Listening with Courage
If understanding of the soul of a community is your desire, then listen, and listen again to its artists. A community’s treasures of memory and passion are packaged for us by its musicians—gifts for us to cherish and preserve. But do we have the courage to listen?
After an evening with singers Mitch Walking Elk and Larry Long at the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community Center recently, I can no longer imagine the experience of native peoples without these two passionate troubadours. Mitch Walking Elk is a tall man who exudes strength and the seriousness of a difficult life, both of which infuse his message-laden music. Larry Long is an energetic and soft spoken man with a sparkle in his eyes and depth to his soul.
Together they told us of life on the outside, of life lived in the shadow of grievous wrongs that excluded courageous people from their due. We were reminded of Columbus and his foreign diseases, and asked what had we gained by laying those railroad tracks?
The story of the thirty eight Dakota who were executed in Mankato in 1862 found fervid musical retelling in the fingers and voice of Larry Long. Reminders of the pride of dozens of Native American tribes brought to mind again the breadth of the native peoples who have lived here far longer than we latecomers. And as a pleasant surprise, Mitch served us a gorgeous treatment of the blues with rich native color.
I felt as though we were granted access to an inner sanctum as we heard prayer songs, hints of a struggle against despair, and the griefs of a people fighting to reestablish the validity of their culture, the value of their persons, and the sacredness of the land that was stolen from them and then scarred, drained of resources and covered over by a people who failed to love it, much less recognize its sacred nature.
The chasm between our cultures widened as I listened. A Christian culture regards nature as a tool toward which we must exercise prudent stewardship so as to preserve its resources for the practical use and pleasure of future generations. To the Dakota, the land is sacred. Christians sing a hymn with the words, There is power in the blood, a fascinating counterpoint to Mitch’s closing song, There is Power in the Water—an assertion of the sacredness of the earth and its resources that contemporary Americans find difficult to grasp. The song’s inspiration was the bottling and merchandising of water from Lake Michigan—an inappropriate use of the living, sacred, priceless gift of water from The Creator.
One must listen with the heart to hear the soul of the Native American community, permeated as it is with a quiet but deep gratitude for the gift of the earth and the life that springs from it. This gratitude expresses itself in love for the earth and for its peoples, for whom prayers are regularly offered by a spiritual people.
But, to listen requires courage of a kind that I fear we are lacking, for to listen is to hear once again the griefs we have imposed on a people; to hear that we established our civil liberties by trampling theirs, and built our economy by exploiting others. We hope that those whom we used for our own ends will remain muted and ask not for justice, for justice is even now beyond our emotional reach.
Are we able at the very least to give our friends the respect we would hope to receive for ourselves and our people, which is to listen to their story and remember?
(Published in the Stillwater, Minnesota Gazette, December 14th, 2006)
After an evening with singers Mitch Walking Elk and Larry Long at the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community Center recently, I can no longer imagine the experience of native peoples without these two passionate troubadours. Mitch Walking Elk is a tall man who exudes strength and the seriousness of a difficult life, both of which infuse his message-laden music. Larry Long is an energetic and soft spoken man with a sparkle in his eyes and depth to his soul.
Together they told us of life on the outside, of life lived in the shadow of grievous wrongs that excluded courageous people from their due. We were reminded of Columbus and his foreign diseases, and asked what had we gained by laying those railroad tracks?
The story of the thirty eight Dakota who were executed in Mankato in 1862 found fervid musical retelling in the fingers and voice of Larry Long. Reminders of the pride of dozens of Native American tribes brought to mind again the breadth of the native peoples who have lived here far longer than we latecomers. And as a pleasant surprise, Mitch served us a gorgeous treatment of the blues with rich native color.
I felt as though we were granted access to an inner sanctum as we heard prayer songs, hints of a struggle against despair, and the griefs of a people fighting to reestablish the validity of their culture, the value of their persons, and the sacredness of the land that was stolen from them and then scarred, drained of resources and covered over by a people who failed to love it, much less recognize its sacred nature.
The chasm between our cultures widened as I listened. A Christian culture regards nature as a tool toward which we must exercise prudent stewardship so as to preserve its resources for the practical use and pleasure of future generations. To the Dakota, the land is sacred. Christians sing a hymn with the words, There is power in the blood, a fascinating counterpoint to Mitch’s closing song, There is Power in the Water—an assertion of the sacredness of the earth and its resources that contemporary Americans find difficult to grasp. The song’s inspiration was the bottling and merchandising of water from Lake Michigan—an inappropriate use of the living, sacred, priceless gift of water from The Creator.
One must listen with the heart to hear the soul of the Native American community, permeated as it is with a quiet but deep gratitude for the gift of the earth and the life that springs from it. This gratitude expresses itself in love for the earth and for its peoples, for whom prayers are regularly offered by a spiritual people.
But, to listen requires courage of a kind that I fear we are lacking, for to listen is to hear once again the griefs we have imposed on a people; to hear that we established our civil liberties by trampling theirs, and built our economy by exploiting others. We hope that those whom we used for our own ends will remain muted and ask not for justice, for justice is even now beyond our emotional reach.
Are we able at the very least to give our friends the respect we would hope to receive for ourselves and our people, which is to listen to their story and remember?
(Published in the Stillwater, Minnesota Gazette, December 14th, 2006)
posted by Dick McMullen at 4:58 PM
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