Red Lake Nation

[Kerrie Workman]

Pat,

My heart goes out to you in this hurting time.  I used to live in Minnesota (Vermont is now home), so a part of me feels for the land there, and the families, and the communities whose hearts are now exposed.  Having worked with high risk kids in nyc before moving to Vermont, I was living in a residential community steeped in racial, social, economic, and emotional conflict.  When something devistating would occur, what always rose to THE TOP OF THE TIME is the need for adults -- and our histories -- to come second to the needs of the children and youth in our care.  I share your belief that something good will and can happen from this violence, and my belief is that it will unfold slowly.  I caution against using these events as ways to unearth or handle the factors that contributed to it -- and your e-mail shows the real issue -- how to work with youth who are isolated, culturally divided, and living in several worlds at once while likely feeling they are living in no world at
 once.  And they do all of this while working through the trauma they've now experienced.  This is an opportunity to engage and really listen to the youth and children in the community and by acknowledging the eldership of support that was/is (I don't know and cannot assume to know) around them for support.  I respect the personal nature of the loss first and feel that 'issues' need to be dealt with in time, as that is most respectful, and I applaud you for approaching this in the same way and not rushing in with a 'process,' or need to correct.  Trust comes slowly to old places.  To impose anything at this time, implicitly or explicitly, flies in the face of human grief.   In my life, I've found that the simplest of pure human gestures go deepest, so that is my food for your thought.

kerrie
Pat Black <patblack at paulbunyan.net> wrote:
I live in the larger community where the young man shot all the students. I
feel a deep loss at this. We are a small communitiy and everyone is
affected by this and most people no someone who has lost someone. There are
many issues coming up related to the loss and how many of our youth feel so
isolated and how to we reach them before they snap. But there are other
issues surfacing because of the racial polarization in this community and
historic racism. Red Lake tribal leaders are controlling media access to
the reservation. They don't want them harrassing and exploiting people for
their stories. Red Lake is one of 2 closed reservations in the US. Closed
means that their original land base is intact. The media interprets that as
they can control who can come on the reservation. They of course can
control who comes in and out if they want but that has nothing to do with
being a closed reservation. This business whether intended as overt racism
or not certainly stirs the historic wounds caused by racism and the
entrenched racist beliefs that live in the community everyday. I believe
some good can grow from tragedy and maybe we can get at these issues. My
question to those who live in areas where there are similar historic wounds
waiting to surface for healing is simply please share your experiences,
especially about the forming of the question and bringing community to the
circle. I feel this will be an opportunity for this community to address
bigger and older wounds. I personally feel the need to address the media
assault and show solitarity with Red Lake Nation for the control they are
exercising here and offer support and build healing between the community
and the reservation. Any thoughts out there?
Pat Black

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20050323/7558f00e/attachment-0016.htm>