I left this as a comment on Michel Duffy’s site, Duffy Writes. A story that Michael tells on his blog, and which he posted as a comment to a recent post here, reminded me of something from Ordinary Wolves, a book I can’t recommend highly enough for people who like to think about these things.
“Another speaker took the place of the first. He was named Joe Smith. He wore glasses, a new haricut, tight jeans, and a gold watch with nuggets lumpy on the band. His hands were large and soft. “Funny-looking Eskimo,” Hanna whispered too loud.
“I’m from the nonprofit arm of the corporation, and I’m here to inform you of our Cultural Edification Project. The project, or CEP, has been proposed through the regional elders, and a grant for one million dollars has already been procured.”
….The elders’ faces held the same expressions they had held at the meeting when strange rangers told them the National Park Service suddenly owned millions of acres of the best hunting land, in every direction. When anthropologists, archaeologists, and con men with computer credentials had come and held meetings and gone. The elders’ expressions, meeting after meeting, for decades: “What in ta hell they’re talking?” and “What in ta hell they’re talking?”
….”Good evening,” he said. “First, I have to say how glad I am to be in your wonderful serene little village. I am also grateful to be able to meet so many of you and glimpse you living your traditional lives. I am here with Mi-tick,” he nodded at Joe, “to make you aware of the sixty-four billion dollars available in grants to communities like yours.”
The crowd laughed.
….The man glanced around quizzically, shuffled papers, and retreated into a forest of overgrown words and Accountant English. The meeting trailed into whispers and tittering. Back on the metal chairs, we chuckled at the man’s pronunciation of Joe Smith’s Eskimo name. We heard “my dick.” We laughed, not because we were mean, but because laughing was traditional, it was something we were good at, and tonight we still remembered how.”
- Ordinary Wolves (p. 280)
Michael’s blog is (mostly) about public policy and aboriginal culture in Northern Australia. He’s a good writer, and I’ve found a lot of commonality in his viewpoint with my own observations working with Alaska Native students.
I mentioned his story to a friend of mine today. And he immediately thought of one himself. There are many examples of cross-cultural miscommunication, and one can easily prompt another, it seems. This one has been on my mind, ever since I read it, because of it’s bittersweet quality.…and tonight we still remembered how.
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Doug,
It’s taken me a while to think through this one and resist the urge to pile anecdote on anecdote and merely replicate or prolong the original post or comment.
So let’s take it somewhere else.
I did some background work nearly 20 years ago (o God, not another anedote!) to help make possible a documentary about a Yongu band – the now famous Yothu Yindi – touring the US and Canada with a big name radical Australian band, Midnight Oil. The Oils lead singer is now the Federal Opposition’s spokesman on the environment and climate change and may well be a Minister in the next Labor Government. Yothu Yindu is not so much a band as a series of electronic events with a Yolngu frontman.
But the Native American support act on the tour was John Trudell and his band. I always remember in the doco Trudell (whose poetry/songwriting I’ve long admired and who played himself – just about, if you read between Pewter Matthiesen’s lines in ‘In the Spirit of Crazy Horse’ – in the movie Thunderheart) said: ‘The thing about us (Indigenous peoples) is that we’re still connected to our memories, our Dreamings, if you like.’
I felt the same sense of awe and loss that I felt on reading and rereading the statement – bittersweet as you rightly put it – ‘…and tonight we still remembered how’.
It’s a rare moment when we get a glimpse of what we’ve all lost and it’s right there in that phrase.
For Indigenous peoples, while it’s about the continuing erosion of cultural values, it’s an optimistic statement of the survival of the essence of those very human values and in parentheses we should always understand ‘..despite everything that you’ve thrown at us…’
But for majority colonising cultures, there’s also a reminder of our collective histories before waves of agrarian and industrial revolutions at worst severed our links with country and at best replaced them with an andoyne sense of local or regional identity.
The dynamism of the human condition can leave all of us from time to time floundering in the unknown, but at the same time grasping for something we can do with pride that sets us apart as both individual and collective.
identities.
The bittersweet joke tells us that and more and I relish tales of encounters where this comes out.
The sad laughter gives me cause for hope.
I’m glad for this comment because it put some things in perspective for me. The book that line came from was fiction, written by a white man who seemed to understand quite plainly the complications of living in the skin of an indigenous person. And even though it was a fictional piece, it seemed to say a lot about both loss, and hope, as you say. The value for me in your accounts is that I can begin to see how problems with the colonial enterprise challenge anyone who cares to ask what we can do now to make things better. Dreams are an excellent beginning point when setting out to do something.
Another literary reference
comes to mind:
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. (Walden, 323- 324)
Thank you. Keep telling your stories.
Great thread! It gets to the heart of what it means to be living as a complete human who is integrated with the spiritual self and the heritage that is not so far behind us all.
If I could do this subject justice I would love to continue the discussion. However the issues of identity that are brought to mind would take far more concentration and tact than I am capable of at this time.
However I would have to say that I believe there is a confusion that exists between what is a cultural quality and those things that are innate in people. Particularly concerning the ethnic stereotypes that surround Aboriginality. Do people of Aboriginal decent have stronger connection to country or dreamings than the rest of us if they have been disconnected from a culture which nurtured these things?
It may be only in the searching for this connection that people are brought closer to actually feeling it, but is it more innate in a Koori from Melbourne than me?
I wonder how long it takes for something to become biologically hardwired in a human being? In the history of man this modern age is a mere drop in the ocean. It was not so long ago that my ancestors would have been practicing similar religous rites in the forests of Scotland (I believe they did have forests there) or Europe. Am I so far removed from my connection to the land because I am a Balanda? Or is it merely a consequence of my culture?
These are important questions for me to consider as I ponder my own place of belonging in this world.
David, your comment prompted me to think some more about the nature of dreaming and culture, and how those affect our individual identities. I need to read a bit more, but I’m thinking that Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, may have had something to say about this.
thanks
Thanks Doug for getting my meaning. Your references do discuss the phenomenon I am thinking about. Of course it is very complex and most likely includes many elements that are well beyond me.
I think my thoughts have been influences by James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather Stocking stories.
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