The Enemy Is Blindness to Each Other's Ways

The trees have eyes

This post is about a book. A very good one that I want to recommend. But before I dive into it, I want to set the thematic stage with a few other things. A rambling preamble of sorts. A preramble.

Two big buzzwords on the right are "freedom" and "personal responsibility." With no context, they could be interpreted in a number of ways; in the context of the right, they mean extreme individualism. The ideal society is one in which everyone is completely and only responsible for themselves. We are a collection of isolated individuals. I take care of myself and you take care of yourself, and no one is ever a burden to anyone else. And if we are all individually responsible enough, then we each have complete freedom to be self determining.

They contrast this idea with what they like to call "socialism," which seems to mean any type of people taking care of others in any way, because, they say, receiving help from others makes a person less responsible. It makes one dependent, reliant, expectant, and lazy. It undermines personal responsibility.

But, here's the thing. When people like me advocate helping others, we mean it in a mutual way. Receiving help means responding and reciprocating. I have been responsible for you, now I expect you to be responsible for me when needed. It comes with obligation. It comes with the idea that we are not mere individuals, but connected. We are a community, a tribe, a nation, a people, a world. My neighbor doesn't take away from me when I help them; my neighbor becomes a part of me through my help and expands me. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility, it adds me to their responsibilities, and vice versa. It comes with a duty to each other.

In my last post, You Own Me, I wrote about how I introduce the idea of a library to groups of kids:

That's the basic story I try to tell. Libraries are shared community information, stories, and resources, and they belong to you. And that's what a library is at its heart: sharing. We each might each be able to buy a few books if we bought them by ourselves with our own money, but if we put all our money together we can buy all of these books together, so many more than any one of us could buy alone.

And we must each be responsible users of that collection. We have to be good at sharing. No one is allowed to hoard the resources, everyone must return them on time and replace what they damage, lose, or destroy. Being part of the greater collective comes with responsibilities.

I recently watched a video about the history of idea of responsibility and how the sense of isolated individualism the right attaches to it is a recent development in the arc of history.

Before the Industrial Age, Western concepts of ‘responsibility’ often evoked a duty to others, particularly those in greatest need. Over the past two centuries, however, the word has come to connote the more inward-looking framework of ‘individual responsibility’, often deployed as an argument against the moral and social necessity of welfare structures. Carefully piecing together a vast range of sources and scenes in this video essay, the English YouTuber Lewis Waller attempts to trace how the idea of ‘responsibility’ became inverted. In doing so, he makes an argument for a more expansive understanding of individual responsibility that encompasses personal development as well as mutual obligation.

That's the introduction Aeon provides for its hosting of the video: How Did ‘Personal Responsibility’ Evolve into Its Opposite, ‘Everyone for Themselves’? Here are some excerpts from it:

Increasingly, throughout the liberal and neoliberal periods, we've emphasized--in politics and the media, at least--responsibility for ourselves at the expense of other types of responsibilities, moral obligations, or duties. . . . 

The rise in emphasis on this type of responsibility has weakened social bonds, justified the dismantling of welfare programs, encourages inwardness and blame, and sidelines other interpretations of responsibility that we've seen historically. . . . 

Almost all of the factors that contribute towards the condition of poverty come from outside the individual--education, upbringing, environment, economics, and unemployment. Even culture. Even genetics is something that an individual has no control over and cannot be held responsible for.

Even if we grant that some are lazy and delinquent, in need of cultural reform, we have to simultaneously acknowledge that the education, encouragement, and solutions to those problems cannot come magically from within, but must come from the guidance and aid of others, from outside the individual in some way. It's for this reason that mutual obligations, as a concept, make much more sense than the idea of an inward, individual responsibility. . . . 

Maybe we should remember that we're all dependent on each other in some way, that the responsibility should be placed on the powerful and not the powerless, and that the dispossessed are more likely to succeed with some kind of external aid.

Instead of being responsible for ourselves, the concept of mutual obligations or duties includes responsibility to work hard and improve ourselves, but can also better accommodate contributing to the world, aiding others, remembering no man is an island, and turning our gaze not inwards but out to others.

That's my transcription, with the help of captions.

So: mutual obligation. That's the first half of this preramble. I think a couple of recent memes from my feed speak to that theme really well.

"Compete with yourself and root for everybody else."

― Candice Millard

"Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors."

― Andrew Boyd

The stones see you

That second one transitions well into the second big theme. As does this, from See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valerie Kaur, which I covered extensively in You Are a Part of Me I Do Not Yet Know:

When you love someone, you fight to protect them when they are in harm's way. If you "see no stranger" and choose to love all people, then you must fight for anyone who is suffering from the harm of injustice. This was the path of the warrior-sage: The warrior fights, the sage loves. Revolutionary love.

I want to pair that with what I wrote in response to a writing prompt on another blog. The prompt:

Write a story about the power of small acts of kindness, given or received. Is kindness always a “doing” or is it more nuanced than that? Does kindness from a stranger have more impact because it’s less expected?

I wrote:

To be kind is to notice. To perceive. To see, hear, feel, understand. To feel kindness is to feel recognized. To be acknowledged and comprehended.

Respect. The root "spect" is for seeing. Spectacles. Spectator. Inspect. "Re" is again. To re-spect is to look and then look again, closely enough to see carefully. Accurately. Truly.

Kindness is attention. It is paying attention with a desire to understand, without judgment or conditions or self-interest. It is accepting the other on their own terms.

Random acts of kindness are small moments of attention. . . . 

(I previously shared that in The Decrees of Bartholomew Sprout.)

I recently came across something similar from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte. From his definition of "Friendship":

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

As Johan Bruyneel put it in We Might As Well Win:

The true value of communication is often not so much what you say to each other but the simple, powerful fact that you care enough to say something to each other so often.

And this somewhat related cartoon from a recent newsletter from the Kansas Leadership Center:

One of the main ways you can energize others is to figure out where they are coming from. When others feel that you "get them"--meaning you understand their situation and issues--they, in turn, are much more likely to get energized about the challenges at hand.

All of that is a way of introducing--my way of connecting to--the book Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder by Kent Nerburn.

For an introduction to Neither Wolf nor Dog, here is my review:

This moving book weaves together two elements: an elder sharing his distilled wisdom from a lifetime spent observing the intersection of white and Indian* cultures and the story of a white observer, Nerburn, doing his best to learn to really see that man as accurately as possible.

Dan, the elder, contacted Nerburn after reading a couple of previous books he had written documenting life on another Indian reservation. He asked Nerburn to edit his scrawled thoughts and turn them into a book. After an initial attempt, Dan decided to scrap that route and asked Nerburn to spend some time dwelling with him, observing his life, and reporting the experience, warts and all. During their time he talked about the things he wanted to share. So the book is both a record of that moment of his life and a collection of his wisdom.

Both aspects are essential, as the wisdom explains the lifestyle and the lifestyle gives the wisdom context. Both are key to Dan's ultimate point, that white people have never taken the time to truly see Indians and understand them on their own terms. Dan's talks and Nerburn's story of the journey they took together accomplish that goal of conveying Indian culture the way Dan wanted it portrayed.

It is a powerful, insightful book with much to say; with much to teach. I'm so glad I had the chance to read it.

From Nerburn's foreword to the second printing, eight years after the first:

This is why Indians and whites alike have embraced this book, and why it continues to work in the many unseen and unlikely corners of the earth where it finds a home. It is a book about acknowledging differences while seeking understanding, about standing on the angers and sadnesses and broken dreams and promises that separate us, and reaching across to become brothers and sisters and part of the common human family. It is about allowing ourselves to be seen, just as that buffalo on the hillside allowed me to see him, and trusting that those who see us will honor what they see, and treat it with gentleness and respect. In short, it is about faith in ourselves, in others, and in the common humanity that lies beneath our many differences.

(*Dan and Nerburn choose to use the term Indian for Dan's people, so I use it in this review as well.)

Because I found the book so insightful and wise, there is a lot I want to quote from it. It is long, but worth it.

I want to start with more of that foreword. In it, Nerburn communicates an essential philosophy for getting along with others, a stance to take when approaching difference. It's all about respecting each other enough to pay attention and really see.

I often ask myself why this book has the enduring capacity to create such magic. After all, I never intended it to be more than an honest homage to the deep and earthborn wisdom of the Native people I have known. The answer, I believe, has something to do with memory and honesty.

I have never met an Indian person who didn't somewhere deep inside struggle with anger and sadness at what has happened to their people, and I have never met an honest and aware non-Indian person in America who didn't somewhere deep inside struggle with guilt about what we as a culture have done to the people who inhabited this continent before us. We can like each other, hate each other, feel pity for each other, love each other. But always, somewhere beneath the surface of our personal encounters, this cultural memory is rumbling. A tragedy has taken place on our land, and even though it did not take place on our watch, we are its inheritors, and the earth remembers.

The small miracle of Neither Wolf nor Dog is that it carries this memory in the fabric of its narrative. The all-too-human characters who appear on its pages each struggle, in their own particular ways, to deal with that memory. They are inheritors of something that whispers in the wind and echoes from the land, and nothing they as individuals can do will silence these voices that rise up around them. Yet they search, for common meaning, common understanding, and common redemption. And, because they search, it does not matter that they are on opposite sides of a cultural chasm filled with tears and guilt and broken promises and dreams. They struggle together to reach across to each other, and, finally, they become more than friends they become brothers and sisters.

This, I believe, is the key to the enduring relevance of Neither Wolf nor Dog. It is a call to each of us to become brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters don't have to understand each other; they don't even have to like each other. But they have to trust each other and stand by each other. That's what Dan and Grover and I, as well as Danelle and Jumbo and Wenonah and all the others learn to do in the course of this book. We stand, strong and adamant, within the confines of our own values and self-understandings, but we reach out and care for each other. They didn't try to become white; I didn't try to become Indian. We simply reached across the chasm of our differences and held each other in common embrace.

This is no small accomplishment, especially in the relationships of whites to Indians. Too many white people I know--good and caring people who are deeply concerned with the plight of Indian people and the tragic history of their last several centuries on this continent--try to "become" Indians or, at least, try to become one with Indian experience. They take on the trappings, they romanticize, they try to right the historical wrong through a great outpouring of empathy, or try to enhance their own identity by appropriating Indian values or belief. In the process, they distort the reality of the people about whom they care so deeply, and turn them into a reflection of their own needs.

This is exactly what Dan and Grover and all the others would never let me do. They remained resolutely and unashamedly themselves, and demanded that I do the same. Whenever I stepped across the boundary I was slapped down. They refused to let me slip into glib generalizations that would mute their individuality. I was asked to recognize their common Indianness, but was constantly reminded that this did not mean I could invest them with a common identity that would reduce them to collective objects of sympathy or pity or veneration.

Consequently, they never let me surround them with my own thinking or understanding. Every time I tried to do so, or every time I found myself doing so unconsciously, they would turn my reality on its head. They would trick me, they would test me, they would ambush me, they would enrage me. They literally and figuratively kidnapped me, and would not let me go until I paid the ransom of giving up my own way of understanding. They wanted me to realize that I had walked through Alice's keyhole, and the world I had entered was not mine to reduce to the size and shape of my own understanding. Yet, through it all, they cared for me as I cared for them, and when we finally parted on that dusty, Dakota roadside, we parted as family, and no one could ever take that away from us.

This, I believe, is why that man who came to my house could finally speak to his wife and children. This is why Indians and whites alike have embraced this book, and why it continues to work in the many unseen and unlikely corners of the earth where it finds a home. It is a book about acknowledging differences while seeking understanding, about standing on the angers and sadnesses and broken dreams and promises that separate us, and reaching across to become brothers and sisters and part of the common human family. It is about allowing ourselves to be seen, just as that buffalo on the hillside allowed me to see him, and trusting that those who see us will honor what they see, and treat it with gentleness and respect. In short, it is about faith in ourselves, in others, and in the common humanity that lies beneath our many differences.

Can there be any message more enduring, or any message more needed, as we try to save this fragile planet, and to move it forward from its bloody and tearstained past toward a more humane and hopeful future?

Here are a couple of sections from the book proper that further illustrate the point.

Before Dan made his offer of material for a book to Nerburn, he conducted his own version of an interview. This is part of it. Nerburn gave the right answers.

Dan has just finished talking about many of the white people who come to his reservation who want to, as much as possible, shrug off all of their whiteness to adopt what they think are Indian ways.

He leaned over as if to tell me a secret. "You aren't like that, are you?" he asked.

There was a kind of conspiratorial hush in his voice. I wasn't sure if it was a question or a joke.

"I try not to be. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't like Indian people."

"That's okay. It's good that you like Indian people. I like them too. But how much do you like white people?"

The question seemed strange.

"I'm not much thrilled with the culture we've created."

"Yeah, okay. But how about white people?"

I didn't know what he was driving at.

"I like white people just fine," I said. "I mean, after all, I am one."

"That's what I mean," he chuckled. "That's good. That's good. If you hate your own people you can't be a very good person. You have to love your own people even if you hate what they do." He gestured toward the mug on the table. "Here. Drink your coffee."

I took a gulp to placate him. It tasted like something brewed from twigs and rubber tires. "No, I don't hate white people," I said. "Sometimes I'm embarrassed by us. But white people are okay."

You can't deny who you are.

Here Dan talks about how white people fail to understand Indians as anything more than stereotypes, how they fail to actually see them.

"For white people there are only two types of Indians. Drunken bums and noble Indians. In the old days, we used to be savages, but that's gone. Now it's drunks and noble Indians. I like the white men better who think we are all drunks. At least they're looking at us as people. They're saying what they see, not what they want to see. Then when they meet one of us who's not a drunk, they have to deal with us.

"The ones who see us all as wise men don't care about Indians at all. They just care about the idea of Indians. It's just another way of stealing our humanity and making us into a fantasy that fits the needs of white people.

"You want to know how to be like Indians? Live close to the earth. Get rid of some of your things. Help each other. Talk to the Creator. Be quiet more. Listen to the earth instead of building things on it all the time.

"Don't blame other people for your troubles and don't try to make people into something they're not."

At least a couple of times in the book Dan says white people treat Indians like zoo exhibits, and in doing so fail to see their basic humanity, always making them "other."

Nerburn has one conversation with one of Dan's granddaughters. She says something similar in relation to the way white people look at Indian women in abusive relationships.

"All you see is the violence and the alcohol. All the white women see is the silence and the bruises. What we see is a broken circle, and we're going to make it whole. This isn't about men and women. This is about our whole culture and our ancestors and our children. White people always think of themselves first, and how to get your individual rights. We don't. We think about the culture and how to make the people strong within it.

"That's what we're doing. We're building the culture. That's our job. That's why it's our turn, now."

She sees the solution as building a stronger society, not merely addressing individuals.

Many of Dan's talks are about the differences between white and Indian cultures, particularly about how white culture has had a negative influence on Indian. (Just like his granddaughter points out.)

This is from a talk about property ownership and possessions.

"From the first you are told, "This is mine, this is yours'; 'Don't touch that, it doesn't belong to you.' You are taught to keep away from things because of ownership, not because of respect. In the old days we never had locks on our doors. There was no stealing, but if someone was hungry, they could your house and get go in food. That was all. Why didn't people take things? Because of respect.

"You build fences around your yards and pay money for people to measure the ground to tell you if your neighbor's fence is one inch too close to your house. You give nothing away unless you can get something in return. Everything is economic.

"Your most powerful people don't even hide their thinking on this. If you ask for something, they don't ask whether you need it; they say, 'What's in it for me?'"

"I'm afraid that's America, Dan," I said.

He hammered the air with his gnarled fist.

"I know it. And a lot of our people have started to act like that, too. Not all, but enough. This kills the old Indian way, where everything was shared. We believed that everything was a gift, and that a good man or woman shared those gifts. Next to bravery, generosity was the most important.

"Now we have been turned around. We think that good people should be rewarded, just like the white man thinks. Can't you see how much better it was when good people thought they should give, not that they should get?

"We didn't measure people by rich or poor. We didn't know how. When times were good everyone was rich. When times were bad everyone was poor. We measured people by how they shared."

We measured people by how they shared. The best people were those who did the best job of sharing. When times were good everyone was rich. When times were bad everyone was poor. They were all in it together, and didn't try to compete against each other. Mutual obligation and duty to others. Responsibility was never individual.

This talk is about the white concept of freedom as an individual-only idea, that by breaking everyone apart and isolating them we end up reducing the freedom we claim to so desire.

"I think it's because the most important thing for white people is freedom. The most important thing for Indian people is honor.

"This is why white people have listened to the black people more than to us Indians," he said. "The black people want freedom, too, just like white people. And since the white people took freedom from the black people, the whites feel guilty about the blacks. You see what I'm saying?"

I nodded absently.

“But the Indian has always been free. We are free today. We have always been freer than the white man, even when he first came here. When you came to our shore your people wore clothes made out of chains. Our people wore nothing at all. Yet you tried to bring us freedom.

"The white world puts all the power at the top, Nerburn. When someone gets to the top, they have the power to take your freedom. When your people first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think.

"In your churches there is someone at the top. In your schools, too. In your government. In your business. There is always someone at the top and that person has the right to say whether you are good or bad. They own you.

"No wonder Americans always worry about freedom. You have so damn little of it. If you don't protect it, someone will take it away from you. You have to guard it every second, like a dog guards a bone."

"This is a good talk, Dan," Grover interjected. Dan nodded in acknowledgment.

"When you came among us, you couldn't understand our way. You wanted to find the person at the top. You wanted to find the fences that bound us in--how far our land went, how far our government went. Your world was made of cages and you thought you ours was, too. Even though you hated your cages you believed in them. They defined your world and you needed them to define ours.

"Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn't look out, they would make us live in a world of cages, too.

"So we started noticing. Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares.

"Then after you had all these cages you made a government to protect these cages. And that government was all cages. All laws about what you couldn't do. The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren't happy and didn't feel free. You made all the cages, then you wondered why you didn't feel free.

"We Indians never thought that way. Everyone was free. We didn't make cages of laws or land. We believed in honor. To us the white man looked like a blind man walking. He knew he was on the wrong path when he bumped into the edge of one of the cages. Our guide was inside, not outside. It was honor. It was more important for us to know what was right than to know what was wrong.

"We looked at the animals and saw what was right. We saw how the deer would trick the more powerful animals and how the bear would make her children strong by running them without mercy.

"We saw how the buffalo would stand and watch until it understood. We saw how every animal had wisdom and we tried to learn that wisdom. We would look to them to see how they got along and how they raised their young. Then we would copy them. We did not look for what was wrong. Instead we always reached for what was right.

"It was this search that kept us on a good path, not rules and fences. We wanted honor for ourselves and our families. We wanted others to say, 'He is a good man. He is as brave as the bear' or 'as clean as the fox.' We had freedom so we did not seek it. We sought honor, and honor was duty. The man who sought freedom was just running from duty, so he was weak.

"The only time freedom is important is when others are trying to put you in chains. We had no chains so we needed no freedom."

Dan paused to let me take it all in.

"Does this make any sense to you? The world your people brought saw everything in terms of freedom. We have always had our freedom so you had nothing of value to give us. All you could do is take it away and give it back to us in the form of cages.

"That is what you did when you took our land and tried to give it back to us in allotments. You took all our Indian land and gave it back to us in squares and said, 'You now have the freedom to be farmers and ranchers.' We didn't want to be farmers and ranchers. We had been farmers when we had to. But we didn't want to be told to be farmers.

"When we didn't farm you got angry and couldn't understand. 'We have given you the freedom to have your own land and be farmers, you said. And you aren't doing anything.' To us, all you had done is given us our own cage.

"If you take an animal from the woods or the prairie and give him a house inside a fence, is that giving him freedom? No. All it is doing is taking away his honor, because if he accepts it, he is no longer free.

"Yet that is what you did to us. 'Either accept this cage you be killed' is what you told us. You took our honor and gave us your freedom. And even you know that is no freedom at all. It is just the freedom to live inside your own locked cage."

Personal responsibility, when it is the only responsibility, is a cage. Opening that responsibility up to include others expands our freedom.

Dan is highly aware of the power of words and stories.

"My little great grandson came home one day and told me they were studying the frontier in American history. I asked him what it was. He told me it was where civilization stopped. I almost told him he couldn't go back to that school anymore.

"Just look at that! They were teaching him that civilization only existed up to where the white men had reached. That means everything on the other side of that line was uncivilized. Well, we were on the other side of that line. We had governments and laws, too. Our people were better behaved than the people that came into our lands. We thought we were at least as civilized as the white man. But here is my little great grandson coming home from school talking about the frontier and civilization. It was like we didn't exist.

"Every time you talk about the frontier you are telling us that we don't matter. I looked up the word. It means the edge between the known and the unknown. Whenever you use it you are saying that our people are part of the unknown. You are teaching your children and our children a history that says Indian people were part of a big, dangerous, empty space on the other side of the line where people had laws and culture. It is like there were wildcats and poisonous snakes and Indians, and they all were the same--just something unknown that made the land dangerous.

"See, this is part of the big story you don't even see. You teach about the frontier. You talk about the wilderness and how empty the land was, even though to us the land was always full. You talk about civilization like we didn't have any, just because we didn't try to haul big chairs and wooden chests across the desert in a cart.

"The way you teach it, America started from some ships that came to Massachusetts and Virginia. The people got off and had to push their way through some big empty land that was full of danger. When they got to these plains, they sent the wagon trains across the mountains and the desert, like little streams cutting their way through the earth. Once they got across, then more people followed their paths, and things were built along the way, and it was like these little streams of people became big rivers of people that all flowed across to California and Oregon and Washington. It was like the place was empty and you filled it up, and history is the story of how you filled it up and what happened while you were filling it.

"You can tell me you don't think that way, but do. I you look at the history books of the kids. They start in the east and come west, all of them, like that is the way history happened."

Even when white people don't want to think of Indians as "other," we still have these narrative frames rattling around inside of us.

I find this fascinating.

"There are leaders and there are rulers. We Indians are used to leaders. When our leaders don't lead, we walk away from them. When they lead well, we stay with them.

"White people never understood this. Your system makes people rulers by law, even if they are not leaders. We have had to accept your way, because you made us Indians make constitutions and form governments. But we don't like it and we don't think it is right.

"How can a calendar tell us how long a person is a leader? That's crazy. A leader is a leader as long as the people believe in him and as long as he is the best person to lead us. You can only lead as long as the people will follow.

"In the past when we needed a warrior we made a warrior our leader. But when the war was over and we needed a healer to lead us, he became our leader. Or maybe we needed a great speaker or a deep thinker.

"The warrior knew his time had passed and he didn't pretend to be our leader beyond the time he was needed. He was proud to serve his people and he knew when it was time to step aside. If he won't step aside, people will just walk away from him. He cannot make himself a leader except by leading people in the way they want to be lead. . . . 

"Good leaders wait to be called and they give up their power when they are no longer needed. Selfish men and fools put themselves first and keep their power until someone throws them out. It is no good to have a way where selfish men and fools fight with each other to be leaders, while the good ones watch."

Everyone will be a leader with the right circumstances. It's all about finding the right match between circumstances and person.

This, as well, is fascinating.

"Don't like Christianity much, do you?" I said.

"That's not true," he retorted. "I like Jesus. Ever since I was a little boy and I learned about him I liked him. He was wakan. He should have been an Indian."

It was a sentiment I had heard before.

"He didn't own anything," Dan continued. "He slept outside on the earth. He moved around all the time. He shared everything he got. He even talked to the Great Spirit as his Father. He was just like an Indian.

"I loved him, Nerburn. I still love him. I still talk to him. Those were things I learned from the priests and the sisters. They were good.

"But I don't like what the churches did to my people. When I see Indians standing in front of crosses it makes me sad. It is like they are such good people and their belief is so strong. Why can't it still be our old belief? Why was that taken away from us? The old ones shouldn't have to be begging Jesus to listen to them."

He shifted slightly in his seat so he could see my reaction. I gave none.

"I guess it's a good thing Jesus wasn't an Indian," he continued. "The U.S. government would have hunted him down and killed him. They would have killed him like they killed Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Just another dead Indian troublemaker."

In my understanding of Jesus, he always sides with the powerless and oppressed.

Dan clearly had many reasons to be angry, but he knew too much anger would stand in the way of what he wanted to accomplish.

"I went to my hill to and spoke to my grandfathers. They gave me that song. They gave it to me in the wind. They said I had too much anger speak. They told me that anger is only for the one who speaks. It never opens the heart of one who listens. There are good white people, they told me. They want to do right. They are not the enemy anymore. The enemy is blindness to each other's ways. Put away your anger, they said. Our earth is crying now, and we need to remove her tears. That is what they told me. Someone will come, they said. Then they gave me that song."

At the same time, he knew anger can be a good thing if channeled wisely.

You cannot be afraid. There is good anger, too, and you have that. It is the anger from seeing clearly. It's the same anger I have. It's the anger the Old Ones warned me about. You must learn to control that anger, then it can be of use. But there is bad anger, too. It is the anger of people who only want their own way. That anger is selfish. It is a child's anger, must not back down from that anger. If you back down from it you are being a coward.

I want to interrupt Dan for a moment to share part of another definition from David Whyte's book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, "Anger."

Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. . . . 

Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability . . . 

What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete but absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence.

That seems to be what Dan is saying in his description of "good anger."

Now I want to share a really long part of one of Dan's talks. It's a topic I consider often on this blog and Dan is particularly insightful about it.

"Race is the biggest thing to white people. You can see it yourself. All you have to do is watch white people talk to people who aren't white. Sooner or later they're going to bring up race.

"Wenonah's one little girl, she's like Eugene. She doesn't look like an Indian, so no one ever talks about it, except maybe to say, 'Oh, you don't look like an Indian.' But me or Wenonah or even old Grover, we look like Indians. Pretty soon after we start talking with a white person, that white person will bring up Indians, sure as anything."

"It's true, Nerburn," Grover chimed in.

Dan kept on. "They might talk about some other Indian they knew or they might talk about some movie or something to do with Indians. Probably it's to show us how much they claim to like Indians. But you sure know that they're going to bring up Indians. It's like that's the biggest thing when they meet me. I could be the president or have a cure for cancer, but before anyone could talk about it, they'd have to say something about Indians.

"Black people have told me it's the same for them, too. You white people just seem to see race first, no matter what.

"Then the really funny thing is that you pretend you don't see race. Like the other night, I was sitting with Grover. We were watching a boxing match on TV."

He turned toward Grover for confirmation. "You remember that?"

"Sure do. Lousy fight."

"Anyway, the announcer kept talking about the one guy in black trunks with a white stripe and the other guy in black trunks with a gold stripe. Hell, I couldn't even see the difference. But that was how he kept talking about them. And you know what? One guy was white and the other guy was black! But the announcer couldn't say, 'the white guy' and 'the black guy' because you're not supposed to see that. It was the damndest thing I ever saw.

"It's all part of a big lie you live. It's like race is the biggest thing you see, but it's the hardest thing for you to talk about."

"I guess I kind of touched a nerve, eh?" I said. I was still hoping he might mention his son.

"It's not my nerve," he said. "It's the white people's nerve. I'll tell you what's really going on. White people are afraid of everyone who isn't white. Look at how you define black people. If a person had one black ancestor back somewhere, and you can see it, you tell them they are black. Everybody for the last thousand might have been white, but one grandparent was black, then you tell that person they are black. You don't years do that with Italians or Irish. You don't say they're Italian if they have one old grandma somewhere who came over on a boat a hundred years ago. But one black grandma? Bingo, you're black. Think about it, Nerburn. If your wife was black, and you had a kid, you'd lose that kid. He'd be black. But the thing is, you're not really saying they are black. You're saying they're not white.

"See, white is a weak color. Think of paint. You add one drop of something else and it's not white. You can add white and white and white and white and you're never going to overcome that one drop of the different color. That paint will never be white again. That's what you're afraid of.

"But at least with blacks, you let them alone once you decided they weren't white. You just threw them all in a barrel black, brown, tan, whatever and called them black. But us Indians, you couldn't even leave us alone to be Indians once you decided we weren't white. You start dividing us up, calling us half-breeds, full bloods. Try calling a black person with some white blood a half-breed. See how that goes over."

He steepled his hands up like a preacher making a point. "See, we do it the other way. One Indian, and you're an Indian if you want to be. For white people, you've got to have all white people to be white. One person who's not white, and that kid is an outsider forever. We only need one Indian to be an Indian. Do you see what I mean?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean."

"Then think about it. You've got all sorts of rules that you don't even know. Like, it's okay for white people to adopt Chinese kids, but it's not okay for Chinese people to adopt white kids. Or when different races go out together, the men are always supposed to be white."

He looked to me for confirmation. I said nothing.

"It's true," he continued. "If a white man is with a black woman, then he's liberal. But if a black man is with a white woman, he must be a pimp. It's the same with Indians. If a white man is with an Indian woman, it might be okay. That's the way they like to do it in the movies. But if an Indian man is with a white woman, there's something wrong with her that she would choose to be with one of those people.'

"I think it has to do with conquering. The white man has to be in control. If there is a man of a different color who is in control of a white woman, either there has to be something wrong with her or there is something bad about him. She's a captive or a renegade. I mean, why would a decent white woman ever want to be with an Indian man? Right?”

I couldn't help but smile. He was right on target.

"It's the same about kids," he went on. "If a white person marries someone who's not white, and they have children, it's okay if the kids are raised like white people, at least while the kids are still small. But if they're raised as Indians or blacks or something else, you say, 'Oh, that poor kid. He doesn't really belong anywhere."

"Well, if that kid has an Indian parent, they belong with us. We believe that. We don't give them any tests or put them in groups according to how much Indian blood they have in them.

"Admit it. If little Eugene was with white people you would think it's more okay than him living with Indians. Admit it." He was proud of his reasoning. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "But if that little fellow went back to live with white people, other kids would call him Tonto and half-breed and would make war whoops when he went by. That's the damn truth."

This is what people mean when they say we have a "white supremacist society." The underlying narrative we live within, most of the time with no awareness, is that "white" is the standard for normal and anything that doesn't qualify as white is in some way lesser. That idea is a part of us whether we want it to be or not. Race is the biggest thing to white people.

This is simply a good thought.

When something is sacred, it does not have a price. I don't care if it is white people talking about heaven or Indian people talking about ceremonies. If you can buy it, it isn't sacred. And once you start to sell it, it doesn't matter whether your reasons are good or not. You are taking what is sacred and making it ordinary.

I heartily agree, and have said many similar things under the labels extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

And this doesn't have anything to do with anything, I just appreciate the description.

It loomed in the distance like any of a thousand rural enclaves that dot the plains and prairies of the central U.S.--a tiny huddling of buildings standing proud against the horizontal landscape, capped by those two proud monuments to civic and spiritual accomplishment--the water tower and the church steeple.

I've seen this sight many times in my life driving across my state of Kansas.

That's probably far too much of Neither Wolf nor Dog to share in one post, yet it only scratches the surface of what the book has to offer. There is much, much more.

A couple of brief things to finish.

First, a booklist I recently created for my library's catalog. It's one I think Dan would appreciate. I noticed a similarity between a couple of books I recently finished (one blogged here), plus some I have planned to read soon, so I decided to find more like them and create a full list for those who like that kind of book.

Nature Teaching Us About Ourselves

Memoirs of transformational relationships with animals, spiritual and philosophical considerations of how we belong in nature, and artistic expressions of wonder in response to wildness. In these books, the authors share personal stories of how they have been changed by the ways they have experienced the natural world.

source

Finally, this just came across my Facebook feed. I think it is a nice example of putting some of the values in this post into action.

From some dude named George Murry

This starts my 22nd year of teaching middle school. Yesterday was quite possibly one of the most impactful days I have ever had. I tried a new activity called “The Baggage Activity”. I asked the kids what it meant to have baggage and they mostly said it was hurtful stuff you carry around on your shoulders. I asked them to write down on a piece of paper what was bothering them, what was heavy on their heart, what was hurting them, etc. No names were to be on a paper. They wadded the paper up, and threw it across the room.

They picked up a piece of paper and took turns reading out loud what their classmate wrote. After a student read a paper, I asked who wrote that, and if they cared to share.

I’m here to tell you, I have never been so moved to tears as what these kids opened up and about and shared with the class.

Things like suicide, parents in prison, drugs in their family, being left by their parents, death, cancer, losing pets (one said their gerbil died cause it was fat, we giggled 😁) and on and on.

The kids who read the papers would cry because what they were reading was tough. The person who shared (if they chose to tell us it was them) would cry sometimes too. It was an emotionally draining day, but I firmly believe my kids will judge a little less, love a little more, and forgive a little faster.

This bag hangs by my door to remind them that we all have baggage. We will leave it at the door. As they left I told them, they are not alone, they are loved, and we have each other’s back.

I am honored to be their teacher.

Take the time to see one another. We are not at odds with each other. The enemy is blindness to each other's ways.