Category Archives: Personal Entries

What’s Going on? #Updates on #Documentary & The Journey of Living

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So adjustment disorder is a thing? In addition to PTSD, anxiety, melancholia, depression and related disorders as diagnoses, all can be very different in people of color. It basically boils down to having lived a lifetime in other dominant societies who continually try to assimilate or control you to keep themselves comfortable, overtly/aggressively (verbal correction/admonishments, policies/laws, societal “norms”, biased policing) and covertly/passively (advertisement, historical amnesia in textbooks, media, etc.).

It is frustrating and exhausting to have to deal with such pressures day after day. So, that’s when you need to be around your people or people who don’t behave, react or think that way, or normalize such behavior. That’s when you need to sweat, to smudge, to pray, and I do it alone as the circumstances have it, but you need people who understand what you’re going through because they’ve gone through it. They know and you don’t even have to say.

This is my fifth year exclusively being in Germany, and close to the 15th where I’ve visited yearly for several months. The last decade was primarily for necessary medical treatment for my son, for his well-being and continuing mobility, which some don’t know about, besides his having Asperger’s syndrome and social disorders because of abyssmal treatment he received in school, from peers, medical staff, etc. He needs extra support, and by nature, the older they get, it remains so because people have less tolerance or understanding with an adult looking person with special challenges…and young people like him know that. Makes the anxiety worse.

All the while, people never asking any question, just assuming your motives or “who/what” you are, and I do get criticism questioning my commitment and connection to indigenous issues and peoples. All day and night that is with me. I consciously only work with native issues and rights, continuing my research and studies when I could have a successful position again as a chef or in a former profession. It’s almost physical pain to be away now, and my family are not in well health, yet it is still necessary at the moment. That’s life though! You keep going on the best you can and be happy with what you have, thankful for what you have while still working to achieve personal and collective goals. Continuing this journey.

Specifically though? Into August, entering post-production of the documentary I’m directing, Forget Winnetou: Going Beyond Native Stereotypes in Germany. Pleased to say upcoming I’m going to film a few more interviews, but learn more about this critically needed discussion by visiting the film website & following on social media.

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#Spider #Dreams Return, A Spider Legion & Remembering Grandmother

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A Spider by Red Haircrow

A Spider by Red Haircrow

Last night I dreamt of my back covered with spiders, like a mother spider with babies. This was great angst for me, despite spiders being sacred to my heritage who are Apache. Spiders are messengers and I’ve had dreams of them before most especially. Dreaming and visions have been part of the native half of family, noted and known, in the community where they lived, even if they were on some rolls but not on others. One of my grandmothers was noted for it, and for the knowledge she had been taught and carried. For me, I only know it as something I’ve inherited, but it had great responsibility with it as well.

I had deep wariness from spiders because in 2010 I nearly died from being bitten by a black widow spider. I had a heart attack, a stroke and lost my vision for a time. This was still so in the dream, this feeling. I couldn’t see the spiders myself, though someone in the dream told me of them in alarm, and that I walked carefully so as not to dislodge them because as sacred, we don’t kill them. I never do so despite wariness.

As I took another step in the dream, some spiders started walking down my neck and arms, but I had to keep walking. These are things I’ve known all along, in dreams and in reality. I must keep going despite feeling fear of striking a hard path alone right now and because of what I might face. As I walked the spiders then began to stream from my back in great masses, going out to keep weaving and holding together the fabric of the universe.

Right now, after months, I had to face a hard decision, but one I neglected to make months ago though I’d felt the sense and need for some time. Not bad, just a different weaving.

The photo is of a spider respected for its role in the great circle and weave of the world while resting on a gate in Bad Saarow, just as I walked down from the house of Spiders where I sometimes dwell. You can read about many of those times by searching on this my site.

One dream: https://redhaircrow.com/2012/04/16/the-lingering-effects-of-the-kiss-of-the-spider/

Strong dream: https://redhaircrow.com/2012/09/13/spider-dreams/

Walk With Strong Belief & Direction #MondayMotivation

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be-strong-2

I’m glad to be able to wake up each morning, and look forward to talking to my mother, to seeing my son, to seeing what the day brings and continue to learn to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Whatever happens. I’ve been waking up with new energy and renewed purpose and a steady eagerness even if it’s the quiet kind most people don’t recognize, even when I’m in pain, and I’m always in pain physically. Arthritis from many previous injuries, heredity and having to work past your endurance point many times before. Whenever I feel the least sorry for myself I tell myself my ancestors endured far more, I can do no less. I shut up and get on with it.

I roll out of bed (mental and/or physical), come what may, because I woke up, even though I am learning to try to relax and self-care when I need to. But the thing is, my self-care is in the form of what other people call “work”. I don’t have down-time, because my work is happy even if it’s hard, even if sometimes it feels un- or not at all appreciated. That’s when I ask myself, “Why are you doing it? For yourself (recognition) or because it’s the right thing to do?” It is important for me, it is incumbent on me to help the People, because I believe that through helping the People it helps everyone, the whole world.

Recently I’ve been attacked headlong yet again, that doesn’t happen that often thankfully, though it has been pretty constant the last two years, and it was very personal and intended to be insulting and destructive. The thing is, I’m used to the same, to those trying to be be insulting and demeaning, reducing, that is the way of colonizer and the colonized. I’ve heard the same all my life since I could determine intent and meaning, which was pretty early, because we know we get it early, if not in word then in tone. We recognize it by instinct, by remembered pain. It didn’t make me mad this time though it is affective, I’ve learned and been fortunate to have good teachers. It all doesn’t keep me from my purpose, my meaning, and offerings.

be-strong

I am thankful for those who take the time to instruct and correct me when I need those things. To help me clarify my purpose, examine my motives, elucidate my next steps on this journey of life. I am thankful for the wisdom of so many people and that things happen in their time just as they are meant to. It is humbling to be able to see and experience it sometimes. We all make mistakes, do or say things without full knowledge or realization of the consequences. When you’re honest and humble you try to make atonement for them, not on your own conditions, but on what’s right.

We are all traumatized in some way. Some more than others. We’re all healing, though some try to hurt each other, striking out, trying to tear down and don’t face or recognize why they’re doing, why they’re really doing it. I pray for them. I try to help others in this. I help as I can while also keeping myself safe and trying to remain steady, while recognizing and unworking negative patterns of the past. Part of healing is forgiving yourself in the first place, and moving on from there. It’s not a lone effort though, by far far measure, and requires contact and connection to others. Again, thank you to all those who have such wisdom, and who are willing to share it, to encourage. Encouragement for everyone as we each face individual and societal challenges.

And Still #IndigenousRising, of course! Post #PresidentialElection 2016

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dsc_2436Consider it your wake-up call.

The Presidential Election was all a power game for them. Nothing changed for us, whoever’s doing whatever in what is now again the WHITE whitehouse. Will keep doing the work we’ve been doing for centuries healing, surviving, resisting, learning, decolonizing my mind and everything I can touch wherever I may be.

In some ways, this a true wakeup call for those who believe “we can change it, just gotta vote!”. I never downed them but I felt conflicted because I knew it was going to end in disappointment for them. Didn’t want to burst the bubble, so to speak. I read about those saying they’d move to Canada, which I could understand also, but right now I’m in Germany so my son can get the medical care he needs. And despite my trying to help I’ve been mocked about not being at Standing Rock, “You’re not even here!” when I voice my support or my positive feelings about #indigenousrising.
 
Some days it is beyond agony just to NOT be there, on the soil of my people, still searching for the things my ancestors had stolen from them, reconnecting and touching and not caring whoever is doing whatever wherever as I make something of myself of which I hope my ancestors could be proud and not betray their sacrifices. Their rejoicing and reveling in white supremacy and power is nothing new, but it is still going to die it big death, which why my mom says all these white people buying up guns, building bunkers because they know they eff’ed up, while we just keep trying to live life.
 
They think they’ve won. LOL They haven’t, not at all or at best its a temporary victory. This wake-up call should light a bigger fire that you have to solve your problems yourself, and THEY are part of the problem. Eff that noise. Batten down those hatches. We’re going in. This just makes me more determined. I am not afraid of them.
 
I don’t want to see anyone hurt, and sure I worry because my immediate family are vulnerable especially: my sis on disability for serious med status, my parents are older retirees, my one nephew is 24, 6’5, 300lbs of brown but with a jolly heart. This is the time we really must come together and not let the BS division and fear overwhelm. That only serves them.
 
The sun is shining after days of grey in Berlin. “Don’t let the sun step over you.”-Apache saying. Get up and get to work!

NativeCry.org #NcoaWalk Challenge 2016 & A #Poem

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1It’s day 4 in the month long walk challenge started by NativeCry Outreach Alliance: At least 1 mile a day each day of the month to raise awareness on native suicide and suicide pprevention.

As a survivor, parent of a survivor, writer and counselor, it is a subject both personally and professionally important to me. As a graduate student at MSU Bozeman in Native American Studies, my research focus is intergenerational historical trauma, native mental health, healing and suicide. I am currently conducting a research study on causal factors, and natives are asked to participate in this anonymous, short survey that can be found HERE. My wish is to try to help strengthen and expand methods, both traditional and appropriate contemporary ones, to lessen and stop suicides, and instead heal.

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Join us, you can do this challenge wherever you are, if you have the physical ability. For others, send us and everyone thoughts of love and peace, reach out to help and hold others. “Be kinder than necessary, you never know what someone is going through.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

From my 2014 poetry collection, CORE, a poem about pain, depression and suicide.

 

BROKEN TOE

Like a fissure beneath the heart,

a sliver of suggestion,

you keep limping on it,

that broken toe.

They suspect something’s wrong,

‘You’re walking funny,’ they say,

and you try to smile,

pressing your hand

to your side as if

you can hold in the pain.

Everyone knows something’s wrong.

They just don’t know what it is,

and perhaps neither do you.

–Red Haircrow