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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!