Towards the end of summer in Big Horn County, two events of great significance for our children converge: Crow Fair and the start of the school year. At the fair, excited children are given the opportunity to be in their first dance, prepared with the right regalia, given an Indian name, blessed, and given strong ties to their extended family and tribe. They enter the arena with strong interest at being acceptable as members of their family. Most important, with these patterns of interaction with their family members, they have life.
After Crow Fair parents hurry to prepare children for school with the right clothing, learning materials, and excitement about school. Children are taken to school the first day so parent, teacher and child can get acquainted. They begin with a clear understanding of school rules, who will enforce them and how.
Both of these watershed events access children's God-given drive for life: to learn the intensely human patterns unique to their family and friends. It's how we humans say to each other, "You belong, you are part of us, we need you to stay with us." The drive to know and do these patterns supersedes any other drive for life among humans.
A few decades ago in my 50's I went with my son and a friend to hike a hundred miles of the John Muir trail in the California High Sierras. At that time he was unconvinced of the usefulness of fly fishing, and left it to me to haul a fly reel along with my seven-foot collapsible spinning rod. Having heard that mayflies, caddices and midges are generally of a light burnt brown to white color in the Sierras, I collected a chunk of fur from our pet cat Marshmallow, and proceeded to tie some midge patterns using this fur. It worked fine for several of the ponds and streams we encountered, but all the trout we caught to that point were small, almost fingerlings compared to Big Horn River trout. Then we arrived one late afternoon at a lake below timberline surrounded by trees and a talus slope to the south. We saw rises. These were larger trout, appearing to be about a foot long.
A slight breeze drifted over the lake down from a tight talus slope, and that's where I carefully dropped my marshmallow special carefully a few meters off the rocks. In seconds, up came one to take a look. Immediately several others surfaced, splashed around my fly, and took off to the depths. I waited, and nothing else happened so I cast to another spot where I had seen some rises, and a larger golden nosed up to investigate mine. Again, this one had barely arrived into visibility when a pod of others charged into the scene, circled with a few splashes and they all disappeared. Meanwhile, I could still see rises to real flies on the surface surrounding my fake.
I kept trying, and the same scenario repeated. Darkness was descending before I finally got a small hit, but I hooked none of those fish from that lake. Neither did my son, with his spinning hardware. We only speculated on why those trout obviously had so much fun splashing around my fake fly. Were the fish actually teaching each other what a fake fly looked like? Was my attempt to harvest dinner being turned into a learning opportunity for the young fish in the school? What had they learned and how? Or was some or all of this my imagination, imposing my human mind on reptile mind?
Crow Fair provides a powerful venue for passing along important life lessons to children. Activities from camping to dancing take place in intergenerational groups of family members. Children don't spend so much of their time with others of the same age from different families. Song and dance are central patterns that connect children with others: first in their family, but also with the tribe and nation. Children are expected to do what their parents do. Yet boundaries are clear, and children are often entrusted with their own self-discipline, with minimal threat and virtually no punishment.
Big Horn County schools serve a similar and complementary role for our children. In the structured environment of public school, our children acquire a different set of life lessons. Because of the schools' healthier foods programs, kids can't default to sugar and refined carbos. Activities are used to challenge and enrich. Time is carefully planned to the minute, and children do not have the option to walk away and do their own thing.
While the lessons of Crow Fair may be more about culture and identity, and the lessons of school more about academics, it seems to me that there is some value in finding ways where the two venues could merge a bit. Just like the fish in that mountain lake, we want to equip our kids as much as possible with the tools and insights they need not just to survive, but to thrive. Perhaps this week's two major community events might hold the key to some powerful tools for doing just that.
--David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
graberdb@gmail.com
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