A Chautauqua Program

 Last month, I signed up for a Chautauqua program at my campus' Museum of Native American Art. The young woman who spoke to AAUW last year about her Choctaw heritage was doing a program of stories from her life and from the Choctaw people. 

I admit, this afternoon, I was less enthusiastic - I had had CWF last night, Board meeting is tomorrow night, I'd like to stay at home, I thought. And storms were threatening (They aren't supposed to come in until tonight). 

However, I had paid $35 for the program. I figured it was to support the museum only, but when I looked at the details again, it said "come dine with us and hear a program"

Okay, fine. We get fed. I decided to go after all. I was prepared for disappointment, though - often at these things there's something (like carrots) I can't eat and I have to avoid the food.

I'm glad I went though. First of all, at each place there was a nice small salad (spring greens, a maple vinaigrette, dried cranberries, cut up strawberries, and walnuts) and a glass of water (There was wine and beer and iced tea for those who wanted. I don't know if they charged for the wine or beer; I took an iced tea, it was unsweetened)

Then I looked at the menu: beef tenderloin, scalloped potatoes, sauteed green beans, lemon tart. Yes. All things I can eat. 

I saw a few people I knew - a couple faculty from other departments, got to say hi to a (good) former administrator who retired in like 2019. Then someone else walked in and before I saw her, she exclaimed my name.

It was one of my very first research students, from like summer 2001. She's still in town, working in medicine. She was excited to see me, introduced me to her mom. I hadn't seen her in more than 20 years. We got caught up - it turns out I am the only professor left she would have known (we do have someone at the instructor level who was a student with her). She didn't eat; she has that alpha-gal sensitivity (from a tick) and can't eat most animal products or derivatives from mammal products (like milk, that might have been in the dessert. So while a carrot allergy stinks, it's not as bad as it could be.

The food was prepared by the campus food service; clearly it was their "A" menu because it was really quite good, and it was just nice to have a nutritious dinner I didn't have to fix. And the portions were small enough we could eat them in a reasonable amount of time, and it wasn't too much food. 

 

And then it was the program. The woman who gave it will be one of our graduates in May; her degree is in English with a Choctaw minor and her skill is as a storyteller. She is VERY good. She obviously learned from a lot of people. She shared two traditional stories and then talked about the woman who had been her inspiration - and who has done a great deal to revive the Choctaw language. 

The first story was a children's tale of how the Opossum got its naked tail - very similar to the "just-so" stories a lot of cultures had. Basically, the opossum was vain and proud of his tail (which in those vanished days was fluffy and beautiful) but he was jealous of the raccoon, whose tail had stripes. When the possum tried a trick to make his tail striped, he lost all the fur off it and wound up with the naked tail. 

(It seems that "being overly prideful is bad" is a common theme in Choctaw stories; the second one had an element of that too. I suspect it's something a lot of people in culture in general need to learn these days).

The second story is one that is apparently also on YouTube, told by Tim Tingle - it's about the Lone Hunter , who was a very skillful (but boastful) Choctaw hunter back when they lived in Mississippi. He violated some of the traditions of the tribe - going out hunting alone, and then, one night, staying out alone all night, and he saw what might be described as being like what we would call the Grim Reaper. 

The story starts out as a definite ghost story (at one point, she smacked hard on a table as a sound effect and we all jumped) but it transitions to.....really a rather sad story, in that the Dark Spirit was a young man who died in an accident while out hunting alone, and because he had never had a proper burial, he became a restless spirit. So the Lone Hunter and other men of the tribe found the bones, gathered them, and buried them properly. And it turned out the scary experience was a lesson for the Lone Hunter, to use more common sense in the future....and at the end of the story, there's a line about how every evening after that, he would go to the young man's grave and sing him a song, or bring an offering of food.

Every culture has its parables, I guess. 

Her last "Story" wasn't really a story, because it was "real life" - scenes from the life of Ms. Billy, her mentor, and how as a young woman she would go with her family to church (which could last all weekend and wasn't just church, it was singing and socializing, and settling disputes) and how she started doing a form of ESL education (in the early days of Ms. Billy's career, there were some students who had only spoken Choctaw at home, and they struggled in the English language schools of the 1960s and 70s) and she wound up helping teach Vietnamese refugee children, as a result of her experience with the Choctaw students. And the speaker talked about how Ms. Billy had basically lived two cultures - general Oklahoman culture, and then her own culture, and it was very interesting.

I enjoyed the program a lot (and the dinner was nice, too) and I have to say at one point I thought "Oh yeah, now I remember why I live in a college town - to be able to do things like this"

I may need to motivate myself more to go to more programs on campus, definitely better than sitting at home, and it was nice to get to see people I knew.