Is my agitation a product of a butt-hurt ego? 

I tried early identification of this need to be recognized in a piece of fiction that freaked me out by starting to come true, and in that work of fiction I put my alter-ego, William Skink, at the precipice of viral-fame when he runs into and performs a poem for Leonardo DiCaprio. 

On Sunday, after the Jackrabbits whooped the Grizzlies, Montana quickly rebounded by celebrating a beautiful star on the rise, a star who got a globe for her performance in Killers Of The Flower Moon. Yes, the one co-starring Leo. 

Before I get to what might appear a trite breakdown of conventional media’s excitement over red-carpet accessories, like earrings, let me contrast the beauty our film industry is capable of conjuring with something quite ugly, and that’s the idea of cannibalism used as a sort of terrorism to control ancient populations Native to the American Southwest.

Douglas Preston has quite the article about this theory, along with the research to back it up. Here’s an excerpt:

Turner eventually concluded that the Polacca Wash site was a place known in Hopi legend as the Death Mound. Hopi informants had first described the legend to an anthropologist at the end of the nineteenth century. According to the story, sometime in the late sixteen hundreds a Hopi village called Awatovi had been largely converted to Christianity under the influence of Spanish friars. In addition, the people of Awatovi practiced witchcraft, which the Hopi considered a heinous crime. Eventually, five other Hopi villages decided to purge the tribe of this spiritual stain. An attack was organized by the chief of Awatovi himself, who had become disgusted with his own people. Warriors from the other villages attacked the errant village at dawn, surprising most of the men inside the kivas–sunken ceremonial chambers of the Pueblo Indians–and burning them alive. After killing the men, the warriors captured groups of women and children. As one of these groups was being marched away, a dispute broke out over which village would get to keep the captives. The argument got out of hand. In a rage, the warriors settled it by torturing, killing, and dismembering all the captives. Their bodies were left at a place called Mas-teo’-mo, or Death Mound. “If the stories are correct,” the anthropologist who first collected these legends wrote, “the final butchery at Mas-teo’-mo must have been horrible.”

Turner recalls that the lecture room was quiet when he finished arguing that the bones were the remains of a cannibal feast. ‘You could smell the disbelief,” he said. Most of his colleagues felt that there simply had to be another explanation for the strange bone assemblage. To suggest that the Hopi could have deliberately tortured, murdered, mutilated, cooked, and eaten a defenseless group of women and children from their own tribe seemed to make a mockery of a hundred years of cautious, diligent scholarship. The paper was looked upon with deep skepticism by many of Turner’s peers, and the Hopi objected to what they considered a crude slur on their ancestors.

Over the next thirty years, Turner looked deeper into the archeological record for signs of cannibalism–going all the way back to the Hopi’s Anasazi ancestors. To his surprise, he discovered that a number of claims of Anasazi violence and cannibalism had been published by archeologists, but the profession, perhaps blinded by the conventional wisdom, had ignored the reports, the notes, the evidence, the very bones.

Turner has identified many Anasazi sites that he believes represent “charnel deposits”–heaps of cannibalized remains. Next month, the University of Utah Press will publish the results of his work, under the title “Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest.” The term “man corn” is the literal translation of the Nahuatl (Aztec) word tlacatlaolli, which refers to a “sacred meal of sacrificed human meat, cooked with corn.”

Though my own family rolls their eyes and sometimes calls me “The Church Lady”, I take matters of witchcraft and sorcery very seriously because, if I’m right, we are ALL being initiated into a formerly occulted world where symbols and numbers gleam with additional meaning most people don’t pick up on consciously (which of course doesn’t mean that there is no impact at all, quite the contrary).

I’m also sensitive to the broad aims of NARRATIVE CONTROL, so spats that break out between big boys like Mark Cuban and Elon Musk over DEI standards (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) gets my attention, especially when this particular method of control seems to be currently fracturing and fizzling out in terms of effectiveness.

Last month, at my other blog, I wrote a five part series on what I call “building a new credibility” (part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V). I would direct you, dear reader, specifically to part IV because it examines a movie titled The Believers, which just happens to be about human sacrifice derived from indigenous culture. That movie came out in 1987, a year mentioned in Preston’s article because of the New Age attempt to create a harmonic convergence.

…the Anasazi captured the fancy of people outside the archeological profession, and particularly those in the New Age movement, many of whom see themselves as the Anasazi’s spiritual descendants. The ruins of Chaco Canyon have long been a New Age mecca, to the point where one of the sites had to be closed, because New Agers were burying crystals and illegally arranging to have their ashes scattered there. During Harmonic Convergence, in 1987, thousands gathered in Chaco Canyon and joined hands, chanting and praying. People have also flocked to the villages of the present-day Pueblo Indians–the Hopi in particular–seeking a spirituality outside Western civilization. The Hopi Themselves, along with other Pueblo Indian descendants of the Anasazi, feel a deep reverence for their prehistoric ancestors.

Ashes, you say? Hmmm, I wonder, has there been anything in the news lately about cool spots to intern one’s mortal remains?

A plan to deposit some human remains on the moon as part of a rocket launch that blasted off early Monday morning is prompting criticism from the head of the Navajo Nation, who says it would be a desecration of the celestial body sacred to many tribes.

Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, urged NASA or other government officials in a statement last week to address the tribe’s concerns before the launch.

“The moon holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology,” he wrote. “The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations.”

Fuck YES this suggestion is deeply disturbing, but, then again, so is the ENTIRE occulted history of NASA (I’ll save all the JPL/Montana/UFO connections for another day).

Ok, let’s talk about earrings and wrap this post up–I’ve got preparations to make as the polar vortex descends!

Montana’s proud sacrifice to the film gods proudly wore earrings beaded by a Native artist based in Arlee, Montana, which is just north of Missoula. If you want to know how little places, like Arlee, connect to influential families, like the Pritzker family, you can take this peek into a post I wrote around the same time I was writing my work of fiction (2016).

Here is Vogue telling its readers that Lily’s jewelry was “embedded with special meaning“. From the link:

Last night’s Golden Globe ceremony was a historic event for actor Lily Gladstone. The Killers of the Flower Moon star took home the trophy for best actress in a motion picture (drama), making her the first Indigenous woman to ever win the category. Gladstone, who is Blackfeet and Nez Perce, began her powerful speech by speaking in the Blackfeet language, then went on to say, “This is a historic win. It doesn’t belong to just me.… This is for every little Native kid out there who has a dream and is seeing themselves represented in our stories told by ourselves, in our own words.”

Representation extended to the red carpet. Gladstone’s fashion look for the evening, a custom Valentino ensemble, was embedded with a special meaning: Her jewelry served as a display of cultural pride. To complement her Bulgari necklace, the star, styled by Jason Rembert, chose earrings by Lenise Omeasoo—a Blackfeet and Cree beadwork artist based in Arlee, Montana.

So, what kind of creature did Lenise Omeasoo’s beadwork depict? Butterflies. Yes, Lily, I’d say that is a very appropriate “cultural” nod as your STAR rises.

Am I a bit butt-hurt by all this? I am, but some of the reasons fueling my agitation can’t be articulated. At least not yet.

Stay tuned…