Chapter 2: Every Day is a Good Day

In chapter two I found many stories of indigenous women who travel back to their native land and they are marveled, it is as if they were reborn and reconnected to their spiritual being. These women did not leave their native land by choice they were part of a government program to break the indigenous ways and culture. Since the 1930s and 40s the United States wanted to whiten the natives they wanted to make them in some way human, the way to do this was through Christianization. Boarding schools were set up in the first major step to bring the indigenous people to a human level. Many tribes sent thousands of children to these schools in belief that they were going to better themselves and in turn better their tribe. What they found was that the white man was not trying to help the Indian culture instead they wanted to break it down. Chiefs soon found that children were getting molested by both priests and nuns, this brought distrust to many and fewer and fewer children participated after these rumors reached the public’s ears. Religion was no longer much of a powerful pull for the majority of natives, but for some it was these were usually children that grew up hearing the Christian ways and did not have much of a choice because they did not get to experience their native ways. After boarding school was no longer a success the government began to displace indigenous groups and move them from their homelands. This is what really sparked natives to be disconnected from their spiritual self because natives were no longer around their hills, creaks, rivers and trees all these are a part of their family and part of their spiritual self. For many years these displaced natives were not able to continue practicing their customs and slowly forgot their ways providing a spiritual limbo. Natives were not allowed to attend traditional festivities and they chose not to participate in Christian ones either so they were left in the middle. Then chapter two discusses stories of how indigenous women feel upon arriving to their once long ago native lands. Like the story of Felicia and her daughter Gina when they returned to Oklahoma in 1976 Felicia describes it as a beautiful experience. She describes herself as being spiritually revived, she says that it was until she moved back to Oklahoma that she discovered the spiritual Dimension of her life. She could remember her childhood stories and home even though it was full of weeds and trees where their once was none. Still her childhood is very vivid and she finally feels at home. She even describes how she bathes in the cold stream to be reintroduced to her land. She also learned her old ways and really enjoyed the relearning process that she went through at the camp site.