THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605090507
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
MESSENGERS OF THE WIND
Native American Women Tell Their Life Stories
EDITED BY JANE KATZ
One World/Ballatine[sic]. 319 pp. $12.
On a day honoring mothers, it seems appropriate to listen to some of them, and a new book, Messengers of the Wind: Native American Women Tell Their Life Stories (One World/Ballantine, 319 pp., $12), provides strong maternal voices.
Laura Wittstock of the Hodenosaunee and Seneca tribes: ``I hold all of life sacred. Ideas are sacred, the collective wisdom that we poor humans, with our limited understanding of the universe, can leave as a legacy to our children. The essence of that legacy is to live a good life, while fulfilling our responsibility to our community.''
Wittstock directs MIGIZI, a national Native news network headquartered in Minneapolis, and trains young Native Americans for the field of journalism. Her mother was a maid in San Francisco. The Indian Center sewing circle that she and her friends founded made dolls and quilts which paid for sending bodies of the dead back to the reservation.
Ramona Bennett of the Puyallup tribe: ``The reason that white people can go from continent to continent destroying everything is because they believe they're going to heaven and it doesn't matter. But we know this is paradise. The spirit world is right here, the ones who aren't born yet and those who have passed on are with us every day.''
Bennett founded and directs the Rainbow Youth and Family Services organization on the Puyallup Reservation in East Tacoma, Wash. Her mother, traumatized by isolation and racism in U.S. government-run boarding schools, became an alcoholic. The clinic Bennett helped to build saved her mother's life.
Ingrid Washinawatok of the Menominee: ``We have the power to bring forth and nurture new life. That's the power Mother Earth has. There's the power of love.''
Washinawatok is a writer and filmmaker who works with the Fund of the Four Directions in New York City. Her mother earned a nursing degree and worked as a registered nurse at the tribal hospital. A federal policy closed the hospital, and her family relocated to Chicago, where her Menominee father worked as an insurance adjuster.
The Native American women of Messengers have seen life in this century and are well qualified to comment on it. They speak of political and economic oppression, good and bad marriages, ambitions thwarted and fulfilled. What is remarkable about the book is not their anger but their buoyant, resilient affirmation of life.
Those women who once had few choices are making it possible for their daughters - and sons - to have more.
As Rose Mary Barstow, of the White Earth Ojibway and Chippewa tribes, observes, ``There's some kind of healing force here.''
She recounts my favorite story of the collection. It has to do with the pervasive spiritual power called Manitou.
``All of us camped in the open country,'' Barstow says, ``then we dressed up to go in a caravan to see a circus. Grandpa said we were going to see Manitou. In a big tent, there were stinking animals, jugglers, clowns, aerialists.
``Afterwards, I wouldn't talk to anyone. Grandpa said, `What's wrong?' I said, `You promised we'd see Manitou.'
``He answered in Chippewa, `You did see Manitou.' ''
Editor Katz has done posterity an important service in moving among these women with a tape recorder and setting down, without ornament, what they had to say. Their stories constitute the testimony of survival. Katz, a public school teacher of multicultural literature, has put a human face on history.
It is a female face, a sustaining face.
Ultimately, it is our own face.
On a day honoring mothers, it seems appropriate to listen particularly to Janet McCloud of the Tulalip and Nisqually tribes:
``All life is a precious gift. We're only here for a limited time. We need to value life, we need to find joy in it and give something back.`` MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: JOHN EARLE/The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB