I like Alexie. He has written some thought provoking books and made a couple of good films.
I think most people who know anything about Elvis, know he was part Cherokee.
I never claimed any such thing. But, I do understand what Jerusha is saying.
No, but I don’t know of any Catholics, Native or otherwise, who have accepted the Mormon version of Lamanites, dark skin curses, “give this land if they live righteously”, as a replacement for true Native cultures.
Rebecca, go back and read Jerusha’s post. She didn’t say that native Americans who were Mormon were not native because they were Mormon, (though that right there is as glaring a true scott fallacy as can be imagined). She claimed that because Mormonism is mostly “European thought and action,” that this is why no Mormon native American can truly be 'native."
So you need to leave specific Mormon thought out of it. She did.
Quite frankly, as to it being specifically Mormonism being the difficulty, that is a problem; no other religion, other than their own ‘native’ beliefs, addresses native American culture/history specifically, or respects it, or the people who live it. Every other belief simply wants to replace it…and that includes Catholicism, by the way.
So of course you don’t know any Catholic Native Americans who accept the LDS idea of Nephites and Lamanites, because they have replaced their culture with Catholicism. That is, after all, a function of their Catholicism, not of their ‘native Americanism’ As an example of a “Four-term fallacy.” I’m keeping it.
To Jerusha’s point, to the memories that survive in the tribes…nothing in there that matches to mormonism. Jerusha says there are memories, however, of Viking visits.
I see…so because some natives around Manhattan have a legend of Cornhair and men in longboats (and the Vikings visited about 400 years before Columbus did…) then this means that no legends from Indians can possibly be traced any further back to Book of Mormon times?
In spite of the fact that there are quite a few that, uhm, do?
True, stories like “Three days of Darkness” and “why the Grand Canyon was made” from the Paiutes could as easily be referring to something else, they are not inconsistent with BoM peoples and beliefs.
What she is saying, is that Native who have accepted Mormonism have accepted a cultural rewrite. One that requires self hate. There isn’t anything like it anywhere, outside of Mormonism.
Except that it isn’t self hate, Rebecca. Pride? yes. the only hate involved is imposed from outside. You have forgotten the many stories in the BoM where the Lamanites were the righteous ones and the Nephites were the wicked group, and you seem to have forgotten that at the end of the book, well…the Lamanites actually won.
…and I find it ironic that a Catholic Indian would criticize a Mormon Indian for 'accepting a cultural rewrite."
To put more of a fine point on it. When I was a kid, and my best friend was in the mormon Indian placement program, she was in a house that had a large collection of Native “stuff”. Weapons, textiles, pottery, paintings. Collections. Even at that young age I had the uncomfortable realization that she was part of the collection.
It couldn’t possibly be that these things were an attempt to honor and respect that heritage, could it? Your perception of this couldn’t possibly have been, oh…WRONG, could it?
It is what mormonism does. Collects, but not for the sake of understanding, but for the sake of rewriting. My friend was being rewritten (it didnt’ work). Native cultures get rewritten, with a story of Lamanites and a culture that never existed.
your opinion is noted. It is absolutely incorrect, but noted.
There is no ‘rewriting’ of Indian history or culture by Mormonism. If we provide a different beginning for those stories, that doesn’t negate the stories, or the culture, or the very real success they had in this land.
I have been in the homes of both LDS and Catholic native Americans, as well as those who have kept their traditional beliefs.
From what I have seen, the LDS and traditional peoples complement each other, and their religions live peacefully together; one can be a Mormon and honor his traditions.
The same cannot be said for Catholicism. At least from what I have seen. Whether that is a bad thing or a good one is debatable, but I do find the irony of a CATHOLIC giving Mormons grief for 'replacing native culture" incredibly ironic.
