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Yoshi Wins posted:Wow. I had no idea. Any recommended reading if I want to learn more about this? My main focus is Indigenous History north of the Medicine Line, but if I recall, Education for Extinction is not the worst start as a very broad history, though it has some methodological issues (for example, the author assumes letters written by indigenous children to the head of the school about how great a particular program is are completely honest).
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 03:00 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 15:22 |
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Captain von Trapp posted:Here's a pretty typical post from what I think's one of the best-known tradcath websites about the current residential school reckoning. It forthrightly admits the scope and scale of the wrongdoing, but will otherwise win few fans here. Wowie Zowie. I am impressed by their ability to barely skim over the genocide before going on about how Canada is no longer free, claiming BLM and Idle No More are media conspiracies, praising earlier Catholic support for colonization, before somehow managed to spend the second half bitching about birth control and abortion and calling Trudeau a Marxist (god, I wish, but he is just another representative of settler-capitalism) Tiberius Thyben fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Jul 20, 2021 |
# ? Jul 20, 2021 03:05 |
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Yoshi Wins posted:Wow. I had no idea. Any recommended reading if I want to learn more about this? Trueanon episode 140 is straight fire
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 03:48 |
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Yoshi Wins posted:Wow. I had no idea. Any recommended reading if I want to learn more about this? This is a recent NPR article where I got that statistic: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/11/1013772743/indian-boarding-school-gravesites-federal-investigation I don't have a lot of reading and resources honestly, most of my exposure is much more local and personal--stories from survivors and their children, grandchildren. I'll ask some folks about good reading. I can't really get through articles like Captain von Trapp posted:Here's a pretty typical post from what I think's one of the best-known tradcath websites about the current residential school reckoning. It forthrightly admits the scope and scale of the wrongdoing, but will otherwise win few fans here. this one because it's enraging. Or the other one linked earlier where the author basically goes "actually it's good children died in Catholic boarding schools because they were buried as Christians." I skimmed a couple paragraphs and it was literally the first and only time in my life I thought about writing hate mail, until I realized that was both unproductive and precisely the sort of thing that rear end in a top hat craves. All I gotta say is listen to survivors and the families of survivors, and if you find yourself reading material that does a "well, actually" about genocide you can write that author off immediately as at very best ignorant. What's a term for mansplaining, but from a Catholic/religious perspective? Vaticansplaining? Explaining things in a condescending or patronizing way to the people actually experiencing them. I dunno, it's very emotionally fraught for me and I think in particular for parents. Virtually every indigenous person in Canada and the US had at least one parent or grandparent who went through the boarding school system where they were forcibly removed from their families and put in schools whose mission was to beat their language and culture out of them. Those kids didn't have a real family or parents for most of their childhoods, so when they themselves had kids they didn't really know how to raise children or be a good parent. Plus they carry the scars of the psychological, spiritual, physical, or sexual abuse. Which leads to a lot of the substance abuse, domestic violence etc we have today on reservations. Let me again throw out a disclaimer here that I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in this thread and I think we should be careful of solely blaming the Catholic Church because they're an easy target. Yes, the Church was one of the major actors in a century+ of genocide of indigenous Americans. But, BUT it was all done with the explicit endorsement of the American and Canadian governments. Our governments had a policy of deliberate assimilation and cultural eradication. Which, combined with (at best) indifference to the physical conditions and well-being of children led to many tens of thousands of kids dying of disease, malnutrition, and abuse in the boarding schools. It also was not just the Catholic church, it was other denominations too. The Episcopalian/Anglican church had active missions and boarding schools in my area, for example. shame on an IGA posted:Trueanon episode 140 is straight fire eh I'll give it a listen but I'm very skeptical of that type of internet irony-comedy podcasting being able to do a good job I hope they brought in an indigenous guest to speak about it otherwise lmao edit: are you sure this is the one you meant? quote:We explore the case of imprisoned Emirati princess Latifia, the lives of the GCC’s permanent class of migrant workers and the labor camps of the Middle East it's also paywalled Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jul 20, 2021 |
# ? Jul 20, 2021 05:15 |
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Captain von Trapp posted:Here's a pretty typical post from what I think's one of the best-known tradcath websites about the current residential school reckoning. It forthrightly admits the scope and scale of the wrongdoing, but will otherwise win few fans here. I wonder why it will win few fans here? ”OnePeterFive” posted:
”OnePeterFive” posted:
”OnePeterFive” posted:
”OnePeterFive” posted:
Could it be because it’s reactionary garbage? If this is the kind of traditionalism that the pope is trying to clamp down on, then all I can say is good.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 08:17 |
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I will reiterate: if you're reading or listening to stuff on on boarding schools in the US/Canada and it does not include indigenous voices, it should be dismissed entirely. The victims must be part of any discussion. Ask yourself--should you ever listen to the perpetrators of a crime without inclusion of the voices of those harmed? I'm sorry but this is a very raw emotional topic for me, this last weekend (over the last four days) I traveled with kids from our tribal youth organizations to participate in the return of remains of nine children from the Carlisle boarding school. Note that Carlisle was NOT a Catholic boarding school, but it was the prototype for many Catholic and other boarding schools in the future. https://www.argusleader.com/story/n...urn/7976939002/ There was a huge turnout. The highway was lined for miles in every direction with orange balloons, flags. Every turnoff had a car parked with a family there to greet the return of the kids' remains. There was a caravan of horseback riders, motorcycles, cars that escorted the remains all the way from Pennsylvania to South Dakota. Many hundreds of people dedicated days of their time in escorting the remains and in producing the grave goods they were buried with. At a local gymnasium, the remains of the nine children were placed at shrines. Each shrine contained a picture of the child, sage, tobacco, a star quilt, moccasins, a shirt. All hand made. Two examples: There was an overnight vigil. I contributed some chokecherries and onions for wasna (pemmican, dried meat and berries) and bapa soup to honor their return. The goal was to prepare a traditional Lakota meal they would have had in the 1880s before they departed for the boarding school, never to return to their famiilies: bapa soup containing dried meat, dried corn, onions, prairie turnips (timpsila) and salt pork. Foods that the nine children would have eaten in the 1880s during the early reservation era. My students and I helped raise a tipi to house the big pot of soup with which we would help feed the hundreds that would attend the ceremony. I have no idea if this facebook link will work but here's Sicangu youth lowering the caskets and grave goods of their nine ancestors into the ground, finally home: https://www.facebook.com/plugins/vi...e&width=560&t=0 I'm not calling out the Catholic Church specifically, though it was a major part of the campaign of deliberate genocide/assimilation of indigenous Americans. The nine takoja returned home this last weekend died at Carlisle which was not a Catholic boarding school but would serve as a template for many Catholic and other boarding schools in the future. Carlisle was the model for "kill the Indian, save the child" boarding schools, which continued into the 1970s in the US and 1990s in Canada. This is a brutal, ugly history that we Americans and Canadians, religious and not, need to confront. The Catholic Church and other religious organizations, in coordination with US and Canadian governments, played a major role. Ho hecetu. Pilamiyapelo. Wopila tanka, Tunkasila Wakan Tanka. Mitakuye Oyasin. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jul 20, 2021 |
# ? Jul 20, 2021 09:03 |
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Fritz the Horse posted:I will reiterate: if you're reading or listening to stuff on on boarding schools in the US/Canada and it does not include indigenous voices, it should be dismissed entirely. This is exactly what I was trying to get at in the beginning of this, with the Inquisition, but I couldn't find the words. Thank you, and solidarity.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 11:18 |
Kayten posted:I wonder why it will win few fans here?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 12:25 |
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Fritz the Horse posted:
Ah woops, it's 167. https://mobile.twitter.com/letstalknative/status/1413296572914409478
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 12:40 |
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The thread title has turned quite dark, eh? Thank you for sharing that Fritz, that's beautiful.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 12:48 |
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Kayten posted:Could it be because it’s reactionary garbage? You've hit on a major reason for the split w/r/t the Pope. Opposition to abortion and contraception may be reactionary garbage, but they're Catholic reactionary garbage. They're not merely stuff the Church believed back in the Middle Ages, they're on the books today and according to the way the magesterium works, are supposed to be there forever. Traditionalists are going to see someone with your view saying good, and take it as confirmation that the Pope is in fact a hostile actor. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Church doesn't deserve judgment for things like the residential schools and sex abuse and the I-word I promised not to talk about. Judgment has a purpose. Evil is supposed to be judged. Fritz: without the need to quote the whole thing, your last post is touching, sad, and hopeful. I hope for true atonement and reconciliation.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 13:05 |
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Captain von Trapp posted:You've hit on a major reason for the split w/r/t the Pope. Opposition to abortion and contraception may be reactionary garbage, but they're Catholic reactionary garbage. They're not merely stuff the Church believed back in the Middle Ages, they're on the books today and according to the way the magesterium works, are supposed to be there forever. Traditionalists are going to see someone with your view saying good, and take it as confirmation that the Pope is in fact a hostile actor. I’m not seeing a problem here. Being hostile to reactionaries is, in fact, a good thing. Changing the church to be marginally less lovely is a good thing, even, especially if it comes at the expense of reactionaries. If the traditionalists want to go all “Old Believer” on the church and split, I don’t see why the Holy See would try to hold them back. Why would you want to be associated with these people?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 13:38 |
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It's not a subject on which I'm well-informed at all but I'm learning that my church's hands aren't exactly clean in the residential school mess either (at least in Canada; I've not found any info on Mennonite Church involvement in boarding schools in the US but that certainly doesn't mean there hasn't been any). Related, I just ran across this podcast (and to be clear I haven't yet listened to any of it and cannot speak to its content at all) that looks interesting: https://anabaptistworld.org/podcast-latest/dismantling-the-doctrine-of-discovery-podcast/
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 13:45 |
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Kayten posted:I’m not seeing a problem here. Being hostile to reactionaries is, in fact, a good thing. Changing the church to be marginally less lovely is a good thing, even, especially if it comes at the expense of reactionaries. The founder of our collective faiths made a point of being associated with his culture's equivalent of "those people".
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 13:46 |
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docbeard posted:The founder of our collective faiths made a point of being associated with his culture's equivalent of "those people". No, Jesus made a definite point of shrugging them off in favour of solidarity with the oppressed and the outcast.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 14:10 |
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Freudian posted:No, Jesus made a definite point of shrugging them off in favour of solidarity with the oppressed and the outcast. I guess I reacted to the phrase 'those people' more than was warranted, though I stand by my assertion that it was specifically the despised people, which included tax collectors who weren't exactly 'the oppressed', that he made time for too. He had harsh words for the religious authorities in particular, but he would talk to anyone who would talk to him and generally had equally harsh words for anyone who told him he shouldn't. I think there's a line between challenging the beliefs and assumptions of reactionaries (or whoever) and just telling them to go gently caress themselves. "Love your enemies" doesn't mean uncritical acceptance but it does mean something.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 14:20 |
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The example of the one good tax collector that Jesus hung out with immediately gave away half of his wealth and promised to pay reparations to anyone that he wronged in the past.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 15:34 |
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I suppose now is as good as any to share a short piece on the origins and historical context of the residential schools up here, for those uninitiated. Ultimately, the residential schools cannot be considered in a vacuum, as they are part of the ongoing settler capitalist drive to eliminate indigenous peoples as an obstacle to the occupation of our land. https://www.google.ca/amp/s/socialistresurgence.org/2021/03/26/canadas-residential-schools-repressed-indigenous-life-and-culture/amp/ Also, if anyone does have any question about the Canadian Schools, I would be happy to answer as best I can.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 15:34 |
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Kayten posted:I wonder why it will win few fans here? I think it's fair to say that the Canadian bishops were cowards when Humanae Vitae came out, neither breaking with the Pope then nor exhorting their priests to exhort their congregations not to break with the Pope. I think it's fair to say that the residential schools were not only not a source of grace, they were a stone wall blocking the flow of grace, and that if the bishops had been less cowardly about saying "We did a bad thing. The government wanted us to wreck these children's cultural identities, and we not only happily complied, we were gratuitously cruel," this latest revelation might have been less... intense? destructive? It would still have hurt but at least it wouldn't also have been a reminder that there are people who don't even think the "kill the Indian, save the man" concept was bad? USAian bishops should be wearing sackcloth and ashes, and sitting on the steps of their cathedrals to listen to anyone who wants to come by, even if that's just to verbally abuse them, too, mind you; their handling of the sexual abuse of minors and those otherwise vulnerable has been abominable, their reaction to our own residential schools has been abominable, and their fidelity to the Pope has been.... iffy. So, that means, no, the kind of traditionalism the Pope is trying to clamp down on is the kind that suggests that the ordinary form of Mass is not just less preferable but actively deficient, or even outright spiritually harmful; the kind that suggests that he isn't really the Pope, because Pope Benedict XVI didn't really resign, or, even better, the kind that suggests that Pope Benedict wasn't really the Pope either because he was consecrated a bishop after Vatican II, and thus 'couldn't' have 'really' been the Bishop of Rome. Quattor abhinc annos prescribed that "it be made publicly clear beyond all ambiguity that such priests and their respective faithful in no way share the positions of those who call in question the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970" before a priest was given permission to use the older form of Mass. Pope John Paul II went on to issue Ecclesia Dei, which encouraged bishops to be generous in granting that permission, to "assist those who had been associated with Archbishop Lefebvre but who wished to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church, while preserving their spiritual and liturgical traditions." Instead, allowing both forms seems to have hardened people's attitudes - "we don't need Latin here; you can go to the Latin Mass if you want" (even though the Ordinary Form is by default in Latin!) on the one hand and "if you can't find a real Mass, go to a SSPX chapel so you don't have to endure the Novus Ordo" on the other. This most recent moto proprio feels a lot like everyone losing recess because somebody pooped in the sink in the boys' bathroom, but the more I think (rather than just emote) about it, the more I think that there was a real danger of the traditionalists trying to be their own little bubble inside the church, and the blister needed to be lanced if it was ever going to heal.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 16:39 |
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A day ago I accidentally went to a cafe owned by these assholes, it was a big red flag when I noticed that all the front of house was men and the kitchen was all women. I obviously didn't want to patronize the place, especially considering the children that seemed to be "helping their parents" bus tables and such. When I was thinking about the experience, it struck me however that I wouldn't have the same issue if the staff were, say, Hasidic Jews, even though they might be just as regressive and practice as much child abuse. In general I think that the state should have higher authority over parents, and be able to make public school compulsory and such, so these insular groups shouldn't really be a thing, but at what point do anti-cult beliefs become just prejudice against newer religions?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 16:55 |
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Freudian posted:This is exactly what I was trying to get at in the beginning of this, with the Inquisition, but I couldn't find the words. Thank you, and solidarity. Crazy Joe Wilson didn’t mention the Spanish Inquisition’s victims in their first post, but once they did you still seemed to think it was whitewashing. It’s true that the founding purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was for ethnic cleansing, but if the original purpose of an organization is what determines whether we have to accentuate their evil and ignore their good, then Christianity (and everything stemming from it like the Spanish Inquisition) has a pretty easy time getting out of responsibility since they can just say “my bad, Jesus wouldn’t approve, don’t hold it against me though since that’s not who I really am as a Christian”. Are we not supposed to extend the benefit of the doubt in this thread that if someone mentions a positive aspect of an organization like the Spanish Inquisition they aren’t whitewashing them. And if we aren’t then who are the irredeemable bad guys that cannot have anything good said of them? We already have proscribed topics like abortion, what else are we not supposed to mention?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 18:45 |
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I just want you to look at the sentence 'It's true they were founded for ethnic cleansing, but-' And think about the fact that Jewish members of our community here in this thread are listening. I was born Jewish, myself. I converted to Christianity later in life, but I was born into Judaism. Reform Judaism, certainly, but while I do not consider myself Jewish any longer it still hurts to hear 'Those guys were founded to hound and persecute members of a fellow faith that believes in the God of Abraham, but-'
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 18:52 |
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In other news, the Los Angeles Unified School District illegally denied a bunch of Title 1 funds to Catholic schools that qualified this past year. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248425/investigation-los-angeles-city-illegally-kept-funds-destined-to-catholic-schoolsquote:According to the report, in 2019, “LAUSD insisted on a hard deadline of June 26 for [the archdiocese] to produce in 12 days all underlying surveys for 123 schools and over 12,000 funding-eligible students. The district was effectively requesting a full census (equivalent to a 100% review) of all [archdiocesan schools, with 12 calendar days to comply, during a summer break when most schools were closing or closed.” That's uhh, pretty dang blatant. Apparently they did it to Jewish schools too. quote:Escala believes the archdiocese would win any appeal because the U.S. Department of Education recently issued a similar ruling in a parallel dispute between LAUSD and Jewish schools in Los Angeles. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jul 20, 2021 |
# ? Jul 20, 2021 18:59 |
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:In other news, the Los Angeles Unified School District illegally denied a bunch of Title 1 funds to Catholic schools that qualified this past year. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248425/investigation-los-angeles-city-illegally-kept-funds-destined-to-catholic-schools That's interesting, because this year the archdiocese of San Antonio instructed principals to very carefully make sure they were participating with the local school districts' Child Find process. I wonder if someone suspected something was off?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 19:05 |
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Speaking of the US Bishops, looks like the general secretary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops just resigned after being apparently outed for using Grindr via cell-phone records. It is incredibly lovely to out anyone like that, even if they are actively working for an organization that is hostile to LGBT people, and I suspect we're going to see more of it. Isn't widespread surveillance technology's impact on society wonderful?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 20:56 |
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Night10194 posted:I just want you to look at the sentence 'It's true they were founded for ethnic cleansing, but-' I’m sorry I worded it so in-artfully. What I was trying to get at is: do we distinguish between groups that are founded with an evil purpose who might also do good, and those founded for a good cause but which do evil? I doubt the victims of the latter would care much for the distinction so should we prioritize one kind over the other? What kind of a responsibility do we have? Just about every religion has had atrocities committed in its names. And talking about them is very fraught, it’s easy to be insensitive and dismissive like I was. But when do we have to talk about the victims to the exclusion of everything else? For example, when there was a discussion of Tibetan Buddhist art should I have posted this article? When do we need to speak up for the victims and silence those who talk up their oppressors?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 21:00 |
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I think you can talk about things the inquisition did that weren't attrocities without it looking like you're saying that they got a bad rap. It is one of those things that should be very easy to do.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 21:42 |
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YF-23 posted:I think you can talk about things the inquisition did that weren't attrocities without it looking like you're saying that they got a bad rap. It is one of those things that should be very easy to do. And I mean, a large percentage of indigenous people in the US and Canada are Catholic (or other denominations of Christianity, with a lot of syncretic beliefs) and cherish their faith. Spotted Tail was a Lakota chieftain probably most famous for advocating education as the way forward for his people, he visited Washington DC and was so impressed by "the men in black robes" he specifically requested the Jesuits come establish missions to educate the people. The Jesuits took their jobs very seriously and put a lot of effort into writing down the language, cataloguing traditional culture and spirituality, medicinal uses of plants. The ends don't justify the means, certainly. It is okay to acknowledge there were some positives things to come out of the Catholic missions on reservations while never forgetting the horrors.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 22:02 |
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Fritz, how do the Lakota view Black Elk?
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 22:09 |
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YF-23 posted:I think you can talk about things the inquisition did that weren't attrocities without it looking like you're saying that they got a bad rap. It is one of those things that should be very easy to do. If they’re being blamed for bad things they didn’t do, or are being treated as uniquely guilty of something that some of their accusers also did, then they are getting a bad rap. Doing evil doesn’t mean you can attribute whatever you want to someone. If someone commits murder does that mean they can’t defend themselves against allegations of any crime? Plus “looking” like you’re doing something is a matter of perception. How responsible are you for how other people will interpret what you say? This kind of thinking is more at home in a Twitter pile on thread than this one. Maybe I’m overreacting but I don’t think so. We either need to clarify what subjects can’t be talked about and why, or this thread is going to scare people off. If there are subjects we can’t talk about then great. I want to know. I’m not some free speech warrior who wants to trigger liberal snowflakes in their safe spaces. I want to have conversations that touch upon theological topics since so many people dread the mere mention of religion. And I want to do it in a way that doesn’t drive people away. But now we’re getting the kind of glib poo poo posting that’s been roundly condemned in this thread before.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 22:22 |
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Worthleast posted:Fritz, how do the Lakota view Black Elk? I mean, I can hardly speak for the Lakota and opinions are going to vary quite a bit. Certainly Lakota Christians and Catholics in particular hold him in high regard. He was an important chieftain and medicine man, so he's respected by everyone. It's unusual to have a traditional medicine man also be very religiously Christian. There's a ton of syncretism and in my experience Lakota Christians aren't thought of negatively by the traditionalist non-Christians. Black Elk Speaks is a rather controversial book because it was written by a European and is generally considered to distort a lot of traditional Lakota beliefs and practices, whether intentionally or not. It's something our students read, but certainly not as a resource or reference for indigenous knowledge. All of that traditional ecological, spiritual, ceremonial knowledge is oral. Crow Dog (who passed away last month) was the greatest spiritual leader in recent times, I've heard him referred to as sort of like the Pope or a living saint. He's an incredibly respected holy man who was one of the lead radical activists from the 1970s onward in AIM fighting for indigenous rights. So, modern Lakota would look to figures like Crow Dog and other elders and medicine men for spiritual and ceremonial knowledge and leadership because that is all oral tradition. Black Elk is a respected historical leader but you wouldn't look to his book as authoritative on Lakota spiritual understandings. Maybe for Catholic Lakota who seek inspiration and ways to reconcile their Catholic faith with traditional spirituality. edit: if you're really curious I can ask some folks. Like, he certainly wouldn't be thought of as a traitor or "heretic." I've encountered some hostility towards Lakota Christians who reject their traditional beliefs entirely but that's a pretty small set of usually Evangelical-leaning people. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jul 21, 2021 |
# ? Jul 21, 2021 02:51 |
White Coke posted:If they’re being blamed for bad things they didn’t do, or are being treated as uniquely guilty of something that some of their accusers also did, then they are getting a bad rap. Doing evil doesn’t mean you can attribute whatever you want to someone. If someone commits murder does that mean they can’t defend themselves against allegations of any crime? It is also possible that this would be more fruitful in a thread discussing interesting tidbits about early modern/medieval history, we have several floating around. It is genuinely something interesting to consider. However, the Inquisition does not really have a positive reputation, and while it may be imperfectly understood, I also do not think that it is going to bear many good fruits to introduce the topic of "let's re-examine the inquisition" abruptly.
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 03:08 |
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Fritz the Horse posted:Black Elk Speaks is a rather controversial book because it was written by a European and is generally considered to distort a lot of traditional Lakota beliefs and practices, whether intentionally or not. It's something our students read, but certainly not as a resource or reference for indigenous knowledge. All of that traditional ecological, spiritual, ceremonial knowledge is oral. Thanks. Someone recommended that very book to me and I hadn't heard of Black Elk before. Apparently his cause for canonization is open. I just finished dinner with a Jewish neighbor, and he compared the removal of Latin in Catholic ceremonies to removing Hebrew from his ceremonies.
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 03:47 |
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Worthleast posted:Thanks. Someone recommended that very book to me and I hadn't heard of Black Elk before. Apparently his cause for canonization is open. People have asked for book recommendations, I'll be on campus tomorrow and will check what they have in the bookstore. Black Elk Speaks is sort of a "classic" and it's certainly worth reading, just keep in mind that it, like many/most readily available texts on indigenous culture, is filtered through a European settler lens. You really want to read indigenous authors if possible. edit: this is a better option than Black Elk Speaks - https://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Grandfather-Black-Teachings-Neihardt/dp/0803265646 It's a reanalysis of the original transcripts of Black Elk done by a scholar of Lakota culture and linguistics. Still not a work by an indigenous person with firsthand knowledge, but considerably better. If you're interested from the perspective of how Wolakota and Catholic beliefs are melded by Black Elk, that's the better option. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jul 21, 2021 |
# ? Jul 21, 2021 03:54 |
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Thanks Fritz. Always looking for good reading. Pet your horse for us.
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 04:27 |
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Howdy! I don't want to derail the serious chat too much here, but I kind of need some spiritual guidance. I was raised Roman Catholic and still adhere to the faith, including church every Sunday. I'm not sure if this is frowned upon, but I'm gonna quote my post in the E/N breakup megathread: magic cactus posted:Howdy! My question is, did I, through my words and actions, sin against my friend? I know that in her words I broke her heart and made her cry, and that makes me feel terrible. Not that it counts for much, but I took pains to not be mean or accusatory in my language. I genuinely took every precaution I could not to hurt her, but I still did. Honestly, hurting her hurt more than the heartbreak of not having my feelings returned. My thought process on the whole thing is that "I hurt her now so that I don't risk hurting her more down the line." Good intentions basically, and I know what they say about those vis-a-vis the road to hell. I definitely feel a disquiet in my heart about what I did. I lost the friendship of somebody very important to me, somebody who genuinely cared about me as a person and helped me grow through most of the previous decade of my life. But I feel like I made the right choice. I just don't know what my faith says about this. Googling around, all I can find are articles about "what to do if a friend hurts you" and nothing about when you're the one who failed or is at fault. Other than "To all things a season, and to every season its time" in Ecclesiastes, I've found little by way of comfort. I would appreciate any perspectives or thoughts (Catholic or not) you all might have. Thanks for reading!
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 05:30 |
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Fritz the Horse posted:And I mean, a large percentage of indigenous people in the US and Canada are Catholic (or other denominations of Christianity, with a lot of syncretic beliefs) and cherish their faith. Several of my lakota/mexican/apache teachers have ancestors who included Jesus in their pantheon, though not to the exclusion of the great spirit. Thanks for the reccommendation! magic cactus posted:My question is, did I, through my words and actions, sin against my friend? I know that in her words I broke her heart and made her cry, and that makes me feel terrible. Not that it counts for much, but I took pains to not be mean or accusatory in my language. I genuinely took every precaution I could not to hurt her, but I still did. Honestly, hurting her hurt more than the heartbreak of not having my feelings returned. My thought process on the whole thing is that "I hurt her now so that I don't risk hurting her more down the line." Good intentions basically, and I know what they say about those vis-a-vis the road to hell. Not christian so others will have an easier time analyze the christian merits, but I would caution you against letting feelings of sinning exarcabate an already painful situation. Do you view yourself or your feelings as so destructive that you can't ever be her friend? 'Cause life is a long time, and you may hit a day where those feelings aren't bugging you. We nordic heathens would recommend that you fight for her heart, but our theology is very old and backwards when it comes to women No means no, though it can be crushingly difficult to accept.
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 06:27 |
magic cactus posted:I would appreciate any perspectives or thoughts (Catholic or not) you all might have. It is difficult to say much beyond this. Are you looking for advice on how to reconcile feelings that you have wronged the other person? Advice on how to behave in general? I will say that you may wish to contemplate how you consider the feelings of others. This would have never been easy, but it seems that you were greatly surprised at her reply. By cultivating this kind of a perspective - which can be challenging to do, and which is not necessarily urgent if you are at the point of 'I just chopped this cord, I need it to clot and heal some' - you can act skillfully and avoid causing such harms in the future. I would agree with Tias on the topic of potentially viewing yourself as destructive. You have future lives to consider, too (at least from my perspective).
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 06:34 |
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magic cactus posted:Howdy! I'm not Catholic but Lutheran. Figured I could chip in a bit. I've been in a bit similar situation but on the other side of it. I was happily married and befriended a person through work. Later it turned out that this person had a crush on me. The situation was a bit more complicated than "just" a friendship, since cutting ties with that person wasn't really possible or ethically correct. We ended up with an arrangement that was, in essence, like thia: We will meet incidentally through work stuff from time to time and that will be professional and not personal. Once or twice a year, we have a cup of coffee or something like that, just to ask how it's going. Nothing closer than that and no calling or texting. It worked well for us and the crush apparently died. However, my wife, who knew fully what was going on knew of the crush and also and why cutting ties entirely wasn't possible or ethically correct, still suffered. The situation is different now, but my take, based on my experiences, is that you can feel good about yourself. You did a loving deed towards your friend and her relationship. I believe time will heal much.
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 07:10 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 15:22 |
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magic cactus posted:Howdy! Just my two cents. You had good intentions (To avoid the near occasion of sin for yourself, to avoid potential scandal), you told the truth, and you wished for the good of your friend (the definition of love). Yes, it is painful to see your friend go through this, as well as yourself, but the truth sometimes hurts, and you were trying to avoid a possible greater hurt and betrayal in the future by telling the truth now. I don't see any possible sin here. If it helps you feel better, think about the numerous times Christ admonished sinners to turn from their sinful ways in the Gospel. Surely, such admonishments hurt, and caused people discomfort, but admonishment is a form of love, and that hurt helped them turn from an ultimately evil path (sin). Here, through no fault of either of you, you were in a situation that could potentially lead to sin, and you chose to avoid that, even though that comes with cost. On TLM Chat, here is a First Things article that posits the main reason for Pope Francis' super-harsh comedown on TLM as being primarily a response to TLM-internet bloggers who gave the rest of the group a bad rep. Interesting read I think: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/07/for-pope-francis-the-mass-is-the-message
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 12:39 |