Everyday Is a Good Day Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 1 titled “Harvest Moon” speaks of different women with whom the author was acquainted with that she felt stood as the strongest women that she has ever met in her life. She says that

“…many incredible women have danced in and out of my life. They are grandmothers, mothers, daughters, aunts, lovers, friends, sisters, and partners. Some have buried husbands and children, faced racism, confronted daunting health problems, and dealt with a staggering set of problems caused by extreme economic poverty, yet they led their nations, their families, and their communities with dignity, strength, and optimism.”

I felt that this was very powerful to say about all the women in her life. It says that these women may have faced many triumphs and tribulations, but they are the ones who hold their families together no matter what. She speaks specifically of a few women who have impacted her life such as Justine Buckskin who was a Mowhawk woman. Justine had her arm amputated and she said despite this “she was quite frail, and spoke passionately”. Another woman, Audrey Shenandoah who was a clan mother, teaches the Onondaga language. I love that she is part of the struggle of preservation of her culture through language. It seems that she is highly aware once a language dies a culture and its people go along right with it. I personally find this very admirable. Later on the author states that “another factor that greatly contributes to a different view of the world is our identity as members of a culturally distinct group of people”. These become the people who bridge the gap from traditional society to modern society. Even when faced with government intervention/oppression/terrorism Mary and Carrie Dann as the author puts it “represent the personification of indigenous womanhood- beautiful, strong, loving, free women who will live full rich lives with their children and grandchildren while waging a forty-year battle to keep the U.S. government from impounding their horses and cattle and evicting them from their land”. These two women like to call it domestic terrorism how the government has come into they home land to take their cattle and horses and then charging them 2 million dollars. I think that it is crazy, and another way the government has through the use of the system by passing acts and laws take rightful tribal land. I could see where this could be upsetting because these women not only have to deal with home life but deal with the government. It shows what native women have to deal with and its more than other women, but yet they remain strong.

Chapter 2 which was titled “ceremony” speaks of how “the spiritual life of indigenous people had been studied, copied, parodied, and exploited, but it had rarely been understood”. It is also mentioned of during the times of Indian Boarding schools where priests and nuns would abuse then and this abuse would carry on. This is like a contamination of a culture if you will. Beyond this exploitation and “rehabilitation”, the women and men have been made a commodity spiritually because “outsiders turn to indigenous spiritual leaders hoping for an easy set of instructions in “Native American spirituality” to help them understand themselves and their place in an excessively self-indulgent society devoid of spirituality”. There are a collection of stories where the women have spoken about their place in the world thanks to their connection to spirituality. Some of my favorites are listed:

Wilma Mankiller
“The Primary goal of prayer is promote a sense of oneness and unity. Negative thoughts were treated by Cherokee healers with the same medicines as wounds, headaches, and or physical illness. It was believed that unchecked negative thoughts can permeate the being and manifest in themselves in negatives actions”. This speaks to me in saying that in ones own spirituality is negativity is a disease and it has to be treated. If you are negative you cannot grow and it will affect in life everyday if you carry that. I think of it as the raincloud over a persons head, if you have a raincloud no one would want to be around you because of the fear of become drenched in your own negativity. Sorry but that’s really deep.

Rosalie Little Thunder
“After many years of being de-spiritualized, as many of us were, I began practicing the traditional rituals, which was a slow and uphill recovery process, I sill grieve for relatives that were de-spiritualized and now call our traditional rituals “witchcraft”. It is hard to imagine that someone can take your spirituality because it is such a personal and individualistic thing.

Angela Gonzales:
“Spirituality is a very private matter”. Again like I said before it is hard to imagine that someone could “take” spirituality from a person, and I do believe it is very much so a private matter between what you believe, if it a god, several gods, no god, a creator, etc.