Abstract
In September 1973 Bob Thomas finally had a chance to collect his thoughts on the movement. The Indian Ecumenical Conference was nearly four years old; organizers had convened the annual gathering four times, the last three at Stoney Indian Park. Thomas and his colleagues had found a way to get people talking across tribal and religious boundaries, but now their conversation was veering from its original course. The Cherokee traditionalist was dismayed by the proliferation of anti-Christian rhetoric—and by his realization that the Conference was in danger of going the way of the traditional movement. He was also tired of being caught in the middle of intertribal ceremonial tensions caused by the growing presence of urban youth and non-native spectators.1
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Notes
Thomas, September 15, 1973; Bob Thomas, letter to service committee, [January 1974], ACC/NMO, collection GS85–6, box 1, file 19; Rolland H. (Bud) Wright, “Experience as Narrative, Culture, and Person,” in A Good Cherokee, A Good Anthropologist: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Thomas, edited by Steve Pavlik (Los Angeles, CA: American Indian Studies Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1998), 327.
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© 2003 James Treat
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Treat, J. (2003). “This Sacred Event Interrupted”. In: Around the Sacred Fire. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05175-2_9
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