Creative Project

Here are some trickster tales for you guys.  keep in mind that I tried to mimic the flow and vocabulary of the ones we read.

Coyote’s Wife gets Jealous

            Once, when the weather was mild and the animals were bored with hunting, fishing, and farming, they decided to create something new.  Frog suggested that they all go for a swim.  Many of the animals agreed, but Coyote shouted over them to disagree.  “Wait!” he said.  “I cannot swim very well.  We should do something we can all enjoy.”

“But what can we all do?” Hawk asked Coyote.  All the animals cried out their ideas.  Coyote disagreed with each and every one.  Some of them would have worked, but Coyote was too lazy to do them.  “Let’s fly!” mosquito said.

            “I have no wings,” Coyote countered.

“We will dig holes,” Mole proposed.

            “My claws are too small for that,” Coyote complained.  “I know what we can all do.”  All the animals leaned in to hear his suggestion.  “We can all copulate,” he said.  “We will pick partners so that we always have someone to do it with!”  The animals immediately agreed and started to pair up.  All of their feet kicked up a cloud of dust that obscured the crowd.  Coyote could not see anything, so he walked slowly forward and reached out with his hands to grab any animal that came by.  “Wait!” he shouted pointlessly.  “This was my idea, I should pick first,” he pleaded, but the animals were too busy running around and picking the attractive partners.

            By the time the dust cleared, everyone except Coyote had a partner and was leaving towards their huts for privacy.  “Is there nobody left?” Coyote howled.  He saw the Moon and even though it wasn’t an animal he asked it if it would be his partner.  The Moon was so repulsed that it fled to the highest part of the sky, so from then on Moon’s light was much weaker than the Sun’s.

            “I do not want to be alone,” Coyote whimpered.

“I will be your partner,” a voice said from behind him.  Coyote smiled and turned around.  The voice had come from a female Coyote who was very ugly.  She had a long nose covered in fur, yellow teeth, and pointy ears.  Coyote’s smile withered.

            “You are too ugly,” Coyote said smugly.  “I cannot copulate with someone so ugly.”  Suddenly the Moon’s laughter fell down from the sky like warm rain.

            “You do not have a choice,” the Moon said.  It turns out Moon had been watching the other animals and noticed that after they copulated, they decided to stay with each other for the rest of their lives.  “The other animals are calling it marriage,” Moon said.  “This female Coyote is now your wife and you can’t copulate with anyone else!”  Hawk overheard this and told all the other animals to add roofs to their huts so that Moon could not watch them in their private moments.  That is why all good shelters have tops.

            “I promise to love you for my entire life,” Coyote’s new wife said, quivering with joy.

“No,” Coyote said.  “Just because I’m stuck with you doesn’t mean we have to copulate.  I will never be with someone so ugly.  I will instead look at everyone else’s wives and pretend they are mine.  For a pretend beautiful woman is better than a real one like you.”

            So some time passed, with Coyote’s wife growing sadder and sadder.  Even though he was hateful, she loved him.  Instead of getting angry at him, she chose to be mad at every woman Coyote looked at with lust.  She was mad at Beaver’s wife for her thin body, Turtle’s wife for her beautiful hair, and Rabbit’s wife for her bright smile.  She spent many nights thinking of ways to make Coyote love her.  One day she was washing Coyote’s clothes in the river when she noticed what the ripples did to her reflection.  Whenever a ripple went by her face looked strange and twisted. 

            “I can use these!” she realized out loud.  Coyote’s wife picked up the ripples and put them in her bag.  Then she ran around the village and threw them in the face over wife in the village.  She threw ripples at Beaver and when they passed over her they stretched her teeth out and made her look fat.  She threw some at Turtle’s wife and made her look like she had small beady eyes and no hair at all.  She threw them at Rabbit’s wife, which stretched her ears out quite far.  Now all the animals in the village had ugly wives and there was no one for Coyote to imagine himself with.  Defeated, Coyote copulated with his wife that night.

            The animals soon learned that they could make children this way and they did.  Every child inherited its mother’s ripples, which is why all the animals look so different.

The Four Ways to Scare Buffalo

            A long time ago, Coyote’s wife yelled at him because there was no meat in their home.  She told him four times each morning, four times after each meal, and four times whenever he tried to go to sleep.  She kept doing this until Coyote finally agreed to go on a hunt.  He wanted it to be the greatest hunt ever so his wife would never again ask him to go out.  So he went to Wolf to learn how to hunt.

            Wolf is the greatest hunter in the whole world and he hates Coyote for being so lazy and stealing food.  When Coyote approached him, Wolf growled a warning.  “Stay away from me,” he said.  “If you do not, I will bite you and turn you the color of blood.  Then everyone will be able to see you coming and run from you.”

            “Please,” Coyote crooned.  “I want to learn to hunt so I can catch my own food.  I want to go on the greatest hunt ever.”  Wolf did not believe him, so he told Coyote of the rarest prey he could think of: buffalo.

            “There is an animal,” Wolf said, “rarer than all the others.  It is called the buffalo, and there are only four of them.”

            “How do I find them?” Coyote asked, hopping up and down with excitement.  Wolf was certain Coyote would get himself he killed if he tried to find the buffalo, was happy to tell him.

            “One hides in a cave at the bottom of the river.  He spends all day drawing pictures of fire on the wall to keep warm.  You can only kill him by biting his nose.  The second one lives in a thunder cloud and runs in circles, his hooves hitting the cloud and making the thunder.  He can only be killed by clawing at his throat.  Another one sleeps high up on a salt lick.  It is so high and so salty that it burned Snake’s feet off when he tried to climb it.  The buffalo rests at the top, licking salt all day.  You can only kill him by pulling his tail.”  Wolf took a deep breath.  “The last one is the mother of Horse, and Horse protects her all the time.  The only way to kill that one is to trick Horse to leave and then gnaw on her stomach.”

            “I can do that,” Coyote boasted before setting off to kill the buffalo.  Coyote spent the next month swimming.  He searched the bottom of every river looking for a cave.  When he found it he swam inside and looked for Buffalo.  The pictures of fire on the wall dried his fur.  The pictures delighted Coyote, so he picked up a piece of flint to draw his own.  Coyote focused and very carefully drew a flame on the wall.  He was looking at the drawing so hard he did not notice that he was actually drawing on the buffalo’s flank!  The buffalo turned around and was frightened to see someone in his home, so he ran away before Coyote could bite him on the nose.  The buffalo ran to the plains so it could be safe.  The flame Coyote drew on its side set the grass on fire.  Now that fire isn’t trapped underwater, it can spread wherever it wants.

            Coyote tried not to lose hope, so he climbed a tree and jumped onto the thundercloud to get the second buffalo.  The buffalo was so busy stomping and making thunder that it did not hear Coyote sneak up behind it.  The buffalo looked so delicious that Coyote started to drool.  A drop of drool fell from his tongue and hit the cloud, making the loudest thunder ever.  The huge sound scared the buffalo, who quickly jumped down and joined the first buffalo on the plains.  Coyote stomped around, mad at himself for failing again.  His stomps were full of anger, so now thunder always sounds angry.

            Coyote still did not give up.  He jumped from the cloud to the salt lick.  That way he did not have to climb it and burn his feet.  The buffalo saw this and became terrified that the sky was falling.  He rolled down the salt lick and joined the others on the plains.  Coyote bawled at this, his tears melting the salt beneath him.  After many tears, he was back on the ground.  The salty water became the ocean.

Coyote was very lazy, but he could be tricky.  So when he found Horse protecting his mother buffalo, he pretended to be weak of thirst.  He lied on the ground and whined like a diseased wind. 

            “Oh I am so weak,” he cried out.

“Can I help you?” horse asked out of concern.

            “Oh my son is so kind,” the buffalo praised.

“Yes!” Coyote said. “I am very thirsty.  Will you please get me some water from over there?” Coyote pointed at the ocean he had made. “You can have some if you help me.”

            “My mother has taught me to always help the weak,” Horse said.  He ran over to the ocean with a jar on his back so he could collect some water.  Horse took a big gulp so he would have the energy to run back.  The water was so salty that it made him thirstier than before.  Horse had to keep drinking.  He drank, and drank, and drank until he could not hold anymore.  Horse fell down dead.  When Coyote saw that his plan worked, he jumped up and tried to kill the last buffalo.  The buffalo was scared because her son was no longer there to protect her, so she ran to the plains and joined the others.  Coyote cried a new river and gave up on his hunt.  His wife would just have to yell at him every day.

            Now that all the buffalo are together, they have learned how to make more buffalo.  They aren’t rare anymore, and live on the plains in huge groups.  Since none of the wolves can tell which weak spot each buffalo has, they have to bite them all over in order to kill them.

Rabbit and his French Gun

            When guns came to their home, they caused the animals trouble.  Coyote thought he had it the worst out of everyone.  Whenever he stole a kill and took a big bite, there would always be a little metal ball in it that hurt his teeth.  Every piece of meat he found tasted like metal.

            “I need to get one of these guns,” Coyote reasoned.  “That way I can kill the people that are making my meat taste bad.”  So he set off to find a gun.  Coyote asked every animal if they knew how to get a gun.  Most of them ran away every time they heard the word ‘gun’. 

            Eventually, Coyote noticed that rabbit had a gun of his own.  He was using it to shoot apples off the tree so he could eat them.  The trees got so tired of this that they started dropping apples themselves so they wouldn’t have to hear the loud noises.

            “Rabbit, my friend,” Coyote said.  “Where can I get a gun like yours?”  Rabbit did not think they were friends, since Coyote always chased Rabbit and tried to eat his children, so he decided to play a trick on Coyote. 

            “Well you have to get them from the French people,” rabbit said.  The French trappers have the greatest guns.  Once you get one from them you will be able to kill anything you want.  You can kill a whole herd of buffalo with one bullet.  You can shoot a hole in the sun and get some shade.  You can even shoot someone and there whole family will die at the same time.”

            “Thank you rabbit, I will go get a French gun.”  So Coyote went to the spot where he knew French trappers tried to catch beavers.  He waited there until one of them showed up.  Then he offered to trade four piles of buffalo hump meat for the trapper’s gun.  The trapper agreed and handed over the weapon and four bullets.

            “I only have four bullets,” Coyote said.  “I should use them wisely.”  So Coyote picked up the gun and started choosing what to shoot.  Little did he know, French guns were the worst guns in the world.  Coyote’s first target was the sun.  He was going to shoot a hole in it so he could lie in the shade.  He aimed up and fired.  The bullet didn’t go very high before it fell back down.  Disappointed, Coyote thought he hadn’t aimed right.  Next he wanted to shoot some fish out of the river.  Coyote aimed very carefully this time and fired into the water.  The bullet bounced off the river’s surface.  All of the fish laughed, so now Coyote leaves the fishing to the bears.  Next he tried to shoot a buffalo so he could get some more hump meat, but the bullet got scared halfway there and turned around.

            Very angry, Coyote decided to use his last bullet on Rabbit.  He snuck up behind Rabbit and got very close so the bullet could not miss.  He remembered that Rabbit said the gun could kill a whole family, so he snickered at the idea of killing all the rabbits. 

            He pulled the trigger.  This time, the bullet worked.  Rabbit died.  Unfortunately, Coyote did not know that Rabbit had married his sister while he was gone.  This made them brothers, so Coyote died too.  Now the other animals stay away from guns even more, because they kill so many.

the field trip

     Many things of extreme interest happened to me during our field trip through the Cherokee reservation and I'm glad I have this venue to share it with everyone.  I'll start from the beginning, weave my way through the museum, scoff my way through the casino, and chew my way through the epic finale we had at the diner.
     The museum was pretty much what I expected it to be.  There were plenty of artifacts, both real and reproduced, as well as the mandatory creepy wax sculptures.  The ancient device that I found most intriguing was the atlatl. (a device that helped them throw spears much farther and faster than they could unaided)  I've never understood quite how those things worked.  You essentially just launch a spear off of another stick with a hook on the end of it.  The few times I've seen them thrown (by bearded white guys on the History channel) it really didn't look very impressive.  I'm willing to bet if we rocketed them back on the timeline by several centuries and told them their food was now covered in hair and running away from them, they'd get much better with it pretty quickly.
     Another one of the exhibits that caught my attention was the firearm section with all the interesting looking bullet molds.  Drawn in by these cool pliers-shaped molds, I wound up reading about how the American Indians bought their firearms.  They grew dependent on European weapons and wound up receiving really shoddy guns because of the settlers dirty dealings.  I can only imagine how alien a firearm felt in the hands of an American Indian hunter or warrior who had used a bow or a spear his entire life.  Feeling the recoil for the first time might convince me that my weapon was attacking me as well as my target.  After all that, they had to find out they still had the lousiest weapons because they weren't allowed to get the well made ones.
     While I'm not a fan of gift shops full of mass produced kitsch, I did enjoy the glass cases just outside the shop that had work from what I assume was local artists.  A particular series of minuscule clay figurines really caught my eye.  They depicted small robed and masked figures, some of them gathered around a campfire.  They were the only things around that actually seemed to be inspired by ideas of American Indian culture as opposed to tourist money. I would have loved to buy one, but unfortunately they were a little out of my price range.  (There are very few circumstances where I would pay twenty-five bucks for one figurine that's made of clay and isn't old in any meaningful way)
     The casino was a bit of a nightmare.  I couldn't appreciate the amount of effort that had gone into the building and maintaining of the facility because of the discrepancy between it and the surrounding community.  The hallways were like airports, the suite was three or four times the size of the place I've been living for the last four years, and the only speck of Indian culture I saw was essentially a GIF of the Cherokee creation story stretched out over the information desks.  While it's very impressive that so much money is given from the casino to each member of the tribe, there's obviously something hugely wrong with the process.  The casino seems to be the nicest building for two hundred miles in any direction.  everything surrounding it was cheap, a little run down, or a trailer.  So it's obvious that this money does not actually get reinvested into the Indian community.  Whether it's a lack of proper financial management or some other factor, I can tell just from being there that something needs to change.  I really think that community probably values the condition of its homes and identity as more important than a Paula Dean's kitchen.  (seriously?  Paula Deen?)
     All of this was more than made up for by the fry bread.  It was one of the greatest things I've ever tasted.  It was a sugar free funnel cake of pure joy that is clearly incredibly versatile.  (It's like the tofu of things that taste good)  I want to eat it regularly for the rest of my life.  I do not understand how it's not sold on every street corner in this great nation of ours.  It is an incredible cultural contribution from the Indians and I think we owe them a huge debt of gratitude for adding those pure discs of pleasure to our lives.

Journey

This week I would like to talk about a video game I played recently that really seems to channel an American Indian spirit and reminds me a lot of some of the folklore we have read in class.  The game is called Journey and it was developed by Thatgamecompany.  I'll break down the similarities into sections and provide video examples demonstrating each one.
     The first thing I notice is a general spiritual nature to the narrative.  Like the trickster tales and some of the other stories we've heard, Journey is light on logic but heavy on imagery and meaning.  We see lots of shape shifting energies and forces but we aren't provided with explanations.  Although the art style for the game is primarily influenced by Egyptian and Tibetan structures, I really feel like the nature of the 'journey' itself as well as the threats the protagonists face fits into an American Indian vein.  Cut scenes are shown to us with simple pictograms portraying the nature of the character's travels.  As far as I can tell, the ultimate goal is to attain entrance to a spiritual realm.  here is a cut scene that reminds me both of Chauvet cave and the simple illustrations from the trickster tales.
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izfG8C9yh1E
     Next I would like to mention the presence of the serpent as something associated with life and the supernatural.  As we've discussed before in class, many non-western traditions have positive serpent representations that were sort of buried in Adam and Eve stories.  Journey, interestingly, combines these two interpretations.  The serpent flies through the sky, wields great power, and contains life energy, but in a Western sense that energy is a perverted refined version of natural life.  Observe the ancient and powerful serpents of journey (which look again, very much like cave paintings).  (The serpent rises from its grave five minutes and fifteen seconds in)
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXRjrENlwSg&feature=relmfu
     Now the biggest part of this game that contains an American Indian influence, in my interpretation, is the multiplayer component of the game.  Now, normally in an online game, players are oriented aggressively towards other players.  It's some kind of shooting deathmatch.  Even if you have teammates, there are ways for them to bother you.  Their names hang above their heads as identifiers, their voice (insults and all) can come screaming through your TV if that player is wearing a headset with a microphone, and if they decide to be a jerk they can just kill despite the fact that you've been assigned as teammates.  Journey is different because it focuses on the bonding experience of human contact rather than the competitive part.  So if we divide this among the lines we've been using through out this class, normal multiplayer would be a highly European idea of competition.  In Journey's multiplayer, a nameless human can be dropped into your world through an internet connection.  You can only whistle to them, they can't hurt you, and you aren't even required to stay together.  This strips the players of all discernible qualities.  By doing so, they remove everything you might dislike about someone.  You become, simply, two beings with the common goal of reaching your destination.  By making you a blank slate, the game also reflects the broad characteristics of characters in Native American tales.  You are now the 'first man' or 'first woman' we've read about.  In fact, it's even less than that because you cannot tell the sex of your character.
     The game urges you to bond with another person, to walk close to them, to playfully whistle and lead them to things you've discovered.  At the very end, the new relationship you have formed is symbolized by walking through a gradually narrowing crevice, which forces both of your silhouettes to become one.  The crevice seen I was talking about can be seen four and a half minutes in.  (I encourage everyone with a PS3 to purchase this game, it's the most beautiful game ever made and the only to reflect this very nonwestern mode of goal seeking)
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD1tkTQD708

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

     I never really got around to talking about the documentary we watched about Chauvet Cave even though I found it incredibly fascinating.  I have since journeyed back to Netflix and seen the entirety of the film.  As the earliest and arguably some of the most beautiful cave paintings, the works of art in Chauvet Cave raise tons of questions about the very roots of human cultural development.  These roots would eventually become the Greek pantheon, the American Indian shape shifting tricksters, the benevolent rainbow serpent, YHWH, Shakespeare's plays, Victorian poetry, cheesy infomercials, Spongebob Squarepants, and everything else we've either fabricated out of sheer boredom or tried so hard to represent across whatever medium speaks to us.
     The main reason these paleolithic drawings pull me in is they way they provide a window into the birth of complex artistic, rather than scientific, thought.  These people were probably not even aware of what they were doing.  They had seen animals, they had figured out you could create likenesses out of charcoal and a wall, and they went about their self-appointed task.  With their lives consumed by fear of predators and the necessity of hunting, it only makes sense that the entirety of this proto-culture revolves around animal figures.  In a way, it's much more interesting to speculate about the motives behind these creations than it is to do the same thing for contemporary art.  even though we understand the depth that goes into modern day creative thought, we can't really wrap our heads around the 'first' creative thoughts because we can't remember our own.  When was the first time, in your faded and sporadic memories of young childhood, that you created something?  Imagination is just a given in our modern culture.  From the moment we're born all we're seeing is the results of other people's creativity.  We are immersed in unnatural and stimulating representations of physical objects and intangible ideas while our personalities are forming, so we can't even begin to simulate the mind of a paleolithic child.
     Imagine being a young member of a tribe that stayed in that cave.  You've only seen 'real' things your entire life.  Every lion has been either a threat or a carcass.  Every owl has been a thing of feathers and eyes that soars silently  away.  You walk into the cave and recoil in terror at the site of a veritable stampede.  Your reaction is much like the people who saw the first films and jumped out of the way when they though a moving train would careen off the screen and into the theater.
     Or is it?  Do you grasp the concept almost immediately?  Have you done this before in a less concrete way?  Maybe your favorite thing to do is look up into the clouds and decide what they look like.  Think about that.  Somewhere on our timeline, some hominid looked up at a cloud and decided it looked like something.  It wasn't convinced that it was that thing, just aware of the similarities.  It was the moment our thoughts became creative.  it was the moment we learned to draw artistic conclusions.  We had art galleries back then.  They weren't thousand dollar canvases obscurely portraying the plight of the artist, they were collections of clouds and derived images in the brains of hairy cave dwellers.
     I first thought about this when comparing the trickster tales to Greek mythology but I didn't have a way to say what I wanted to until the cave was brought in as a cultural root for mankind.  We're all prejudiced with the specific creative tenets in our cultures.  Everyone's ability to tell a story or paint a picture is decided for them before they're even born.  (picture one of those silly expectant mothers with headphones on her abdomen trying to upgrade her child's I.Q. with Mozart)
     I think about this and I'm overcome with a desire to rewind.  I want to extract these gargantuan but unidentifiable tenets of western European creativity and move back to the starting line.  I'm a hominid.  I've never stepped inside Chauvet Cave.  I look up at the sky, or down at the ground, or close my eyes and see something that's not there.  I create.


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwW0JErbha1kTlGF55oxdU0g8HUCnmkuN1rJLRcOENQs5YQT1hV-GZqIoQ_ChrLWaNf-Kfm88KJK5z4j6AV9-o0OGjGrZoExxMWrAUgXQ1rxtVIbjBi8SH3xDovG2swycJOHQH6krqBOnb/s640/634x375chauvet-cave-rhino-painting_2351.jpg

Eagles

     I saw something the other day, on one of the blogs I regularly read, that I thought would be very relevant to the class.  I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this and have come to an opinion.  First, I will explain.
     http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46729054/ns/us_news-environment/#.T2ftZhHeBYA
The federal government is about to grant a permit to a Northern Arapaho tribe which will allow them to kill two bald eagles for the purposes of a religious ceremony.  traditionally these tribes have usually applied for feathers and other eagle parts from a federal repository.  it is extremely rare for one of these permits to be issued.  Should it ever be issued at all?
     This is an issue I've thought about from several angles and in several different frameworks.  I land firmly on the side of the 'no' argument.  Someone might ask what the harm is if this tribe is allowed to kill these eagles.  After all, people are allowed to sacrifice certain animals if they wish.  Chickens and goats are still slaughtered for religious ceremonies regularly.  The bald eagle was taken off the endangered species list in 1995 and its status was officially improved again with its removal from the threatened list.
     This person might also argue that we owe it to the American Indians to help them maintain any semblance of their culture that they want.  Under most circumstances, I would agree with them.  while I'm no fan of a 'white guilt' kind of effect, I do recognize that our government has historically stolen things from the various indigenous peoples of America.  The difference here though, is in the substance of the culture.  The death of an animal.  The animal's life will be taken for the purpose of a ceremony.  The purpose is not to eat the animal or make specific goods out of its body.  the purpose is for a 'religious ceremony'.  That means its one and only purpose is to further a superstition.  I will, under no circumstance, support the taking of any kind of animal life based on superstition.  it's inhumane.
     As an omnivore, I understand why we raise and kill certain animals.  There's always a line though, and I think the line of purpose is the best one to draw.  I argue that religious freedom is never more important than a living creature of sufficient importance, rarity, intelligence, or capacity to suffer.  No one has the right to increase the amount of suffering and death in the world without just cause.  For me, just cause ends at entertainment and superstition.  I oppose this permit in the same way I oppose hunting.  Yes hunting is sometimes important and allowable for the control of various animal populations, but when the main purpose seems to be the joy of ending life, it's indicative of  a harmful proceeding.
     As a side note, my opposition has nothing to do with the bald eagle being our national bird.  My disapproval does not come from some selfish sports-team-mascot kind of patriotism that can't bare to see a bald eagle killed the same way it can't stand to see an American flag burned.  (After all, Benjamin Franklin wanted our national bird to be the turkey, and I think that was a swell idea.  The somewhat homely but stubborn and resilient turkey would be a fine symbol)  I do suffer from the same 'awe' bias as everyone else has for nature's more iconic animals.  Although there's not much reason for it, it seems so much more sad when a panda or a rhino dies than it does when a cow or a rare type of worm passes on.
    Regardless, my point is that religious freedom, even that of a badly oppressed culture should not take priority over a general life affirming public policy.  After all, what happens when someone decides that they need to stab a baby dolphin 345 times with a corkscrew or they cannot attain salvation?  What about the small but devoted sect that needs to publicly guillotine a live camel in order to communicate with their dead relatives?  In the realm of religion all ideas are equal, so any request in that vein involving death or suffering must always be considered with extreme caution.

'Spirituality'

     I've never had trouble talking about my views on 'spirituality' so this might be the easiest blog post for me over the course of this entire class.  I'm afraid my descriptions won't provide much substance for discussion though.  Any time I open my mouth on this subject it tends to bring people down.  I cannot elaborate on my views without asserting that most other human beings, plainly put, have the wrong idea about the whole concept of spirituality or an religion that they are associated with.  I assure you that I do not wish to offend anyone, just express myself.
     The best way to do this in this blog would be for me to use the concept of the medicine wheel from the book we've been reading.  The Sacred Tree has the medicine wheel divided into four sections that are supposed to represent the various categories that everything in a person's life falls into.  There's the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual.  Now I absolutely hate to do this to the medicine wheel since four is my favorite number, but when it comes to my life (and again plainly, everyone else's life whether they accept it or not) I have to remove a piece of the wheel.  Well, not so much remove it as collapse it into one of the other sections.
     I'm an atheist.  By atheist, I mean the form of agnosticism put forth by one of my favorite scholars Richard Dawkins.  While I cannot prove that god doesn't exist, I find no reason to even entertain the idea of his existence in the same way that I cannot disprove fairies but still live my life as if they aren't there.  While I believe the human imagination to be our second greatest faculty behind compassion and pay tremendous respect to several forms of fiction, I find it disrespectful of the world to put stock into false or untestable ideas that aren't admitted to be such.
     This makes me object to the term 'spirituality' in several ways.  First of all, it's too broad a term.  It is often cast in very separate lights without anyone bothering to make note of it.  For example, an atheist or agnostic can look at the grandeur of some natural landmark or Hubble telescope picture and say that it makes them feel spiritual when what they really mean to point out is a sense of awe or wonder or perspective.  Meanwhile, a christian can go to church and talk about how praying makes them feel spiritual when what they really mean is that they think they are talking to the creator of the universe.  There's something very different about these two interpretations.
     My second objection to the word 'spiritual' comes from the first definition I offered.  I feel it has no place in the vocabulary of an atheist because it implies something otherworldly, something that either cannot be understood by people or never will be.  This first definition is the reason I wish to remove the category spirituality and let its slot be filled in by the 'emotional' section.  For as an atheist who has felt small before the vastness of the universe and gigantic against the stretches of the microcosm, I know my reactions are nothing but emotions.  They are powerful, sometimes frightening, and sometimes rewarding emotions but there's nothing 'transcendent' about them.  There's nothing there that is beyond explanation.
     Many people have asked me how I manage to not feel hollow in the face of such ideas.  They ask things like 'Well then what's the point of being alive?' or 'How can you be happy without god's love?'
     These are the most offensive questions imaginable.  it is my personal opinion that life's value is the most obvious thing in reality.  I can't even begin to answer the questions because the list is so long.  To give you an idea though here are several reasons to be alive, each one on its own probably enough to prop up an existence.  Love. Fun. Food. Entertainment. Awe. Contemplation. Sleep. Each one of these (and others I'm not bothering to list) can be broken down into innumerable configurations, sizes, colors, and intensities that make life worth preserving.
     Even in the face of this answer people have asked me if I don't feel limited by the boundaries of reality.  Of course I do.  That is why I seek out stories.  I love to hear of places that will never exist, of people too decent to be found, of objects currently beyond our cleverness.  It's harmful to let those ideas to bleed into my perception of reality though.  After all... is there anything smaller than a creation story compared to the science of human genesis?  A creation story, like one of the trickster tales or the beginning of the bible, is a story that explains everything while explaining nothing.  Supreme being existed forever, eventually decided to make the universe, then the planets, then some beings out of mud.  For these stories to be taken seriously is to deny our world its dignity.  Things are infinitely more complex than a godly touch turning dirt into humans. The big bang.  The exceedingly long life cycle of stars.  The precious water in our cells.  The blind but moving process of natural selection.  These are the ideas that truly contain the beauty of existence because they reflect it.  To be spiritual in any supernatural or metaphysical sense is to punch the mirror of the universe and then insist that the cracks are the most important part.  That is the small idea.  That is the selfish view that limits us.
     To answer the question of god's love... all I can say is that everyone else lives without it too.  So perhaps now you can see why I feel so left out when I see a diagram that tells me that a quarter of my humanity is missing.
     I am not a spiritual being.  I'm an emotional, physical, and mental one.

Indian in the Cupboard

     The time has come.  Netflix has finally sent me the film 'The Indian in the Cupboard', so now I have a real chance to look at the content and see how it relates, if at all, to any of the things we've discussed in class.  In my initial nostalgic thoughts about the film, I entertained the idea that there was some kind of meaning behind the relationship between the onscreen characters that went a little deeper than 'kid has tiny magic Indian friend' but alas, it seems nothing of that sort is actually going on.  The film is strictly children's fare in terms of content.  It was interesting to find out, however, that the film was directed by none other than Frank Oz, the man who frequently worked with Jim Henson, voiced Yoda in the Star Wars films, and previously directed the wonderful Rick Moranis musical Little Shop of Horrors.
     More relevant to our class material, the main Indian in the film was portrayed by a Native American rapper with the incredibly Indian stage name 'Litefoot'.  (His real name is Gary Paul Davis... that's right.  Three, count them three, white guy names)  I also found out that he portrayed another Native American character in an awful awful film I was already familiar with, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.  In that movie ( a sequel to a bad film based on a series of occasionally good video games), he was known as 'Nightwolf'.
     Further examination of his wikipedia page has revealed some interesting details.  Apparently, his work in music has created a distinct style which he calls 'tribalistic funk' meant to blend several influences including Native American reservation life and African American street life.  He has won six Native American Music Awards (more on those later), started several clothing lines, and has a radio show called Reach the Rez Radio. His latest album, released in 2008, was his first one to receive nationwide distribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litefoot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ96yeb897k
     As far as these Native American Music Awards, I had no idea these even existed.  Apparently they've been around since 1998.  Now I don't see any reason to rephrase the description here so I'll just pull it straight from wikipedia.  "The Annual Native American Music Awards, which USA Today urges to “take seriously” and Indian Country Today has called, “Awesome & Incredible,” is the largest professional membership-based organization for Contemporary and Traditional Native American Music Initiatives and consists of over 20,000 registered voting members and professionals in the field of Native American music. They also hold the largest Native American Music Library in the World with a national archive featuring a collection of over 10,000 audio and video recordings in all formats housed since 1990."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Music_Awards
     While the film has little entertainment value (mostly thanks to its annoying and untalented child protagonist) there were a few moments that attested to the kinds of relationships I was hoping to see in it.  At one point, the little boy hands the tiny Indian a plastic tipi to sleep in.  The Indian responds by saying that his tribe built longhouses and never used tipis.  So it is nice to know that they paid some consideration to actual Native Americans at the time and not just the 'reel injun' we're so familiar with.  On the other hand though, they went a bit overboard when the brought in a tiny cowboy to fight with the Indian in the second half of the film. (The cowboy's performance was so over the top that I almost forgot how awful the child actors were)
     So there you have it.  What i was hoping would be a meaningful and cool film with a robust commentary on American-Indian relations is just a dull Hollywood kid's film wit little of anything to offer.  Nostalgia has once again lied to me.  I hope that Litefoot has moved on to bigger and better things.