THE BIRCH CLUMP VILLAGER PRESENTS:

BBRORO. J. JOSHUAOSHUA SSEIDLEIDL, SSP, SSP AAUTHORUTHOR

HHAWKAWK DDANCERANCER, , RECIPIENTRECIPIENT OFOF THETHE CCATHOLICATHOLIC WWRITERSRITERS’ ’

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V.1 2013

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BIRCH CLUMP VILLAGER

NORTH COUNTRY LITURATURE AND ARTS

ABOUT THE VILLAGER

2013 The Birch Clump Villager promotes new aspiring authors and artists. Preference is given articles promoting Indigenous cultures and also North Country themes. Yet, a wide variety of other topics can be accommodat-ed. All items submitted must maintain general family moral standards. Inquire before submitting materials. www.HawkDancer.com

Bro. Joshua Seidl, SSP - 2187 Victory Blvd, Staten Island NY 10314 Email: birchclump@hawkdancer.com / Phone 1-718-865-8781

HAWK DANCER

H awk Dancer, recipient of the Catholic

Writers Guild’s Seal of Approval, is a work of modern historical fiction, 1934-2010.

Native American, Metis and Euro-American

relations play out in Brother Joshua’s endearing Village of Birch Clump. Dynamically driven, the

events of World War II, the Korean and Vietnam

wars, and the Great American Civil Rights Movement both pulls the

community together and threatens to divide. Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, (Dignitatis Hu-

manae - 1965) and passage of the American Indian Freedom of Reli-

gion law (August 11, 1978) reflects a spiritual vision relayed to us through Our Lady of Guadalupe and events of Los Tres Culturas (The

Three Cultures) in the 1530s.

Richard White and Job set up the first ever Order of Native Ameri-can Catholic religious. They base the Congregation of St. James on the

Rule for the Third Order Regular of St. Francis and the Letter of St.

James at the outbreak of World War II.

While troops suffer the frigid conditions of the Korean winter, es-tranged neighbors come together to aid a terminally ill child in Birch

Clump two nights before Christmas, 1957. The positive concepts of

Inculturation, as opposed to acculturation and assimilation policies that

strained relations between the cultures begin to take shape around what appears to be a miraculous healing. This becomes, for the author, a piv-

otal point in the story.

Randy literally popped into their lives in a single car accident that

orphaned him at age one. Job and his wife Hazel, both Anishinabe, contest their Dutch-American neighbors, the Vanwesterdykes, in court

over the right to keep the child in the tribe. The village is divided 80-

some to five in favor of having the child removed from his nation, rela-tives and tribal culture. Only fear that the child both families loved

would die brought them together during a blinding blizzard that closed

roads and power lines isolating the village from modern medical assis-tance. They had only their deep faith and prayers.

Job, shunned for not masking his cultural traditions, offered his

prayers in his traditional Potawatomi language (Anishinabemowin), in

Latin and English. His traditional herbal incense, comforts and medi-cines, scoffed at and yet clandestinely sought after by the non-

indigenous villagers over the years, were laid beside the Cross. [Ref.

Canticles, Daniel 3:57-88, Ps 148]. This was no longer a contest of ac-ceptable traditions for the Dutch-American parents. Instead, the night

of The Cure became a healing within those who humbly placed their

trappings of faith before the Divine Physician1 and the Creator, our Grand (Almighty) Father.

There are those, including the Vanwesterdykes until that night, who

have difficulties to see how Christ could be part of a history or culture

of those lands colonized during the so-called European Age of Discov-ery. Brother Joshua draws from his research of over two hundred Papal

and other Vatican documents with regard to Indigenous cultural and

sovereign rights within the Church and in society in general to mold these stories.

Randy and his Baby Boomer peers are guided by the Native Friars

of Annunciation Monastery through their formative teen years of the

1960s. They eventually become the Elders of the next generation. They and we are reminded of the Ojibwe proverb: We did not create the web

of life. What we do to it, we do to one another and ourselves and to the

next seven generations.

Gakina-awiiya (Ojibwe language, “We are all related.)

1. Jesus, the Divine Physician,

by Christopher Cardinal Schoenborn, Ignatius Press

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BBBOOKSOOKSOOKS BYBYBY JJJOSHUAOSHUAOSHUA SSSEIDLEIDLEIDL, SSP, SSP, SSP

Hawk Dancer

And its companion

novel: Cloudburst

The Birch Clump Village Readers:

Emerald Rising (1)

Fritha (2)

Peanut Butter and Pickle Pie (3)

All books are available in paper back and as E-Pub

(e-books)