Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Quest for the White Gods

Sage Frank (left) with his little brother Bluestar Frank, his dad Cameron Frank and his mom April Carmelo outside their family home in the City of Shasta Lake. Sage was allegedly attacked by an apparent self-proclaimed white supremist.

        Is it just me, or does there seem to be a thread of White Supremacy running through all this "truth about Ancient America" stuff?
          Let me explain a little:
   By coincidence, via the Face Book Phenomena, at about the same time, I “met” three different people in three different parts of Turtle Island who had begun to realize that they were seeing stones and stone constructions atypical of the works of Post Contact people. Call them colonists or settlers or Europeans - call them people who arrived here and there after a specific time, depending on where we’re talking about, places where European diseases spread after October 12, 1492 and decimated a whole hemisphere of Human Beings.
    They were posting some amazing photographs and were searching for answers as to who built them, why hadn’t they heard of them, and perhaps questioning whether or not it was “real,” and not just their imagination, some sort of delusion. I can relate to that.
I’m lucky, I guess. It’s a lonesome feeling to have something like this happen to you.
I’m lucky, I guess, to have early on, about twenty years ago, met and talked with a Schaghticoke Elder who was not very surprised at the photographs I showed her of stones I thought might be effigies or petroforms.
    I’m lucky, I guess, that she told me about book about The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization, which in turn led me to a friendship with the author of a well known blog about (and called) “Rock Piles,” and several people that I met through him. We don’t always agree on things, but we persevere and forgive each other’s grumpiness at times, but mostly we share discoveries, in the field and in the literature, among other things. We celebrate small victories and grieve great losses together, which are what friends are for.
    I’m lucky to be just where I am, by a Contact time Village by a Sacred Site. I’m lucky to have an artist’s eye and a great love of reading
   So my three new “online friends” are each in unique places. All three friends find themselves in similar situations, seeing similar constructions, all seeking answers to questions that may or may not ever be answered. We all think we know a little bit for sure, think we learn a little more each day, and try to be open about it in our thinking, sifting through a dizzying amount of contradictory information, complicated by bias of all kinds, and in the end really relying on intuition and imagination that some times more important, a wiser man than I once said, was more important than information.
    I am the odd person out in the fact that I have no Native American Ancestry. My other three friends do. Two of them have come to embrace that Ancestry, tracing family genealogy, one living in the original territory (or at least pretty close to it), very much involved with his relations in the area.
     Meanwhile the other friend tracked down her roots, finding her Grandfather was Tsalagi/Tsalagi  as these people seem to have called themselves but as Wikipedia puts it: “…Cherokee (which) may have originally been derived from the Choctaw word Cha-la-kee, which means "those who live in the mountains", or Choctaw Chi-luk-ik-bi, meaning "those who live in the cave country"…The earliest Spanish rendering of Cherokee, from 1755, is Tchalaquei.[8] Another theory is that "Cherokee" derives from a Lower Creek word, Ciló-kki, meaning someone who speaks another language.[9] The most common derivation, however, is an Anglicisation of their autonym, or name for themselves: Tsalagi in their language.” This ancestry was a surprise to her; she’d thought that her Grandpa Den was a Modoc living on the Hoopa Reservation in Northern California, where she spent many summers with Grandpa Den. She also turns out to be a great niece of the naturalist John Muir, crucially responsible for the establishment of the Natural Park System of the United States of America who eventually came to respect Native Ways, hunted the high country with Native Americans in the landscape where the management of the landscape by burning became illegal somewhere in the mid 1900’s, encroached by the Gold Rush only 50 years before that.

    These first two people are very selective these days with whom they share information, moving slowly and cautiously, thinking long about what they see entirely open about what they say, and honoring me with questions they think I may have some opinions on and sometimes “gathering wood” for them, a concept that come from Yurok, Kurok, Maidu , Wintu, and Anishinabe/Ojibwe/Chippewa  ethnologies, ethnographies, and other sources that include those peoples fights to continue to follow tradition ways, once outlawed and punishable sometimes by Christianization or a slow or quick death in the past – and present.
    My third friend has somehow unwittingly I believe, become a target for a different group of people, surrounding her like a pack of wolves, using her and her Face book Pages as a source of possible converts to more than one of the rather horrifying groups of White Supremacists, some of whom pretend to ascribe to something similar known as “Scientific racism,” or a softer term called “Scientifical Racialism.” These people search for undeniable truths that support the belief that ancient cultures around the world were visited by Caucasian races in ancient times, and that they were known as "White gods". The writer Robert F. Marx has written extensively about the concept of "White gods", Marx came to the conclusion that white gods "figure in almost every indigenous culture in the Americas." The implication was that Indigenous cultures did not possess the intelligence to create civilizations until these Ancient Europeans landed on Turtle Island (and the South American continent – not to mention Egypt and all the rest of Africa as well) from a dizzying variety of places in Europe, by a Caucasoid or Nordic Culture. 


Some links, with other links (and even more links) could start with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy(Where I got to the article for the title of this post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_godsA recent news story: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/native-family-allegedly-attacked-by-white-supremacists-in-shasta-lake-133113Ancient America Reference relates to statements like this:“The purpose of Ancient American Magazine is to describe the prehistory of the American Continent, regardless of presently fashionable beliefs--- to provide a public forum for certified experts and nonprofessionals alike to freely express their views without fear nor favor.
“Fashionable Beliefs” refers to what these people as the “Lies of Anthropologists, Archeologist, and Mueseums including the Smithsonian (and most other Museums around the world):http://www.ancientamerican.com/aa/



Tuesday, July 23, 2013

That Nightmare Again

It was that nightmare again
The bulldozers came in
And, oddly enough this time, left the road much like it was
Before – but without the boulders and the stones
Freshly wounded earth
And then they diverted the River
And it flowed where there once was an ancient road


Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Monday, July 22, 2013

Ruining More Perfectly Good Photos

    I hope you forgive me, DG Merrit, for ruining a perfectly good photo of yours (not to mention stealing the image). But I always look to see if there might be a turtle or two in a stone pile or on a stone row (or almost anywhere). I thought one might be what I call a "single stone turtle," ( a few examples here: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-single-stone-turtle-effigy.html ) and then just got carried away, pasting in some eyes here and there (others more of a "composite nature" that is head stone and carapace stone, sometimes legs/feet, like comes up in this search: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=single+stone). Click away and you'll see how I defaced (pun intended) this otherwise fine photograph:


SHAMELESSLY BUT GUILTILY STOLEN FROM:


Sunday, July 21, 2013

Side Show Archaeology

I didn’t intend to re-visit all these side show exhibits
But I’ve been in and out of all these little tents
Just off the midway
Around the Big Top of Archaeology and Anthropology
(You know:)
People just won’t leave them alone
The Lost Tribes of Israel, Angels and Giants
Greeks and Egyptians and “Anyone but Indians,”
(You know:) The Indians who aren’t from India
    (You know:)  “Sitting Bull, not Gandhi.”

I get confused still though, you know,
Trying to remember which one is Bat Creek,
Which one is Grave Creek,
And was King Manure from the Old Dynasty
Or was it the New? Was he IV, III, or II?
Let’s not leave out that Newport Tower
 – although I wish some magician would make that windmill disappear -
Shining White Knights with a strange form of Christian God,
Who doesn’t look Jewish at all.

And it’s always half a story,
Here at the side show:
A find with an ancient alphabet or two or
A horned human skull with leg bones big as a Mastodon’s
Hurry, hurry
 Step right up, used to cost one thin dime,
But now it’s a self published book for $29.99
Available at Amazon, companion DVD preview at YouTube

The other half of the story is pretty boring
The part where the Cultural Forensics Investigation
Proves it was all a fake or fraud
A hoax played by, sometimes on, a Seeker,
And there’s a Seeker born every minute.
And the man who didn’t say that
Couldn’t be sued for his counterfeit Cardiff Giant
Since the original was a fake…

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Knows More Than I Ever Will

There’s a big old Stone Snake grinning at me,

He says, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
There’s a Bear smiling and rocking,
Waiting for a pinch of Tobacco.

There’s a Turtle just standing still,
Knows more than I ever will…

More Serpent? Click here:
Even More? Click Here:
How about More Bears: 
Turtles? Stone Turtles?
Who would suspect such a thing, here on Turtle Island?



Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Constant Prayers to the Creator


Our people have always lived on this sacred and wondrous land,
Ever since the Spirit People made things ready for us and the Creator placed us here.
(Photo: Alyssa Alexandria)
Some remained and became stones of which you can still speak to.
(Photo: Alyssa Alexandria)
(Photo: Carl Bjork)
In times past and now, the People bless the river, the tall trees, the rocks, the mounds, and the trails.
We pray for the health of all the animals, and prudently harvest and manage the great fish runs and herds of deer and elk.
(Cliff Palace Fires; Rex Robinson, © 2000, Kentucky Heritage Council - http://heritage.ky.gov/kas/pubsvids/VolumeOne.htm )

We also have practiced our stewardship of the land, renewed the world with prayers and sacred fires that rise up to the Creator.
(Photo: Carl Bjork*)
Our people have always carried on extensive trade and social relations throughout our territory and beyond.
We also have always traveled to the high places on our traditional trails to worship the Creator at our sacred  sites, the stepping stones for ascent into the sky  world.
(Photo: Alyssa Alexandria)

This whole land stayed in balance, kept that way by our good stewardship, hard work, wise laws, and constant prayers to the Creator.
(Photo: Alyssa Alexandria)

(Based on the Constitution of the Yurok Tribe, Ratified: November 19, 1993 - along with some words from Alyssa Alexandria Runs With Wolves- Cherokee)

*"The little petro looks like (the) flute player. The dots might represent hail stones or the white fire stones that fell from the sky... or just plain old stars," Alyssa writes.