Signing Of Peace Research Articles

The Bridge of the Gods

The Bridge of the Gods Jeanne Eder (bio) Crow Indian historian and storyteller Jeanne Eder opened the Fifth Women's West Conference with her interpretation of Sacagawea, the Lemhi woman who was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In her persona as Sacagawea, Eder drew a convincing portrait of a self-contained and competent Indian woman unaccustomed to taking orders from men and remarkably tolerant of the white men who refused to admit how much they could learn from Native people. Then she took off her wig, changed her posture and her accent, and as Jeanne Eder, Ph.D., explained to a fascinated audience how she researched her character, drawing particularly on sources for Hidatsa women (Sacagawea was captured by the Hidatsa when she was a child) and on the oral tradition claiming that she led a long life that included a happy marriage with an attractive Comanche husband. Later in the conference, leading off the panel on Pacific Northwest women, Eder told a version of the "Bridge of the Gods" story reprinted below.1 In Eder's version, however, Loo-wit generously shared her fire with the people and later was rewarded with youth and beauty, rather than (as in this version) bargaining for them beforehand. This small change in emphasis reminds us of the flexibility of perspective that is an inherent part of living oral traditions, and it points to exciting and different ways to understand how the Native peoples viewed the land we now call the Pacific Northwest, no longer fixed and unchanging but alive with personal meanings. Tribes from central Oregon to northeastern Washington related traditions about a legendary rock "bridge" that spanned the Columbia River "one sleep" below the site of The Dalles. When it fell, old Indians said to early travelers, its rocks formed the Cascades in the river; its fall, two Indians explained to travelers in 1854, was accompanied by quarrels between [End Page 57] between Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, who threw fire at one another. The most familiar version of the myth about the stone arch has been altered so freely that no one now can determine the original tradition, even in the variant written by a Puyallup-Nisqually Indian. The source of the story given here, Lulu Crandall, seems to have been the one closest to the Klickitats, who had this tradition. Mrs. Crandall, who had known those Indians from her pioneer childhood, was a historian of The Dalles area. Long ago, when the world was young, all people were happy. The Great Spirit, whose home is in the sun, gave them all they needed. No one was hungry, no one was cold. But after a while, two brothers quarreled over the land. The older one wanted most of it, and the younger one wanted most of it. The Great Sprit decided to stop the quarrel. One night while the brothers were asleep he took them to a new land, to a country with high mountains. Between the mountains flowed a big river. The Great Spirit took the two brothers to the top of the high mountains and wakened them. They saw that the new country was rich and beautiful. "Each of you will shoot an arrow in opposite directions," he said to them. "Then you will follow your arrow. Where your arrow falls, that will be your country. There you will become a great chief. The river will separate your lands." One brother shot his arrow south into the valley of the Willamette River. He became the father and the high chief of the Multnomah people. The other brother shot his arrow north into the Klickitat country. He became the father and high chief of the Klickitat people. Then the Great Spirit built a bridge over the big river. To each brother he said, "I have built a bridge over the river, so that you and your people may visit those on the other side. It will be a sign of peace between you. As long as you and your people are good and are friendly with each other, this bridge of the Tahmahnawis will remain." It was a broad bridge, wide enough for many people...

Free Tibet, Man!

Free Tibet, Man! Dinty W. Moore I drive all morning, fervent and focused on enlightenment, finally stopping for coffee at The Waffle House, near Plain City, Ohio. My car sports a "Free Tibet" bumpersticker that I picked up in Atlanta, and as I lean against the left fender, sipping my cup of mindfulness, a young man spills out of a purple school bus and starts running toward me. He is a 1990s version of a hippie—a white kid with dreadlocks, a knit cap, probably hemp, and Grateful Dead patches on his Levi cutoffs. "Hey, hey, freeTibet," he shouts, pointing to my bumper. "Free Tibet, man." "Hey," I answer back. "Free Tibet," he repeats. "Were you there?" "Tibet?" I ask. "No, man. The concert. Were you there?" I realize he is talking about the Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco, and that to him, the grave situation in Tibet has mainly translated into an opportunity to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers through really big speakers. I explain that I'm not primarily a music fan, but rather heading to Bloomington, Indiana, to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The hippie kid tells me that he and his busload of pals are on their way to Woodstock, NewYork, for another music festival. "It's gonna be cool." His girlfriend, a twenty-something, longhaired young woman in an oversized Mama Cass cotton dress and Birkenstocks, is on a pay phone about twenty feet offfrom us. She seems to be arguing with someone. My new friend shouts to her: "The Dalai Lama is in Bloomington. Wanna go?" She waves and shouts back. "Free Tibet! I was there!!" I give them a peace sign. There is nothing else to be done. im| "Free Tibet, Man!," by DintyW. Moore, was originally published in BREVITY: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, Summer 1998. (http://cac.psu.edu/~dwm7/notart.htm) 56 ...

Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk

Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk Thomas Sayers Ellis (bio) [1] That name: D’VoidofFunk. An expressionistic thing With do-loops And threes in it, Preceded by A silly-serious Attempt by Old Smell-O-Vision To cop Some nobility. [2] The whole bumpnoxious, Dark thang stanks Of jivation And Electric Spank. Glory, glory, glory- hallastoopid. Then there’s his funny Accent—pitch Change and delay Looped through Feedback, pre-spankic Self-satisfunktion. [End Page 75] Nose gets harder As his voice Gets higher. Nose won’t take His shoes off, Dance, swim or sweat. Nose snores, A deep snooze, Snoozation. [3] Syndrome tweedle dee dum. Despite The finger-pointing profile, False peace signs And allergic reaction To light, we brothers Wanna be down With Nose. All that! The girls, the clothes. Now you know Nose Knows when to fake it And when to fake Faking it. Waves Don’t mean he’s gone Or that there’s going To be a cover-up, Very Nixonian. You can’t impeach Nose. Where’s your court- room, your wig and robe? You ain’t Nose judge. Somebody scream just to see The look on our party’s Tromboneless face, That burial ground [End Page 76] Of samples and clones Jes grew. A nose Is a nose is a nose Is a nose, so Wherever the elephants In his family Tree untrunk Is home. [4] And that’s about the only tail Mugs can push or pin On him. Thomas Sayers Ellis Thomas Sayers Ellis, an associate editor of Callaloo, is an instructor of African American literature and creative writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He recently received the MFA in creative writing at Brown University, a few years after he co-founded the Dark Room Writers Collective. He is a co-editor of On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists and one of the emerging poets collected in Take Three. His work has also been published in Agni, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, The Harvard Review, and Ploughshares. Copyright © 1998 Charles H. Rowell

The Orbiting Unification Ring-Space Peace Sculptures: Progress Report on Global Art in Space

The authors discuss the progress of the Orbiting Unification Ring-Space Peace Sculptures (OURSPS), a project of the OURS Foundation. The OUR-SPS have been designed in accord with both the astronomical sign of the planet Earth and an ancient sign of peace and unity. The sculptures also communicate to a global audience that the development of outer space is not only beneficial but also crucial to the well-being of the planet. Specific developments discussed include the evolution of launch arrangements with the space agencies of the United States and the USSR, the selection of contractors and technology and the broadening of artistic collaboration and public awareness through events and exhibitions. Today we understand that at our level of industrialization and social development we are united by nature, and there is no more meaning to the words ‘mine’ and 'yours’. We must use a new word—'ours’. When we cosmonauts go out into space, this word ‘ours ’ unites us. Valentin Ledebev, Soviet cosmonaut on Salyut 7

Peace Signs and Placards, Blue Lights and a “Breach”

Peace Signs and Placards, Blue Lights and a “Breach”

An Ethiopian refugee village in Sudan: the question of employment

Abstract— There are some 460,000 Eritrean and Tigrean political refugees in Sudan. The numbers have increased dramatically since the mid‐1970s, and as yet there are no convincing signs of peace which would allow the prospect of a speedy return home. Sudan is thus faced with one of the Third World's largest populations of long term refugees, and the capacity of the economy to absorb such numbers into its labour force is an acute and potentially violent issue. Discussion and planning has been hindered by a lack of specific information on the proportion of refugees who are of urban or rural origin and the proportion of those who might undertake skilled or unskilled employment. The following report of a census and survey of a refugee village in eastern Sudan offers some insight into the problem and suggests steps towards its solution.

The Air Force Estimates and Aeronautical Research

THE development of military aviation has been one of the wonders of the war, but we have naturally been kept somewhat in the dark as to the exact extent of such development while the war was still in progress. The veil has now been lifted, and Gen. Seely, in speaking on the Air Estimates in the House of Commons on March 13, has given us a striking summary of the progress made during the past four years. The fact that the expenditure on the Air Force has increased two-hundred-fold since the outbreak of hostilities is a sufficient comment on the enormous advances that have taken place in the aeronautical world. Gen. Seely states that if the armistice had not been signed, this year's Estimates would have reached the sum of 200,000,000l.—an amount which is practically four times our pre-war expenditure on the entire Navy! Even with the signing of peace in sight the sum of 66,500,000l. is asked for, in order to ensure the maintenance of the aerial supremacy which we have gained during the war.