Hi Doc, Howard and the List,
As the resident pagan I find the following to be a revival(as Doc points
out) of a tradition that relegates the teaching of community
responsibility to the followers of organized religious cultures. My own
family history with this has yet to be told. Let us just say that their
are two sides to the story about how the little black book was brought to
my people.
Let me also point out that the U.S. Government is a signatory to the
Genocide convention and that the following is IMHO in violation of
articles II and III of that convention. This was not drawn up by a
bunch of "one worlders" but by the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Jackson in
the trials at Nuremberg. If someone wishes in an organized way, to give
aid and comfort to the needy or to heal the sick or to help the criminal
to learn how to fit into society on his release that is a charitable
act. If however, that act is tied to a dogma or story that demands
belief as an act of contrition, forgiveness or the human development of
good actions then that is coercive proscelytization and is covered by
the genocide convention.
Richard C. Holloway wrote:
> Howard Jacobs wrote:
>
> > There was an interesting piece on ABC (TV) news last night in a section
> > they call "Solutions." It is about a prison in Texas that is being run by
> > a Christian organization. The idea is to change the beliefs of the
> > prisoners by inculcating them into religion. The program is new and it is
> > too soon to evaluate the results.
> >
> > On the emotional level I have some difficulty with this type of approach
> > but on the intellectual level it hit me as a great example of applying
> > systems thinking to solve a problem.
The people being tried at Nuremberg were great system's thinkers. You had
just better not be from another system if you wished to survive.
Doc wrote:
> Howard, listen to your emotional level. Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork
> Orange" gave us an interesting look at a similar picture--although not
> seemingly as benign as inculcating people into a new religion.
Consider the story of Hosteen Klah the great Navaho Singer(Priest) and the
first artist to bring the beautiful sand paintings to the outside world.
Klah would not cooperate with the "missionaries" who demanded conversion,
their first baptism being an immersion in a pesticide bath ostensibly to
get rid of "lice." Not a bug was killed but the people were made sick by
the dip. The "missionaries" then had Klah picked up and put in jail. He
was left there for several years and finally released. When he returned
home he found that his wife had remarried thinking that he had been
killed. No one told his family where he was or even whether he was alive.
Because of pressure from religious groups our people converted, including
my family. The Cherokee seminary was Baptist and the Oklahoma Baptist
newspaper (the Baptist Messenger) was originally the Cherokee Messenger.
We taught Cherokee values within the church and English language context.
Because each Baptist church is an independent entity with a congregational
English town structure, our people were reasonably comfortable with it
once the missionaries left. Since our own religion was illegal we simply
practiced it in the church while having our ceremonies at night away from
the Anglos. Although we are not Messianic, our ceremonial structures
based upon the moon calendar were close enough to the Jewish calendar that
the early ethnologists went out of their way to prove that we were the
lost tribe. We weren't, but that belief helped us retain many of our
festivals by creating a calendar that the traveling European American
preacher would be comfortable attending. They usually didn't speak
Cherokee either.
That was the last blow, when they got the U.S. government to ban our
language in the schools and made us immigrants in our own land. In 1978
the Congress passed the Native American Freedom of Religion Act and our
traditional elders began to come out of the Hiding Bushes. I came out in
1979 and trained as a Priest during the eighties. As you know I am a
professional performing artist, but I am not a professional Indian. Our
council serves at the behest of the community and anything we do is done
because we are born who we are. You can't convert to being a Cherokee
Keetoowah.
Because the traditional Cherokee government was divided we were great
believers in the separation of religion from the American Government. The
Baptist Messenger(newspaper) in Oklahoma was a crusader and early
supporter of the Supreme Court decision that banned school prayer. We
also didn't like the inculcation of the extreme materialistic values that
came from many of the school teachers and their similar approach to the
marketing of their own particular church to our children. We felt that
asserting the original separation was a good thing and that we would teach
our spiritual practices in the old ways to our children.
In the last twenty years the churches have grown more European American in
Oklahoma until my Father said before he "passed" that he didn't recognize
the church anymore. Now they have schools and are trying to get back into
the public arena.
> Although,
> the good Catholic fathers from Europe worked hard on American
> indigeneous peoples (oh, yes, they were prisoners, too).
Actually for us it all started with inviting the Mennonites into the old
Cherokee nation to teach the children English. After that the Methodists
and the Baptists followed. In their defense, the Methodist Worchester was
jailed by the state of Georgia for defending the Cherokee Nation and he
helped Sequoia build the first printing press to print in the Cherokee
Syllabury. Both Worchester and the Baptist Evan Jones walked to Oklahoma
over the Trail of Tears and were very helpful to the people. We
considered them relatives. Jones was so against slavery that he helped
the Keetoowahs(traditional Cherokees) to form a society that fought
against slavery during the Civil War even though he knew that it was a
pretense that allowed them to keep their spiritual ways. So, as my Father
always said, "it was not so simple."
> We have two great examples of using systems thinking, in economic and
> political terms, to solve problems. They all occurred during the first
> half of the twentieth century and were called fascism, nazism, stalinism,
> and maoism. They were very popular with their adherents for their
> intellectual simplicity. We're still living with the consequences of
> those ideologies. Inculcating beliefs is a primary principle of social
> life. Schools, churches, communities and families all play significant
> roles in implementing that principle. One integral part, though, of the
> "inalienable" rights of democratic peoples includes the moral rule of
> autonomy. While society should permit and encourage its' members to act
> rationally, and find socially acceptable means to deal with criminals,
> this doesn't give society the right to act irrationally.
I agree.
> If I want to
> change my belief systems, then I'll choose to see Morty--or go to a
> church--and see if I can succeed. If I don't want to change them, that's
> my choice. Some folks would rather die than switch (or have their beliefs
> "disappear").
I agree with that as well. I would like to add that the prison system is
very resistant to the practice of Native Spirituality. I have known
prisoners all of my life and my Father took his students out of prison
whenever they were incarcerated. It means a lot when a community supports
the development and change of their citizens both young and old. We have
found help from different groups from Christian to Jewish to Moslem in the
prisons when we couldn't practice our faith. It would be a shame if a
converting group broke that down. We should never forget that Iran-Contra
and Rios Mont amongst the Mayans killed 100,000 people all in the name of
democracy and a small radical group of fundamentalist missionaries. I do
not mean to paint with a large brush because that would not be correct.
As I said in the beginning, if it is, like the Christian and Jewish
Medical "missionaries" to Korea after the war and to Central America,
these are charitable acts and are generous and giving, to steal a soul is
another thing all together.
regards,
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York, Inc.
mcore@idt.net
--Ray Evans Harrell <mcore@IDT.NET>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>