Winona LaDuke - Part 3 & 4 and Karl Gasper's Article

This week’s reading of LaDuke and Gasper was very interesting and informative. However, I wanted to begin with something that resonated with me last class. Throughout the readings I have taken a more passive and informative stance as a reader on the information, partly because the arguments that the writers’ pose make sense and are very logical and articulated. I soak up the information and I don’t feel like I have really formed any vehement opinions or stances. For instance, in LaDuke, I can see the Native American perspective, and to some extent I can see the other perspective that exists in the clouded judgment of democracy and capitalism. Although that perspective is not desirable for me, I can still put myself in their shoes and their position. However, it was commented in class that there is a push for the development of the mind and NOT the body, resulting in a body that is so overly disciplined that we “relieve our body in perverse ways.” A few weeks ago, for my memoir writing class, I attended a lecture regarding alienation and “The Question Mark Kid” (it was a writing contest in light of the Virginia Tech shooting because the shooter was a creative writing major). The panel talked about the physical and emotional alienation which inevitably led to the worst school shooting in American history. Thinking about this idea of alienation of the body there is a little irony in the fact that the shooter choose to “relieve his body in perverse ways” to compensate his alienation in the highly intellectualized educational atmosphere. As a result, I began to ask myself, how is it that our educational system condones sitting in a classroom for sometimes four hours, disassociating our body for the pursuit of the “development of the mind?”

As a balance to school, I enjoy playing recreational soccer (to add a personal antidote). I am on five teams (both indoor and outdoor) and I believe that my enjoyment comes from the fact that it is an expression of my body - it is a type of release. I experience only concentrated, concrete thinking while forcing my body to play through your emotional states such as injury and fatigue. Furthermore, all of my intellectual actions are expressed solely through the movements of the body. In the sport, the body becomes a form of expression which, to some extent, fuses the intellect with the body. Thinking about this situation I began to vehemently believe that the development of the mind must occur simultaneously with the development of the body. Alienation of one or the other creates a fragmented self. Therefore, the vehemence of my spirituality occurs in this particular instance, not through traditional religious doctrines, but by combining the intellectual with the physical.

This idea of the physical helping attain the spiritual is reiterated in Karl Gasper’s article, “To Hold God’s Face in One’s Hands.” He indicated that most ideas of mystic figures are associated with the “White elite, ensconced in perpetual solitude, safe from worldly temptations” (24). However, he was surprised to find the mystics in the poor and marginalized (26). Gasper notes that their daily activities of farming or fishing left then in tune with nature and able to connect their emotional state with their physical state and the physical surroundings.

He also brings up the idea of the power of nonverbal communication when he states that “I realized the futility of writing down words spoken straight from the soul. These were words to be heard and cherished, not documented and printed” (26). I felt that he implied that it is the combination of nonverbal actions and truthful words that embodies such power but leaves them to seem cliché when written down. Gasper even falls into this trap when he states that we need the silence of nature such as “the movement of the stars, the whispers of the winds, the songs of the turtledoves” (27). Although this is true, it becomes somewhat cliché because, on the one hand, it is too hard to encapsulate the emotional and physical response to the movement of the stars by just stating those words. But on the other hand, these actions provide a spiritual and deep response in an individual. I believe that it is this nonverbal coupled with verbal communication that provides individuals, including myself, with a spiritual feeling.

Ultimately, Gasper argues that the ordinary is sacred. He states that, “every day is holy, every place is sacred, and the divine infuses everything around us” (27). This is also what LaDuke is trying to illustrate regarding the Native American culture. LaDuke writes in parts three and four of “Recovering the Sacred,” that companies and corporations see seeds, rice, corn, horses and the land as commodities, while the Native Americans view these items as all equally sacred and significant. For instance, she quotes an Iroquois biologists as saying, “the simple act of planting connects me the past, roots me in the present, and commits me to the future” (165). This interpretation of his land being sacred has established him in the past, present, and future simultaneously. Yet, LaDuke reiterates over and over in the book how most non-whites attempt to strip this deep connection of the sacred ordinary in pursuit of profit. Time and time again, LaDuke explains how these big businesses tear tribes away from their spirituality when they use Native American products or land as commodities. They are robbed this deep connection to the past, present, and future.

I also felt that LaDuke used the last chapters effectively by illustrating the plight of a few non-Natives and Natives who have been proactive in their attempt to reconcile and recover what was taken from them. LaDuke explains that “the reconciliation of loss is only through vigilant and long-term vision” (225). The Native Americans have been wronged. LaDuke clearly asserts and supports this statement throughout the pages. However, LaDuke leaves the book on a positive note by providing examples of how the Native Americans have turned travesty into hope and renewal. She states that they have bought back land, aided the education of farming, cultivation of plants, and begun to establish green power. For instance, LaDuke notes that “we are energy junkies” and America has an “insatiable thirst for oil.” But instead of perpetuating this downtrodden and antiquated system of wasting resources, Native Americans have established wind energy and taken proactive measures to ensure harmony with nature. Essentially, both LaDuke and Gasper place the most emphasis on the fact that ordinary must be considered sacred in order to ensure a healthier, cleaner, and more spiritual surrounding for our lives.