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Couple brings message for Brooklyn Avenue Thanksgiving assembly

Kids learn about native traditions

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Students at Brooklyn Avenue Elementary School were treated to a special assembly on Nov. 19 that demonstrated that today’s Native Americans are modern people who have managed to keep alive cultural traditions that address serious issues modern society struggles with.

“People have had the mistaken idea that we’re still hunting buffalo and looking like this every day — these clothes,” said Donna Couteau-Cross. She wore a long buckskin robe with strips dangling from the sleeves to mimic a waterfall’s motion when she performs her traditional dance. “We crafted a beginning of the show where we’re just in regular street clothes so they could see that we’re modern people. We come out of the audience and then we transition into our special clothes.”

Donna and her husband, Joe Cross, originally lived in Oklahoma, where Donna’s forbears, the Sac and Fox Nation, settled after they moved from upstate New York several hundred years ago. Each has personal ties to their heritage’s rich history: Donna is a distant relative of Black Hawk, who led a band of warriors against European-American settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin during the 1832 Black Hawk War. Joe is a member of the Caddo Nation, whose native language gave the state of Texas its name. He is also related to Jim Thorpe, the famed athlete and Olympian from the Sac and Fox Nation.

The couple moved to Manhattan more than three decades ago, and since 1990 they have traveled as far as China to share their culture and the meaning behind their traditions.

“Our message has always been that we will all survive as long as the earth continues to live,” said Joe. “It’s a very basic message. Many of our stories are like that as well — how the earth is alive, which is really a part of our religion.”

The pair told students traditional stories with animals and other metaphorical characters teaching lessons about the balance that is fundamental to nature and all of life. Joe said that the Native American community has always been on the front lines of environmental conservation efforts, especially now, given the potentially disastrous effects of climate change. A Marine who served in Vietnam in 1968-69, Joe marched with other veterans in the People’s Climate March in Manhattan on Sept. 21.

Student Mya Miller, 7, said she especially liked one story about a giant that was eating everything in sight until a medicine man summoned another giant to battle him. “It was really good, and we got to learn more about the Native Americans,” she said.

Teacher-in-charge Vincent Milano oversaw the assembly in the absence of Principal Scott Comis, who was out for the day. Milano said it was coordinated through the district’s PTA in celebration of Thanksgiving.

“We want them to understand Native Americans’ contribution to this culture, and that they were the first people to come to this country,” he said. “The basic point is that they should respect everyone’s culture.”

The assembly concluded with Donna and Joe performing a traditional dance, adorned in full tribal regalia. Joe’s voice played on a recording over drums and chanting voices: “An eagle is still an eagle, as it was tens of thousands of years ago, still following in the ways of its ancestors, long since gone. And so it is with us. If we are to provide our future generations with the same songs, prayers, language and spirituality, that which has given us strength, then we must never abandon the teachings of our forefathers. We are of this land, and we must remain that way, forever.”