A Nation Unlike Others
Ten years ago the Mohegans were preparing to open the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut.
The Mohegans were among the first original American nations to encounter the Europeans. In 1861 a faction of the tribe dismembered the reservation and disbanded the state-recognized tribe. The last speaker of the Mohegan – Pequot language died in 1908. Virtually all Mohegans appear to be racially and culturally white with no more than 1/64th or 1/128th of an Indian blood quotum. Mohegan Culture had become a very diffuse, nebulous, near-extinct thing.
But enough of a semblance of American Indian "nationhood" existed for casino developers to build an Indian casino on it. Before the casino opened on October 12, 1996, Jane Fawcett, vice chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribal Council declared that since the Mohegan Sun Casino was the only place where the Mohegan Nation and Mohegan Culture ruled, the casino would be the showcase of Mohegan Culture.
But no matter how much American Indian window-dressings and flubber-dubs are put on the Mohegan Sun Casino, it is still a tawdry casino. The casino frames the absence of a true, emanating culture.
The Cherokee Tribal Nation is a very different situation. The Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Culture is a bright cultural light. Its emanations suffuse Tahlequah, Cherokee County. Northeastern Oklahoma and beyond. Those who are not of the blood, but who live in this emanation are affected, shaped and employed by it. And the Cherokee Nation is unlike other nations. And the place and the people who are in this emanation are unlike other places and other people.
This is demonstrated every September during the celebration of the Cherokee National Holiday.
What makes the Cherokee Nation different from other nations is the Cherokee have maintained their nationhood outside the boxes, the containers of business-as-usual nationhood.
In the stories of themselves which the Cherokees are always telling, particularly during the national holiday, they are always being dispossessed of a secure, static homeland, and a traditional business-as-usual sense of nationhood. Like the Hebrews they are always being thrust into an allegorical Canaan/Oklahoma – an arduous land of conflict, uncertainty, of hope, utter despair, wild joy, anguish, disaster, obstinate reconstructions, and stubborn resurrections..
The Cherokee origin story is that in the beginning the original homeland was an island surrounded by the sea. A high level of civilization was achieved. There were many beautiful, elaborate temples. In the beginning the Cherokees were literate people of a written language, people of the book.
Then the shamans received premonitions that the island was going to shake and burn and sink into the sea. Seven arks were built and loaded with those who possessed the finest attributes of Cherokee civilization, and then the arks were dispatched throughout the world.
The island shook and burned. In one day half the population died. But the other half followed shamans who led them over the waters to the mainland of the Americas. In their journey over the waters they looked back to see the horrifying apocalyptic vision of their homeland sinking into the sea.
The Cherokees migrated North. They would find places that resembled their lost homeland and they would interrupt their migration and build cities. Some people such as the ancestors of the Olmecs and the Mayas would remain in these places. But the majority of the Cherokee continued their migration north.
They crossed a great dry place where the only food was great big animals with humps (American bison). They again came to a place that resembled their homeland. Many wanted to stop their migration and stay there. But the shamans said it was a land of sorrow and it wasn’t the time to dwell in that place (Oklahoma).
They continued north until their way was blocked by a moving mountain of snow (a glacier). They then migrated east where they encountered the fierce, cannibalistic mound builders.
There was a great battle. The Cherokee conquered much of the Southeast of what is now the United States of America.
And then the Cherokees’ story becomes a historical story. The Spanish and then the English find the Cherokee possessed of high cultural attainments, huge territories, material prosperity, and all the business-as-usual attributes of nationhood. They are envied by their white neighbors who conspire to dispossess them of all they have and make them walk the trail of exile and tears to Oklahoma, to a land of sorrows, and further dispossession, of utter despair, wild joy, disaster, obstinate reconstruction, and stubborn resurrection.
The Cherokee Nation is unlike other nations in that the traditional, static containers of nationhood are always being broken, and the nation must survive outside containers, outside the box. The Cherokees’ Nationhood transcends a fixed homeland. It survives when internal civil war breaks the containers of nationhood. It survives when a Cherokee is physically separated from his land, from his people. It survives when Cherokees mix and are dispersed among others.
A great attainment of Cherokee Culture is that it transcends resentment and attitudes of victimization. It stays out of those boxes, those containers – too. In this season’s production of the trail of tears drama, the story of the dispossession and exile is one of many Cherokee stories told. And all the stories ultimately have happy endings and its not over until the phoenix dances and the fat lady sings.
Although I am often mistaken for an American Indian, I am of the Hebrew Tribal Nation. (But I am only Jewish on my mother’s and my father’s side of the family.) One of the greatest cultural attainments of the Jewish people is that even in the Nazi Concentration Camps there were Jewish comedians.
The Cherokees have achieved a similar cultural attainment. Even on the trail of tears there were Cherokee comedians. Will Rogers, one of the greatest American comedians, was unmistakably Cherokee. There certainly is no shortage of Cherokee comedians now.
So it is a beautiful, joyful, comedic coincidence that the Cherokee National Holiday coincides with change check days for the students of Northeastern State University.
The state university is descendent from the institute of higher learning that the survivors of the trail of tears built soon after they arrived in Oklahoma. Among its academic programs is one that accredits Cherokees to teach the Cherokee language, literature, and culture.
Right before the national holiday students at the university are given checks representing the difference (the change) between what their actual university expenses are and what they have been given in student loans, grants, and scholarships. For students at the university, for local businesses, for those residing in the emanation of the Cherokee Nation it is the most wonderful time of the year, a time for balls to the walls celebration.
This year’s national holiday commemorated the great Sequoyah.
I’ve spent much time studying the way Sequoyah is depicted in the national holiday brochures, and posters. Sequoyah is depicted as a man of Qabala.
Qabala is the study of the Hebrew alphabet not as a traditional, business-as-usual alphabet that forms words, that form sentences, that forms texts such as the Bible, as organized religion knows it. Qabala is the study of the Hebrew alphabet as quantum energy symbols that form quantum energy equations.
Sequoyah never claimed he invented the Cherokee alphabet. He said he rediscovered the ancient alphabet the ancient knowing that the Cherokee had when they lived in the original, destroyed homeland.
The great revelation of the quantum energy equations of Qabala is that humans are endowed with the potential of not-business-as-usual. We have the potential of being the vessels of the primal, creative, life force. We have the potential of realizing the greater potentials of the human, of being the vessels of the seed of humanity-to-be.
But for most people, for most nations this great potential is suffocated and destroyed by the rigid, static containers, the boxes, the repetition of business-as-usual.
There is much that is business-as-usual in the Cherokee Nation. The Oklahoma Cherokees operate three Indian casinos which are just as tawdry, if not as profitable as the Mohegans’ casino. When given half a chance the Cherokees’ like the Hebrews, try to be nations like other nations.
But Sequoyah and the Cherokee alphabet represent the Qabalic potential of the Cherokees to be a nation unlike others.
The Mohegans were among the first original American nations to encounter the Europeans. In 1861 a faction of the tribe dismembered the reservation and disbanded the state-recognized tribe. The last speaker of the Mohegan – Pequot language died in 1908. Virtually all Mohegans appear to be racially and culturally white with no more than 1/64th or 1/128th of an Indian blood quotum. Mohegan Culture had become a very diffuse, nebulous, near-extinct thing.
But enough of a semblance of American Indian "nationhood" existed for casino developers to build an Indian casino on it. Before the casino opened on October 12, 1996, Jane Fawcett, vice chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribal Council declared that since the Mohegan Sun Casino was the only place where the Mohegan Nation and Mohegan Culture ruled, the casino would be the showcase of Mohegan Culture.
But no matter how much American Indian window-dressings and flubber-dubs are put on the Mohegan Sun Casino, it is still a tawdry casino. The casino frames the absence of a true, emanating culture.
The Cherokee Tribal Nation is a very different situation. The Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Culture is a bright cultural light. Its emanations suffuse Tahlequah, Cherokee County. Northeastern Oklahoma and beyond. Those who are not of the blood, but who live in this emanation are affected, shaped and employed by it. And the Cherokee Nation is unlike other nations. And the place and the people who are in this emanation are unlike other places and other people.
This is demonstrated every September during the celebration of the Cherokee National Holiday.
What makes the Cherokee Nation different from other nations is the Cherokee have maintained their nationhood outside the boxes, the containers of business-as-usual nationhood.
In the stories of themselves which the Cherokees are always telling, particularly during the national holiday, they are always being dispossessed of a secure, static homeland, and a traditional business-as-usual sense of nationhood. Like the Hebrews they are always being thrust into an allegorical Canaan/Oklahoma – an arduous land of conflict, uncertainty, of hope, utter despair, wild joy, anguish, disaster, obstinate reconstructions, and stubborn resurrections..
The Cherokee origin story is that in the beginning the original homeland was an island surrounded by the sea. A high level of civilization was achieved. There were many beautiful, elaborate temples. In the beginning the Cherokees were literate people of a written language, people of the book.
Then the shamans received premonitions that the island was going to shake and burn and sink into the sea. Seven arks were built and loaded with those who possessed the finest attributes of Cherokee civilization, and then the arks were dispatched throughout the world.
The island shook and burned. In one day half the population died. But the other half followed shamans who led them over the waters to the mainland of the Americas. In their journey over the waters they looked back to see the horrifying apocalyptic vision of their homeland sinking into the sea.
The Cherokees migrated North. They would find places that resembled their lost homeland and they would interrupt their migration and build cities. Some people such as the ancestors of the Olmecs and the Mayas would remain in these places. But the majority of the Cherokee continued their migration north.
They crossed a great dry place where the only food was great big animals with humps (American bison). They again came to a place that resembled their homeland. Many wanted to stop their migration and stay there. But the shamans said it was a land of sorrow and it wasn’t the time to dwell in that place (Oklahoma).
They continued north until their way was blocked by a moving mountain of snow (a glacier). They then migrated east where they encountered the fierce, cannibalistic mound builders.
There was a great battle. The Cherokee conquered much of the Southeast of what is now the United States of America.
And then the Cherokees’ story becomes a historical story. The Spanish and then the English find the Cherokee possessed of high cultural attainments, huge territories, material prosperity, and all the business-as-usual attributes of nationhood. They are envied by their white neighbors who conspire to dispossess them of all they have and make them walk the trail of exile and tears to Oklahoma, to a land of sorrows, and further dispossession, of utter despair, wild joy, disaster, obstinate reconstruction, and stubborn resurrection.
The Cherokee Nation is unlike other nations in that the traditional, static containers of nationhood are always being broken, and the nation must survive outside containers, outside the box. The Cherokees’ Nationhood transcends a fixed homeland. It survives when internal civil war breaks the containers of nationhood. It survives when a Cherokee is physically separated from his land, from his people. It survives when Cherokees mix and are dispersed among others.
A great attainment of Cherokee Culture is that it transcends resentment and attitudes of victimization. It stays out of those boxes, those containers – too. In this season’s production of the trail of tears drama, the story of the dispossession and exile is one of many Cherokee stories told. And all the stories ultimately have happy endings and its not over until the phoenix dances and the fat lady sings.
Although I am often mistaken for an American Indian, I am of the Hebrew Tribal Nation. (But I am only Jewish on my mother’s and my father’s side of the family.) One of the greatest cultural attainments of the Jewish people is that even in the Nazi Concentration Camps there were Jewish comedians.
The Cherokees have achieved a similar cultural attainment. Even on the trail of tears there were Cherokee comedians. Will Rogers, one of the greatest American comedians, was unmistakably Cherokee. There certainly is no shortage of Cherokee comedians now.
So it is a beautiful, joyful, comedic coincidence that the Cherokee National Holiday coincides with change check days for the students of Northeastern State University.
The state university is descendent from the institute of higher learning that the survivors of the trail of tears built soon after they arrived in Oklahoma. Among its academic programs is one that accredits Cherokees to teach the Cherokee language, literature, and culture.
Right before the national holiday students at the university are given checks representing the difference (the change) between what their actual university expenses are and what they have been given in student loans, grants, and scholarships. For students at the university, for local businesses, for those residing in the emanation of the Cherokee Nation it is the most wonderful time of the year, a time for balls to the walls celebration.
This year’s national holiday commemorated the great Sequoyah.
I’ve spent much time studying the way Sequoyah is depicted in the national holiday brochures, and posters. Sequoyah is depicted as a man of Qabala.
Qabala is the study of the Hebrew alphabet not as a traditional, business-as-usual alphabet that forms words, that form sentences, that forms texts such as the Bible, as organized religion knows it. Qabala is the study of the Hebrew alphabet as quantum energy symbols that form quantum energy equations.
Sequoyah never claimed he invented the Cherokee alphabet. He said he rediscovered the ancient alphabet the ancient knowing that the Cherokee had when they lived in the original, destroyed homeland.
The great revelation of the quantum energy equations of Qabala is that humans are endowed with the potential of not-business-as-usual. We have the potential of being the vessels of the primal, creative, life force. We have the potential of realizing the greater potentials of the human, of being the vessels of the seed of humanity-to-be.
But for most people, for most nations this great potential is suffocated and destroyed by the rigid, static containers, the boxes, the repetition of business-as-usual.
There is much that is business-as-usual in the Cherokee Nation. The Oklahoma Cherokees operate three Indian casinos which are just as tawdry, if not as profitable as the Mohegans’ casino. When given half a chance the Cherokees’ like the Hebrews, try to be nations like other nations.
But Sequoyah and the Cherokee alphabet represent the Qabalic potential of the Cherokees to be a nation unlike others.
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