Real Dignity in the face of Adversity

In 1993, I was one of four non-Native Americans who independently participated with a few hundred members of the Cherokee Nation and with members of the American Indian Movement, including Russell Means and Jokay Dowell, in a Spirit Walk, from Tulsa to Ponca City, Oklahoma, commemorating the centennial of the Oklahoma Land Rush. I carried a small sign that I had made, the only sign in the group, that said “Truth = Reconciliation”, because I felt it was important to elicit something more than only questions amongst those who saw us along the highway.

We walked for a couple of days, camping at night, to arrive at a museum, located on historically preserved civic property near Ponca City. There, after a holy man's prayerful Cherokee song, beautiful formal statements of protest against celebration of the Land Rush were presented to the group by a male representative from the Indian Nations Council of Governments and by a female leader speaking for Principle Chief Wilma P. Mankiller (who was recovering from surgery). Then the group, several on horseback, many in full native dress, and covering the entire top of the small hill on which the museum was located, stood watching in complete silence, as the Governor and a large party of constituents, all in full period costumes, arrived on an antique train and walked a cleared, winding, park walkway through The People to a banquet in a large historically preserved hall on the museum grounds.

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I was an empathic observer on that walk to Ponca, City. Today, because of recent Congressional votes denying the will of We the People in regards to ending the Occupation of Iraq, I and many others are waking up to what it means to actually be, as Native and Black Americans are, members of "the slave class". I hope the DU finds opportunities to learn from those like the Cherokee Nation, who after a couple of centuries of the worst forms of oppression, stand un-bowed in the presence of the powers-that-be and show them the quiet power in the Face of Freedom.

MKJ

very fortunate to have. It came to mind recently, because I had to write a curriculum vitae for a job application.

Wilma Mankiller is no longer Principle Chief of the Cherokee, but she must have been a good leader when she was, because she was sponsoring the development of several young women and these people were all helping one another. They were very "together".

Maybe some of the weirdness we've been seeing around here is due to the fact that many of us are kind of new to the awareness of our oppression and pretty naive/inflated about our roles in what is happening.