This exchange took place recently on a list i'm on. The admin contacted me for being a little too radical for his (and allegedly others') tastes. Significant questions arose and want to be shared with folks who want to see resurgence (and truly authentic transformation) towards shared evolutionary ways of seeing. Your input is thus much invited, no matter how challenging!
The letter which was being responded to follows this exchange, along with the original letter by Jerome (who was okay with keeping things out in the open, and thus, i assume okay with me publishing his letter here).
The volunteer administrator, who i'll call "A" said:
C,
I'm saying the same thing to everyone involved: the tone of this
discussion has dropped below the point where it could be considered to
achieve the standard of respect that is a requirement of all members of
this list. If you wish to continue this conversation in a different
format or a different place, that's fine. But please consider letting
this conversation go in this place and medium. This isn't judgment or
blame; it's a result of complaints received from other members of the
list and my own feeling of unease.
It's probably best to let it end here.
A
------------
My latest reply:
i hear you, A, yet i have to start asking questions, you know. Because if we are to follow Tai's way of seeing and speaking (i.e. in his book _Wasase_) things like resurgence aren't always going to be peachy-creamy. So i'm wondering if you (and the perennial complainers) are getting tripped up too much in what passes for "normal" relations, i.e. "polite" et al.
That's the feeling i'm getting...As if this list is *already* compromised by such mind-set that sees not what it does.
What if you at least published this, along with my letter to Jerome (who asks to keep it public, notably), with this question in mind, inviting others to speak up? --Rather than go with what i think is your uncritical tendency to manage how people wanting resurgence speak to/with each other.
It's your call, and i'll go along. And it is true that i *may well* have a blindspot on this, but then again, i'm coming from more than 10 years of discourse online with all sortz of folks in heated discourse, and i tend to trust *authentic* communications rather than "nice" ones (as does Tai in his book; shall i quote him?).
What is it that is intended by keeping language so reduced to the norms of settler banter and reporting??
Note that i have ways, and method, which are *differently abled* and fly in creative ways of nonviolent confrontation. i am very aware that my freespirit'd style pushes buttons, but this is amongst a broad way in which i see resurgence coming into play. Are you going to join "normal" settler mentalities in suppressing such spirit?
Like i said, i'll go along, tho; since so many do seem to be soooo trapped in such beliefs in this world. How disenchanting the imaginatioN!
QUESTION FOR ALL:
How do you expect to bring spirit'd HEART into this resurgence if you fall back only on what you know and are comfortable with --in whichever way that speaking and singing our hearts is done??
And do you REALLY agree that creative approaches such as my free-wheeling angle of approach on thangz must be kept reduced to the kind of "nice" and "normal" that academic and intellectual communications are kept in (rather, corralled) as a "rule"??
Sure, i "disrupt"; and what is this idea we are socialized with?? i "disrupt" the "normalized" idea of how speaking "must be done", trusting my radicalized intuition...
If this email list were a traditional village scenario, imagine a chieftan (Adam) telling a fellow villager whose way of speaking is different than his this kind of thing!!!!
Whatever you all agree on (not to take you too far away from your normal focus!), i'll go along with. After all, i'm "only" another relatively new "white guy" who *appears* to be "way too" disrespectful and so on and so forth.
(Really, i see my honesty of form and spirit (even if it is poetically challenged, heh hee) to be of a possibly inspirational nature for others whom have subordinated their SPIRIT much too long to the same old again! Perhaps that's REALLY why we are "supposed to" follow along with so-called "tried and true" "rules" --which sound to me to be awfully SUSPECT in themselves--in terms of colonialist attitudes not allowing themselves to be resurgently scrutinized!!!!)
((four exclamations to sing truth to the four directions!!!!))
==================================
==================================
The exchange that brought this up:
> */Jerome @gmail.com
> wrote:
>
> At one point in this conversation I thought one of you
> guys were going to say that you met an indigenous person
> at a gas station once and you were lucky he was a shaman
> who helped you to understand indigenous peoples. Too
> bad...it looks like no one won the pissing contest.
>
> The only thing that kept jumping into my head while I was
> reading this was misplaced concreteness.
>
> C, I'm guessing you have not read Andrea Smith's
> writing on white supremacy [published in online pdf format at "The New Socialist" website]. Or, you have read her
> work but failed to comprehend it because you embody what
> she discusses.
my reply:
> On 11/28/07, *c* @yahoo.com
wrote (privately to Jerome):
>
> Har har, whatever you say must be true since you're
> indigenous. And if you were Dickie Wilson, also indigenous
> (Lakota, the b.i.a.'s 1970s pick for divide and conquer
> technique on the Pine Ridge Rez), the reasoning would be i'd
> also better subordinate myself? i don't think so!
>
> How about some actual backing up of your quick resort to
> labeling me into that category, eh?
>
> Hoo hoo, you must be having fun, eh? What Ever!
> {;
>
*/Jerome @gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
> >Lets keep this conversation out in the open...which was the
> original intent, right? [referring to my original interest to share a letter with an apparent Leftist with all on the list]
> --
> great! :}
>
> >c...I'm sensing discontent on your part. It surprised me a
> bit considering your email address is "spiritd_dude." But I was
> probably misleading myself because a "spiritd" person in my
> community is someone who is wise. A wise person is an individual
> that has the experience and knowledge of power and place.
> --
> Ah..and you think because i don't subscribe to your angle on
> morality that i'm suddenly unwise? OooO! For me, spirited (or
> spirit'd) includes a much wider variety of truth than this
> reduction you seem to want to hold onto (for what intent?).
>
> Why get bogged down into this off-topic thingy? My approach is
> simply different from yours. Egad! (i'm such a BAD citizen!)
>
> >Also, I'm missing the connection between what I wrote and what
> that has to do with truth and being indigenous. Where I'm from,
> being indigenous has a lot to do with the process of
> self-awareness and how one creates balance upon understanding of
> self and the relationship to one's environment. Being the one who
> holds the "truth" is something that is embedded within Western
> thought. Categorizing and characterizing one's self and the
> environment based on "truths" can easily be found in Western
> science and religion.
> --
> Self-awareness is in the eye of the beholder, you know.
>
> As for balance, i can certainly hear what you're saying. And like
> the feminine way of balance, my form is different from yours. As
> for being indigenous, i'm no "wannabe"; i openly state i'm a
> settler. And yet, i have praxis to share in community. Albeit
from
> a differently-abled situation than you, i guess.
>
> i don't need to defend my process to you; i mean, based on your
> way of relating to me (awfully authoritarian just under the
> surface, man!) and all. Assuming automatically becuz i don't fit
> your prescription that somehow means i'm "unwise". You just can't
> figure me out; and i'm okay with that!
> :}
>
> You misread my language on "truth". Notably, i don't capitalize
> the word, so that means a definition similar to Confucious'
> Elephant. Familiar with that one?
>
> As for "categorizing" i think you're putting words into my mouth.
> Care to back up your assertion with actual samples to chew on?
Oh,
> i make my feelings heard alright! But that don't mean i'm seeking
> to do what so many of my uncritical fellow settlers do without
> thinking through such! Gee-whizzies!
>
> Again, you're gonna need to back up your assertions with actual
> examples, and stop tryin' to brow-beat your way into my heart!
>
> >So don't sit there and tell me that my calling you out to be
> aware of yourself is me acting as if I hold the truth. You asked
> for it when you wrote, "Perhaps i could use an attitude
adjustment
> (?) even?!" So don't ask for it if you can't take it.
> ---
> Hey, i can take it, baby; i just ain't gonna take it from them
> folks who come up and brow-beat my punk ass without any actual
> examples to back up their allegations!
>
> i'm actually looking forward to a good ol' ass-whippin' by any o'
> y'all that wanta step up to the plate with some REAL challenge!
>
> And tho i may appear to your hidden colonized mentalities
> (obviously as above) to be here just to "disrupt" and all that
> b.s., you'll see, if you actually respond in the way a
traditional
> community would respond to one labeled "crazy" by colonials, with
> your hearts open, that i got some HEART dudes! And i ain't coming
> from lies and manipulations!
>
> So, Jerome...is this the best you can do?? Maybe you should turn
> the tables around and have me interpret myself, eh?
>
> winkte-ly,
> c
> www.angelfire.com/psy/intheheart
>
> p.s. i'd like to send a copy of this to Tai [Taiaiake Alfred, author of _Wasase: Indigenous Pathways Towards Action And Freedom_, 2005], but he's on vacation
> 'til June! [so he said to me, anyway]
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