thanksforwhating?
I'm reposting last year's Thanksgiving post. Somehow, I think it should be a tradition. I'll save my thoughts on it all for later, but still feel the same now as I did then about the day. I've different readers now than I did then. What I never said in my post was that my heart got partially broken last Thanksgiving, due to an alcoholic lover. I tried to see the best in him, so I only remembered the apology, not the heart breaking into pieces while everyone was smiling and loving each other.
Yesterday was bittersweet and beautiful, strange as angels and dark as devils. That seems to be how holidays go. We’re supposed to prepare and plan, forsaking all outside activities. The actual holiday usually resembles a stop-action film: a flurry of action with weird pauses thrown into the mix. When it’s over, everyone wipes the sweat from his or her brows and collapses. I swear, I never saw my parents fight more than when they were trying to figure out how to get to a relative’s house and what to bring. Holidays are stressful for a lot of people, when really they should be relaxing, joyful occasions. I mean, how often do folks get to feast with loved ones instead of working or tending to duties? I’ll ride that pony all that I can.
So yesterday, I woke up early, the way I used to as a little girl at Christmas and run into my parents’ room and throughout the house, crowing for everyone to get up, until, grumpy and sleep-rumpled, everyone did. To soften my rudeness, I brought coffee and Nutella-spread Italian bread to my love (heretofore known as the Raccoon) in bed (I’ve taken a keen liking to Nutella even though I know it’s bad for me, but whatever, I’m young and I work out all the time, so if I want to eat hazelnut death in a jar, I damn well will) and mussed his hair up plenty. Where I come from this means, “I love you, you hot-ass rebel” or something closely approximating that.
It’s okay to fuss with the Raccoon’s hair, though. He’s got hair that goes vertical in the morning, and it is perfectly mess-up-able in this if-James-Dean-and-Elvis-Presley-had-a-lovechild kind of way. I knew I’d be giving him a haircut before dinner, so messing things up was part of the package. While I’m talking about my love’s hair, let me say that it’s one of my favourite features of his. Two mornings ago, I was in the shower getting ready for work and heard a great deal of banging at the sink (which is inexplicably in a little chamber outside of the bathroom instead of being in the actual bathroom). When I poked my head out of the door to be like “Gold tooth, what?!” the Raccoon was combing his black-and-grey hair into a high pompadour, his hairstyle of choice. The cherry? He was singing “Greased Lightning” and had all the moves down. This is the creature that I love.
As a little girl, I was absolutely mad for the movie Grease, and now, I’ve somehow snagged myself a lover that’s a whole lotta John Travolta and then some. From time to time, he even rolls his jeans and has been known to keep cigarettes stashed in his shirtsleeve. No fooling, ma. He’s the coolest and even has eyelashes so black it looks as if he’s wearing dark-smudged eyeliner like some post apocalyptic witch-king love-man. Sometimes, when he’s peeking out from under a pillow at me, I get hit in the chest with this sledgehammer kind of sensation, and I almost can’t breathe because he’s just so stunning and I don’t know how my life turned this way, that I have a love peering at me from under a blue pillowcase, asking me what worlds we’re going to conquer for the day.
Anyway, I digress. Before dinner, I danced around the house to funky jams like the Roots and the Staples Singers and Little Milton, slipped past the influx of people who kept coming to the house to get supplies or cook or just hang out, played with the black cat that’s taken to being my shadow as of late, loved on far too many people, and ran around barefoot, trying to get this drink Progressive organised for after-dinner. The Progressive went off like gangbusters, and we had about thirty people up in my little pad alone. Good times with dreamy people. I ended up going to bed earlier than I’d originally planned, but that’s a story for another evening that doesn’t include a little rockabilly boy-creature waiting beneath the covers.
Last year, I made a post about Thanksgiving. I think it still applies, and I’m reposting it to remember. It’s kind of remarkable to look back on words I wrote almost a year ago and to believe in them just as much now as I did then. I’m such a gremlin of change and chaos that I occasionally forget that I can be steadfast and predictable in my own, bizarre manner. Kind of like celebrating holidays, eh? Hey, at least I didn’t drunk-dial anyone last night and insist on singing the "foreveah evah" part of “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast or debate the finer points of Kool and the Gang, right?
jewel-lion
* * *
Thanksgiving at Arcosanti is a sweet affair. Everyone cooks traditional and nontraditional dishes and brings them to the café, where we throw a big potluck dinner. Paolo treats the residents to cases of Asti Spumante. That type of wine is made in Paolo’s home region of Italy. Everyone drinks the sparkling wine after dessert and makes toasts to one another. Not everyone onsite has their own kitchen, so folks gather in different houses, fixing food side-by-side and listening to Frank Sinatra or Le Tigre on high volume. This year was my second ever true Thanksgiving. That’s strange, given the number of people who’ve invited me to come over to their houses to sip spiced brew, trip on turkey tryptophan, and talk about pilgrims and “Indians,” while watching football teams like the Redskins or the Browns crunch each other for titles.
Most of the time, when I think about Thanksgiving, I feel soul-sick, much the way I feel when I think about grade school history lessons that gave the distinguished title of “explorers” to the cruel rapists, conquerors, thieves, and murders of the “New World.” Newsflash to Houghton Mifflin, publishers of such texts: America was not a “New World” to anyone but the Europeans. Over six million indigenous people lived in what is today’s not-so-United States. Over two thousand languages were spoken. People had cultures and ways of life that were ignored and eradicated with the coming of the “explorers.” Later on, the settlers used God as an excuse to move westward, plundering more settlements and destroying more people.
Many of the paintings depicting Manifest Destiny showed Amerindians as brute savages and the “explorers” as being guarded by angels and Jesus. Because you know, Jesus and the angels support the genocide of an entire group of people based on their heathen status (and O, land wealth, but who’s keeping track?). Sounds kind of like a new Crusade, doesn’t it? While I’m ranting about Thanksgiving, let me say that it’s one of the biggest crocks of shit that Mount Rushmore-a so-called monument that celebrates great American leaders-was carved on a mountain stolen from the Oglala Lakota Sioux. How about just letting a mountain be and breathe without the faces of men from an impermanent empire being etched on them? The Pine Ridge Reservation is a great consolation for Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, too. Everyone who’s visited Pine Ridge knows how desolate the place is. The windows are mostly covered with plywood, dirty children spill into the streets, there is no running water in most of the houses (conditions similar to Third World countries, right here in the U.S.A.), and a high incidence of alcoholism, suicide, and fetal alcohol syndrome.
The thing is, it’s not just Pine Ridge that’s an impoverished reservation. Almost all reservations are. The reservation is armpit land, reserved for those that the government is waiting to die. Some people will think that I’m being an alarmist, but I am not. Why is it that military installations are commonly built near reservations? This causes hazardous materials to leak onto Native lands (an estimated 20 to 50 million acres of polluted land), which means Natives living on reservations are more susceptible to contamination than non-Native peoples. I believe this is purposeful. Why are these places not being built near non-Native settlements?
How can someone explain the relocation program of the ‘fifties, ‘sixties, and ‘seventies, which took Native people from their communities and transplanted them to places where no other Natives lived? Divide and conquer. Separate a people from their culture and that culture will be forgotten. Appropriate their traditions and that people will be no more. My Grammy was born in Montana, but was moved to Utah through such a program. She went years without seeing her own grandparents when she was sent to a boarding school. Many scholars have heard about boarding schools and how Native children were forced to go there to be indoctrinated with non-Native culture. Hair cuttings, whippings for speaking a Native tongue, and cut-off access from tribal elders were the boarding school's common tools. A popular slogan for boarding schools was, “Take the savage out of the Indian and make him a man.” I’m so glad our guardians were thinking of our well-being. How mighty it must be to judge someone as a savage simply because he or she doesn’t subscribe to one’s belief system. I can hear the church meetings: "Better yet, let’s make turquoise crosses and feathered mission robes to try to show these savages that we’re down with them, while secretly trying to convert them! Send them to school, throw away their medicine bags, give them wasichu names, and make the savages pray for forgiveness. Heck, adopt some of the wily kids so that you can steal their land allotments." This has all happened and still sometimes does.
Boarding schools are still in existence, although they’ve become better than their previous incarnations. Even into the ‘eighties, many Native boys were committing suicide or developing drug and alcohol habits because they were being sexually abused by clergy members or supervisors/teachers at the churches and boarding schools that were supposed to be helping them. This is recent history, folks, and not ancient past. Native men are not the only people who’ve lost power.
Women had prominent leadership roles in Native society, something that changed with the advent of the settlers and Pilgrims. Native women had their own councils and decided on important matters. When the settlers came, they questioned Native women being allowed to attend treaty meetings, and Native men questioned why no settler women were present. Eventually, as Natives were subjugated and “integrated” into non-Native culture, Native men adopted European attitudes towards women. Wilma P. Mankiller, first female chief of the Cherokee, once said that misogyny did not exist in Cherokee society until the settlers arrived.
While I’m explaining why Manifest Destiny and Thanksgiving make me snarl, I want to say that the settlers and Pilgrims should have been called squatters because that’s what they were. I don’t walk into someone else’s yard just because it has mineral and agricultural wealth and decide it’s mine because I saw it. I sure as Hades don’t say God drove me to murder people for their land either. Nor do I go to a foreign country and demand that everyone dress, speak, and look like I do. Whenever I visit a new place, I take special care to observe and enjoy the culture of it. Doing this makes me understand a people and a land better than before.
These things considered, I know that Thanksgiving is something entirely different to many Americans, but for me, it is a reminder of ugly things for Native peoples. Making Thanksgiving into a happy holiday where people remember each other doesn’t change its origins. It’s like making a friendly Holocaust Day, and saying that’s not such a bad thing because look, we celebrate things to be grateful for and eat with our families. Shouldn’t we do that anyway? I have a few cultures in my bloodline from varied places, but I relate strongest to my Native blood. This matters to me. The Native blood doesn’t make me better or worse or special. It just is, and I suppose part of that is that my great-grandmother and Grammy, both full-Native ladies, were very influential during my life. Even as a child, I identified with this part of my heritage, partially because of these two strong, sharp-faced women. I mostly talk about my great-grandmother when discussing Native culture because she retained the Old Ways, while my Grammy allowed herself incorporated into mainstream society. These women (and my great-grandmother's husband, father, various aunts and uncles, and so forth) are my touchstones. I cherish this culture because I cherish them.
Last year, when I heard Arcosanti was having this huge Thanksgiving feast, I was nervous. Mirelle, knowing this, came to my house before the dinner and invited me to attend with her. She understood my feelings, but just wanted to eat with me and not have me be alone, and that meant a lot to me. That ended up being one of the best days of the year because I got to spend time eating, drinking, and making merry with good friends, went on a great walk after dinner, and indulged in stolen dessert and secret-telling with boy-Lynn, Mirelle, and Eva in the Music Center.
So, this year, I stayed in my room Thanksgiving eve, burning sweetgrass, singing the heart drum song, and remembering everyone that sacrificed something so that I could live and walk today. It was important to me to remember my ancestors and loved ones before preparing for the holiday. The moments in my room by candlelight were some of the cleanest, clearest I’ve ever had. I was-and am-so grateful for the opportunity to walk the earth, and needed to express it through song and drumming. Afterwards, I went to bed and awakened anew.
I spent the morning in the kitchen, sprinkling cloves, unsalted butter, cinnamon sticks, and allspice into a vat of apple cider. I made a huge casserole, enough to serve sixty people, and listened to the music of my ancestors, remembering. Dinner was intimate and crazy, as I sat with Monica, her cute little family, Sarah Beth, and Eleanor. Mo’s father woke us up in the morning to make traditional Mexican food because he is from Mexico. His cilantro salsa was the best ever. He had quite the teasing sense of humour, too, and grumbled the way older dads do when they’re trying to be curmudgeons but want to laugh. Mo is the only girl amongst brothers, just like me, and I liked the surrogate brother presence.
After dinner, we had a progressive, where everyone listened to a single album (smooth jazz, Willie Nelson’s Teatro, and electronic hip-hop) and sipped an exotic drink (hot French wine, mulled cider, and milk liqueur) while visiting a different house. The final destination was Eleanor’s for a cozy movie viewing with cushions and blankets on the floor. I tried to attend that, but I was too sleepy and instead, went home and curled myself into the story quilts my mother and grandmother made me as a little girl, and I thought, “Life is good” and saying it, I discovered that it was.
Yesterday was bittersweet and beautiful, strange as angels and dark as devils. That seems to be how holidays go. We’re supposed to prepare and plan, forsaking all outside activities. The actual holiday usually resembles a stop-action film: a flurry of action with weird pauses thrown into the mix. When it’s over, everyone wipes the sweat from his or her brows and collapses. I swear, I never saw my parents fight more than when they were trying to figure out how to get to a relative’s house and what to bring. Holidays are stressful for a lot of people, when really they should be relaxing, joyful occasions. I mean, how often do folks get to feast with loved ones instead of working or tending to duties? I’ll ride that pony all that I can.
So yesterday, I woke up early, the way I used to as a little girl at Christmas and run into my parents’ room and throughout the house, crowing for everyone to get up, until, grumpy and sleep-rumpled, everyone did. To soften my rudeness, I brought coffee and Nutella-spread Italian bread to my love (heretofore known as the Raccoon) in bed (I’ve taken a keen liking to Nutella even though I know it’s bad for me, but whatever, I’m young and I work out all the time, so if I want to eat hazelnut death in a jar, I damn well will) and mussed his hair up plenty. Where I come from this means, “I love you, you hot-ass rebel” or something closely approximating that.
It’s okay to fuss with the Raccoon’s hair, though. He’s got hair that goes vertical in the morning, and it is perfectly mess-up-able in this if-James-Dean-and-Elvis-Presley-had-a-lovechild kind of way. I knew I’d be giving him a haircut before dinner, so messing things up was part of the package. While I’m talking about my love’s hair, let me say that it’s one of my favourite features of his. Two mornings ago, I was in the shower getting ready for work and heard a great deal of banging at the sink (which is inexplicably in a little chamber outside of the bathroom instead of being in the actual bathroom). When I poked my head out of the door to be like “Gold tooth, what?!” the Raccoon was combing his black-and-grey hair into a high pompadour, his hairstyle of choice. The cherry? He was singing “Greased Lightning” and had all the moves down. This is the creature that I love.
As a little girl, I was absolutely mad for the movie Grease, and now, I’ve somehow snagged myself a lover that’s a whole lotta John Travolta and then some. From time to time, he even rolls his jeans and has been known to keep cigarettes stashed in his shirtsleeve. No fooling, ma. He’s the coolest and even has eyelashes so black it looks as if he’s wearing dark-smudged eyeliner like some post apocalyptic witch-king love-man. Sometimes, when he’s peeking out from under a pillow at me, I get hit in the chest with this sledgehammer kind of sensation, and I almost can’t breathe because he’s just so stunning and I don’t know how my life turned this way, that I have a love peering at me from under a blue pillowcase, asking me what worlds we’re going to conquer for the day.
Anyway, I digress. Before dinner, I danced around the house to funky jams like the Roots and the Staples Singers and Little Milton, slipped past the influx of people who kept coming to the house to get supplies or cook or just hang out, played with the black cat that’s taken to being my shadow as of late, loved on far too many people, and ran around barefoot, trying to get this drink Progressive organised for after-dinner. The Progressive went off like gangbusters, and we had about thirty people up in my little pad alone. Good times with dreamy people. I ended up going to bed earlier than I’d originally planned, but that’s a story for another evening that doesn’t include a little rockabilly boy-creature waiting beneath the covers.
Last year, I made a post about Thanksgiving. I think it still applies, and I’m reposting it to remember. It’s kind of remarkable to look back on words I wrote almost a year ago and to believe in them just as much now as I did then. I’m such a gremlin of change and chaos that I occasionally forget that I can be steadfast and predictable in my own, bizarre manner. Kind of like celebrating holidays, eh? Hey, at least I didn’t drunk-dial anyone last night and insist on singing the "foreveah evah" part of “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast or debate the finer points of Kool and the Gang, right?
jewel-lion
* * *
Thanksgiving at Arcosanti is a sweet affair. Everyone cooks traditional and nontraditional dishes and brings them to the café, where we throw a big potluck dinner. Paolo treats the residents to cases of Asti Spumante. That type of wine is made in Paolo’s home region of Italy. Everyone drinks the sparkling wine after dessert and makes toasts to one another. Not everyone onsite has their own kitchen, so folks gather in different houses, fixing food side-by-side and listening to Frank Sinatra or Le Tigre on high volume. This year was my second ever true Thanksgiving. That’s strange, given the number of people who’ve invited me to come over to their houses to sip spiced brew, trip on turkey tryptophan, and talk about pilgrims and “Indians,” while watching football teams like the Redskins or the Browns crunch each other for titles.
Most of the time, when I think about Thanksgiving, I feel soul-sick, much the way I feel when I think about grade school history lessons that gave the distinguished title of “explorers” to the cruel rapists, conquerors, thieves, and murders of the “New World.” Newsflash to Houghton Mifflin, publishers of such texts: America was not a “New World” to anyone but the Europeans. Over six million indigenous people lived in what is today’s not-so-United States. Over two thousand languages were spoken. People had cultures and ways of life that were ignored and eradicated with the coming of the “explorers.” Later on, the settlers used God as an excuse to move westward, plundering more settlements and destroying more people.
Many of the paintings depicting Manifest Destiny showed Amerindians as brute savages and the “explorers” as being guarded by angels and Jesus. Because you know, Jesus and the angels support the genocide of an entire group of people based on their heathen status (and O, land wealth, but who’s keeping track?). Sounds kind of like a new Crusade, doesn’t it? While I’m ranting about Thanksgiving, let me say that it’s one of the biggest crocks of shit that Mount Rushmore-a so-called monument that celebrates great American leaders-was carved on a mountain stolen from the Oglala Lakota Sioux. How about just letting a mountain be and breathe without the faces of men from an impermanent empire being etched on them? The Pine Ridge Reservation is a great consolation for Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, too. Everyone who’s visited Pine Ridge knows how desolate the place is. The windows are mostly covered with plywood, dirty children spill into the streets, there is no running water in most of the houses (conditions similar to Third World countries, right here in the U.S.A.), and a high incidence of alcoholism, suicide, and fetal alcohol syndrome.
The thing is, it’s not just Pine Ridge that’s an impoverished reservation. Almost all reservations are. The reservation is armpit land, reserved for those that the government is waiting to die. Some people will think that I’m being an alarmist, but I am not. Why is it that military installations are commonly built near reservations? This causes hazardous materials to leak onto Native lands (an estimated 20 to 50 million acres of polluted land), which means Natives living on reservations are more susceptible to contamination than non-Native peoples. I believe this is purposeful. Why are these places not being built near non-Native settlements?
How can someone explain the relocation program of the ‘fifties, ‘sixties, and ‘seventies, which took Native people from their communities and transplanted them to places where no other Natives lived? Divide and conquer. Separate a people from their culture and that culture will be forgotten. Appropriate their traditions and that people will be no more. My Grammy was born in Montana, but was moved to Utah through such a program. She went years without seeing her own grandparents when she was sent to a boarding school. Many scholars have heard about boarding schools and how Native children were forced to go there to be indoctrinated with non-Native culture. Hair cuttings, whippings for speaking a Native tongue, and cut-off access from tribal elders were the boarding school's common tools. A popular slogan for boarding schools was, “Take the savage out of the Indian and make him a man.” I’m so glad our guardians were thinking of our well-being. How mighty it must be to judge someone as a savage simply because he or she doesn’t subscribe to one’s belief system. I can hear the church meetings: "Better yet, let’s make turquoise crosses and feathered mission robes to try to show these savages that we’re down with them, while secretly trying to convert them! Send them to school, throw away their medicine bags, give them wasichu names, and make the savages pray for forgiveness. Heck, adopt some of the wily kids so that you can steal their land allotments." This has all happened and still sometimes does.
Boarding schools are still in existence, although they’ve become better than their previous incarnations. Even into the ‘eighties, many Native boys were committing suicide or developing drug and alcohol habits because they were being sexually abused by clergy members or supervisors/teachers at the churches and boarding schools that were supposed to be helping them. This is recent history, folks, and not ancient past. Native men are not the only people who’ve lost power.
Women had prominent leadership roles in Native society, something that changed with the advent of the settlers and Pilgrims. Native women had their own councils and decided on important matters. When the settlers came, they questioned Native women being allowed to attend treaty meetings, and Native men questioned why no settler women were present. Eventually, as Natives were subjugated and “integrated” into non-Native culture, Native men adopted European attitudes towards women. Wilma P. Mankiller, first female chief of the Cherokee, once said that misogyny did not exist in Cherokee society until the settlers arrived.
While I’m explaining why Manifest Destiny and Thanksgiving make me snarl, I want to say that the settlers and Pilgrims should have been called squatters because that’s what they were. I don’t walk into someone else’s yard just because it has mineral and agricultural wealth and decide it’s mine because I saw it. I sure as Hades don’t say God drove me to murder people for their land either. Nor do I go to a foreign country and demand that everyone dress, speak, and look like I do. Whenever I visit a new place, I take special care to observe and enjoy the culture of it. Doing this makes me understand a people and a land better than before.
These things considered, I know that Thanksgiving is something entirely different to many Americans, but for me, it is a reminder of ugly things for Native peoples. Making Thanksgiving into a happy holiday where people remember each other doesn’t change its origins. It’s like making a friendly Holocaust Day, and saying that’s not such a bad thing because look, we celebrate things to be grateful for and eat with our families. Shouldn’t we do that anyway? I have a few cultures in my bloodline from varied places, but I relate strongest to my Native blood. This matters to me. The Native blood doesn’t make me better or worse or special. It just is, and I suppose part of that is that my great-grandmother and Grammy, both full-Native ladies, were very influential during my life. Even as a child, I identified with this part of my heritage, partially because of these two strong, sharp-faced women. I mostly talk about my great-grandmother when discussing Native culture because she retained the Old Ways, while my Grammy allowed herself incorporated into mainstream society. These women (and my great-grandmother's husband, father, various aunts and uncles, and so forth) are my touchstones. I cherish this culture because I cherish them.
Last year, when I heard Arcosanti was having this huge Thanksgiving feast, I was nervous. Mirelle, knowing this, came to my house before the dinner and invited me to attend with her. She understood my feelings, but just wanted to eat with me and not have me be alone, and that meant a lot to me. That ended up being one of the best days of the year because I got to spend time eating, drinking, and making merry with good friends, went on a great walk after dinner, and indulged in stolen dessert and secret-telling with boy-Lynn, Mirelle, and Eva in the Music Center.
So, this year, I stayed in my room Thanksgiving eve, burning sweetgrass, singing the heart drum song, and remembering everyone that sacrificed something so that I could live and walk today. It was important to me to remember my ancestors and loved ones before preparing for the holiday. The moments in my room by candlelight were some of the cleanest, clearest I’ve ever had. I was-and am-so grateful for the opportunity to walk the earth, and needed to express it through song and drumming. Afterwards, I went to bed and awakened anew.
I spent the morning in the kitchen, sprinkling cloves, unsalted butter, cinnamon sticks, and allspice into a vat of apple cider. I made a huge casserole, enough to serve sixty people, and listened to the music of my ancestors, remembering. Dinner was intimate and crazy, as I sat with Monica, her cute little family, Sarah Beth, and Eleanor. Mo’s father woke us up in the morning to make traditional Mexican food because he is from Mexico. His cilantro salsa was the best ever. He had quite the teasing sense of humour, too, and grumbled the way older dads do when they’re trying to be curmudgeons but want to laugh. Mo is the only girl amongst brothers, just like me, and I liked the surrogate brother presence.
After dinner, we had a progressive, where everyone listened to a single album (smooth jazz, Willie Nelson’s Teatro, and electronic hip-hop) and sipped an exotic drink (hot French wine, mulled cider, and milk liqueur) while visiting a different house. The final destination was Eleanor’s for a cozy movie viewing with cushions and blankets on the floor. I tried to attend that, but I was too sleepy and instead, went home and curled myself into the story quilts my mother and grandmother made me as a little girl, and I thought, “Life is good” and saying it, I discovered that it was.