I'd
like to start off to say that this week, like I said before,
is the big days - we call them Bwikam - this week, and many
of the people that are the people that learned this tradition
from elders, they right now are not doing their laundry, they
are not cutting hair, no sewing, no ironing, nothing. Everybody
has to be very cautious of what they do because we are told
that these are the big days, especially Good Friday. We try
not to do anything on Good Friday but be devoted and worship
with the church group, and so on. And many times if in the
villages some people are seen working there, they are told
not to do it, they are told to stop. And this shows that our
people - we've had this religion since the 1600s, early 1620s,
and we've kept up with it until now, and many people think
that we are going to lose this religion, this culture, but
we cling to it.
This
morning I was talking to the class, Larry's class and Ofelia's
class, and I told them that the tradition that we have here
- the Easter ceremonies - to us is the very sad story because
of what they did to Jesus, and the Yaqui people of that time
in the 1600s, they readily accepted this belief because their
hearts were almost like Jesus had. He was kind, loving, and
caring for people, and this is the kind of people we are.
We always try to be good to one
another, love one another, and so on, because in our songs,
the songs of the deer songs, the other bwikam songs, it always
tells us how to care for the world, the earth, the animals,
the plants. Everything you see out there, they all have a
purpose we say, so when we sing our songs - the deer songs,
they tell us this to protect the animals, to care for them
because they in turn will care for you.
And
so when I work with deer singers, the young ones and old ones
too, I tell them you know this is what I learned from my elders,
and this is what I've learned working with deer singers, and
this is a very old tradition, and to me, it's almost like
the religion was brought to us - it seemed like we already
had it before, so it seemed like more of a build up from the
Christian religion from Spain that was brought over to the
Yaqui people.
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