Category: Language and Culture
just been thinking and been feeling a little alone here. i have certainly noticed there seems to be no users here that know of native american culture, and there seems to be no other native americans here at all, except one other user. it's not that i don't have good friends round here, but i'd really really like to have some sense of native community. yes there are loads of others like me in my state. so, if any of you are out there and wouldn't mind getting in touch with me, please send me a private message or just simply comment on this post. wa do
I am Charicky and Chockttah however they are spelt but I am only 1/8 of each. I don't have a role number because someone on my fathers side was embarrassed about it and wanted to be just wite or something... My mom was adopted and we could not get her role number either... I have features of being
(mostly called Indian because of long ago mix ups
)but
(what your calling) native american too. the long strait hair that people here in raleigh keep calling asian hair...small feature as i have been told is part of it, and some what wavey hair that becomes more curley the shorter it gets, but my long hair makes it so strait. I tan easy and love outdoor and animals. I am artistic and feel like that comes from part of it. I love being native american and have always had a bit of a love for it. I don't go to trible meetings or pow-wows though. My family has never been that involved... I do love sleeping outside in a tent though!
all very native-esque things. and btw: i do sometimes say "indian" to mean native american, but on very public sites such as this, i find it is more understood to call it native american, as Indian is oftentimes thought to mean east indian, india, etc.
not saying that to be defensive, but just explaining y i said native american.
yes, i understood. I know why you chose that way of describing. I do too on sites and stuff like this...
I grew up thinking I was part Native American. Granted I was blond headed with big blue eyes but we were always told that we had Native ancestry. Then my grandma started researching our family back ground and found out that we were actually from a Spanish Island. I have no clue how to spell it so I won't even try. Either way, I was terribly disappointed because I really wanted to be of Native heritage.
I hope you find what you're looking for. ,
wa do, domestic goddess, and don't know if u knew, but many people who are mostly native american (people who are maybe full even, or very nearly full blood) can be blond. my friend's cousin is almost full-blood osage, and she is blond and blue-eyed. in most cases it seems, there is a 50/50 chance u could turn out looking blond, for instance, or dark hared and tan skinned. just depends on what your genes decide to choose. smiley
I was born with blond hair but it had gone brown by the time I was two and I now have a dark brown almost black being nearly 25. It just keeps getting darker. Funny thing to, most people gets their hair bleached in the sun, I have always been told mine gets darker. not sure though.
Well, I'm African American who was born with black hair, but sometimes it can be brown and at other times, it can be red and I'm light skinned. I know we have Native blood in our family, but I've never been able to figure out what I'm mixed with. Any of you have any ideas?
well it could be half a million of tribes. LOL But I will say that my hair is dark brown but has a bit of red and blond in it to that is like under tones or something. It shows in the light but you don't see it to much other wise I hink... I also have natrul high lites too. I just leave my hair along and don't treat it with anything.
I have to say, being someone who grew up with people who spoke Cherokee as a first language, actual native americans would laugh at half the stuff said on this board, and be extremely offended by the other half. For example, saying that enjoying sleeping outside in a tent is a quality of a native American is extremely insulting. Native americans didn't live in tents, they didn't even live in teepees. The teepee is used on hunts, its not a dwelling. Native americans had housing. Go to a reservation and you won't find people living in tents. Matter of fact some of the nicest houses I've ever been in are on reservations.
I'm all for trying to figure out what tribe you come from if that's what you want to do. I just encourage you to stop watching old western movies and actually learn something about true native American culture before you start saying things like that. I promise, if you learn a few facts about the culture, it will get you less beaten if you ever go to a reservation. They take that stuff seriously.
And just to clear up another misconception, not all native americans have dark hair and dark features. That is actually a stereotype born out of racism. Some of them have it, yes, but just as many have blonde hair and blue eyes. Some have red hair and green eyes. It just depends on what part of America they come from. Southern tribes are darker, as are plains tribes, northern reaches have lighter skin and hair.
Yeah, we're talking about that now in history and many Native Americans are just like the average American, but a different culture and it's kind of weird saying that considering, they are the real Americans.
My hair changes color after being in the light as well, so...I dunno, I might dig into my family history at some point in life.
Wow, cool. Thanks for clearing that up about the hair and skin color. I honestly didn't know and didn't mean anything offensive.
Cody's right, you know.
The Native American societies were and are as advanced as any other.
I see this among my fellow whites also who are trying to find our indigenous, pre-Romanized roots, and instead of doing research they dress up like Vikings and hang themselves upside down to mimic the mythical god Odin in his quest. Now I understand shedding Middle Eastern roots like Romanization or Christianity / Islam / Judaism, that is all Middle Eastern and has nothing to do with indigenous whites at all, when you're searching for heritage. But real Vikings and real Saxons and real Celts would just laugh at people faking it.
But I do understand the desire to find one's roots, something I never even considered when I was younger. Heritage was for other people, and we whites were just non. I salute anyone for having the courage to go look this stuff up and try and find out more about your ancestry.
For what it's worth, I lived for a year on the Heiltsuk First Nation on the central coast of British Columbia, and while I am not First Nations by blood, I consider myself to be part of the community... I have friends on the Rez whom I am in regular contact with.
Renegade Rocker is First Nations from the north coast of British Columbia. Perhaps you might want to get in touch with him to chat.
TP's are a form of houseing that they used. I was told this myself by a guy back home who was very close to his roots.
I said I love to sleep in tents meaning I love the out doors and enjoy being close to it even at night verses being in doors.
Maybe the native americans you
Coady,
know, didn't live in TP's but the ones I knew did. Remember, there were and are many tribes and they all did their own things.
I grew up in oklahoma...
my resorce links for those interested...
A tepee (tipi, teepee) is a Plains Indian home. It is made of buffalo hide fastened around very long wooden poles, designed in a cone shape. Tepees were warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Some were quite large. They could hold 30 or 40 people comfortably.
http://nativeamericans.mrdonn.org/plains/teepees.html
Tepees
Tepees (also spelled Teepees or Tipis) are tent-like American Indian houses used by Plains tribes. A tepee is made of a cone-shaped wooden frame with a covering of buffalo hide. Like modern tents, tepees are carefully designed to set up and break down quickly. As a tribe moved from place to place, each family would bring their tipi poles and hide tent along with them. Originally, tepees were about 12 feet high, but once the Plains Indian tribes acquired horses, they began building them twice as hi
Do Native Americans still live in houses like these today?
Most Native Americans do not live in old-fashioned Indian houses like the ones on this page, any more than other Americans live in log cabins. The only Native American housing style on this page that is still in regular use as a home is Indian adobe houses. Some Pueblo families are still living in the same adobe house complexes their ancestors used to live in. There are also a few elders on the Navajo reservation who still prefer to live in hogans. But otherwise, traditional Native American houses like these are usually only built for ritual or ceremonial purposes, such as a sweat lodge or tribal meeting hall. Most American Indians today live in modern houses and apartments, just like North Americans from other ethnic gro
http://www.native-languages.org/houses.htm
Oh yeah and... No
not all native americans are dark but a good lot of us are... I get my coloring from my native american blood. but I never said that all native americans were only dark...
I don't watch old westerns and reservations are reservations. They are not like mobile tribes who used the Tp's as my links I posted says...
this should be all for me for a while. anyways.. anyone else with any thoughts on your possible roots? Thats if you dare to try without getting smacked down for trying... Sometimes a lot of these threads gets soured because people try to hard to spoil them...
Read what I said again and maybe you'll catch the part where I said they were used for housing while on hunts. Remember me saying that?
A dwelling is a static home, a teepee is not, and was not designed to be, a static home. Its like saying you're dwelling is a camper. Your camper might be a camper, but its not your home. Your dwelling is static.
You can also go back and read the first sentence of my last post and take a wild guess where I grew up. Its also in my profile.
But either way, if you want to find your tribal roots, or whatever other cultural roots you have, go for it. I've done it, and its extremely interesting. I'm just saying its highly insulting to say that you liking to sleep in a tent has anything to do with your indian blood. I like to have a beer at the end of the day, that has nothing to do with the fact that I'm part irish. Stereotypes are insulting, period.
Cody's right on all this. I read an article with a lot of comments regarding this very issue. Native Americans or First Nations peoples feeling pretty upset that there are whites who want to co-opt the romantic notions of Indian-ness while not identifying with the struggles.
To my knowledge, I have no Native blood, though I will find this out via DNA at some point. But any first nations family living on a reservation has a lot of claims in this regard. In fact, any of us who have ancestry that was conquested by Roman technologies - the descendants of which conquered Native people in North America - have that in common. I'm not a Native, so far be it from me to say, but Kate's experience being part of the community is a lot more authentic than people romanticizing the 19th century. Modern First Nations people have a lot of unique struggles, governmental interference, exploitation by current culture vultures, and so on.
About 5 years ago now, I read an article from a Native American, an elder of some kind, no disrespect I can't remember the location or position. But anyway his contention was that most of us whites are often doing this because we don't know our own roots. By roots he meant ancestral, pre-conquest, pre-Romanized pre-middle-eastern-religion roots. It's true. I and others I know used to think finding one's roots was for other people, and that us whites basically had nothing but conquest and tyranny to look back upon.
This is actually untrue. I've been reading in recent months, and taking that second look at history the way it's been passed to us. the so-called white man's religion, and all its customs, are Middle Eastern in origin, and so it goes for the technology and ideology of conquest. Northern and Western Europe was vanquished, much like the Native peoples have been now, over 1500 years ago. Only then it was Rome, and what Native peoples now call the White Man's religion was brought to us from the Middle East.
That doesn't excuse anything our recent ancestors did, and few people weep for the catastrophes of 1500 years ago or for the cultures who were wiped out then. But I think that Elder had it right, and the Natives on that blog I read yesterday, who talked about the culture vultures have it right also. We white people, who have been told all we have is slavery and conquest, rape and pillage to look back on, have often been guilty of romanticizing and co-opting other people's traditions. All humans want to belong, and belong to something noble not just conquest rape and pillage. It's my opinion that we should do what we can without the culture vulture exploitation, and maybe separate ourselves from the middle eastern vestiges of conquest and exploitation done to us, try and learn about our own past, outside the vestiges of Roman historians.
The term Barbarians and savages was first applied to whites by Roman historians, and in the last few hundred years, we simply repeated the cycle against the First Nations peoples of the Americas. Also, just as our recent ancestors downplayed the advanced civilizations and sophisticated trade networks all over the Americas, this had been done to us by the Romans. European societies were said to be wild and savage, lesser peoples, and all the other things we now associate with whites doing to other races.
History would perhaps not have repeated itself had we maintained our roots the way the First Nations people are trying to do now. Some may laugh at me for saying this, but when I read Roman historians now, in a new light, I find it truly sad. And our recent ancestors repeated what was done to them against the First Nations peoples, rather than learning from it. You can't learn from it, if your heritage is stamped out. To that end, I wholeheartedly support any First Nations people trying to maintain their heritage, and all that comes with it, without any romantic notions of my own.
I'm finding it's a lot easier to not be a culture vulture when I can look at my own roots for a sense of belonging, and learn from the mistakes not just that our recent ancestors made, but that were made against us by Eastern conquests into Europe 1500 years ago.
Anyway, sorry to have hijacked this thread, I hope I'm making sense and not just trying to make it about us whites, which I know First Nations people can be sensitive to. I just think there is a way to not be a culture vulture.
@yourNightmare: yes, it could b pretty much any tribe you've got in your blood. @silverLightning: how dare u tell us all that and assume we mean it sterotypically. none ofus said that all natives are dark and all live in teepees, etc etc. This is damn sure not a post put up for u to act like a jerk on, and shoot everyone down.
to all: if you have nothing else to do on this post but to argue with others and say "you're wrong", take it elsewhere. no one is being racist here i am certain, and we don't need negativity on here from u
2and yes natives are just like the average american, as someone on here did say. not a different species, not aliens, just got a different culture. but i don't think anyone said that natives weren't like other peoples.
I don't think anyone is being overly negative, we're trying to get others to think. If you are of First Nations descent as Cody also is, then you will be glad if some of us whites stop with the culture vulture tendencies. In fact, some Native tribes have asked online that whites not co-opt their practices.
The reason whites do it, I outlined in my prior post. And just like all peoples, white, black, Native people of North America, there are all sorts of differences within the tribes of each. One cannot lump all whites, or all Native Peoples, or any other group into a single set of beliefs or practices. Of this you are correct and it's understandable how you would get upset at that kind of romanticizing.
i agree, leo gardian.
I consider myself to be VERY fortunate to have been warmly welcomed into the community at Bella Bella.... I learned a good deal about life on the Rez and Heiltsuk culture.
I hope to be able to return 'home,' as it were, to the Rez one day and see everyone again.... sadly, I live in England now and don't get back to Vancouver very often.
i have never heard of the heiltsuk people, but not surprising as i know next to nothing about canada. nice to c your comment.
Information about the First Nations of British Columbia can be found here:
http://fnbc.info/heiltsuk-nation
wa do
OK, I'm going to be heavily disagreed with here, I know that. But here goes, so hope I can explain it.
In the end, every human being alive comes from similar roots. We are all mixed stock that drifted across the entire planet and our differences formed because of those drifts. I don't want to say that any culture is mine or that mine is anyone else's. All I want to say is that if you feel connected to something, regardless of what or where it is, take the effort to be informed, learn about it, and find people willing to teach you about the world outside of what you know and the things in it that you might be drawn to without being negative or misinforming.
Looking for one's roots is a fantastic way to do this. Most people would feel connected with their roots, some don't. Be like a magnet, and wait until something pulls you toward its level, somewhere in the world. Even if you make up your own things to live by. There are a thousand ways to the top of the same mountain, they are all human ways, and everyone is going to find their niche, whether it be in their roots, a place they grew up, or a culture that absorbed them. Being absorbed is one thing, having a culture forced on you is a crime against you and stealing another is a crime against a people.
In all honesty I feel connections with things that most people would tell me I have no right to. I keep them close to my heart, these things that have helped me. The more I learn, the more I accept, instead of trying to strip the substance off of it. I let myself be absorbed. I will never absorb the ways of another. I would be remade as a person first before I ever let myself do something so selfish.
I know this is off topic, I'm sorry that I responded to the posts and not the thread.
um, last time I checked, posts make up threads. therefore, they're part of them.