A History Lesson On The Day We Skipped Class

I remembered the other day that when I was six years old I was made an honorary Indian chief. I was named Chief Tonka of the Sioux Nation at a Christmas party hosted by the VFW hall where my mother and friends played bingo on Wednesday evening . I remember the Indian Chief in charge of the event displayed a stone tomahawk that he claimed carried the blood of many “white men.” I told him it looked more like finger nail polish and the audience roared with laughter. We engaged in more frolic and banter as we went along, but I was firmly convinced at the end of the charade, that I had received a great title. Yes, Tonka meant “great’ or “big” to the Sioux, but it also meant toy trucks to Hasbro and while I owned a few of them I didn’t note the relevance at the time. But in the neighborhood cowboy- Indian games, I played the role of the redskin and my friends played the more prestigious buckaroos. I became quite proficient with those rubber suction cupped arrows.

Why should this come to mind a half century later? Maybe, it was something I read recently that clenched my soul, begging me to reach out to new thoughts and ideas that have surfaced in my mind. There are and always have been a multitude of Indian tribes. From the Alaskan Inuit to the Florida Seminole; the Yana and Yuma of California to the Wabanaki nation in Maine; Cherokee to Comanche; the Ojibway of the northern woodlands to the Choctaw of the lower Mississippi all shared a common spiritual premise.

Big Thunder of the Wabanaki nation once said, “ The Great Spirit is our Father, but the earth is our Mother, She nourishes us; that which we put into the ground she returns to us…” Tecumseh, a Shawnee, stated, “The sun is my Father, and the earth is my Mother, on her bosom I will rest.” Like other cultures, Native Americans had their myths to account for the origin of the cosmos and life. Unlike some other cultures, Native Americans, or Indians if you prefer, viewed all animate or inanimate, as we would view it, life as having a spirit of equality. Native American myths had a more whimsical quality than other ancient cultures often dwelling in a cartoon like atmosphere, a childish quality, where beavers, chipmunks, spiders and ravens held center stage in the formation of the universe. The food of the earth, grains and cereals , were as sacred as the mountains, rivers and forests. The spirits of the hunted animals, buffalo and deer, held no animosity as long as the hunter ritually respected the value of the animal in providing food and clothing. Wonder why we didn't learn from this.

Ho hum, what laborious thought. Today, rivers and streams are polluted in the name of progress and landfills overflow. Natural resources diminish . Slaughter houses and packing plants only survive with the aid of marginal ratings granted by a bureaucratic regulatory scheme. “Big Oil” stands by twiddling their thumbs and whistling a happy tune as the price at the pump goes up . Retailers purchase from abroad; corporations outsource in the same manner. Developers rape the land, to build commercial ventures. We engage in wars for less than reputable reasons . Our humanitarian efforts are rebuffed by tyrannical regimes and we simply turn away.

The Indians had it right, but we didn’t hear the message. All we have is sacred to life.