So I decided to give Marks post some thought after my last response and went for a walk. Along the way I met Chief Fulla Bull’s grandson, Learnfromthepast.
Even though I am a simple inborn with a crooked tongue, Learnfromthepast offered some insight into this thread. It turns out that me and his grandfather share parallel experiences in his eyes. We both moved to a place that we loved for its beauty. We lived there every day of our lives, in harmony with nature as much as we could (Learnfromthepast points out I have not done as good of a job as his grandfather did though) and enjoying our lives as best we can. But then one day strangers came from the south (Learnfromthepast did not have a word for the place they came from, but we do today) and found our home. We tried to welcome the strangers, to embrace our differences and learn from each other.
Some of the strangers welcomed this and lived and learned with us, but others of them did not. They thought we were “simple” people who needed the strangers ideas and beliefs to “save ourselves”. The strangers began to change our homes to met their needs. They tried to “educate us” to show that we could be better people if we tried to be more like the strangers. They wanted to help themselves to our land, our resources. They wanted to bring in their governments, their ideals. These strangers did not stop to realize that what had brought us and them to the same place would be changed by this, they simply continued relentlessly to instill their ways.
Learnfromthepast became very sad at this point. He said that my inborn crooked tongue could not understand the words for the sorrow his grandfather felt when he had to move his people far away from the strangers to save what was left of his peoples ways. Learnfromthepast never lived by the Smile of the Great Spirit, and therefore was sad he could never love it as his grandfather and I do.
Learnfromthepast then asked me if I would go quietly into the night as his people did, or would I Learn-from-the-past?
Now I ask you all, what type of stranger are you?
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Is it bikeweek yet?
Now?
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