Customer Reviews

The Children of the Morning Light: Wampanoag Tales as Told By Manitonquat

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an outstanding collection of traditional Wampanoag stories by well-known Wampanoag Story-teller Manitonquat. Stories that explore many facets of the "Long-Ago Time" -- when the humans and animals still spoke the same language -- focused around the actions of the twin culture-heroes of the Wampanoag, these stories are a joy for children and contain important insight and information for adults.

The negative review here is not a review of the book, but of the author, based on false information about him that has been circluated without actual knowledge of the author or his nation. Here is a view by a well known and respected Wampanoag, a teacher of Native Studies at the university of Maine from a letter to the author:
Thanks for sharing these stories---i have always enjoyed the manner and style You share these Visions of the Heart. So, Netomp, You have my greatest affection and support.
i will offer this as a supportive statement:

Manitonqat's unique and wondrous manner of sharing ancient and contemporary stories of the Wampanoag follows in the profoundly valued tradition of the Pauwau. Especially applied to the Indigenous Nations and Peoples of the Northeast, maintaining a People's History is both a fine art and an evocative response to the incoherence, tyranny, and cynicism of modernity. Manitonqat is one of the Wampanoag Nation's leading national treasures.

As this is offered in the deepest respect for You as a person and Your wonderfully inspiring style.
gk
gkisedtanamoogk

We are a mixed-tribe family and we love this book. One of my favorites. I memorized the stories so I could tell them without the book!

For the one critic: all stories are shaped by the storyteller. Perhaps you could produce your own book of these stories, so we could see the true form you allude to? Amazon makes self-publishing easy, so you have no excuse. And if you don't produce something better, what have you really added? Not much. The Golden Age of humanity was perhaps the Pleistocene. Manitonquat told stories in my daughter's school years ago, and I took the day off, to hear what he had to say. He told stories from this book. An entire school audience was spellbound, listening with total attention. I had heard him speak at a National Storytelling Association event, also. Manitonquat makes me feel like a kid again, in a good way, where the world is full of wonderful lessons to learn, still magical, still beautiful. Western culture worships the material, for it has forgotten the spiritual. In many indigenous cultures, the old teach the young, for the old are close to returning to the Great Mystery, as the young have only recently come from it. There are few true elders in WhiteManCulture. Elders like him put tons of meaning into a single sentence, at times so much that it takes a while to unravel it all. He told me once that we all have the same job on the planet- helping each other out. I do some charity work, helping people no-one else helps, as a direct result of this epiphany. About a month later, an epiphany hit me, that yes, that really is true, the truth of that unfolded for me, all at once. Manitonquat reminds us that the search for light and truth is never-ending, there is always more growth. The Children of the Morning Light: Wampanoag Tales as Told By Manitonquat is worth reading only for the story of Moshaup and the Dolphins. This guy is very humble, you'd never know he has spent over 30 years creating Medicine Circle healing groups in Europe, or that he, like a fair number of native elders, has run programs in prisons for almost 40 years, for people forgotten by everyone else. You would never know of the incredible frustrations he's run into, for doing the simplest of service for others. No, he's kind of like the old priest in that Frank Capra movie of Shangri-La, just full of light, speaking simple words from a deep spiritual place. His books are simple, and extremely profound. I think I have all of his books, and read them at intervals, to get what I missed the last time. He has inspired others, including the author of Whispers of the Ancients: Native Tales for Teaching and Healing in Our Time, and Journey to the Ancestral Self: The Native Lifeway Guide to Living in Harmony With Earth Mother, Book 1 (Bk.1), that I know of, both of which are aligned with his writings. If he was Catholic, I suppose he'd be on his way to being a saint. I mean just that. He focuses totally on service to others. I've seen two Christian ministers, 3 Buddhists, and a Sufi who got to his spiritual level, living totally in the heart, but this is not common in any spiritual tradition I've seen. He is also of Scots ancestry, and one sees echoes of the Celtic culture in his statements and writings, also, for he is a bard who transmits the old stories. Manitonquat told a group of people that the purpose of life is "give-away", to gather in all the awareness and stories and whatever else one can, and then to pass it out freely to all who would receive. This book is part of his give-away. It is worthy of study, and application to life. Dr Glenn Morris Path Notes of an American Ninja Master notes that some spiritual books need to be read and re-read, often, well just as with the Tao Te Ching. Manitonquat's books fall in that category. Maybe this book has some flaws, I don't know- but somehow the critics seem unable to produce anything, much less anything better.

that Medicine Story Manitonquat Francis Talbot had to go and change perfectly wonderful creation stories to make his book more marketable. This book is published for children and it is reinforcing the stereotypes the dominant culture has of Indian Peoples.