[TN-Bird] Ivory-bill article/INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY
- From: Dthomp2669@xxxxxxx
- To: Dthomp2669@xxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 11:20:37 EDT
Hello Birders,
Here is another perspective and some native insight on the recent discovery
of the ivory billed woodpecker from the publication INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY. I
thought some of you might enjoy reading this article.
As I am one-quarter Creek, I am interested in Native American matters, so I
subscribe online to INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY.
Dee Thompson
Nashville, TN
Harjo: Never give up on anyone
© Indian Country Today May 12, 2005. All Rights Reserved
Posted: May 12, 2005
by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today
The honorable ivory-billed woodpecker has returned from the dead and is
living in a wildlife refuge in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. It seemed to
disappear in 1944 and was long presumed extinct.
This spirit bird's reappearance 60 years later reinforces a wise instruction
by Native elders: ''Never give up on anyone.''
From time immemorial, the handsome, broad-shouldered bird thrived in the
bottomland forests and bayous of what is now the southeastern United States.
After
50 years of developers clear-cutting old-growth trees in its habitat from
North Carolina to Texas, the ivory-billed woodpecker was left with few places
to
live.
In recent decades, the federal government and private parties have declared
certain ecosystems as Important Bird Areas. The ivory-billed woodpecker
re-emerged in one of these areas, which should encourage the Bush
administration -
whose strong suit is not environmental protection - to establish more such safe
places for the homeless.
John James Audubon painted this bird in the early 1800s, comparing its
stylish chiaroscuro markings to a ''great Vandyke'' painting. Audubon described
it
as 21 inches long, with a 30-inch wingspan and three-inch bill, and a ''dark
glossy body and tail ... large and well-defined white markings of its wings,
neck, and bill, relieved by the rich carmine of the pendent crest of the male,
and the brilliant yellow of its eye.''
Muscogee artists have been depicting this bird for thousands of years. A
flurry of e-mail and voice messages spread the word among Muscogee people that
the
ivory-billed woodpecker lives.
My friend Rob Trepp, a Muscogee researcher, sent three images of the bird
that Muscogee artists etched on shell and in clay over 2,000 years ago. He says
the bird ''is found in many iconographic settings, sometimes pictured alone,
wings spread; other times pictured in fours, heads only, at the four cardinal
points around an inner image.''
I had lots of questions about this important bird. Rob checked with Muscogee
cultural experts George Cosar, John Fixico and Ed LaGrone; and I asked my dad,
Freeland Douglas, who's always my first call on Muscogee language and
cultural matters.
Here are their consensus answers about the ivory-billed woodpecker.
Woodpeckers - toski in the Muscogee language - are medicine birds, respected
for their persistence and power to ''pull things out.'' Singers of toski songs
''take on the power'' and gain the ''ability to pull things out of their
patients.''
The largest and strongest of the toski is cvkvlv, the ivory-billed
woodpecker. Traditional Muscogee medicine practitioners still use ''songs about
cvkvlv.'' Its own song was recorded only once, in 1935. Prior to the release in
April
of video footage from one year ago, the last documented sighting of cvkvlv was
in 1987 in Cuba.
Cvkvlv is pronounced CHUH kuh luh - ''kind of like chocolate, if you need a
mnemonic,'' wrote Trepp. The word is a ''progressive contraction'' that
references the ''fine feathers at the back and the color of the bill.'' Cvkvlv
is
preserved in a Muscogee/Cherokee family name, Chuckluck or Chuculate.
Cvkvlv is called a rather rude name by scientists: Campephilus principalis,
which is Latin for grub-eater. Audubon observed that its main food consists of
beetles, larvae and large grubs, but it eats ripe forest grapes ''with great
avidity,'' along with persimmons and hagberries.
He also noted that the ''ivory-bill is never seen attacking the corn.'' I
think this respect for sofkee (corn) must have further endeared cvkvlv to
Muscogee people.
I never met cvkvlv, but I feel as if an ancient, beloved friend has come home
after a long absence.
I had a similar feeling 10 years ago, about a butterfly. I had checked into a
conference hotel and turned on CNN to see what news I'd missed during the
flight from D.C. to Albuquerque.
The news anchor was saying that scientists in northern California were elated
at the re-emergence of the formerly extinct teal blue-tailed butterfly that
disappeared from the Plains in the late 1800s.
This caught my attention for several reasons, not the least of which was the
phrase ''formerly extinct.'' Now that is news.
But the big news to me was that the teal blue butterfly was real. During my
first Sun Dance in South Dakota, the ceremonial leader told me to listen
carefully to the messages of the blue butterfly. I looked for blue butterflies
for
years and finally decided they were magic beings, and maybe I'd see them and
maybe not.
Hearing that they vanished for a century made me imagine that the blue
butterflies saw what was happening to the Indians and the buffalo on the Plains
and
said, ''We're outta here.''
The news that they traveled to the West Coast and were presenting themselves
to elated scientists made me laugh and cry at the same time. I felt as if I
were greeting a familiar stranger with an important message. I could hear my
respected elders saying, ''See why you should never give up on anyone.''
Then and now, I think how Native peoples have been pushed out of our natural
homelands and how long we have lived at the edge of extinction. The Native
population hemisphere-wide was over 100 million in 1491. By 1900, it was under
1
million.
In the U.S. at the turn of last century, there were fewer than 240,000 Native
people. The good news is that there were 2 million American Indians by 2000
and that Native populations are increasing in every country.
It is a miracle of survivance that there are Native people alive in
sufficient numbers to assure a future as Native people.
It still is touch-and-go for Native heritage languages, traditional
religions, sacred places, salmon and myriad other precious treasures, but no
one should
count them out.
Native people are revitalizing heritage languages as fast as humanly
possible, even some that have been pronounced extinct for 150 years.
More and more Native young people are living within traditional religions,
one ceremony at a time.
Native sacred places and salmon remain viable, despite the best efforts of
government and developers to destroy them.
So, hail, cvkvlv. Hail, blue butterflies. Hail, all the formerly extinct
living beings that refuse to die and stay dead. Never give up on anyone.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country
Today.
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