Additional Notes (some on "rqce")

[Hunter Gray]

I placed this three piece combo on all of our lists a couple of days. I'm now sending it to a very few individuals -- with some additional notes. I plan to send these specific notes around to our discussion lists this morning.

First, however, thanks to Jyri for his good May Day greetings. Perhaps these will evoke some discussion.

Thanks to Greg on RBB for his several posts on the Russian/Ukrainian situation. They are helpful.

In the combo material, I made mention of a special Pact I'd made at 23. I have never mentioned that beyond our immediate family. I made an exception this time -- the first ever -- since I was interested in reactions. No reactions were visible. In sending the combo around, I added for our non-RBB lists one sentence on parapsycholgy. This is the very slightly expanded version:

I was born to be an Organizer. Some day I may tell this list of a very special pact I made -- to spend my life helping people. I was 23. The circumstances would seem mysterious to those pure secularists on our good list -- they might have trouble with it. But no Native or any genuinely open minded person would see the pact and its circumstances strange. (On this, do not think "supernatural" -- think paranormal or parapsychology.)

After the pact, many challenges followed. I've kept my word and will always continue to do so.

I am indebted to our direct ancestor and the family culture hero -- and to his sturdy wife. This has been around before but, in the foregoing context, it is worth another read:

If you looked at that portion of the combo entitled Family Stuff, you noted my mention of the two historically well known white captives in our direct family line -- Samuel Gill and Rosalie James. They were taken at a very young age by Abenakis during a famous raid near Deerfield, Mass., at the beginning of the 1700s and raised as Natives and syncretic Roman Catholics (i.e., Native beliefs mixed with Catholicism) . (It might be worth noting that Samuel Gills' grandfather, Richard Gill, came to the Massachusetts Colony from England in 1630.)

In time, the two former captives married each other and had a number of children -- all culturally Abenaki. As noted in my combo material, one, Marie Appoline Gill in our direct line, married Gabriel Annance, a Mohawk visitor to the St Francis Abenaki in Quebec. He remained there and that liason was the beginning of the famous Annance line among the St Francis Indians -- one of our family lines.

One of Marie's brothers, Joseph Louis Gill, biologically white but thoroughly Abenaki in the cultural sense, served as principal chief of the St Francis Indians for half a century. "Race" obviously was no factor; a traditional cultural outlook trumped.

In the material involving our direct ancestor, John Gray, Mohawk, I posted a link to our website page, Some Notes on Gray. In it there is mention of one of the Seven Nations treaties between the Mohawks and the Americans. John Gray's Anglo father, William Gray, is there as one of a number of signatories (and as interpreter). Also mentioned is signatory Colonel Louis Cook as a Mohawk leader. Col. Cook earned his rank by serving in the Revolutionary War. He was one-half Abenaki and one-half African American. As a small child in Canada, he was seized by Anglo military officers from his Abenaki mother for slave purposes but Mohawks entered that situation immediately and rescued he and his mother. Louis Cook was then formally adopted into the Mohawks and raised accordingly.

There isn't much anti-Black sentiment at all among Native Americans. Never has been. Where it does exist, it's due to Anglo influences and it's almost always pretty superficial. Native/Black marriages are not unusual. The Southern tribes all have African ancestry.

In the case of Lumbee Indians, many of whom I've known for decades, there is a good deal of African ancestry. This has been used by some -- some -- leaders of the Eastern Cherokee of western North Carolina in their so-far and sadly successful campaign against full Federal recognition for the Lumbee people. But if you look beneath the surface, that anti-Black attitude is actually being used because the Eastern Cherokee have a casino monopoly in that whole region. And they are afraid that the Lumbee, if "recognized", might get a casino themselves.
http://www.hunterbear.org/lumbee_indians_of_north_carolina.htm

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)

[s***@netscape.net]

I have to admit that I was a little confused by your statement about having committed to spending your life helping people. That does not seem to me to being such an unusual commitment. Many of us on our lists have made similar commitments, under various circumstances.

It might be interesting for people to mention when they came to similar decisions and/or commitments--and the circumstances.

In my case, it came during my college years, specifically in Summer of 1962 between my second and third years of college. I had spent the first two years as an astronomy major, but also was taking part in movement activities both while in high school, on vacations home during freshman year of college (and maybe a little at college), and then increasingly during my sophomore year. I spent 6 weeks of the Summer taking French at college, and reading and thinking a lot--and helping to gather signatures to put H Stuart Hughes on the ballot for his Senatorial race against Ted Kennedy and one of the Lodges. Hughes was an independent peace candidate with a vaguely social democratic program, as I remember.

Anyway, I came to realize that being an astronomer (or physicist or mathematician) was not my path. And so I changed to economics major and decided that my path lay in trying to help people and also in transfroming the world into a better place.

Thinking back, I have come to realize that my life was fundamentally shaped by the fact that no one that I knew of in my family was or had ever spent time in full time movement or even human services work. It just never occurred to me that I could be a full-time movement person, for example. That realization came only in the 1970s.







-----Original Message-----
From: Hunter Gray <***@hunterbear.org>
To: Bear Without Borders <***@lists.mayfirst.org>
Cc: Redbadbear <***@yahoogroups.com>; SycamoreCanyon <***@yahoogroups.com>; marxist <***@yahoogroups.com>; newgreencanada <***@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thu, May 1, 2014 9:24 am
Subject: [marxist] Additional Notes (some on "rqce")







I placed this three piece combo on all of our lists a couple of days. I'm now sending it to a very few individuals -- with some additional notes. I plan to send these specific notes around to our discussion lists this morning.

First, however, thanks to Jyri for his good May Day greetings. Perhaps these will evoke some discussion.

Thanks to Greg on RBB for his several posts on the Russian/Ukrainian situation. They are helpful.

In the combo material, I made mention of a special Pact I'd made at 23. I have never mentioned that beyond our immediate family. I made an exception this time -- the first ever -- since I was interested in reactions. No reactions were visible. In sending the combo around, I added for our non-RBB lists one sentence on parapsycholgy. This is the very slightly expanded version:

I was born to be an Organizer. Some day I may tell this list of a very special pact I made -- to spend my life helping people. I was 23. The circumstances would seem mysterious to those pure secularists on our good list -- they might have trouble with it. But no Native or any genuinely open minded person would see the pact and its circumstances strange. (On this, do not think "supernatural" -- think paranormal or parapsychology.)

After the pact, many challenges followed. I've kept my word and will always continue to do so.

I am indebted to our direct ancestor and the family culture hero -- and to his sturdy wife. This has been around before but, in the foregoing context, it is worth another read:

If you looked at that portion of the combo entitled Family Stuff, you noted my mention of the two historically well known white captives in our direct family line -- Samuel Gill and Rosalie James. They were taken at a very young age by Abenakis during a famous raid near Deerfield, Mass., at the beginning of the 1700s and raised as Natives and syncretic Roman Catholics (i.e., Native beliefs mixed with Catholicism) . (It might be worth noting that Samuel Gills' grandfather, Richard Gill, came to the Massachusetts Colony from England in 1630.)

In time, the two former captives married each other and had a number of children -- all culturally Abenaki. As noted in my combo material, one, Marie Appoline Gill in our direct line, married Gabriel Annance, a Mohawk visitor to the St Francis Abenaki in Quebec. He remained there and that liason was the beginning of the famous Annance line among the St Francis Indians -- one of our family lines.

One of Marie's brothers, Joseph Louis Gill, biologically white but thoroughly Abenaki in the cultural sense, served as principal chief of the St Francis Indians for half a century. "Race" obviously was no factor; a traditional cultural outlook trumped.

In the material involving our direct ancestor, John Gray, Mohawk, I posted a link to our website page, Some Notes on Gray. In it there is mention of one of the Seven Nations treaties between the Mohawks and the Americans. John Gray's Anglo father, William Gray, is there as one of a number of signatories (and as interpreter). Also mentioned is signatory Colonel Louis Cook as a Mohawk leader. Col. Cook earned his rank by serving in the Revolutionary War. He was one-half Abenaki and one-half African American. As a small child in Canada, he was seized by Anglo military officers from his Abenaki mother for slave purposes but Mohawks entered that situation immediately and rescued he and his mother. Louis Cook was then formally adopted into the Mohawks and raised accordingly.

There isn't much anti-Black sentiment at all among Native Americans. Never has been. Where it does exist, it's due to Anglo influences and it's almost always pretty superficial. Native/Black marriages are not unusual. The Southern tribes all have African ancestry.

In the case of Lumbee Indians, many of whom I've known for decades, there is a good deal of African ancestry. This has been used by some -- some -- leaders of the Eastern Cherokee of western North Carolina in their so-far and sadly successful campaign against full Federal recognition for the Lumbee people. But if you look beneath the surface, that anti-Black attitude is actually being used because the Eastern Cherokee have a casino monopoly in that whole region. And they are afraid that the Lumbee, if "recognized", might get a casino themselves.
http://www.hunterbear.org/lumbee_indians_of_north_carolina.htm



HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)