A woman’s place
They say March is Women’s History Month in the United States. That is good I suppose, but it probably needs to be more than a month.
Considering the fact that every man who has ever walked the earth was brought here by a woman, we probably need much more than a month to do justice to women’s contribution to human history. Even Jesus Christ, the son of God himself, needed a woman to carry him into this dimension.
There are plenty of books, articles and even a few good movies lauding the contribution of women of various backgrounds to the tapestry of human history (I watched one pretty good one last night about the life and travels of the great Gloria Steinem). In the last year or two, there has been more attention paid to the contributions of African and African American women, and rightly so.
What has been missing from this conversation is the contribution of Native American women. And it is still missing. In most of pop culture, Native women are relegated to either the role of cartoon heroine, or to that of poor victim. One has only to consider the average dinner plate to know how false that narrative is.
The contribution of the Indigenous Women of the Americas to the average dinner plate is probably one of the least recognized in human history.
Take a moment to consider, from avocado to chocolate, from corn to tomatoes, we would have none of these without the contributions of Native American women over many thousands of years. The domestication of corn alone should be enough to raise the status of Native American women in the pantheon of human history. This brings us to the story of Selu.
The most important woman in the Cherokee historical/mythological pantheon is Selu, the Corn Mother. In the Cherokee creation story, Selu is the first woman, the mother of the Cherokee people. Created by the Great Spirit himself, she is the contemporary of Eve of the biblical Genesis story. The role she plays in the Cherokee creation story is but one example of the importance of corn to the development of so many of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.
Many communities and cultures of the Americas share some version of the Corn Mother story. This is not surprising when one considers the miracle that is maize, or “Indian Corn”. Depending on what one chooses to do with it, corn can be made into bread, whiskey, sugar, or automotive fuel. There are few plants which can boast of such a variety of uses. But it would not exist as it does without the effort and genius of Indigenous Women. Even more impressive, they were doing all this somewhere around 7,500 BC. In other words, something like 5,000 years before the One True God revealed himself to the patriarch Abraham in the gates of Sumer, he was revealing to the Indigenous Women of the Americas the secrets necessary to maintain the life and health of the peoples he created here, in this land.
3,500 years before the first pyramids of Egypt, 4,500 years before the legendary Minoan civilization, 5,000 years before Brahma revealed himself to the peoples of the Indus valley, and 7,000 plus years before that experiment in paranoia known as the Great Wall of China, Native American women were developing the foundations of modern agriculture. We take way too much for granted these days. Most of all, we take our food for granted. We can afford that luxury due to the work of Native women several thousand years ago.
We live in interesting times. Things are strange. People are strange. We worry about the strangest of things. There are debates about whether one is a man or a woman, what bathroom to use, whether the latest crackpot conspiracy has any validity. There is a reason that Native people have trusted women to be the keepers of tradition and good sense. It is a literal and absolute fact that without Native American women, much of the life we take for granted today would not exist. This is fact, not hyperbole.
This “Women’s History Month” let us take a moment to recognize the contribution of both Mother Mary and Mother Selu. One gave us the Son of God, the other gave us the means to feed all his other children. The fact is, many people would not be alive today without the contribution of Native American Women. Because without Native American women, their ancestors would not have lived long enough to be ancestors.
In just about any endeavor, you’ll benefit by showing resilience – and that’s certainly true when it comes to achieving your financial goals.
Y o u c a n demonstrate this resilience by answering these questions: What is your specific goal? What obstacle do you face in achieving this goal? How can you overcome this obstacle?
Here are some examples of how this resiliency process works:
Goal: Building sufficient retirement funds
To build sufficient retirement income, you need to invest in the financial markets through your 401(k), IRA and other accounts. But how should you respond when these markets go through periods of volatility? Your best defense is to remain invested. If you were to jump out of the market every time it dropped, you’d probably miss out on the rebounds that followed. Also, over a period of decades, the effects of short-term market fluctuations tend to diminish, so while the results of any particular day or week may not look good on your investment statement, the importance of these results may diminish in 10 or 20
years.
Goal: Maintaining steady cash flow
Keeping a steady cash flow is essential to meeting your daily and monthly expenses. So, it’s obviously important that you maintain sufficient earned income. But what happens if you encounter a serious illness or injury that keeps you from work for an extended period?
Depending on the length of time you’re not working, you could feel a real financial pinch, so you may want to consider some type of disability insurance. Your employer may offer a shortterm policy as an employee benefit, but it might not be sufficient, so you may need
to look at private coverage.
Goal: Keeping retirement accounts intact
Ideally, you’d like to leave your IRA, 401(k) and other accounts intact until you need to start tapping into them when you retire. But what if you face an unexpectedly large medical bill or you need to replace your furnace or get a new car? If you don’t have the money readily available, you might be forced to dip into your IRA and 401(k), incurring taxes and potential penalties and leaving yourself fewer resources for retirement. You can help avoid this setback by creating an emergency fund containing three to six months’ worth of living expenses, with the money kept in a liquid, low-risk account.
Goal: Having confidence in your strategy
To achieve your important financial goals, you need a strategy – and you need to believe in it strongly enough to keep following it during all types of stress on the financial markets. It’s not always easy to maintain this conviction – less than half of Americans are confident in their abilities to recover quickly from difficult financial situations, according to a new survey from Edward Jones. One way to help gain this confidence is by working with a financial advisor.
In fact, 36 percent of those surveyed began working with a financial advisor in 2020 for help navigating the past year. The importance of receiving good advice became apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about a variety of financial worries, such as job loss, retirement considerations, caregiving for elderly parents or providing financial support to adult children.
You will face some challenges on your journey toward achieving your financial objectives. But by being resilient, you can stay on the right road.