Yesterday I drove back from Garambuio, a small town west of Las Vegas, New Mexico, after spending a few days with Sharon Franklett. Sharon once volunteered for me at the RAP School, when I taught high school students in the Mission District of San Francisco in the mid-80's. Most community people in the Mission worked at RAP, the Real Alternatives Program, which was mobilized around keeping Latino youth out of incarceration, fight police brutality and providing alternatives for the youth.
Sharon, now a biologist, has worked with the US Forestry Service on land management. She has advocated for inclusion of the Native voice in restoration of lands, among a variety of things... She also hosts Native Film events, which I attended on the first night in Villanueva. The movies were excellent, my favorite being, "The Salt Song Trail," in which the Southern Paite reinstitute their traditional trails, but go to the Sherman Institute to send the spirits of the dead Indian children who never made it back home to their ancestral lands. My favorite quote happens when a Paiute man worries about how no one does the songs anymore and the grandma says, "Why don't you sing the song? You know them!"
The movie reminded me so much of the work of Cirilio Bawer, Kalinga, working with the elders, and the youth, practicing their chants in homes and the school building up in the Cordillera Mountains. That's why I hate it when I hear people say tradition cultures are dying. They are not. Althought many languages have been lost, I know of many peoples out there investing their time in revitalizing their language, their songs, their rituals.... It's like Datu Vic, Taalandig leader, saying, "This is LIVING CULTURE...LIVING TRADITIONS...."
...right now on our way to Picuris Pueblo to provide elders a workshop on diabetes prevention... more later...
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