Speaker 1: No bread of that areland.
Speaker 2: Sons, no bed.
Speaker 1: Of that are ho bred of that areland.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to the show. This is the Cult
Speaker 3: of Conspiracy and I am the Cajun night Ay Raven Lee,
Speaker 3: and we are continuing on our holiday week pile on
Speaker 3: of all the crazy things and stuff, and believe it
Speaker 3: or not, this episode accidentally will get conspiratorial. I didn't
Speaker 3: even intend for this to go this way. But today
Speaker 3: we are going to be talking about Kwanza, which is
Speaker 3: an inherently American, specifically African American, but it's inherently an
Speaker 3: American celebration. And then as we are sticking to the
Speaker 3: more you know, American traditions that a lot of Americans
Speaker 3: may not be aware of, we are then gonna go
Speaker 3: to some Native American tribes.
Speaker 4: M h.
Speaker 5: So we're gonna we're gonna touch at least on the
Speaker 5: history of kind of just what some Native American tribes do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm excited to learn about these things. Honestly,
Speaker 3: I I as a side tangent, I started doing some
Speaker 3: more research into some obscure things I never knew about.
Speaker 3: The Iroquois society of the no Face, which is a
Speaker 3: winter solstice celebration thing, and I didn't do too much
Speaker 3: digging into it. We're gonna talk about that one probably
Speaker 3: on the Obscure episode We're gonna do in a minute
Speaker 3: or tomorrow, I should say, But yeah, for today, we
Speaker 3: are going to go to Kwansa and we are going
Speaker 3: to go to a couple of different Native American tribes.
Speaker 3: And I do need to apologize. I was supposed to
Speaker 3: be wearing a daishiki for this, and I had a source.
Speaker 3: I had a buddy of mine who I told him
Speaker 3: when I was doing He was super about that life.
Speaker 3: I know there's gonna be people that are saying I'm
Speaker 3: appropriating culture. No, I'm an American and there's a specifically
Speaker 3: American holiday, and he was super, super helpful. Actually, he
Speaker 3: was like about that life. But I should admit my
Speaker 3: buddy is a few sizes smaller than me, and this
Speaker 3: would have looked like I was trying to make a
Speaker 3: joke out of the culture, and that's not what my
Speaker 3: intention was. So the flannel is still rocking.
Speaker 5: It happens. Hey, I'm wearing a Crumpuss shirt and I'm
Speaker 5: wearing these awesome earrings that were made for me. But today,
Speaker 5: so there are trees, Christmas trees with skulls on them.
Speaker 5: I'm super happy. So hell, I'm still rocking the theme
Speaker 5: over here. At least of Christmas things. I could throw
Speaker 5: on a Christmas hat.
Speaker 3: I could throw on the Christmas hat. But this episode
Speaker 3: is not going to be about Christmas yet, not like
Speaker 3: this kind of Christmas. So at that point it's kind
Speaker 3: of this thing's lost in translation, you know. So it
Speaker 3: is what it is, but we are gonna to get
Speaker 3: into it here, good cult members, and we might as
Speaker 3: well give the shameless plug now for anybody that is
Speaker 3: listening to the show that would like to see the articles,
Speaker 3: the videos and the things and the stuff, and Ravenlee
Speaker 3: and I are gorgeous faces talking about these topics. Then
Speaker 3: the only place you can go to see all this
Speaker 3: would be to go to patreon dot com slash Cult
Speaker 3: Conspiracy Podcast. Over there, there are a few tiers for entry.
Speaker 3: We got that five dollars a month tier where you
Speaker 3: get all these episodes. You get them a couple of
Speaker 3: days in advance, sometimes even a week in advance. You
Speaker 3: get all the video content, you get some of the
Speaker 3: behind the scenes things. We are doing a lot more
Speaker 3: on the Patreon. We are trying to revitalize and retool
Speaker 3: the Patreon. We just did a live Q and A.
Speaker 3: We're showing more behind the scenes things. We may even
Speaker 3: be dropping some exclusive content for certain tiers within the Patreon.
Speaker 3: We we're gonna start sending out some ourach, yeah merch, not.
Speaker 5: Merch, We're gonna so we have a couple things that
Speaker 5: we've decided to do. So we're revitalizing Patreon completely and
Speaker 5: hopefully by the beginning of the year we'll have all
Speaker 5: the tiers set up exactly what we want to do.
Speaker 5: But we're going to have promo boxes for the third
Speaker 5: Eye Open tier and for the Mannic tier, and we're
Speaker 5: gonna have a cool sticker a month, so every month
Speaker 5: will be a different kind of sticker and it will
Speaker 5: be it will be like kind of coo little ones
Speaker 5: that will change every single month. And then we're also
Speaker 5: going to do hopefully potentially merch exclusive merch for certain tiers,
Speaker 5: also have a merch store, and it's gonna be pretty awesome,
Speaker 5: Like we're gonna we're gonna set it all up and
Speaker 5: have a really cool time.
Speaker 3: So I'm excited. I am we got you know, Braven
Speaker 3: Lee and I have a different type of let's call
Speaker 3: it esthetic, you know, a different type of artistic flair.
Speaker 3: And I am excited to see what kind of stickers
Speaker 3: we're gonna just come up with month to month. That
Speaker 3: should be fun, just saying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think between the two of us, we're gonna
Speaker 5: have some really cool ones. Definitely, probably some skulls for mine,
Speaker 5: Oh for sure, everyone, I'll have a lot of skols
Speaker 5: for mine. But I'm interested to see what you come
Speaker 5: up with, the ones that you like.
Speaker 3: I got a few ideas. Some will be rather lighthearted,
Speaker 3: some will be rather obscene. I don't know. I guess
Speaker 3: we'll figure it out together, you know. But like I said,
Speaker 3: we're also coming out with more merch as well. We
Speaker 3: are currently looking for a merch store type of situation.
Speaker 3: Some coffee mugs, some hoodies, some T shirts. We're gonna
Speaker 3: start making this happen in real time. We have had
Speaker 3: with No Ego, hundreds of people ask us where can
Speaker 3: they buy our merch? And we have been slacking for years.
Speaker 5: On this, but well, I mean we did. We did
Speaker 5: go and have some conversations with some people to do merch.
Speaker 5: It's just very expensive up front, and trying to figure
Speaker 5: out how to do a merch store and then actually
Speaker 5: have good quality and where to actually house it, or
Speaker 5: if we're gonna do one of those where you click
Speaker 5: and then it does the automatic thing. It's it's a
Speaker 5: process to learn how to do all that. So we
Speaker 5: are hoping though, by at least the beginning of the year,
Speaker 5: we'll have our tiers set up for Patreon, and we'll
Speaker 5: have a lot more exclusive content and behind the scenes
Speaker 5: Q and as contests run different kind of things to
Speaker 5: where you know it's gonna be a lot more fun
Speaker 5: building a real community within the Patreon So I don't
Speaker 5: know if we're gonna throw the discord, because both of us,
Speaker 5: to be honest, are kind of dumb when it comes
Speaker 5: to Discord.
Speaker 3: But I can tease this, at least there will possibly
Speaker 3: be a link to a secret merch store only available
Speaker 3: to Patreon subscribers, the secret store which will have the
Speaker 3: secret star Bey app Uh. Let's say this like there's
Speaker 3: been some quotes, there's been some sayings that have come
Speaker 3: off of this show over the years. We're like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, that's a T shirt. That's gonna be the
Speaker 3: spot where those T shirts are made. And it's not
Speaker 3: something that you would put out on the interwebs for
Speaker 3: the world to see, but for the people that get
Speaker 3: the joke, you know. Yeah, Anyway, like I was saying,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have these things available on the Patreon here
Speaker 3: very soon, so.
Speaker 5: Like Beetlejuice right then, I'm sorry, Yeah, that sound like
Speaker 5: you did when you were like.
Speaker 3: I'll take that as a compliment. I think he's phenomenal.
Speaker 5: Saying it in a bad way. I'm just saying, that's
Speaker 5: what you sound like.
Speaker 3: But I think he did okay at Batman.
Speaker 5: He did. I mean, I didn't think he was terrible
Speaker 5: at Batman. I'll say that better.
Speaker 3: Than Jack Frost. That was just me.
Speaker 5: Oh that's a sad movie.
Speaker 3: I know that. That movie is the reason why I
Speaker 3: still can't listen to Landslide by by Fleetwood Mac without
Speaker 3: getting a little.
Speaker 5: It's pretty emotional movie. I'll say that. To go back
Speaker 5: to your point about Patreon, we are going to be
Speaker 5: doing a lot of things coming up and really trying
Speaker 5: to i don't know, build expand grow our community, grow
Speaker 5: the cult and see how it all plays out.
Speaker 3: What absolutely So with that being said, there are a
Speaker 3: few other tears that you can go to on the page.
Speaker 3: We got that cult member tier right there, like we were
Speaker 3: talking about, then if you want to go to that
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Speaker 3: a Maga echo chamber, we have a very diverse group
Speaker 3: that would say otherwise, because I throw that out. But
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Speaker 3: Absolutely yes, that's right. Kick the ads, we know they suck.
Speaker 3: We hate commercials too. We offer exclusively on Patreon commercial
Speaker 3: free listening. That's the best place to go. That's the
Speaker 3: only place to go. So I'm gonna go ahead and
Speaker 3: share the screen at this time. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: just off of the Ravenle, do you know anything about
Speaker 3: Kwanza I don't.
Speaker 5: I actually don't know anything about Kwansa. I know you
Speaker 5: said it's an American holiday. I don't know when it
Speaker 5: was started, what it's really about. I'm gonna be honest
Speaker 5: with you. I'm pretty nineive when it comes to this topic.
Speaker 3: So I feel like a lot of Americans, specifically white Americans,
Speaker 3: don't know much about Kwanza. And that's understandable because it
Speaker 3: is a specifically African American holiday. So the background to it,
Speaker 3: it was started in nineteen sixty six by a gentleman
Speaker 3: that we're gonna learn more about here in a minute.
Speaker 3: And basically it was started to be a Pan African celebration,
Speaker 3: a political, a religious. So to be fair, you can
Speaker 3: celebrate Christmas and Kwanza and the two do not conflict
Speaker 3: in any way, shape or form, believe it or not.
Speaker 3: And there's a few things, a few symbols that take
Speaker 3: place during this time. It's a seven day holiday. It
Speaker 3: starts the day after Christmas and it goes in until
Speaker 3: the uh I think the first we're gonna learn more
Speaker 3: about it here in a moment. Each day there's a
Speaker 3: candle that is lit. There is some poetry you should
Speaker 3: read or or it's like seen as like the daily thought,
Speaker 3: something you're supposed to contemplate and reflect on this day.
Speaker 3: There is music that you're supposed to listen to, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna actually read about that as well. Earth Wind
Speaker 3: and Fire is on that. So yeah, that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's weird. It's not, and I don't mean weird as
Speaker 3: a negative thing. It's I had never really done much
Speaker 3: digging into it, to be honest. The extent of my
Speaker 3: knowledge on Kwanza came from the Proud Family. There was
Speaker 3: an episode where they celebrated Kwansa with this family and
Speaker 3: all that. So for any of our say I.
Speaker 5: Thought it was a Jewish holiday, I'm not gonna lie
Speaker 5: to you. I did for like a hot minute there.
Speaker 5: I think it was like a part of Jewish holidays.
Speaker 3: The candle obra would make you think, so right, very
Speaker 3: similar to how the the Hanukkah celebration we just learned
Speaker 3: about has there thing so like you need more. I
Speaker 3: didn't do enough, Flim, I'm sorry, Royknikah. Yeah yeah, but
Speaker 3: but to your point, the candle lighting, it does kind
Speaker 3: of resonate a certain way that make you think possibly
Speaker 3: this is connected to Judaism. None whatsoever. It is not
Speaker 3: related to Islam, Christendom, Judaism. There is no religious significance
Speaker 3: to Kwanza whatsoever. It is specifically a cultural holiday. So
Speaker 3: I got a quick little vigia here, and we are
Speaker 3: gonna learn about Kwanza together using this video, and then
Speaker 3: we're gonna go more into the details of it. And
Speaker 3: then there is some uh con controversial uh some some
Speaker 3: might say conspiratorial things to be said about Kwanza and
Speaker 3: the creator thereof and really oh yeah, yeah again, good
Speaker 3: cult members. Please, if you are somebody that celebrates Kwanza,
Speaker 3: please habarghane to you. Okay, all the things and all
Speaker 3: the stuff. I didn't know anything about this. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that Marcus Garvey made his appearance into this, which
Speaker 3: if you don't know who Marcus Garvey is, he is
Speaker 3: one of the most vehement violent racists against white people
Speaker 3: ever on Earth. I didn't know that. I didn't know
Speaker 3: that before we got started. I didn't know the creator
Speaker 3: of Kwansa also was arrested and convicted for assaulting two women.
Speaker 3: But we're gonna get to it all. We're gonna get
Speaker 3: to it all because I don't I don't want to
Speaker 3: take away from Kwansa itself, because the celebration itself, it
Speaker 3: kind of seems cool. It kind of seems cool. I
Speaker 3: know that I can't celebrate it for multiple reasons, but
Speaker 3: like I respect those that do, you know, and before
Speaker 3: we get to the controversy, I should say that too.
Speaker 3: If you're somebody who celebrates Kwansa, you know, more power
Speaker 3: to you do not. Sometimes you gotta take the good
Speaker 3: with the bad, right like you gotta take the Yes.
Speaker 3: This person might have been a piece of shit, but
Speaker 3: what they did was something good and you could you
Speaker 3: could extrapolate the good from it. And it's not like
Speaker 3: this instant of what happened with him takes away from
Speaker 3: the holiday that he created by any stretch of the
Speaker 3: imagination that actually happened years after. But we're gonna get
Speaker 3: to it all. Sorry about the tangent on this one,
Speaker 3: but anyway, let's learn about Kwansa together, good cult members.
Speaker 3: We're gonna start off with this little vigia here. It's
Speaker 3: only four and a half in its long, and it's
Speaker 3: gonna talk to us a little bit about the backstory
Speaker 3: of Kwansa and also how to celebrate it. Let's learn together.
Speaker 4: Kwansa is a holiday that was started by doctor Malinga
Speaker 4: Krenga in nineteen sixty six. The reason that he felt
Speaker 4: a need to start a brand new holiday was because
Speaker 4: he felt that African Americans that lived outside of the
Speaker 4: continent of Africa were detached from the values and the
Speaker 4: culture of the continent of Africa, and he wanted them
Speaker 4: to feel good about themselves and to have something that
Speaker 4: they could connect to to make their lives better. Kuansa
Speaker 4: is actually derived from a Kiswa hilly word meaning first harvest.
Speaker 4: All through the continent of Africa and many other places,
Speaker 4: people celebrate the harvest. They give thanks for the harvest,
Speaker 4: so Kwansa really means first fruits or harvest time. Quansa
Speaker 4: is not a religious holiday. It's a cultural holiday, which
Speaker 4: means that you can celebrate whatever your tradition is and
Speaker 4: still enjoy Kwansa. Kwansa is observed the day after Christmas,
Speaker 4: which means you could still celebrate Christmas from December twenty
Speaker 4: sixth all the way through January first New Year's Day
Speaker 4: to seven days, so the seven days you're actually celebrating
Speaker 4: and thinking about seven principles. Those seven principles are called
Speaker 4: the Nguza Saba. The seven principles of Kwanza are Omoja unity, kutishagualiyah,
Speaker 4: self determination, Ujima, collective work and responsibility, Ujama cooperative economics,
Speaker 4: Nia purpose, Koumba creativity, and last but not least, Imani faith.
Speaker 4: Those are seven principles that everyone can use to have
Speaker 4: a better life. It doesn't matter if you're African American,
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter where you're from. These seven principles will
Speaker 4: help you to be a better human being and also
Speaker 4: help to make the world a better place. The condelabra
Speaker 4: for Kwansa is called a kinnora. It is seven candles
Speaker 4: that represent again the seven principles. So the middle candle
Speaker 4: is black that represents the people. Then you have three
Speaker 4: candles representing the blood, and then three candles that represent
Speaker 4: the earth or the hard work that you do. I
Speaker 4: think that what resonates with people about this holiday is
Speaker 4: that it really is a holiday that makes you look
Speaker 4: within and then connect with the people around you. So
Speaker 4: part of Quanta also is looking at your relationships people
Speaker 4: who you might need to ask forgiveness from people who
Speaker 4: you might need to forgive. The quansa celebration at the
Speaker 4: American Museum of Natural History is literally the largest Quanta
Speaker 4: celebration in the United States. Thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 4: come in to see the Quantsa celebration, and as a storyteller,
Speaker 4: I am just prouded. Every year I look forward to
Speaker 4: coming and sharing with everyone about Quanza.
Speaker 6: We have about ten thousand people that come together to
Speaker 6: celebrate every year with the shows that include performances as
Speaker 6: well as storytelling and teaching about the principles and all
Speaker 6: of the nature of the holiday of Kwansa, as well
Speaker 6: as a popular marketplace that opens for artisans to come
Speaker 6: in tell the wares of the museum for just one day.
Speaker 4: And you see people of every ethnicity, every race, every
Speaker 4: religion coming together to celebrate love, to celebrate culture, to
Speaker 4: celebrate through great and rich contribution of African Americans and
Speaker 4: the African diaspora. What's wonderful about Kwansa for everyone is
Speaker 4: that it gives everyone the opportunity to learn a little
Speaker 4: bit more about African American history, which is American history.
Speaker 4: Then we also get the opportunity to be with family
Speaker 4: and share personal stories. So when people of any ethnicity
Speaker 4: come together and they hear these stories, it helps them
Speaker 4: to understand one another better.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Inside. Addition for the backstory into Kwanza. Now,
Speaker 3: a couple of things I should mention here. Kwansa, as
Speaker 3: the traditional holiday here is actually spelled with an extra
Speaker 3: a at the end. Ye that she was talking about
Speaker 3: as first fruit is actually only six letters, so they
Speaker 3: added the seventh letter just to make it seven long,
Speaker 3: as the holiday is seven days long. I think that's
Speaker 3: an interesting tidbit.
Speaker 5: That's pretty cool. I will say that one, she seems
Speaker 5: like a really awesome person.
Speaker 3: She seems like an awesome story tellers.
Speaker 5: She really want to hang out with her and like
Speaker 5: listen to her, do you stories to Actually, it sounds
Speaker 5: like a fantastic celebration. I really like the seven principles
Speaker 5: in what they represent. It sounds like overall it would
Speaker 5: just be a great holiday for everybody. But also it's
Speaker 5: a really cool holiday to celebrate African American history and
Speaker 5: how they are tying their roots back to Africa and
Speaker 5: doing more unity stuff. Sounds like, you're awesome holiday overall.
Speaker 3: To me, agreed honestly, and I mean especially it makes
Speaker 3: sense that this formed in the nineteen sixties civil rights
Speaker 3: movement was on the rise, and the Black community was
Speaker 3: trying to find a way to redisc cover their roots,
Speaker 3: so to speak. Right, so many of them got brought
Speaker 3: over against their will. They have no idea from what
Speaker 3: tribe they originally came from, what culture they originally came from.
Speaker 3: Blood tests are only so good, and I've seen I
Speaker 3: had a corporal of mind in the Marine Corps. As
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, when I was a PFC. He
Speaker 3: and one of the sergeant majors they did a blood
Speaker 3: test and there was a different type of test they
Speaker 3: could do at the time, based off of some facial
Speaker 3: features and things like this, and they discovered that they
Speaker 3: were actually from the same tribe originally in Africa, like
Speaker 3: at least the predominance in their DNA would show that
Speaker 3: they were from this area. And I thought that was
Speaker 3: really cool. But because there was so much detachment from
Speaker 3: their ancestral history for them to come together and say,
Speaker 3: you know what, fine, we are going to make our
Speaker 3: own ancestral history. We're gonna base it off of nothing hate.
Speaker 3: Nothing that we heard just now had anything to do
Speaker 3: with black superiority, white inferiority, nothing along these lines. If anything,
Speaker 3: it was about community growth and community strengthening, and I
Speaker 3: think it's awesome, to be honest with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the reflection and unity and faith and every I like,
Speaker 5: really liked all the principles. I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 5: I'm curious to know more about this and how how
Speaker 5: it celebrated. I never even really I mean, I've heard
Speaker 5: about it because I have my neighbor's next door, but
Speaker 5: they they are like Jamaican. She's Jamaican and actually was
Speaker 5: born in.
Speaker 3: England, and do they celebrate Quanta it's from.
Speaker 5: I think they celebrate Kwanza. Honestly, we celebrate a lot
Speaker 5: of holidays together, so that's why wouldn't be surprised that
Speaker 5: they celebrate Kwanza. They're fantastic. They're like some of my
Speaker 5: favorite people on Earth. I'm so blessed to have them
Speaker 5: as wonderful neighbors. But agreed, Yeah, no, it's definitely a
Speaker 5: It definitely sounds like a great holiday.
Speaker 3: So I tried looking up how many people in America
Speaker 3: celebrate Kwansa. Again, it's a American holiday, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: that there's like some people in Canada, some of African
Speaker 3: descent in Canada that might celebrate it in their own
Speaker 3: way or whatever. But as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: it is specifically celebrated. It's an American tradition right. Again,
Speaker 3: it was only starting in the nineteen sixties. It is
Speaker 3: not even one hundred years old yet, to be honest
Speaker 3: with you. That being said, depending on the year, it
Speaker 3: says anywhere between five hundred thousand and twelve million people.
Speaker 5: That's a huge gap, very huge gap.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean, I mean it's also like, how do
Speaker 3: you celebrate it? Right?
Speaker 5: In?
Speaker 3: What way? Is it? That's like saying, how many of
Speaker 3: you celebrate Christmas? Even if you don't do the whole shebang? Right?
Speaker 3: Do you and your family celebrate the tree? You know
Speaker 3: what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well, Christmas is one of those things though that like,
Speaker 5: some people celebrate parts of it, some people celebrate one
Speaker 5: aspect of it, some people do all the shebang. It
Speaker 5: depends on how It depends on your socioeconomic status, It
Speaker 5: depends on your religious background, it depends on your family's traditions.
Speaker 5: So I mean, obviously this would I feel like, be
Speaker 5: on par with that, But it seems Eric does remind
Speaker 5: me somewhat of Judaism when it comes to like they're
Speaker 5: obviously the candles and what they represent. I'm curious to
Speaker 5: do they have any like weird rules.
Speaker 3: No, but I see what you're saying. When when they
Speaker 3: decided to make this non religious, non political, cultural holiday,
Speaker 3: you're gonna see some things that he pretty much borrowed
Speaker 3: from a bunch of different other celebrations that kind of
Speaker 3: go in line with the same thinking. But they took
Speaker 3: it and made it their own right, and so that's
Speaker 3: the background of that. But yeah, so the wide birth
Speaker 3: of it. Just like you said, there's so many different
Speaker 3: ways to celebrate Christmas for KWANSA. I don't know to
Speaker 3: what level that poll was taken. Is it Well, if
Speaker 3: you're not lighting the candles, then you're not celebrating. Does
Speaker 3: it mean that you do you take these days and
Speaker 3: reflect on the principles. Maybe you don't do the candles,
Speaker 3: but you reflect on the principles. Is that how you
Speaker 3: celebrate quants? And there's no we're gonna get into it.
Speaker 3: There's not many rules. There's a few key items that
Speaker 3: are seen as the standard for lack of better words,
Speaker 3: but it's not like some strict adherents where if you
Speaker 3: step out of line then the ancestors get mad at you.
Speaker 3: By any means again, this will start in sixty six,
Speaker 3: so we're gonna read in on it a little bit
Speaker 3: more the Guide online. This is from Hayes High School.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, shout out to Hayes High
Speaker 3: School in Kansas, and the article is actually written this year. Christmas,
Speaker 3: Honkah and Kwanza explains the differences. We're gonna jump ahead
Speaker 3: here because we already know the differences between Christmas and
Speaker 3: Hanukkah and how these are celebrated. We know about this,
Speaker 3: but let's get into the quanta conversation. It says, lastly,
Speaker 3: as Kwanza, this is the holiday that is probably the
Speaker 3: least celebrated in this area and the least well known
Speaker 3: among the three discussed in the article. This is likely
Speaker 3: due to the fact that, unlike Christmas and Honkah, which
Speaker 3: have religious ties, Kwanza is not tied to anyone religion
Speaker 3: and is rather a cultural celebration. It is by far
Speaker 3: the newest holiday, only found in nineteen sixty six by
Speaker 3: doctor Mulana Kurenga. Again, keep a pin in that guy's
Speaker 3: name for later. He's pretty much the entire reason for
Speaker 3: this whole thing. An activist and professor to reaffirm African
Speaker 3: heritage and culture for people with African descent. As a result,
Speaker 3: it is most celebrated by African Americans. This week long
Speaker 3: non religious celebration is observed from December twenty sixth to
Speaker 3: January first, meaning one person can realistically celebrate both Kwansa
Speaker 3: and Christmas. The name Kwanza is derived from the Swahili
Speaker 3: phrase matunda yakwanza, which means first fruits. And again you
Speaker 3: see the Swahili word Kwansa right, there as only six letters,
Speaker 3: so they just added the extra a at the end
Speaker 3: to make it a seven day things. You could put
Speaker 3: it on the candleabra from what I could sell, the
Speaker 3: extra a is had to make the word seven letters long,
Speaker 3: representing these seven days of Kwansa. Hey. The holiday is
Speaker 3: based on African harvesting festivals. During each evening, Kwanza families
Speaker 3: light one of the mushuma saba, which is the seven
Speaker 3: candles in the knara a candle holder. Oh and I
Speaker 3: should just go ahead and say this now. If I
Speaker 3: butcher the pronunciation of any of these words, please do
Speaker 3: not take it as a disrespect or a slight towards
Speaker 3: the culture, good celebrators or Kwansa I mean no disrespect.
Speaker 3: I speak American English and barely at that. The knara
Speaker 3: has one black candle, three red, and three green, representing
Speaker 3: the people, the struggle, and the hope for future, respectively.
Speaker 3: Each day of Kwansa is dedicated to one of seven
Speaker 3: unguza saba principles, being with what you are learned earlier.
Speaker 3: Emoja unity, could kuldj chaila gulia? Which is a determination?
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, got that one? Uh uji yama ujima.
Speaker 5: It was terrible. Go ahead, Maybe just read you know what,
Speaker 5: just maybe read a determination? Responsibility? Uh you know, principal creativity, faith.
Speaker 3: You want me to americanize this American holiday that seems
Speaker 3: rather culturally intuitively wrong.
Speaker 5: Maybe Nia nia kumba kuumba?
Speaker 3: Did you just say kumbaya?
Speaker 5: And I was trying to think of how to say kumba?
Speaker 5: You know what?
Speaker 3: Fuck? I can't it is what it is.
Speaker 5: I'm terrible even trying to sound out words. I'm trying here.
Speaker 3: Look I get it, I get it. Anyway, let's get
Speaker 3: they sure enough did so. Now we're gonna swap over
Speaker 3: to the Smithsonian article talking about the seven principles of
Speaker 3: kwans and this gives us a little more background into it.
Speaker 3: Also certain foods you're supposed to make on the certain days,
Speaker 3: certain literature that you're supposed to pause and reflect on
Speaker 3: on these specific days, and certain music that you're supposed
Speaker 3: to listen to on these seven days. Gotta say, some
Speaker 3: of these not my jam, some of them slap. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna be real with you. I pretty much love
Speaker 3: anything earth wind and fire. I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 3: But anyway, let's get into it. The Seven Principles of Kwanza.
Speaker 3: Kwanza is a time of learning, family, and celebration. During
Speaker 3: the week of Kwanza, families and communities come together to
Speaker 3: share a feast, to honor the ancestors, affirm the bonds
Speaker 3: between them, and to celebrate African and African American culture.
Speaker 3: You see the light of candle to highlight the principle
Speaker 3: of that day and to breathe meaning into the principles
Speaker 3: with various activities such as reciting the sayings or writings
Speaker 3: of great Black thinkers and writers, reciting original poetry, African drumming,
Speaker 3: and sharing of a meal of African diaspora inspired foods.
Speaker 3: The table is decorated with the essential symbols of Quansas,
Speaker 3: such as the canara which is the candle holder, the
Speaker 3: macheka which is the matt mahindi which is corn to
Speaker 3: represent the children. Put up pen in that one for
Speaker 3: later as well. Just gonna say that maezo or mazeo
Speaker 3: fruit to represent the harvest, zowadi which is gifts. There
Speaker 3: is a little bit of a gift exchange here, but
Speaker 3: from what I could tell, it's nothing. It's not like
Speaker 3: Santa Claus gifts. It's more like very small and personalized gifts,
Speaker 3: you know, just something to you know, give to your
Speaker 3: loved ones, to a celebration type of thing. You know.
Speaker 5: I do like that this is a cultural celebration rather
Speaker 5: than face space.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool, agreed. So again, one might also see
Speaker 3: the colors of the Pan African flag, red the struggle,
Speaker 3: black the people, and green the future, which is again
Speaker 3: represented in the candles as well and represented throughout the
Speaker 3: space and in the clothing worn by participants. These colors
Speaker 3: were first proclaimed to be the colors for all people
Speaker 3: of African diaspora by Marcus Garvey. Again, if you don't
Speaker 3: know who Marcus Garvey is, I'm not gonna be the
Speaker 3: one to tell the kids there's no Santa Claus here,
Speaker 3: but uh, he did a lot for people of African descent,
Speaker 3: not gonna take that away from him. I will also
Speaker 3: say he was some some might see him as the
Speaker 3: tiny mustache man of the black community, and I will
Speaker 3: actually have.
Speaker 5: No idea who this is. I'm not Actually, I'm not
Speaker 5: gonna lie to you. I was like, who's Marcus.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be honest with That's that's probably a good thing, honestly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're gonna leave it that if it's like the
Speaker 5: tiny mustache dude, so we're just gonna would have been
Speaker 5: in that one and just leave it alone.
Speaker 3: If you ever seen shirts like a Killer Mike for instance,
Speaker 3: he well, you wouldn't know who that is because you
Speaker 3: think rap is horrible.
Speaker 5: And literally was like, who are we talking about?
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ Raven? Okay, Killer Mike is a rap artist.
Speaker 5: Name a rock band, and I'll be like, okay.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay, cap Can Killer Mike is a rap
Speaker 3: artist who I happened to like his music. And when
Speaker 3: Trump got elected, he went and did a press conference
Speaker 3: with a T shirt saying kill the White Man. This
Speaker 3: was a quote from mister Garvey. You can take that
Speaker 3: to whatever level and depth you'd want to. We're talking
Speaker 3: about Kwanza today.
Speaker 5: You know, Kwansa is a peaceful, it is happy holiday,
Speaker 5: and that's where we're gonna be staying.
Speaker 3: That's right. Well for now, we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 3: founder of a here in a bit anyway, So on
Speaker 3: each day of Kwanza, light a candle for that day's
Speaker 3: principle in your candle holder or again kenara uh. Now
Speaker 3: we're going to go over these umoja, which is unity.
Speaker 3: This is day one to strive for and maintain unity
Speaker 3: in the family, community, nation, and race. The song for
Speaker 3: reflection is worth his weight in gold from Steel Pulse,
Speaker 3: also called Rally Round the Flag. Thought for the Day
Speaker 3: is from Tony Morrison Beloved, first edition. This is a
Speaker 3: poem from nineteen eighty seven, believe it or not, or
Speaker 3: at least that's the first edition that it was published.
Speaker 3: We're not going to read the entire thing, but we
Speaker 3: can at least tell it. Baby Sugs Holy gives a
Speaker 3: sermon in the clearing. This is from this work the Beloved.
Speaker 3: Here she said, in this here place we flesh, flesh
Speaker 3: that weeps laughs, flesh that dances on bare feet and
Speaker 3: grass love it, love it hard. Yonder. They do not
Speaker 3: love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes,
Speaker 3: They just as soon pluck them out. No more do
Speaker 3: they love your skin on your back, Yonder, they flay it.
Speaker 3: And oh, my people, they do not love your hands.
Speaker 3: Those they only use to use, tie, bind, chop off
Speaker 3: and leave empty. Love your hands, love them, raise them
Speaker 3: up and kiss them, touch others with them, pat them together,
Speaker 3: Stroke them on your face. Because they don't love that either.
Speaker 3: You got to love it you and know they ain't
Speaker 3: in love with your mouth. Yonder. Out there, they will
Speaker 3: see it broken and break it again. What you say
Speaker 3: out of it, they will not heat what you scream
Speaker 3: from it, they will not hear. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: read the entire thing, but as you can tell, it
Speaker 3: is very much of love yourself, because no one else
Speaker 3: is going to love you. Obviously, there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of some racial tension on this, as you can tell. Anyway,
Speaker 3: The next one j kuji chaulia, kuji chigulia. How would
Speaker 3: you pronounce it? Ah?
Speaker 5: I have no idea. I guess we should watch the
Speaker 5: video again. I'm not I'm not gonna I'm not even
Speaker 5: gonna try, because there's just no way that I'm going
Speaker 5: to get this correct.
Speaker 3: Again it to any of the celebraties of Kwanza. No
Speaker 3: disrespect intended, Kujakulie. I don't know, yes, see, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Look, I can't even get half the words down here correct.
Speaker 5: What do you think I'm going to be able to say?
Speaker 5: It's Swahili, that's very fair.
Speaker 3: Self determination. Self determination is what we're talking about here,
Speaker 3: to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak
Speaker 3: for ourselves. The song of reflection here is I am
Speaker 3: the black gold of the sun by rotary connection and
Speaker 3: many Repton Reperton. Rather, the thought of the day comes
Speaker 3: from Daniel Black the coming this It says from twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: but I don't believe that that's the original, But either way,
Speaker 3: I'll read at least a little bit of it. We
Speaker 3: didn't know we wouldn't return. We simply believed some terrible
Speaker 3: calamity had befallen us, that our gods had let tragedy
Speaker 3: come because we had not honored them. But we were wrong.
Speaker 3: We were warriors and hunters, poets and jail poets and
Speaker 3: jail farmers and soothsayers oh jolly, excuse me, ja l.
Speaker 5: I my, I guess I'm really say I thought that
Speaker 5: I said jail to you twice.
Speaker 3: I was like, man, I might be dyslexic. God damn anyway. Okay,
Speaker 3: So we were magicians and healers, artisans and thinkers, writers
Speaker 3: and dancers. We were fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers,
Speaker 3: cousins and kinsmen. We were lovers and we were home.
Speaker 3: We loved the land and it loved us. We were
Speaker 3: black like the land and kissed by the sun. We
Speaker 3: knew our strengths and our frailities, and we knew much.
Speaker 3: We knew much needed improvement. But we were home. So
Speaker 3: that is the thought for the day of self determination.
Speaker 3: Okay oujima collective work and responsibility to build and maintain
Speaker 3: our community together and make our communities problems our problems
Speaker 3: and solve them together. Okay. Song of Reflection, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: like that too. The song for reflection is Sounds of Blackness.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be honest, I look this one up. I
Speaker 3: found like five different versions of songs that called themselves
Speaker 3: sounds of Blackness. I do believe that this is the
Speaker 3: original from the nineteen sixties, not the one from the
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties. I'm just gonna throw that out there. But hey,
Speaker 3: you celebrate what scene you want to.
Speaker 5: I mean, this was created in sixty six, so I'm
Speaker 5: assuming everything was actually originally made in the sixties, maybe
Speaker 5: potentially early seventies, not twenty fifteen and twenty ten.
Speaker 3: But I don't know how much of this was like
Speaker 3: written down back when it was founded, or how much
Speaker 3: of this they kind of you know, adopted over time
Speaker 3: and made it to what it is today. I honestly
Speaker 3: couldn't tell you.
Speaker 5: I mean, but who adopted it and created more of it?
Speaker 5: That's I guess what I'm curious about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't find anything as far as like who's
Speaker 3: the authoritative body over the holiday, Like there's no it's
Speaker 3: not like this is a religious movement.
Speaker 5: Where well, no, it's a where they say it the
Speaker 5: American American Heritage.
Speaker 3: The American Heritage Museum in DC. But even still, that's
Speaker 3: just the biggest quans of gathering. There's no like figurehead
Speaker 3: of quansa that decides what is and is not, uh
Speaker 3: you know, falling in line. It's again, this is not
Speaker 3: like a religious holiday where you would go to a
Speaker 3: priest or a past or whatever, and they would make
Speaker 3: the determination this is a cultural holiday. So just as
Speaker 3: the culture shifts and formulates and molds in time, quansap
Speaker 3: very well might also do the same thing. I don't know, hmm.
Speaker 5: I wonder if it's like changes depending on your city,
Speaker 5: depends on Like I wonder if this is something that
Speaker 5: just gets like things added.
Speaker 3: Into it or maybe so.
Speaker 5: I wonder if it was like originally like an outline
Speaker 5: and then people have added into it. But then who
Speaker 5: is the one's adding into it and who's right now
Speaker 5: I'm getting confused, Like I want to know. I want
Speaker 5: to know more of how this is like established or
Speaker 5: if it changes per people. I wonder if we have
Speaker 5: anybody in the cult that actually practices, if they could
Speaker 5: like share some information with us.
Speaker 3: That would be dope. If you are listening to this,
Speaker 3: good cult member, and you would like to tell us
Speaker 3: how you and your people celebrate your Kwanza, I would
Speaker 3: love to know. I would love to know, because we're
Speaker 3: only going off with the articles and the videos that
Speaker 3: we have pulled up. If there's more things here that
Speaker 3: we're just missing out right, please educate us. We don't know.
Speaker 3: We are lost in a sea of our own caucacity
Speaker 3: on this one, i'mna be honest. But that being said,
Speaker 3: so the main tenants have stayed the same. The seven principles,
Speaker 3: those don't change. Maybe how someone reflects on these things
Speaker 3: might alter a bit, but these seven principles themselves don't change.
Speaker 3: The knara doesn't change, the candle colors don't change, the
Speaker 3: matt the corn doesn't change. Which again we'll get to
Speaker 3: that one in a bit. But there's a few key
Speaker 3: things that is definitely like within the ritual of Quansa,
Speaker 3: and then everything else seems to be kind of open
Speaker 3: into interpretation. Yeah. Anyway, so Sounds of Blackness as a
Speaker 3: song of reflection for Ujima and the thought of the
Speaker 3: day is from Isabelle Wilkerson the warmth of other sons,
Speaker 3: you know, we could read though, Yeah, and this is
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. I wonder if some of these reflections
Speaker 3: kind of came about later on, but the song might
Speaker 3: be like Cannon, I don't know. Over the decades, perhaps
Speaker 3: the wrong questions have been asked about the Great Migration.
Speaker 3: Perhaps there's not a question of whether the migrants brought
Speaker 3: good or ill to the cities they fled or were
Speaker 3: pushed or pulled to their destinations, but a question of
Speaker 3: how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place,
Speaker 3: or how they found the will to press beyond the
Speaker 3: forces against them and the faith in a country that
Speaker 3: had rejected them for so long. By their actions, they
Speaker 3: did not dream the American dream. They willed it into
Speaker 3: being by a definition of their own choosing. They did
Speaker 3: not ask to be accepted, but declared themselves the Americans
Speaker 3: that perhaps few others recognized, but that they had always
Speaker 3: been deep within their hearts. That one like that on
Speaker 3: one pretty good. The next one is Ujama cooperative economics.
Speaker 3: I find that to be interesting that that would be
Speaker 3: a principle of this holiday. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: why not, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, it makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: So I've read a couple of things about this on
Speaker 3: these days. Specifically, you, as a celebrator of Kwanza should
Speaker 3: look to help local black owned small businesses.
Speaker 5: That's what I assumed it meant, was supporting black owned
Speaker 5: businesses and you know, supporting their people within their own community.
Speaker 3: For sure, at.
Speaker 5: Least that's what I are automatically assumed, which you know
Speaker 5: makes sense, especially like if you have small communities. I
Speaker 5: mean hew Chinese community support Chinese people within their communities.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, and like big time, like they shop within
Speaker 5: all of their communities and they pretty much that's where
Speaker 5: they stay. So I mean the Jewish people do the
Speaker 5: same thing. So absolutely it would make to me that
Speaker 5: this would be a principle of just maintaining orally supporting
Speaker 5: their own people within their communities instead of branching out
Speaker 5: and buying things from other companies.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so it goes on to say to build and
Speaker 3: maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to
Speaker 3: profit from them together. Absolutely. The song for reflection on
Speaker 3: this day is We're a Winner by Curtis Mayfield. A
Speaker 3: banger of a song I should mention thought for the
Speaker 3: day is from Angela Davis, an autobiography of her. As
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, this is my first introduction to
Speaker 3: class differences among my own people. We were not we worthy,
Speaker 3: not so poor until my experiences at school. I believe
Speaker 3: that everyone else lived the way we did. We always
Speaker 3: had three good meals a day. I had summer clothes
Speaker 3: and winter clothes, everyday dresses, and a few Sunday dresses.
Speaker 3: When holes began to wear through my shoes the soles
Speaker 3: of my shoes. Although I may have warned them pasteboard
Speaker 3: for a short time, we eventually went downtown to select
Speaker 3: a new pair. The family income was earned by both
Speaker 3: my mother and father before I was born. My father
Speaker 3: had taken advantage of his hard earned college degree from
Speaker 3: Saint Augustine's in Raleigh, North Carolina, Raleigh rather Ali Yeah Raleigh,
Speaker 3: to secure a position teaching history at Parker High School.
Speaker 3: But life was especially difficult during those years. His salary
Speaker 3: was close to nothing as money could be, so with
Speaker 3: his meager savings, he began to buy a service station
Speaker 3: in the black section of downtown Birmingham. My mother, who
Speaker 3: like my father came from a very humble background, also
Speaker 3: worked her way through college and got a job teaching
Speaker 3: at the Birmingham Elementary school system. The combined salaries were
Speaker 3: nothing to boast about, yet enough to survive on, and
Speaker 3: much more than was earned by the typical southern black family.
Speaker 3: They had managed to save enough to buy the old
Speaker 3: house on the hill, but they had to rent out
Speaker 3: the upstairs for years to make the mortgage payments. Until
Speaker 3: I went to school, I did not know that this
Speaker 3: was a stunning accomplishment. Oh, there's a thought for the
Speaker 3: day for you now. Nia is purpose to make our
Speaker 3: collective vocation the building and development of our community in
Speaker 3: order to restore our people to their traditional greatness. The
Speaker 3: song for reflection is Higher Ground by the great Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 3: The thought of the day is Poem about My Rights
Speaker 3: by June Jordan. And they actually don't have an excerpt
Speaker 3: from it, but if you would like to go check
Speaker 3: it out, good cult members, please do so. And oh,
Speaker 3: I forgot to mention there's recipes for each day. Damn it,
Speaker 3: I'm meant to say something about that.
Speaker 5: I just saw that. I was like, wait, there's a recipe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the first day, well, let's backtrack here, umoja
Speaker 3: the day, the recipe should involve dates, figs and milk.
Speaker 3: All right, So the next one kuji chuk guliyah. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 3: That day's recipe should include seasoned olives yum ujima. The
Speaker 3: third day, the recipe should include Caribbean soirel solid.
Speaker 5: I don't know what that is, actually sorrel.
Speaker 3: I've had in foods, but now like being asked about it,
Speaker 3: I don't actually know. So we're gonna we're gonna look
Speaker 3: this up. I want to say, is it like fat.
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, I'm sorry a tangy lemon lemony herb like
Speaker 3: remix uh Kesota using cooking for salads, soups, and sauces,
Speaker 3: known for its bright sour flavor. I've had it, yeah,
Speaker 3: I I've had it before.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, I've had it. I just didn't know what
Speaker 5: that was. So I was like, okay, so we learned something.
Speaker 3: New every day we do indeed, So yeah, Caribbean sorrel
Speaker 3: should be used in the third day oujama Uh. This
Speaker 3: should include pink party punch. Hell yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is, but like fuck yeah, I like the
Speaker 3: way they're going here. Man, all right, so nia it
Speaker 3: should involve salted pecans. Hell yeah. I do like that.
Speaker 5: They have children activities too for every day as well, So.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. There's like coloring books, there's games you
Speaker 3: could play with your kids to teach them more about it.
Speaker 3: It's this is a real cultural and community holiday and
Speaker 3: that's awesome.
Speaker 5: So like they could all that's really cool that they
Speaker 5: have a palm to read, a song to listen to,
Speaker 5: and a recipe to cook and children activities so that
Speaker 5: they're strengthening their fem Wow, I can talk family unity absolutely,
Speaker 5: so I think this is wonderful.
Speaker 3: Actually, so now the next day kumba, which is creativity
Speaker 3: to all to do always as much as we can
Speaker 3: to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when
Speaker 3: we inherited it. I mean, how can how can you
Speaker 3: come against that? Right?
Speaker 5: You can't argue against this at all. I mean every
Speaker 5: principle so far has been wonderful.
Speaker 3: So absolutely. The song for reflection on this day is
Speaker 3: Africa by the great John Coltrane, and the thought for
Speaker 3: the day is from Leroy Jones Amre Baraka Blues people,
Speaker 3: Negro music in White America. It was a song from
Speaker 3: nineteen seen sixty three. Uh, I'm not going to try
Speaker 3: to actually I'll read a little bit of it. How
Speaker 3: did it do this? What was so powerful and desperate
Speaker 3: in this music that guaranteed its continued existence? This is
Speaker 3: what pushed me. But as it began to get into
Speaker 3: the history of music, I found that it was impossible
Speaker 3: without at the same time getting deeper into the history
Speaker 3: of the people. That is what the history of the
Speaker 3: Afro American people as text as tail, as story, as exposition, narrative,
Speaker 3: or what have you, that the music was the score,
Speaker 3: the actually expressed, creative, orchestrated, vocalized, hummed, chanted, blown, scattered
Speaker 3: colary confirmed confirmation rather of the history, and that one
Speaker 3: could go from one to the other, actually from the
Speaker 3: inside to the outside or reverse and be talking about
Speaker 3: the same thing. That music was explaining the history, as
Speaker 3: the history was explaining the music, that both were expressions
Speaker 3: of and reflections of the people. I like it, And
Speaker 3: for the record, I do love traditional blues music one
Speaker 3: hundred percent.
Speaker 5: Blues is wonderful music.
Speaker 3: So it is I actually really like that.
Speaker 5: I think it's really interesting how music has been one
Speaker 5: of those things that even in like the worst of times,
Speaker 5: people will always find a way to use music to
Speaker 5: lift their spirits or release to keep going, depending on
Speaker 5: you know what scenario and stuff. But music is one
Speaker 5: of those things that it seems just inherent to people
Speaker 5: always agreed.
Speaker 3: Agreed one hundred percent, especially when you're talking about blues music,
Speaker 3: because you could see how that transferred from nineteen forties
Speaker 3: and fifties and sixties blues to even into the seventies, eighties,
Speaker 3: and nineties. Basically, look at BB King, I understand he
Speaker 3: is the King of blues music. But you look at
Speaker 3: his first album he ever cut, as opposed to the
Speaker 3: last album he ever cut, and you could watch the
Speaker 3: transition of music, and that could be used as a
Speaker 3: litmus test almost to see the transfer of culture, honestly,
Speaker 3: And I love it.
Speaker 5: I like the I like the line from the inside
Speaker 5: to the outside and reverse. Yeah, I definitely that definitely
Speaker 5: resonates with me, at least when I was thinking of blues,
Speaker 5: That's what I think about. I used to listen to
Speaker 5: blues all the time, actually with my grandma on the
Speaker 5: way to school.
Speaker 3: And you know that's another thing too. We talk about
Speaker 3: music a good bit, right, And there's music.
Speaker 5: We've talked a lot about music in the last few weeks.
Speaker 5: Sorry everybody, I.
Speaker 3: Am not gonna apologize for that whatever, Okay, but hear
Speaker 3: me out. There's music that can be mass produced and
Speaker 3: cookie cutter as hell. Rock music can do that. Look
Speaker 3: at any of the pop punk music from our teenage years.
Speaker 3: They all pretty much are saying the same thing.
Speaker 5: The same way. I mean, there's a lot of music
Speaker 5: that can match each other.
Speaker 3: Rap music absolutely, country music, absolutely all of them. They
Speaker 3: can be cookie cuttered and fake. You can't fake blues.
Speaker 5: No Blues is a soulful, spiritual journey. Yes, every single
Speaker 5: person sounds different from each other. Now, they might have
Speaker 5: the same kind of tone esque and kind of like
Speaker 5: the similarities might be somewhat there, but every single blues
Speaker 5: artist sounds at least somewhat different from each other.
Speaker 3: There's a song from David allen Coe and I know
Speaker 3: it's really weird to bring him up as they're talking
Speaker 3: about Kwanza because he was a out, out, loud and
Speaker 3: proud racist. But hear me out here.
Speaker 5: I don't know who that. I don't know that. I'm
Speaker 5: terrible with names.
Speaker 3: It's like traditional country singer.
Speaker 5: Okay, like hearing the music, I will know.
Speaker 3: But you ever heard Long Hard Ride?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 3: Do you know the sounds a country song? Yeah, So
Speaker 3: basically the story of this song is he gets in
Speaker 3: a car. He's like trying to hitchhike down the road.
Speaker 3: He's got his guitar and on his back and he's
Speaker 3: trying to make it to Nashville. Right this this old
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties Cadillac pulls up and he gets in the
Speaker 3: car and he realizes, like something's a little different about
Speaker 3: this ride, and the dude driving is asking is like,
Speaker 3: so you're a singer, huh, well, can you make folks
Speaker 3: cry when you play and sing? Can you? Can you
Speaker 3: play the blues?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Can you? Can you in those strings? Can you make
Speaker 3: folks feel what you feel inside? Because if you're trying to,
Speaker 3: if you're a big star bound, I'm gonna say it's
Speaker 3: a long, hard ride. That's the overall principle of it.
Speaker 3: But my point is blues is something that you have
Speaker 3: to make the folks listening feel what you're feeling in
Speaker 3: your heart. If you fake it, you are not going
Speaker 3: to be a blues player. Sorry, this is not gonna happen.
Speaker 5: I agree, I totally agree, and I like the the
Speaker 5: whole thing about it. Definitely definitely represents blues, especially during
Speaker 5: that time as well in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the recipe for the day of Kumba needs
Speaker 3: to involve molasses water. Okay, I do not like molasses.
Speaker 3: You don't like barbecue sauce.
Speaker 5: I do like sauce, but like the It depends on
Speaker 5: the flavor of it. But like the molasses, molasses flavor
Speaker 5: is not not my geam. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3: I love the smell of it. I don't know if
Speaker 3: I don't really cook with a lot, and I got
Speaker 3: it so working at the sugar refiner like I used to,
Speaker 3: that is that's essentially what the differences between brown sugar
Speaker 3: and white sugar.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, So for anybody who doesn't know, you take raw sugar,
Speaker 3: you cook it, you boil it out, and then you
Speaker 3: separate the molasses from the white sugar, and then that
Speaker 3: white sugar gets dried out and granulated, and that is
Speaker 3: what when it's like, you know, crystallized sugar, that's all
Speaker 3: it is. There's no chemicals, there's no bleach, none of
Speaker 3: these things. You're just cooking it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The molasses then gets extracted and it goes into a
Speaker 3: lighter and darker molasses and it gets sprayed back onto
Speaker 3: the white sugar, and that's where we get brown sugar from.
Speaker 3: That's that's all that is. But the molasses itself can
Speaker 3: also be so yeah, that's it.
Speaker 5: Man. I feel, you know, I feel like I am
Speaker 5: intelligent until i I'm on this show and then I'm.
Speaker 3: Like note, and most people don't know that. Most people
Speaker 3: think that brown sugar has grown a different way, and
Speaker 3: it's like no, no, it's just white sugar different.
Speaker 4: Wait.
Speaker 5: Honestly, I just thought it was maybe cooked slightly different,
Speaker 5: or there was like a different chemical process to it.
Speaker 3: That's I didn't know until I started working there and
Speaker 3: then had to work on the sprayers that sprayed the
Speaker 3: molasses on the brown sugar line. I'm like, wait what, No, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you ever seen it the sort of light brown sugar
Speaker 3: and dark brown And I'm like, dark brown.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, the dark brown just got sprayed three times.
Speaker 3: That's the difference. The light brown just got sprayed once.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, that's it's just molasses dipped sugar. He's like, yep,
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 5: Wow, well man, we just learned all sorts of knowledge tonight. Guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd be like that, you know. I hope, I
Speaker 3: hope that the people listening to the Colt Conspiracy are
Speaker 3: all learning something along the way, you know, me and
Speaker 3: them are.
Speaker 5: Learning together about molasses.
Speaker 3: But again, that was what I was gonna say, is
Speaker 3: I love the smell of it. I hated fucking with
Speaker 3: it because it is so sticky and it's solidified and
Speaker 3: it's oh my god, that was the worst. Oh, especially
Speaker 3: with my beard and my long hair. If I had
Speaker 3: to work on something and something sprayed me.
Speaker 5: Like, I'm I fucking smell really weird a lot.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm just saying like, if I'm get sprayed with molasses,
Speaker 3: I'm going home, dude, Like, I'm not gonna sit here
Speaker 3: and let this shit just congeal and solidify. Now, I
Speaker 3: gotta go home and break a molasses chunk out of
Speaker 3: my beard in the shower later. Fuck off. So like anyway,
Speaker 3: it was so many fun memories and so many knots
Speaker 3: of fun. But that's how it is when you have
Speaker 3: an industrial job, I suppose anyway. The next one is
Speaker 3: imani or faith to believe with all our hearts in
Speaker 3: our people and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
Speaker 3: I like it. The song for reflection is keep your
Speaker 3: Head to the Sky by the ever great Earth, Wind
Speaker 3: and Fire.
Speaker 5: Oh queen like the entire article to be pumped about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's a great song. For the record. The
Speaker 3: thought for the Day is a poem for for My
Speaker 3: People by Margaret Walker. And today's recipes should include spicy vinegar.
Speaker 3: I have never heard of spicy vinegar.
Speaker 5: Neither have I. But I'm actually very surprised that my
Speaker 5: Angelou isn't one of the people that they mentioned in
Speaker 5: this all her story is I don't know if people
Speaker 5: have actually looked into her entire story. Her story is insane, honestly,
Speaker 5: how she came about, everything that happened to her, how
Speaker 5: she even became a poet, and how she even became
Speaker 5: a writer. Just the entire thing start to finish was
Speaker 5: just crazy. What she went through. I agree, and that's
Speaker 5: I actually really love my Angelou, But the I forget
Speaker 5: how or why I ended up looking into her entire background.
Speaker 5: I think my kid was doing a report on her
Speaker 5: and we did a whole deep dive on her, and
Speaker 5: I didn't even know half of the stuff that she
Speaker 5: went through, even to become the writer that she was.
Speaker 3: Well, she was, yeah, lot of a lot of licks
Speaker 3: to get there, a very very hard ard we went through.
Speaker 5: She went through a lot of shit. She is one
Speaker 5: tough cookie. And also she did a lot of crazy stuff,
Speaker 5: like all around the world. She was a singer. She
Speaker 5: did she performed all over the place. She had an
Speaker 5: insane background.
Speaker 3: She had a very uh, I don't want to say
Speaker 3: iconic voice, but it definitely stood out from a crowd.
Speaker 3: So to hear that she was doing singing. I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I could see it.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, like her background and singing was she traveled
Speaker 5: all over Europe and did that and she I forget.
Speaker 5: I don't want to like misspeak because it's been a
Speaker 5: while since I read it, so, but just looking to
Speaker 5: her background of what happened to her as a child
Speaker 5: and when she lived and then when she decided to
Speaker 5: move she moved into the city, and what happened then,
Speaker 5: and then how she ended up faking her papers to
Speaker 5: be able to work, and then all this. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of stuff that happened to her. She went through
Speaker 5: a lot of shit, and it definitely reflected in her writing.
Speaker 5: And I just loved a lot of her stuff, to
Speaker 5: be honest with.
Speaker 3: You, agreed. And that's also why I have a real
Speaker 3: hard time hearing people whine about the situations that they
Speaker 3: find themselves in. I'm just saying, and this isn't even
Speaker 3: towards any community or anything like that. When you hear
Speaker 3: these stories of people that truly suffered and truly like
Speaker 3: persevered and pushed through and became these cultural icons and
Speaker 3: worth millions and millions and all these things, and you
Speaker 3: see where they came from. And it's like, and I'm
Speaker 3: sorry you're bitching because because why now what you got
Speaker 3: going on?
Speaker 5: It's it's I mean, that's but everybody deals with trauma differently. Yeah,
Speaker 5: what it deals with circumstances differently. How you're raised your
Speaker 5: own you know how you handle emotions. If you are
Speaker 5: raised with people that don't know how to handle emotions,
Speaker 5: then you don't learn how to emotionally regulate yourself. And
Speaker 5: it depends on the situations. I mean, every person, five
Speaker 5: people could be in the same room and it all
Speaker 5: experienced the same traumatic event, and every single one of
Speaker 5: them is going to compartmentalize and handle it and have
Speaker 5: PTSD or whatever from that same traumatic event, completely different
Speaker 5: to the other four people. So I don't want to
Speaker 5: take away from people's experiences, you know, I think that
Speaker 5: there is a lot of the older generation that seems
Speaker 5: to have endured so much more.
Speaker 3: Yeah and Putt Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think they just had a grit to not give up.
Speaker 5: And her story is one of those. Just even listening
Speaker 5: to her first twelve years of life. Yeah, and she
Speaker 5: actually put I think it's her stepfather, her father. Oh,
Speaker 5: I can't I don't want to misspeak and that somebody
Speaker 5: one or the other one of the two sexually assaulted
Speaker 5: her and she actually spoke up I think at the
Speaker 5: age of eight twelve, eight to yeah, somewhere around there.
Speaker 5: I and she she did a lot, a lot of
Speaker 5: things happened to her. Not just that, but she would
Speaker 5: tormented in her town because she was one of a
Speaker 5: handful of black people, if not like one of like
Speaker 5: a three or four. They own like a little gas station.
Speaker 5: Yeah and yeah, she went through a lot of things.
Speaker 5: So and then there's an interview you can watch about
Speaker 5: her going back. They actually take her back to the
Speaker 5: town where she originally was from, and she hadn't been
Speaker 5: back in a long time. It was an interesting to
Speaker 5: watch somebody because she was all recording what she was
Speaker 5: really going through, step by step as she's seeing all
Speaker 5: of these things and talking with them through this is
Speaker 5: where I was beat up, this is where like these
Speaker 5: boys attacked me, this is what happened to me here,
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. And then you look at her
Speaker 5: writing and what she did for the African American community,
Speaker 5: and it's just like she's just such a pioneer I
Speaker 5: think overall in for women in general, but also for
Speaker 5: the Black community.
Speaker 3: Absolutely and agreed. I don't know why none of her
Speaker 3: writing is a part of the reflections of Kwanza.
Speaker 5: But again I would think she, honestly it would be
Speaker 5: one of the biggest people in this because of everything
Speaker 5: that she went through. But hey, I have no idea
Speaker 5: who's making who's adding this in and stud But overall
Speaker 5: it looks like just a fun celebration. It it looks
Speaker 5: super awesome.
Speaker 3: And again, like we said, maybe this does adjust in time. Right,
Speaker 3: Maybe every year they come out with different reflections and
Speaker 3: they posted on to the media's and the things. Maybe
Speaker 3: some of these things are exactly as they always have been.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I couldn't really find anything on that.
Speaker 3: All right, So now we are going to go to
Speaker 3: history dot Com from the History Channel to learn a
Speaker 3: little bit more about Kwanza. All right. So, doctor Milana Karenga,
Speaker 3: professor and Chairman of Black Studies at California State University,
Speaker 3: Long Beach, created Kwansa in nineteen sixty six. After the
Speaker 3: Watts riots in Los Angeles, Doctor Karenga searched for ways
Speaker 3: to bring the African Americans together as a community. He
Speaker 3: founded You Are Us, a cultural organization and started to
Speaker 3: research African first fruit harvest celebrations. Korenga combined aspects of
Speaker 3: several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti
Speaker 3: and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of
Speaker 3: the week long holiday. Kwanza twenty twenty four, which that's
Speaker 3: when this article was listed, begins on Thursday, December twenty
Speaker 3: sixth and will last through Wednesday, January first, or of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, So that was posted last year. But anyway,
Speaker 3: like we said earlier, the name Kwanza is derived from
Speaker 3: the phrase matunda Yakwanza, which means first fruits in Swahili.
Speaker 3: Each family celebrates Kwanza in its own way, but celebrations
Speaker 3: often include songs and dances, African drums, storytelling, poetry reading,
Speaker 3: and a large traditional meal. On each of the seven nights,
Speaker 3: the family gathers and a child lights one of the
Speaker 3: candles on the kenaro, which is the candle holder. Then
Speaker 3: one of the seven principles is discussed. The principles called
Speaker 3: Naguzo Saba seven principles are values of African culture which
Speaker 3: contribute to building and reinforcing community among African Americans. Like
Speaker 3: we talked about. It also has seven basic symbols which
Speaker 3: represent the values and concepts reflective of African culture. An
Speaker 3: African feast called a Kamaru or Karamu rather is hailed
Speaker 3: on December thirty first, so the night before the final day,
Speaker 3: there's a massive feast that takes place.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: The candle lighting ceremony each evening provides the opportunity to
Speaker 3: gather and discuss the meaning of Kwanza. The first night,
Speaker 3: the black candle in the center is lit, which is
Speaker 3: to represent the black community or the people itself, and
Speaker 3: the principle of umoja or unity is discussed. One candle
Speaker 3: is lit each evening and the appropriate principle is discussed.
Speaker 3: So we already talked about the seven principles. And you know,
Speaker 3: as a matter of fact, here's how you pronounce that word,
Speaker 3: since people want to come as ji chagu li yahkuji
Speaker 3: kuji chaguliya, kuji chaguliyah. Okay, I did say it right.
Speaker 3: One of those times I gave like eight pronunciations. I'm
Speaker 3: sure one of those is accurate.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, oh man, So is it an order in
Speaker 5: which they have to because three of them are red,
Speaker 5: three of them are green.
Speaker 3: Ye, so is it like back and forth?
Speaker 5: Is it like all three on then all green? Like
Speaker 5: how does it go?
Speaker 3: I don't actually know, I'm gonna be honest, although all
Speaker 3: the iconographies that I've seen of them are either all
Speaker 3: of them lit or like the three reds and the
Speaker 3: black in the middle, So I think it goes black first, red, red, red, green,
Speaker 3: green green. But earlier we saw one of these candilabras
Speaker 3: and the they were kind of stagger pattern.
Speaker 5: So I don't actually know that I saw they were
Speaker 5: like they were. It was like red green, red green
Speaker 5: kind of a thing.
Speaker 3: I do know that the black one is lit the
Speaker 3: first night, and that is like for sure the way
Speaker 3: that goes down, and.
Speaker 5: That was for sure in the middle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I'm but that same candilabry where was staggered,
Speaker 3: the black one was on the far end.
Speaker 5: So I well, I mean the all the other ones
Speaker 5: that we saw in the in the little clip and
Speaker 5: the other photos were the black women is in the middle,
Speaker 5: which would make most sense to me it being in
Speaker 5: the middle. But I'm just wondering if there's any like
Speaker 5: rules around it, or you know, is this is kind
Speaker 5: of like you to decide with the way that you
Speaker 5: want to.
Speaker 3: Do it, I honestly have no idea. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: aside from our butchering of the pronunciations here, we did
Speaker 3: already talk about the seven principles. Now let's go in
Speaker 3: on these seven symbols. So Mazao, which means the crops,
Speaker 3: which would be fruits and nuts and vegetables, symbolizes work
Speaker 3: in the basis of the holiday. It represents the historical
Speaker 3: foundation of Kwanza, the gathering of the people that is
Speaker 3: patent or patterned after African harvest festivals, in which joy, sharing, unity,
Speaker 3: and thanksgiving are the fruits of collective planning and work.
Speaker 3: Since the family is the basic social and economic center
Speaker 3: of every civilization, the celebration bonded family members, reaffirming their
Speaker 3: commitment and responsibility to each other. In Africa, the family
Speaker 3: may have included several generations of two or more nuclear families,
Speaker 3: as well as distant relatives. When it says nuclear families,
Speaker 3: keep in mind, depending on which section of Africa you're
Speaker 3: talking about, that can mean a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: But neither here nor there. Ancient Africans didn't care how
Speaker 3: large the family was, but there was only one leader,
Speaker 3: the oldest male of the strongest group. For this reason,
Speaker 3: an entire village may have been composed of one family. Again,
Speaker 3: that very much varies tribe to tribe. Because there are
Speaker 3: some matriarchal tribes in Africa. We should throw that out.
Speaker 3: But per Kwanza, this is how they do it, so anyway,
Speaker 3: But there was only one leader, the oldest male of
Speaker 3: the strongest group. For this reason, the entire village may
Speaker 3: have been composed of one family. The family was a
Speaker 3: limb of a tribe that shared common customs, cultural traditions,
Speaker 3: and political unity, and were supposedly descendant from a common ancestor.
Speaker 3: The tribe lived by traditions that provide a community or
Speaker 3: continuity and identity. Tribal laws often determine the value system
Speaker 3: laws and customs encompassing birth, adolescents, marriage, parenthood, maturity, and death,
Speaker 3: though are through personal sacrifice and hard work. The farmers
Speaker 3: sowed seeds that brought forth new plant life to feed
Speaker 3: the people and other animals of the earth to demonstrate
Speaker 3: their Maysao celebrants of quans of place, nuts, fruits and
Speaker 3: vegetables representing work on the macheka. Speaking of the mcheka,
Speaker 3: this is what they call the place matt Okay, and
Speaker 3: it's typically a woven tapestry that is of the black
Speaker 3: red or black red and green colors. So moving on here,
Speaker 3: the macheka made from straw or cloth comes directly from
Speaker 3: Africa and expresses history, culture and tradition. And we've talked
Speaker 3: about that too, Raven Lee. As far as from an
Speaker 3: anthropology standpoint, tapestries and how certain cloths are woven has
Speaker 3: a lot to say about the culture from which they
Speaker 3: come from.
Speaker 5: Correct, Yeah, Yeah, it's one of those things of what
Speaker 5: they how they weave it, what types of materials they use,
Speaker 5: how they tell their stories in it, and even how
Speaker 5: the women spin the depends on like what they're they're using,
Speaker 5: but say spin spoons to silk, like you have the
Speaker 5: whole silk trade and everything like that. But there's a
Speaker 5: whole method and tradition about how they do it, and
Speaker 5: you know, how they make some of the material in
Speaker 5: and of itself, Like way back in the day was
Speaker 5: like the women using their piss to actually help break
Speaker 5: it down and said, there's a whole tradition of how
Speaker 5: to like work it into the into the fibers and
Speaker 5: things to be able to create the tapestries or any
Speaker 5: of you know, like kilts or things like that. That way,
Speaker 5: there's a whole like backstory to a lot of different
Speaker 5: types of tapestries and different types of clothing material and
Speaker 5: cloth and things like this, and so that it holds
Speaker 5: a lot of significant meaning in many cultures.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so continuing on here, it symbolizes the historical and
Speaker 3: traditional foundation for us to stand on and build our lives,
Speaker 3: because today stands on our yesterdays, just as the other
Speaker 3: symbols stands on the macheka. In nineteen sixty five, James
Speaker 3: Baldwin wrote quote for history is not merely something to
Speaker 3: be read, and it does not refer merely or even
Speaker 3: principally to the past. On the contrary, the great force
Speaker 3: of history comes from the facts that we carry it
Speaker 3: within us are consciously controlled by it in many ways,
Speaker 3: and history is literally present in all that we do.
Speaker 3: It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history
Speaker 3: that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and
Speaker 3: our aspirations. End quote. During Kwansa, we study, recall, and
Speaker 3: reflect on our history and the role we are to
Speaker 3: play as a legacy to the future. Ancient societies made
Speaker 3: mats from straw or dried seams of rains sewed and reaped. Collectively,
Speaker 3: the weavers took the stalks and created household baskets and mets.
Speaker 3: Today we buy makeeka that are made from kintake cloth,
Speaker 3: African mudcloth, and other textiles from various areas of the
Speaker 3: African continent. The mishuma, I think that's how you pronounce mishuma, saba,
Speaker 3: the vibunzi, the mazeo, the kawate, the kikombi, chau mojo,
Speaker 3: and the knara are placed directly on the makeka. So
Speaker 3: everything that I just listed that I tried to get
Speaker 3: the pronunciations right on. Those are those things. That's the candles,
Speaker 3: the candelabra, the corn, the cup, all these things. So
Speaker 3: we're going down that list now. But all of these items,
Speaker 3: these seven critical pieces, are all put on this mat,
Speaker 3: which is a piece in and of itself.
Speaker 5: Okay, there is actually quite a few places to be
Speaker 5: able to buy authentic things that were made in after
Speaker 5: Africa that actually help a lot of the people. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of mission groups just it depends on what
Speaker 5: they are, but there's a lot of groups that you're
Speaker 5: able to buy from that the profits go directly to
Speaker 5: the people. I actually own several bowls that were hand woven.
Speaker 5: I own a couple bags that were created. Some jewelry
Speaker 5: as well that went directly to these women that were struggling,
Speaker 5: that had large families and stuff, or there's something happened
Speaker 5: to their husbands and it was it's a part of
Speaker 5: the women's run missionary organization and stuff, and that's one
Speaker 5: way to help a lot of African people. They have
Speaker 5: a lot of different types of organizations and being able
Speaker 5: to buy this stuff directly from them instead of buying
Speaker 5: a third party or you know, created in China and
Speaker 5: slapped a label on it saying, hey, this is authentic
Speaker 5: when it's not.
Speaker 3: I will say, if you're going to buy something from
Speaker 3: Africa directly, do your research and make sure that you're
Speaker 3: not buying it from an African version of a sweatshop,
Speaker 3: because that absolutely does take place as well. But there are,
Speaker 3: to Ravenlee's point, real organizations that are out there to
Speaker 3: put this money where it actually belongs, rather than into
Speaker 3: the pocket of the quote unquote nonprofit that's paying their
Speaker 3: workers actual pennies. It's a mess.
Speaker 5: There's actually some people on social media too that you
Speaker 5: can find that have real organizations that are from there,
Speaker 5: that live there and that do support the one woman
Speaker 5: that has the orphanage where she has my god, I
Speaker 5: think it's like sixty people, sixty children pretty much. I
Speaker 5: mean it's girls like twenty one and under that she supports.
Speaker 5: She was also a child bride and was raped and
Speaker 5: had all this different stuff happen to her, and she
Speaker 5: ended up having several kids of her own. Her entire
Speaker 5: story is insane, Like she has an entire village she's
Speaker 5: pretty much created just for women refugees, but it's actually
Speaker 5: mainly children. To be honest with you, I mean, I
Speaker 5: consider a sixteen year old still a child. But she's
Speaker 5: one of those people. And they create a ton of
Speaker 5: textiles and different things like that that people are able
Speaker 5: to buy from. So if people are looking for a
Speaker 5: way to help at least children or anything like that,
Speaker 5: I suggest going and do your due diligence and research.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Next on the table on the mat would be
Speaker 3: the the Bunzi ear of corn corn and this put
Speaker 3: a pin in for later y'all, just so we're clear.
Speaker 3: The stalk of corn represents fertility and symbolizes that through
Speaker 3: the reproduction of children, the future hopes of the family
Speaker 3: are brought to life. One ear is called abunzi and
Speaker 3: two or more ears is called mahindi. Each ear symbolizes
Speaker 3: a child in the family, and thus one ear is
Speaker 3: placed on the makeka for each child in the family.
Speaker 3: If there are no children in the home, two ears
Speaker 3: are still set on the makeeka. Because each person is
Speaker 3: responsible for the children of the community. During Kwanzam, we
Speaker 3: take the love and nurturance that was heaped on us
Speaker 3: as children and selflessly return it to all children, especially
Speaker 3: the helpless, homeless, loveless ones in our community. Thus, the
Speaker 3: Nigerian proverb it takes a whole village to raise a
Speaker 3: child is realized in this symbol, since raising a child
Speaker 3: in Africa was a community affair involving the tribal village
Speaker 3: as well as the family. Good habits of respect for
Speaker 3: self and others, discipline, positive thinking, expectations, compassion, empathy, charity,
Speaker 3: and self direction are learned in childhood from parents, from peers,
Speaker 3: and from experiences. Children are essential to Kwanzam for they
Speaker 3: are the future, the seed bearers that will carry cultural
Speaker 3: values and practices into the next generation. For this reason,
Speaker 3: children are cared for communally and individually within a tribe,
Speaker 3: a tribal village. The biological family was ultimately responsible for
Speaker 3: raising its own children, but every person in the village
Speaker 3: was responsible for the safety and welfare of all the children. Okay,
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 5: I like that a lot, and that's interesting to use corn,
Speaker 5: though I wouldn't have thought that that is inherent to fertility.
Speaker 3: Not just to fertility, but to Africa. I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: start poking holes in that.
Speaker 5: We're going to get into it, but I'm just specifically fertility.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't think that's not the first yeah vegetable that
Speaker 5: I would think that is out of pocket for fertility.
Speaker 5: Just I thought that was an interesting choice for that representation.
Speaker 5: But I do actually like the entire thing that they
Speaker 5: talked about because it does take a whole village to
Speaker 5: raise child, well, it should take a village, and that's
Speaker 5: where I think Americans are going really off the beaten path,
Speaker 5: awry from what it takes to actually be fulfilling the
Speaker 5: children's needs.
Speaker 3: So I agree, and yeah, it's it's just it's the
Speaker 3: symbol itself and what it represents. I do like corn
Speaker 3: would not have been a choice that I made if
Speaker 3: it's an African American holiday, but again put a pin
Speaker 3: in it. We're gonna talk about it here in a
Speaker 3: bit anyway, Okay. Masumba or Mashumah Saba the seven candles,
Speaker 3: and we talked about this earlier here. The candles are
Speaker 3: ceremonial objects with two primary purposes to recreate symbolically, the
Speaker 3: sun's power and to provide light. The celebration of fire
Speaker 3: through the candle burning is not limited to one particular
Speaker 3: group or country. It occurs everywhere. Masuma Saba are seven candles,
Speaker 3: three red, three green, one black. The black candle symbolizes
Speaker 3: the unity, the basis of the success, and is lit
Speaker 3: on December twenty sixth, the first night. The three green
Speaker 3: candles representing Nia, Ujima and Imani are placed to the
Speaker 3: on the or Yeah placed to the right of Emoja candle. Okay,
Speaker 3: so there is an order of precedence order. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 3: we learn it together, good cult members, while the three
Speaker 3: red candles representing Kuji, Chakuliyah, Yeah, Ujama and Kumba are
Speaker 3: placed on the left of it during Kwanza. During Kwanza,
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be one candle represents one
Speaker 3: principle is lit each day, then the other candles are
Speaker 3: relt to give off more light and vision. The number
Speaker 3: of candles burning also indicate the principle that is being celebrated.
Speaker 3: The illuminating fire of the candles is a basic element
Speaker 3: of the universe, and every celebration and festival includes fire
Speaker 3: in some form. It's very true. Fire's mystique, like the sun,
Speaker 3: is irresistible and can destroy or create with its mesmerizing, frightening,
Speaker 3: mystifying power. Mishu Masaba symbolics. Colors are from the red,
Speaker 3: black and green flag Bendhara created by Marcus Carvey. The
Speaker 3: colors also represent African gods. Red is the color of Shango,
Speaker 3: the Euroba god of fire, thunder and lightning, who lives
Speaker 3: in the clouds and sends down his thunderbolt whenever he
Speaker 3: is angry or offended. It also represents the struggle for
Speaker 3: self determination and freedom by people of color. Black is
Speaker 3: the people the earth, the source of life, representing hope, creativity,
Speaker 3: and faith, and denoting messages than the opening and closing
Speaker 3: of the doors. Green, since the earth that sustains our
Speaker 3: lives and provides hope, divination, employment, and the fruits of
Speaker 3: the harvest. So there we go.
Speaker 5: Okay, So as long as they have the candles, doesn't
Speaker 5: matter what order they burn it in, as long as
Speaker 5: it's the amount of burning candles for which principle I
Speaker 5: think so.
Speaker 3: But it did say that there was this on this
Speaker 3: side and this on the other side, So yeah.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, it just seems to me, I think
Speaker 5: they're going to burn one side then the other. But
Speaker 5: I guess maybe to each their own.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe they go left right, maybe they stagger it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know. All right, So next canara,
Speaker 3: which is the candle holder itself, the candelabra, if you will.
Speaker 3: The canar is the center of the Kwanza setting and
Speaker 3: represents the original stalk from which we came our ancestry.
Speaker 3: The canar can be can be shaped straight lines, semicircles,
Speaker 3: or spirals. You know, a spiral worm will look pretty dope.
Speaker 3: As long as these seven candles are separate and distinct
Speaker 3: like a candlelabra. Canaras are made from all kinds of materials,
Speaker 3: and many celebrants create their own from fallen branches, wood,
Speaker 3: or other natural materials. The kannara symbolize the ancestors who
Speaker 3: were once earthbound, understand the problems of human life and
Speaker 3: are willing to protect their progeny from danger, evil and
Speaker 3: mistakes or progeny, I should say. In African festivals, the
Speaker 3: ancestors are remembered and honored. The mishu masaba are placed
Speaker 3: in the canara. Okay, now we get to the Unity Cup,
Speaker 3: the Kikombe che Umaja Unity Cup, the Kacombe che Umaja,
Speaker 3: and that's the last time I'm going to say from
Speaker 3: this point or I'm just gonna call it. Unity Cup
Speaker 3: is a special cup that is used to perform the
Speaker 3: libation or tombiko ritual during the Cokaramu feast on the
Speaker 3: sixth day of Kwanza. In many African societies, libation are
Speaker 3: poured for the living dead, whose souls stay with the
Speaker 3: earth they tilled. The Ebo of Nigeria believe that the
Speaker 3: drink that to drink the last portion of a libation
Speaker 3: is to invite the wrath of the spirits and the ancestors. Consequently,
Speaker 3: the last part of the libation belongs to the ancestors.
Speaker 3: During the Kamaru feasts or Karamu feast, the Unit cup
Speaker 3: is passed to family members and guests who drink from
Speaker 3: it to promote unity. Then the eldest person presents present
Speaker 3: poors the libation, usually water, juice, or wine, in the
Speaker 3: direction of the four winds north, south, east, and west
Speaker 3: to honor the ancestors. The eldest asks the gods and
Speaker 3: ancestors to share in the festivities and in return to
Speaker 3: bless all the people who are not at the gathering.
Speaker 3: After asking for the blessing, the elder pours the libation
Speaker 3: on the ground and the group says Amen okay. Large
Speaker 3: quansa gatherings may operate just a communion service in most churches,
Speaker 3: for which it is common for celebrants to have individual
Speaker 3: cups and to drink the libation together as a sign
Speaker 3: of unity. Several families may have a cup that is
Speaker 3: specifically for the ancestors, and everyone else has his or
Speaker 3: her own, and the last few ounces of the libation
Speaker 3: are poured into the cup four of the hosts of
Speaker 3: hosts or hostess, who SIPs it and then hands it
Speaker 3: to the oldest person in the group, who asks for
Speaker 3: the blessing. Okay, so.
Speaker 5: The only thing I thought about was one for the homies.
Speaker 3: The same but I didn't want to say it because okay,
Speaker 3: with a Quansa celebration and that seems yeah a bit.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, but I was just thinking about how, like,
Speaker 5: you know, everybody leaves that little bit in the bottom
Speaker 5: of the cup and like, you know, pour it out
Speaker 5: for one for the homies kind of thing, and I
Speaker 5: was like, fuck, I don't want to be that person.
Speaker 5: But like, also, are we all thinking when we were
Speaker 5: listening to that, because that's definitely what I thought about.
Speaker 3: That is absolutely what I thought about when I was
Speaker 3: reading this. So basically, pouring one out for the homies
Speaker 3: doesn't only go back to just cultural things. That's a
Speaker 3: Quansa thing. So here we are, we've been celebrating Kwanza
Speaker 3: and we didn't even know it. I guess it's a joke.
Speaker 3: That's a joke, y'all, Calm down, calm down, But yeah,
Speaker 3: apparently you're supposed to pour some out to all the
Speaker 3: four wins. Then they all as they're talking about to
Speaker 3: the gods, then they say amen. Thought that was kind
Speaker 3: of interesting, but again, hey why not? Why not? You know,
Speaker 3: next is Zawati and this would be the gifts when
Speaker 3: we celebrate Amani on the seventh day of Kwanza, we
Speaker 3: give meaningful zawati, which is gifts to encourage growth, self determination,
Speaker 3: achievement and success. We exchange gifts with members of our
Speaker 3: immediate family, especially the children, to promote or reward accomplishments
Speaker 3: and commitments kept, as well as with our guests. Handmade
Speaker 3: gifts are encouraged to promote self determination, purpose and creativity
Speaker 3: and to avoid the chaos of shopping and conspicuous consumption
Speaker 3: during the December holiday season. Respect a family may spend
Speaker 3: the year making kenaros a or may create cards, dolls,
Speaker 3: or makeekas to give to their guests. Accepting a gift
Speaker 3: implies a moral obligation to fulfill the promise of the gift.
Speaker 3: It obliges the recipient to follow the training of the host.
Speaker 3: The gift cements social relationships, allowing the receiver to share
Speaker 3: the duties and the rights of a family member. Accepting
Speaker 3: a gift makes the receiver part of the family and
Speaker 3: promotes umoja. So there we have. This is basically the
Speaker 3: over under of the kowanza.
Speaker 5: Which it came from a book. At the very end
Speaker 5: it said that it came from the actual book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an excerpt from the book The Complete
Speaker 3: Quansa Celebration or Celebrating Our Cultural Harvest from copyright nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five by Dorothy Wimbush Riley.
Speaker 5: That's interesting, so they added new stuff into it if
Speaker 5: it came if the majority came from the excerpt of
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety five, then they added in newer relevant stuff
Speaker 5: from twenty fifteen, twenty ten. So maybe it is shifting
Speaker 5: and changing with the culture.
Speaker 3: Nothing about this talked about recipes, talked about songs, talked
Speaker 3: about it, talked about how there was reading, and there
Speaker 3: was dances and songs and stuff, but it didn't give
Speaker 3: like specific songs to reflect on or excerption, specific authors
Speaker 3: and things like this. So it's very bay.
Speaker 5: This is the basis, Like, this is the basis of
Speaker 5: what they do, Like this is what we celebrate and
Speaker 5: how we celebrate. And then what we read earlier was
Speaker 5: the more modern interpretation of how to continuously grow it
Speaker 5: and keep it within the culture and shift it as
Speaker 5: time goes on.
Speaker 3: Very possibly could be it. So now we get to
Speaker 3: the darker side of Kwansa. All right, and I'm gonna
Speaker 3: say this, this was the nicer article that I could
Speaker 3: find to talk about this. The person who founded Kwanza.
Speaker 3: Although there was a lot of great things that this
Speaker 3: gentleman accomplished, there was some controversy surrounding him. I found
Speaker 3: an article from a HBC if anybody doesn't know, historically
Speaker 3: Black college who basically was shitting on Kwanza as being
Speaker 3: completely fake. He even pointed out the fact that why
Speaker 3: is corn on the altar? Corn is not even indigenous
Speaker 3: to Africa? Like why why would you have that on
Speaker 3: an African celebration thing like this? And like you had mentioned, Raven,
Speaker 3: I don't understand why corn is used as the fertility
Speaker 3: thing of all the things, Why wouldn't you choose eight
Speaker 3: like yams that is from Africa and you can find
Speaker 3: those in America and put it on that. I don't,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 5: It just seemed like an odd to me. When I
Speaker 5: think of fertility, I don't think of corn. But you
Speaker 5: know that's just me.
Speaker 3: I mean corn was It's only indigenous to one spot
Speaker 3: on Earth, and that's North America, and I guess you
Speaker 3: could say South America too, but more specifically the Latin
Speaker 3: American section. I don't, I don't know why that is
Speaker 3: what's being used. But at the same time, it's not
Speaker 3: about the item itself. It is about what it symbolizes,
Speaker 3: and at that point, it could be any arbitrary thing
Speaker 3: that they decide to use for Kwansa to you know,
Speaker 3: be the identifying marker. So why not, corn, I guess
Speaker 3: it's whatever right now.
Speaker 5: Sure, pomegranates make more sense.
Speaker 3: But okay, you know, but that's that's a Greek thing
Speaker 3: that you're talking about right now. I know it's a
Speaker 3: great thing, and to some honey would have seemed like
Speaker 3: a much better option, right to some you know, wine,
Speaker 3: I who know.
Speaker 5: It's gonna say grapes.
Speaker 3: Grapes make a lot of sense. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't know why they decided to go with that, but
Speaker 3: that is what they decide to go with.
Speaker 5: There is a darker side to this, and hopefully this
Speaker 5: doesn't detract from the positive, says Kwanza. But also, you know,
Speaker 5: when we we are talking about celebrations, we are digging
Speaker 5: into all the different sides and how people are celebrating
Speaker 5: in the history of these things. So I hope this
Speaker 5: shedding light on this darker side that you're gonna tell
Speaker 5: us about isn't going to be taken poorly.
Speaker 3: By people. It shouldn't be because this is not Jacob's
Speaker 3: opinion and it shouldn't and nothing about what we're about
Speaker 3: to talk about should take away from all of the
Speaker 3: really cool things we just learned about Kwansa. Okay, that
Speaker 3: being said, keep in mind in nineteen sixty six, take
Speaker 3: a little mental walk about what was going on during
Speaker 3: this timeframe. Right civil rights was going on, The Black
Speaker 3: Panther Party was being pushed heavily. And then your guy here,
Speaker 3: the good doctor that created Kwanza, He developed US, which
Speaker 3: was seen as the counterbalance to the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 3: One of them predominantly carried weapons, had a very They
Speaker 3: were trying to be an intimidating force. The other was not.
Speaker 3: The US movement was trying to be a communal and
Speaker 3: family gathering type of situation to be seen as a
Speaker 3: very positive thing for the community as a whole. With
Speaker 3: that being said, it's understood that he was also an
Speaker 3: FBI plant. That should that what Krenga was absolutely an
Speaker 3: FBI plant, and that's been confirmed. But there's there's backstories
Speaker 3: to this because the Black Panthers at this time also
Speaker 3: had plants that were on their side of things to
Speaker 3: try to see if these were homegrown terrorist organizations or not. Right,
Speaker 3: And again, you gotta keep mind in sixty six, the
Speaker 3: government was looking for anything they could start pointing the
Speaker 3: finger out and saying, Ah, that's the bad guy. You
Speaker 3: see what I'm saying here. Yeah, So we're gonna skip
Speaker 3: ahead a little bit because the author kind of goes
Speaker 3: into his own personal take on this, but you know,
Speaker 3: we'll pick up here it says, you know what not.
Speaker 3: I discovered Kwanza while attending Pomona College, separated for the
Speaker 3: first time from my family in the black Pentecostal church
Speaker 3: I had attended at least three times a week. I
Speaker 3: craved black culture. There were fewer than ten African American
Speaker 3: students in my cohort, and I felt culturally isolated. Soul
Speaker 3: food launches offered through the Office of Black Student Affairs
Speaker 3: or a weekly source of comfort. Then I was introduced
Speaker 3: to the year in celebration that had been created for
Speaker 3: black people by a black man. Muallana Kurenga unveiled Kwansa
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty six to fill the gaps where the
Speaker 3: US had failed African Americans. Set against the backdrop of
Speaker 3: the Civil rights movement, The seven day celebration urged African
Speaker 3: American communities to define and uplift themselves. Kurenga designed seven principles.
Speaker 3: We already talked about them. The unity, self determination, collective
Speaker 3: work and responsibility, cooperative opera, economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
Speaker 3: Each principle correlated to a specific day and symbol to
Speaker 3: be celebrated. December twenty sixth to January first. Kwansa beckons
Speaker 3: us to the heights of our humanity, petitioning us to
Speaker 3: imagine ourselves and our communities in ways white American culture
Speaker 3: can and will not okay. Kwanto was attracted particularly because
Speaker 3: it was fubu for us by us, a cultural celebration
Speaker 3: that was distinctly ours, untainted by white supremacy. It was
Speaker 3: an annual reminder that hashtag black lives matter. Before the
Speaker 3: hashtag emerged, it felt pristine until I suddenly it was
Speaker 3: suddenly sullied for me. Two years ago, more than a
Speaker 3: decade after college, I was commissioned to write about the
Speaker 3: history of Kwanza. That's when I learned that Korenga had
Speaker 3: been convicted of heinous felonies, though he denied the allegations.
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy, he and three other members of the
Speaker 3: US Organization, a black nationalist group based in la imprisoned
Speaker 3: and assaulted two female members of their own organization. Trial
Speaker 3: testimony revealed that the women had been whipped with cords,
Speaker 3: beaten with batons, seared with irons while naked in an
Speaker 3: effort to elicit confessions that they were conspiring against him.
Speaker 3: Those confessions never Materie realized. Karenga served a few years
Speaker 3: in prison and later went to get his doctorate and teach.
Speaker 3: So now, wow, okay, yeah, Like I said, he went
Speaker 3: on and did a lot of amazing things for the
Speaker 3: black community, and I'm not taken away from that, but
Speaker 3: at that time, he in nineteen seventy, when this court
Speaker 3: case was finally heard, and justice, I don't believe justice
Speaker 3: was served personally, because this is the kindest version of
Speaker 3: this story that I could find.
Speaker 5: It's the not kind version. I mean, clearly, I mean beaten,
Speaker 5: assaulted these women for glad knows how many days.
Speaker 3: It Some say it was an evening, some say it
Speaker 3: was days. Some say there was other types of assault
Speaker 3: that was done. Some say that that's all propaganda. I
Speaker 3: you know. So essentially, here's the layout here, and I'm
Speaker 3: not giving you the context to diminish the atroses this
Speaker 3: guy committed to these two innocent women. But here's the backstory.
Speaker 3: The Black Panthers had already put out a hit on
Speaker 3: him at this point, and allegedly he had retaliated by
Speaker 3: putting a hit out on a couple of these other
Speaker 3: individuals from the Black Panthers. What I'm saying right now
Speaker 3: cannot be cooperated. It really really depends on the source
Speaker 3: you look into. But we know for sure that the
Speaker 3: FBI was watching him, and the FBI was watching the
Speaker 3: Black Panthers. This is before he was a confirmed FBI plant.
Speaker 3: At this point in time, he was still, as you know,
Speaker 3: as much of a brother of the movement as anybody.
Speaker 3: And this was after he found a Kwanza. Keep that
Speaker 3: in mind. He found it in sixty six. In seventy
Speaker 3: is when he did these things.
Speaker 5: Loss of shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, he knew that the FBI was watching him.
Speaker 3: There was also some letters written to him by some
Speaker 3: quote unquote anonymous sources telling him he needs to calm down,
Speaker 3: very similar to how Martin Luther King Jr. Got some
Speaker 3: letters written to him from the FBI. So he was
Speaker 3: making enough waves to where the government took notice. And
Speaker 3: these two women, who were also loyal followers of him
Speaker 3: and the US organization, they thought were FBI spies and
Speaker 3: they were torturing them to get confessions. There was nothing
Speaker 3: to confess. These women had no ties to the FBI.
Speaker 3: And he was a bit crazy for this one after
Speaker 3: he got out of jail, A bit, a lot, a lot.
Speaker 3: These women were beaten, like most of the reports I
Speaker 3: find would say within an inch of their lives, they were,
Speaker 3: and they were whipped. They were beaten with batons, not
Speaker 3: like little twigs, not like a switch like, No, with sticks,
Speaker 3: like with proper closet dowels. Bones are broken, hair was
Speaker 3: ripped out. I've heard possible rape. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't know, because again it depends on the source. But
Speaker 3: like I said, this is the kindest account that I
Speaker 3: could find on the internet. And we didn't need to
Speaker 3: bring it up because later on Karrenga himself did in
Speaker 3: fact work for the FBI. Perhaps that was a part
Speaker 3: of the plea deal to why he only served a
Speaker 3: few years in prison for this.
Speaker 5: I mean I could see it. I could see them
Speaker 5: coming to him and being like, hey, look, you have
Speaker 5: to serve something because on paper, we have to make
Speaker 5: it look like there's some justice was served and now
Speaker 5: you're in our pocket.
Speaker 3: Which he later on did help the FBI try to
Speaker 3: wrangle in and shut down certain chapters of the Black
Speaker 3: Panther Party, which was no skin off of his nose
Speaker 3: because he hated the Black Panthers anyway. So turning snitch
Speaker 3: to go against your already enemy and you get off
Speaker 3: with a way lesser sentence. I think he only served
Speaker 3: like three years for these two assaults. Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So maybe somebody better could like revitalize Kwansee name
Speaker 5: it something else.
Speaker 3: Well, you know it is revitalized, if nothing else. People
Speaker 3: are still celebrating. It's somewhere. Some estimates are saying twelve
Speaker 3: million people every year celebrated. So although this guy did
Speaker 3: some crazy, heinous shit, it didn't take away from all
Speaker 3: of the amazing things that we talked about that Kwanza
Speaker 3: represents for the community itself. Right, the author continues to say,
Speaker 3: my stomach lurches I read about the trial and his conviction.
Speaker 3: Kurengo has found guilty of violence against black women. How
Speaker 3: could Quansa's inventor be that person? What did it mean
Speaker 3: about the celebration I had embraced. Why did no one
Speaker 3: talk about his history? And I couldn't help but wonder
Speaker 3: if Karenga's history was elighted because Kwansa's viability was deemed
Speaker 3: more important than Black women's safety. The discovery felt like
Speaker 3: a personal loss and a loss for black culture, and
Speaker 3: it left me with a dilemma to embrace Kwansa or not.
Speaker 3: In ways, it's similar to the dilemma faced by those
Speaker 3: who admire the work of an artist who have been
Speaker 3: accused of a sexual assault or harassment in the hashtag
Speaker 3: me too era, should we continue to admire the work
Speaker 3: of a person who has done unconscious ofble things. Last year,
Speaker 3: the author did not celebrate Kuwansa. But this year I
Speaker 3: will again light the candles every night starting December twenty sixth.
Speaker 3: Kwansa's originator may have a dark side, but the holiday
Speaker 3: itself is a beacon. My yearning for it is a
Speaker 3: sign that it fulfills its goals. It reminds African Americans
Speaker 3: of their crucial connection to each other. I have to
Speaker 3: agree with that, and I'm not saying that this is
Speaker 3: the same as like the hashtag me too, movement, like
Speaker 3: especially like listening to p Ditty's music. Now knowing things
Speaker 3: about Diddy, No, I can't listen to his music anymore.
Speaker 3: It resonates different for me personally. But that's also because
Speaker 3: nothing that, nothing of his music resonated with my soul
Speaker 3: to a level that was like filling a void or
Speaker 3: anything like. It was just you know, something to bobbyr
Speaker 3: Head too, as you're driving down the road. It's not
Speaker 3: a big loss for me for Kwanza, for anybody who
Speaker 3: does celebrate Kwanza, it shouldn't take away from the communal grouping,
Speaker 3: right and for all these seven principles, which again going
Speaker 3: down the list of these seven principles is something that
Speaker 3: everybody of every race, of every socioonomic background, for with
Speaker 3: every religion, whatever. If you apply these to your life,
Speaker 3: you will be a better person as a result. I
Speaker 3: think we can all agree with that.
Speaker 5: I do you agree with her when she said that?
Speaker 5: I think that is very true, at least to the
Speaker 5: principles of it. I don't know if I personally, if
Speaker 5: I was of African American background, if I would want
Speaker 5: to participate in a holiday in which he actually harmed
Speaker 5: black women and to that level, and that hate like, yeah,
Speaker 5: to be that that horrible. I don't know personally if
Speaker 5: I would want to celebrate something that's attached to that person.
Speaker 5: But I mean, to each your own and the I mean,
Speaker 5: the holiday itself sounds fantastic in everything that we've read.
Speaker 5: But I don't know if I wanted to associate myself
Speaker 5: with something like that.
Speaker 3: That's just me. I get it. I get it. But again,
Speaker 3: the author says, I decided that hating Coranga's crimes didn't
Speaker 3: or Kerenga's crimes didn't mean abandoning the good that he accomplished.
Speaker 3: The US Organization or the US Organization's nineteen sixties petitions
Speaker 3: for black study courses in US colleges and universities is
Speaker 3: one reason those classes existed for me to take in college.
Speaker 3: His emphasis on Ujama cooperative economics the fourth principle is
Speaker 3: why I quote unquote by black whenever possible. Quanta calls
Speaker 3: on African Americans to see one another and uplift one another,
Speaker 3: something we particularly need right now. It beckons us to
Speaker 3: the heights of our humanity, petitioning us to imagine ourselves
Speaker 3: in our communities in ways white American culture cannot and
Speaker 3: will not. We need to acknowledge Kerenga's full story, but
Speaker 3: it shouldn't tarnish the value and beauty of the holiday
Speaker 3: that promotes collective action for the collective good.
Speaker 5: And so it's truly I think it's well written, yeah,
Speaker 5: and and holds really good points. So I mean, I
Speaker 5: think it's just a personal choice for whoever actually participates
Speaker 5: in Kwanzaah, I do agree that you know, this does
Speaker 5: help their community and help strengthen it. And yeah, I
Speaker 5: think it's great. I agree the holiday. Let me let
Speaker 5: me refreeze the holiday.
Speaker 3: Right right right, And I mean other articles that I've
Speaker 3: found that were shitting on Korenga himself, although it's deserved,
Speaker 3: one hundred percent deserved, they also decided to take jabs
Speaker 3: at Kwansa as a holiday and basically say that it's
Speaker 3: all fake, it's all made up. He just stole something
Speaker 3: from this group and this group and threw it together.
Speaker 3: Why is corn on the table? Why we got jewish
Speaker 3: looking candles? And it was and also written by black authors.
Speaker 3: I should mention, but I didn't want that to be
Speaker 3: the vibe as they're talking about Kwanza, because there are
Speaker 3: so many awesome things about this holiday. But I also
Speaker 3: couldn't especially how this is the cult of conspiracy. We
Speaker 3: do need to mention the fact that Krenga was working
Speaker 3: with the FBI after his arrest for the assault on
Speaker 3: two women that he thought was FBI agents, which again,
Speaker 3: if you want to do your own research into the
Speaker 3: incident itself, this was the kindest quotes that I could find,
Speaker 3: for it goes as far as your imagination wants it
Speaker 3: to go, depending on the author. And he absolutely was
Speaker 3: an FBI plant designated to help them shut down factions
Speaker 3: of the Black Panther Party which went against the Black culture.
Speaker 3: And so it's as talking about the cult of conspiracy here.
Speaker 3: There were some absolute conspiratorial connections on this, but Kwansa itself,
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, as not anything of
Speaker 3: the conspiratorial nature. It is something of a non religious,
Speaker 3: cultural cultural holiday, and I think it does in fact
Speaker 3: reach out to the best of the community, and I
Speaker 3: like it. I do anyway. Next Good Cult Members, we
Speaker 3: are going to be talking about Christmas across Native America
Speaker 3: and we are going to talk about some more more
Speaker 3: obscure tribes on the next episode. But for this one,
Speaker 3: Raven Lee actually did a little bit of research into these.
Speaker 5: This is this kind of just a general overview of
Speaker 5: just kind of how Christmas is celebrated in Native American tribes,
Speaker 5: kind of like how it came about. It's it's not
Speaker 5: a super deep dive there, you know, there was a
Speaker 5: lot of information if we dove relled deep into it,
Speaker 5: right of some of the different things and aspects that
Speaker 5: they do. But overall, a lot of people don't celebrate
Speaker 5: Christmas in the same sense, obviously because it is a
Speaker 5: Christian holiday, and how Christianity was kind of forced fed
Speaker 5: down their throats by not everyone. You know, some people
Speaker 5: converted wanting you know, wanting to convert themselves, but a
Speaker 5: lot of them their traditions were erased and eradicated for sure,
Speaker 5: and they suffered a lot, you know, so they aren't
Speaker 5: really keen on celebrating Christmas in and of itself, but
Speaker 5: Winter Solstice is more or less what they've always celebrated,
Speaker 5: you know, seeing with a lot of cultures around the world,
Speaker 5: and so the Smithsonian there was like several Native Watch
Speaker 5: McCall it websites and they all kind of reference back
Speaker 5: to this particular article over and over again. So I
Speaker 5: was like, you know what, I'll just pull up the
Speaker 5: actual Smithsonian article instead of just you know, keep referencing
Speaker 5: back and forth to it.
Speaker 3: So no doubt way, they're so pretty and I love
Speaker 3: their earrings. Yeah, I will say, And this is not
Speaker 3: my taking an opportunity to take a jab at the Catholics.
Speaker 3: But hear me out here. If you listen back to
Speaker 3: our Thanksgiving episode and we talked about King Phillip's War,
Speaker 3: there were Iroquois that or Iroquois that became uh, praying Indians.
Speaker 3: They were Indians that were not forced converted. They converted
Speaker 3: out of their own free will, and they were welcomed
Speaker 3: with open arms by the settlers. This being said, there
Speaker 3: is at least as far as American history is concerned,
Speaker 3: there is a clear dividing line between which groups forced
Speaker 3: conversions i e. The Jesuits at the schoolhouses that the
Speaker 3: Native children were forced to go to, and the Puritans
Speaker 3: and Protestants, and how they converted the native population. One
Speaker 3: of these was through kindness, and one of these was
Speaker 3: at gunpoint. Do your own history to find out who
Speaker 3: did what. I'm just gonna say, we can't lump all
Speaker 3: of them into the same grouping. But yes to your point,
Speaker 3: raven Lee. Some of them were, some of them were
Speaker 3: very much of their own fruition, some of them very
Speaker 3: much were not. That is absolutely a fact, all right.
Speaker 3: So reading in from the Smithsonian magazine here. For the
Speaker 3: last few years, Native friends have shared their Christmas plans
Speaker 3: and traditions with Smithsonian voices. This year we have updated
Speaker 3: the story with new photographs and quotes. The introduction of
Speaker 3: Christianity to the Americans and the origins of Christmas can
Speaker 3: be controversial to native circles. Europeans knowingly replaced native people's
Speaker 3: existing spiritual beliefs with the beliefs taught in the Bible,
Speaker 3: cruelly and brutally often accompanied or cruelty and brutality rather
Speaker 3: often accompanied this introd indoctrination. Yet it is also true
Speaker 3: that some tribes, families, and individuals embrace the Bible and
Speaker 3: Jesus teachings voluntarily. This complicated history is reflected here. All
Speaker 3: throughout Indian country, native people have gathered in churches, missions,
Speaker 3: and temples to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ by
Speaker 3: singing carols and hymns in their native language. In some churches,
Speaker 3: the story of Jesus Birth is recited in native languages.
Speaker 3: That's cool. Some Native churches also host Nativity plays using
Speaker 3: Natives settings and actors to reenact the birth of Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ among Catholics. Christmas Eve Mass traditionally begins in Indian
Speaker 3: communities at midnight and extends into the early hours of
Speaker 3: Christmas Day. In Tippis Hogans and houses, the Native American Church,
Speaker 3: or the NAC, members also hold Christmas Services ceremonies that
Speaker 3: begin on Christmas Eve and go all night until Christmas morning.
Speaker 3: And I will say this about the NAC. They may
Speaker 3: hold true to Christian beliefs, but they still blend them
Speaker 3: with their ancestral Native customs and cultures. For instance, the
Speaker 3: sharing of communal peyote. Even though the NAC is a
Speaker 3: Christian denomination. When they do their massive like things, everybody,
Speaker 3: including the small children will get their spoonful of peyote.
Speaker 3: So keep in mind, they're still holding true to their
Speaker 3: traditions as much as they can. So that's good things.
Speaker 3: Let's see. Continuing on, music played in an important part
Speaker 3: in converting Native people, establishing their practice of worship, and
Speaker 3: teaching them how to celebrate the Christmas season. Perhaps the
Speaker 3: earliest North American Christmas Carol was written in the why
Speaker 3: a dote y undot language of the Huron winded people. Okay, Jesus,
Speaker 3: Jesus ahtaniah Yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 5: He is born. This is why I didn't want to
Speaker 5: read it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Dick. Popularly known as Noel Huron or the
Speaker 3: Huron Carol, is said by oral traditions to have been
Speaker 3: written in sixteen forty three by the Jesuit priest Jean
Speaker 3: de bre beauf Okay. In contemporary times, traditional powow singing
Speaker 3: groups have rearranged Christmas songs to appeal to native audiences.
Speaker 3: I do love powow music, like the drums in.
Speaker 5: The same fantastic. I have a girlfriend of mine that
Speaker 5: I think lives in Wyoming, and she she's high, like
Speaker 5: her family's high up, and I believe in a tribe.
Speaker 5: But she makes traditional moccasins for all different sizes, mainly
Speaker 5: she makes them for children, and her daughter just went
Speaker 5: to her first powowt and oh my god, it's so cute.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 5: But I have actually quite a few friends that are Native,
Speaker 5: and I just absolutely think that all of their different
Speaker 5: tribes are so fascinating and they have some of the
Speaker 5: best culture, and I just love listening to their dances
Speaker 5: and the way they sing and everything that they do
Speaker 5: is so awesome.
Speaker 3: Shoot, I want to go. I want to get some moccasins.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're you, I don't know if you're
Speaker 5: recognized by the tribe, but if.
Speaker 3: You are, you can. You have to be recognized. My
Speaker 3: money ain't green enough, asshole.
Speaker 5: You have to be recognized by the tribe. You have
Speaker 5: to have your certification to be able to attend a powow.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, not to attend a pow wow, to participate,
Speaker 3: you got to, but you can show up as a spectator.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm not trying to participate. I don't know the
Speaker 3: dances of the songs, the language, any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: But no, just to own a pair of moccasins and
Speaker 3: wear them around the house like loafers. She I've found
Speaker 3: some by Oneida and these are traditionally made the same
Speaker 3: way that the Oneida tribe made them. But they're so expensive.
Speaker 3: Harrison Ford consistently wears a pair. If you ever see
Speaker 3: him out and about in town, and he's wearing these moccasins.
Speaker 3: That's this one brand, And I.
Speaker 5: Want one honestly, I honestly could probably reach out to
Speaker 5: her and ask her and like, you know, commission her
Speaker 5: for him, because her beadwork is so phenomenal. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: oh I love looking and she did these really cool
Speaker 5: ones for her daughter for the pow Wow Yeah, and
Speaker 5: it's such intricate little details in the bead work. It's
Speaker 5: absolutely awesome.
Speaker 3: Okay, So yeah, I wouldn't want anything with the bead
Speaker 3: work because it's sitting for pow wow us. This is
Speaker 3: for like me, like hunting in the woods or walking
Speaker 3: around the house or something like that. It would be
Speaker 3: like as bare bones they come so like perhaps, oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but she, yeah, she does that. And then actually
Speaker 5: one of my best friends, one of my honestly, she
Speaker 5: probably is my oldest best friend. Actually she is Native
Speaker 5: American and she actually she made the traditional board. So
Speaker 5: when she had her baby, she one of her kids,
Speaker 5: they actually did like the whole ceremonies and all this
Speaker 5: stuff for her being pregnant and her now ex but
Speaker 5: he is like high up in the tribe itself, and
Speaker 5: she brought over because our kids were only like a
Speaker 5: few months apart, and she brought over the actual like backpack,
Speaker 5: the traditional wearing and stuff, and she showed me how
Speaker 5: to do all the laces and how how it is,
Speaker 5: and she gave me all sorts of like so she actually,
Speaker 5: you know, I got to use it and pack around
Speaker 5: my kidne it and stuff, and it was it was
Speaker 5: really cool. It was It's really cool to learn about stuff,
Speaker 5: and I constantly am asking questions and like, what does
Speaker 5: this to, what's this? Yeah, it's it's really awesome to
Speaker 5: be able to have people that are close to me
Speaker 5: that have such rich cultures and be able to learn
Speaker 5: so many different backgrounds of people.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Continuing on to the article, it says a humorous
Speaker 3: example is War Scouts n d N Twelve Days of
Speaker 3: Christmas from their album Red Christmas. Native solo artists also
Speaker 3: performed Christmas classics in native languages. Ronda Head Cree, for example,
Speaker 3: has recorded Old Oh, Holy Night, and johna mashby Lumbee
Speaker 3: and tuscarro roh Yeah has recorded Winter Wonderland in a jibway. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's kind of cool. Native communities host traditional trap dances,
Speaker 3: round dances, and powwows on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,
Speaker 3: all among the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, special dances
Speaker 3: take place, such as Buffalo eagle, antelope, turtle, and harvest dances.
Speaker 3: Well that's cool to see, right. The eight Northern Pueblos
Speaker 3: of New Mexico perform Los Mati Mada Chinez. Yeah, a
Speaker 3: special dance drama mixing North American, Moorish, Spanish and Pueblo cultures,
Speaker 3: which takes place on Christmas Eve along with a pine
Speaker 3: torch procession. Ah, I bet that thing go up. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of really cool pictures here too. For
Speaker 3: Native artisans, this is traditionally the busy season as they
Speaker 3: prepare special Christmas gift items. Artists and crafts people across
Speaker 3: the country create beadwork, woodwork, jewelry, clothing, basketry, pottery, sculptures, paintings,
Speaker 3: leather work and featherwork for special Christmas sales and art
Speaker 3: markets that are open to the public. For seventeen years,
Speaker 3: the National Museum of the American Indian annually holds It's
Speaker 3: a Native Art Market in New York and Washington a
Speaker 3: few weeks before Christmas, which I got to say, when
Speaker 3: we went to DC, I'm so pissed that the government
Speaker 3: was still shut down. We couldn't go because that's one
Speaker 3: of my favorite museums.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that you were going to get all those Smithsonians. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's all.
Speaker 3: I mean, We're gonna have to make another trip one day,
Speaker 3: I know, in order.
Speaker 5: We have the tribes in Washington and so a lot
Speaker 5: of them come down and they sell at different markets
Speaker 5: and stuff. I have, actually, I think of worn one
Speaker 5: set already on the colt but I have quite a
Speaker 5: few earring sets that are handbeaded, beautiful earrings, because I
Speaker 5: just I love them and I want to support the community.
Speaker 3: So absolutely. In many communities and homes, Christian customs are
Speaker 3: interwoven with Native culture as a means of expressing Christmas
Speaker 3: in a uniquely native way. The importance of giving is
Speaker 3: a cultural tradition among most tribes. Even in times of
Speaker 3: famine and destitution, Native people have made sure their families,
Speaker 3: the old, and orphans were taken care of. This mindset
Speaker 3: prevails into the present. Gift giving is appropriate whenever a tribal,
Speaker 3: social or ceremonial gathering takes place. You know, that's actually
Speaker 3: very important to all the native tribes. As a matter
Speaker 3: of fact. Most famously, when the Irish potato famine took place,
Speaker 3: the Choctaw Tribe sent Ireland five hundred dollars. That was
Speaker 3: all they could afford to give at that moment. There
Speaker 3: is a massive monument to the Choctaw Nation in Ireland
Speaker 3: right now. It's five feathers and when I say massive,
Speaker 3: like they're huge metal feathers that are up And basically
Speaker 3: the Choctaw tribe knew nothing of Ireland, but they heard
Speaker 3: through the grapevine that there was a potato famine and
Speaker 3: that these people were starving to death. So they pulled
Speaker 3: a collection of whatever they could and sent five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars to Ireland to help.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know that. That's crazy, especially five hundred
Speaker 5: dollars back then. Yeah, that's so much money. And for
Speaker 5: them to not even know them or have any part
Speaker 5: of them, especially everything that was going on, that's so
Speaker 5: kind to do that. I didn't even know that. That's
Speaker 5: I would love to see that.
Speaker 3: I am very proud of my choctawl heritage if anybody
Speaker 3: didn't know, and it's not a lot I'm not. I
Speaker 3: don't have like the card, although I think I could
Speaker 3: get it like a little Member of the Choctaw Nation
Speaker 3: identification card, but I haven't gone through the process yet.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, they're If you look at the Choctaw history,
Speaker 3: it's really cool. And their story of the original vampire,
Speaker 3: which is where mosquitoes come from, it's a really cool story.
Speaker 5: But anyway, honestly, I didn't, I haven't. I don't know
Speaker 5: how much Blackfoot we have in us, so I'm I'm
Speaker 5: gonna have to reach out to family members and see.
Speaker 5: But I guess according to you, I don't know a
Speaker 5: bunch about Blackfoot, But according to you, apparently we're a
Speaker 5: little bit salty.
Speaker 3: It looks a little bit shit. They're known as one
Speaker 3: of the if not the meanest tribe. Take that with
Speaker 3: whatever grain assault you need, you know.
Speaker 5: What I'm here for it.
Speaker 3: I'm about to say what you're You're gonna come combat
Speaker 3: me on this?
Speaker 5: Oh no, I'm like, if I have more in me
Speaker 5: than I thought, like, first off, okay, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Second off, I am not pissed that, like potentially, however
Speaker 5: much I have in me, the tribe that I come
Speaker 5: from is like some survely bastards that like to like
Speaker 5: some warfare. That's just you know, shocking. I don't. I
Speaker 5: don't know how I ever came about that.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, I don't know. I also got a little
Speaker 3: bit of hacksaw on me. We cut anything anyway, moving on.
Speaker 3: In the same way, traditional native foods are prepared, I
Speaker 3: couldn't resist. And this is dumb. It's funny. It's funny.
Speaker 5: You do you feel good about you?
Speaker 4: I do?
Speaker 5: I do? I actually I feel real good about yourself.
Speaker 3: You know, you gotta make the jokes when you can,
Speaker 3: you know. In the same way, traditional native food foods
Speaker 3: are prepared for this special occasion, salmon, wileye, shellfish, moose, venison, elk, mutton, geese, duck, rabbit,
Speaker 3: wild rice, collar, greens, squash, pine nuts, corn soup, red
Speaker 3: and green chili, stews, bread pudding, pueblo bread, peky bread,
Speaker 3: bannock or fry bread, tortillas, berries, roots, and native teas
Speaker 3: are just a few of That's not just a few,
Speaker 3: that's a whole list of the things that come to mind.
Speaker 3: Individual tribes and Indian organizations sponsor Christmas dinners for their
Speaker 3: elders and communities prior to Christmas. Tribal service groups and
Speaker 3: warrior societies visit retirement homes and shelters provide meals for
Speaker 3: their tribe members on Christmas day. Hell, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: Many tribes begin their Christmas meal by putting out a
Speaker 3: feast plate or spirit dish for loved ones who passed away.
Speaker 3: As a special Christmas day of feasting. A prayer is
Speaker 3: rendered and food offerings are placed outside of the home
Speaker 3: on a plate or in the sacred fire for relatives
Speaker 3: who are no longer with us. The respect is that
Speaker 3: you allow your remembrances those who have passed to eat first.
Speaker 3: Many are experience or yeah, many are experiencing their first
Speaker 3: Christmas without a loved one. Wow. Alternatively, some natives do
Speaker 3: not celebrate Christmas, but use this seasonal opportunity to celebrate
Speaker 3: the winter solstice. Yet others in northern plains are honoring
Speaker 3: their relatives with a memorial horse ride called Dakota thirty
Speaker 3: eight plus two. On December twenty sixth, eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 3: at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in Dakota Country, thirty eight Dakota
Speaker 3: men were hung all at once. This Yeah, I remember
Speaker 3: reading about this. This is the largest recorded mass execution
Speaker 3: in US history. And how Some natives in the Minnesota,
Speaker 3: Mni Soda and the Dakotas observe this time of year
Speaker 3: each December tenth, riders set out to traverse three hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty miles between Lower Brulai South Dakota and conclude
Speaker 3: on December twenty sixth in monk Mankato, Minnesota. Okay, wow,
Speaker 3: so yeah, Abe Lincoln basically gave the go ahead on
Speaker 3: this mass execution in eighteen sixty two. There's some controversy
Speaker 3: around it, and I'm not you could look into it
Speaker 3: if anybody's curious, But yeah, these thirty eight men were
Speaker 3: mass hung all at the same time. There was actually
Speaker 3: special gallows that were made. Few hundred the.
Speaker 5: Two hundred people were arrested and then he chose he
Speaker 5: picked like thirty eight out of the two hundred and
Speaker 5: eighteen or something like that. Yeah, and then those were
Speaker 5: the ones.
Speaker 3: Okay, yep, yep, that's what I thought. We just talked
Speaker 3: about that a couple episodes ago. I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 5: That was on the Thanksgiving episode. Yep, marifion that so
Speaker 5: I was like, I know, this story I just interesting.
Speaker 5: It's really cool though, how they take everything to their
Speaker 5: elderly and the retirement homes, and I like that. I
Speaker 5: like all the other traditions of culture or cultures that
Speaker 5: celebrate their loved ones that have passed with setting out
Speaker 5: of food or setting a prayer, lighting candles or something
Speaker 5: like that. I've always thought that was such a wonderful
Speaker 5: thing to do and be able to remember your loved
Speaker 5: ones that were here at one point.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I mean hell, even the veteran community
Speaker 3: does that, right If any any chowh or any veteran gathering,
Speaker 3: or or any veteran organizational gathering, you'll see the table
Speaker 3: set out, the lemon, the salt, the plate, the pow
Speaker 3: n I A like. That's that's the thing that a
Speaker 3: lot of cultures, specifically warrior cultures do to acknowledge those
Speaker 3: that are not with us. So I get down on
Speaker 3: the Catholics do that.
Speaker 5: No, No, the Christians don't either, don't they not?
Speaker 3: Really? Per Christian liturgy, you wouldn't set anything out for
Speaker 3: your loved one that's not there, because your loved one
Speaker 3: is seen to be in a better place where they
Speaker 3: have no want for food or drink or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But again, talking about war your cultures and societies like this,
Speaker 3: or those that honor the spirits of their loved ones
Speaker 3: that have passed, it's a thing that you'll see for sure.
Speaker 5: Interesting.
Speaker 3: According to the Urban Indian Health Commission, nearly seven out
Speaker 3: of every ten American Indians and Alaska Natives. I don't
Speaker 3: know why they would put those as different things, but okay,
Speaker 3: two point eight million people live in or near cities
Speaker 3: that and that number is growing. During the Christmas holidays,
Speaker 3: many urban Natives travel back to their families, reservations, and
Speaker 3: communities to reconnect and reaffirm tribal bonds. They open presents
Speaker 3: and have big family meals like any other American Christian.
Speaker 3: This year we ask our native friends how important is
Speaker 3: Christmas to you? Here are some answers preceded by the
Speaker 3: locations that they were submitted from net.
Speaker 5: So this is what I was talking about. So this
Speaker 5: talks about it's people from different parts of the country
Speaker 5: and they kind of just share light of if they
Speaker 5: celebrate or not. I don't know if you really want
Speaker 5: to read into that, but it's just different places that
Speaker 5: kind of Some of them say that family is important,
Speaker 5: some of them say that they don't celebrate at all.
Speaker 5: Some of them say that Christmas is for the children.
Speaker 5: You know, it just depends on where it's at. So
Speaker 5: that's kind of the end of what I was going
Speaker 5: to put on that article.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean we don't really have to dig into
Speaker 3: it if you don't want to, but I mean it
Speaker 3: does go.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean you can. It's just it's just different
Speaker 5: people talking about their different family experiences. It's not like
Speaker 5: speaking for the entire tribe of each location.
Speaker 4: So yeah.
Speaker 3: And I guess that's also they'd be like asking a
Speaker 3: group of you know, people from all over the country
Speaker 3: how they celebrate Christmas. You're going to get a wide
Speaker 3: variety of.
Speaker 5: Answers, right, I mean, hell, like as one street just
Speaker 5: just in town, like in a subdivision, as one single street,
Speaker 5: how do you celebrate Christmas? Every single person is going
Speaker 5: to say something different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I guess it's really good living test of
Speaker 3: how Native tribesmen celebrate.
Speaker 5: Its kind of why. I just you know, it's just
Speaker 5: there's people that are like one reservation is in Idaho,
Speaker 5: ones in like Colorado, and it's just one particular person's
Speaker 5: opinion on it. And I just felt like it wasn't
Speaker 5: really representing each tribe into the fullest.
Speaker 3: So yeah, And it's it's not like that it says
Speaker 3: like if this person holds some sort of position of
Speaker 3: power within the tribe or on the rest.
Speaker 5: Just random people that submitted their their knowledge in Yeah yeah,
Speaker 5: so we.
Speaker 3: Could bypass that all right, So now we are going
Speaker 3: to shift over to Native News online warrior journalism defending
Speaker 3: tribal sovereignty. Hell yeah, Okay, the winter Solstice begins a
Speaker 3: season of storytelling and ceremony. Okay.
Speaker 5: At this website has so much good information and a
Speaker 5: lot of good articles about Native American practices, about their culture,
Speaker 5: what's happening with them right.
Speaker 3: Now, what they've been through.
Speaker 5: It's really a very informative website.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I like it. So in the northern hemisphere,
Speaker 3: December twenty first will be the year's day of least sunlight,
Speaker 3: when the sun takes its lowest, shortest path across the
Speaker 3: sky north of the Arctic Circle. It will be the
Speaker 3: midpoint of the period of darkness when even twilight doesn't
Speaker 3: reach the horizon as we did before the solar eclipse
Speaker 3: in August. This December, we ask our Native friends to
Speaker 3: share traditions they've heard about Winter Solstice. Their answers highlight
Speaker 3: winter as a time of storytelling. Interesting, So this is
Speaker 3: actually written from what I could tell in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: So this is from the Ajibwe, Minnesota Chippewa Chippewa tribe. Yeah.
Speaker 3: This description of winter in many Native communities was prepared
Speaker 3: by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation Lessons of Our Land
Speaker 3: as background for teachers. Very good. Like many events in
Speaker 3: American Indian culture, there is a proper time and place
Speaker 3: for all activities. Traditional storytelling is reserved for the winter
Speaker 3: months for many tribes. This was a practice choice given
Speaker 3: the fact that during the other seasons people were busy growing, gathering,
Speaker 3: and hunting food. It was in the winter, with the
Speaker 3: long dark evenings, the snow and wind blowing outside, that
Speaker 3: telling stories was a way to entertain and teach the children.
Speaker 3: Another reason is that many traditional stories contain animal characters.
Speaker 3: To be respectful, people waited until the winter when the
Speaker 3: animals hibernate or become less active, so they cannot hear
Speaker 3: themselves being talked about.
Speaker 5: Okay, hell yeah, I thought that was super cute. I
Speaker 5: was like, man, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: I mean, I get it, especially if they A lot
Speaker 3: of the Native tribes believe that their language is something
Speaker 3: that resonates with the animals, So you want to be
Speaker 3: talking about the bear when the bear is out and about.
Speaker 5: Right numbers like okay, thanks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now as you're talking about like wind howling and blowing outside,
Speaker 5: the wind is blowing so strong right now? Is it
Speaker 5: at night?
Speaker 6: It is?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's like it's past midnight here for us,
Speaker 5: and it is howling like it sounds like wolves outside.
Speaker 5: I keep thinking it's going to get picked up on
Speaker 5: the on the microphone because it's so loud. I was like,
Speaker 5: is there a draft somewhere in my house? Is that far?
Speaker 3: So good?
Speaker 5: As as we're sitting here doing that, I was just like, man,
Speaker 5: it is it is howlin outside for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be like that. So anyway, continuing, it says
Speaker 3: to have a storyteller tell you a story is like
Speaker 3: receiving a gift. To be respectful, a gift of tobacco
Speaker 3: is offered to the storyteller before the story begins. Good good.
Speaker 3: The storyteller will often take the tobacco outside and place
Speaker 3: it on the earth as an offering to the spirits
Speaker 3: of the story. Now where I thought that next part
Speaker 3: was going? But all right, fair enough, you know, save
Speaker 3: the lungs for other things.
Speaker 5: You want me to read these ones if you would
Speaker 5: like to, Okay, seeing Carlos Apache, Arizona. This reminds me
Speaker 5: when I was young, my grandfather would ask a really
Speaker 5: old man to come to come visit. We would eat dinner,
Speaker 5: they would visit, smoke, and then my grandpa would bundle bundle,
Speaker 5: would put a bundle on his feet. Soon he would
Speaker 5: start to telling stories most of the night.
Speaker 3: Very good. I like that one.
Speaker 5: Now, so Chunk Nation of Wisconsin is the next one.
Speaker 5: We have to wait for the winter moon and there
Speaker 5: has to be snow on the mother Earth for those stories.
Speaker 3: Oh, very cool.
Speaker 5: Yes, they actually have to wait and tell snow is
Speaker 5: happening before they can even start their stories. Blackfoot, Blackfoot, Calgary, Alberta.
Speaker 5: People come from Alberta.
Speaker 3: Your people come from very cold climb as you got
Speaker 3: Norway and Alberta, and then you'll ended up in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, well, I am French too, like a
Speaker 5: good amount of French. So Francis are the same with
Speaker 5: snow and stories. That's all it says.
Speaker 3: Basically, they wait until there's snow on the ground before
Speaker 3: they sit around the fire and listen to the old
Speaker 3: man tell the stories.
Speaker 5: Very cool. I'm gonna butcher that Omakumakuma Coma, Cuma Pablo Pueblo,
Speaker 5: New Mexico Pueblo. Yeah, the winter solstice marks the new
Speaker 5: year in Kuma at the time mark at the time
Speaker 5: with ceremonies not privy to the public. It is also
Speaker 5: the time for hama ha ha hamaha ha ha maha maha. Okay,
Speaker 5: storytelling of the coyote, stories of heroes, stories of animals,
Speaker 5: sharing of knowledge. My parents said that when you call
Speaker 5: Hamama hama maha, people will arrive with pinon pignon nuts
Speaker 5: gathered in the fall that are roasted and shared.
Speaker 3: Interesting, So the whole chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Speaker 3: Bit that that has its own, you know, thing through
Speaker 3: the through the customs and cultures, which I mean to
Speaker 3: be fair nuts are more of a wintertime thing. So
Speaker 3: so that makes sense. Okay.
Speaker 5: So we have oh man, that is that is a word?
Speaker 3: Hamaha? Oh oh the pass yep passamaquote.
Speaker 5: It's a New England tribe. I'm not gonna lie to
Speaker 5: you being dyslexic and then trying to actually read some
Speaker 5: of these words.
Speaker 3: I'm just like, oh, there's no way you could be
Speaker 3: dyslexic and read the native tribes names. That's impossible.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm kind of like
Speaker 5: shoe is it is.
Speaker 3: A all right, So this is the passa Macati out
Speaker 3: of New England. I hope I said that right.
Speaker 5: In traditional calendars in Northeast, the solstice is always marked
Speaker 5: for my folks. It's a sign that the frost Yep,
Speaker 5: we gotta gotta do the page turn. Yeah, the frost
Speaker 5: giants will be returning to the north. Especially pretty cool.
Speaker 3: The New England native tribes have frost giants in their low.
Speaker 3: I had no idea. I thought that was specifically a
Speaker 3: Nordic thing.
Speaker 5: H I didn't actually know that either. But you remember
Speaker 5: right that the Vikings were the first ones to make
Speaker 5: contact with tribes here in North America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that was in Canada.
Speaker 5: No, but the but they landed in Canada and they
Speaker 5: came down into America, damn, near like halfway to Virginia.
Speaker 5: They found remains of settlements and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Very true.
Speaker 5: It could be that they actually cross cultures and they
Speaker 5: had some you know, traditions potentially bleed over.
Speaker 3: Very possible. Okay, let's see.
Speaker 5: The I'm gonna let you do that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Asiny Boyne sue the Sioux tribe I know of.
Speaker 3: I don't know like what clan that is. So that
Speaker 3: a boy as Sydney boyne blonde, I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: We just be butchering everything tonight.
Speaker 3: The Sioux tribe of South Dakota. Here we go, go ahead,
Speaker 3: the wanna yet to or winter time for gathering ken
Speaker 3: sassa or red willow bark while the thunder is gone.
Speaker 5: Interesting, Okay, wintertime for gathering the red willow bark while
Speaker 5: the thunder is gone.
Speaker 3: So they gather the red willow bark during the winter.
Speaker 3: I don't know why specifically that, but that is a
Speaker 3: thing for this.
Speaker 5: We'll have to look into that more, all right.
Speaker 3: So now this is the seal Selks s y I
Speaker 3: l X Silks Okay, Washington State and British Columbia. Do
Speaker 3: you want to read this one or me?
Speaker 5: What I know is that it marks the point in
Speaker 5: time when our winter ceremonies can be held. My grandmother
Speaker 5: sometimes held her first ceremony of the winter at this
Speaker 5: powerful time. We have winter dance, ceremonies, prayers for the
Speaker 5: new year to come, for the berries roots, four leggeds,
Speaker 5: four legs, four leggeds, like yeah, four leggeds. I was
Speaker 5: right the first time, okay, and the fish, the four
Speaker 5: food chiefs, prayers for our families and ourselves. There are songs, dancing, feasting,
Speaker 5: and giveaways. This is held during the evening and can
Speaker 5: go all night depending on the number of sacred singers
Speaker 5: who come to share. The ceremonies are called winter dances
Speaker 5: or my grandfather also called them Chinook dances in our
Speaker 5: territory to the south, in Washington State aroundnessipline discipline. My
Speaker 5: grandfather told me one dance ceremony lasting ten nights in
Speaker 5: a row. Yo, that's pretty intense.
Speaker 3: They'd be getting down ten nights of ceremony just for
Speaker 3: one dance ceremony. All right, Yeah, so I like to
Speaker 3: throw down, I hear you.
Speaker 5: I did have a quick one though. From the Apache culture,
Speaker 5: marking the time of renewal and return of the light
Speaker 5: missed during the season often features stories of survival, of importance,
Speaker 5: and gathering as a community to share resources and knowledge.
Speaker 5: Traditions during the wintertime include storytelling sessions to be passed
Speaker 5: down with wisdom and knowledge, ceremonies to honor ancestors and
Speaker 5: reflect on the past year, community gatherings to strengthen the
Speaker 5: bonds and celebrate one another and reinforce the idea of
Speaker 5: winter while the time is a time of rest and
Speaker 5: also a critical part of the seasonal cycle that prepares
Speaker 5: the community for renewal of the spring. So there's a
Speaker 5: lot of different tribes and stuff. You have to go
Speaker 5: to each tribe to break down what they actually believe in,
Speaker 5: what they do, and things like that. But I kind
Speaker 5: of just wanted to briefly touch on Native Americans just
Speaker 5: because they you know, because we were talking about a
Speaker 5: Black holiday as well, and so I wanted to kind
Speaker 5: of touch on other American holidays.
Speaker 3: Absolutely is a inherently American holiday. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: I only found a few scant sources to find that
Speaker 3: anybody in Canada was celebrating it. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: perhaps it's gone more international. I can't find anything to
Speaker 3: say so, But because we were talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: tis the season, and in this week we're gonna be
Speaker 3: talking about a lot of different holidays and celebrations from
Speaker 3: around the world, Kwansa being an American one, we did
Speaker 3: want to take a moment to acknowledge Native American customs
Speaker 3: and cultures, some surrounding Christmas, some surrounding just the winter
Speaker 3: solstices and this time of year in general. Tomorrow's episode
Speaker 3: we are going to be talking into more of the
Speaker 3: obscure celebrations and things of the customs and cultures and
Speaker 3: things and stuff. So I find this to be a
Speaker 3: good transitional episode, Like.
Speaker 5: I'm really excited about that. That's like the one I'm
Speaker 5: looking forward to the absolute most. Oh yeah, because there's
Speaker 5: a lot of different celebration There's some that are really
Speaker 5: there's like fifteen of them that are pretty bizarre. But
Speaker 5: there is a lot of different cultures that celebrate Christmas
Speaker 5: in different ways or winter Solstice, and they obviously have
Speaker 5: changed through the times. So I was really pumped to
Speaker 5: get into that history and different cultures and stuff like
Speaker 5: that in the backgrounds and so yeah, this is a
Speaker 5: good segue to go. You know, Native American tribes will
Speaker 5: be mentioned, probably as most likely, but there's definitely a
Speaker 5: lot of interesting historical backgrounds into the quote unquote Christmas.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So as we wrap up this episode, good cult
Speaker 3: members or talking about gift giving, multiple tribes, multiple cultures,
Speaker 3: hell even Kwanza and if you would like to get
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Speaker 3: in the description below. But another way to support the show,
Speaker 3: good cult members and let us know what you think
Speaker 3: about this episode. What do you think about Kwanza, What
Speaker 3: do you think about some of these native tribes? What
Speaker 3: do you think about the controversy surrounding Krenga. I want
Speaker 3: to know, good cult members. Hit us in the comments section.
Speaker 3: The best place would be too, Please hit the five Stars,
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Speaker 5: The rest of you.
Speaker 3: Finallys and gentlemen, why are you ready to go check
Speaker 3: out menimistics Jonathan's of the show and give them the
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Speaker 3: using the positivity in the comments, Come check out the
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Speaker 3: lives we host every Wednesday night. I'm hem Central. Links
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Speaker 3: thank you. Everybody's already gone done so. With all of
Speaker 3: this being said, good cult members, hamar Ghane, Happy holidays,
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas. And this was another Buke episode of the
Speaker 3: Cobs of Conspiracy.
Speaker 5: And I am the Cage of Night amazingly, and there's
Speaker 5: one very import extremely by of these things make much
Speaker 5: to learn just as him as human