Lonnie Graham: A Conversation with the World by jsmauo

Lonnie Graham

A Conversation with the World

8 Questions asked all over the world

Origins

What are your family origins?

How far back do they go?

Prominent personalities?

Role of ancestors?

Family

How dependent are you on your family and what is the nature of that relationship? Spirituality?

Life

What, in your opinion, is the meaning of life in relation to death?

Death

Does death, for you, have any connection with the concept of salvation?

Values

How does your culture interpret the origin of the universe, or the principle on which the universe may be based?

Tradition

How do you define your traditional culture, in relation to your own life?

Connections

Do you see around you any connections (art, architecture, etc.) linking your traditional culture with contemporary life?

Western Culture

What is your opinion of Western Culture, in terms of its spirituality?

Origins

What are your family origins? How far back do they go? Prominent personalities? Role of ancestors?

• The role of the ancestor is to pass along, inform and give knowledge of where we were, who we were, and from whence we came, so we can go forward with the peace of mind of knowing that. It’s important. It’s like planting a plant in the ground. You can develop a hybrid from a rootstalk, and then you can graft onto that rootstalk many other variations, and it’s alive and well. If that plant dies and it was not grafted onto a rootstalk but from another hybrid then you can’t go back. But if you have a rootstalk, then you can go back, but if it’s a hybrid breeding a hybrid, you can’t go back.

• You are a part of something. And if you don’t know from which part you came, you’re dealing with something that’s not real.

• I have relatives that fought on both sides of Civil War, Union and Confederates. My Grandmother, who was an artist died unexpectedly. My mother’s father was First Scientific Advisor to President Eisenhower and President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• For me, my ancestors taught my grandparents and they taught my parents and then they taught me.

• Whatever comes from them is like gold. I keep it with me all the time. They taught us what happened, and how the future will be. They give us a path to walk on.

• The role of the ancestor, for me, is to provide insight for future generations to just make things easier.

• When you talk about civilization, people are often forgetting something. They think now you have to live in civilization. They forget our ancestors. When you forget always, you are trapped, because you were born around this. We have it in our blood.

• I know the role of the ancestor is that it provides a line, a continuum that basically fits in the whole philosophy that, in order to go forward, you need to know where you came from. You know it’s very important.

• We’re all pretty much who we are. I could be related to a king, but that doesn’t make me a king.

• Father is from a village just down the way, and mother is from a village over the pass, a village called “Digar. ”She is continuing the family tradition. She says “I don’t know,” but she is continuously following the tradition for sure.

• I don’t even know. Everybody is connected. If we were to do a genealogy of every person in the world, somehow, some way, we would be somewhat connected. It’s so vast, there’s no ending from the beginning of time, from the beginning of the world.

• My dad is actually a really good encyclopedia of people’s stories in the family and what they’re doing now. And all the different little branches, he knows all of this stuff. You can start to trace patterns, and then you figure out how you fit into that and what you’re continuing on, usually unconsciously. And so then you actually do start feeling this connection. You feel a part of this line, because we think, in our own way, about time. I really started realizing how much of the development of my personality or what I do or the choices I make are not necessary, and that I’m not fully in control of them. You think you are because you’re in U.S. and you’re convinced of that. It’s like everywhere you turn that culture of the individual is reinforced and supported. I started realizing how much I can make my own choices and they end up being the choices that people make for me.

• Our great grandfathers, even our grandfathers got everything from the livestock. They grind them. They wash them. Everything is from the earth, this product, the clothes they wear. They don’t buy from the market. It is their own produce, this system, they have learned by staying with the grandfather. And their children can also know this, we are self sufficient from times gone by.

• I am Cree. My father is from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. My mother’s parents are originally from Ireland. So I’m Irish and Cree.“Opaskwayak” in Cree means, “where the two rivers meet.” I’m embarrassed because I don’t know how far back I go. My grandfather, Murray, was a photographer – one of the first Aboriginal photographers in Canada. And he had a family tree that went all the way back to his great- great-grandmother.

• That part of our culture is that knowledge is passed on to the younger generations. I know that’s what my dad taught – how to respect your elders, parents, work, survival. You know that’s part of what they taught throughout the years. And my faith is Christianity; that’s what my dad passed onto me.

• I was raised in a non-native community, and I’m sad about that. I grew up away from my cousins, and my aunts and my uncles and away from the family. But if it’s true that there is that little segment of my DNA that contains memories from generations past, I have a lot of hope there. I would say on both sides of my family, just knowing that part of who you are gives you a sense of identity. It’s really powerful.

• Well, speaking only of my clan, our clan is responsible for protecting our village. And we belong to a spear group; that’s where we look after our land, or not particularly our land but the place that we come from, and our culture. We do whatever is decided by the chief.

Family

• I’m dependent on my family mainly. Mainly just the knowledge that the family unit is a strong unit and if you can keep it intact it’s for your well being and feeling of completeness. You have a lot of people walking around these days that don’t have this, this little unphysical thing that lets you know that you are a part of something, you understand? And a lot of us want to believe that we don’t have to be a part of anything that we are just who we are, but the truth is that in order to make steel or iron, you need to know from whence it came to understand.

• I have roots. I belong here and I feel very comfortable. I love this country, the land and the people. My mother decided to move to San Miguel against my grandpa’s will, and she settled here and started working at Posada San Francisco. A few years after that, when she was about 19 she was able to buy this house.

• Then she brought the whole family: her mother especially, my grandmother, and lived here.

• I’d like to think that I’ve become more – I’m probably the most autonomous that I have been yet.

• Yeah, it’s still existing in the younger generation. In Ladakh, in other part of the world it’s same, you know, the parents have to give the education to the youngster.

• I’m from the Blood Tribe, and the Blood Tribe is in the Blackfoot Confederacy. Well, Blackfoot oral tradition and history teaches that we were created right here on this land, so my people have been here forever, and the Cray Bull family is one of the families that are 100% indigenous and 100% Blackfoot. We haven’t mixed with other races, and you’ll see that my husband is actually Irish-Cree in the photos, and I am the first of many, many generations of people that has married outside my own culture. It wasn’t the most popular decision that I ever made. But branching off, I think really, I think we’re creating history. But for history and language I depend on them to set me straight sometimes because I’m the youngest, and I’d be the most foolish. I haven’t reached a point in my life yet where I’d consider myself wise, and I consider a lot of my older brothers and sisters wise, so I rely on them a lot. But for the most part, I believe that the Creator is the one that sets the tone for that (spiritual dependence). I follow the Creator as opposed to a person, and I don’t want to follow the Creator because someone else’s belief depends on it; I want to have my own relationship with the Creator.

• My wife and my mother, they look through the green pasture and look for livestock. My job is to look for dung, to look for wood, and even for making some trading with each other and sometimes we need to go outside, our children don’t go to school, we ask our children to bring the fertile soil from the down plan to our small fields, so in a way, every people in the family play their own part, so we are multi-dependent.

• I’m very dependent on my family. I have a very close relationship with my mother and father and the family that I have here in Calgary. Especially with my granny, I really value her knowledge, where she’s been.

How dependent are you on your family, and what is the nature of that relationship? Spirituality?

•

I have to go back and connect with my community because I haven’t lived in my community for a long time, so most of the stories and most of the people are gone. There’s a lot of spirituality in my relationship with my grandfather. Even though I don’t – it’s not like he visits me in my dreams – but he’s a Cree elder, so he practices his religion, and eventually one day I will be in his position because he is passing down the culture to us. But one of the things about the culture is you need to know the language, and I don’t know the language. There are also so many things I haven’t done to be on my journey to that place, to help people in their spirituality. I do know most of the ceremony practices, but I don’t know the protocol, like what has to be done, what kind of prayers, what kind of songs. But I do know what goes on in pretty much all the ceremonies. It’s up to the individual if they want to believe in God. It’s up to them if they want to do nothing. They can believe whatever they want to believe. And I will be there if they want to hear a different view of life and hopefully unlock their mind in being accepted into our culture. There’s no obligation.

Completely dependent. I need them, because otherwise I would just be here alone. To know that they’re there makes things easier. My grandmas are really spiritual, went to church all the time, believed it all. And she was part of societies. She had ten kids, and then each of those ten kids probably had five kids. I have a huge family. It’s good to know that there’s always going to be someone there.

It’s completely intertwining, and it’s deep, and it’s completely together. I need my mother; I need my children; I need the memories of my father. They’re everything to me. I think it goes beyond worlds. It goes on many different levels. I think that my mother and my sisters have been around each other many, many lifetimes; our spirits are always coming back to each other. I think that my relationship with my family is always throughout time and space and whatever constructs; it’s just constant.

• I was not raised by my biological mother. My father passed away when I was 2 months old. I never met the guy, but I heard he was a good man. My mother raised eight kids, and I was the eighth. She was depressed, stressed; she couldn’t handle me, so my father who is here with me took me in and raised me. Because of that, I am who I am today. Otherwise, where would I be if I didn’t have a home, no mother to raise me. I’m thankful for the life I have, the people I have. It’s a blessing. It’s a Christian home, Christian people. I know who is the Creator, who is God, who is Christ. I believe that there is a man coming back soon. I believe in Christ, God.

• It’s like I do ice sculptures, and when I’m doing it, people come up and ask me. I’m working hard, sweating, perspiring. And I’m creating this thing out of ice that’s gonna melt and go away anyway. They say, “Doesn’t that bother you? It’s going to melt and go away.” And I explain to them that, “But aren’t you going to remember this event forever? Aren’t you going to carry this away into your heart and soul? And whenever you need it you can call on it. Because it’s there. ”Whereas a physical something that you don’t have a spiritual connection with it, it’s sitting on a mantle somewhere but it doesn’t mean anything. And the greatest thing that exists in the world – the spiritual connection to family, love – those things that don’t have any physicality, it’s the essence of it; those are the most important things that exist in the world.

• Not very. I’m somewhat close with my dad; I have a good relationship, but I have this family. I love the girls, I love my wife. Within a family, everything is a learning process, a curve. We’ve named our cats after dead relatives, just to keep them in mind. But other than that, I don’t think there’s really any connection. My relatives are in Nova Scotia, so I don’t see them unless there’s a funeral. And on my mother’s side, they’re all pretty much passing away or have passed, so it’s sad.

• For information, I’m kind of not dependent on anyone. But, if I want to get information you know then I depend on them. Something related to me something that I found out, you know? But then I depend on them one hundred percent. But other than that family wise, I’m married. I have kids, no, I don’t depend on anyone. No, I just live my life.

Life

• I have a book on that actually. I’ve been reading a lot of meaning of life books recently. Meaning in life. So we have this life. Right? So, and then we don’t. I think the way that I see it is kind of this split between two modes.

• Well, to my understanding, we should enjoy life as much as possible, as within what we are doing is righteous inside of God, which will be the same when we die.

• It’s just a cycle, like plants, like everything else that’s in the planet. We form part of this universe and we go through this cycle and we have this opportunity to be here and then we just disappear into the ground, coming back into nothing. But we still are part of whatever is here, as far as I’m concerned.

• Life is about experiencing the wonders of being. Life to me means just being able to wake up everyday and experiencing whatever happens to me. The day that I can’t have that experience then I’ll be dead. The day that I can’t look forward to waking up I’ll be dead. If I wake up and there’s no wonderment, no newness, no possibilities for something to happen, whether that might be bad or good or whatever, then I’m dead.

• Dead to me is not a physical thing. Dead is a mental, spiritual thing. It’s me talking to you right now, but possibly these words will spread which means I will live forever. The essence of Burt Long will live forever. My body might not be here – which is the whole reason I live as an artist.

• There’s ultimately no death because when you die, your body dies – your shell dies – but your spirit continues, and the spirit is what is really connected to the Creator, and so the relationship between life and death is that it just continues. It’s a change in conscience as opposed to actual death.

• – There’s a relationship. Life is what you know. Death appears, and it’s something you have to face. I think when people who you live with, see, have good times, and the next thing you know they’re gone, it’s a big impact; it hurts. It’s like you’ve crossed and you can’t get back. But it’s a reality that we have to face.

• You know my father is dead. He just changed. Like traveling, just like traveling, when you take a train and go to the United States. It’s the little brother of death. When I see scientists they say, life after death, it’s impossible. But for us in Africa, life after death exists. And when you got a baby, you give the baby the same name of the ancestor and when the baby is born, he grows just like the ancestor. For example, I named my baby after my father as he grow.

• Death is inevitable, so there’s no point in dwelling on death because it comes when it comes.

What, in your opinion, is the meaning of life, in relation to death?

• I’ve always viewed death as a new beginning. Life compared to eternity is just a blink of an eye, and that’s how fast it’s going to go by, so I guess death is the beginning of everything, essentially.=

• Everyday, we get closer to death. I’ve read things like, “Life is like a fresh fallen snow. Be careful how you tread in it, for every step shows.” You have to be proud of who you are, what you do.

• We believe in karma, we believe in life after death. And we also say that if you do good, even in this life, if you are good to yourself and your people, that will generate happiness in you. So you by that thought and for even in the next life, it is solely dependent on what deeds you have done in this world. We’re all one thing at a time, like we’re one blade of the grass. If the blade of grass dies, we turn into an animal or maybe a tree and the tree dies then we reincarnate into something else. And then we reincarnate to human form. I think death should be a celebration of life. I know there are feelings with it; there is pain and sorrow and loss of loved ones, but there should be a celebration of the person’s life when they die.

• My opinion? I have two opinions. Sometimes I think there is life after death, on the other hand, sometimes when the Jehovah Witness comes in, then I have doubts in the life after death.

• I don’t know. We just live our lives to make ourselves and the people around us happy, so we die happily.

• I really struggle with that. Because I was raised in a Catholic family. I have come into my own the last couple of years, just realizing how that doesn’t really make sense; it doesn’t align with my values. Life and death is such a strange thing to discuss because we’re all disposable. I’d like to think in a scientific way that we’re born, we live, we die. But then there’s also a blank spot in our lives where spiritual things occur that you can’t explain, and I always question why I have these connections, or why I have these feelings; there’s got to be more than just to be born, to live, and to die. Things are passed on from life to death. Maybe part of my ancestors are alive inside of me.

• I think they’re intertwined. Like my mom said, they’re cyclical. You can’t have life without death. I like to think that no matter what, at the end, I will be united with my mother and sister. I will see my dad again. I will see my daughter again. Maybe not in this form, but in the spiritual form.

• Since I have been coming feeding the hyenas, doing the same kind of life. Daytime, I work in the farm and afternoon I have time my chats. At late afternoon, I prepare my food for the hyena and lastly at the evening, I feed them. This whole thing makes me happy. And with this income, I can feed my family and I can survive. It is good, my life. When I live, I am living and then I will die, I replace my life to the children all that I have, I pass to my children in the material.

Death

• Salvation is freeing our mind, freeing of our mind somewhere and being born in our next life, whether being an animal, or human, but of a good mind. When I die, ok, not only in this world, I may be born anywhere. You die, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that some part of you becomes saved for some reason.

• Yes. I do think so. As long as I am spiritually alive, I’m not afraid of death because I know that I am spiritually alive. So even when I’m physically dead, my spirit will be saved.

• Salvation is a free gift. In Ephesians the Bible says, “For by grace we are saved.” Not of ourselves, so no one will boast, but it’s a free gift. So salvation is a free gift from God. All we have to do is accept it, that Christ died for my sins.

• I turn 50 this summer in all likelihood I’ve lived over half my life. As my body breaks down, I hope my spirit will grow.

• I would say yes, I would say that, but I don’t know why.

• I believe we will all die eventually. We might be reborn or resurrected, you never know. You just have to lead a good life, to get a reward after that.

• Well yeah, I don’t want to live in a dark light, you never know what’s after. For me, I have a real Eastern way of thinking about things and I believe in karma. What you do, what you put into the world, is what you get back and that relates to death. Like an insurance, you just want to treat people in a good way. Yeah, like a state of being, if you treat people how you want to be treated, life will be good.

• I don’t believe in a specific religion, or the Bible fully. I’ve always believed there’s God. Lately, I’ve been questioning it more, thinking more scientifically rather than spiritually. I believe that there is a higher power; it might not be God in the sky; it’s more like the Earth and Mother Nature.

• It’s like what my mom says, to treat everybody as you would like to be treated, not because they deserve it, but because you do. It’s kind of like this guy, he was a drunk and lived a sad, or a very poor existence or something. When he died, he fulfilled what he came down here to do. He chose that life, so the idea is just trivial. I wouldn’t choose the life that I have, but somehow I think maybe I did. You don’t choose to have your daughter die; or to be abused at a very young age; you don’t choose this stuff, but it happens.

• Yeah, I believe if you go somewhere else, you can be recreated into something else later in life, in the next lifetime. I’ve talked to people who have just about died and come back to life, and they tell me about the experience they had. They said that when they went to a tepee and meet four elders, you either come back or go across to the other side.

Does death, for you, have any connection with the concept of salvation?

• When you hear the word death, automatically you have a thought of something terribly negative, totally bad. But on the other hand, it’s not totally a bad thing, per se. And I say that because I had an experience at dad’s funeral. I saw my dad, and he was lying in the coffin, and you don’t ever, ever want to see that. But when he was lying there and it was my turn to stand, I stood there, and I had this awareness that he had lived the full seasons of his life. It was just awareness; it just came to me. That experience changed the way that I think about death. He lived his time. In the time that was allotted, he lived a pretty full life – he had a wife that loved him, he raised a family. What more is there? With the thought of death, you’re hoping for some kind of salvation, so there’s a hope there.

• I’m not sure. I used to think so, but I just don’t know anymore. I used to believe in God, and that he’s not here to send people to hell for eternity, because that doesn’t sound like a loving God to me. I used to believe that the earth would be a paradise, and we’d come back and live together, and all that stuff. But because the devil did something, now the rest of us have to live in this crap world we’ve got now. So right now, I just figure, why does he even bother? Obviously we can’t do anything– that’s what I was taught. We all get tested. Once you go through your test, God reads our heart; no one else can. But he already knows our heart, so what’s the point in putting us through suffering for our whole lives – taxes, working 12 hours a day to pay the government. So if he is alive, if he is around, I’m ticked off at him, so I’m already in his black book.

• Yes, I think there’s an afterlife, two places. I think there is a heaven and a hell. If you go to heaven, it’s a good place. But if you go the other way, there’s no salvation.

• I think we’re people who died a long time ago and made it to heaven and sent back to learn what they haven’t learned when they were first on this earth. There’s a place in the stars called “Campfire”. When you die, you go on that journey to the spiritual world and you go home to a place in Campfire. On your way there, there’s a house halfway there, and they try to make you stay there. And if you stay there, if you go inside, they’ll keep feeding you and feeding you. But if you keep staying there, you get stuck. Once you make it to the Campfire, the heavenly gates, you have to speak in your native language to pass and get into that side. People that die, that commit suicide are actually stuck on this earth. People who don’t know their language, I’m not sure if they make it in or not.

• Salvation? I guess that’s the Christian teaching. To me, everyday we get closer to our death, and I think to die must be nice, must be beautiful. We get to meet all the people that have gone on. We get to meet them and see them. It would be better in the spiritual world.

Values

• I don’t believe in the words in the Bible. I think the bible is man-created as a form of control. There’s a spirituality that deals with the whole creation of the universe. It’s bigger than anything we could ever imagine. If you say that you’re talking about the spirituality of the creation of the whole universe when you talk about God, then I can say yes. In Africa they might call Him this, and over here you might call Him that, but you’re basically talking about the spirituality of the creation of the universe, which is not a person.

• I think we are all one, you know, it doesn’t matter black or white. We are all one. I was taught that we are all one and it just happens the white people end up here and they become white, and we end up down there and we became black. In our mind, our thoughts, our everything, we are one. We all come from Africa somewhere. I believe that, that we all come from Africa. From generations, from following the biblical statements and following the roots that we came up, you know, we all come from Africa somewhere. I don’t believe that we come from apes, I believe that both of us, all of us both red, yellow, green, humans everybody comes from Africa somewhere.

• I believe that there was a ball of energy. It exploded and Pangea was formed and things crawled from the ocean. Yes, I believe in evolution. I don’t believe that someone created something and rested on the seventh day.

• I used to believe in God, that God made us all, but now it’s kind of a difficult question. I think everybody’s always wondering – even if they don’t say they are, then maybe secretly.

• So, everything has a spirit. And we also like to think about the future, so traditionally, First Nations people, specifically Cree, like to think seven generations ahead, so everything you do is for the future generations. I really like that everything you do is for future generations. I wish I had better words to describe it.

• The earth. That’s all I know.

• Well, we believe in the Creator that created all living beings, and in the universe there’s the person, and they’re only one part in many parts. Everything is connected, so we’re all connected to each other; we’re all connected to one source. And essentially, we’re not above other beings – other plants and animals – and we don’t dominate those other living beings. Instead, we give thanks to all living beings.

• Some of our elders, some young people, still believe that the eagle is a high power. Of course, it’s a gift from God. He made everything. I believe that. And I think that our culture just describes who we are. It’s not something I should serve; it’s just explaining me. But I have my belief in the high power. Traditional culture serves the temporal, the people. But then there’s another belief system that addresses something that’s more celestial, something that’s more spiritual.

How does your culture interpret the origin of the universe, or the principle on which the universe may be based?

• I’ve heard many creation stories, and I heard this one woman tell a creation story in one of my classes, and it sounded a lot like the Big Bang Theory. Almost like a woman giving birth. And I wish I could have that story written down – I like that story best because it coincides with science. I think it’s important to keep asking, but at the end of the day, we don’t really know.

• I know our culture has many creation stories. They tell you different stories as you’re growing up. They tell you a story that’s simple for your mind to grasp when you’re really little, and then they change stuff as you get older. Like there’s one about Napi. Napi existed before the world did, and he’s on a boat in a water world, and all the animals died one by one. And Napi sent the beaver down, and he said, You’re strong, and the beaver swam and swam until he got to what was Earth, and he grabbed it and brought it back to Napi, and Napi moulded the earth, and that’s how we have land. So in our culture, the beaver is a sacred animal, and we’re not even allowed to touch beaver hide, and we’re not supposed to take in beaver meat or anything like that.

• I don’t think it’s evolution, because that’s ridiculous. But I don’t know if I think it’s God, either. I don’t think it’s relevant to my day-today life, so I don’t really honestly care how we got here. I’m just making the best of right now.

• The things here on Earth are just here to feed us, but we weren’t meant to destroy it. My culture is based on the faith of not seeing yet still believing that there’s a greater Spirit Being that’s more powerful than any of us that we can’t comprehend; our minds are too small.

• Within the Native way, everyone was created from the land – it always goes back to the land. And to this day, if you fast-forward to the contemporary, it’s the land that’s being destroyed, and the Native way – the old way, the traditional way – is saying, let’s regroup the environment, let’s take care of Mother Nature. Yet it’s disregarded because in the modern day, it’s all industrialized. The original way is to maintain the land, but it’s kind of cliché because it’s government against an old, passé ideal of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo. It just seems like common sense not to destroy the land, yet people are destroying the land for production.

• It just began. I’ve never asked that question. I just know we got here. When I was going to school, I remember them talking about it, saying we came across Alaska. And my great-grandfather said that in our culture, we never go against the sun. We always follow it.

• I call him the Great Spirit. I guess that’s where we originate from. We come to this life through the Spirit. I guess that’s where it starts from; I don’t exactly know, but that’s what I’ve been told.

Tradition

• My life is culture. I live culture. I live with my culture naturally. I was schooled at university. I know one part of my culture every time I try to understand the way of doing good that my culture requires.

• I think what I take from my traditional culture is prayer and meditation. I would like to learn traditional Native dances. I have to keep searching. I think dancing is important, because if you look at other cultures, they all have some sort of dance; I think there’s something in dancing, other than exercise, that’s important. It brings joy. Rain dances bring rain; it’s a form of expression. And it’s a form of art and creativity.

• Our culture is changing too fast. I am a potter. I believe I want to touch the earth to stay grounded or in touch with my past or roots. Touch makes me feel alive.

• My culture has been forced to develop to survive. I think that, as well as just hearing someone like Sammy Davis Junior say, “Yes I can.” You understand? Perseverance, that’s one of the most important – and I think the black race has proved that’s almost inbred in us because we wouldn’t be here right now if had not had that. And that age-old belief that someone else is in control and that all we have to do is give these problems to that person and we’ll be taken care of. But I think that tenacity has been one of the things. It certainly hasn’t been the lineage. The connection with my culture has been destroyed. Basically the black race doesn’t exist right now in America. We’re just people. We don’t have a race. We’re second-class citizens. We don’t exist as a race if we ever did. And now, because we’re no longer needed as a race, we don’t exist. We don’t exist anymore. It’s gonna be less and less and less.

• Culture, I’m kind of suddenly getting that confused with family heritage.

• Well, I am definitely a product of pop culture, that is a culture that I relate to. Visiting Peru and seeing how they have all of these traditions from hundreds upon thousands of years ago, really I feel unfortunate, because I don’t have that experience. Pop culture is my culture; it’s an observation that I see that in a way that I am a little culturally deprived. I don’t know if pop culture really classifies as a culture compared to “Pavataubu,”that has all of these traditional outfits and dances. Just events with a lot of historical background.

• We hunt for food, and our ancestors did the same thing. But today, I’m not going to forget about what we were taught, what I was given, handed to us so we could pass it on. It’s nature that’s giving us the breath, the food, life, and when we kill something, it’s given to us, and we take of it to share with other people.

How do you define your traditional culture, in relation to your own life?

• Kind of walks hand in hand. It helped me where I actually am today because if it wasn’t for my culture I probably would have been on the streets or something. I’d probably be at home – at my mom’s house right now, and I’d probably be doing nothing right now. But the insurgence of my culture into my mind helped me want to push forward for better opportunities for our youth that are growing up today that maybe don’t have the support from their culture, because most of their parents didn’t teach them the culture. So I want to continue the culture like my grandfather has shown me. I want to know all the things, all the knowledge he knows.

• I’m a real mix. I’m half native and half white. So half the dominant society and half the subordinate society. I’ve kind of grown in a white society, and now I’ve taken the initiative to learn about where my family on my father’s side comes from because a lot of those traditions have been lost through colonization and whatnot. So you’ve caught me at an interesting point in my life because I’m learning about where I should be. Like I said, Opaskwayak – that’s the name of my reserve – means, “where the two rivers meet”, and living one life, and deciding to take a new path, I’m learning another side of me.

• I’m more of an observer than a participant of my culture because of my grandmother being raised in a residential school. Basically, everything known to her about our Blackfoot history has been pretty much wiped out. For that reason, I feel uncomfortable participating in cultural things, it feels unnatural because it’s not second nature to us; it’s almost foreign.

• I was off at residential school, and it’s sad. In the residential school we were told that our ways were evil. We couldn’t even talk our language. So to live a life, a whole life, it was hard, thinking that you’re evil because you know a different language and pray in your language. We call God “the Creator,” and the Nuns said we were talking to the devil whenever we talked to God in our language. So through the years in my adult life, I began to go back and go to sweats and sing and pray. It would be really beautiful if I could do sweats in Blackfoot. Because where I go, they’re Cree, and we don’t speak the same language. And they sing and chant in Cree, and I’ve learned the Cree songs; I enjoy them. On Sundays, usually we get up early and go to the sweat and sing and pray.

• When you see stuff from my culture, like if I’m walking down the street and there’s a poster of a Native, it’s like, oh cool, look. It’s a Native. But that’s about it.

• With my mom, even though it seems like she attempted to raise me as white as possible, and there were some things in childhood that I remember she just did. I don’t think she was thinking, “I’m going to teach my daughter some Native tradition,” she was just living. And memories of her taking bark off a tree and boiling it when someone had a sick stomach – she did that, but it wasn’t explained. Also, what we called walks was someone else’s hiking. And my mom never said, “We’re going to go outside, and we’re going to get in touch with the outdoors”; it wasn’t announced like that. We just did it. Saturday morning, me and my mom and dad, we’d go climb a mountain. And when we went berry picking, we wouldn’t do it in a small way. It wasn’t like going on a little excursion; we’d go out, and all of a sudden, there would be vats and pails of berries that my mom and dad would make into jams. It was really neat and with my mom being Native, that was just part of what we did.

Connections

• You know, it’s like having a radio in Spain that’s not plugged into any circuit in the wall, but you can hear a program that’s going on in China. It’s like me speaking these words right now. They don’t go away. Those words are out there in the universe forever. All someone has to do is build some kind of a receiver to pick it up. Do you understand? So everything that has existed still exists, for one thing, but it still exists because you can call it aura, you can call it essence, whatever, but the spirituality of everything that has ever been is still here. It’s about having the knowledge to build the receivers, a contraption that can recapture.

• No, it’s all gone.

• No. No, it’s a problem. It’s a problem. Everything that I am right now is basically what I felt as something I was supposed to be doing, basically trying to assimilate. I came from the era where the world said, “We acknowledge that we have done your race wrong. We didn’t allow you to get an education, you were kept back, and we’re saying, yes we did this. But if you go and get an education and if you do what is supposed to be done, then these doors, all these things will happen for you.” You understand? And it’s fake. It’s not real. And so here I am at this point basically a white man in a black man’s body, you understand, that everything I’ve been taught is not about my culture, it’s about being an American, which they won’t allow me to be. They will not allow me to be a first class citizen in America, just an American.

• Yeah, I live it, it’s kind of what it is. It’s contemporary.

• People as a whole have to start working together and stop thinking individually – as a person, as a community, as a society, as a country – the whole world has to work together, because the way we’re going, we’re going to end up destroying this world. And I want to know if people really care about life. If people really care about what they’re doing to this earth, and also what they do to help other people. What can be done? I know we can’t change the world in a day, but we, in Canada, a hundred years ago, this all wasn’t here, and if we keep going, in a hundred years, it’s not going to be here. We have to find solutions to the problems now.

• Yes. Fortunately, I’m in my traditional territory, so everything around me links me back to people and our way. My ancestors that were here many, many years ago, their spirits still are with us, and the rivers, the lakes, the trees, the mountains, the moon and the sun. Everything that the Creator put here for us to enjoy is the same. The land is still the same. I mean, it might be different with the buildings and the cement and the immigrants, but the land is essentially still the same.

• I don’t know.

Do you see around you any connections (art, architecture, etc.) linking your traditional culture with contemporary life?

• The sky – when I look up the sky is always changing and it is the roof of which we all live under.

• Absolutely. I’m here in the Native Center everyday, and I’m surrounded by people just like me who are coming back to discover their roots. And it’s really, really interesting to be surrounded by people who are just like me, and it’s really inspiring as well. I always thought growing up here that I was the split culture, two very different cultures, two contrasting cultures, and there’s people all around here who are mixed blood. And it’s very inspiring to know that there are people like me who are coming back to discover their roots so they can carry on their traditions for future generations so they’re not lost. And it’s a beautiful culture.

• Yeah. Photographs and family relics. I mean, this quilt. We moved so many times we don’t really have anything left that would be like an artifact, but I’ve been given some like this. Somehow I got this in the divorce because neither of them could have it, so I got it. Um, linkage in family photographs. I’m not as obsessed – I’m proud of them because I actually have something.

• Here we would say, “Here is a white man’s country.” And everything done here is different. In my home, I have a strong culture that I have to with. To make life easier and better for me, I have to stand with my culture. That’s what I do. I don’t take culture from here, no, no. What I was taught and what my grandparents taught me.

Western Culture

• Hmmm – maybe since I’ve lived here in Mexico I’m not really aware, truly, of what it might be. But from my point of view it’s subtle, it’s not too profound. It could be for some people, but what I see in the culture, what I see in TV, everybody is free to think whatever they want to think and how they want to feel, same in Mexico. But basically we all come from one source and in this other culture it’s many, many, many different influences.

• Uh, everything – some of the most horrific and some of the most wonderful things that have happened to this Westernized society have been done in the name of God, of spirituality. What has to do with spirituality is that it is not a physical thing. It’s a spiritual way of being in this society in that they believe spiritually that we should go and do dastardly things supposedly for the good. How can you kill all of the animals and talk about preserving them? It’s a spiritual belief in a wrong concept. It’s trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s trying to manipulate. It’s trying to control. It’s spiritual because it’s really the way we believe now. When anybody grows a garden biologically like I do, what you do – if you kill all the bugs that come in your garden, your garden’s not gonna grow. If you put something so lethal on your garden, to kill all of the bad bugs, it kills the good bugs too. The way your garden survives is you plant a little bit more so that bugs may kill two plants, but you’ll get twelve for yourself. And that’s – it’s almost spiritual. It’s not a physical –it’s like a concept.

• I think Western cultures have really lost their connections to spirituality. And a lot of cultures try to dominate other cultures with their beliefs. Our culture is a very humble culture, and you don’t hear us; we’re not loud because that’s the way of our people. So I find a lot of people are really disconnected from their spirituality, even if they’re attending church on Sunday, or the Mosque or the Temple, they’re still very far removed from their spirituality.

• I think it’s too busy to really, really acknowledge it. It’s not really in everyday conversation. Spirituality is not out there. It’s not seen or heard.

• I feel like Western culture has different priorities. I feel like everyone is concerned with prosperity and making money and they don’t put a lot of focus on spirituality, it’s not tangible, I feel. You can’t take it to the bank so it’s not as important, at least that is my experience in San Francisco. Just because the cost of living is ridiculous. I do feel like a lot of people, maybe it is just unique to that area, but many people do, they are spiritual in a sense, they are connected to a lot of eastern ways of thinking: yoga, but not your traditional Catholicism. And even then, I don’t feel that they treat people a certain way, and then still with the belief that money is the main principal.

• I don’t think anybody should be pushing their culture. It’s up to the people if they want more. My grandfather was really open to everything. He never put other religions down. I think the same should have been done for us, too. We should have been allowed to pray in our language. That’s why I think there’s so much stuff happening in the different Native communities, because all of that is destroyed.

What is your opinion of Western Culture, in terms of its spirituality?

• I don’t think it’s very spiritual; they’re told just to be a good person, and that’s that. But for Natives, for example, it’s more spiritual. We have beliefs, customs, traditions, and stories. But in the end we all have the same morals, to be good people.

• So, I’m telling about Europe. I was traveling from Cologne to Munich by train. It was about seven hours. I was in the cabin with some other people. I was trying to make conversation with them, you know? I just want to make conversation to pass time. I said, “What’s the time?” They said it was 3:30 or 2:30. That’s it, nothing more. But they know I’m a stranger and I have totally different faith, but they don’t care. After two hours and the fourth station, some people they come into our cabin with a dog. And the people talk: (gasps) “Oh, whata nice dog!” And, “What’s his name?” And they say, “Where does he come from? You know, it’s a beautiful dog! Oh how beautiful.” I was really upset. They can talk to the dog, but not to the human being sitting just in front of them? And really I get really mad. But, I can’t do anything. So I feel very bad. I feel that, you know, for human beings there’s no value. That’s my point of view.

• In Europe you see society or culture and they don’t respect their culture. Sometimes I say it’s the savage civilization. From their civilization they are wild because they use their civilization in a destructive way. When you don’t know the roots, the source of your culture, you can’t fit yourself into civilization, you know what I mean. You are wild when you do not know the roots of your culture you can’t fit yourself in this kind of modern civilization. Yeah, if you don’t know the roots of your culture you can’t fit yourself correctly in this kind of civilization.

• I don’t know anything about spirituality, but what I see about Western culture is become modernized like and it has changed from old traditions.

• Woefully lacking – it has become a commodity like everything else. We are not taught the importance of reflection or having a sense of awe. The root word of humility is humus – the black earth- life comes from dirt where we all return.

• I think that they tend to be really out of touch – just going through the motions and really disconnected. And it’s really sad, because if you’re just living a bunch of rules, it’s very hollow. Not a lot of depth there. It’s disconnected from passion, from the thrill of being alive and having the desire to live. Being in touch with yourself, with a desire to live a fulfilled life. To me, that’s somehow intertwined with spirituality.