On a side note – today was a damn good day in the Aboriginal community in Regina – one of the best I have ever seen actually. There was the Smudge Walk in North Central (1000 attended – my wife and family attended), the Aboriginal leadership Seminar (200 attended – with 6 speakers – I volunteered there), the Awasis kids pow-wow @ Mosaic Field, FSIN Leg assembly in Saskatoon, and Mosiac Aboriginal Pavillion open tnight (for 3 nights) – it was just one of those good days for my community.

I really felt we are coming together as a larger community and dealing with past stereotypes about our culture (and us in general) – and doing it in such a united positive way. I really am all smiles today…cartoon brought out the fire in me…but today was the actual kindling for what really matters – a united people(s) doing something positive for the community (5 events). I think this is the reason why I am so quick to be passionate about the Aboriginal community – to see days like these!

I had a chance to talk with an elder today about it all – and we were all smiles about the good things happening around us – despite all the problems we still need to see dealt with and re-focused. I really got a great sense od that community today – and it made my month (which oddly enough is something the group I am a part of ‘RAPA’ is promoting as Aboriginal History Month).

It wasn’t until I saw the word “savage” used in the comments that I mentally winced, because savage carries huge negative connotations (maybe I didn’t make the link picture-wise because they were stick figures? If it were in a movie fashion, with 3-D people “dressing” and “behaving” like savages, then it would be different).

But there’s just too much background to the word. The very word itself was used an excuse for the horrible treatment done to Native AMericans, and I don’t think that was understood. It was why they were killed, it was why their land was stolen, it was why their children were taken from them, why treaties were constantly broken, and I could just keep going.

That’s why you and I get along so well, Jason. We have to deal with the same things just in different settings.

No offense to NP, but I thought the cartoon was just plain stupid. Church people are always crying that they’re under attack. I read the net, I read the news. Seems to me the problem is rot from within and a lack of any real repair, not attacks from without, the same problem as we have in Judaism, the same problem that is seen in Islam. Most of the rest of us could care less what’s going on with churches and just wish to not be bothered by the pew fillers. We’re not the ’savages’ with our bows and arrows. A better depiction would have been church people running out the door of the church with their weapons firing wildly in their scatter-shot evangelism attempts even as the church collapses in a heap behind them. JMO

” . . . religious thinkers attract disciples and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to ‘organize’ themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing. . . when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration.” (William James, Varieties of Religious Experience)

Mine is Tatsden@rogers.com

Do you have an email address. I would love to talk some more about this stuff directly if you wouldnt mind.

John