Great! I'll bet your line is in the "Bala Chitta" Simmons Family book. And, yes, the white ancestors came here around 1808-1810. My grandmother was Linnie Virginia Strickland, her mother was Sarah Jane Varnado. I've also got Magees, Morrises, Simmonses. I guess I should call you cousin, or cousin-in-law. I read your posting and identified with it very closely. Many of the words could be mine, then you had that suprise ending. Perhaps our Chahta spirits hunt, fish, dance, and sing together on the other side, maybe in the same band. This technology brings people together that would not have met in this lifetime. Maybe the Spirit World needs some things sped up on this side, what with all the stabbing in the heart of the Mother nowadays. The Hopi say that the white people will come to the red people for teaching and leadership to save nature when a certain horrible point is reached in the destruction. Many wrong things will be set aright in the coming days. Perhaps things will be more like a crucible, but in the end beauty will overcome and things shunned and attacked will be embraced, even by the children of those people Squanto taught how to farm on this "side of the pond", who, consequently, would have died in the middle of winter without his knowledge. I used to tell folks at work, I'm medically-retired now, every Columbus Day to go to their neighbors house, grab a beer and the remote, sit in the biggest, most comfortable chair and catch a game on TV. If they complain, kill'em, then they'd be continuing the holiday tradition. I find shocking and catalytic thought is best to break down the mental barriers and generations of glossing over the nasty details, unfortunately it sometimes makes folks see you as the village idiot. What a world! To have a sense of social justice makes you look weird. I also used to tell my fellow workers, mostly black, that "I have a little Choctaw in me, and, boy, is he p****d!" and then we'd talk about all the stupid racists and supremists, and how they arrive at their conclusions. I studied them alot, to understand what my father fought in World War II. I told them I'd like to pray the white man out of me, but I might disappear too much. We gotta' be related somehow. We do get wordy. Kevin Frindik/Crazy Diamond Please note I have another e-mail address now. It is [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: Juli Kearns <[email protected]> To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 6:09 PM Subject: Re: [CHAHTA] Question >For me, one of the more striking experiences I've had, down this line of >discussion, was the following: > >My husband and I were visiting one afternoon with a friend of his. I'd not >met him or his wife before. She was not yet home. When she entered, as I >looked at her I saw a Chahta spirit moving with her. It was not her, not >her soul or spirit, not an aura of her that I was seeing, it was >specifically a Chahta spirit. I'm not speaking of something which >possesses its own personality...and not a ghost. What I saw (and I saw it, >didn't just feel it) was a spirit of numerous generations, of people. And >I blurted, "You're part Choctaw, aren't you?" She answered yes, she was. >Her grandmother was Choctaw, her grandfather French Canadian. She was >blond, fair-skinned... > >Like me, in that respect. The reason the incident was significant to me is >that I've a Chahta ancestress (Oklahoma, mid 1800's) I've not been able to >locate. To look at me most people would think it ludicrous that I would >begin to claim Chahta blood. Though I've had several people ask me over >the years if I was part American Indian...they say it's my eyes (epicanthic >eyefolds), high cheekbones and something about the set of my features. I >was made fun of by my family and schoolmates for my eyes as I looked >different. I used to sketch alot when I was young and someone finally >asked a relative why I always drew people with American Indian features, >which is when my family said, "Oh, that must be because of the Choctaw." > >I dream quite a bit about meetings with "shaman" spirits. They speak about >taking the land back; talk about spritually surviving in part by having >gone "underground", the spirit surviving by their concealing it in their >work, so it was still expressed, but was unrecognized by whites. I don't >dream about meeting with ancestral Irish shamanistic types. Or French or >English. I know the Chahta origins involve the mound-builders, but for >some reason I dream repeatedly also about a MesoAmerican connection, of >following my "brother" Quetzlcoatyl down into Central and South America (as >if both a physical and spiritual journey) and then returning. Ten years >ago when I was passing through the "Painted Desert" I saw for the first >time petroglyphs in person. I dreamt that night that as I looked at the >rock, a man stepped out of it and began to speak to me, which was the rock >speaking. A spirit whose appearance was American Indian (I say appearance >though he was "beyond" that) and I was surprised we were able to so easily >communicate. He spoke with me (a woman followed) and then they were joined >by a third person who I thought of as being a younger girl and they went on >with their journey. I didn't know at the time that so many petroglyphs are >records of journeys. Perhaps the rock I was looking at was one of such, I >can't now find the picture I took of it. > >I dream about the Pecos pueblos. I was aware of the Pueblos, but I didn't >know of the Pecos pueblos until I dreamt of taking a spiritual journey (yet >I was also walking and the environs were quite vivid) to a "height" which >had to do with them, and receiving instruction from shaman spirits in the >dream in how to act when in the company of the ancestral spirits...that we >communicated by removing our faces, and he did so and I wasn't surprised, >for as I said to him I had done this before. It was a month after the >dream, the fires buring near Los Alamos, that I was reminded of the dream, >that I had been, in the dream, very near there at a place specifically to >do with "Pecos" and looked up and found out a bit about the Pecos. > >At any rate, if anything has been difficult for me about this it is that I >have had no one with whom to speak about any of this. My husband >understands (found out a few years ago he has a Cherokee ancestress we >hadn't known about, now have a picture of her) but he doesn't have such >experiences. It used to be distressing for me to be someone who couldn't >legally show, "Yes, see, I am part Chahta." No paper to speak for me. >Though this is no longer troubling to me, not since I saw the Chahta spirit >myself, I am still sometimes troubled that I should be ridiculed by >individuals who can legally claim ancestry for my feeling this inheritance, >that they would believe I want a little Chahta blood for a bit of "Oh, how >neat" decoration. Because for me the dreams and experiences came unbidden. > And what they create is an atmosphere apart from much that surrounds me >culturally (though we have a rather "different" culture in our own >household) so that I feel I am part of a living inheritance, and feel an >essential drive to fulfill my part in it. I understand the resentment of >individuals who feel a so-called "conquering" culture would now seek to >claim to be Chahta or Cherokee, as if this legitimizes their "place." >Understand the resentment also because of the gross suffering that has been >experienced, and the nightmarish privilege of being the survivor of a so >recent and still largely unrecogonized attempt at complete genocide (yes, I >did mean to say nightmarish, in that to be privileged as a child of >survivors is not only perpetual testimony to strength but also to horror). > >And yet some how, some way, despite my fair skin, I have in me also that >same survivor inheritance. It lives. It speaks to me. It comes in dreams >and says, "Look and learn." It says it still lives in me and that >surreptitiously, despite the effort at genocide, that inheritance is strong >and continuing. > >Forgive me if this sounds trite, but there are people who have spoken to me >about feeling failures, and according to what I know about them, if I feel >it appropriate I ask them "failures by what standard? So, you haven't >accomplished what the status quo begs. Why are you purchasing that the >status quo is right? Why accept that measure of success at all?" I think >of Black Elk's vision and how he cried and said it was a great vision given >to someone too weak to fulfill it. But he also understood as the years >went on that the vision was far more than his initial comprehension of it. >The reclamation of a land by a "people". If I bring this up it is because >despite how significant to me any Chahta inheritance I have, no matter how >significantly it seeks as if to have me recognize it, to get caught up in >the passion of some racial pride is not the point. I am not saying that to >have esteem in and pride for one's ancestral legacy is not appropriate. It >is. But I personally believe the "people" observed in Black Elk's vision >are not to be qualified by blood legacy alone. I think instead in terms of >spirit, and yes blood plays a part as well, but in contributing to and >fortifying the whole with its unique and special inheritance. Black Elk, >as with many others, was the carrier of a vision which was not dependent >upon him, but which he did manage to broadcast...and such a great >vision...and yet by the status quo that grinds many into the ground he >would be considered a failure? Preposterous. > >Sorry for the length of this email. I have not spoken about this before to >anyone other than my husband. As the subject of spiritual or psychic >inheritance was brought up, I thought I might contribute a little. > >Thanks for permitting me to ramble. > >Juli > >(By the way, I have Strickland ancestors as well, married into the line >which was part Chahta, in Oklahoma. My husband's family all hail largely >from Washington and Tangipahoa Parishes for the past century and a half.) > >At 02:19 PM 8/30/00 -0500, you wrote: >>I am a man. I have many experiences of a spiritual and /or psychic nature, >>also. > > >==== CHAHTA Mailing List ==== >To subscribe to CHOCTAW-SOUTHEAST-L: >Send msg. to [email protected] >Put "one" word in "body" of message:... "subscribe" without the quotes >Nothing in the subject line... Turn off signatures.......