From: Vikki Riley <riley.vikki-AT-gmail.com>
Date: 03 Jul 2009 17:22:06 UTC   (01:22:06 PM in author's locale)
To: Situationist <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>

got it, great reading

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:15 PM, richard haden <richard_haden-AT-yahoo.com>wrote:

>
>
>
>
> I don't think this made it to the list, last night, so here it comes
> again...in response to the conversation about Native Americans, here is one
> particular tribe of American Indians that I am very familiar with...
>
> Vikki,
>
> The Lummi nation in North West Washington State has about 6000 members.
> They have, what seems to be about four family names on the whole reservation
> >>> solomon, Far, Jefferson and a couple of others that I can't remember.
> Most were forced to change names as well as become christians back in the
> good old days of stealing cheap land from natives...
>
> The biggest problem that the reservation suffered, happened in the mid
> 90's. It was Crack and Meth that destroyed a lot of the community.
> Unfortunately that was about the time when a wave--a crack and cheap meth
> hit that corner of Washington State in the rural areas as an epidemic. Hell
> even inland farmers got caught up in the epidemic...imagine a 60 year old
> farmer who had little experience with urban living, all of a sudden taking a
> hit on the crack pipe. Many had early heart attacks, lost farms and so on.
>
> I know that a great number of young members of the tribe got swept away
> with the crack, meth and pharmaceuticals wave. I'm not sure how it is going
> there these days but I can't help to think that it must have gotten
> better...for it couldn't have gotten worse. I lived in the area back
> then...there was a big difference between the Lummi and the Nooksack Indians
> who lived further inland--as well the Native American up in Canada who had
> more tribal Independence than many US indigenous peoples have.
>
> Because of the business I was in at the time, which involved crossing
> forested borders--I was asked a few times to teach several lummi tribe
> members how to become woodsy again. That was very ironic considering their
> history...Seems that everybody wanted to get in to the smuggling racket back
> then. Except the locals lost track of knowing the ways of tracking. [I did
> teach a few native friends how to stay out of trouble and how to safely
> navigate in dense forest]
>
> Hanging with those guys was very intense--they always liked to say to me
> when I was dealing with them...Richard... your on the rezz...then they would
> "try" to take all my shit. That was oddly enough a way of being excepted. I
> was sort of a forced way to always be alert...in order to go native now and
> then, one paid the interesting price of enjoying a hyper-real awareness. The
> other thing was...that the Rezz seemed to be portable...it meant where ever
> we were, even if I were leading them through the forest of British Columbia,
> it was the Rezz.
>
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lummi
>
> Richard Haden----
> Message sent by the Situationist list.
> To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe situationist" in the body of a message
> to requests-AT-lists.nothingness.org
>
>
----
Message sent by the Situationist list.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe situationist" in the body of a message
to requests-AT-lists.nothingness.org