  Spiritual
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The conquest of the earth, which mostly means
the taking it away from those who have a different complexion
or slightly flatter noses than ourselves,
is not a pretty thing when you look into it.
~Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness |
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Misunderstandings… Misinterpretations
On the outskirts of my hometown Lawrence, Kansas is a wilderness area called the Wetlands, a marshy land preserved by Baker University (located in nearby Baldwin City, Kansas) for the purpose of education, research, and restoration to native habitat. There has been much controversy over this land in recent years, as the many want to build a major highway across this land. The land is considered sacred to the Native Americans of Kansas and many, including students from Haskell Indian Nations University (Lawrence, Kansas) are protesting the disruption of this land for the sake of a highway.
Recently, I visited the Wetlands, which is open to the public. A man-made boardwalk winds through the wetlands, a nature trail rising a few feet above the marshy land. Tall native grasses, reeds, and dense wooded areas are prevalent, along with beautiful wild flowers, butterflies, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the wetlands were a place of refuge for young Native Americans who fled the regimented, abusive lifestyle of the United States Indian Industrial Training School. The school was founded in 1884 as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to assimilate Native Americans into the Euro-American lifestyle. The school was modeled after Carlisle Boarding School in Pennsylvania, which was established by a military man, not an educator, Richard Henry Pratt. With government approval, he took Native American children from reservations to his school, over 1,000 miles from their homes. The plan, in Pratt’s words, was to ‘kill the Indian, not man.”
Native American boys and girls were cast into a military-like regimented lifestyle at Carlisle and other boarding schools that opened soon after the establishment of Carlisle. The children were restricted from seeing their families and forbidden to speak their language. Their hair, which was a source of great pride for Native Americans, was cut; they were given military uniforms and their native clothes were tossed away. There were forced to change their names, taking a more 'proper' name, in a further effort to strip them of their identity. They could practice only 'Christianity,' a religion foreign to them. Many stories of abuse and other atrocities were reported when these boarding schools finally closed in the 1930s to1950s. Children were whipped with leather straps for breaking rules, especially for speaking their native language. They were kept busy from the time they woke in the early morning hours until they went to bed at night. They were told how to think and not permitted to think for themselves. All of life was regimented.
To escape the terrors prevalent at the United States Indian Industrial Training School (now Haskell Indian Nations University), the young Native Americans fled into the Wetlands. There they could meditate and practice their spirituality. Nature was important to them; it was a sanctuary away from the ugly, bigoted environment of the boarding school.
As I walked the nature trail in the Wetlands, I sensed the sacred ambience. I imagined the young Native Americans coming here when there was no boardwalk, as they trudged through the swampy marshlands, weary and afraid, to find a source of peace. The sounds of nature are everywhere in the Wetlands. As I rested on one of the benches along the boardwalk, I thought that I too would have tried to escape the boarding school, fleeing into the Wetlands. In the boarding school, they were taught a religion that they didn’t understand – it was forced upon them against their will. It was a place of unrest where little if any love was to be found and their way of life was stripped from them as they were expected to assimilate in the new American culture.
In the late 1800’s, Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph said that between the Native Americans (Indians) and the new Americans (whites) there were “too many misunderstandings; too many misinterpretations.” There still are, it seems, and much work needs to be done to bring healing of relationships.
While walking the nature trail in the wetlands, I saw a sign indicating the area was once part of the Oregon Trail as the settlers moved west across the North American continent. However, before these settlers came, the land was a habitat, a sacred place for the Native American Indians of the Kanza tribe, for which the state of Kansas is named.
I am not Native American; as far as I know I have no Native American blood in my veins, but I am a human being and I do respect and love nature. I do admire the fortitude of the Native Americans who survived and maintained a semblance of their cultures, despite designed plans to obliterate first the people then, when that failed, the heritage.
In his book “The Lakota Way,” Native American author Joseph M. Marshall III writes. They (the Lakota Native American people) learned to speak English and told the old stories in their second language because they knew their pride was not as important as keeping the stories alive. In short, they used the last weapon available to them in order to save the essence of being Lakota: fortitude. Two generations of Lakota walked Grandmother’s Road. The ultimate result will be that the traumatic changes in lifestyle and all the losses suffered in the past 150 years will one day amount to nothing more than a bump in the road.
The Lakota Way, Joseph M. Marshall III, Viking Compass (page 172-173)
It is my hope that the day is fast approaching when we may all look back and our tainted relationship with the Native American people will be “nothing more than a bump in the road.” The beginning will be a change of attitude, laying aside stereotypes, misinterpretations, and racial biases. Lawrence, Kansas, like many communities, has a long, though often austere, history with the Native American cultures, and still there exist many misunderstandings. By working together with a new mindset, we may hopefully develop a reciprocal relationship that will bring healing to our communities as well as the Native American people, who are an integral part of our society.
As former Clare Boothe Luce, U.S. Representative from Connecticut stated, “There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.”
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Thanks to those who have responded and provided feedback to the Spiritual Newsletter. We, as the editing team, appreciate your feedback, comments, questions, and suggestions. We know that many members of Writing.com read the newsletters on a consistent basis, and we appreciate your faithfulness to read, though you are not always able to provide feedback.
Here are a few responses I received to my last newsletter, which was part two of the effects of being a people-pleaser:
Ronis brain tumor is gone! 
Larry this is a great news letter that really points out the truth of "people pleasers!" I am one who is like this just to make sure everyone is happy not to judge me.
But it does tear you down to no self esteem and and not having any self independance because you are trying to please everyone but yourself!
~~Thank you for your thoughts CW3 and your honesty. I think people-pleasing is something that is instilled in us at an early age and, to some degree, most of us are prone to want to please people. It becomes a problem when you live only to please others, afraid to express who you really are for fear of rejection.
faithjourney
Thanks for continuing on this powerful theme. It's not selfish to take care of yourself. You're no good to anybody if you're falling apart. So may people think it's selfish to do anything for themselves because they've been "trained" to believe this by people that want to manipulate them. Don't believe it. You must take care of yourself before you're in a position to take care of others. We should all lead first by example. Others will value themselves if they see that we value ourselves. Thanks again and keep up the great newsletters.
~~Sherri, thank you for your faithfulness in providing feedback to the Spiritual Newsletters. You are so right. I think as a son of an alcoholic who terrorized his family, I somewhere along the line, as a teen, decided, as oldest sibling, that it was my responsiblity to protect and care for others. Only in my forties did I realize how important it was to value myself. Thanks again for your honest feedback.
~Vikki~
Thank you so much for featuring my story "Light the Way" . It's a pleasure to be a part of your newsletter.
You are quite welcome, Vikki, and it was a pleasure featuring your story. Thanks for reading the Spiritual Newsletter and for responding.
embe
Hello Larry
So nice to read your inspiring letter dealing with betrayal.
Herewith my poem of recovery.
"As I sit, staring at nobody there who cares"
I dream of when I was a child of five
So happy and free sitting on my daddy’s knee
Until the day my mother went away
Too ashamed to say,” I am the mother of this child”.
Dad tried his best to teach me how to read and write
But soon realized there was something wrong with me
My eyes could not recognize the letters-a b c
So now can you see what this means to me
The idiot that cannot read or write.
I am sent to a special school
Where there are others like me
Lost and lonely, waiting to see
Who will come and visit us
This Sunday, on the yellow bus,
Where every day is another day
As we laugh and play
But everything gets in the way
When we try to hide away
Where we are not allowed to play.
Today my teacher baked a cake for me
She said it was my birthday,
A very special day
For a boy like me
But my father, he never visits me.
I cannot read or write
But I draw a lot
Pencil pictures of my mom and dad
And the house where I lived
Hiding in the night, too afraid to see the light.
Tomorrow! “I don’t want to be me”
I want to teach myself
To be a man and have a wife
And children, even if they cannot read and write
Then I will teach them how to draw like me.
Today! God blessed my family and me.
No longer do we have to walk
That dirty road to heaven.
The road is now paved with gold
For we have eyes and faith to see
"The Glory of Another Day".
embe, in praise of God.
~Embe, thank you for sharing your beautiful poem of recovery with us.
The editing team of the Spiritual Newsletter thanks each of you for the opportunity to bring the newsletter into your homes. If you have items you would like to see in the newsletter, please submit them and we will seriously consider your requests.
The editing team:
kittiara
Sophurky 
larryp
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Spiritual: September 03, 2008 Issue [#2591]
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