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Date:         Thu, 8 Oct 1992 13:38:00 EDT
From:         CMORRISO@SNYESCVA.BITNET
Subject:      Another noble savage story from Active-l (can't delete header).
              Chris.

From:   BITNET%"AFRICA-L@VTVM2.BITNET"      "FORUM PAN-AFRICA "  8-OCT-1992 09:2
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To:     Chris Morrison <CMORRISO@SNYESCVA.BITNET>
CC:
Subj:   White Deer Speaks on Somalia

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Comments:     Resent-From: Dorothy Morse <dmorse@igc.apc.org>
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From:         Dorothy Morse <dmorse@IGC.APC.ORG>
Subject:      White Deer Speaks on Somalia
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To:           Chris Morrison <CMORRISO@SNYESCVA.BITNET>

/* Written  6:10 pm  Oct  7, 1992 by dmorse in cdp:soc.cult.afric */
/* ---------- "White Deer Speaks on Somalia" ---------- */
Gary White Deer is a Choctaw artist whose design appears on a t-shirt
commemorating the Choctaw Trail of Tears.  The Irish group AFRI (Action
from Ireland) who recently walked the Trail of Tears with a group of
Choctaws, asked to use the t-shirt to commemorate their walk also.

This walk, as noted in previous posts, took place because the Choctaw
Nation, in 1847, hearing of the Irish potato famine, took up a collection,
and although the Choctaws were in great need at the time (they had
walked the Trail of Tears only 16 years before), the Choctaws collected
$710 for the Irish.

The walk together took place from mid-September to October 3, 1992.  Here is
a letter written by Gary White Deer about his design, and the walk, which
was used to collect funds for the relief of the Somalian famine.


     LETTER FROM GARY WHITE DEER TO DON MULLAN OF AFRI


Don:

     I am honored that your oranization will use my little Choctaw painting
as a t-shirt design to help relieve the Somalian famine...

     Hunger is no respecter of nations.  When my people were forced from
their homelands by the American government, much of the massive loss of
Choctaw life was due to hunger... A few years afterward we took notice when
the Irish People were suffering from terrible famine, and although we had not
yet recovered from our Trail of Tears, we sent your people sustenance.  Thus
a bond was made between the Irish and Choctaw Nations, woven of a measure
of human history and of human spirit.  We must again invoke a measure
of that spirit.

     Among the Choctaw it is important that our guests are asked,
"Impa chi bana?" or "Do you want to eat?"  We are taught that to feed others
is to help sustain human life....We further believe that our human spirits
also need to be fed, and that this may be done through sharing.  In the
sharing of food, therefore, sharer and receiver obtain both these kinds
of nourishment.  This is an old and simple teaching.

     As I mentioned, my mother is part Irish.  It will be a great and
wonderful thing if we reaffirm the bond between our two peoples by
feeding the People of Somalia.  We will be feeding our own spirits as
well....Our shared histories keep telling us this.

                             A friend,

                           Gary White Deer
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