Keith Bassos Wisdom Sits in Places Essay -- American History Western

Keith Bassos Wisdom Sits in PlacesThere is a deep relationship amongst the environment and Western Apache people. The bonds between the two are so strong that it is embedded in their culture and history. Keith Basso, author of Wisdom Sits in Places expanded on this theory and did so by divulging himself into Western Apaches life. He spent fifteen years with the Apache people studying their relationship with the environment, specifically concentrating on Place-names. When Basso inaugural began to work with the Apache people, one of his Apache friends told him to learn the names, because they held a special meaning with the community. (Cruikshank 1990 54) Place-names are special names given to a specific locality where an event took dictate that was significant in history and crucial in shaping morals and beliefs. Through the use of place-names, the environment became a teaching tool for Apache people. Red Lake, manganese is an Ojibwa place-name. The area dates back 9000 yeas ago when the Stone Age peoples first inhabited the region that is now known as northwestern Ontario. These aboriginals were indigenous people known with the properties of the surrounding plants and wild animals. They lived along the waterways and treated their environment with respect and celebrated its bounties through their spirituality. (Web Site 1) According to Ojibwa legend, thousands of years ago, two hunters came across a genuinely large moose standing beside a beautiful clear blue lake. The Hunters thought the moose was an evil spirit named Matchee Manitou and they tried to kill it. One of the hunters quip the animal with an arrow just wounding it. The grand and majestic animal escaped by diving into the water and disappearing forever. A large pool of blood colored the water red, masking the once beautiful blue lake. A creature so huge was never to be seen again. The hunters named the lake Misque Sakigon meaning color in of Blood Lake. Years later it became kn own as Red Lake. (Web Site 1)When I heard this story, 12 years ago, it came from the mouth of my fathers wide-cut friend, an Ojibwa man, named Henry Meekis. I still remember everyone sitting in front of him while he told the story. His passion for the story permeated the room and we were all captivated by it.The importance of place-name study lies in the light it sheds on the cultural... ...lace-names can be seen in the following quote given by an Apache named BensonLewis. I think of the locoweed called White Rocks Lie Above In a Compact Cluster as it were my own grandmother. I recall stories of how it once was at that mountain. The stories told to me were like arrows. Elsewhere, perceive that mountains name, I see it. Its name is like a picture. Stories go to work on you like arrows. Stories make you live right. Stories make you replace yourself. (38)When I take aim Wisdom Sits in Places I c ould feel the importance of place-names through the words of the Apache peoples stories. Events that took place many years ago in a specific areas recapitulate the morals and beliefs the Apache people hold near to them. To say that they are anything but relevant to Apache history and culture would be a mistake.Works CitedBasso, Keith 1999 Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press.Cruikshank, Julie 1990 Getting the Words Right Perspectives on Naming and Places in Athapaskan Oral History. Artic Anthropology 27 52-65. 1. www.red-lake.com/museum