First and foremost- this is my first 'blog'. Now I have seen the movie 'Julia and Julie' and have the concept down, but I am a virgin. Please excuse any blunders I make on this and point me in the right direction.
I had a weekend retreat this past weekend in Syracuse NY that my family and I had to go to. How exciting that I had just watched 'Oren Lyons the Faithkeeper' and was happily telling my teenage son about Syracuse University and its lacrosse team and the Iroquois history with the sport that I had grown up watching and love to play (of course only in my imagination because I have no alethic ability). And what a treat that my family has me to entertain them on long drives across New York- for without me reading my history lesson out loud to them in the car they may have been bored. Or worse forced to play with their game boys and I- Pads!
The boys were actually enjoying the insight to what it must have been like to see those strange white men with yellow eyes when we stumbled onto the story of 'Their Wondrous Works and Ways'. I had to have my husband pull over to the side of the road because I almost peed my pants from laughing at a statement that was made about taxes. Now I have just finished filling my taxes and was not too please with how much the country was taking from me and it just tickled me green when I read that other people thought the concept was outrages also.
"I am also informed," said my uncle, "but this I hardly believe, that their Great Chief (President) compels every man to pay him for the land he lives upon and all his personal goods-even for his own existence- every year!" (This was his idea of taxation.) "I am sure we could not live under such a law...( Nabokov pg 23)
Honey- hundreds of years later- you are right! Preach on my bother, preach on!
Eastman, Charles Alexander. "Face to Face." Native American Testimony. Comp. Peter Nabokov. New York: Penguin Group, 1999. 23. Print
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ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked the story. Indians often have a new/unique way to view something that we are now just used to in history. It may help others to give a paragraph recount of the story, as we do a lot of reading and it may / may not stick in other people's minds.
ReplyDeleteI love when I am taking a college class and can relate it to other aspects of my personal life as you have. My girlfriend homeschools our children and there was actually a scholastic issue a couple months back that addressed the mascot issue, using the Washington Redskins as an example. As a family, we are going to revisit that issue so that we can have a more in depth talk about it. We are also going to discuss Columbus day differently in hopes that our girls get both sides of the story!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog and love how personable it is. I think it's great that you are including your kids in some of the course material we are learning. It definitely helps set a precedent in how kids view natives. Taxation was definitely a foreign concept to Natives and rightly so. With such a reverence for the land the idea of exchanging money/goods for property was definitely outside the realm of comprehension.
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