Dear Friends,
I begin to think this is a quarterly newsletter. I entered the semester at Oglala Lakota College in mid-August and am just now coming up for air. I took on a load of six classes, traveling three times a week to Pine Ridge for classes and meetings. Too much.
Today I was driving back across this beautiful land beneath a bright sky. The land, normally burned and dry by now, is still green. I was thinking about my students and imagining our goodbyes a few weeks from now and tears came to my eyes. I had just heard Elizabeth Lynn-Cook (a Dakota scholar and writer) speak and was moved by her talk. Such obstacles for our indigenous (her word) people. This semester three of my students had babies, eight of them lost a loved one, at least half a dozen faced court dates or watched a brother or uncle go to jail. It is hard sometimes to know which is higher–their hopes or their barriers. I also realized, as I crossed the miles one more time, that I would rather be here doing this work than just about anything else (well, maybe working on my novel).
In truth, it is not just Indian people who have barriers. We all have our own distances to cross, and we do it in the best way possible for us. Sometimes those who have the greatest distance to go emerge the strongest. A hopeful thought and one of my favorites. We all have the potential to become strong activitists for life.
I turned 54 in October and feel like now my life is about putting my hands together so others can put their foot in it and boost themselves up. I want so much for them–for all of us. My expectations are high. When a person is as blessed as I am– with good family, good friends, a great husband–there is no other path but to serve in any way I can.
I am only one person but there are a whole lot of “one persons” out there. Let’s think about all that we can do in this upcoming year. Here are just a few ideas:
Look at other people and not just yourself.
Smile more–it costs nothing and earns much.
Weed negativity out of your garden with love,
only love.
See God in each other.
Use less of our precious earth’s resources. We simply
don’t need all that stuff. Stuff robs energy from our real lives.
Watch carefully for opportunities to help
someone out.
Forget the miniature emergencies and work
on the big picture–your vision of the world.
Be yourself as authentically and as honestly
as you can.
Give your time, your money, and your good state to others.
Make a New Year’s Resolution to stop all
gossip, blaminng and other injurious forms
of communcation.
Breathe more.
Give more money to your favorite charities.
Teach what you know. Do it now and quit worrying
about whether you will be “good enough” at it.
That is all that comes to mind at the moment but I am sure you have your own lists. Oh, and by the way, The Bead People have journeyed to France, Germany, Texas, Washington D.C., Maine, Oregon, Mississippi and Eagle Butte, South Dakota. The Bead People project is being used by church groups, schools, girl scouts and who knows what else. It makes me smile–so much for self-doubt. You have to read my August newsletter to hear about the birth of The Bead People.
Maybe you have the tiniest spark of an idea that you think is just plain silly but needs (NOW) to be in the world. Go for it.
Finally, I want to wish you all a blessed New Year. Love the ones your with and, most importantly, be gentle with yourself.
For Milt and I, we are making plans to combine our (too many) websites into one. Hopefully my next newsletter will announce the unveiling of the new site that will be filled with teacher/people friendly downloads. Our focus will be to make the hundreds of hours of interviews Milt has done over the years available by download with lesson plans to go along with them. Our focus will continue to be to create a world where the human spirit, diversity and creativity are celebrated. More on that later. It should be an interesting challenge to put things like The Bead People together with our great stuff on Native Americans and The Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP=education).
2008–here we come.
Love to all,
Jamie Lee