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Brett makes the superior point here.
As a member of one of these seemingly mysterious primitive “people that have somehow missed the mass of civilization” I thought I should speak directly to this issue.
It maybe that “missed” really does not apply in my case. You see.. Ninewidbaskohaung Ndesnekas. Mukwa Ndodem. Bedosega ndogeba minawa Waganakising Odawa Ndaw. What I said there, among other things, is that I am Odawa … a lot of people pronounce it or spell it as Ottawa. My people were among some of Turtle islands first to be victims of the whitemans angry war god. Among the first to have the twisted words of Christianity victimize our people through this very topic.
Before the coming of the Black Robes my people understood human beings as human beings. We understood who we were and were not ashamed of ourselves. The women wore strap dresses so that in the summer they could remove the sort of bib portion of the dress and be cool. This, of course, left their breasts exposed. The men wore a kind of apron in front of their genetalia but if that flapped up or even got snatched off in a game of begadewe no one was shocked, incensed or otherwise thought ill of it. If we were lucky maybe one of the women might like what she saw.
Relationships were of all kinds, monogamous, pluralistic, open, heterosexual, homosexual … whatever you can think of we did and respected each others right to do so. The only issue was the piece and tranquility of the tribe. Yes, some folks got jealous, maybe that is a human thing. To us, however, jealousy was the individual’s problem and something they would need to go to the mountain and get their head straight about. If YOU were jealous then YOU are/were the problem.
Today many of us Odawa are poisoned by the whitemans Christianity. We are taught these ways are wrong. The very priests who tell us our traditional views on sex are evil horribly torture some of us, like my father, for things like speaking our language.
Human beings do not spring out from Kishilomilangop knowing they are necked. Christianity does not go back to primitive man, be it as Judaism or not. The Church fathers speak with two tongues, and they always have. From the gender bias their book is written in, to its racists over tones, to the way their priests murder, rape and destroy the world around them the truth manifest in our reality has very little to with Christian ideology or philosophy. Whatever human nature is, Christianity is not it.
--Tim
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