The Purpose of Stories, 2
I’ve had an amalgam of texts at a rolling boil in the back of my head lately. They all deal with a special cultural distinction between between Taker (colonial) and Leaver (indigenous) cultures: the strange insistance on history over stories.
Buoyed
Tuesday afternoon I went over to Pat’s place and dug through boxes-and-boxes-and-boxes of books with her husband, John. To give a sense of the rarity and quality there, a good deal of her collection will be donated to UNM’s library archives, and probably another university’s.
What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate
Toward the end of Pat’s book, Weetamoo has some hard concerns about writing, itself. Young Metacom has learned to write the figure A. He pronounces it for her, and explains the white men’s utility in writing – and the Indian need, therefore, to be conversant in it. I had to stop reading a while after I saw her response: …What if, whenever we wanted a story, we could just reach out and read it from a paper, instead of waiting for the right time and place and…
Next Levels of Dramatic Irony
Your experience as a standard reader: Toward the end of Pat’s rendition of Weetamoo’s diary, the sachem-to-be is finally called for her adulthood rite. The year is 1654. She’s been anticipating it most of the book; she’ll spend several days and nights in a sweatlodge, tending a fire and waiting for contact from the nonmaterial world. In her two visions, a deer she’d unceremoniously killed leads her through the winter night to an important fishing area to the Pocasset, downstream from a waterfall. The second night, the deer…
I miss you, Pat
I’m reading my late editor’s Weetamoo (pronounced Weh-táh-moh) book, Heart of the Pocassets. It’s a heavily-researched, 95% imagined diary of the Pocasset sachem at 14. Pat wrote it for Scholastic, for those lucky eighth-graders with an Indian History unit. It’s simple and refreshing, if light-weight for my needs. An easy little recap after the over-saturated and disturbing Mayflower. Weetamoo’s parents mandate that she find time each day to learn patience. Because the historical Weetamoo didn’t read or write (her culture didn’t use those technologies) it’s a…
Keep On Dredging