NA Writing Exercise Journal

Native American Writing Exercise Journal
For Cissy's NA class through the New Horizons Writing Academy
by Sara King

Writing Lesson #1

First writing assignment: Please write a short story of no less than 500 words and no more than 1500 words ( include word count), Why you joined this class and what you hope to receive out of it. You will be graded on this, so please, even if it is a work of fiction, make it believable.

I joined the class because I was interested in Oldwarrior's post on Totems. I saw it on the list static items list while I was surfing Writing.com and immediately became interested by the title, "Your Personal Totems."

I was initially intrigued because several years ago, I came to the undeniable conclusion that I had a strange connection to spiders. Since I was a very small child, too young to walk, I'd been fascinated by them. Some of my first memories are of being 2 or 3 and having my grandmother take me to the outhouse behind her fishing lodge in order to watch a spider build a web in one corner. I was so enthralled by this that I would ask to see the spider a dozen times a day, for many days straight. Guests at the lodge even began to comment on the number of trips my grandma and I were making to the bathroom, thinking that there was something wrong with my bladder, and my grandma had to explain several times a day that I was just watching a spider.

Other oddities have happened over the years. For instance, I seem to see spiders a lot. When I sit down to write, if it's a good writing day and the 'mojo' is flowing, I usually have one or two of the little guys hanging out on the walls around me by the time I'm finished, and this happens even in the depths of an Alaskan winter, when you don't normally see spiders...ever. They also appear quite frequently in my dreams, in all sorts of vivid, beautiful colors, and I very rarely dream about any other sort of animals at all. I would have to say that the proportion of times I see spiders to any other creature combined is about 7/1. In fact, the very night before I saw Oldwarrior's post, I had dreamed about beholding a gorgeous, intricate spiderweb unlike anything I'd ever seen before, where the spider had created designs that almost looked like pictographs in the web. Even creepier, on the edges between waking and sleep, I've had huge ethereal spiders drop onto my face, legs spread like an octopus falling through water. If they were spirits or ghosts, they were benign, I know in my heart, yet it's just plain creepy to see it first-hand, especially directed at your head. It is always at this point that I run screaming from the bedroom and babble about spiders to my spider-weary family.

So, upon seeing the Totems list, I was immediately interested to find that Spider was included on the list, and even more surprised to see what it stood for: Balance, wisdom, creativity, communication. Not sure about the first two, since I'm usually a sarcastic ass, but the last two, creativity and communication, have always been my fortes. I've been reading since I was three, writing stories since I was four, one of those kids who knew they were 'born' to do something since they were kicking in the womb. I've always felt awed by paper, and could feel a certain power emanating from it. I've been likewise fascinated with pens and ink and pencils. I took a fountain pen calligraphy class and taught myself Chancery Italic calligraphy, upper and lower case, along with proper pen stroke order and flourishes, in one night. My teacher, who had been planning on using the entire semester to teach us this style--one class period per letter--just stood there in shock when I brought in the essays I'd written in calligraphy. She thought maybe I'd cheated somehow, so she had me write out a few sentences as she watched. Completing them to her satisfaction, I spent the rest of the class working on an entirely new--and ultimately much more fascinating--style of calligraphy called Copperplate. It was the same style Thomas Jefferson used in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

Ever the communicator, I've taken every type of language class I could get my hands on. In one of them, near mid-terms, the teacher gave us a list of 50 new, obscure words to memorize overnight. For every word we could remember, spell correctly, and define the next day, we got a point of extra credit. Most people got one, maybe two of the words. I got all fifty, and I literally only glanced at the list a few minutes. It was almost like someone else was supplying the answers, drawing them from the ether and thrusting them at me while I sat at my desk.

So, when I saw the "Totems" piece, all these things kind of smashed together and left me wanting to join the class very, very badly, as you probably already know. I was hoping that an immersion in Native American culture might supply a few answers that I've been seeking about myself.

And that's what piqued my interest, in a nutshell.

(818 Words)

Discussion topic: Please write what Native American you think that you have in your background. If you do not, please tell me what kind of Native American you would be. This should be no less than 500 words. Please put your word count at the bottom of your item. Submit in 'Bitem' format only.

I know that I have a fullblood Blackfoot indian on my great-great-great grandmother's side. However, having grown up in Alaska and lived here most of my life, I have never been drawn to that area of the world. I feel much closer to the Athabascan peoples here in my home state. The Tlingit are interesting and the Eskimo have very intriguing history, but culture-wise, I find the Athabascan way of life the most appealing. Both the Eskimo and Tlingit were too blood-thirsty for my tastes, and the Tlingit society was too rigidly structured for me to be comfortable, having both nobility and slaves.

While I do think I could be comfortable on Eskimo hunts and in the thick Tlingit forests, it's the Athabascan river life in the interior that I find most attractive. I very much favor the sense of community created by the communal salmon harvest and subsequent berry gathering in fall. The moose and bear hunts get my pulse racing whenever I read old stories about them. The nomadic lifestyle--with both summer and winter camps, depending on the season--made my heart ache for that culture.

And though I do realize that native life was never as easy as it appears to an outsider reading romanticized versions passed down from early explorers, I believe a lot of our culture has lost that satisfaction that comes from being close to the earth, and from surviving each day based on your own hands, and from sustaining yourself with your own hard work. There is much to be said about self-confidence and happiness if every person in a community fits together, having an individual task to help the whole, benefiting others with their work while they benefit from the work of others. Much of today's society seems to have lost touch with that basic element of community.

I also find that our current culture is overly harsh and sarcastic (myself being particularly guilty of the latter). I appreciate the lack of entitlement that the Athabascan peoples I've seen have towards the world. Unlike other Americans, they walk softly, not taking it for granted that the earth they are trodding on is theirs. They speak softly, for they are far more interested in listening. They make friends easily and bare their hearts for all to see. Their sense of family and loyalty is unsurpassed. They also have an intriguing concept of time.

For instance, when a straight-from-the-Bush Athabascan makes an appointment to meet a friend for a meal, the friend will give them a time--say, 2:00. The Athabascan, in turn, will show up whenever they feel it is time to show up. That can be at 10:00am on the appointed day...or it can be six pm the next evening. They have a holistic attitude about the world that I would strive to emulate. I think it's a healthier worldview, and lends towards more patience, less rush, less anger, and less disease.

So, out of all the Native Americans I've studied, I find the Athabascans to be the most fascinating, and if I were ever invited to join a tribe--as pale-skinned and blue-eyed that I am--I would hope it would be with one of the up-river tribes in the Alaskan interior. It's some of the prettiest country imaginable, has some of the hardest winters and harshest lifestyles, yet easily some of the world's best people someone could ask for in family.

(572 Words)

Writing Lesson #2

Assignment: Read the lesson provided. Write a essay or book report on it. This report must be 500 words or more, include word count please.

1. Tell me what you found about this story lesson interesting.

2. Were you familiar with this tribe? Or the subject of the article ?

3. After reading this article do you find this tribe similar to the cultures and ethics we follow today?

4.Did you feel a connection to the tribe in this article?


I have heard this story about the Cherokee before, but it still saddens me as much today as it did when I learned it in History class. The Cherokee seemed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time, between a rock and a hard place. Most of the settlers themselves couldn't be put at fault, since men as a species will strive to meet their own best interests, and without government restrictions and control--the government had nothing to lose and everything to gain from more settlers pouring into the frontier--they viewed their best interests to be staking out a piece of land, growing crops and livestock, and living the life and having the freedoms their land-poor ancestors had never managed to have back in the Old Country.

The problem with this was that the reason the land was unspoiled was that the Cherokee and other Native American tribes had learned to live with the land, rather than on it. They did not overpopulate an area that could not support it. They did not overreach their own food supply, because once they ran out of game, they experienced a cycle of starvation where their numbers decreased, just as in all other species in Nature.

The settlers, however, brought with them farming and--arguably more importantly--animal husbandry techniques that could keep them alive despite a lack of wild game. Not only this, but their methods of food growing and gathering allowed them to support many times the number of people per acre of land than the Native Americans had traditionally done with hunting and what little crop-growing they had developed.

While beneficial to humanity's health and reproduction, I would argue that farming and herding has also been detrimental to its ultimate survival. This story of the Cherokee is an excellent example of this. The people with time-proven, sustainable ways of life were looked down upon as primitive by those who had more selfish, easier ways of life. Worse, when the Cherokee's hunting grounds were spoiled by settlers who did not have to rely upon the game for survival, the Cherokee were forced to trade for food or move. Settlers who ultimately would destroy just about every woodland in America and drive hundreds of species towards extinction, bringing the very planet to the brink of global starvation, exitinction, and poverty in just a few hundred years, saw themselves as superior to a race who had been there and lived in peace with Nature for many thousands of years before them.

As for feeling a connection to this tribe, it is one of great sorrow. This was an example of failed government, individual greed, and misunderstanding. The Cherokee tribe was no more in control of its situation than a man standing on the beach, trying to hold back a rising tide. European man's technological advancement, its political, and social environment, and its culture of greed all combined to bring about the hardships and heartaches that the Cherokee endured time and again. By the time the Cherokee realized this and attempted to recover what had been lost, it was too late. More waves of settlers were flowing from the Old World in hopes of seeking out those treasures that they had destroyed in their own country. At times, it feels like humanity's continual technological advancement has been a curse, rather than a blessing.

(562 Words)

Writing Lesson #3

After reading the explination and example, I would like for you to write your own Native Story.

1. Name characters, the places, let me hear sounds, see colors and/or smells.

2. Can you write this fiction to make me believe that it is real?

3.This assignment does not have a word count.


How Dogs Came to Pull Sleds

There was once a very hard winter, one where the snow buried all but the tops of the cottonwood trees and the wind swept cold and harsh across the top. The snow was so deep that the moose can't move to eat the willow shrubs and they began to starve. The village, with its stores of fish, was able to last many months without meat from the hunters' snares, but in the deepest part of the winter, the village ran out of fish and the people began to starve. The village hunters--twenty strong men--tried for many days to find food for the people, but even with their snowshoes, they couldn't travel far enough to find moose. They had to walk atop the thin crust of snow to leave the village, and one by one, they fell through the snow and no one could dig them out, so they froze.

This left the village with only one young child--a girl named Little River--to search for food for the village. No one else was willing to venture into the snow, for if it could kill twenty strong hunters, what would it do to the old and the weak?

But Little River was small enough that she could walk upon the hard crust of snow without falling in. She left the village and traveled for many days, looking for signs of moose or martin. Along the way, she found wolf tracks in all directions, and eventually came across a pack of wolves circling a moose calf carcass, howling with hunger. They had dug it from the snow and were circling it, but were unable to eat it because the cold winter had frozen the carcass so hard it chipped their teeth with every bite.

This was back when men could speak with the animals, and Little River asked the wolves if they would share their meal with the village. The wolves considered, and they came to the agreement that if Little River could find a way to soften the meat so they could eat it, they would let her take the rest back to her family.

Little River immediately set to building a fire next to the moose carcass, and the wolves, scared of fire, turned to run back into the forest.

"Don't run," Little River said, "The fire will help you eat."

The wolves returned, slowly, and Little River cut them a big piece of meat from the carcass, planning to save the rest for her village. But the wolves were desperate and they ate until every scrap of the calf carcass was completely devoured. So happy were they to finally have something to eat that they told Little River they would find her another carcass in the morning to make up for eating her share.

The next day, the wolves set out to find another carcass in the deep snow. With their good noses, they were able to find another very soon, buried deep within the snow. When the wolf pack dug it out, they found it was a big bull moose, with the horns still attached.

"There is the meat we promised you," the Leader of the wolves told Little River. "Now take it back to your family and feed your village."

"But I can't carry that," Little River despaired. Here was everything she needed to save her village--all she needed was to get it there. "The old bull is too big--I could never get it home."

"Then take a piece," the wolf Leader said, "And leave the rest for us."

"But if I left it, you couldn't eat it," Little River said. "The flesh has frozen too hard."

"This is true," the Leader said. "But our bellies are full and maybe the spring will come before we need to eat again."

"It won't," Little River warned them. "The village shaman dreamed that the snow will stay for many more moons."

The wolves thought about it, but sadly they could offer no other choice. They apologized that they couldn't help her.

"But," Little River said, "If you help me drag the carcass back to my village, I can thaw it for you there and we can eat it together."

The wolves considered this, then agreed that it was the right thing to do. Little River created straps from the old moose's hide and tied the wolves together in a line, then tied the line to the moose's leg. Then, together, they dragged the moose back to the village.

When they got there, the village was so happy to have the meat that they invited the wolves into their homes to sleep and offered them all the food they wanted. The wolves grew fat and happy in the village and whenever they ran out of meat, Little River would lead them back out into the snowdrifts to find another moose carcass. So it went until spring came and the villagers could fish again. By this time, the wolves had decided to stay, and the people of the village fed them fish in gratitude for guarding their village from bears.

From then on, whenever the villagers needed food in the winter, the wolves would band together and, with Little River to lead them, they went out and pulled back a sled full of meat. And with that, the village never starved again.


Lesson #4

1. Please read the meaning of the animals, then tell me what 'you' think your Totem animal/Spirit Guide is.

2. Why do you think the animal you have chosen is your Spirit Guide/Totem ?

3. What made you choose the animal that you chose ?

4. Would you say that it explains who you are? Or that you are drawn to it?

Please remember to post your lesson in ' bitem ' format, Wado=Thank you!


This assignment is easiest for me because I'm pretty sure I've always known what my Totem animal or Spirit Guide is. As I wrote in the "Why I Wanted to Take This Class" essay, I have always been drawn to spiders.

But when I say I'm 'drawn to them,' perhaps that's misleading. It seems--most of the time--they're drawn to me. In my writing room--a room that has been cleaned thoroughly, top to bottom--they will appear on the walls as I really get 'into' it, even in the dead of an Alaskan winter at 40 below zero outside. They often appear in my dreams, not as part of the "story"--I'm always dreaming of stories, 3-5 a night, every night--but as a separate, in-between stories appearance. It's usually a quick flash, just a brief image of a spider. They're almost always brilliantly colored, with reds and yellows and purples, all intricately designed. Sometimes I see their web, too, though the webs are most often part of my story dreams. I was once reduced completely to tears and woke up sobbing when someone in my dreams destroyed one of the beautiful webs I had dreamt about.

Yet the strangest--and perhaps most convincing--are the spectral spiders that have visited me many times as I sleep. They are not dreams and not physical, existing on the same plane as ghosts and spirits, and I only catch brief glimpses of them as I wake. Several times, I have been startled out of sleep by the appearance of a spectral spider--as elegant as an octopus falling through water--descending upon my head. At those times, even though I've known deep in my soul that they were benign creatures, there to help me, it sure scared the bejeebus out of me and I would run screaming from the room, flailing until I was sure there was no physical 2-foot spider clinging to me.

Obviously, I'm scared of them, just like most people. I freak out when they climb on me. I scream when my sonofabitch brother-in-law lobs a tiny piece of paper at my face, pretending it's a spider. However, I refuse to kill the little guys, and have always insisted upon saving them from my grandmother's broom, despite how much they frighten me.

As to how the spiders and I get along, well, I think there's a kindredness between us. I've always felt like spiders and I have something very basic in common, and the best I can describe it is the urge to create. The energy I feel from a spider is the same kind of energy I feel when I'm deep in a novel, writing a wonderful new scene.

As for feeling a kindredness towards spiders, when I first joined Writing.com in '06, I searched through the author icons looking for one that felt 'right' to me. It was the spiderweb, hands-down. I never changed it since Day One. And, if you look closely, there's a tiny spider hanging from it. That's what I've always felt was more important. Not the spider, but the web.

However, as to whether I've ever communicated with spiders, it's never been anything so crude. I think the help they give me is just the energy that we both share, which is help in itself.

So, as to the four qualities of the Spider--Balance, wisdom, creativity, communication--I'd say it's dead-on with two of them. As a full-time writer, I have built my life around creativity and communication. As for balance and wisdom, though, I'm still working on that part ;)


Lesson #5


Assignment: From reading the poetry above , you have an idea of the storytelling involved in their poetry. Not every writer on writing.com are poets, some do not even write poetry. But how else do you expand your writing ability except to try to write in new area's, after all .... isn't that the real reason why you took this class ? To learn to write in another area ? To learn to write in area's that you have not written in before? To expand your writing ability and your horizons ?


1. Write a poem that tells a descriptive story.

2. This poem can be in any style, as long as it is a poem.

3. Rhyming is extra credit on your grade.

4. Please try to keep it at no longer than ten stanza's if possible. Wado!

5. It cannot be just thrown together, it has to make sense.

6. It cannot be a previously written poem, it has to be new for this lesson.


The Bucket Baby
by Sara King

The child was born blue-eyed and afraid,
His cries in the minds of man, woman, babe.
Neither muffled ears nor distance made
His mental whimpers dull or fade.

Old men held a meeting and boldly agreed,
To murder the child was the village's need.
They moved into the night as their women wept
To kill the babe as its mother slept.

The midwife brought a bucket of water,
In which to drown like a malformed otter.
The men placed the swaddling bundle inside,
And held it down 'til the blue eyes went wide.

The entire village heard its last whimper,
Afraid and alone, its tiny arms went limper.
And soon came the silence that they craved,
Free from the unknown was the road they had paved.

They returned the child to the mother's breast.
Cold and lifeless, upon her chest.




Discussion Topic:I would like for you to write, an essay, book report of any word count that you choose. Make it a separate static item. The report should be about the poetry of this lesson plan that you read of the Native Americans. The questions are this ....


1. Did all of the poetry in the lesson tell a story?

2. If it did, Which poem did you like the best?

3. What about the poem of the story that they told, stood out to you the most?


I didn't believe that each poem told a story, per se, since in my somewhat extensive training a story consists of a beginning, middle, and end, with a protagonist, an antagonist, and a goal, but I did think that they each invoked a strong emotional sentiment, at the very least. I found the story of the ancestors' bones to stand out the most. I believe it was called "Remove Us Once Again." The imagery here was the strongest for me, and I could sympathize with those natives who are having their ancestors' disturbed like this, where before I thought it was just a silly power struggle. It never really occurred to me to think of it in this manner, and I think that's the most important thing a story can do--make you look at your world differently.



Lesson #6

Assignment:

Class I know that this was a lot of reading again , but I feel that it is something that you all wanted to know, just another look at our culture of the Native Americans.

1. Tell me what Dance caught your attention in this lesson.

2. What did you learn about non-Native Americans can do in a Pow-Wow?

3. Would you be interested in seeing a real Native Pow-Wow in person?

4. What kind of Dance would you do yourself if you were in one of these Dances?

5, There is no word count to this lesson, but you must make it a static item to your
port and then submit it to the class room in ' Bitem ' format. Wado!= Thank you!


The dance that caught my attention was the Ghost Dance. I think that this was emotionally, the most involving for me. It's heart-wrenching to imagine what the Native Americans were going through at that time, and the persecution that they endured in order to hold onto their beliefs. It's good to see that these traditional values are being respected and kept alive by even modern generations. I also found the legend of the feather to be quite emotionally engaging, and I could see that it was a great man, indeed, who had all of his enemy at his mercy, and showed them respect and kindness, instead.

Though I would definitely be concerned about standing out--and the fact that I can't dance worth a damn--I would be interested in joining a Pow-Wow, if invited. I've seen several of them here in Alaska, both Athabascan and Eskimo, and my heart aches every time I watch them. I observe them with the utmost respect, and feel the sense of magic wash over the place to the beat of the drum. I wish I could be there, participating, singing and living the drum with them. I was actually a bit surprised to find out that outsiders (in the Lower 48, at least) are sometimes invited to dance.

If I could dance, ideally, it would be the Ghost Dance. I think that this would have the most meaning to me. I would be much less interested in a shawl dance or jingle dance. Dancing for the sake of being pretty has never appealed to me as much, as can be evidenced by the fact I don't wear dresses or jewelry. I did find it a bit disappointing that dancing was segregated by sexes, but I'm not about to challenge an ancient tradition because I don't understand its significance and culture. And I'm not a raging feminist... I respect both sides of the coin, I just don't relate very well to the female side. Let it suffice to say that I've always felt more male in spirit than female, and 99% of the time, someone reading my stories blind will say that they were written by a man. If one takes my beliefs in reincarnation into account, perhaps that would account for the sense of unhappiness I get when I'm told I cannot participate in a symbolically male dance.

Overall, though, this lesson has sparked my interest in finding and attending an Athabascan Pow-Wow. Thanks for sharing!


Discussion Topic:

1. Did you learn something that you did not know in this lesson?

2. Did you like this lesson or think that this lesson was unnecessary ?

3. Please discuss this in the class room with your fellow class mates.


Yes, I learned many new things. My favorite was the legend of the eagle feather. I liked the lesson quite a bit, and it sparked my interest to read more.


Lesson #7

Assignment:

Write an essay to answer these questions please. This essay does not have to have a word count.

1. What was the purpose of The Sweat Lodge? Was it Spiritual ? OR just Traditional ?

2. Do you think that this lesson was important to learn and know about the Native Culture?

3. What did this lesson teach you? and What did you learn from this lesson?

4. What do you think was the most important lesson that you have learned from this lesson?


The sweat lodge served--and continues to serve--both an important traditional and spiritual purpose. It helps the tribes remember and remain grounded to their ancestors, family, and traditions, and at the same time, it sparks and nurtures a transformational process that is deeply spiritual. Both physically and emotionally, the act of sweating can release toxins and negativity, and the sense of community that is shared during the process elevates spirits and strengthens family ties.

As to new information, the lesson had very little I've not seen before, since I made it a point to study Native American culture in my youth. One aspect I did find fascinating was the ritual positions of water keeper, fire keeper, drummer, etc. I thought that it was a more communal system, and was surprised to find it was indeed quite organized. Further, I was unaware of the fact that it is considered disrespectful to pass between the fire and the lodge. It made me curious as to why that is.

The most important lesson from this assignment was the nature of community. It reminded me that one cannot be an island, and that to create a true spiritual experience, one must enlist the aid of others to help guide and assist them. Also, it was good to be reminded that in nature, everything has a role, and that is likewise reflected in the tribe, where everyone's strengths are recognized and needed. I feel this is something that modern society has forgotten.


Discussion Topic:

Please discuss with your fellow class mates what stood out to you in this lesson, and if this was valuable information to know.



Lesson #8

Part Two of the Assignment

1. Using the words given to you throughout this semester, write your own quote or proverb with these Cherokee words, in Cherokee.

2. Now using those same words you wrote in Cherokee, write it in English, divide the Quote and/or Proverb into two separate parts on the same page.


Tsilugi hi-a Adanvdo (as) ni-hi Dinadanvtli, a-le hi-a Elohino (as) ni-hi unitsi, a-le waya (as) ni-hi ulv, a-le ni-hi kla u-wa-sa.
Welcome the Great Spirit as your brother, the Earth as your Mother, and the Wolf as your sister, and you are not alone.

Author's note: There were many grammatical nuances to language and I'm sure I fumbled this pretty royally. Further, I could not find the word for 'your,' so I substituted the word for 'you,' which in many languages means basically the same thing. Also, the word 'as' is often untranslateable in other languages, so I put in a placeholder. Soooo... With my limited talents, this is what I could come up with. I would have liked to use "Father" for Great Spirit, but I didn't see it anywhere. Hope it's all right for our purposes :)

-Sara King
http://www.kingfiction.com