Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Unknown - Chapter 10b - by nova

Chapter 10b

We had to give up on cutting up the horse meat after awhile. There wasn't enough light to work by and we were all tired. Working with sharp knives by moonlight when you're tired was a great way to end up hurt bad. Nowadays my guess was infections killed more people then guns did which was saying something. Child birth was back to being a big deal and so was breaking a bone.

Since Powerdown Women's rights had taken a major step back, at least 100 years worth of stepping. Not because men decided it, childbirth, kid shepherding, and the division of physical labor made it happen. The attitudes that went with it a 100 years ago had tried to make a comeback but with women who knew how to use a gun, and probably had, it didn't get far. I had noticed most of the old school fundie communities disarmed their women.

Then again there were women like Kat who hadn't stepped back at all and never would. She would and probably had paid for it. The Dine culture, from the little I knew, was unusual in that women had always had a voice in how things were run. It occurred to me this might be why they were never a warrior society and I almost asked Ty what he thought but decided not too. It might start a conversation and I wasn't really in the mood.

I halfway listened to Ty and Kat talk about what restaurant would be best to sell the meat at, there were only two, so you would think that would have been a conversation that only two minutes, but no. Then it was who would have a truck or a cart near enough to help harvest the rest. They they talked about what to do with the Apache bodies. I went to sleep only waking up every couple of minutes when my head bounced up down harder then normal as we hit another hole, stone, or washout in the road.

I sleepwalked through the off loading of the meat and when the palaver about what had happened and what needed to happen began I told Kat I would be in the truck waiting. Since we weren't moving I actually drifted off into a deep sleep. Something that was unusual for me when I wasn't in a secure place to do it.

4 comments:

  1. Really good stuff -- keep it up. As an old woman who knows how to use a gun - and practices - I appreciate the way you put things.

    Thanks.

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  2. Thanks Tina. Beware the gov that tries to disarm its people and the man that says women should know to use a gun.

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  3. Rats...should be "the man that says women should not know how to use a gun."

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  4. Nova, most Native American Tribes are matriarchal, my tribe the Cherokee (western band) is a good example of this. Men did not have the ability to own property with the exception of the shaman.

    The southwest is unique in that about half the tribes located there are patriarchal, a rarity for north America

    -TheDreamer

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