 body, soldier boy.
I talked to him later, at the buffet table.
“It felt like they really appreciated what I’ve been doing,” said Travis Williams, an Odawa.
It was his first Winter Solstice celebration.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “The music, the people -– it’s a really good atmosphere. I feel really welcome here.”
Someone gave Fay an eagle feather, which only native people legally can obtain, in tribute to her tireless efforts to help the local Indian community. In the native community, there is no greater symbol of respect.
I felt embraced, too, a stranger in a warm and welcoming family.
It was Tom Lowler’s third celebration. The retired owner of a firm that sells industrial instruments, Tom described himself as “very non-traditional.” His mother was Wyandot and his father was Dutch and Irish, “but I’ve always known I’m an Indian,” he said.
“I’ve always been proud of it. But I ran a big company, and I only got involved when I was semi-retired.”
He had on his beige Wyandot tribal sweatshirt with a patch bearing a green turtle, the tribe’s symbol.
The various Wyandot tribes are known collectively as the Turtle people, and historically have lived in both the United States and Canada. The Wyandot Nation of Anderdon are still concentrated in southwest Detroit and its downriver suburbs.
“Our tribal roll has in excess of 1,000 members,” he said.
About 200 of them live on Grosse Isle just south of Detroit, where Tom grew up and developed a strong connection to the Detroit River.
“We used to sit on the riverbank and talk about how our ancestors used to run back and forth in canoes to Canada,” he said, remembering. “Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to live back then?”
There was a lot of heartfelt concern expressed for the planet.
“There were once wild rice fields everywhere in Michigan,” said Ray St. Clair, 39, an Ojibwe language student at UM and EMU who returns to his reservation in White Earth, Minn., “The Place of the White Clay,” to harvest wild rice from a canoe.
(Wild rice isn’t really rice; it’s a marsh grass that still grows naturally in a few places, where it is harvested and sold by Native Americans. The wild rice sold at supermarkets typically is farm grown.)
Ray, a Gaawaabaabignikaag –- I had him write it down for me –- said he was working with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to reseed some of the state’s lakes with wild rice.
He had on a handmade green-and-brown cotton shirt decorated with gold metallic leaf appliqués, my favorite shirt of the evening.
“My auntie made it,” he said. Ray said he was on his way to Mt. Pleasant to Saginaw Chippewa Winter Solstice celebration on Saturday. “Mother Earth is going to cleanse herself with snow, so it’s time to get ready for next year,” he said.
“I have so much to be thankful for –- my language and my culture. You can’t take anything with you, so I’ve decided to give back to my community, to my culture.
“It’s such a beautiful, beautiful culture. We have to leave something for our kids. Who are we if we’re destroying everything?”
Many who attended on Friday evening repeatedly thanked the Creator “for bringing us together on this beautiful night.”
Lisa Parrish, 45, a former Detroit police officer and now an American Indian Health nurse, said she was sorry to see it end.
“I love it,” she said. “There’s this feeling of connection. That’s the basis our community. I wish the rest of the world could live like this.
“It’s hard to go back to the outside, everyday life. It’s often so cold.”
She said she was half French and German, and didn’t look obviously Native American, with pale skin and brunette hair. “I’m Cheyenne and Cherokee and I’ve been adopted by the Shawnee,” she said.
Lisa “always had a hole” in her heart before attending her first powwow in the early 1990s, she said. Then, "when I walked in and heard the drums for the first time, that hole I could never fill was filled up and I balled like a baby."
I followed Jose outside. He was carrying his two drums, and on the way I asked him about the fire.
“The fire is our life,” he said. “The fire and the water are our main sources of survival.”
I watched him walk into the circle and stop for a minute, his long thin braids and brown face barely illumined by the dying fire.
When he came back, I asked him to share his private thoughts.
“I said goodnight to the fire,” he said. “And my drums were blessed, too, by the smoke.”
He gave me a wide smile. Then he said, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and I want a hug, too!”
COME BACK TOMORROW -- or anytime this week -- for our final Christmas story, which looks ahead to Epiphany. Feel free to share these stories with friends and invite others to visit this site and enjoy your favorite holiday story with you.
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK, please. Click on the "Comment" link at the end of this story online to leave a comment for other readers. Or, you can always Email me, ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm, by clicking here.
Great Blog!
Posted by: pam perry | January 02, 2008 at 02:27 AM
Great Blog! Thank you David for starting this! Pam
Posted by: pam perry | January 02, 2008 at 02:28 AM<commit_before>/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package org.apache.sling.jcr.resource.internal.helper;

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.URISyntaxException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

import org.apache.sling.api.resource.Resource;
import org.apache.sling.api.resource.ValueMap;
import org.apache.sling.jcr.resource.internal.JcrResourceResolver2;

/**
 * The <code>MapEntry</code> class represents a mapping entry in the mapping
 * configuration tree at <code>/etc/map</code>.
 * <p>
 * 
 * @see http://cwiki.apache.org/SLING/flexible-resource-resolution.html
 */
public class MapEntry implements Comparable<MapEntry> {

    private static final Pattern[] PATH_TO_URL_MATCH = {
        Pattern.compile("http/([^/]+)\\.80(/.*)?$"),
        Pattern.compile("https/([^/]+)\\.443(/.*)?$"),
        Pattern.compile("([^/]+)/([^/]+)\\.(\\d+)(/.*)?$") };

    private static final String[] PATH_TO_URL_REPLACEMENT = { "http://$1$2",
        "https://$1$2", "$1://$2:$3$4" };

    private final Pattern urlPattern;

    private final String[] redirect;

    private final int status;

    public static String appendSlash(String path) {
        if (!path.endsWith("/")) {
            path = path.concat("/");
        }
        return path;
    }

    /**
     * Returns a string used for matching map entries against the given request
     * or URI parts.
     * 
     * @param scheme The URI scheme
     * @param host The host name
     * @param port The port number. If this is negative, the default value used
     *            is 80 unless the scheme is "https" in which case the default
     *            value is 443.
     * @param path The (absolute) path
     * @return The request path string {scheme}://{host}:{port}{path}.
     */
    public static String getURI(String scheme, String host, int port,
            String path) {

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.append(scheme).