Black Elk

Speaks.

(o scribd anda-me à perna, um dia ainda sou corrida do dropbox)

kitap (storytellers)

one happy momma.

"The tales in this book, I heard from my mother. My mother heard them from a storyteller nearly sixty years ago. It seems my grandfather never thought twice about hiring a storyteller to warm the cockles of his little girl’s heart. She listened to many stories, though she couldn't always recall them, she passed many along to me, as well, though I couldn’t recall them all either, TO tell the truth, I had long since forgotten even the stories in this book. Years later, I returned to my father's house in Antep and my mother just so, happened to tell them again to me. I was captivated by the beauty of the stories laid before me. TO her credit, my mother was a superb storyteller, but it wasn’t just my mother's eloquence that affected me. The secret to the beauty of these stories lays hidden in their striking literary form and the profound messages in their content. The basic nature of humankind so matter-offactiy unfolded in front of one's eyes, it was impossible not to admire these narratives.

Hearing the stories again, it dawned on me that it was imperative they be written down. I was pushed to this conclusion by the fear that in this contemporary World, where we are domineered by visual narration, these tales which rely on the spoken word will one day be lost. So I set about putting them on paper, fine-tuning and embellishing in places to be sure, but without tampering with the essence of the stories.

I suppose the same adventure has befallen these tales as all other oral retellings. Each storyteller and listener in turn enhances the story, or impairs it for that matter, by adding a little of themselves. With that, I feel compelled to remark on the great enthusiasm with which I set to writing down these stories, enriched by the dream world of my mother. Who is such an extraordinary storyteller."

Ahmet Ümit na introdução deste livro mas também aqui.
com as ilustrações de Oğuz Demir. o site, aqui.

"Once upon a time, there was and there was not", um artigo no Today's Zaman sobre este livro. parte inicial engraçada: "Everyone loves a good story. Whether it be old men sitting in a café, young men around a camp fire or children snuggling down in bed at night, the fascination of a tale that draws the listener in and sets their imagination alight cannot be beaten." a piada é que o 'everyone' não inclui a metade da população que é feminina. muito injusto, até porque as histórias do livro foram contadas por um pai a uma filha e por essa filha ao seu filho. detalhes, até porque o autor do artigo continua numa linha de as minhas histórias são melhores do que as tuas. seja como for, um excelente livro, apesar de artigos estranhos nos jornais.

as far as I am concerned, I am drawn to the Persian style storytelling of the never ending tale, one that begins in the middle of the previous one in a continuous procession of stories never ended, never disclosed. in this book there is disclosure and mysteries are solved (isn't that Ümit's main job, after all?). a beautiful book to add to all those story-books that, such as this one, are transcripts of an oral practice carried out through time. I could think of Homer and of Black Elk Speaks. on the other hand, the idea of author needs to be looked at from a different perspective: the writer as medium and not as creator. more and more I see the idea of author, the lone god in his ivory tower, as a creation of western literature, the individual as such being a western concept.

rir

alguém nas literaturas comparadas podia pôr lado a lado o heyoka e Falstaff.
ou alguém já o fez.

o que me faz rir, a mim, mas que não é clown:
(entre Gogol e Bartleby)

"Aproveitou ainda para corrigir o próprio estilo do texto." na p.64.
"*** Como se prova pela fotografia incluída nesta página." na p.68
"A folha em branco, por sua vez, observa com atenção o rosto do escritor." na p.109
Rui Manuel Amaral em Doutor Avalanche.

como o heyoka, pegar nas Grandes Questões e virá-las ao contrário.

'flaming rainbow'

vi um assim quando entrávamos em mais um hotel e havia um manto negro de tempestade baixa no céu, o risco dos relâmpagos ao fundo e o peso da humidade continental, mas nunca me lembro onde ficava esse parque nem as árvores de inverno nem as pessoas que se moviam pesadamente depois de longas milhas.

"The Lakota had no word for poet or poem. They did no talk of secular aesthetics apart from religion. Art for them could no more exist for its own sake than a person separated from a tribe.", daqui sobre Black Elk. assim teve de inventar esse nome, flaming rainbow e dizer dele: "He is a word sender. This world is like a garden. Over this garden go his words like rain, and where they fall they leave it a little greener. And when his words have passed, the memory of them shall stand long in the west like a flaming rainbow."

para memória futura, dizia ele, antecipando a própria morte.

princípio e fim

no final, mesmo que indianizado por Neihardt:
"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream."

e no início: "It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit."

mulheres: "The woman is the life of the flowering tree, but the man must feed and care for it. One of the virgins also carried the flowering stick, another carried the pipe which gives peace, a third bore the herb of healing and the fourth held the sacred hoop; for all these powers together are women's power."

real/sombra: "I looked about me and could see that what we then were doing was like a shadow cast upon the earth from yonder vision in the heavens, so bright it was and clear. I knew the real was yonder and the darkened dream of it was here."

em Black Elk Speaks.

circle

no fim de Black Elk Speaks, a história estranha no sentido do outro e clara, num universo onde os vários elementos se equilibravam. histórias assimiladas hoje e ocidentalizadas para nelas caber tudo, até souvenirs. uma grande parte do que é dito soa em cadência, em ritmo de ritual, com as mesmas expressões para o que dizemos numa palavra, repetindo as palavras como o universo repete tudo dentro do seu círculo.

"After the heyoka ceremony, I came to live here where I am now between Wounded Knee Creek and Grass Creek. Others came too, and we made these little gray houses of logs that you see, and they are square. It is a bad way to live, for there can be no power in a square.

You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain, and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion. Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children."
(daqui)

Black Elk Speaks

ou aqui.

Pine Ridge Reservation of the Lakotas

"I'm here today to show my photographs of the Lakota. Many of you may have heard of the Lakota, or at least the larger group of tribes called the Sioux. The Lakota are one of many tribes that were moved off their land to prisoner of war camps now called reservations. The Pine Ridge Reservation, the subject of today's slide show, is located about 75 miles southeast of the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is sometimes referred to as Prisoner of War Camp Number 334, and it is where the Lakota now live. Now, if any of you have ever heard of AIM, the American Indian Movement, or of Russell Means, or Leonard Peltier, or of the stand-off at Oglala, then you know that Pine Ridge is ground zero for Native issues in the U.S.

So I've been asked to talk a little bit today about my relationship with the Lakota, and that's a very difficult one for me. Because, if you haven't noticed from my skin color, I'm white, and that is a huge barrier on a Native reservation. You'll see a lot of people in my photographs today, and I've become very close with them, and they've welcomed me like family. They've called me brother and uncle and invited me again and again over five years. But on Pine Ridge, I will always be what is called wasichu, and wasichu is a Lakota word that means non-Indian, but another version of this word means "the one who takes the best meat for himself." And that's what I want to focus on -- the one who takes the best part of the meat. It means greedy. So take a look around this auditorium today. We are at a private school in the American West, sitting in red velvet chairs with money in our pockets. And if we look at our lives, we have indeed taken the best part of the meat. So let's look today at a set of photographs of a people who lost so that we could gain, and know that when you see these people's faces that these are not just images of the Lakota, they stand for all indigenous people.

On this piece of paper, is the history the way I learned it from my Lakota friends and family. The following is a time-line of treaties made, treaties broken and massacres disguised as battles. I'll begin in 1824. "What is known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created within the War Department, setting an early tone of aggression in our dealings with the Native Americans. 1851: The first treaty of Fort Laramie was made, clearly marking the boundaries of the Lakota Nation. According to the treaty, those lands are a sovereign nation. If the boundaries of this treaty had held -- and there is a legal basis that they should -- then this is what the U.S. would look like today. 10 years later, the Homestead Act, signed by President Lincoln, unleashed a flood of white settlers into Native lands. 1863: An uprising of Santee Sioux in Minnesota ends with the hanging of 38 Sioux men, the largest mass execution in U.S. history. The execution was ordered by President Lincoln only two days after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

1866, the beginning of the transcontinental railroad -- a new era. We appropriated land for trails and trains to shortcut through the heart of the Lakota Nation. The treaties were out the window. In response, three tribes led by the Lakota chief Red Cloud attacked and defeated the U.S. army many times over. I want to repeat that part. The Lakota defeat the U.S. army. 1868: The second Fort Laramie treaty clearly guarantees the sovereignty of the Great Sioux Nation and the Lakotas' ownership of the sacred Black Hills. The government also promises land and hunting rights in the surrounding states. We promise that the Powder River country will henceforth be closed to all whites. The treaty seemed to be a complete victory for Red Cloud and the Sioux. I fact, this is the only war in American history in which the government negotiated a peace by conceding everything demanded by the enemy.

1869: The transcontinental railroad was completed. It began carrying, among other things, large number of hunters who began the wholesale killing of buffalo, eliminating a source of food and clothing and shelter for the Sioux. 1871: The Indian Appropriation Act makes all Indians wards of the federal government. In addition, the military issued orders forbidding western Indians from leaving reservations. All western Indians at that point in time were now prisoners of war. Also in 1871, we ended the time of treaty making. The problem with treaties is they allow tribes to exist as sovereign nations, and we can't have that; we had plans.

1874: General George Custer announced the discovery of gold in Lakota territory, specifically the Black Hills. The news of gold creates a massive influx of white settlers into Lakota Nation. Custer recommends that Congress find a way to end the treaties with the Lakota as soon as possible. 1875: The Lakota war begins over the violation of the Fort Laramie treaty. 1876: On July 26th on its way to attack a Lakota village, Custer's 7th Cavalry was crushed at the battle of Little Big Horn. 1877: The great Lakota warrior and chief named Crazy Horse surrendered at Fort Robinson. He was later killed while in custody. 1877 is also the year we found a way to get around the Fort Laramie treaties. A new agreement was presented to Sioux chiefs and their leading men under a campaign known as "sell or starve." Sign the paper, or no food for your tribe. Only 10 percent of the adult male population signed. The Fort Laramie treaty called for at least three-quarters of the tribe to sign away land. That clause was obviously ignored.

1887: The Dawes Act. Communal ownership of reservation lands ends. Reservations are cut up into 160-acre sections and distributed to individual Indians with the surplus disposed of. Tribes lost millions of acres. The American dream of individual land ownership turned out to be a very clever way to divide the reservation until nothing was left. The move destroyed the reservations, making it easier to further subdivide and to sell with every passing generation. Most of the surplus land and many of the plots within reservation boundaries are now in the hands of white ranchers. Once again, the fat of the land goes to wasichu.

1890, a date I believe to be the most important in this slide show. This is the year of the Wounded Knee massacre. On December 29th, U.S. troops surrounded a Sioux encampment at Wounded Knee Creek and massacred Chief Big Foot and 300 prisoners of war, using a new rapid-fire weapon that fired exploding shells called a Hotchkiss gun. For this so-called battle, 20 Congressional Medals of Honor for valor were given to the 7th Cavalry. To this day, this is the most Medals of Honor ever awarded for a single battle. More Medals of Honor were given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than for any battle in World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. The Wounded Knee massacre is considered the end of the Indian wars. Whenever I visit the site of the mass grave at Wounded Knee, I see it not just a grave for the Lakota or for the Sioux, but as a grave for all indigenous peoples.

The holy man, Black Elk, said, "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there, and it was a beautiful dream."

With this event, a new era in Native American history began. Everything can be measured before Wounded Knee and after. Because it was in this moment with the fingers on the triggers of the Hotchkiss guns that the U.S. government openly declared its position on Native rights. They were tired of treaties. They were tired of sacred hills. They were tired of ghost dances. And they were tired of all the inconveniences of the Sioux. So they brought out their canons. "You want to be an Indian now, " they said, finger on the trigger. 1900: the U.S. Indian population reached its low point -- less than 250,000, compared to an estimated eight million in 1492.

Fast-forward. 1980: The longest running court case in U.S. history, the Sioux Nation v. the United States, was ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court determined that, when the Sioux were resettled onto reservations and seven million acres of their land were opened up to prospectors and homesteaders, the terms of the second Fort Laramie treaty had been violated. The court stated that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that the initial offering price plus interest should be paid to the Sioux Nation. As payment for the Black Hills, the court awarded only 106 million dollars to the Sioux Nation. The Sioux refused the money with the rallying cry, "The Black Hills are not for sale."

2010: Statistics about Native population today, more than a century after the massacre at Wounded Knee, reveal the legacy of colonization, forced migration and treaty violations. Unemployment on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation fluctuates between 85 and 90 percent. The housing office is unable to build new structures, and exiting structures are falling apart. Many are homeless, and those with homes are packed into rotting buildings with up to five families. 39 percent of homes on Pine Ridge have no electricity. At least 60 percent of the homes on the reservation are infested with black mold. More than 90 percent of the population lives below the federal poverty line. The tuberculosis rate on Pine Ridge is approximately eight times higher than the U.S. national average. The infant mortality rate is the highest on this continent and is about three times higher than the U.S. national average. Cervical cancer is five times higher than the U.S. national average. School dropout rate is up to 70 percent. Teacher turnover is eight times higher than the U.S. national average. Frequently, grandparents are raising their grandchildren because parents, due to alcoholism, domestic violence and general apathy, cannot raise them. 50 percent of the population over the age of 40 suffers from diabetes. The life expectancy for men is between 46 and 48 years old -- roughly the same as Afghanistan and Somalia.

The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, "My God, what are these people doing to themselves? They're killing each other. They're killing themselves while we watch them die." This is how we came to own these United States. This is the legacy of manifest destiny. Prisoners are still born into prisoner of war camps long after the guards are gone. These are the bones left after the best meat has been has been taken. A long time ago, a series of events was set in motion by a people who look like me, by wasichu, eager to take the land and the water and the gold in the hills. Those events led to a domino effect that has yet to end.

As removed as we the dominant society may feel from a massacre in 1890, or a series of broken treaties 150 years ago, I still have to ask you the question, how should you feel about the statistics of today? What is the connection between these images of suffering and the history that I just read to you? And how much of this history do you need to own even? Is any of this your responsibility today? I have been told that there must be something we can do. There must be some call to action. Because for so long I've been standing on the sidelines content to be a witness, just taking photographs. Because the solution seems so far in the past, I needed nothing short of a time machine to access them.

The suffering of indigenous peoples is not a simple issue to fix. It's not something everyone can get behind the way they get behind helping Haiti, of ending AIDS, or fighting a famine. The fix, as it's called, may be much more difficult for the dominant society than, say, a 50-dollar check or church trip to paint some graffiti-covered houses, or a suburban family donating a box of clothes they don't even want anymore. So where does that leave us? Shrugging our shoulders in the dark?

The United States continues on a daily basis to violate the terms of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties with the Lakota. The call to action I offer today -- my TED wish -- is this: Honor the treaties. Give back the Black Hills. It's not your business what they do with them."

daqui no início de uma incursão de seis meses em território literário nativo-americano.

imagens, daqui.

Black Elk Speaks

aqui. de John G. Neihardt.