercial slave trade...it gave me the reality check that I needed.

I thought the medicine wheel was something as separate from me as my siblings, the Jews from blacks, the blacks from blacks and so many degrees of the same separation that can easily be found all throughout your community and mine.

Realizing I could not learn a medicine wheel way of life from a book, or from a Native American. I settled for being able to pray. Being able to give thanks offerings. Being competent of the spirit keeper's of the directions. Being able to smudge. Most of all I have discovered what I read in an old Cherokee story about some Native Americans that lamented the Creator to turn the day to night and eventually vice versa.

The balance  between night and day. It was hard to live a life on my wheel with no tribe. It was hard to live on my wheel and the oneness it recognizes with each of the races...yet only finding more of the same.

Everything has its season. Each day I am reminded that I have everything I need. Each day I have to find these little affirmations, because without them and my medicine wheel...it would be more than a challenge to get out of the bed.

I was the guy who wanted to play like an Indian until I was taught that identity just like a journey is lifelong.  I was the guy who called myself a medicine man based on the few alternative medicine remedies my brother taught me. I was the guy who thought the stereo types I had about Native Americans and how they would take me in and give me this astonishing "wow" insight to finally beat my life a d struggle. After the desperation...after trying to overcome the attrition between my night and day...I just had to accept the basics without all the bells and whistles.

This has been a journey that has revealed itself as a balancing act. My goal on my medicine wheel is to have community with my ancestors, to live a good life and to live in my purpose and potential. Through it all I have found that the medicine wheel helps me in identifying with my African heritage.

So for my part I apologize to every Native American for being a part of the same class of stereo typical people and institutions...that tore African Americans from their families and time after time provided Native American people with an individualized Trail Of Tears...historically and right now today.

[Sedrick]

It goes without saying that it is a daunting task to find your place within a family structure...let alone the community, society and the world.

During the Transatlantic slave trade Blacks were stripped of their name, heritage and as time went on with nothing but oral traditions...we were also stripped of our identity. We were legally considered "beasts of burden" and held equal rights to a horse.

The subjugation of Blacks is equally gruesome as that of the Native Americans. Is the historical records of slavery accurate? Did the Five Civilized Tribes as coined by the Europeans and French enslave Blacks on a commercial scale In order to make peace for three Native Americans being forced off their lands?

We're Blacks used in some Native American Tribe's rituals in a cannibalistic capacity? History states all of these things but what is really the truth?

I am 40 years of age. In my generation being of Native American Ancestry meant you were something better. In a remedial example...having "good" hair, high cheek bones, being brave, being different, being a hunter and fisherman and other examples of such were often compartmentalized into having "Native American" in your family.

The truth is that the same source of the Transatlantic slave trade that met the Native Americans with a historical, modern and very individualized "Trail Of Tears"...seems to be the very same source that took Africans from what was allegedly their native lands into great ships and onto lands coined "America".

Is the horrific epidemic of New Age Fraud of Native American culture and spirituality In fact...the same rape of black culture. The same exploitation. The same "EBT" style of living of some of the poorest reservations in America.

Is it the historical failure of the Black race that we did not fight and die to the last of us rather than to live to be a people as a whole...where large number of individuals have no oral traditions. No history except slavery and into all of how we "scattered our own" and have been scattered.

"New Age Discovery" begins with the growth and development of individuals. Terraforming. Equivalent exchange.  Not the masses swimming in a sea of politics. "New Age Fraud " is the same poverty that Blacks, Native Americans, Asians and some Caucasians suffered for hundreds of years.

I am on my medicine wheel each day to be a difference. To defeat my attrition. To be whole my ancestors and the Creator. To redeem my father's bloodline and to make all my eccentric mash potatoes into the civilization of a legacy. The balance between night and day.

I remember having an argument with a woman in a Native American group on Facebook, because I called myself a Shaman. Not knowing that this word is the same as "Ni****" to me I never understood. 

My reasoning was that my grandmother was and still is a renowned medicine woman in all of Sumner County Tennessee. Knowing your history when you are Black is paramount. I had just come into this knowledge and chose the road that came before me...without anyone that would guide me.

She called me a Plastic  Shaman. She said I had misappropriated Native American culture. I tried to explain but she only wanted to vent.  I asked her this "What am I supposed to do? Be a plastic Christian in Judaism?"

Not having health insurance, alternative remedies, my family orientation and how my life was in the shadows is what made me stop being a slave in Judaism and being who and what I am on my medicine wheel.

The is what I could never communicate to the Standing Rock tribe, the Lakota of all South Dakota and even LeRoy "King Of The Badlands".

Belonging to a family, being taught how to operate in the family and your spiritual  rites of passage as a man, or woman is so big in Black culture. In short it is the difference between having community in your culture as some Native Americans do and it just being serendipity which is more common with Blacks.

[Diana]

Oh God, this isn't going to end well.....we were a little over due for one of these anyway.

[Sedrick]

Is it right to sell Sweet Grass and all the other sacred medicines at inflammatory prices?

Is it right that countless books coined with stereo typical titles benefit those who have no real intention of having a rich and authentic spirituality?

Was it right what happened to the Standing Rock tribe  with the pipeline? Is right to be a culture vulture with no respect for the people's you are stealing it from?

Are movies like Wind River and Hostiles illustrating hard truths that people have allowed themselves to be desensitized and blind to?

Are movies like The Black Panther in how Black people that are marred by the lack of community in our culture...lack of identity, division in the family unit and the miseducation of the streets and survival...making just a prolithic of a statement?

Are the diseases, drugs, suicides, rapes and murders on Indian Reservations getting the publicity they should have, or are more and more...generation after generation just accepting what happens.

Change starts with each of us. For Native Americans, Blacks and Asians. For Latin Americans. For women. For Caucasians. It's starts with the Creator.  Has its Seasons in our blood and it haunts us and opposes us at every turn of our life until we accept that change is each our lives.

Change for you means change for me...because we work together for that change. We sacrifice for that change. We stand for peace for that change. We get out of our own way for that change. We become community with the people The Creator shows us...that our ancestors shows us...and overall our wheel...so each of us can begin to build with one another and for all of us.

[Sedrick]

It wouldn't end well if I were invested into reacting rather than creating. A while ago I would have tripped on you being negative, or whatever you are being. I could even say that if you saw it was that long why read it, but it also speaks to the same thing. Since you have obviously seen my type so many times before...thanks you know when it does end up won't have any problem starting over and sticking with being part of the solution and not the problem.

[Sedrick]

The term "Five Civilized Tribes" derives from the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States. It refers to five Native American nations—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole. These are the first five tribes that Anglo-European settlers generally considered to be "civilized" according to their own worldview. Examples of colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes include Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and plantation slavery practices. The Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the Europeans.

The term has been criticized for its ethnocentric definition of civilization.

[Sedrick]

Hello my name is Sedrick. I am a 40 year old African American in Indianapolis.

Despite what I have learned is an uphill battle...I would like to learn how I could meet some Lakota people here locally and then try my best to shoot my shot at being an to further my knowledge beyond the fundamentals of my medicine wheel.

I am going to try and not go into a dissertation here because no matter if I wear my heart of my sleeve, or what have you...I have learned that people and this subject matter are going to be unpredictable by default.

I grew up Christian. I found a friend in one of the last churches I went to. She was a Creek woman who had been adopted by a Lakota woman she had come to know when she worked at a camp for Ebenezer church.

I had been searching for a long time before I met her and when we reunited again ten years later I guess it was our time for me to get the fundamentals of my wheel from her. I am a different and difficult person. I have been alone and estranged to my family for some time...everyone except my mother.

Based on the past I know that you have to be born in...that you have to be adopted and that Native Americans spirituality belongs solely to their culture. Despite how hard it has been or that it is going to be...I just want the chance to have a traditional practice on my wheel.

It's is a lot of people that are critical and what have you. I can dig that based on what Native Americans have been through and are going through as a whole. The same is true of being Black. I am not new age fraud built. I am not here to culture vulture to try and sell whatever. I am also not a groupie that wants to play like I am a Native American.  I have also been beaten out of a Christian share the good news...it should be like this or that kind of school of thought.

Like every Lakota reservation in wrote in South Dakota...like LeRoy of Turtle Mountain John Crowdog...like the American Indian Center...Like Teresa Webb and countless others...there is nothing I can do to prove I am not whatever you feel you are against when it comes to this subject matter.

Naturally what will work will. What won't just won't. What has a chance can only produce if you set that chance up to win. You don't care anything about what I have been through. You don't know me. Vice versa. Whatever we are...we are still people.

Meeting a Lakota and hitting it off means I get to build community with my totems. It means I can have my grandfather with all his hard work, strength, selflessness, and character and grandmother with her medicine way with my right now in my life.

I never could seem to find what I needed in a Christian way. I have come to understand that like most people the balance between night and day...is what determines making a way at all for myself in this life boils down to.

When you talk to people and give them the straight dope they look at you through lenses. I remember trying to get down with John Crowdog and amidst it all he called me a Prarie nigger. First a while I thought that with all the adversity I was facing in simply trying to make myself whole that Native Americans had to be racists against Blacks

The truth is that people are going to be what they are. Balance is the reason this is so important to me. Being sufficient in myself is why this is so important to me. Living in my purpose, potential and in a constant state of growth is why this is simply important to me.

You could condemn me with harsh critical thinking. You could tell me how I do not deserve. You could blame me for the Tsunami of people that are the New Age Fraud, which inspired this site. The only thing you would be doing if you walked down any of those ways...would be the same pain Native Americans and Black Americans and Asian Americans and Latin Americans have, or are suffering from today.

I am 40 years old. I just want my life time work and in order for hat to happen in have to deal with my spirituality. I am someone that needs pack even though my family is estranged to me.  The same is true of people and so on. The wheel does this for me.and I just want it to keep growing in my life so I can finally have one. So I can have a traditional practice. So I can have my grandmother and grandpa and my mother each day...so in reality just like that Turtle prayer...I can have everything I need in who and what I am.

I tried to be as transparent as possible. Thank you for your time.

[Laurel]

"The only thing you would be doing if you walked down any of those ways...would be the same pain Native Americans and Black Americans and Asian Americans and Latin Americans have, or are suffering from today."

Well, I'm white, so you can throw you "gimme what I want or you're a racist" stuff at me if you like.

"I just want the chance to have a traditional practice on my wheel."

I don't believe this is possible, as use of a medicine wheel is not traditional in any cultures I know of.

"Meeting a Lakota and hitting it off means I get to build community with my totems. It means I can have my grandfather with all his hard work, strength, selflessness, and character and grandmother with her medicine way with my right now in my life."

Is there anything this meeting might do for the Lakota? Anything you can offer them? Or is their religion all about you?

[Laurel]

Here are two things "it" does: It spams the board with messages, some of which have nothing to do with anything. And "it" isists that other people solve "its" problems, like this: "Since you have obviously seen my type so many times before...thanks you know when it does end up won't have any problem starting over and sticking with being part of the solution and not the problem."

Your problem is not "THE problem." Nobody owes you a solution.

[Sedrick]

Hello Laurel. Thank you for your illustration of "it". I am sorry the content of my message implies that I feel like I am owed and that you consider it spam and what have you.

It can be difficult to connect with people on plateaus such as this where being critical is part of the daily norm. Indeed I am not good with people and in writing this illustration of "it" this shows. Despite what you and Diana pointed out nobody has taken the time to introduce themselves, which makes your artistic license of "it" and Diana's "here is another one" kind of like picking, or trying to push people around instead of showing them around or welcoming them I to the space.

[Sedrick]

I also do not feel that my lack of organization constitutes an emergency for other people...especially strangers. What I wrote was meant to be transparent. In my attempt to be humble you insult me and take shots at my character. How does someone owe me a solution when I am on my own in America and in my community everyday.  The more I think about what you said it just states more of the same. No I do not feel anyone owes me a solution. Typically understanding. Try learning but most of all approach people like they are people and.be considerate the way you would want people to be towards you. Be a person a** because you have the position and means. Everybody deals with life In the best way they know how and learning.how to do better is lifelong.

[educatedindian]

Merged the five frickin threads you started within minutes. This is pretty much spamming. We don't exist to be your therapy group or for you to pour out your heart at random like some emo high school kid, seeing how many tangents you can go off on.

The medicine wheel was a pretty straight forward calendar for some peoples. It had sacred uses for other Native peoples, but wasn't intended to be alt therapy as it's used now by anyone naive enough to fall for Charles Storm and his awful Seven Arrows book.

And no you can't walk onto a Lakota or any other reservation and expect to buddy up and learn every super spiritual secret you imagine they have, any more than I could walk into any Black neighborhood and say, "Hey bro, let's me and you solve racism together!" to someone on the street.

Take some time to look around and read and listen. Then contribute or ask questions if you want, but in a more focused and less "I need you to define me for me" way.

[Defend the Sacred]

And no you can't walk onto a Lakota or any other reservation and expect to buddy up and learn every super spiritual secret you imagine they have, any more than I could walk into any Black neighborhood and say, "Hey bro, let's me and you solve racism together!" to someone on the street.

Or to walk up to random Black strangers and ask them to adopt you into their house and share Afro-Diasporic ceremonies with you. 

[Sedrick]

Happens more often than not. Two major religions in Africa are Islam and Vodun. Both of which readily share their culture and ceremonies.

I don't understand why the few people that have reacted to what I have said are against me, so critical and hateful. I know that each of the people I have encountered on here are not like that as individuals, because that benefit of the doubt is who I am.

I can understand how words can be misunderstood. I can even put my self in the shoes of indifference. What I don't get is the way of being I am receiving on this site.

It's apparent you want me to leave, but I believe there is one person here that is different than what I am experiencing with others.

Lastly I thought it would be more respectful and appreciative to propose "adoption" than to ask to "borrow and to be loaned" ceremonies. I didn't think that getting to know people was this problematic. I have apologized for many things but I am done with my sorrys.

I am not here to be accepted, or to prove anything because there is no reward in fools gold worship of a man or a woman. I am here to defy the norm
I am here to actually meet real down to earth people and get to know them and see what the Creator reveals for us naturally.

Like is said people who are conditioned to the culture of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Paganism...often are misguided in how to approach people like Native Americans in regards to learning more about their culture, which is not a one way street.

It seems to be am idea that I am looking for a handout, or that I am trying to do all except what I say. I am a person just like any of you. I am genuinely here what I say I am here for. Is it a long shot? Based on what I have experienced here yeah it is.

I still have to hope because my spirituality is important to me. It is more than half of my everyday life. Therefore I would like to grow in knowledge so that my faith and deeds can bring me closers to the Creator...not just people.

I am not anyone's enemy. I am not a groupie. I am not any of what Diane, Educated Indian or Laurel imply about me. So those of you who choose to relish in misunderstandings and indifference long live how you get down. Yet if you are as real as you claim to be in speech and manner value that you are part of the problem...a large part and not the solution as I myself have had to learn from the various reactions I have experienced here.