Joe,
The feelings are mutual. If you haven't already read them, you might
enjoy the writings of Frank Waters. Waters is like Edward T. Hall in that
he has an uncommon understanding of what you speak. I believe that the
best one to begin with would be "The Man Who Shot The Deer." For anyone
else on the list that wants a good story about the cross-cultural issues,
these books are sensitively written and well told without the guilt or
didactic nature that sometimes gets into my writings about these issues.
I find the books and poetry of Mesquakie author Ray Young Bear to be the
best translations into English of the Native life at present but there are
many fine writers who are carrying this into the present time. They have
struggled with the realities that Benjamin Lee Whorf found so difficult to
comprehend when he began examining the languages in the Southwest.
It really is a different world that is spoken into being when you use
those languages. Subtleties and closeness found in the Native languages
comes out raw and difficult in English where the words become painfully
intimate and almost shy. However, as Am de Lange suggested, the
"emergent" native writers have struggled with the Art and English and
offer a vision into the spirits and environment that the newcomer suspects
and the older newcomers feel but do not yet comprehend.
This internet that points us back to the truth of Spiderwoman, this web
that we struggle on, shows our differences but crams them all into the
inadequacies of literacy. In turn, the literacy levels the historical
advantages of age in environment with the advantage of age in the written
word. So we begin the struggle together.
We must not expect too much but be observant of each other and always give
thanks. There is an Anglo writer like Hall and Waters, but a woman, who
has written well on the Piaute and on Taos. Her name is Nancy Wood and
she is from New Jersey unlike Hall and Waters. But sometimes you need
someone from the other side to see certain things that are missed for
cultural reasons and assumed by the locals. That is the reason that I
enjoy Japanese singing American popular music and I hope the Italian enjoy
our versions of Tosca. Nancy Woods includes these poems that came from
the people at Taos:
I.
Who will teach me now that my fathers
Have gone with the buffalo?
Who will tell of times I wish I knew?
Who will direct my journey
So that I will come out right?
The years are clouds which
Cover my ancestors.
Let them sleep.
I shall find my way alone."
II.
What can I tell you of life?
It comes hard-earned and beautiful.
It comes disguised and tricked.
It comes with laughter too.
What can I tell you of life?
Nothing.
My version of it is my own.
It does not belong to you.
Like trees, we have our common roots.
But our growth is very different.
III.
You cannot go back.
You cannot live here believing that
Our way is the bridge to yesterday.
Now is not the way it was.
Now is beautiful because
Everything that mattered
Has found its way to us.
IV.
My people are a multitude of one.
Many voices are within them.
Many lives they have lived as various Beings.
They could have been a bear, a lion, an eagle or even
A rock, a river or a tree.
Who knows?
All of these Beings are within them.
They can use them any time they want.
On some days it is good to be a tree
Looking out in all directions at once.
On some days it is better to be a rock
Saying nothing and blind to everything.
On some days the only thing to do is
To fight fiercely like a lion.
Then, too, there are reasons for being an eagle.
When life becomes too hard here
My people can fly away and see
How small the earth really is.
Then they can laugh and come back home again.
from "Many Winters" by Nancy Wood
"Prose and Poetry of the Pueblos"
Doubleday & company, Garden City, New York, 1974
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/>