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 Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:25 am Post subject: First Nations |
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WELCOME!
First Nations:
Indians of the Northwest Coast
Hardcover
By Pliny Earle Goddard
| Quote: | The Northwest Coast people (click on Canada's magnificent Museum of Civilization) were quite addicted to gambling. The most popular game was the well-known and widely distributed one of guessing by the expression of the opponent's face where a marked stick was concealed. The objects necessary were a number of sets of sticks about three-eighths of an inch in diameter and five inches long. The sticks of the same set were painted with the same pattern except the "ace" which was unmarked. Each set had a bag and a larger one held the various sets of the owner. The sets of sticks were laid out on a piece of skin, the playing was on a mat, the sticks were displayed on a second piece of hide while the guess was made. The opponents sat facing each other. The first player selected one of his set of sticks, wrapped them in cedarbark, and divided them into two bundles which he placed before himself. His opponent then attempted to guess, by a study of the player's expression, in which bundle the "ace" was concealed. If he guessed correctly, he took the play, but if not, the former player continued. When one side attained a count of seven, four bundles were made instead of two; the player won the final point only if the guesser missed it after three trials. Such odds greatly prolonged the game. This game varied as to the objects used, but the main point, that of guessing from the opponents's expression and reactions was the same.
There were, in addition, dice games, shooting at a mark, a form of quoits, shinney, wrestling, and numerous other games. The stones used in the latter game were frequently found near the village sites. The Northwest Coast people, in common with those all over the world, had string figures or cat's cradles. (-- p. 106) |
A competent, matter-of-fact if somewhat pedestrian study of the stories and customs of coastal First Nations by the unassuming anthropologist Pliny Earle Goddard. Illustrated with a few unremarkable black and white photos but also many excellent line drawings. Not a bad little publishing venture for Depression-era 1934.
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| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:59 am Post subject: |
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People of the Lakes
Harcover
Time-Life
Here is a publishing venture that must have been a labor of love. The fascinating stories set down in this lavish leather-bound text are richly illustrated throughout with large color and black and white photos and colorful ink drawings portraying the beauty and resilience of First Nations tribes from the Great Lakes region of coldest Canada and the U.S.
| Quote: | Several tribes of the lakes region have preserved legends of an ancient migration. The Ojibwa -- sometimes referred to as the Chippewa -- tell of an epic journey that long ago brought their ancestors to the shores of Lake Superior from the east. In the beginning, the story goes, their ancestors lived in the land of the rising sun, near the great salt sea that whites would call the Atlantic. For generations, the people had prospered there, drawing on the bounty of the eastern forests and lakes. They called themselves the Anishinabe, or original People. In those early years, one version of the legend says, the Original People "were so many and powerful that if one was to climb the highest mountain and look in all directions, he would not be able to see the end of the nation." Living in small bands, the Anishinabe were scattered across a broad area. But they kept in contacxt, traveling by canoe and overland trail to exchange goods and hold councils. (p. 22)
...Ojibwa gamblers threw the four long sticks in [a contest of chance known as the snake game (scroll under Games and Amusements). The five shorter pieces were used to keep tally. (p. 50) |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:18 am Post subject: |
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The Snake Game
Hardcover
By Wayne Johnson
| Quote: | He took to spending more time with Red Deer after that day, brought him over to Old Man Muskeg's. The old man told the boy stories, about Winabogo, and The People. Tragic stories, funny stories, frightening stories. The old man would talk for hours, his hands a thousand shapes -- running deer, young maidens, roaring flames. And when the old man tired of talking he loved to play games -- mikazin'ata'diwan, the moccasin game, or bu'gese'win, the plate game. He took a delight in these afternoon contests, and gambled shrewdly. He played each with enthusiasm. But of all the games he loved the snake game best.
Gama'giwe'binigowin.
He had a passion for it, and Osada admired his sill.
"Watch!" the old man would say, throwing the sticks up in the air, flashing.
"What's he doing?" Red Deer would ask.
"Watch," Osada would say.
The old man was crafty, and he carved his own sticks. Losers had accused him of fitting lead into their bellies, holding the sticks too long when he threw them, or rubbing magic on them. Now no one would play with Old Man Muskeg, because in his old age he had gone off a little, and sometimes took things he shouldn't.
It had been like that the first time Osada had played him nearly 20 years before.
"For your ring," Old Man Muskeg had said.
"This?" Osada had said, pointing to his wedding ring.
Even then the old man was a talker. He talked nonstop. He talked about the flood, and the ruined rice harvest; he talked about his son, Tossed-About-the-Winds, and his problems with his wife. His hands were always moving and he noticed things around him. A bird, someone walking, anything.
"Over there," he would say.
Osada had tried to ignore him, but it put him in a nervous mind. He had considered himself an expert at the game, had held the sticks with great confidence, only, that afternoon, he threw the sticks too high or too low, or put too much spin on them. Belly up, belly down. Four sticks, bright red tongues on the end.
"You want to play to the end?" Old Man Muskeg had asked. It was close, but not too close, Osada leading.
"Of course you old coot," Osada said, poking the old man with a stick.
Old Man Muskeg shrugged, then smiled, his eyes bright.
"Watch," he said.
Three tosses. Three belly up/belly down. High score.
"I win," he said.
Osada had sat there on the blanket, dumbfounded, and Old Man Muskeg had touched his knee.
"You keep the ring," he had said, then smiled again and tapped his forehead. "Only, don't forget." (From the first chapter entitled, Gama'giwe'binigowin (The Snake Game) at pgs. 10-11) |
This work reprsents the first of several novels by this Lawrence, Kansas writer, whose shorter fiction has appeared in a literary magazine we're fond of, Ploughshares. It also makes the best case we've found for the traditional right of First Nations in Canada to regulate their own gambling industries outside of provincial and federal control. For more on that argument, see Canadian First Nations at the PokerPulse legal forum.
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| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:00 am Post subject: |
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Legends of Our Times
Native Cowboy Life
Hardcover
By Leslie Tepper and Morgan Baillargeon
| Quote: | Horse racing and betting were an important part of Native gatherings. This Secwepemc legend tells of a supernatural being who transforms himslelf into a horse to help a man regain the wealth his father has gambled away.
A wealthy man gambled and raced horses with the chief of a neighboring tribe until he lost his dogs, hborses, and everything he had. His wife and son were much grieved because they had come to be so poor. The lad, in a fit of shame and discontent, left home and wandered over the country. (From the opening of The Gambler's Son and Star Man, Collected by James A. Teit , at p. 205). |
Thus begins another fascinating and richly illustrated account of First Nations cowboy lore in this excellent Canadian collection published in association with the Museum of Civilization (see links above). A wonderful photo collection never before seen. Look inside here.
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:28 am Post subject: |
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Gambling in Canada:
Golden Goose or Trojan Horse?
A Report from
the First National Symposium on Lotteries and Gambling
May 1988
Hardcover
Edited by Colin S. Campbell and John Lowman
| Quote: | Indeed, two Tribal Councils in B.C. assert that gambling in the form of the traditional "bone" or "stick" game is an existing aboriginal right within the meaning of s. 35 (of the Constitution Act, 1982).
The Kootenay Indians, whose reserves and traditional lands straddle the international border in southern B.C., spell their gambling game "Katgahat" which means Kootenay stick game.
The Gitksan on the Skeena River still observe and maintain a traditional chieftain position whose Indian name is "Gambling Chief." His power and position of Chief derives from his skill and cunning in the bone game. This Chief participates equally with other Gitksan Chiefs of high rank in their potlach which is the Indian institution equivalent to a legislative council.
The Kitimats call the bone game "Lahal" and it is still practised as a cultural sport along the Fraser River involving whole communities competing against each other in teams. Traditionally, the Gitksans gambled for the right to win spoils of war which then became the common property of the house (or clan) of the chief who won it. The communal ownership of gambling winnings is in keeping with the fundamental and unique Indian philosophy of communal ownership of property. (Footnote from Submission to Task Force on Gaming on Reserves by Vina Starr and Micha Menczer at p. 174-175). |
| Quote: | | Note: It is a failure of scholarship, in our view, for any one culture to claim that communal ownership of property originated with or is practised soley by its members. Doubters may view the Property link at Wikipedia for a brief tour of the concept and its many manifestations throughout the world. Where would Canada be today without the great Saskatchewan Wheat Pool co-operative movement? However, not every group effort here has enjoyed similar success. Here's one of the more spectacular Canadian examples of a failure of communal ownership: B.C. condominiums. |
It's difficult to locate sale copies of this excellent collection of gaming reports from 1988, a must-read for anyone researching the industry. We'll monitor Amazon.com. Please check back soon.
We've also been informed recently that the book is available online. Scroll down to Popular books here for instructions on downloading it.
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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Our Story
Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past
Foreward by Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson
Hardcover
Can these be the same charming people featured on the Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour's Famous Indians segments? We should have heeded the warning inherent in the foreward. Any book that requires Her Majesty's presence on the cover to prop up sales is usually prima facie an admission about the quality of what lies within and man, is that true in this case -- P.U.!
We held our noses to bring you the one barely readable sample:
| Quote: | Sometimes Grandpa would take me along to his poker games. He would play for two or three days at a time sometimes. I would have to come home and look after the horses though. He was happy when he was on a lucky streak. Sometimes he would leave me at home to cut wood or haul water, or whatever had to be done. Then I knew he would be getting into the homebrew and come home in a rage. I hated those times, Grandpa yelling, telling me I was "no good for nothing," even though the wood was up and the water was there. He would yell and scream for awhile, then he would go to bed and sleep, or he would cry, grab me, and cry all over me. I know why he did it, I couldn't blame him. We'd both lost my mother and my grandmother, and he'd lost others besides, lost himself. And him crying was better than the belt.
In those days, I had been happy only when Uncle Lucien took me upriver on the steamer. He was the captain and he would keep me up in the cabin with him. He taught me about the water, the currents, how the light on the waves told a story. I loved that world. He told me I had good water sense. He started to teach me how to navigate, and I was good at it. By the time I was fourteen I was working full-time on the boats, in the man's world. Uncle would take me to dances. In time I wasn't just a kid any more, and I was a good dancer. The ladies liked me. They made me feel like I was someone they wanted. I had fun with them. I spent my money on them and my poker games. That's the way money goes, I was never good at keeping it around. (From There Is a Place by Tantoo Cardinal at p. 110). |
A waste of an expensive production, in our view. Even Amazon wouldn't carry it at posting time. Suggest 'chroniclers' study the bootstraps of these two blackguards for future reference.
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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Something for Nothing
Luck in America
Hardcover
By Jackson Lears
| Quote: | A man grief-stricken by the loss of his son persuades some friends to join him on a journey to the underworld, the Land of Souls. They are delighted at first to find the same game animals, the same sorts of dogs even, as they knew in their life at home; but then they are accosted by the gian Papkoutparout, guardian of the Land of Souls, who threatens to kill them all. The mourning man flings himself on Papkoutparout's mercy, pouring out his tale of loss. Papkoutparout is moved; he decides to spare the father and restore the son. But first, he insists on playing a game of chance.
Since this is an Iroquois legend, Papkoutparout chooses the sacred bowl game, with caribhou-bone counters that are tumbled from a dish or bowl and function as dice -- six black, six white. (This is godlike elegance; mere mortals generally use peachpits.)...
The role of gambling in this Orpheus-narrative is not entirely clear. The sacred bowl game was a form of serious play: it was associated with a weighty transaction between man and the supernatural; its ritual may have affected or at least ratified a crucial divine judgment regarding human affairs. The sacred bone game was also played at the green corn and harvest festivals, as propitiation and thanksgiving and a means of keeping evil spirits at bay. It was a means of summoning mana for benificent purposes.
This was the essence of divination. The Iroquois tale reveals that gambling and divination are blood kin, though their relationship may sometimes be obscure. By exploring divinatory rituals in various early modern settings -- European, West African, North American -- it is possioble to piece together the cultures of chance that coalesced to shape early American attitudes toward luck. What all shared was a common fascination with the mysterious power of mana. (From Chapter One, The Dance of Divination at pgs. 25-26) |
A fully annotated, articulate and even illustrated answer to the question, Why do people gamble? Lears is to gambling what Joseph Campbell was to myth. A truly inspiring read by a master scholar.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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Legalized Gambling
For and Against
Paperback
Edited by Rod L. Evans and Mark Hance
| Quote: | As it does throughout most of the rest of the world, gambling has ancient roots in indigenous North American culture. An estimated 130 tribes from 30 different linguistic stocks played dice games of various kinds centuries before European settlement. Unlike Euro-American games of chance, which function as secular rituals and foster acquisitiveness, individual competition, and greed, traditional Native American games of chance are sacred rituals that foster personal sacrifice, group competition, and generosity.
For instance, among Hodenausaunee Iroquois traditionals Gus-ka'-eh, the ancient peach stone game, is considered one of just four divine amusements made by the creator for the happiness of the people. (footnote omitted) Taught to men when the world was young, the game is an important rite of the Midewiwis, or Midwinter Ceremony. According to Trudie Lamb Richmond,
the Midewiwis...concludes the end of one cycle and marks the beginning of another. The Sacred Bowl Game is one of the Four Sacred Rituals of Midwinter and symbolizes the struggle of the Twin Boys to win control over the earth. The Midwinter is a time of praying and awaiting the rebirth, a renewal of life. It is a time of giving thanks to the spirit forces and to the Creator...The Iroquois explain that the Sacred Bowl Game...when played during the four-day Midwinter, is not only meant to maintain a balance of nature but also to amuse life-giving forces; to please the plant and animal world; and to make the Creator laugh.
Because Gus-ka'-eh occupies a central place in Iroquois cosmology winning is less important than the attitude a player brings to the game. Playing with right attitude means staking one's most valuable possessions on the outcome of the contest and playing for the good of the whole community, if not for the sake of creation itself. This understanding of the game is informed by its history. According to Hodenausaunee tradition, the peach stone game was first played by the divine twins, Skyholder and Troublemaker. Evenly matched with his brother, Skyholder won the contest by sacrificing a part of his creation.
Ordinarily bowl games are played with stones, fruit pits, nut shells, or some other two-sided object. These are placed in a small wooden bowl. The players take turns smacking the bowl on the ground or some other hard surface. This action throws the pieces into the air; beforehand, the players bet on how they will fall. Skyholder chose to play with the heads of several small birds he had created. By killing the birds and playing with their heads he gained a crucial advantage he needed to defeat his powerful twin. In this way he retained his right to govern the earth. To commemmorate his victory and to ensure that the game is played in the proper manner something of great value should always be staked on its outcome. (Footnotes omitted) (From Modern Gambling Is Unlike Indian Games of Chance, an essay in Part VII by Paul Pasquaretta at pgs. 355-356) |
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 11:04 am Post subject: |
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T-Sou-ke
A Festival of Community Spirit
1790-1990
Special Edition Hardcover
By Sooke Region Museum and Festival Society
View photos of Sooke, B.C. here.
| Quote: | | The centuries-old tradition of S'La Hal, or the "bone game" was played outdoors and much enjoyed. Between times of food gathering and the making of clothing and utensils, the people loved to socialize. To the beat of drums and traditional chanting, two sets of bones are played from one team to another. The teams are each led by a "Guesser" who must correctly guess which of the two concealed bones each set is the unmarked one. Suspense mounts as chanting and drums heighten the excitement. Points are gained for the opposing side when a guesser misses identifying which player on the opposite team has the unmarked bone. (-- p. 5) |
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 8:34 am Post subject: |
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The Summer of Black Widows
Paperback
By Sherman Alexie, whose novel, Reservation Blues,
made us roar. Do check out Movies
and Road Trips at his site.
| Quote: | 9.
My father often climbed into a van with our crazy cousins and left us for days to drink. Whe he came back, still drunk, he always popped "Deer Hunter" into the VCR. He never made it past the wedding scene. I kept watching it after he'd passed out. Halfway through the movie, John Savage and Robert De Niro play a sick game of Russian Roulette while their Vietcong captors make wagers on the probable survivor. De Niro asks for more bullets. Two bullets, three. He knows the odds. He holds the gun to his head. He has a plan. (Stanza from the poem entitled, Father and Farther, at p. 40) |
A thin collection of dark, rippling, little prose poems with a potent sting.
| Quote: | The Deer Hunter
DVD
(Like Black Widows
above, still a shocker
even after all these
years and wars)
|
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| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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The Atlantic
Magazine Subscription
In the Footsteps of Tocqueville
A Frenchman Hits the Road and Takes Our Measure
By Bernard-Henri Levy
Translated by Charlotte Mandell
May, 2005
| Quote: | Since Sioux Falls, I've been in South Dakota. The prairies. The motorcyclists. Bands of bikers headed out of Rapid City with their leather jackets, high boots, metal insignia on their backs, bandannas over their hair, aviator sunglasses. Mitchell and its Corn Palace. Chamberlain and its St. Joseph's Indian School, where for a long time Indian children were "re-educated". The prairies again. The desert. Long, well-defined clouds. At the end of the day, after ten hours on the road, descent into the Lower Brule Reservation: sagebrush, shrubs, bumpy road, old cars, signs posting the number of fatal accidents due to the hairpin turns, bony animals inside ramshackle pens, herds of cows in the distance, drunkards lying by the side of the road, little lakes. And then finally Lower Brule - Lower Brule proper. I was expecting a village, but I find scattered houses, mobile homes; one final pond, infested with mosquitoes; a shabby casino, the Golden Buffalo - nothing like the glittering temples I hear Indian tribes have such a monopoly on, just grimy slot machines in an old saloon decor, a handful of woozy, sad little white men weaving in and out at the tables, clutching their chips. And then a little farther on, in the middle of a field, a circle marked out as if for a rodeo, tents, plastic chairs and wooden stands beneath the tents. This is where the [b]pow-wow will take place, the sacred dance at which, as a signal honor, two groups of white people will be in attendance: my companions and I, and the senator from South Dakota, Tom Daschle, in a tough re-election bid, and his family.
... Meantime, the stands and the plastic chairs are beginning to fill with people: too-thin, sly-looking children; women prematurely aged; men in jeans and leather jackets, with only their tied-back hair - and, alas, their broken faces, devastated by alcohol and poverty - distinguishing them from average American farmers. The entire local Bureau of Indian Affairs is here, along with employees from Wells Fargo and from the Lower Brule Farm Corporation (the nation's largest producer of popcorn), people from the Indian Health Service and from the casino, and the unemployed, the tramps. In Lower Brule there are 1,362 Indians registered, of whom at least a third are needy. It looks like all of them are here.
... How can we forget what these dances signified, and what, perhaps, they still signify? How can we not recognize that these are the same ghost dances that a century ago aroused such keen terror in Daschle's ancestors that they forbade them under penalty of death? How can we not keep in mind those thousands of Indians massacred because they devoted themselves to these same dances that Tom Daschle and his family are aping? When I say "masquerade," I'm also thinking of the Indians who consent to this aping. I'm thinking of the chief who, afterward, standing next to the senator, declaims that the Lakota people took the flag from Custer's hands, and now the flag belongs to them. I'm thinking of the soup being passed out by the senator's majorettes, in T-shirts and orange caps, at the end of the ceremony. (From Masquerade at pgs. 82-84, Part I of a series continued in the June, 2005 issue) |
A fascinating account of a journey likely to offend just about everyone.
Indeed:
American Vertigo
Travelling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville
Hardcover
By Bernard-Henri Levy
| Quote: | Levi is the most pro-American of European intellectuals whose condemnation of "Islamo-fascism" has made him a darling of the right, but his book has struck a touchy nerve in some American viewers.
In a sneering review in the New York Times, <a href="Garrison Keillor dismissed the book as "the classic Freaks, Fatties, Fanatics & Faux Culture Excursion beloved of European journalists for the past 50 years."
Levy concludes that the American model, despite its difficulties, is far from the collapse predicted by some Europeans, but Keillor was not impressed by this vote of confidence.
"Thanks, pal. I don't imagine France collapsing anytime soon either. Thanks for coming.
"Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was that all about? Were fat people involved?" he wrote. Levy's champions hit back quickly, led by New Republic publisher Martin Peretz, who dismissed Keillor as a peddler of "middlebrow American sentimentality" who had waded in out of his depth.
The author himself was more restrained, describing the review as well-written but out of character with the welcome offered by most Americans.
"In all my travels across America, I didn't meet a single Francophobe.
"But the New York Times article gave me venom on a dish," he said. (From Battle-lines drawn on French view of US culture, America column by Denis Staunton in the Irish Times, Feb. 18/06, p. 10) |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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Hidalgo
DVD
| Quote: | Sheik Al Riyadh: Shall we play at cards?
Hidalgo: No, I ain't too much of a gambler, sir.
Sheik: To the contrary. You are gambling with your life in this great race. |
Amazon critic Jeff Shannon describes Viggo Mortensen's uninspired performance in the lead role of this dog thus:
| Quote: | | ...In his first role since playing Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Viggo Mortensen brings handsome appeal to his low-key portrayal of Frank T. Hopkins, a real-life long-distance horse racer who, as the movie opens, has witnessed the appalling massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890. Drifting into Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, he agrees to compete, with his trusty mustang, Hidalgo, in "The Ocean of Fire," a treacherous 3,000-mile horse race across the Arabian desert. Toss in a bunch of conspiring competitors, a noble sheik (Omar Sharif), his lovely daughter (Zuleikha Robinson), and enough fast-paced danger to fill 133 minutes, and you've got a rousing, humorous, and lightly spiritual adventure that's a lot of fun to watch. It hardly matters that it's almost pure fiction (the real Hopkins was known by many as "a pathological liar"). |
Ho hum. We liked the Indians and the horses, though. |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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Indian Killer
Paperback
By Sherman Alexie
| Quote: | "Listen, folks, I admit that what was done to the Indians was wrong. But that was hundreds of years ago, and you and I were not the people who did it. We have offered our hands in friendship to the Indians, but they insist on their separation from normal society. They are an angry, bitter people, and treat the rest of us with disdain and arrogance. Maybe this whole Indian gambling thing is about revenge on the white man. They want to take all of our money. They want to corrupt our values. They want to teach our children that greed and avarice are good things.
"Let me give you an example of what Indian gambling has brought to our state. I want to tell you a little story about a young man named David Rogers. David is a student at the University of Washington. An upstanding young man, a good son, an English major who loved Hemingway. He shares a house with his brother, Aaron, who called me up this morning. Aaron told me all about his brother. You see, a couple of days ago, David Rogers want to go gambling at the Tulalip Indian Casino just north of Seattle.
"Now, David didn't want to go alone, so he invited his brother to come along. But he refused. In fact, Aaron tried to discourage his little brother, but David was seduced by the easy money he thought he was going to make. Aaron kept telling his brother it was dangerous. He reminded his younger brother about the scalping and murder of Justin Summers. But David would not be denied.
"So David went to the casino alone, and, lo and behold, he won two thousand dollars at the slot machines. Can you believe that? He must have thought he was the luckiest man alive. And you know what, he was lucky for a few minutes. He was also smart. Most people would have gambled their winnings away, thinking they were on a hot streak. But David, despite the protest of of the casino management, collected his money and left the casino, anxious to celebrate with his brother. He left the casino and he has not been seen since. (From the chapter entitled, Greek Chorus, at pgs. 117-118) |
Gulp. Yet another good argument for regulated Internet gambling in America.
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:30 am; edited 3 times in total |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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Crazy Horse
Hardcover
By Larry McMurtry
| Quote: | | Various historians have chided the Sioux for not fighting as, say, West Pointers fought, but that was not their way. To them, tribal warfare, though starkly violent, was nothing like as generally deadly as the forces whites would soon loose against one another in their own Civil War. In a sense every Sioux was his own general, attacking when he wanted to attack, retreating when the odds seemed too long or the weather too bad ... (-- p. 30) |
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http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2324#2324
Last edited by editor on Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:06 am; edited 3 times in total |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:57 am Post subject: |
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Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout
Paperback
(A Play)
By Tomson Highway
| Quote: | DELILAH ROSE
Leaving the Johnson family -- as I'm sitting here with their child sound asleep deep inside the folds of my flesh, my veins, my spirit, Ernestine Shuswap -- leaving them, white as pillowcases as every single one of them may be, Protestant as banks as they may be, or leaving you and my sisters and my family and my friends, my community, everything I know, everything I love, well, that would be like me asking you to neigh, Ernestine Shuswap, that would be like me asking you to act like a horse. It just wouldn't happen, would it now?
But ERNESTINE, too, is caught in a Catch-22 -- her religion or her sense of family, of community, which is she to choose? She turns away from DELILAH ROSE and to the "window." Long silence. The loon cries again. DELILAH ROSE resumes her sewing.
DELILAH ROSE
And your husband? What's he think? Of all this...this...
ERNESTINE
Don't know. Haven't seen him since...since before six o'clock this morning. Out fishing, even though he's not supposed to. But I'll bet you a dollar, Delilah Rose Johnson, I'll bet you a dollar what he'd say is, what he'd say is: they'll kill him, they'll lynch him, they'll hang him by the neck from the tallest, most beautiful Douglas fir they can find between here and Victoria. (From pgs. 65-66) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2405#2405
Last edited by editor on Fri Jan 23, 2009 12:22 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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