Ode to our lost culture

We come across stories of people who go to extraordinary measures to prove that they are, even if it's just a very small percentage, of Native American origin.

Some of this is, admittedly driven by the fact that tribes are occasionally at the center of great wealth.

Their ancestry is so often watered down and practically undetectable.

We have witnessed communities attempting to revive their forgotten languages, culture, and practices in an attempt to reboot their long lost culture.

I have in the past been critical of these "fake" reconstructions but have more recently begun to see things differently.

Take the example of the whirling dervish in Turkey. The custom was outlawed during the reign of the Attaturk. One is now able to see the dervish perform all over the country in a mostly reconstructed, spectacular ceremony.

The words, moves, and costume are all reconstructed and there is little doubt that they are far from authentic. What used to be a  spiritual, religious practice has evolved into something very different.

Do they make it irrelevant?

Today I watched a piece in the news about some native group in Canada trying to revive their lost identity. Many of the songs they sang were set to the tune of ABBA's "I have a dream".

We contrast these broken lines of tradition to ours, where the oral history it's strong and unbroken through the ages and draw the conclusion that the reconstructed culture is shallow and fake. And we look down our nose at them.

I propose that,
All history is fake.

Even in our world where we are in touch with events unfolding around the world on a blow by blow basis, we have no idea what the real truth is. The truth of any news we hear is so heavily laced with bias, that we can't be sure about anything.

So why then are we so certain of the "unbroken oral" record we were handed by our ancestors.

The communities who remodel their ancestry to create myths that inspire courage and heroism might be more honest than those that are shrouded in veils of time.

If you want to worship the great Spaghetti God and call yourself Pastafarian, who am I to claim it's not authentic in a world where nothing is authentic.

Even these words that I write are  not an authentic record of my thoughts, and far from a defining representation of me.

So let's just live and let live.
Believe what ever you want.
Try to tread lightly on the Earth and each other's feelings, and believe or not believe in what ever cookie God we are drawn to.

Clearly we are wired to look to the Stars and imagine something bigger than ourselves to give meaning to our existence, or not.

It's all good.

M Parak
Aug 2018
Accra