Lloyd Arneach -- A Special Tale to Tell
© 2001-2002 Carole Moore
Lloyd Arneach opens his program of Native American and human interest stories by speaking in a foreign tongue. Many in the audience don't
understand him. After all, not everyone speaks French. Yes, that's French, not Cherokee. Arneach uses the European language as an ice breaker, something to let the audience know it's OK to laugh when the story's funny. And
besides, the Cherokee language isn't foreign. It was being spoken on these shores long before English settlers arrived. Arneach throws a Cherokee phrase at the audience. Someone answers back in Cherokee and Arneach beams
with pleasure. "You speak Early American?" he asks, then gives a thumbnail sketch of his life: college, followed by four years in service with a tour in Vietnam, then moving to Atlanta where he worked for 3M, Lockheed and
AT&T, programming computers. Arneach says people would find him working on a computer and tell him he was supposed to be working on leathercrafts, not computers. "I have a lot fun with my heritage," Arneach says. At one
point he pulls off his flat-brimmed hat, revealing a "chrome dome" underneath. Pointing to it, Arneach alludes to the fact he's "nineteen-thirty-seconds" Cherokee, and the hair -- or lack thereof?
"That part came from my English ancestors," he says. Arneach, whose mellifluous voice charmed Saturday visitors to the Onslow County Public Library, was asked to speak in honor of Native American month, celebrated in
November. Anyone expecting a pig-tailed Indian in buckskin and feather headdress was due for a disappointment, though. The Cherokee Indians have never dressed like that, except to impress the tourists. "The Plains
Indians wore the big headdresses," he said, adding that the dense woods on Cherokee lands would have made a headdress impractical. "Can you imagine running through the woods wearing one of those things?" he asked the crowd.
Arneach tells light-hearted traditional tales highlighting the Cherokee reverence for nature. He said Native Americans never wasted the animals they killed for food. They used everything from the skin to the hooves and
were grateful for what they had. The American Indian tribes had many things in common with one another: esteem for their elders, love of the land and an appreciation for what Mother Nature has to offer. They also do not differ that
much from their lighter-skinned countrymen. "We have honor and respect just like everyone else; I just have a good tan year round," he said. Arneach tells stories about things non-Indian, too -- stories that
emphasize the spirit and indomitable side of both man and beast. He recounted the tale of a young man beaten so badly in a robbery that the people who found him thought he was dead. When the man gasped, they realized he was alive,
but because he was so badly injured, no one thought he could survive. His face was crushed and disfigured to the point that the only job he could find was as a circus freak. Eventually, Arneach said, the young man met a
priest who introduced him to a surgeon. That doctor, along with another surgeon, performed reconstructive surgery on the young man. The man recovered and went on to marry a beautiful woman, have beautiful children and become a
success in a field he would never even consider before the surgery. The man's name was Mel Gibson. Arneach pauses while the crowd lets his message sink in, then smiles. He likes to give them a reason to pause and
think. Later, he tells what he calls "the dark side" of the Indian story: The Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee. The stories of how Indians were driven from their ancestral lands, suffering terrible hardship and death
in the process, are emotional ones for Arneach. After the crowd has gone he confesses there are some chapters to the story of his people that bring him to the brink of tears. Arneach doesn't tell those tales to all his audiences.
Instead, he weighs their reaction to his tales, feels them out, sees what kind of crowd he has before deciding whether to open his heart and allow others inside. Arneach talks without bitterness. There's no recrimination,
nothing to make the audience squirm. And he doesn't hold non-Indians responsible for the way the American Indian was treated in the past. He doesn't hold present-day Americans responsible for what their ancestors did.
"You didn't do this, so why should I?" he asks. Arneach, who wears a ribbon shirt, asks his friend and companion, Miami Lively, to explain the significance of the shirt to the audience. Lively, who is also a Native
American, says it represents a "ghostdance" shirt. Arneach says she's the perfect person to answer those types of questions. With a college degree in Native American Studies, she laughs when she talks about some of
Arneach's past experiences. She recounts how once a visitor to Cherokee, where Arneach lives, asked him "How long do you people live?" Lively recalls Arneach's answer.
"He said, 'Until we die,' and the man took it so seriously," she said. Arneach wants his audience to understand he's no different from them. He's an American, a human being, a father, a son and, by happy coincidence,
both a member of the Eastern Cherokee Tribe as well as a terrific storyteller. He's also, says Lively, a world-class expert on snakes. She talks of the time when Arneach and a friend were stopped by a sheriff in a very
rural part of Georgia. The men had been collecting rattlesnakes for their venom, according to Lively. She said the sheriff asked him what was in the trunk of his car and, when he started to answer, stopped Arneach with,
"Never mind, you'll just lie about it anyway. Just give me the keys." Arneach handed the man his car keys with a shrug. The rattlesnakes were starting to stir and he could hear the rattles beginning to whisper from the
trunk, but the sheriff was so intent he didn't notice. The man unlocked the trunk and recoiled in horror, backing up so fast he fell and dropped his cigar, much to the delight of the young deputies who were also present.
Arneach was sent on his way very quickly. On stage, the man with the gently compelling voice talks about things Indian. He explains the rough game of Indian ball, upon which the modern lacrosse is based, walks through
some of the filming of "The Man Who Dances with Wolves", plays the flute and, with each step, brings his audience closer to understanding how Arneach's people view the world around them. Afterwards, Arneach talks about how
he became a storyteller. He says his babysitter needed to earn her Indian lore badge for the Girl Scouts, so he gave a talk to her troop. Soon, he was being asked to repeat the experience, eventually blossoming out into a
full-fledged storyteller. "To think, I got started in this because my babysitter needed a Girl Scout badge," Arneach says. The girl received her badge and, in the process, started Arneach on a career that has taken
him across the country and into the hearts of his people -- American citizens all.
Home -- About the Humor Writer -- Getting Older . . . Not Better -- Potpourri
Encounters of the Kid Kind -- Life With A Man The Perils of Eileen -- The New Adventures of Eileen
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