Expectations

By: Pamela Waterbird Davison

Copyright 2007

Expectations leak out of us everyday in every way. Somehow we overflow with ideas of how we think people should behave or respond. And when our expectations are not met we become severely disappointed, laid to waste, and languish in our discontent; because that, too, is what we’ve come to expect.

We imagine our just rewards and cannot find the answers when compensation is not forthcoming. We call out to God, “Why has this happened? I’ve done everything. I can’t understand it.” Even God fails to come forward with a reasonable explanation.

Then we penalize the perpetrators of our anguish only to find in the end that what we’ve really done is punish ourselves. Joy disappears between the layers of mistrust we leave behind and it’s very sad indeed.

But what if we could change our perspective and expectations? What if there were a way to eliminate so much heartache and despair?

There are two very simple things to be done.

First is no incentive other than making your presence in someone’s life the very best it can be without waiting for the same in return. Even if you fall short of their expectations, yours will have been met. There is nothing more satisfying than knowing you’ve lived up to what you believe is the best you can offer.

Second is by far the most worthwhile of endeavors. Forgiveness is and always will be the greatest challenge human’s face. Yet it is the single thing we can do for our fellow humans and for ourselves that will free us from the tyranny of disenchantment and grant us tranquility unrivaled by any other emotion, including love, only because forgiveness begins with love.

What if we made the decision to love regardless of vows broken, harm committed, or expectations unmet? What if love was the only motivation to give of your self to anyone? Not acceptance, appreciation, or other recognition. Only love.

You may be cynical at first. It’s allowed. But I assure you that if you love without expectation you will find yourself freer than you ever thought possible.

We Indians are taught to learn from our elders and the stories they bring us, yet the greatest elder of all is the one living inside you. Listen, learn, forgive, and love. You won’t be disappointed.

Brown Receives Scholarship for Navajo Language Study

By: Carolyn Gonzales

Tavish Brown grew up in Naschitti, N.M., located between Gallup and Shiprock on the Navajo reservation. While still a student at Newcomb High School, where he graduated in 2005, Brown knew what he wanted to do: study the Navajo language. Brown is the UNM undergraduate recipient of the 2007 Robert W. Young Scholarship, which supports students studying Native American linguistics.

“Barbara Howard was my high school Navajo teacher. She told me that she was getting old and that I should learn Navajo and come back and take her spot,” Brown recalled. Howard also encouraged Brown to form a Navajo dance group at the school, which he did. Called T’iis Nideesghizh Bitsoόké, or “Grandchildren of Newcomb,” the group was influenced by the Dinétah Navajo Dancers; Brown is now one of their performers.

Brown speaks highly of the Navajo language program at UNM. “Ms. [Roseann] Willink helps us with difficult words, tongue twister words. She breaks them down, explains their history. She also explains the difference between some Navajo words used in New Mexico and those used by Navajos in Arizona,” he said.

Willink also helps her students to learn and understand old Navajo words that are not in use today, Brown said. He noted that the Navajo equivalent of the phrase, “let’s go,” has evolved from “tsotti’” to “tį́.”

“People who are fluent notice that others speak in a chopped up or abbreviated form. Only medicine men still speak the language in its full form,” Brown said.

Brown said that his parents speak Navajo, as does his older sister Tamara, a student at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His younger sister, Kendra, at Newcomb, doesn’t have the language fluency either. Brown said that mispronouncing words in Navajo can be embarrassing because they can be “bad words.”

The beauty of learning Navajo at UNM, he said, is that he is learning it while also learning more about culture and tradition. “Words are tied into ceremony. You can’t understand the words without their cultural context,” he said.

Want to know more? Click here: http://www.nativebiz.com/community/News,op=visit,nid=17613.html

January 23, 1919: Native American Code Talkers are put into service by the U.S. Army.

As long as he could remember, Philip Johnston had loved the Navajo culture and language. By age five, he had learned the tribal language well enough to serve as a translator for his missionary parents. By age nine, when most boys his age were riding bikes and trading baseball cards, he had served as an interpreter for a Navajo delegation sent to Washington, DC, to lobby for Indian rights. He had no way of knowing it at the time, but his affinity for, and mastery of, the Navajo tongue would one day help to save the lives of countless United States Marines.

In time, Johnston would leave the American Southwest and the people he loved to serve in World War I. After the war, he would earn his civil engineering degree at the University of Southern California. December 7, 1941, found him hard at work as an engineer for the city of Los Angeles. At the time, Johnston was in his 50s and well beyond the grasp of his local draft board; however, his experiences on the battlefields of Europe in a earlier time motivated him to try to put into action a plan that he was sure could help the war effort.

Johnston’s hope was to help the Marine Corps protect their communications so well that every Marine who wore the uniform would be provided a huge advantage in combat. His idea revolved around a code. But, unlike many coding systems, this code was not dependent on a complicated machine or a series of numbers or ciphers. Rather, the heart of his proposal rested on the language of the Navajo Indians. He was convinced that, used properly, the Navajo dialect would provide unprecedented security to those who would need it most. All he needed was a chance to prove it.

Native American Code Talkers are put into service by the U.S. Army, January 23, 1919

For more information click here: http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00034.cfm

A Good Time to Remember Standing Bear

By: Kevin Abourezk

As the country honors the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. this week, I think it's a good time to remember a man many consider to be our country's first civil rights activist. He is widely known in Nebraska, but I would dare say few have heard of him beyond the state's borders.

He is Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca Tribe.

In January 1879, Standing Bear and 30 of his followers left Indian Territory in Oklahoma to return to their former lands in Nebraska. You see, as it had done to so many Native people, the U.S. government had forcibly moved the Poncas from their homes and sent them to Oklahoma two years earlier.

But Standing Bear and his followers preferred their homelands along the Niobrara River to the barren earth of Oklahoma. Then the chief's son died. But before Bear Shield died, he asked his father to bury him in the soil of his homeland.

Like any father, Standing Bear wanted to fulfill his son's dying wish. So on Jan. 2, 1879, he and 30 followers left for Nebraska. Two months later, they were arrested, and Standing Bear was put on trial.

The trial of Standing Bear lasted two days. Shortly after it ended, the chief offered this impassioned plea to the court in an effort to prove he was a human being and entitled to the same right to freedom as every human being: "That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both."

About two weeks later, federal Judge Elmer Dundy ruled that "an Indian (is) a person within the meaning of the law," entitled to the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. The decision allowed the Ponca to return to their lands and freed Standing Bear.

Get the whole story here: http://www.reznetnews.org/blogs/red-clout/good-time-remember-standing-bear