Back in Ukraine, I loved writing snail mail letters. I had a bunch of fascinating correspondents all over the world, and we exchanged long hand-written letters.
My favorite correspondent was a Native American history professor in his sixties who lived in the Deep South. He was disabled and no longer teaching. And fascinated with post-Soviet countries.
I was very ignorant about American history, and the questions I asked of my correspondent were often very naive. Since he was from the South, I asked him what the official narrative was on the Civil War. Please remember where I was from if you wonder why I believed there needed to be an official party line on everything.
“One would assume that the general feeling would be that the slave-owning South was bad and the North was good,” I wrote. “But I recently saw Gone With the Wind, and it’s very sympathetic to the South. And I know it’s a massively popular movie in the US. How is this possible?”
The Native American history professor actually deeply identified with the Confederacy. And he told me about the whole “The South will rise again” thing, about the resentments of the Southerners that are still very much alive, about the Southern vision of the Civil War and its economic legacy.
When I moved to Canada, I was really looking to meet with my correspondent in person. But when I called him, his son told me that his father had passed away a week earlier. So we never got to meet in person.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Native American history professor”
You mean the history of Native Americans (called I think First Nations in Canada)?
If so, do you know his area of expertise?
I’m fascinated by the Native American cultures from the Southeast US and always looking for more info (esp when I should be doing other things).
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No, I meant that he was Native American. He would tell me about his tribal identity and his ancestral . . . I forget the word, they are something like artifacts. This was the first time in my life I even heard these terms.
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\ Since he was from the South, I asked him what the official narrative was on the Civil War. Please remember where I was from if you wonder why I believed there needed to be an official party line on everything.
Official narrative does exist. It is what is presented as Truth to Southern school students at history lessons in usual mainstream schools. Now you made me curious regarding what this narrative is.
\ No, I meant that he was Native American. He would tell me about his tribal identity and his ancestral . . .
I’ve once listened to a lecture by a Native American poet who visited Israel. She also mentioned being a member of a tribe and participating in some tribal ceremonies, if I remember correctly, of religious nature. She was a modern educated person, obviously, and I wondered what it meant to her to participate in ceremonies of non-monotheistic religion. Unlike past Indians, she could not believe she was doing something magical or sacred, right? I hope the following comparison won’t hurt your readers, but is it a kind of role playing game making the participants feel closer to their roots?
I understand a desire to know about one’s history, but don’t “get” what tribal identity means in practice, except knowing one’s history. One can not have a pre-modern identity and be a successful citizen of a modern world, so the way “tribal identity” is defined has to be very different from NA in Columbus’s days.
And, what is the goal of most Native Americans? Do they desire to become full and successful members of American society, which leads to intermarriage and leaving tribal identities behind? It’s the position of not Israeli Jews too, so I do not think people should be hurt by the former sentence.
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“I understand a desire to know about one’s history, but don’t “get” what tribal identity means in practice, except knowing one’s history. ”
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Unlike past Indians, she could not believe she was doing something magical or sacred, right?
I have been present when a NA did a blessing ceremony for a non-NA friend of mine when he was in the hospital. I was asked to stay because of a chance remark I made to the friend when I was about to leave the room.
The gaming tribe here in the Gateway to the Gateway to the Sierras my wife works for has a powwow every year, and I’m sure that’s true around California with other tribes as well
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” I wondered what it meant to her to participate in ceremonies of non-monotheistic religion. Unlike past Indians, she could not believe she was doing something magical or sacred, right?”
Why not? Native American religions are no more nonsensical than middle eastern ones. pluritheism makes as much sense to me as mono-theism (but I’m incapable of religious faith so what do I kow?)
“I hope the following comparison won’t hurt your readers, but is it a kind of role playing game making the participants feel closer to their roots?”
Almost all religious practice can be seen as role playing to some extent, either to make the person feel better about themselves or to feel closer to their roots.
IIRC Clarissa said a lot of religious practice is daddy issues in disguise, following lots of arbitrary rules that don’t make much rational sense but give the follower a sense of achievement that surely daddy will have not choice but to recognize. What he didn’t? I just have to follow the rules more closely!
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The great revolutionary impact of monotheism was that it allowed people to see the world as one, with everything being intimately interconnected. Modern science would not have been possible had this radically new idea not become widespread. Politheistic religions always stop at some point, without being able to advance past the limitations imposed by their fractured vision of the physical world.
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On the other hand, countries with a strong monotheistic tradition are always a step away from totalitarianism because their totalizing, authoritarian impulses are too strong.
There is a positive and a negative side to anything.
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Plus, monotheistic societies are always sexually repressive. Precisely because everything is one.
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“And, what is the goal of most Native Americans? Do they desire to become full and successful members of American society, which leads to intermarriage and leaving tribal identities behind?”
There’s no pan-Native-American group. Native Americans in North America are actually secveral hundred different groups (556 tribes with government recognition and some others without) who can differ from each other just as much as they do from European culture. The language, cultural and social structures of Navajo, Lakota, Choctaw groups (for example) have almost nothing in common.
Most tribes are actually very small groups (few hundred to few thousand)* and intermarriage to any strong degree means cultural obliteration. On the other hand, Native American genes tend to whomp the crap out of anything they come into contact with so some genetic continuance is a given.
*the numbers are much, much bigger in Central and South America.
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“The Native American history professor actually deeply identified with the Confederacy”
Which one? One of the largest groups in the Southeastern US was the Creek Confederacy, a multi-ethnic proto-state with some centralized government structures. They became one the Five Civilized Tribes who created practical orthographies for their languages and adopted constitutions and took up many other European practices (including chattel slavery, unfortunately).
That was all destroyed by Andrew “proto-Hitler” Jackson and the Trail of Tears.
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No, I mean the one in the Civil War. The guy was very pro-Southern. Not in some sort of an aggressive racist way. But he was very aware of the economic exploitation of the South after the Civil War, of the long-term poverty that arose as a result, of the collective trauma of being marginalized in the country, of the prejudices against Southerners that still exist.
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