Billy Mills on Today's Day of Service

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."



These words of John F. Kennedy are being acted out by many Americans today, including Mr. Obama. But I was quite moved by this op-ed piece about the day of service by Billy Mills, the Lakota man who ran all the way to Olympic history. I was thrilled when, earlier this fall, he officially endorsed Barack Obama, lending his highly respected Native name to a long list of supporters.



His words are simple, but passionate. It is a call to arms for Native people, but not to war - to serve others. He speaks of the trouble Indian Country is in, the historical truths and the present realities. He also tells us ways out of this:

As we observe this day of service in Indian country, I cannot help but think of the old Lakota saying, “We are all related.” As American Indians, we should join Americans from across the country in this call to service.

We must act because our history demands it. We must act because our heritage is being diminished. I speak, of course, of the effects of the signing of the treaties between our various tribal nations and the U.S. government....

Before these treaties... The children were allowed to dream and grow based on the cultural and traditional virtues and values they were taught. These virtues and values were based on service to the entire tribal nation...

...I hope that on National Day of Service, many in our community will
offer time and support. And I hope they will take President-elect Obama’s call to make this an ongoing effort to heart. If we all commit ourselves, we can better our community and fulfill those dreams. Every dream has a passion and every passion has its destiny.

I hope you'll read the article, as my few examples truncated it horribly. I think the line, "Every dream has a passion and every passion has its destiny is one of my new favorite quotes though. Mills also gives a few examples of his own service, and places to go to find out how to volunteer, including: http://www.usaservice.org/ .

First Nations people were "Savages"?

I became aware of this older story only because it was on today's National Native News radio piece.

Basically, an group promoting aboriginal culture in Canada filed a complaint against a member of the International Olympic Committee, Richard Pound. He made a remark, in French, that could be interpreted as calling First Nation's ancestor's "savages." The people filing the complaint are saying that it's actually the whole context of his sentence/point.

Pound's words translated in English, as reported in no2010:

“We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European descent, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization,” he said. In interviews with The Globe and Mail, Mr. Pound insisted the term sauvages carries a different meaning in French and English, and that he was using language of the era he was describing.

I am having a hard time finding all the facts out about this - I'm hoping a generous and knowledgable Canadian can point me in the right direction.

Pound's defense of this was the more frustrating part to me:

“I thought that in doing a 400-year-old picture, you use 400-year-old words,” he said. “If that hurts somebody today, I had no intention of doing that.”
“I used the term that was regularly used there by the Jesuits, in the Relations and all the other published material, ‘ les sauvages,' ” he said. “There was no intention of making any racist comments. But you know, as well as I know, what was going on here 400 years ago.”

This, to me, makes me lean toward thinking this guy is extremely ignorant. I mean, n -- r was regularly used to describe people of African descent in America 400 years ago as well as not that long ago. But I gaurantee you that if I use it to describe even the first black Americans ashore, few would view it as acceptable.

Yet I still am unsure what to think about this. I hate claims of racism when there is none - it makes fighting actual prejudice that much harder. But is this the kind of knowledge we want to be passing around? I don't think I'd be as undecided on this if it were an American making a comment in English. Cultural and linguistic differences out of the picture - this is a comment of ignorance. With them added, I just don't know enough about the differences in French/English and Canadian/American.

What do you think?

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