BITTER HUMOR

Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island Twinkie Test

We, indigenous peoples of north America, dislike 'New Age Crystal & Turkey Feather Waving Twinkie-Twinkies' who shamelessly appropriate, distort, misuse and disrespect our culture. If you want to be among Native Peoples and shared human knowledge, it is wise to avoid being a Twinkie. So, we interrupt your web browsing to bring this very important test. This test will determine if you're a Twinkie:

1..you think 'twinkie' is a name brand of golden sponge cake.

2..you're a Shaman, and all your friends are Shamans too.

3..your Indian Spirit Guide only speaks English.

4..you have a plastic Indian headdress hanging from your rear view mirror.

5..you don't drive a 'rez rocket'.

6..you think "Apples" are fruits you eat.

7..you gave all your dogs authentic Native American names.

8...your great grandmother was a Cherokee “princess”.

9..your great grandfather was a Cherokee prince, too.

10..you own collector plates featuring men with rippling muscles, feathers, and prostrate maidens.

11..you've never been to a Fourty Nine.

12..you've never woken up with a houseful strangers fixing themselves breakfast, eating your bacon, and calling you 'cousin'.

13..you think "Dances with Wolves" is a great movie.

14..you don't know who Leonard Peltier is.

15..you've read books on Native American spirituality and you feel ready to guide people on an expensive, vision-quest excursion.

That was a sad, but funny commentary. On the one hand a lot of whites reach out the best way they know how to heal themselves, and mend the tears in relationships they've torn asunder. Others do deep work within themselves healing the awful consequences of conquering and killing that rends the soul into multiple pieces. These precious souls learn to become relatives again. Others never learn to forgive. They are scared to death of retribution. Most are out of place in the posture of asking for help, and forgiveness. There are some profound reasons for their inability to ask for forgiveness, or deeply immerse themselves in the spiritual work required to come to the place they can sit with a whole heart amongst the people's they've oppressed and/or rendered invisible. The reasons revolve around guilt, and fear, and resentment.

So, there are choices of heart to take watching these people whom our Elders tell us are our relatives. A lot deserve watching. They are up to no good, and others cannot find their voices, or who they are meant to be. Others are bitter being forced to subjugate themselves to a concept of equality with a people they took from and held in contempt. Still others are fearful, and hide under their antics playing Indian.. Others are just thieves. Stealing souls, intellectual property, formulas, trust, identity and property is what they do and who they are. They served the Crown well, and now displaced have no where to sit. Fear is the underlying emotion in the paradigms of all of these emotional landscapes!

The same thing happened in the Black community. Whites did similar things trying to connect with Black people during and after the struggles for citizenship in the 20th century. Declarations of solidarity with Colored people a year or so before  we got the right to vote were really full of contempt, and whites who were unable to express affinity for Black folks out of fear when Jim Crow was walking freely about were making strides learning how to be themselves, and befriend a race they were socially and spiritually isolated from. From their worldview it is a helluva a place to exist.

What choices of approach do whites have? There are choices, but what is typically chosen has infuriated many cultures for reasons similar, if not the same, as your own. I dig the humor, but in the end, we will be required to fulfill our own spiritual responsibility and those Twinkies, and Wiggers will be needing our help, and one day we will be in the sacred circles discovering how they can help us heal! - Gregory E. Woods August 20, 2012