Giving thanks later on . . .

Xanny

Disjad drinking watermelon juice Thanksgiving Day 2014

Watermelon juice for tonight. Happy thanksgiving.

คืนเน้ขอแค่น้ำแตงโมปั่นค่ะ

Thanksgiving Day to me...



Gregory E. Woods, Creek & Crow Indian African man

I am an African-American man. I am an Absaroka Muskogee Indian. I am a Keeper of Stories, and a Keeper of the Drum. The two responsibilities are related to each other, and have power in the telling today the day before Thanksgiving Day! Nothing offensive in here, but the Native story about Thanksgiving has to be told. The story is one of betrayals, and the murder celebration the immigrants held! But that story will not be told here. This story will be told:













I know a little about Turkey medicine. My friend Pam is an Eastern Band Cherokee. She taught Turkey medicine to me one day in the mountains of Virginia. I knew medicine was coming my way on the trip to the mountains. I was looking for it the whole ride up to the mountains. Just as we got to her property a large turkey walked out of the woods and collapsed dead. We stopped the car, and walked to his body, and left tobacco offerings with our prayers.

"What do we do with him?" Pam asked. "Take him to the house and listen." I said.

During the following ceremony Turkey’s spirit, in return, allowed us to take the wings, tail feathers, and the necklace the Turkey wore. We buried the Turkey in the northern part of the Medicine Wheel we had earlier built on the land. The necklace Turkey wore was given to me. Pam explained that hunters have another name for it, but she learned from watching their ceremonies the necklace under their beaks is a Medicine necklace with its own powers. Turkey’s are Keepers of Ceremony!

Pam would travel alone into the mountains and sit. She can become a ghost in the forest. Turkeys would land unaware of her and perform ceremonial dances as the sun set. She said one had to be completely still. Turkey People are very sensitive to movements subtle or not. Turkeys have a deep sense of ceremony. Deep in their dances they are balanced and attuned to the subtle elements at work around them. It is a natural teaching for the People, and by People, since we are talking about the colonial times; I am talking about Turtle Island’s indigenous people's relationship with living things, and our Grandmother Earth.

The immigrants remain, to this day, outside of these things for the most part and continually legislate and make laws from a framework that is disconnected from the subtle elements that move, engage, and try, in this day and age, to balance everything. Their paradigms have taught billions of people for the last few centuries their ways, and we all participate in the process of disrespecting our Earth, shortening our time on Earth, and neglecting our spiritual responsibilities to each other. These are my words.

Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories
nov. 25, 2009

 

Ghost of the Wolf, by artist, Joe Belt Finished art on commission by the Ossahatchee Pow-Wow Association, to be used on posters, limited edition prints, and t-shirts promoting this years event.

 

a sad story not remembered

Wituwaumet

Wituwaumet was one of several native men invited to share a feast by Pilgim leader Myles Standish in March of 1623. Standish and his men ambushed and killed them all in order to warn other natives to fear the whites. On this Thanksgiving weekend we honor the memory of Witumaumet and his friends and affirm our commitment to a world in which colonial plunder and racial targeting will be but a memory.

Ricardo Levins Morales

THANKSGIVING STORY

The true Thanksgiving story should be the starting point for a deeper telling of the spirit of a people who have kept the spirit of the first Thanksgiving alive, active, and engaged in the taking of, and the killing of my People. This spirit is woven into the fabric of American consciousness with such incredible skill that today millions upon millions of Americans challenged cannot see it. It was in Vietnam. It snaked through American foreign policy in Central America during the 1980’s, America’s opium trade in Afganistan, and the uranium mines on native lands in the southwest United States. The laws of the land sing its testimony, and last but not least the invasion of Iraq holds this dark energy as its core value. We cannot escape this truth. We live with it.

How boycotting Thanksgiving will help raise the awareness upon an indifferent, affluent, and fat satisfied populace is beyond me. Myth, and legend are primal needs within the souls of people and nations, and the soul of this nation feeds from its mother’s breast. Her milk stirs loyalty, and contentment. White Americans, and Black Americans are rubbing their bellies, and picking their teeth after dinners across the land. Their eyes roll into the back of their heads. Sleep dulls the senses around a table of well-fed people laughing, and shouting at television sets with either movies, CNN, or a football game on. Mothers, and daughters talk excitedly about getting up at three o’clock in the morning to stand in long lines to catch Black Friday specials. Their children run off to listen to their Ipods, play video games, or talk on their $3oo cellphones, or Twitter mindlessly with the typical dumb look acquired from long hours on phones.

Information runs non-stop today. Most don’t hear my ancestors cries, teachings, or sense their presence. Our songs are in the air but today’s America hears airplanes, and the pop music of Lady GaGa, or Beyoncé Knowles is in the air, and in their ears. Barely stopping for long deep reflection people tend to do as they were taught: look, pause, and move on; get it done, do it now, work, work, work. Americans are trained to concentrate thought into seven minute intervals interrupted with three to four minutes of mental playtime while TV commercials run their course. As musicians we notice and talk about how audiences behave as the end of a show approaches. A noticable, and distracting movement ripples through audiences as people get up and leave while we are deep into our music.

“Where are they going? The music hasn’t even stopped!”

They are leaving to be first in line to get ahead of the crowd going home. Onstage we have advantage looking into people’s eyes, and watching their energies shifting within them and around the club, the stadium, or whatever stage we are on. There is often a sudden and internal cutting off and quick robotic turns for the exit doors as the last notes run into the chambers of the soul, and fly upward into the heavens past the airplanes. It’s weird but we try to get used it. I have not gotten use to it because it means something. An insight lives below the surface and it has everything to do with the questions raised by the whole question of boycotting Thanksgiving Day in solidarity with Native Americans. -Gregory E. Woods, Dawn Wolf Keeper of Stories (novembre 2009)

Mashpee Wampanoag war dancer

GIVING THANKS IS THANKSGIVING

"When we met the English, we made that offering. And of course it would take time for them to know who we are and what we are, to be able to be in thanksgiving. If you think about it, we gave them unconditional acceptance and love and nutriment. Otherwise they would have been massacred at the beach. That was an ability of my people of which I am most proud. But to say thank you for the love you receive from another group of people and to peacefully and happily coexist with us that did not happen. And it still isn't happening. That is the only thing that we can lament about, is not to be received for who we are. For we are the people of the First Light. The new and original thought of the Creator is on that light." - Ramona Peters, Wampanoag

Native American artist Ramona Peters, Wampanoag at work

NASA SPACE PROGRAM

"The Wampanoag Nation has the true, powerful and painful story of the spirit of the Pilgrims, Europeans, and the consciousness known as the White Man in its infancy of spiritual development that has grown in small increments the past four centuries. Space travel, to me, is the Western paradigm of death, destruction, and division applied to interplanetary travel, war, conquest over people, and control of resources.  Why in God's name would Creation allow, or at the low end of the spectrum, why should any of us on Earth allow the space program to advance to the level of travel knowing the paradigms of yesterday live in the hearts and minds of today's White Man?" - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories, 2009

THANKSGIVING DAY

I am an African-American man. I am an Absaroka Muskogee Indian. I am a Keeper of Stories, and a Keeper of the Drum. The two responsibilities are related to each other, and have power in the telling today the day before Thanksgiving Day! Nothing offensive in here, but the Native story about Thanksgiving has to be told. The story is one of betrayals, and the murder celebration the immigrants held! But that story will not be told here. This story will be told:


I know a little about Turkey medicine. My friend Pam is an Eastern Band Cherokee. She taught Turkey medicine to me one day in the mountains of Virginia. I knew medicine was coming my way on the trip to the mountains. I was looking for it the whole ride up to the mountains. Just as we got to her property a large turkey walked out of the woods and collapsed dead. We stopped the car, and walked to his body, and left tobacco offerings with our prayers.

"What do we do with him?" Pam asked. "Take him to the house and listen." I said.

During the following ceremony Turkey’s spirit, in return, allowed us to take the wings, tail feathers, and the necklace the Turkey wore. We buried the Turkey in the northern part of the Medicine Wheel we had earlier built on the land. The necklace Turkey wore was given to me. Pam explained that hunters have another name for it, but she learned from watching their ceremonies the necklace under their beaks is a Medicine necklace with its own powers. Turkey’s are Keepers of Ceremony!

Pam would travel alone into the mountains and sit. She can become a ghost in the forest. Turkeys would land unaware of her and perform ceremonial dances as the sun set. She said one had to be completely still. Turkey People are very sensitive to movements subtle or not. Turkeys have a deep sense of ceremony. Deep in their dances they are balanced and attuned to the subtle elements at work around them. It is a natural teaching for the People, and by People, since we are talking about the colonial times; I am talking about Turtle Island’s indigenous people's relationship with living things, and our Grandmother Earth.

The immigrants remain, to this day, outside of these things for the most part and continually legislate and make laws from a framework that is disconnected from the subtle elements that move, engage, and try, in this day and age, to balance everything. Their paradigms have taught billions of people for the last few centuries their ways, and we all participate in the process of disrespecting our Earth, shortening our time on Earth, and neglecting our spiritual responsibilities to each other. These are my words.

Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories
nov. 25, 2009

 

MONEY

Money alone doesn’t ensure happiness. What we call money is only a medium of exchange for goods and services. It replaced barter systems of old because it became impractical to carry around exchangeable goods such as clothes, livestock, etc. Credit card companies have begun to penalize consumers for paying their balance off too early. Banks and gun manufacturers made the most gain in profit. Fear is associated with your money including but not limited to the lack of it, what it is, how to manage it, how to keep it, invest it or use it. As a medium of exchange, money has become a major social control mechanism. Halloween is touted as being the 6th leading financial generating holiday in America. Black Friday begins the day after Thanksgiving when the ridiculous spending begins. The entire economy will be based on the amount you spend for gifts this Christmas. Folk have become so caught up in the things that money buys that they measure their lives and success by the amount they have.

Hello, folk! Wake up and let’s examine this one. What is the impact to the soul? What about debt slavery? Are there tips to know as they relate to balancing a checkbook, reducing mortgage, wealth, savings that will help us. Join us as we examine the impact of financial capital on our bodies, our soul and ultimately – our world. Sandra Hurst states, “Five major definitions of wealth combine to form our subconscious attitudes and reactions to money (financial, intellectual, interpersonal, physical and spiritual) and that all are important for excellence and prosperity.”

Check out the full article www.hh-bb.com Featured Guest: Brian Riley, President and CEO of Synergy Financial Services located in Silver Spring, Maryland. SFS is a full service firm with a mission to educate and provide comprehensive 21st century financial solutions - teaching financial stewardship while ultimately becoming the lender.  Look at this site: SYNERGY OF SERVICES 

- Emilo Williams, radio host, activist for change & thought