Deeper chord note
For all our descriptions of the beauty of this place and the graciousness and hospitality of the Lakota people, I would be doing us all a disservice not to mention what several of us have felt since our first trip to the reservation.
There is a heaviness here that at times is palpable; a sadness that seems to seep up from the ground itself. It is the deepest note of the same chord which holds so much beauty for us.
I never knew how to describe this sense until I read "Neither Wolf nor Dog" by Kent Nerburn - and he so exactly captures it that I'll let his words serve for us.
"I have never met an Indian person who didn't somewhere deep inside struggle with anger and sadness about what has happened to their people, and I have never met an honest and aware non-Indian person in America who didn't somewhere deep inside struggle with guilt about what we as a culture have done to the people who inhabited this continent before us. We can like each other, hate each other, feel pity for each other, love each other. But always somewhere beneath the surface of our personal encounters, this cultural memory is rumbling. A tragedy has taken place on our land, and even though it did not take place on our watch, we are its inheritors, and the earth remembers."
There is a heaviness here that at times is palpable; a sadness that seems to seep up from the ground itself. It is the deepest note of the same chord which holds so much beauty for us.
I never knew how to describe this sense until I read "Neither Wolf nor Dog" by Kent Nerburn - and he so exactly captures it that I'll let his words serve for us.
"I have never met an Indian person who didn't somewhere deep inside struggle with anger and sadness about what has happened to their people, and I have never met an honest and aware non-Indian person in America who didn't somewhere deep inside struggle with guilt about what we as a culture have done to the people who inhabited this continent before us. We can like each other, hate each other, feel pity for each other, love each other. But always somewhere beneath the surface of our personal encounters, this cultural memory is rumbling. A tragedy has taken place on our land, and even though it did not take place on our watch, we are its inheritors, and the earth remembers."
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