After eating supper at Dr. Foster’s parents’ house, some of the NSU folks invited me, Andrei, and Ben to go hang out. After a little discussion, they decided it would be best to take us “snipe hunting” at a creek called “the NJ.” Travis offered me and Andrei a ride in his pickup truck, and we drove out a ways and talked about good food and spirituality and whatever else came to mind. Travis, who considers himself a “pagan Christian,” is particularly interested in how Christianity and Cherokee spirituality complement one another.
Anyway, when we got out at the NJ, it was almost too dark too see. The stars were brighter than I’d ever seen them, but other than that, there was hardly any light at all, and I could barely see five feet in front of me. We were told to take a couple of trash bags and head up the road to look for snipe. The three of us North Carolinians headed up the dirt road with Asa, but all the other folks dropped off to the back. The three of us started to get a little freaked out, since all of them had been the ones to drive us back up. We all ran back up the road to find the other guys, which, after a few nervous minutes, we finally did. As soon as we met up with them, we started talking and joking around and then—the loudest, most startling scream I’d about ever heard. I think I jumped about a half mile. And then all the NSU kids laughed uncontrollably. We later learned that there is no such thing as snipe hunting; it’s just a joke that folks play on dumb city boys. (When we got back to Seminary Suites, Chris had already heard we’d been “snipe hunting” and teased us pretty intensely).
The rest of the night, we all just crowded around the cars and alternately teased each other and listened to Travis tell Cherokee ghost stories. This is the point at which I could probably go into some involved, academic-sounding discussion of Cherokee folk lore or Indian humor or something like that. But that, I don’t think, would accomplish much. Because what I really learned was a lesson about the limits of academic discussion. After a certain point, there are things that can’t be understood intellectually. They have to be felt--What it means to feel at ease a thousand miles from home. To meet genuinely good people. To ride around in Eastern Oklahoma in a pickup truck with a busted up passenger-side door handle. To be scared out of your mind. To laugh so hard it actually hurts. Stuff I didn’t learn from a book, or from a class, or from an educational field trip. I certainly learned things—even factual things. But more than that, I felt and did things that gave meaning to everything else I know. It colored the gray spots in my understanding, and I can’t teach anybody about that. But I know I felt something beautiful.
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Ah yes, "Snipe Hunting." Man that was fun. The most embarrassing part is how excited I was to catch these 'little dumb field birds that can't fly too well.' Kinsey and Asa even coached me on my snipe call, a high pitched rising ah-ahh, ah-ahh. I got really good.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we got played, but afterwards just hanging out with Kinsey, Asa, Eric, and Travis, shooting the shit telling stories like I would back home with my friends was an experience I cannot place enough positive emphasis on. After playing volleyball and gigging for crawdads with them since then, I would consider all of them friends. Walker really hit it on the head when he said:
"what I really learned was a lesson about the limits of academic discussion. After a certain point, there are things that can’t be understood intellectually. They have to be felt--What it means to feel at ease a thousand miles from home. To meet genuinely good people."
Hit it so good its worth reading twice. Cherokee culture encompasses a wide array of topics, but one of the most important parts that cant really be understood reading print documents is what the contemporary Cherokee is actually like in person. And "in person" cannot be accomplished in the classroom. It's the same reason I feel so much closer to everyone on this trip in two weeks than I would ever feel with any fellow student after a full semester of any regular lecture class back on campus at Chapel Hill. Escaping the classroom allows people to be themselves and only then can you say whatever the hell you want and actually be yourself.
Yes, Kinsey, Asa, Eric and Travis played a joke on us. Yes, they all have a healthy sense of humor, but like Walker intimated, one would have to be pretty culturally inept to consider this some remarkable feature of Cherokee culture. The most important thing I found this night was not a Snipe, but a reinforcement of the idea that across cultures, people are people, and these kids are awesome.
But to be realistic, plenty of Americans have nothing to base an opinion of Indians on aside from what they have seen in old Western flicks and their opinion of Casinos and would in fact find Indian humor quite remarkable, which is sad.
After speaking with Sidelta, I rescind my statement about no significance in Indian humor. As an Indian herself, she has confirmed it. I was thinking about writing this, but it would have been my own opinion and didn't want to sound like a cultural idiot making assumptions. Anyways, now that I have a legit source, Indian humor does have a sort of prototype. Here is how I would define it:
ReplyDelete-Call people out (poke fun at their mistakes or shortcomings, mainly mistakes), including self call outs
-Heavy sarcasm
Function:
-While calling out bad parts of a person, its sort of like saying, "hey, don't do this, that's why we are making fun of it," but not in all circumstances.
-Important!- poking fun in a way that wierdly shows affection. Can't really explain it, but its kind of like, 'we wouldn't make fun of you unless we felt like you knew we were just joking and friends'