Curious Conversations at Maple Grove Hot Springs
The wounds, the divides, and the differences within and without our communities are real. They wield power over us. They jockey us back and forth and sideways and upside down.
If we aren't paying attention, they leave us nowhere.
If we pay too much attention, they launch us everywhere and anywhere.
So what, then, do we do with cultural chasms that feel too complex to cross?
WE WADE IN. We listen to one another. We learn from the past. We move forward more thoughtfully into the future. This is how we heal.
Yesterday, in our speaker series Curious Conversations, 30 strangers from all walks of life did just that and took in the storytelling of Shoshone Elder Darren Parry as he sang the songs of this land we hold dear.
He sang to the wounds of a modern nation founded on indigenous extermination. To the divides between a Western sense of personal rights and the native value of community obligation.
He sang his grandmother's songs to water as medicine, to trees as wisdom. He sang to the decimation of his tribe on Jan 29, 1863, along the river we now call Bear.
And he sings. To that same river, Boa Ogoi. To the cultural center to be built along the same shores that buried his forefathers. He sings this song and invites us to join.
This is how we wade together. This is how we heal.
Thanks, brother, for honoring this land and for one quite Curious Conversation.