No doubt you have encountered a bureaucratic snafu or two from time to time. If not, you are lucky. Surely you have read about someone who purchased an appliance; a refrigerator that refused to keep their left-overs cold or that broke down soon after installation, or a toaster, that wouldn’t toast their English muffins.

            Call after call to the dealer or manufacturer failed to elicit a repair or even offer any satisfactory response. You may have reached a “service” person who you couldn’t understand.

            Finally, you resorted to contacting a local newspaper’s ombudsman, or TV station’s consumer help reporter who quickly…sometimes…wades through the bureaucracy to resolve the issue or gets your money refunded…sometimes.

            The word “snafu” is an acronym which means: “Situation normal, all…” you can guess the rest. Suffice to say, it was coined by soldiers during World War II to describe the bureaucracy of the Army. In my experience, bureaucrats exist to interpret the fine print that you haven’t read or don’t understand, and to aggravate you, making your life miserable.

            Enter poor Kinley Maner, a 10-year-old girl in Arizona, who learned this the hard way. Young Kinley decided to raise chickens because they were “cute” and selling them at the County Fair would be “fun.” Her folks encouraged Kinley because they felt caring for chickens was a good lesson to learn and an introduction to running a business. It wasn’t long before a bureaucratic snafu spoiled her fun.

            Kinley was successful in earning $2,100 by auctioning six birds at the fair. The Small Stock Association, sponsors of the fair, wrote the kid a check which Mom deposited in her own account for safekeeping. Shortly after, Mom received a notice that her bank account had been cancelled.

            After spending many hours on the phone with multiple nameless customer service persons she could hardly understand, the big nationally-known bank finally explained that the check “had been frozen” because the Small Stock Association’s phone number on the check was not in service. Even after the association’s official, who wrote the check, visited the local branch to explain that their number had been changed and the check was legitimate, the bank refused to un-freeze Mom’s account and “there was nothing they could do about it.” Kinley’s money had flown the coop. No money for Kinley!

            Funny how a little threat of bad publicity will cut through the bureaucracy of a company. Mom contacted the local TV station, which broadcast Kinley’s tale on their evening newscast. Yup, you guessed it. Shortly after the broadcast the big nationally known bank apologized, blaming the whole thing…wait for it…on a bureaucratic snafu. Kinley’s $2,100, chicken feed to the bank, a fortune to Kinley, was returned. Mom’s account was un-frozen.

            Kinley used some of the money (perhaps to buy more chickens?) and the rest went into a new college account, presumably at a different bank.      

            Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

Thoughts on…

By Dick Morgado

One of the most heavily attended events in Mattapoisett took place on November 23 when Linda Coombs of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah was Invited to talk about her book

Colonization and the Wampanoag Story. At the invitation of a joint partnership between the library and the Mattapoisett Museum, Coombs guided the audience through early first contacts between the Wampanoags and Europeans. She has spent the majority of her life educating both indigenous people and those whose ancestry is derived from European settlers on traditions, day-to-day life, and the languages of her people.

            Coombs shared her insights into how the Wampanoags once lived and the importance of maintaining and strengthening indigenous culture. First, the author and educator talked about her newest book Colonization and the Wampanoag Story. She explained the target audience for the book is middle-school-aged children and older. The pages of the book are set up with black pages representing the historical novel, a story of young girls, members of a Wampanoag Tribe living their lives by the seasons, the animals and the natural environment successfully and in reverence to Mother Earth. White pages are researched text elaborating on the known history of the southeastern Massachusetts tribes.

            We were told about the Doctrine of Discovery, written papal mandates granting explorers wide ranging rights to take, exploit, and even kill non-Christian people. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History writes, “The Papal Bull ‘Inter Caetera,’ issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World.

            The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” This “Doctrine of Discovery” became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western expansion. In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held ‘that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands. In essence, American Indians had only a right of occupancy, which could be abolished.’”

             Coombs said that although indigenous people, while not practicing a “religion,” were however, deeply entrenched in a belief system that recognized Earth’s importance and its very foundation to all life-forms. Coombs said with sadness and a bit of sarcasm, “…the English thought they had a better way of life.”

            Some facts Coombs shared were that there are/were 69 villages that spoke the same language, each tribe had a leader and that plagues decimated entire regions were once tribal people had thrived – a 90-percent death rate. Oral histories, a well-known form of sharing culture and ancestorial history, were nearly completely erased.

            To say indigenous people have persevered in spite of attempts to annihilate them is an under-statement. Today there is an awakening that has been growing although it has been slowly rising over decades. That awakening is the importance of all people but in this case America’s indigenous people, to the overall survival of our species. We live on one planet, need the same things to sustain life, food, air, water – we need each other. Oh, one more thing, Coombs gives us, as close as is possible, the real Thanksgiving story in the book. You already know the ending.

            To learn more about Linda Coombs read Colonization and the Wampanoag Story available at the library or simply search her name on the internet, you’ll find her.

Mattapoisett Free Public Library and Mattapoisett Museum

By Marilou Newell