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East Oregonian
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Make a plan to
do a good deed
G
ood deeds don’t happen by
accident.
Some are jump-started by
coincidence — a need presents itself and
a well-meaning person responds. But
most are the result of careful thought
and planning, of addressing a need not
as a single incident but as a confluence
of circumstances that will rear their
heads again and again.
The needs become a calling, and
people rally together to address them.
We see the work of nonprofits year-
round. It takes on many forms, from
feeding hungry people to sheltering
neglected animals, from offering
grief counseling for hurting families
to fighting illness and disease, from
helping a local child learn to read or
play a sport to sending gifts across an
ocean for a child in poverty.
And the work is hard because the
need is great.
This is the start of the giving season,
for both philanthropic and practical
reasons. Because of the blessings in our
own lives, we’re reminded of misfortune
in the lives of others and often moved
to make a gift. And many are looking at
their year-end accounting and looking to
do some charitable giving.
Whatever the motivation, the money
enables these organizations to pay their
staffs and rent and buy the goods and
services to accomplish their goals.
But the money isn’t enough. Writing
a check helps an organization balance
its own bottom line, but what most of
these groups will tell you is they need
dedicated volunteers.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Volunteer Mariza Sharpe serves up salad to Mickey Morris and Shavon Slack on Oct.
25 at the Harkenrider Senior Activity Center in Hermiston.
We’ve highlighted a few of the
people who fill that role in today’s
holiday edition. They exemplify the
intentional effort it takes to make good
deeds a common occurrence. Some
volunteer in multiple places for a variety
of causes.
There are many more, and there is
much more to do. We thank all of our
readers who use their time to make their
communities better places to live, and
encourage any who have not found a
place to donate and serve to consider it
this holiday season.
OTHER VIEWS
Fighting the spiritual void
W
YOUR VIEWS
Tribe should not silence
differing opinions
Free speech and free expression are
bedrock rights of all citizens of our great
democratic country. However, free speech
for Umatilla tribal members will be
suppressed and censored unless we march in
lockstep to the tribal government party line.
Earlier this year the Confederated
Umatilla Journal, a publication owned
and operated by the Confederated Tribes
of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, twice
refused to publish my opinions on relevant
tribal issues just because I had a differing
opinion.
The first unjustified denial of my free
speech rights occurred when I rebutted,
supported with facts, an editorial on
tribal education. The second came when
I responded to a CUJ article on Cayuse
Technologies, a tribally owned business,
wherein I wrote, again supported with
facts, that we owners (shareholders) do not
benefit much from CT.
The issue I am writing about today is
the lack of free speech, and the lack of
transparency.
The East Oregonian newspaper has
been the primary source of news and
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and
not necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
information for our tribal community
for generations. Thus, when the CUJ
suppressed my two letters, I submitted the
letters, verbatim and identical, to the EO
and the letters were published in a timely
manner. There was obviously nothing
in my letters that was libelous, obscene,
threatening, or otherwise out of line, or the
EO never would have published them.
At any rate, I am OK that I have to
use a forum or venue other than our tribal
newspaper to express my opinion. Also,
it is obvious that the only reason the
decision-makers at the CUJ denied my
free speech rights is they personally do not
agree with the content of what I wrote.
If tribal government allows them to do
this, it raises the legitimate question: Do
we have a democracy if free speech rights
can be denied on the whims of people
working in tribal government? Genuine
products of journalism, like the East
Oregonian, do publish opinions from their
readership that may differ from theirs.
Tribal leaders have always welcomed
input and viewpoints from the tribal
membership. And that is all my two letters
are — input from a tribal member.
Bob Shippentower
Pendleton
herever I go I seem to
die at any second, he felt his soul
run out of his body. It stayed
meet people who are
out, traumatized, on red alert, for
either dealing with
decades.
trauma or helping others dealing
Tick told Art: “We can try to
with trauma. In some places I
make your body and this life a
meet veterans trying to recover
safe place for your soul to move
from the psychic wounds they
back into. If we can get you off
suffered in Iraq or Afghanistan.
David
alert, if you can learn to
Sometimes it is women
Brooks combat
trust
a
little
bit … maybe we can
struggling with the aftershocks
Comment
bring you two closer together.”
of sexual assault. Sometimes
People who are recovering
it is teachers trying to help
from trauma often embrace the
students overcome the traumas they’ve
language of myth, which offers us
suffered from some adult’s abuse or
templates of moral progress. Recently,
abandonment.
in New Orleans, I met the founder of
Wherever Americans gather and try
a community of vets called Bastion.
to help each other on any deep level,
The men and women there are taught to
they confront levels of trauma that their
training has often not prepared them for. see their lives as a hero’s journey with
three stages: from Separation through
Our society has tried to medicalize
trauma. We call it PTSD and regard it as Initiation, and then back to Return.
When we see our lives in mythic
an individual illness that can be treated
terms, we can see that life still offers a
with medications. But it’s increasingly
clear that trauma is a moral and spiritual chance to do something heroic. “Myths
are clues to the spiritual potentialities
issue as much as a psychological or
chemical one. Wherever there is trauma, of the human life,” Joseph Campbell
wrote.
there has been betrayal, an abuse of
Tick points out that most ancient
authority, a moral injury.
cultures put returning soldiers through
Medication can rebalance chemicals
purification rituals. The men came back
in the brain, but it can’t heal the inner
self. People who have suffered a trauma from battle and the terrible things they
had done there, and they were given a
— whether it’s a sexual assault at work
chance to cleanse, purify and rejoin the
or repeated beatings at home — find
community. The community would take
that their identity formation has been
possession of the guilt the soldiers may
interrupted and fragmented. Time
have felt for the things they had to do on
doesn’t flow from one day to the next,
its behalf.
but circles backward to the bad event.
The Tohono O’odham, a Native
People who endure trauma
American people from the Sonoran
sometimes say that they feel morally
Desert, once practiced a 16-day
tainted. They have the same plaintive
purification ceremony.
mindset as the old man at the cemetery
These ceremonies had, Tick writes,
in “Saving Private Ryan,” who says to
what most rites of passage have: a
his wife, “Tell me I’m a good man.”
sacred space, training by the elders,
As a culture we’re pretty bad at
ordeals that prepare and test the initiate,
dealing with moral injury. Sometimes I
look at the rising suicide and depression rituals that symbolize the transformation
taking place. After the cleansing, the
rates, the rising fragility and distrust,
blood-soaked soldier was now known
and I think it all flows from the fact
as a warrior, a positive leader in the
that we’ve made our culture a spiritual
community.
void. When you privatize morality and
I wish our culture had many more
denude the public square of spiritual
rites of passage, communal moments
content, you’ve robbed people of the
when we celebrated a moral transition.
community resources they need to
There could be a communitywide rite of
process moral pain together.
passage for people coming out of prison,
The good news is that the people
for forgiveness of a personal wrong, for
who are addressing trauma most
people who felt they had come out the
directly are reviving a moral language
other side of trauma and abuse. There’d
and developing a moral curriculum.
be a marriage ceremony of sorts to mark
Edward Tick is a therapist who has
the moment when a young person found
been working with survivors of wars
the vocation he or she would dedicate
for decades. In his book “War and the
life to.
Soul,” he writes that PTSD is best
It’ll take a lot to make our culture
understood as a “soul wound, affecting
a thick moral culture. But one way or
the personality at the deepest levels.”
another, nations and people have to
One of his patients, Art, told Tick,
grow a soul big enough to enclose the
“My soul has fled.” He felt it leave his
traumas that haunt them.
body at Khe Sanh. Art was a machine-
■
gunner repelling wave after wave of
David Brooks has been a senior editor
North Vietnamese’ assault, killing them
at The Weekly Standard, a contributing edi-
by the score.
tor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly,
One day the North Vietnamese
and he is currently a commentator on “The
overran his position, and while he was
Newshour with Jim Lehrer.”
sprinting away in retreat, expecting to
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the
newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual
services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Letters must be signed by the author and include the
city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published.
Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.