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Full text of Roger Welsch's testimonial |
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"By training, experience, and inclination I am a folklorist and anthropologist. I don’t see this life-work as idle scholarship even though it may lead to knowledge, a dabbling in amusing curiosities even though it may be of interest. I see these studies as a legitimate path to wisdom, a way to reach alternate solutions for very real problems.
As a young man I was surprised again and again as I spent more and more time among Native peoples (mostly Omaha) not as a scholar or researcher but as someone seeking...something. I’m not even sure what I was after but for darn sure, there it was. I realized early on that sometimes the answers to problems are not always something new but often can be found in old, traditional, lost or neglected ways. Contrary to a common American way of thinking, there is not just one answer to every question; sometimes there are many. And sometimes the solutions even to new problems can be found in ancient ways surviving and even thriving right beside us but forgotten in our rush to find new methods.
Richard Fool Bull, a Lakota holy man, told me thirty years ago that Native knowledge is not all that mysterious, nor is it exclusive to Native people. He said that the non-Native is often simply educated out of seeing and knowing the obvious. If we only look… And there’s the rub all right…”if we only look.”
I am not directly or formally associated with The Tapestry Institute but I consider Dawn Adams and her associates to be my friends and partners because they are open to and respectful of this rich store of neglected knowledge. (One of the most remarkable surprises in this sort of investigation, to my mind, is that Native people remain willing to share their wisdom with us despite generations…even centuries…of at best neglect, at worst abuse! But there must be a receptor like The Tapestry Institute to receive that knowledge.
There aren’t many agencies taking the risks of remaining open to unlikely, unconventional, alternative information sources, even though that is precisely what is needed. It takes a lot of courage to go out on that limb. The Tapestry Institute does, and that’s why I am proud to be considered a friend.
Roger Welsch
CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kurault for 10 years
Author of "Science Lite" column in Natural History magazine for 15 years
Prolific author
Professor of Anthropology, Retired, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
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