Category: epritchard

Robert Jay, the author of Consciousness The Key To Freedom, called me back and we connected this morning. He said financial harassment in Maryland has slowed him down and he can’t go to press with the new book for two more months. The good news is he liked my edits on The Awakening; only three suggestions. I can make the changes within an hour’s work. (done!) He sounded in good spirits, and said he had workshops coming up in Alabama; they are very open to new ideas there right now, at least some. Up here in the north, that sounds odd, but in fact I think our northern cultural snobbery is way out of date.

Then I got a call from Linda Law, and we finally got a chance to discuss what happened with our education grant that got torpedoed. She has written many successful grants, which is quite a skill, and she said that this grant was the best she ever put together. She said the objections didn’t make any sense. They said they preferred more reliance on the historical site teams, but the grant that won had less sites, and proposed to use sites that have limited knowledge of Native American history, and who usually call on me for free advice! Her point of view is that there are plenty of other grants we could apply for. I have no idea about that, so to me it’s hard to be so cheery. But Linda knows her stuff, so I agreed to have another meeting.

Peacemakers In Action

I talked to Tom Dostou for a while, and received his email. I learned that a life long dream of mine is coming true, a gift from my elder, the great Peacemaker, William Commanda. On September 24th through 26th there is going to be the first great gathering of Algonquin leaders in probably 400 years. This will take place in Maniwaki, Quebec. Tom and William are basing the event to some extent on my map and my research, using my statement about the gathering of the 84 nations (No Word For Time) in the time of prophecy. The concept of 84 nations comes from the ancient creation tale of hoops of seven nations times twelve. The idea of the Algonquins finally reuniting at the end of the seventh fire is as old as the hills. I think I’ve heard that all my life, and I’m sure William has too. Well, he’s going for it, and so Tom invited me to participate! This was quite a lift after learning so much bad news from Linda.

I called and left a message for Eddie Benton Benaise to confirm his address and will send him Paths of Light, which I will want his blessing on before Waniwaki. Eddie is not only “a legend in his own time” but is probably more of a legend than almost anyone alive today, as if Sitting Bull (whom he resembles) suddenly showed up in a supermarket! In my book Paths of Light Paths of Darkness, I did a critical “white guy” analysis of his writings on prophecy, and in fact they make perfect sense. He is the author of The Mishomis Book, one of the most important books on Native American culture, but little understood, and a founder of AIM (in its early days) and of the Red School House in Minneapolis. He is the Grand Medicine Chief of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge, the largest of the Mide lodges. We exchanged emails a month ago, then I got busy in NYC.

I went to the Inquiring Mind and took notes on a book about whaling, Whaling Days. It said that in the early days at least half the whaling teams in Cape Cod Bay were Native Americans; relative of mine, in fact. My Wampanoag ancestors were those whalers, and my branch of the family ended up owning their own whaling ships in Westport, formerly Liberty Town Indian Reservation. That branch of the family was named Boston.

I called Brian Wilkes, the webmaster for http://www.algonquinculture.org and agreed, on his suggestion, that the Center For Algonquin Culture should go under the non-profit umbrella of The Heritage Foundation, which his Standing Bear foundation is under. We’ve talked of this for years, but now it seems important. The Standing Bear Foundation (his name is Yona Gadoga, and if you speak fluent Cherokee, well, nuff said!) is going to focus more on restoring at-risk languages in the future. Right now, CAC’s language projects are not getting support from people of influence due to state politics, all of which probably has to do with gambling.

The highlight of my day was getting the garbage out late but just catching the garbage truck in time. This reminds me of one of my favorite teachings from Frank TiConti, the late Anishinabi elder and pipe carrier. He said, “Being a pipe carrier is a lot like being a garbage man….some roads are hard!” I used to laugh my head off at stuff like that, but today Frank is dead and I’m having a hard time getting support for my language programs so that our Algonquin children can speak their own native tongue. So it is true, some roads are hard.

I was talking to Little Eagle and he said that with Edwards on the ticket polls are showing a close race between Democrats and Republicans in the southern states from Virginia to Texas. I was talking on the cordless phone in the road and my neighbor came out to get his mail. My neighbor is the Republican State Representative from our district, who is moving. I guess he overheard me saying something nice about Democrats.

I also called the folks at home. Yesterday, mom told me a story of how when this nephew of mine was younger he was running around at a party with a staple gun and shooting it at people. She said that I stopped him and took the staple gun away and reprimanded him. He was very upset and out of control at that time and wasn’t exactly overjoyed at my reaction. We didn’t speak for a while after that. She said there was a great risk of blinding someone in the eye, and that he would now be very sorry if that happened, because he’s come to his senses. Now she says he is all into helping other people and being the peacemaker. He is now a very tall guy! I think she said he wants to be a policeman so he can take guns away from out of control crazy people. I don’t remember much about the original incident, but I’m glad he’s found his path, whatever it took to get there.

In this Promethian year, I can see mounting evidence that the states are making Algonquin language and history preservation as difficult as possible. The economic weapons they use are just as invisible as the Deniable Action Weapons (laser, maser, phaser, tazer, or whatever) now being used on dissidents. I talked to Watie, and he caught me up on what has been going on with the Penobscot band council and cultural preservation committee. He said that Carol, who is opposed to my easy-to-use system of learning Penobscot, is right now an essential part of the current program (that is getting major funding from some mysterious source) and so her objections carry a lot of weight. I said as an outsider, it was hard for me to see that, but I trusted he was right as usual. He said I had the tribe’s (tacit) blessings however to finish the project and to go to the outside world if necessary for assistance, and reminded me that he and I had been working on preserving the language long before the creation of the committee. He said for the record that our groundbreaking work did not necessarily precipitate the creation of that committee. However he felt there was grassroots support for what I was doing, and that he wanted me to say that it was at his request I undertook the project, which was true. I am grateful for the opportunity to finish this important work, however I can’t help but feeling like John Henry, in that the committee has thousands of dollars at their disposal and I am without a cent. At one time there was talk of incorporating my work into the committee’s, but Carol objected. In the end, we shall see whose work bears the best fruit.

I talked to Wappingers native Dave Fisher about the growing need to form the Wappingers Council. I told him of the great turtle, which lies in Wappingers territory, and expressed my thought that it was an omen that we should unite the brothers and sisters of the Wappingers nation, at least in order to protect the turtle. He agreed. I explained my views to him concerning state recognition, which some have been holding out for. I said that we are ethnic Algonquins, and have an inherent right to speak up for our ethnicity. I commented, partly in jest, partly quite serious, that if a black person, such as Whoopi Goldberg, wants to stand up for black values, black culture, and civil rights, she doesn’t have to prove that she’s a citizen of Uganda or the Congo. Yet that’s how institutions treat us as Algonquins. We don’t need state recognition in order to reconstruct Wappingers culture. I urged him to move to unite the people and to stand up for what we believe in, the environment, individual freedom and dignity, and traditional culture. He sounded inspired. The next day, I ran across Bill W’s number. Bill is the strongest natural leader we have. He knows I am working on a Wappingers language program and a history book, and has named me Wappingers Tribal Historian.

I found the press conference from May 8th 01 today on the web, which bears further looking into. I also looked through Peace File’s website for a while, a wonderful place to webbrowze.

I worked in my favorite air conditioned library, and did research on space weapons. Later, I was looking for UV paint, and someone said to go to Dragons Den on Rte 9. I went and ran into the owner of the whole chain, a man named Fred, whom I probably hadn’t seen in ten to twenty years. The name Karen Doe came up, his former wife, and a Penobscot He said she was back in Old Orchard. I was surprised because she and I met in Old Orchard when we were kids, and have been running into each other since. She used to call me her “Water Brother” because of a ceremony we did back then, but also of course because one day we discovered quite by accident that we both say “uggabugga” when we’re flummoxed by something. You can imagine how rare it is to find someone else saying that. It must be genetic. Now, in all my years as an Algonquin linguist, I have never come across a definition for this word, but we both say it, and we are both Maine Algonquins, so that’s my evidence. Add it to the list!

She is now a recording artist on the flute with Narada Records. She was on the wonderful Inner Child CD with Michael Jones, by far his best album, no longer in stores for some reason, along with Nancy Rumbel. She played flute on a recording of mine, and there was a problem that never got resolved so I never released the recording. That was years ago. Now here is a chance to resolve it, and maybe the cousins will be reunited in the spirit of Uggabugga. That made me happy to know she was alive and well after all this time. She now has a bunch of teenagers. By the way, I didn’t find the paint. I was told I’d never find it! I ran into Ray working at the library, and exchanged notes, but his brother in law showed up and he left in midconversation.

I did some reading on Vannevar Bush, a truly fascinating man. He was the founder or inventor of much of what we are just learning about in the news today. He was the founder of Raytheon and Texas Instruments for one thing. He developed a form of computer, had influence over the atomic bomb’s development, and was a pioneer in radio and television components, and indirectly, refrigerators. Raytheon means “God of Life.” He is also credited with the concept of hyperlink, and much of the conceptualization of the internet. (Sorry Mr. Gore, you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.) But there were views on other things like genetics that most of us would not agree with Mr. Bush. He also wanted to link the human brain directly in with computers, an idea only a mad scientist could love. In fact these inventions have now been patented, and some say the same thing can be done with electronic beams, which opens up a can of worms in regards to the space weapons program. But I don’t believe that.

In the evening, in between baseball innings (I’m monitoring this amazing surge from the Mets) I watched C Span with some amazement. William Delahunt D Mass was criticizing Bush for allowing the US to lose credibility, saying the Bush guys believe their own PR. Most importantly, he quoted a poll in Stars and Stripes magazine, a patriotic military mag, that said that 52% of the GIs polled said that “morale was low.” That is remarkable. Everywhere on TV while surfing channels I saw hardcore conservatives questioning everything they used to believe. Chris Matthewson has always seemed like a sincere conservative, but he had just seen Fahrenheit 9-11 and said he thought it was a really good, emotion-packed movie, and was asking Howard Dean if it was really true about the Bush connections with Osama Bin Laden. Howard was trying to act Presidential, and said he hadn’t had time to see it. It was an historic moment on talk TV, a conservative more outraged at Bush than the arch-liberal. He was also shocked that 40% of Americans still believe that Saddam was connected to the attack on the World Trade Center. Howard Dean also said that with John Edwards on the ticket, he predicts the Dems will pick up states we don’t expect. (We don’t know what those states will be till we get there, but they were red before!)

There were clips everywhere of Kerry and Edwards walking around together, and Kerry looked really genuinely happy for the first time. That was good to see. Again, it was a BLOG that revealed the news about Edwards, even though the New York Post got it wrong and announced Gephart as Kerry’s Choice. The BLOG from an airport hanger said they saw Kerry’s jet with signs “Kerry and Edwards” painted on the side. That was the only reliable news source that got the scoop.

I had a morning meeting with the Good Doctor, Michael Picucci (NIH 2000 Man of the Year) and it went very well. There is a lot of work to do on chapter two, and we did a taping session, him commenting on the material and me coaxing deeeeeep deeeep ideas from the back of his amazing brain. We talked about the language of living. It was sort of a relaxed day of doing chores, and continuing the research.