Archive for June, 2007
Wisdom is better than wit…
Beauty is not in the face.
Beauty is a light in the heart.
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury – and refinement rather fashion; to be worthy – not respectable – and wealthy – not rich – to study hard – think quietly – talk gently – act frankly – to listen to the stars and birds – to babes and sages – with open heart – to bear on cheerfully – do all bravely – awaiting occasions – worry never – in a word to – like the spiritual – unbidden and unconcious – grow up through the common…
Warning: Put down your soda before proceeding!
Fasten your seatbelt!
Adjust your attitude!
Author assumes no responsibility for those who snort their sodas, fall off their chairs, or get their panties in a twist, or in any way your attitude after reading this list!
If you spend much time around American Indians, you will discover that we have a deep dislike of ‘New Age Crystal Waving Twinkie Twinkies’ who shamelessly appropriate, distort, misuse and disrespect our culture.
Accordingly, if you want to get along with Indians, it is wise to avoid being a twinkie.
The following test will help you determine if you’re a twinkie.
Below is a list of behavior patterns that most of us have seen and have nudged each other over. If these are offensive to anyone, skip the list, quit having a bad hair day and uncross your “i’s” because we were doing what Indians everywhere have learned to do, no matter what type of circumstances we are in, and that is to laugh with ourselves.
Continuations are accepted!!!!!!
You might be a twinkie if…
1….you don’t know what a ‘twinkie’ is.
2….you think ‘twinkie’ is a name brand of golden sponge cake.
3….you’re a shaman, and all your friends are shamans too.
4….your Indian Spirit Guide only speaks English.
5….you have a plastic Indian headdress hanging from your rear view mirror.
6….you don’t drive a ‘rez rocket’.
7….you think apples are for eating.
8….you gave all your dogs authentic Native American names.
9….your great grandmother was a Cherokee princess.
10….your great grandfather was a Cherokee princess, too.
11….you own collector plates featuring men with rippling muscles, feathers, and prostrate maidens.
12….you’ve never been to a 49.
13….you’ve never woken up with a houseful strangers fixing themselves breakfast, eating your bacon, and calling you cousin’.
14….you bought the collectible Barbie ™ ‘with authentic Native costume’.
15….you named your dog, cat, or hamster for a famous Native American.
16….you think Dances with Wolves is a great movie.
17….you don’t know who Leonard Peltier is.
18….you want to know where to apply to get your Indian name.
19….you desperately want to date a Native American person.
20….you’ve been studying Native American spirituality for three months and are now ready to lead a sweat.
21….you send greeting cards with images of Noble Red Men on them.
22….you have ‘Native American scent’ air freshener in your car.
23….you have never stood next to a dancer after five hours of powwow in the hot sun and therefore think ‘Native American scent’ is something you >want to have in your car.
24….you don’t know what a CDIB card is, and wouldn’t qualify for one even if you did.
25….you wonder why that abalone shell has holes in the bottom.
26….you want to get a cool Native American tattoo.
27….you had your brother-in-law airbrush a big eagle on the tailgate of your pickup truck and you’re not a Harley fan.
28….you refer to a drum as a ‘tom tom’.
29….you think ‘heya heyaya’ is the Indian word for ‘God’, because it’s in all the songs.
30….you bought the soundtrack to Disney’s Pocahontas and sing along.
31….your mother gave you a t shirt with a picture of a scantily clad woman petting a wolf for your birthday.
32….you mistook an Italian man for a Sioux chief.
33….you signed a petition protesting the slaughter of buffalo while dropping your trash on the ground.
34….you had a dream in which you discovered your ‘true name’ is ‘Spirit of the Red Wolf Who Runs with Crystals’.
35….you’re only interested in the ‘good parts’ of Native spirituality.
36….your bumper sticker has a quote from Chief Seattle instead of AIM.
37….you bought ‘genuine Indian moccasins’ made in a factory in Minnesota.
38….when you meet a real Indian, you hold your hand out like a stop sign and say, “How!”
39….you made a construction paper headdress and put on a play at school and you’re more than twelve years old.
40….you can remember that Indian guy who cried in the ecology commercial, but you don’t know his name.
41….when you meet a man with a mohawk, you assume he must be a punk rocker.
42….you have a mohawk–and you’re female.
43….you have no idea if the headband you’re wearing is intended for men or women.
44….you didn’t notice your ‘Indian jewelry’ was stamped ‘made in Thailand’.
45….you own many Indian art objects, but you have never been to a powwow.
46….you think militant Indians are a disgrace to the red race, but you just adore Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
47….you interrupt an elder to tell them they’re wrong because a book you read said so.
48….you’re a man, but you don’t have footprints on your back from your woman walking all over you.
49….you were an Indian princess in a former life.
50….you were a medicine man in a former life.
51….you want people to call you ‘Chief’, even though you are not the leader of a fire department, police department, or a tribe.
52….you made up your own tribe.
53….you are the great, great, great, great, grandson of Tecumseh, putting the number of his offspring at 24,473–more than the entire population of the Shawnee tribe today.
54….you didn’t know that Tecumseh was Shawnee.
55….you’re the grandson of Tecumseh–you can remember sitting on his knee.
56….you built a sweat lodge from instructions you found on the Web.
57….you chose to leave the city and live on a mountain in a cabin with no running water.
58….you get annoyed if people are late.
59….your fur coats are all store bought.
60….you have no idea why Native people laugh hysterically when they see you on the street.
61….you call a shinny stick a ‘LaCrosse stick’.
62….you admire Chief Joseph for what he said, but you’re not sure what he did.
63….you call the Sioux people ‘Lakota’–even the Dakota and Nakota.
64….you think all Native Americans spend their days communing with Mother Nature.
65….you willingly pay $300 for an authentic sweat with a plastic shaman.
66….you believe that ‘freedom of expression’ gives you the right to poke your nose into matters that don’t concern you.
67….you ask a question, then argue with the answer.
68….last year you were into Buddhism, the year before that you were a witch, and the year before that you were a member of Green Peace.
69….you had a sudden impulse to drive non-stop across America to the Black Hills–and you don’t even know anyone out there.
70….you think the Black Hills are the only sacred site in America.
71….you wear plastic chokers to honor Native Americans.
72….you love Native American jewelry, but make it more attractive by adding your own personal touch.
73….you’ve never used an outhouse.
74….you’ve never eaten ‘slow elk’–you’re sure you’d remember if you had!
75….when served ‘Indian steak,’ you complain, “Hey, this is bologna!”
76….road kill makes you go, ‘Ew!’ instead of, ‘Hey, new regalia!’
77…you don’t know how many drummers it takes to screw in a light bulb.
78….you ask complete strangers for advice on naming your kids.
79…you got interested in Native culture by watching ‘Star Trek’.
80….you use words like ‘squaw,’ ‘buck,’ ‘berdache,’ and ‘shaman,’ and wonder why people are mad at you.
81….you bought a medicine bag, but you don’t know what’s in it.
82….you think a powwow sounds like a great place to work on your tan, so >you wore your swimsuit.
83….you’re proud of the fact that you can name all five Indian tribes.
84….your car is not made out of equal parts Bondo and duct tape.
85….you selected wallpaper with Indians, horses, and tipis for your son’s bedroom.
86….you’ve never eaten commodity cheese.
87….you’ve never used commodity cheese as a doorstop.
88….you hang Indian corn on your front door instead of eating it.
89….your mother gave you an Indian name, but it never occurred to you to ask her what it meant until it was too late.
90….you get defensive and evasive if anybody questions your Native credentials.
91….you’ve never heard of fry bread.
92….you won’t eat fry bread because it has too much fat in it.
93….you think it’s an honor to Native Americans that Jeep named a sport utility vehicle after them.
94….none of your relatives has diabetes.
95….you are one third Native American.
96….you want to know what tribe you’re related to, but have no intention of actually doing the genealogy to figure it out.
97….you ask the Internet to tell you who you’re related to instead of asking your relatives.
98….you think you should get in free to a powwow because you have Indian blood.
99….you’re proud of being a twinkie.
100….you wear the purple suede fringed miniskirt with knee high moccasins to a pow wow and wonder why no one likes it.
101….you walk up to strange Indian women and ask them to bless your beads.
102….you have a dream catcher hanging from your rear view mirror.
103….you have a Nativity scene featuring a tipi and Indians in regalia.
104….you think Native Americans should put up with your crap because after all “we’re all related.”
105….you offered me a ‘talking feather’.
106….you write in a stilted, poetic, formal English that sounds like a Victorian author putting words into the mouth of a Noble Savage character in a dime novel.
107….you feel sorry for the poor Native Americans who are so benighted they can’t understand that you’re right.
108….when entering an argument with a Native American, you attack their method of expression, instead of the points they have to make.
109….you exhort us to unite and work together and get along with each other–as if nobody had ever thought of this (obvious) idea before.
110….you have never mended your underwear, hemmed a dress, repaired a car, or made art objects out of duct tape.
111….you have to go and find some scissors to open your package with.
112….you joined the Nuage tribe.
113….you just adore Mary Summer Rain.
114….you tell everyone how proud and humble and honored you are to carry a pipe.
115….you have to have the last word every single time.
116….it embarrasses you to be seen in the company of real Indians, so you’d rather hang out with twinkies like yourself.
117….when you see a person in traditional Native American dress, you pat your mouth and make ‘woo woo’ noises.
118….somebody asks a question about Native American culture, and you make up your own answer.
119…you think Indians have no sense of humor.
120 •…you can’t see that you are funny. •
121…you think this list isn’t funny.
122…This page is close captioned for the humor-impaired.
123…if your idea of a tribal dance is a ballet.
124…if you don’t know what a “rez rocket” is
125…if you don’t have at least something wrong with your car
126…if you say, “You don’t look like an Indian” to an Indian (or if you think all Indians look like Geromino)
127…you don’t have at least 4 feet of balin’ wire in the trunk of your car.
128…you butcher a sheep while trying to sheer it during your last visit with your “Navajo” grandma.
129…you think that the hair on your back qualifies you to be a skinwalker.
130 …the framed picture of your great-great-great-granddaddy is really of a “chief” that you tore out of your high school history book.
Posted by ro on June 18th at 2:06pm in in the news
OLYMPIA — Four months ago, Lacey resident Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Pond and their children Katie, David and Danielle, ages 10 to 13, were set for a relaxing cruise from Miami to the Bahamas.
But Pond, Langbehn’s partner for nearly 18 years, was stricken in Miami with a brain aneurysm and died. The family says the way they were treated by hospital staff compounded their shock and grief.
Langbehn, a social worker, said officials at the University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital did not recognize her or their jointly adopted children as part of Pond’s family. They were not allowed to be with her in the emergency room, and Langbehn’s authority to make decisions for Pond was not recognized.
“We never set out to change the world or change how others accept gay families,� Langbehn told the crowd at the Capital City Pride on Sunday. “We just wanted to be allowed to live equally and raise our children by giving them all the same opportunities their peers have.�
While Washington is one of a half-dozen states to recognize same-sex partnerships in some fashion, Florida is not.
Compelled to speak out
Langbehn said that the pain from losing Pond is still fresh, but she spoke at the gay pride event Sunday because the issue of legal recognition of homosexual families was too important to let go.
“I want people to be able to hold their partner’s hand in their moment of death,� she said.
Pond suffered the aneurysm just before the R Family Vacations cruise ship left Miami for the Bahamas in February, Langbehn said. After Pond was taken to the emergency room, Langbehn said she was informed by a social worker that they were in an “anti-gay state� and that they needed legal paperwork before Langbehn could see Pond.
Even after a friend in Olympia faxed the legal documents that showed that Pond had authorized Langbehn to make medical decisions for her, Langbehn said she wasn’t invited to be with her partner or told anything about her condition.
She said she wasn’t allowed to see Pond again until a priest arrived to give Pond the Anointing of the Sick, also commonly known as Last Rites.
“I was shocked. It never would have been on my radar that we wouldn’t be allowed to say goodbye,� Langbehn said. “When I was an emergency room social worker at Mary Bridge (Children’s Hospital and Health Center in Tacoma), if someone had said they were an aunt or a partner, I would have let them say their last goodbyes.�
Langbehn says she still has not been given Pond’s medical records from the hospital nor her death certificate directly from the county or the state, which affected their children’s Social Security benefits.
But she has received support from the local community and from former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, who has e-mailed her to offer support and said she was angry over the way the family was treated. O’Donnell’s partner, Kelli O’Donnell, is a co-founder of R Family Vacations.
Capital City Pride co-chair Anna Schlecht said that Langbehn’s story drives home the reason why gays and lesbians continue to lobby for national legal recognition of their partnerships and families.
“When Janice told me the story over the phone, I started crying,� she said. “Death is hard enough. I can’t imagine having my children barred from me in the last moments of my life.�
Langbehn said attitudes changed when doctors in charge of organ donation recognized Langbehn and Pond as a couple. They accepted Langbehn’s signature on the consent forms, she said. They also allowed the children to visit with their mother, who was kept on life support while organ matches were found.
Pond, who was a volunteer with her church and with the Girl Scouts, as well as a foster mother, wished to donate her organs because she wanted to continue to give to people after her death, Langbehn said.
“I heard from the heart recipient last week,� she said. “Now he’s able to play with his grandkids again and he definitely would like to meet our family.�
Venice Buhain
The Olympian
