Indigenous Ability

  [Expanded with Old Man Film Recommendations.] For some it was Bruce Lee. For others, Chuck Norris. For those of a more recent vintage it may be Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, or Tony Jaa—all excellent by the way. Me, as a 58-year-old man and child of the 70’s, sure I had my Bruce Lee poster phase but, the real filmic influences, the ones that grabbed by my eye, my imagination, my soul, my aesthetic were two icons grounded right here in the grand ol’ American tradition—yeah, yeah, Billy Jack Korean Hapkido, Bong Soo-Han and all that…we’ll get to that. My youngster eye went to Charles Bronson and Tom Laughlin’s character of American Indian half-breed, Billy Jack. But, even here I am specific—it was not the Billy Jack of the increasingly hippie-dippie self-indulgent sequels, it was the original Billy Jack, even here less the Billy Jack of the 1971 film titled Billy Jack . I was smitten, captured, held by the 1967 quasi-biker flick, The Born Losers . In this version w...

  What do the Ha Che Cha Gi of Hapkido, the Tendangan Ular Sanca of Pencak Silat, and the Heel Kick of Pananjakman have in common? Well, mostly everything. How do they differ from the Wuh'pi'ta'pu'ni' Su'an'ni'ru of the Plains Tribes or the Tomahawk Kick of Lumberjack scrums? Well, that is the subject of today's sermon. We open with an anecdote to illustrate one of today’s two points. Two trappers, one old, one young, wound up hunting and travelling together for a season. The younger respects the elder’s wisdom and know-how and keeps an avid eye on all that he does. He treats this season as one of intensive study. He watches how the old man cuts for sign, where he places traps, where he skips traps in areas that seemed fertile ground at first glance. He even subtly tries to imitate the old man’s series of odd rolling movements that he performs after he alights from the dugout canoe and just before they head off to trail game. In short, whatever the...