Will Our Wishes Be Respected After Death?

I took an article from the Indian Country Today Media Network about Jim Thorpe.  Jack McNeel's article, "The Battle Over Jim Thorpe's Remains", is clearly about his remains.  Now, before I go on, I assume that most people, especially those that live in Pennsylvania know who Jim Thorpe is, and that there is even a town north of here that is named after him.  For those of you that do no know about Jim Thorpe, he was from the Sac and Fox tribe in Oklahoma.  He is most known for being an amazing athlete, being quoted as one of the top three greatest athletes of the 20th century.  He also died at the age of 64 in 1953.

Okay, now that we got that all settled, back to the article.  What basically happened was that when he died, his body as taken away from Shawnee, Oklahoma during his funeral and taken to Pennsylvania, in what is now the town of Jim Thorpe (obviously this is how the town had gotten its name).  Clearly, a huge controversy came from this this issue.  The biggest of which is that there is now a Federal Case to have his body returned back to Oklahoma to a place that his two surviving sons have already picked out.  "The basis for this suit is the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).  This Act requires federal agencies and institutions receiving federal funding to return American Indian Cultural items, including human remains, to their respective places.  In this case it's asking that Jim Thorpe's remains be repatriated to the Sac and Fox tribe in Oklahoma, Jim had voiced his desire to be buried on his ancestral homeland and his sons desire to honor that wish."

McNeel goes on to explain that during the three day funeral ceremony for Thorpe his third wife Patrica, along with two Oklahoma state troopers removed the body.  Patrica had contacted these men to take the body of her late husband.  They wanted Jim Thorpe's body in order to create more revenue/business for their town and make their town attract more people and tourists.

So now, their is a rift between the Sac and Fox Tribe in Oklahoma, and those in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.  The people in Jim Thorpe do not want to give up his body, because that is what their town has become.  That is what their town thrives off of.  And to be honest I do understand the argument from both sides. I agree more with the children of Thorpe and the tribe of the Sac and Fox.  I think that a person should be buried wherever the hell they that want to be buried.  I think that it is extremely wrong that his body was pretty much sold out to draw attention to a town.  I honestly hope that his remains are brought back to Oklahoma, not just for the tribe, but mostly for his sons' and family.  His remains should be with his sons and family.  That tribe was and will always be his family.

More Interesting Ways to Educate People

I was looking for new topics to talk about in my blog and I just randomly clicked on one of the links that were posted on the D2L page. That link was for the the newspaper Cherokee Phoenix (well for their online newspaper). I was looking around on the front page for a little, when I saw the beginning of one story that really interested me. To be honest, the name of this article,"NSU Students Create Cherokee Language Happy Hour", is what originally struck my interest. This article. written by Tesina Jackson, is about the students that are enrolled in Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The students that were in the Cherokee language class came up with the idea that they wanted to get more people knowing about the Cherokee language, and educating more people than just the class itself. What they decided to do was make the menus on restaurants in Cherokee language and then on the opposite side of the menu they put a cheat sheet of how exactly to say and pronounce the words, and what the words meant.

NSU Cherokee program director Dr. Leslie Hannah states in the article, “From our perspective at the university, especially my students in the programs that we run at Northeastern, they practice Cherokee all day long in classrooms. They practice Cherokee in the hallways there, but they really don’t bring it outside into the community where they can mix with the fluent speakers, where they can mix with the people that use it everyday out on the streets of Tahlequah, out in the roads of the communities". She continues by saying, “They’ve got classroom Cherokee, so this is our effort to bring that Cherokee out of the classroom into the community and let them get some community Cherokee because it is a community language". I think that this is an amazing thing to do. Not only are these students getting educated, but they too are educating other people. By changing the menus in restaurants from English To Cherokee is a great and smart way to educate people that do not much about the Cherokee's or their language. I know that if I want to a restaurant and saw that the entire menu was in Cherokee instead of English, it would intrigue me and make me more interested to find out more about the Cherokees. And I am sure that many of the people that are seeing these menus are are having to order their food in Cherokee are becoming more interested in learning more and more about the Cherokees. This is a great way to educate people, and to have them want to educate themselves more by speaking that language.

How Close is To Close?

After reading the article "Rhetorical Sovereignty: What do American Indians Want From Writing?" by Scott Lyons.  I found a few things in this article interesting.  I know that I commented about this in class, but what first had me hooked into this article and pushed me to keep reading was how the article started.  Lyons mentions the book My People the Sioux.  Lyons talks about Luther Standing Bear and more specifically when he and other (I'm guessing) Sioux children were taken to the Carlisle Indian School.  I was literally appalled when I heard what these children, who were probably no more that ten or eleven years old were forced to do.  They were forced not only out of the land they were in, not only away from their parents, but not importantly they were forced out of their culture.  They were forced into having new, more "American" names.  These children had to pick out their "new" names from a chalkboard, yet they did not even understand what was on the board, or how to say their new names.  I heard once that people argue that someone's name is their identity.  Their name is who they are.  These children's original names were taken away from them, and they were forced into getting new, "better" names.  They had no idea what their new names meant or even what they really were.  Ergo, one could argue that these children did not even know who they were anymore.  So, not only was everything else taken away from them when they entered this school, now their own selves were taken away as well.

I think that this whole situation is not only demoralizing, it is dehumanizing.  Just look at things from your perspective.  How would you feel if you were taken away from your home.  You were taken away from your family, your pets, your possessions, everything, and were forced to go to this new place that would "better" you.  And then when you do get to said place, they tell you that your name isn't good enough, and make you pick out a new name that you don't even understand what it means, how to say it, or why you even have to pick a new name.  To me, it is just so unbelievably disgusting to think that somewhere that is literally twenty minutes away from where I grew up, from where I live when I'm not at school, did these things.  It really does hit home when I think about how close these things occurred to where I live.

How Little I Know about the Indigenous

After sitting in our first class for ten minutes, and having to write down what we knew about the Native Americans, I obviously came to the conclusion that I personally knew very little about them.  I knew some stereotypical remarks that I have learned over time: the whole Pocahontas story, that they all dress in loincloth and feathers, they all carry around a tomahawk, etc. etc. etc.  I realized that I also knew some benign facts such as most tribes own casinos and that you only have to be eighteen to gamble in these said casinos.  That is when the sad truth hit me.  I realized that for the longest time, I have none very little about the Indigenous people of the country that I have lived my entire life in.  If that could not get away worse, I knew that a part of me on my father's side is part "Native American".  Cherokee to be exact.  I know that that is something that I know extremely little about, just because it is something that my grandfather does not really bring up.  All that is really discussed is that that is in our heritage, because he is 1/16 Cherokee.  Since he is part of that nationality, he felt that that is something that we all should know because even though it is an extremely low fraction, us grandchildren are 1/64 Cherokee.  But besides that information, that is all we really know.  I always wondered why it was something that my Grandfather, and even my Father, never really discussed openly with us.  Maybe it was because they didn't really know much about it themselves.  Maybe (and I am ashamed as I type this) is that they didn't really want to find anything out about it.

This is where my last reasoning comes through and connects with what we have been discussing in class.  Why is it that people are afraid of finding out what their nationality is?  Or why is it that people don't want to admit to what their nationality really is?  Your nationality is not something you can change.  You can't change it if you move somewhere else, even a different country.  I can't change it is you learn a different, more "acceptable" language, religion, or culture.  The simple fact that people need to learn is that you are what you are.  No matter what you do, you will never be able to change that.  And no matter who you marry, or what nationality they are, that is never going to change the fact that your children, and their children, and their children, etc. are always going to be that said nationality, even if it is minuscule (similar to my Cherokee nationality).