Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Martin Mc Carthy's avatar

I have always loved these blessings and proverbs of the Native Americans. I find them to be calming, wise, and imbued with a sacred sense of all men as brothers and sisters on the same earth - qualities that seem quite lacking now in today's polarised society. I particularly like this blessing:

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I

loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.

Yet a little longer we will walk life's sunlit paths together.

I will love you like my own brother, my own blood.

When you are disconsolate, I will wipe the tears from your eyes.

And when you are too sad to live, I will put your aching heart to rest.

Expand full comment
David Kirkby's avatar

Thanks for posting this, Michael. I found it deeply interesting.

I read Dee Brown's book "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" when I was around 20, and it had a profound impact on me. It contained some wonderful translations recorded in the 19th century, and it tells a detailed and dreadful account of the invasion, destruction and genocide. (I accept more recent critiques which point out that it ignores the persistence and ongoing development of First Nations cultures, but I don't think that's a weakness of the book. I think it's a valid argument for a "Volume 2" which needs to be written by someone. Probably by now there are accounts which do just that).

The book made me reflect on the very limited - and highly sanitised - version of colonial/invasion history in my own country, and it made me look more deeply at that history, and at Australian Aboriginal/First Nation peoples and cultures. Which led me - a few years later - to relocate to the NT (Northern Territory) and end up working for many years in and with Aboriginal communities across remote areas of the centre and North. In fact, I lived for 3 years in a desert community of Warlpiri people, some of whom had - as children - survived Australia's equivalent of the Wounded Knee massacre; the Coniston atrocity of 1928. (If you are interested - my poem "Junga Yimi" tells of this. https://davidkirkby.substack.com/p/junga-yimi-true-story?r=471m47

So yes - your translations are fascinating, and I liked your own poetry too. Some of them are very beautiful. I particularly like: "The soul would see no Rainbows if not for the eyes’ tears."

Those Mayan boys sound like they had a one track mind. I'd love to know what poems and proverbs the women created. In this country, too, translations and cultural studies have tended to focus almost exclusively on men - with women's ceremonial knowledge and role and statements largely invisible until the 1980's, and still under represented.

Anyway - I could talk about this stuff all day!

What I really wanted to say was - thankyou!

Best Wishes - Dave :)

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts