Posted on 11/09/2002 9:26:40 AM PST by anymouse
When NASA's first American Indian astronaut embarks on his long-awaited journey into space in a few days, he will fly with eagle feathers, arrowheads, a handful of sacred ground and the blessings of the Chickasaw Nation.
"I've always imagined what it would be like to be able to go out the hatch and to see the Earth in all its glory," said John Herrington. "I think it's going to fill me with an incredible sense of who I am."
His flight aboard space shuttle Endeavour is slated for liftoff early Monday.
Herrington will conduct a series of spacewalks outside the international space station with Spanish-born astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria. Not long after Columbus Day, the two crewmates — both 44-year-old U.S. Navy pilots — discussed the historic significance of their pairing.
"It would be like having a German and a Jew go out together" on a spacewalk, Lopez-Alegria said.
Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation in Ada, Okla., said it is wonderful to see two men, whose ancestors may have been enemies, on the same spaceflight. "It has come full circle," he said.
Anoatubby traveled to Cape Canaveral for Herrington's launch, along with 200 other members of the 35,000-strong Chickasaw Nation. An Indian ceremony is planned on the eve of his flight.
"It's a source of real pride for all of us," Anoatubby said.
Herrington's great-grandmother on his mother's side was Chickasaw, making the astronaut one-eighth Indian. Although he did not grow up in an Indian environment, his mother made sure he was registered as a member of the Chickasaw tribe. Herrington said there is Choctaw on his father's side, but he cannot document it.
"I take tremendous pride in who I am, where I came from," Herrington said. "I know that the people I meet who are Native American, there's a connection to me, there's an immediate recognition or belonging."
Like many children of the 1960s, Herrington was fascinated with space travel. He and his brother and a friend would lie on their backs in a big cardboard box and pretend it was an Apollo spacecraft carrying them to the moon.
By the time he got to college, Herrington wanted to be a forest ranger but flunked out. He and his family were always moving — 14 times by his count in Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Texas — and he lacked ambition.
A fellow rock climber persuaded Herrington to return to school and he took up math and engineering at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. That led to the Navy, test pilot school and, in 1996, NASA's astronaut corps.
Herrington, who is married to a non-Indian and has two daughters, is considered the first self-identified American Indian bound for space. Robert Crippen, the pilot of the first shuttle flight, had long thought he was part Cherokee but recently discovered he has no Indian blood.
Six eagle feathers are tucked away for Herrington's 11-day shuttle flight. Chickasaw Nation and Crow Nation flags also will accompany him into orbit, along with a braid of sweet grass, two arrowheads found by relatives, a rock from the sacred site of Bear Butte in South Dakota's Black Hills, wooden flutes and flute music, and a piece of pottery by a Hopi artist.
Herrington wanted to fly some tobacco leaves, too, but NASA vetoed it because of a space agency ban on tobacco aboard its spacecraft.
I suppose the FReeper smoker activists might find this interesting.
Not long after Columbus Day, the two crewmates — both 44-year-old U.S. Navy pilots — discussed the historic significance of their pairing.
"It would be like having a German and a Jew go out together" on a spacewalk, Lopez-Alegria said.
Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation in Ada, Okla., said it is wonderful to see two men, whose ancestors may have been enemies, on the same spaceflight. "It has come full circle," he said.
I guess Herrington and Lopez-Alegria won't be smoking a peace pipe then. :)
Seriously, this cheesey PC claptrap that NASA's Public Affairs Office pushes should be ended. These statements are an insult to Indian (Native) Americans, Americans of Spanish decent, German decent and Jews. As if they need a NASA publicity stunt to get along.
A bar stool?
A privitized space industry would just get to work, not spend its time putting out politically-correct press releases.
Check your job description; somewhere there, it probably says you're an astronaut.
I'm a native American too - born here in 1951. This fancy terminology garbage is starting to get to me. Sorry for the rant... I realize you didn't write it, you just posted it.
The above news story is about an indigenous native American, about whom our ancestral terminology has referred to as American Indian.
By the way, the terms "chief" and "warrior" are not native American expressions originally; they formerly derive from Scotland and various other parts of mainland Europe.
The Air Apaches of the U.S. Army Air Forces flew in the worst of Southwest Pacific Theatre conditions, and however they chose, as have many before and since chosen, to "gear up" for combat by donning war paint.
We still do.
Only the fussy-dom of fascist-socialism that is destroying the Democrat Party, is uncomfortable with the superficial and therein they are lost.
Mike
Native American
Yes. That, and the clinton/gore sellout to the miserable Russians. That's why I got out three years ago. From my resignation letter:
This once-proud program, which sparked the imaginations of millions of Americans such as myself, has seemingly been reduced to some kind of pathetic international welfare agency, transferring billions of US taxpayer dollars directly away from our professed mission and into the accounts of whichever foreign "partners" are favored by our current president.These so-called "partners" have siphoned off American taxpayer money for purposes know only to themselves and provided nothing of value in return to the US taxpayers. The hardware and services that they cynically promised to provide have not materialized and probably never will.
Thanks to the policies of our current administration, the US Space Shuttle program now finds itself being held hostage to the whims of a miserable socialist country run by a declining alcoholic buffoon and a communist legislature.
How could our so-called leaders have let this happen?
Worst of all, it seems that seats on the few remaining Space Shuttle flights are now being handed out in return for political favors or to support causes unrelated to the exploration of space and other than the furtherance of our technical knowledge. Besides being an affront to those of us who once loved the space program, this new policy is a slap in the face to all those dedicated astronauts who have spent years (in some cases 30 years) honing their talents to better serve their love of space exploration.
These new trends are (or should be) alarming to all of us who believe that ability should be the sole criterion in Astronaut selection, and science or "envelope-pushing" should be the sole criteria for mission planning. The American Manned Space Program cannot and will not survive on any other terms.
Right kimosabe, the space program is all about your feelings.
Think he's a liberal?
Anyone who believes that it is a requirement of man's nature to be free and that the function of government is to protect his rights is an American at heart.
The seal is described in The Constitution Of the Chickasaw Nation. Scroll down to the last Section (About the Seal).
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