James Giago Davies. Photo from Native Sun News Today
Ghosts in the ravine
I seem to have lost my Lakota mind
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nsweekly.com Unlike most people from Lakota country, I don’t believe in spirits or ghosts. I don’t hold for magical, mystical things and find superstition, based upon the science ignorant proclamations of long dead men, pretty much unconvincing. But I could be dead wrong. That is why I am a skeptic, skeptical about everything, comfortable with mystery and inconvenient, threatening realities. Prove me wrong, and I will believe what I previously did not believe, as much as you believe it. Not sure how I got that way, I was not raised that way; skeptics are uncommon in my world. Lakota skeptics will want for company. Lakota assume I think this way because I am assimilated, that it is some failing of my mongrelized aboriginal character, some have left comments after my articles that I have “lost” my “Lakota mind.” Most Americans are anti-intellectual, and the Lakota are very American in that respect, and so they do not generally know what the word irony means. They don’t understand that as a skeptic I am equally as skeptical of Wasicu beliefs. The irony is, they are not. For example, because I read books and have a perspicacious grasp of the world at large, including, but not limited to the use of words like “perspicacious,” they assume this is graphic evidence of assimilation. Any iyeska or full-blood speaking English well, and comprehending science, philosophy, history, economics, politics, stamp collecting and Marvel comic books, must have internalized the distorted mentality of Wasicu. But Lakota who drive cars, use deodorant and cell phones, porn surf the internet, and play basketball and get drunk as boiled owls on Wasicu liquor—not assimilated! That’s not the funny part, though; the funny part is they do not even realize this until you point it out, but that’s not even the funniest part—the funniest part is even after you point it out, they are intractably averse to reasoned correction. And the unfunny part is they will now see you as their enemy.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Ghosts in the ravine (Contact James Giago Davies can at skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
Join the Conversation
