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Screw Robert's Rules of Order, let's get a talking stick and an answer feather!
Take the talking stick but try to be polite Today's question: What does "talking stick," as in the casino's name, refer to or represent? I don't think it's a microphone. Actually, microphone isn't a bad guess. Not a great guess, but not a bad guess. In many Native American cultures, the talking stick was a way of kind of keeping order and being sort of democratic in council meetings. When all the people – mostly guys – were gathered around at a council meeting to decide on something important the senior elder would pass around the talking stick. If you held such a stick you could speak your mind without being interrupted by that nut case on the other side of the council fire. In some cultures they also used something called an answer feather. If you held such a thing and the nut case holding the talking stick asked you a question holding the feather, often an eagle feather, allowed you to answer. I'm sorry, but I don't know to what extent the talking stick was used in the cultures of the Navajo, Hopi, Pima, Apache, Maricopa or other Native Americans from hereabouts. When you think about it, this talking stick thing isn't a bad idea. This is especially true if you think about some of the comments some of you people post in response to news stories on azcentral.com. Comments on this column on our website have fallen off sharply since my masters instituted a Facebook-remarks-only policy to columnists' blogs and I miss hearing from some of you regulars. But some of the stuff some people post on regular news stories makes one kind of nauseous. Try to behave, people. Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8612. |