There was a moment missed in yesterday's debate, but before I cut the bead from the shell, a short cultural detour.
Long ago, the Creator made and gave many gifts to man to help him during his life. The Creator made the lives of the Abenaki very good, with plenty of food to gather, grow, and hunt. The Maple tree at that time was one of these very wonderful and special gifts from the Creator. The sap was as thick and sweet as honey. All you had to do was to break the end off of a branch and the syrup would flow out.In these days Gluskabe would go from village to village to keep an eye on the Abenaki for the Creator. One day Gluskabe came to an abandoned village. The village was in disrepair, the fields were over-grown, and the fires had gone cold. He wondered what had happened to the Abenaki.
He looked around and around, until he heard a stange sound. As he went towards the sound he could tell that it was the sound of many Abenakis moaning. The moaning did not sound like people in pain but more like the sound of contentment. As he got closer he saw a large stand of beautiful maple trees. As he got closer still he saw that all the Abenakis were lying on their backs under the trees with the end of a branch broken off and dripping maple syrup into their mouths.
The maple syrup had fattened them up so much and made them so lazy that they could barely move. Gluskabe told them to get up and go back to their village to re-kindle the fires and to repair the village. But the Abenaki did not listen. They told him that they were content to lie there and to enjoy the maple syrup.
When Gluskabe reported this to the Creator, it was decided that it was again time that man needed another lesson to understand the Creator's ways. The Creator instructed Gluskabe to fill the maple trees with water. So Glukabe made a large bucket from birch bark and went to the river to get water. He added water, and added more water until the sap was that like water. Some say he added a measure of water for each day between moons, or nearly 30 times what it was as thick syrup. After a while the Abenaki began to get up because the sap was no longer so thick and sweet.
They asked Gluskabe "where has our sweet drink gone?" He told them that this is the way it will be from now on. Gluskabe told them that if they wanted the syrup again that they would have to work hard to get it. The sap would flow sweet only once a year before the new year of spring.
The Abenaki were shown that making syrup would take much work. Birch bark buckets would need to be made to collect the sap. Wood would need to be gathered to make fires to heat rocks, and the rocks would need to be put into the sap to boil the water out to make the thick sweet syrup that they once were so fond of. He also told them that they could get the sap for only a short time each year so that they would remember the error of their ways.
And so it is still to this day, each spring Abenakis remember Gluskabe's lesson in honoring Creator's gifts and work hard to gather the maple syrup we love so much.
OK, now to the political shell midden, with our hooked knife, the little hammer, and the bone drill.
Reverend Al Sharpton likes his sap thick. In September I spent 20 minutes briefing Frankie Watkins, then his campaign manager, on Dean's program of political extermination of (Western) Abenaki in Vermont, the Willie Horten campaign against a really inoculous, in fact completely ridiculous folkloric "recognition" bill, which he claimed would cloud title to all land in Vermont, and cause casinos to spring up anywhere in Vermont, along with their attendant criminality. Whether that was supposed to parse as Mafia or Tribal criminality was left to Vermont's troubled White voters. Frankie got it. His penny dropped. He knew we'd a history of "strange fruit", odd trips to the State's Women's Correctional Medical facilities, unsolved murders, and lots and lots of DWI (driving while indian). The phrase "Woods Nigger" sounded right to his cultured ear as the two word summation of what it was, and is, to be at the sharp end of the White Stick. His client however, is comfortable with leaving instutional racism something that only affects blacks and hispanics who Howard Dean didn't appoint to any governmental administrative positions of note. The fat sap for the ones who aren't willing, or compelled, to work. I'm sure there are other reasons than this for Frankie firing his client, but this one works for me.
From the time of the New Deal, Black scholarship in the United States has articulated a theory of racism. This is a work of social anthropology or political science or sociology or history that is vast. The hard work of hundreds and hundreds of scholars, degreed or not, in and out of the NAACP, the SCLC, the UFW, the CP-USA, and on and on. Al Sharpton has passed on the opportunity to extend the political discussion of power, privilege, exclusion and race from the (absurd in the context of Vermont) spy vs spy simplicity of white vs black, ammended by the addition of (equally absurd in the context of Vermont) white vs black and/or Spanish-speaking. He couldn't be bothered to cut and tote the wood through the snow and boil the sap down to the real brown sugar. Senômoziimlases.
To be sure, there is a study anyone honestly interested in the dynamics of race and crime in Howard Dean's Vermont should read, the Final Report (Jan 2003) of the Vermont Center for Justice Research, "Exploring the Dynamics of Race and Crime using Vermont's NIBRS Data". The study uses Census 2000 data to define the Abenaki population in Vermont, which misses the non-radicalized who prefer to continue the tradition of hiding in plain sight (non-declaration), so half of the actual population is missed. Howard's Vermont does have an unwritten DWB (driving while black) statute. It has an even more rigerous DWI (driving while indian) statute. It was wicked clever of Ho Ho to run a Confederate rabbit in front of the oppo research hounds, he got 100% mindshare on race-means-black, and a free-ride on Northern Racism.
I know who lost the debate last night. Intellectualism. Indians. The faltering coalition of immigrant minorities and natives. Whitie won last night, with an assist from the colored bench. Ho Ho Rah.
Update: The Note finally gets a clue:
12:45 pm: Gen. Clark receives the endorsement of the Abenaki tribe at the Museum of Natural History, Concord, N.H.
Well, in some sense, Governor Dean will now have to work harder to get the nomination by having to boil away the excess water that Terry McAuliffe has dumped into the electoral sap, notably, watery saps Sharpton, Moseley Braun and Kucinich, each of which has not shown a pulse in national polling, and therefore, should not be on the podium-- IF the DNC is seriously interested in having their eventual nominee become President.
Given McAuliffe's inseparable relationship from the Clintons, and the Clintons' now all but official support of Wesley Clark, I think we can see what is happening, a bit too clearly.
I honestly don't blame Sharpton: this is just what he does. This is why no SERIOUS party would EVER give him this kind of natural stature.
Off topic. The issue isn't McAuliffe, or the Clintons, or even Sharpton (other than his weakness for simple, Indian-free, racism). Please stay on topic when commenting. I will delete your original and this after you have a chance to get on-topic. It is worth the effort.
Posted by: Eric at January 12, 2004 11:40 AM