Scout Cloud Lee - Survivor Vanuatu
Story found at Powwows. com click on Paul's name
By : Paul G
Rating : 
On
Survivor Vanuatu Scout Cloud Lee made an impact on the game and placed
third in an 39 day challenge. Scout is the first American Indian to
play Survivor. PowWows.com was honored to be able to talk with
Scout. Below is the transcript of our conversation.
How
did you make it as far as you did, being one of the older players.
And with taking a strong leadership role where other previous
older Survivors rode the coattails of others—Clay and Rudy.
First
of all I ve spent the last 26 years doing corporate training. I
started the corporate ropes phenonomin in 1981 with my partner.
So I ve spent many years doing this kind of challenge
activities—river trips,ropes courses
and that kind of thing. So when Survivor came out, it
was kind of a natural for me. And I do a lot of coaching for
corporate executives. So to that extint, I had some skills in
leadership that were not the control and command kind of skills but to
lead by influence, lead by example. So I used that in the game.
And you know my strategy going in the game, knowing that I had a
physical disability with my leg. I think they cast me for part of
that because Chad had an artificial leg, I had an artificial knee, and
they knew it was going to be men s and women s tribes
out there. Which is culturually consistent with what goes on in
Vanuatu. So I went in and I knew I could make myself useful.
For the first half of the game, you have to make yourself useful.
I m am an incredibly good builder. I ve built a lot of
homes and villages and indigenious structures here on my ranch and on 5
continents as I ve traveled. So I had those building skills and I
had the skills to find food on the land, to find water out of bamboo.
I grew up in Florida. I knew how to make fire. So for
the women Iwas an incredibly strong influence in the first part of the
game. And very nurturing for them. So I was able to make it
to the merge. After you get to the merge, even though I didn t
have the strong physicality, I was very
good on the mental games. To make it to the merge the physical
limitations I had with my leg became an advantage. I was not a
physical threat. Because the strategy is to take out
those strong people. So I continued to strategize. You know
there was a point where our alliance with Ami and Leann, Leann went off
at got herself a little touched by champagne and she moved me out of
the final 4 slot and moved Jules up. And at that point we had to
change the game. So we did strategically.
We didn t see it on the show, but did you and Julie talk about your Indian heritage?
Well,
I discussed it to the extent that even though I have my great, great,
grandmother is Eastern Seminole, so my heart is Seminole. But I
don t have as much Native American heritage as she does. She has
a lot, but she is adopted. And doesn t know anything about it.
She has never had any influence. To that exent, I ve
written a book called the Circle is Sacred [put a link here] which
includes a lot of the information I ve shared and gathered over 26
years traveling all over the planet with a lot of indigenous people.
So we talked about it. That was my meaning when I said to
her when she left the thing go back to your roots. Right now we
re working, there s a dear friend of mine Sarah Smith [should I omit
the name??] in Canada,
a wonderful, wonderful teacher. And Julie is from Maine, so her
tribal roots are some where up in that neck of the woods. She has
said that she would very much like to get with Grandmother Smith.
And GS would be fabulous. So we talked about that.
And I talked with her parents when I wasout in LA, her adopted
parents. They are very, very supportive of Julie having the
experience of going back and maybe learning about her heritage.
What was it like seeing an Indengious culture removed from modern society?
I
think part of my casting, because I was almost cast on Survivor 7 the
Pearl Islands, but they knew Vanuatu was coming up, and they knew
I had strong roots to indengious people because I ve traveled so much
and been with aboriginal people from everywhere. And I think they
cast me somewhat for that because they knew that I had a spiritual
propensity towards them and an appreciation for what was going on
there. And it is how it was and often now where the men will sit
on one side of the arbor and the women on the other. That
continues to be very cultural
in Vanuatu. The women are very much in the background and they do
a lot of the work. They do the gardening. They take care of
the pigs. But they are right now beginning to develop, where the
men s hieracrchal identity comes with the pig tusks. The number
of pig tusk curls those tusks make. Once a pig s tusk curls once,
it can no longer eat on its own. It has to be hand feed.
And the women do the feeding. The men who have the most of
those curled pig tusks, that gives them a lot of status. The
women have panderas matts that they make now. Beautiful,
beautiful. You saw over the fire sometimes we d use the panderas
root as a stove. We d stack them up because they don t burn very
fast and use it to put our pots on. That plant, the women are now
making these incredibly beautiful panderas mats and their weaving their
heritage. Each one has a different design and they are weaving it
into the mats. And they are beginning to identify their own kind
of hierarchy among the women which is interesting.
Were you able to interact with any of the Vanuatu other than what we saw on camera?
A
little bit. Of course actually, Da, which is not his indigenous
name, but for the show Da had the chance to visit with Da a lot more
than you saw. In fact Twila and I stayed up the whole time he was
there even all night long and we went crabbing together. I mean
we gathered everything we could possibly gather from his experienceon
the land, He was really amazing. And then just towards the
end of the game, on the 38th day before we had gone out to do that
challenge I had seen some of the native people sort of sneaking through
the jungle. You had to move further and further from camp to get
ironwood which is the only wood that would burn for any length of time.
And I had walked maybe a mile back into the jungle and was
dragging some wood out and a couple stepped out on to the trail to talk
to me. They wanted to know my name which of course I couldn t
tell them. We conversed enough to know, I did learn to speak a
little Vislama which is their language before I went so that if I did
encounter anybody I could at least you know say hello and how are you.
So we communicated enough to know that he would bring me his
address and hide it under a rock, we identified a place in the jungle.
So the next day I went back and sure enough he had written his
address there, heand his wife. So after the gag order was
released when we got back I wrote them and thye wrote back and I wrote
back. So we are in communication now with afamily from Vanauatu,
he and his grandchildren and children.
So that has been really rich for me and hopefully be able to go
back one day and stay with them. I have an open invitation to
stay in the village with him and his family. That would be great.
I would have loved to have won the challenge that took us to the
feast there in the village, but that didn t happen.
On that
first ceremony it did appear, you did mention the Vanautu ceremonies
were a little male centered and it appeared the women on the show
seemed to get a little offended by that. Were you able to talk to
the other women about it?
Yes I did as a matter of fact.
You know and some of them did. Mia, it is real obvious
where head was. Some of them, Eliza even when she went to the
ceremony later on Eliza she announced proudly when she got back that
she had told the Vanautu people that she was an American and that she
___________ which is just so offensive to somebody (this was garbled on
the tape – background movement made it impossible to hear). They
have no experience of respect of other cultures. So yes I did
talk with and it just isthe way it is out there. Their medicine
man came out there, their spiritual leader. He used a stick and
actually poked the women out of the men s tribe and almost pushed us
over to where the women and children were. But let me tell you
the joy for me in sitting in that ceremony is the women, they laughed
and laughed and laughed. They got such a kick out of the antics
that were going on with the men, seeing the men drink their cava, the
slaughter of the pig (which you guys didn t get to see you just knew it
happened) you know all that stuff the women laughed and laughed and the
children laughed and laughed. Whatever was happening for them it
was very meaningful, there was a sacredness but it was also that
incredible Indian humor that you know about.
We have mentioned
here a couple of times that there are things that we don t get to see.
Having watched a couple of past seasons, how different was it for you – how different was it from what you expected from just watching it on t.v.?
You
know I went out there never to win the money. It was never my
thought. It was to actually experience how in the world CBS
creates a documentary. I think the thing I want most people to
know is that it is truly a documentary. They go through a very
rigorous casting process and out of that, this time, picked 18 people.
And this time took us to hell and dropped us off. As
beautiful as Vanautu looks it is an incredibly hostile environment.
Thecoral and beaches you cannot walk on. The coral is so
thick inthe ocean, you can t swim. Those zebra striped snakes,
they will kill you in a heartbeat. It is an instant cardiac
arrest, so you can t really swim. Finding the food…of course I
knew taro, that was good..and I knew watercress and I knew coconut and
I knew hearts of palm because I grew up in Flordia. So we were
able to eat that basic stuff. And then Da came and showed us the
mantiock which is a root similar to the yucca root. And the leaf
of the trees that we ate were similar to spinach. So we were able
to put mantiock and those leaves together and make a decent stew that
you could live on. It was different because I had no idea that
the terrain would be that rugged. It was cold in Vanautuu Paul.
It was winter down there. It was 50 degrees at night and
raining, wind blowing off the ocean. It was freezing, it was just
horrible. They didn t give us any food
which was different. They had always given food before.
They gave us no rain gear, They gave us no fleeces, so we
were cold. We had to spoon each other. We were pelted with
rain until we got out hut built. We had to us palm fronds to try
and keep the rain from stinging, pelting us, trying to lay on the
ground. Crabs crawled all over us. So the physical, you
know the actual survival challenge was much tougher than I thought it
was going to be. I thought we would be sitting on a sandy
beach
Comment about this Story from one who knows them in person!! In Oklahoma
It was nice to see
someone with what ever small degree of Native Blood (1/100 something
Seminole) on that show. Ms. Scout (Cloud -she gave it
to herself) Lee did well for an older woman. Her twin sister
works for our tribe and they learned about the Indian blood long
after they were grown, 1/100 something Seminole?. What they
know about Natives/traditionals was learned later from the those with
the knowledge or books. I believe its not easy to represent
a culture you came into after you are 45 or so older in age.
Personally I would like to have a real traditional who has
learned survival skills as it was handed down by their relatives and
family, as was mine. Those of us who know them (Twins) don't have
a great deal of respect for them as you might be able to tell from
this. This is my thoughts only. I rarely post and as you can tell, my
thoughts are not the main stream!
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