Gaia: TRIBE: Choosing Intentional Community - GENERAL SEEK & FIND/HOW TO DISCUSSION - Tipi Frank and the Search for Tribe

Tipi Frank and the Search for Tribe

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:21:41 -0000

Since the mid eighties, he's made his life putting up tipis all over the south, including a wonderful tipi village in Athens, Georgia. Now I'm coaxing Tipi Frank up north, at least as far as Maryland. It's heartening to hear this itinerant idealist wax poetic about tipis and their effect on the people who encounter them. It makes me wonder about the deeper symbolism of tipis, and as soon as I do, he starts to ruminate in that direction. "Tipis speak to people's yearning for something tribal, direct and natural."

When I spoke to him by phone last night, he was visiting a site where he'd put up a tipi for someone's weekend-long Halloween bash last year. When the folks found they had sixteen guests for Thanksgiving, the dinner was moved to the tipi! Stop and soak that in:

Thanksgiving in a tipi...

In north central Florida, where he's home-based for ten years, Tipi Frank has been participating in a forming ecovillage. Community is a hard thing to birth, and after 4 years, it's his tipis that are the standing, habitable structures on this historic piece of land in the Santa Fe River floodplane. Tipi Frank feels a deep connection to this land, which is the site of an American Indian settlement, the first tribe whose culture was intentionally erased by Europeans, a few short years after Columbus.

But it's time to move on. What will be next for Tipi Frank? Like so many of us, he's seeking a tribe, not in the traditional (born-into) sense, but a "tribe of choice." But choice makes things complicated--Tribe where and with whom? Are we ready for a tipi village on the White House lawn?

I'm visiting Ravenkeeper during my Kentucky trip. She's answered her "where." She owns a farm in the mountains with several houses, pastures and a woods with many native plants. She's struggling to identify her "with whom."

Her vision is to turn her farm into a playwright's retreat center. Her profile is:

http://ravenkeeper.gaia.com/

If interested, contact her and visit her place! Maybe it needs a tipi! I'll post a review in TRIBE: Choosing Intentional Community when I get back.

So what does tribe look like for you? Where is your "where?" How are you looking for your "with whom?" I'm sure gaia.com is a piece of the puzzle for many of us. I'll be expanding my discussion of these questions on my new website,

http://www.hippiechickdiaries.com/

which should be up in two to three weeks.

Happy Trails,

Wren

Re: Tipi Frank and the Search for Tribe

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:26:15 -0000

Wren.. Happy to hear you're going to go see Ravenkeeper! I enjoyed the story of Tipi Frank. If he ever has the inclination to visit the northwest have him look me up. I have ALWAYS wanted a tipi! Your Thanksgiving story was wonderful too. It makes me want a Tipi even more now, as it would be a wonderful tradition to start in my family. Love and Hugs..PE

Re: Tipi Frank and the Search for Tribe

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:06:07 -0000

Hi Wren,
    Ditto for what PeaceEagle said. However, I am afraid you might have scared Frank and 10,000 other men away by reporting that I need a maintenance man. I am actually my own maintenance woman, although I did n't look like it when you were here, because my houses looked so bad -- but any house falls down if you don't use it, and I haven't been to the farm since 2002. After you left, I commenced work, and yesterday I took a pair of used double doors to one house to hang. I am NOT looking for a man to take care of me!!1 In fact, I wind up taking care of men as well as women. . .I can plumb and they can't, 99.9% of the time.
  That said, I was interested in Frank, if he is around. . .he sounds like the kind of person who could genuinely fit into a community. However, I am curious why he b uilds tipis, which were originally used only on the plains, weren't they? The Cherokees used river cane and built huts in this area, and the river cane is returning to the Ky. river bottoms after 100 years. Buffalo grazed in the cane, which got the name "buffalo grass" as a joke apparently, since it's awful big grass!
   How does he make tipis? I would not want the elk killed on the farm for tipi hides, and there are no buffalos. I prefer the idea of using stones or recycled materials to build wsee cottages for the playwrights coming to the farm for their artistic homesite.
    Real native Americans laugh at non-natives who think that everybody lived in tipis. . .in fact, the Cherokees went underground in the winter. Tipis were for nomads, and the Cherokees were not nomads. I wondered how Frank would feel about stone yrurts, fofr     ex