JUST TO CATCH EVERYBODY UP:
JAYMAN: Rifle, thanks for your perspective. It really helped me with this. In life we are all challenged in our own way. Challenge and diversity are a part of our personal and spiritual growth. "It doesn't matter what set us out on our journey; only what lessons we take from it." (an old Irish saying) In life we may say things we don't really mean. Maybe at the time we meant it and we say it; however, in truth we often say things out of: fear, lack of understanding, or misplaced anger, etc... I believe that intrinsically most of us mean well in general. I would like to pass on one of the things I learned the hard way. Sometimes; I remember this lesson other times I may need to be reminded of it.
• When I made a mistake or said something I did not mean to say; I learned that you cannot always take it back. Often times you must move on and grow. When I error as a public speaker I simply apologize once and move on.
Once something is spoken, or it has been said or written and read; the more you apologize, the more fuel you throw on the fire. (yeah, I know I am not following that advice now. LOL) The more you personally dwell on the issue the more you draw attention to the issue. If people are ever going to forgive you they will do it at the first apology. As long as your apology was sincere and genuine it will be accepted by those people willing to allow you to be forgiven. There are some people who will never forgive you no matter what you do. In other words. "That is it, that is all, it is over." You said it. Some people were offended. Finish the presentation and move on. Lesson learned. Mental note don't say that again... LOL
I used to give lectures to battered and abused women regarding HIV and STD's. Every time I passed out evaluations I was given low marks for sensitivity on some papers. Finally I asked the woman in charge if she would like someone other than me to come in. She said, "no, we almost have you broken in." I asked about the sensitivity area of the presentation. She said, "Oh, I that is easy. I keep forgetting to tell you." "Stop using the cliché' "rule of thumb"." We teach them about the history of violence before you ever get here. And we explain where that cliché' "the rule of thumb" comes from.
Come to find out that there used to be a law in the olden days of Old England. That carried over to the states. "The rule thumb" was a law that said a man may beat his wife and or children with a stick as long as it was not thicker than his own thumb to keep them in line.
Biblically speaking the Baptists, Catholics, and Protestants teach that the man is the head of the house and responsible for maintaining order and discipline. (One of my favorite arguments when it comes to the accuracy of the Bible regarding Gay rights. LOL)
Many town halls including ours had laws that allowed men to come down to City Hall and beat their wives and children on the City Hall steps before sundown. Form then on I was careful about that cliché'. Thank God for Power Point presentations...
RIFLE: Jayman, I'm not sure the Cherokee were much better at it, but they were matrilinear and the women ruled the household. When the woman was tired of the husband she simply wrapped his possessions in his half of the bed cover and set them outside the door. He was dismissed. The men even shared power with the women. The Ghigau or Beloved Woman in each village had a strong say in village life and control over captured warriors and slaves. She was almost an equal to the two village chiefs. Needless to say it took only a couple of generations of assimilation into white society for all those practices to disappear.
JAYMAN: I hear you Rifle. One of the things I think is interesting in Native American Society is that it is the Clan Mothers are the ones who decide on who the chief of the tribe will be. It is because of their connection to the Earth Mother. The Clan mothers responsibility is to nurture the Tribe as Earth Mother nurtures us.
RIFLE: Maybe we need to move this to another thread. I think there are a lot of members with interest in this heritage. The only Native Americans with matrilinear societies I'm familiar with, Jayman, are the Hopi and the Navajo, the Huron and the Iroquois Confederation (which, until their expulsion for warring with the Delaware) included the Cherokee. The true clan mothers only existed among the Iroquois and they did, indeed, appoint the chief and the faithkeepers for that tribe. The Cherokee chiefs were elected by vote in the council house and there were two of them, red and white. The red ruled in times of war and the white in times of peace. Each village was autonomous; the tribe was organized like the Greek city states. There was no overall Principal Chief until the British wanted to sign a treaty with the tribe and appointed Moytoy as Emperor of the Cherokee (1730). There are three recognized Cherokee Nations now. The one in Oklahoma is the largest with over a quarter of a million members consists of descendants of those removed to Indian Territory over the Trail of Tears; their chief is Chad Smith. The Eastern Cherokee in North Carolina descended from those who hid during removal and purchased land afterwards for their own tribal lands (thus there is no true reservation for Cherokee) and they number about twelve thousand, and the United Keetoowah Band, or Nighthawk Society, about eleven thousand, also from the removal, and they are Cherokee traditionalists who still practice the ancient rituals and beliefs. They also live in Oklahoma.
