Elders' Talk

Angaangaq, Elder, Sirmiq Aattuq Wisdom Keeper teaches that ‘the greatest distance in the existence of man is not from here to there nor from there to here. Nay, the greatest distance in the existence of man is from his mind to his heart. Unless he conquers this distance he can never learn to soar like an eagle, and realize the immensity within.’

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 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 us 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