Sacred Fire Magazine Issue 11

WHALE FROM THE DEPTHS

WHAT IS KIN

THE GRASPING EGO

DRIVING THROUGH DAM-NATION SACREDFIREMAGAZINE.COM

THE HEART OF THE LIVING WORLD

ELIOT COWAN

CRISTOBAL GONZALEZ SEVEN SACRED

VISIONS IN YARN

HEALING THE WOUNDS OF COLUMBUS

$7.95 U.S. / $9.75 CANADA

I S S U E 11

SONGS OF THE MOUNTAINS

UNDER THE RIVER WE ARE ALL THE SAME ABANDONING THE PADDLE

SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION

Speaking The Whole World is

For many, many thousands of years,

humankind experienced every facet of the world as being alive with spirit. The earliest peoples regularly communicated with the plants, with the animals, and with the natural forces of the world.

This was not a religious practice, not a belief system. It was an everyday fact of life. These relationships were essential to our health and well being.

Why should we care how early people lived?

After all, we’re modern now. Haven’t we conquered the earth?

Haven’t we harnessed the elemental forces of nature? Don’t we live lives of great power, comfort and excitement?

Meanwhile...the whole world suffers. Call it climate change.

Call it social injustice. Or groundwater pollution, drug addiction, eroded topsoil, ethnic cleansing, ocean dead zones, family dysfunction, extinct species, autism, or profound feelings of helplessness, alienation and depression.

Call it what you will. When we treat everything in Creation like “inanimate resources” rather than living beings, we create tremendous imbalance in the world.

Sacred Fire Foundation is here to promote listening. The kind of deep listening that comes from hearing, not with our minds, but with our hearts.

To bring balance back into the world, we need to listen to the people who have come before us, the ancestors.

We need to listen to the people alive today whose traditions remind us of the stories and lessons that served humankind for thousands of years.

And we need to listen to the living spirits of nature that are there to help us awaken to all of life.

Listen deeply.

Be in conversation with the world.

Sacred Fire Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, supports initiatives that honor and sustain traditional knowledge and indigenous spiritual approaches, because these ancient lifeways foster global balance and healing.

MIKENORTON/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

sacredfirefoundation.org

On our Cover Kate Baldwin photographed Cristobal Gonzalez in Nayarit, Mexico in September 2009.

CONTENTS

8

11 14 DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

4 | Publisher’s Note

12 | Out of the Frying Pan

Mysterious Evidence

5 | Flares from Our Readers

The Dammed

By Larry Messerman

A Little Help for Our Friends + Delicious Frosting + Your Liberal Agenda + Grabbing with Gusto

14 | Light and Shadow

6 | Our Contributors

15 | Dreams of the Holy

7 | Editor’s Note

The Universal Drumming

8 | Flint and Tinder

The Drowning Island + The Crows and the Ashram + Not Just Howling at the Moon, The Wolf at Twilight

by Kent Nerburn + Born into the Chaos of Change, Children of the Amazon, A Film by Denise Zmekhol 2 Issue 11

Ego: Friend or Foe

By Rob Preece

9

POETRY 23 | Laugh Your Way Home

By Mokasiya

47 | Earth Song

By Katharine Dancing Heart Gregg

Whale Dreaming By Barry Williams & Renata Ritzman

17 | Logs for the Fire The Oarlock

By Kawan Sangaa “Woody” Morrison

56 | Final Flicker Weaving Kin

By Kim Stafford

15

FEATURES

18 | The Lone Leopard

An Interview with John Lockley, Xhosa Sangoma Years of dreams and unexplained illness lead a white South African to his calling as a traditional healer. By Jeff Baker

PREVIOUS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DENISE ZMEKHOL; KITTY COLLINS; ROB PREECE; MACE FLEEGER. THIS PAGE: BETH WHITE

24 | The Huichol and the

Sacred Land Living in good relationship with the world is not just a noble sentiment; it’s a matter of life and death. By Eliot Cowan

28 | The Visionary The Sacred

Art of Cristobal Gonzalez With vivid colors and precise lines, the Huichol artist brings to life the stories of his people and the visions of his dreams.

By Rosette Royale

38 | Forgiving Columbus

When wounds to our bodies and psyches correspond to wounds in our cultures and in nature herself, how can 500 years of oppression be healed?

By Deanna Jenné

48 | Still

In the busyness of modern life, is it even possible to sit still for four hours? By Zan Jarvis

38

Copitl Tapia Aztec Dancer from Mexico lighting the copal

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 3

Sacred Fire The Heart of the Living World Issue Number Eleven

sacredfiremagazine.com

PUBLISHER SHARON BROWN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JONATHAN MERRITT CREATIVE DIRECTOR MACE FLEEGER MANAGING EDITOR KATHARINE DANCING HEART GREGG CONTRIBUTING EDITOR CHRIS SCHLAKE COPY EDITORS KATHARINE DANCING HEART GREGG, JAN LEENHOUTS-MARTIN SUBMISSIONS MANAGER STEPHEN MICHAEL SCOTT EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR JAN LEENHOUTS-MARTIN PHOTO EDITORS ROBIN RAINBOW GATE, JAN LEENHOUTS-MARTIN SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER KATHY AFTAB SUBSCRIPTION COORDINATOR MARILYN BERTA ADVERTISING SALES LYN FELLING I.T. & WEB MASTER DAN CERNESE

THANK YOU! THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED YOUR TREASURE, TIME AND TALENT, AND OF COURSE GRANDFATHER FIRE

Letters We encourage readers to share their reactions to Sacred Fire by sending emails to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com or letters to 10720 NW Lost Park Dr., Portland, OR 97229.

We reserve the right to edit submissions for length and clarity.

Submissions We accept queries and unsolicited submissions of writing and illustration. See sacredfiremagazine.com for guidelines. Email editorial inquiries to submissions@sacredfiremagazine.com and illustration inquiries to artsubmissions@sacredfiremagazine.com Advertising Inquiries For an ad sales media kit, visit sacredfiremagazine.com/the magazine/advertising sales or email advertising@sacredfiremagazine.com.

Change of Address or Other Subscription Inquiries Email subscriptions@sacredfiremagazine.com and include both your old and new address. Please allow 6 weeks for address change to take effect.

Subscriptions In the United States: Four issues: $28, in Canada, $38, all other countries, $48 (all amounts in USD). Subscribe online at sacredfiremagazine.com Single Copy Sales Bookstore sales in the United States: $7.95, Canada $9.95. Order single copies and back issues online at sacredfiremagazine.com, $10 includes shipping within the U.S. Distribution Services Sacred Fire is available to newsstands in the U.S. and Canada through Ubiquity, Armadillo, Kent News, New Leaf, One Source, Ingram, Source Interlink and Disticor Direct Postmaster Please send address changes to: P.O. Box 7284, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7284.

Reproduction No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Any requests to reprint material appearing in Sacred Fire magazine must be made in writing and sent to publisher@sacredfiremagazine.com.

PUBLISHED BY SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION Sacred Fire Foundation fosters personal, cultural and environmental healing through the preservation and propagation of traditional indigenous lifeways. A 501 (c) 3 charitable organization, the Foundation seeks to revive “right relationship” between humanity and the natural world. The Foundation supports sources of ancestral wisdom through partnership and grants, and brings ancestral wisdom to the world through publishing and events.

SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION sacredfirefoundation.org 71 N. Main Street P.O. Box 270 Liberty, NY 12754

Board of Trustees CHAIRMAN DAVID WILEY BOARD MEMBERS ALAN KERNER, ARTEMIA FABRE TREASURER AND ADMINISTRATION DIR. NANCY EOS EXEC. DIR. DEVELOPMENT SHERRY MORGAN EXEC. DIR. PARTNERS AND GRANTS SOFIA ARROYO EXEC. DIR. COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION SHARON BROWN SECRETARY VICTORIA REEVES The opinions expressed by Sacred Fire contributors are not necessarily those of Sacred Fire magazine, the Sacred Fire Foundation, the Sacred Fire Community, and/or their respective staffs.

4 Issue 11

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

MYSTERIOUS EVIDENCE Recently a friend e-mailed me a NYTimes.com article about stories that travel virally, forwarded from person to person with lightning speed on the Internet. Researchers at University of Pennsylvania were curious: which stories travel fastest, and why?

After studying the New York Times’ list of “most e-mailed” articles, researchers found the most popular articles weren’t about politics, celebrities, gadgets or practical information. Rather, they were about Science, the “big” topics that explore humanity’s place in the universe like paleontology, cosmology and quantum physics.

The common thread to the most-forwarded stories? A single emotion: the feeling of awe. Apparently readers wanted to share the unexplainable feeling of wonder that arises when we perceive the vast power, complexity and beauty of the natural world.

I don’t believe it’s the “science” that is captivating readers. I believe it is the glimpse beyond the quantifiable, offering a peek at the Mystery that inspires awe. This study points to the hunger people feel for a relationship with the unknown.

Rather than the New York Times, perhaps people should be reading Sacred Fire, where we encourage direct engagement with the Mystery. Readers who demand “proof” and “evidence” of the livingness of other realms will find it in their own lives if they will quiet their minds enough to begin to perceive the world with their hearts.

A small story from my own experience: last February, I attended a ceremony to consecrate a Huichol tuki (ceremonial house) in Tepotzlan, southeast of Mexico City. A tuki is recognized as a living being that feeds and is fed by cycles of ceremony. When properly cared for, it offers a portal to the Mystery, a doorway to Divine. It is literally a house for the gods.

A ceremony of consecration is akin to a birth and true to most births, the family showed up. Only this was a Divine family, and the matriarch was Tatei Haramara, Great Grandmother Ocean Herself.

In this part of the world, November through May is the dry season.

No rain falls for months. Yet we experienced a near-constant deluge the three days before the event. “As rare as snow in July,” was the way one local described the unusual weather.

The consecration of this tuki was an event even rarer, as this was reportedly the only time it had been allowed to occur outside the Huichol’s Sierra Madre homelands. The ceremony’s eldest shaman noted the weather and told the gathering how Great Grandmother Ocean wanted to make an appearance, to be among the celebrants and to spend time with the kakayaris, the local gods of that place.

Her rains announced blessings of abundance in the midst of unusual circumstances. For me, touching the livingness of the world in this way inspired more awe than any news story could ever muster.

In a world hungry for wonder and meaningful connection, we give you Sacred Fire. We hope you are moved to tell a friend.

— Sharon Brown see nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/09tier.html?emc=eta1

LETTERS

A LITTLE HELP FOR OUR FRIENDS

Dear Sacred Fire, I wanted to write to thank you for the profound and personal article “To Save the Sacred Waters: The Tsilhqot’in Fight for Their Lives and the Heart of their Land” written by Emilio Portal in the last issue (#10). We have received numerous positive reviews from people who knew nothing of the issue and find the information both troubling and motivating. In fact, I think Mr. Portal’s convincing prose helped us to get a $10K grant from a foundation in Toronto—so it really is wonderful. Thank you again,

RAVEN, a charitable organization with non-profit tax status in the U.S., has supported scientific studies that detail the potential impact of mining on Tsilhqot’in lands Please send your letters to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com

SUSAN SMITTEN

Director of Communications

R.A.V.E.N. (Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs) Victoria, BC Canada

DELICIOUS FROSTING To all you wonderful folks who work so hard for this magazine, I just had to write you after opening issue #10. I opened the cover and was so struck by the beauty of “The Whole World is Speaking,” the majesty of the photo, and then when I read the words I was so touched and so grateful to have such a magazine in my hands. Just when I “think” it can’t get any better, it does. I have only had it for a few hours, and I have already read almost it all from cover to cover. And WOW! teachings from Grandfather Fire.

That’s like having this enormous chocolate layered cake with the most obscenely delicious chocolate frosting. What a gift!

My heart is full, thank you dear ones.

TRISH CANNON Tepotzlan, Morelos, Mexico

YOUR LIBERAL AGENDA When we began getting the magazine it was very refreshing to get a spiritual read and an enlightening view on spirituality and indigenous life and prayer.

The magazine has taken a turn to be a very “liberal” and agendapushing magazine for the “global warming scam.” I will not renew and won’t even pick one up to read anymore. There is a lot that can be written about in Sacred Fire that could be about “sacred fire” and not just the same stuff we can read in the New York Times or any other liberal publication. Maybe this is your agenda and underlying theme, but then you should change your mission statement.

JIM PARTSCH Grand Rapids, CO, USA

We’re sorry you won’t be renewing, but we appreciate your telling us why (instead of simply remaining silent).

Actually, we don’t believe that global warming is anything except a lesson from the gods about the false pride and faith that humans put into science, technology and human supremacy. Our view is that no liberal political policies or technological fixes will solve our profound ecological problems. Rather, we need to remember who we are—creatures in intimate relationship with and utterly dependent upon every aspect of the world around us. We believe that if people return to right relationship, honoring the livingness of every plant, animal, stone, drop of water and breath of wind, our Mother will no longer need to “turn up the heat” to get our attention —Sacred Fire.

GRABBING WITH GUSTO Dear Ones, I picked up Issue #9 and was thrilled to find such compelling truth set forth for all to find. I especially loved the poetry you published and, in particular, the poem, “You,” by Hydeh Aubon. I felt the image of “You.” Recently I saw Issue #10, which I with gusto grabbed, hoping to find another of Hydeh’s poems as well as other selections. I was thrilled again.

Thank you, dear ones, for uplifting consciousness, for adding helpfully to the conversation, for enlightening the outlook.

KEN ROOMES Morrison, CO, USA

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 5

CONTRIBUTORS

ROSETTE ROYALE

Currently Assistant Editor of Real Change, a Seattle weekly sold on the streets by homeless people, story-gatherer and performer ROSETTE ROYALE has long been drawn to the ways and stories of different cultures and traditions. A singer in an Anishinaabe elder’s powwow drum group, he also assists in ceremonies based upon Shoshone/Paiute traditions. rosetteroyale.com KATE BALDWIN

DEANNA JENNÉ, an initiated

Huichol shaman and Nahua weather worker, co-facilitates the Sacred Fire Community’s Lifeways Women’s Retreat and the Initiation into Womanhood rituals. She and her husband Gary are Fire Keepers in Grand Junction, Colorado and co-founders of an intentional community near there. Deanna is available for individual appointments and may be reached at deannasoffice@gmail.com.

KIM STAFFORD, founding director

of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, a 6 Issue 11

WOODY MORRISON

zone for exploration in creative writing and regional story in Portland, Oregon, is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose. kim-stafford.com KAWAN SANGAA “WOODY” MORRISON began his training as

a History Keeper for the Haida people at the age of three.

Heir to the chief of the Whale House, he has sat in ceremony with tribal elders from around the world and has been an active planner and participant in international conferences on environmental, economic and health issues. A lawyer by trade, Woody has also served as an advisor, actor and crew member on many film and television productions.

MICHAEL AIELLO paints and

prints in a little red barn in Portland, Oregon. With his lovely daughter, Chiara, and beloved wife, Amy, he collages with Nature at their shop, Artemisia.

To view more art go to artemisiamichaelart.blogspot.com

ELIOT COWAN

Contributing photographer BETH WHITE is based in Aspen, Colorado. She specializes in travel, documentary and event photography and is available for assignment.

To view more of her work, please visit bethwhitephotography.com.

Seattle-based photographer KATE BALDWIN specializes in food, lifestyle and commercial photography. Her work has appeared in some of the country’s top magazines and in the packaging and advertising materials of major corporations. katebaldwinphotography.com Founder of the Blue Deer Seminary and the Blue Deer Center, ELIOT COWAN is the author of Plant Spirit Medicine. A Tsaurirrikame, a fully initiated shaman in the Huichol tradition, he offers Plant Spirit Medicine practitioner courses and continuing education, healing camps based on traditional Huichol healing, and animal totem courses at the Blue Deer Center. bluedeercenter.org

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: SHERRY LOESER; JENNIE DAVIS; CREWMEMBER OF “THE X FILES”; WILL BERLINER; ALICE HAYES.

DEANNA JENNÉ

EDITOR’S NOTE

THE UNIVERSAL DRUMMING

JENNIFER MEANS

There is a recurring image that

often wakes me and returns in my daydreaming. In the place of the gods there is a large central fire, and around the fire, arrayed in ever increasing concentric circles, the gods are drumming.

In the innermost circle the great drums of essence, light, darkness, emptiness, fullness and form reverberate into the world. They animate the elements of wind, rain, growth and burning whose drums in turn bring forward the drums of ocean, mountain, lake, forest, stream, plains and deserts. With their drumming these beings, with heads like mountain peaks and tongues like rivers and vast undulant bodies, cause the spirits of plants and animals to spring forth—fungus, moss and grass, fern, berry and rose, apple, oak and redwood, worm, slug and snail, beetle, butterfly and bee, frog, lizard and turtle, sparrow, crow and eagle, rabbit, bear and lion. Each has its own great drum and drums its beingness into the essence of each individual, down to the ant on the countertop who returns to the nest with a crumb of bread— that crumb itself the center of a thousand drums of the individual life forms that give the crumb presence in the world.

In this vision I see myself down the lineage of humanity drumming the rhythm of my ancestry, mixed as it is, and that rhythm weaving into the rhythm of this suburban neighborhood hillside forest where I live. Somehow I drum beautifully in the mix, my drumming shaped by the drums of all my relations—human, animal, plant, mineral, water, gas— as the rhythms flow through me

and from me into the world. And we are all in the presence of the great central fire whose flames leap, dancing ecstatically to the universal drumming.

Fire is the element of transformation and connection.

Every cell of our bodies, every molecule of matter is animated by fire. Fire is spirit itself, constantly changing as we ourselves constantly change, living our lives with the weather of emotions flowing through us, eating, excreting, growing, copulating, aging, dying and being eaten. In my vision the bodies of everything are consumed and transformed into essence by the fire. At the same time fire is a constant renewing presence. In most spiritual traditions fire is at the center. Offerings are given to the fire. It carries our prayers and brings back divine wisdom.

In the Huichol tradition to which I belong, Grandfather Fire is the first shaman, the source of all ancestral wisdom, the essential connection between everything.

It is the fire between us that we call love.

In my vision everything drums beautifully in the presence of this love and expresses its essence in the world. Everything plays its part without hesitation or fear, and the flow is simply magnificent. That flow is the world alive with an infinite richness and depth of diversity, constantly changing as the flames leap in endless variation.

Yet it is always the same, full and complete as the energies of creativity, growth, diminishment and death cycle endlessly.

Then something strange happens. In my vision I become en-

JONATHAN MERRITT

amored with my own drumming and begin adding flourishes, throwing in off-beats and beating my drum more loudly. Pretty soon I can only hear my own drum. Pretty soon I feel cold. I’m far from the fire and all alone.

My drumming slows and nearly stops and though I can still hear the distant drums of the world, I can’t seem to find my way back into the flow.

This is the human condition.

We are unique among all the beings in that our egos, our individual concerns, desires and fears have the capacity to let us forget our interconnectedness with the rhythms of the world. And so we create tremendous imbalances as we drum too loudly, taking more space, more energy than we need so that the drums of the world recede and we hear only our own drumming. Or, where we have fallen away, they fill in to make up for our lack of rhythm.

We are living in a very cold time, a time of separation, a time when the imbalances that we have created have poisoned the air and land and sea, have caused the drums of many beings to fall

silent and have created reactions among the great beings of weather and earth in the forms of cataclysmic storms, droughts and earthquakes and among the subtler beings—viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects—in the forms of plagues and pestilence as they move to restore balance.

The big question is how do we, as humans, regain our rhythm and restore ourselves in the balance of the world? How do we stoke the fire that sputters around us?

In my vision I let go of my chattering ego, I let go of fear and begin to hear the great drum of my heart, that animating center of fire in my body—which really is not even my heart but the heart of the world itself, the wise rhythms of my ancestors pouring through me from the beginning of time—and I begin to feel again that primary connection between myself and all living beings. I hear the vital drumming of diversity, and I feel how every aspect of that diversity nurtures my life. My hands begin to move again. I play my part.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 7

ALBERT NAQUIN

THE DROWNING ISLAND When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur

de La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682 and claimed its vast watershed for King Louis XIV, the Mushkogee and Choctaw and Chitamacha who fished, hunted and foraged that delicate coast knew nothing of the “Sun King.” For more than a century they fared fairly well under French “rule” since the French saw them primarily as trading partners. But once Louisiana was sold to the United States, which wanted not just the fruits but the land itself, the native people were persecuted mercilessly. In the 1830s, twothirds of the Choctaw Nation were forced to walk “a trail of tears” to Indian Territory, a walk that left several thousand dead along the path. Those who remained in the bayous survived 8 Issue 11

by adapting to the mixture of cultures—French, Spanish, Indian, and African— known as Cajun. And over generations most of their original traditions were lost.

Today, the invasion continues from another quarter. Every half hour Louisiana loses a football field of wetland to the swift and hungry currents of the Gulf of Mexico. Spawned by the increase in atmospheric moisture due to global warming, six major hurricanes in the last four years have ravaged the coast. Once again, the people who belong to the barrier islands and lacy fingers of land that reach down to the Gulf must adapt to survive.

The road to Isle de Jean Charles, down to one lane bordered by orange cones, floods every day in the high tides. No

roadwork has been done since the twin strikes of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008. And no roadwork is scheduled. Once home of the Biloxi Choctaw, the island lies outside of the ring of levees the U.S. Corps of Engineers plans to build to keep Louisiana separate from the sea.

In a few years, sooner with a strong hurricane, the island will be completely submerged.

The people know that life on Isle de Jean Charles is no longer viable. The soil is poisoned by heavy metals sandblasted from offshore oil rigs. The bayou’s fresh waters are polluted by salt from the Gulf. The huge canopy of oaks has been toppled by 150 mile-per-hour gusts of wind, and the houses have been blown apart, flooded, or flipped upside down. Many families have already left.

Albert Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitamacha-Choctaw Confederation of Mushkogees, grew up on Isle de Jean Charles.

He remembers Sundays in the days before the waters started to rise. After lunch, everyone in the community gathered at the island’s little grocery store.

There, they spent the whole afternoon visiting, keeping tabs on the intimate details of each other’s lives. These gatherings were, and are, essential for their lives and their community.

“You can’t help somebody if you don’t know what is going on in their day-to-day life,” he says.

“My main task as chief is to know the gossip. To know everybody’s business, so I can give them the help they need in the way that they can accept it.”

Chief Naquin is working to save the tribal community by raising enough money to buy inland property. He envisions building a house for each family and a community center where everyone can go to laugh and visit and mind each other’s business.

But it’s not just the physical

CARMEN DELZELL

Stories from the Heart of the Land “If you could tell any story about people and the natural world, what would it be?”

That’s what Atlantic Public Media asked some of its favorite radio producers, and they went... all over. “Stories from the Heart of the Land” is a sixpart series featuring intimate stories from around the world about the human connection to land and landscape. Accompanied by noted guitarist Bill Frisell, this eclectic mix of tales turns quirky, solemn, lyrical, humorous, unexpected and philosophical. atlantic. org/projects/heartoftheland

survival that concerns him. A man of great dignity and quick wit, Chief Naquin endured strong prejudice and the ridicule of his native traditions. Like other tribal members he does not hide his longing to reclaim his Indian heritage. Recently, his people held a traditional naming ceremony. The tribe has an annual powwow, and members are writing a history of remembered Native ancestry.

Still, they acknowledge that ancient wisdom lost to years of disrespect and neglect will not be recovered easily.

As much as he and his people need to adapt to the changing geography of their land and waters, he knows the necessity of maintaining the most important tradition that still remains—their heart connection to each other and their tribal identity. As chief, it is his role to protect it.

—Carla Leftwich

FROM LEFT: KITTY COLLINS; COURTESY OF CARMEN DELZELL.

FLINT AND TINDER

A Network of Grateful Living Teaching grateful living as the core inspiration for personal growth, cross-cultural understanding, interfaith dialogue, intergenerational respect, nonviolent conflict resolution, and ecological sustainability, A Network of Grateful Living (ANG*L) affirms gratitude as the central global ethic of our times. Inspired by the work of Brother David SteindlRast and colleagues, the international nonprofit offers workshops, retreats, local groups and an abundance of free online resources to help cultivate practice of the gentle, transforming power of gratefulness. gratefulness.org

THE CROWS AT THE ASHRAM

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MACEFLEEGER; GIRISH A V; M.LICKERS.

Corvus splendens, commonly

called the house crow of India, is a species that does not seem to mind crowded coexistence with human beings. Omnivorous, intelligent, aggressive, gregarious birds, these crows hunt in “murders,” large groups that stage complex ambush attacks as a regular routine.

They’ll take food from school children, kill the chicks of domestic fowl and chase off large

birds of prey.

Crows are deeply rooted in the Indian consciousness. They are sometimes considered an avatara (a Hindu word meaning “the appearance of a deity in physical form”) of dead relatives who revisit their loved ones on the 14th day after death. But despite their unruly nature, they are willing to listen.

At an ashram near Mumbai a bunch of crows began to

territorialize around a certain statue of Ganesha, the elephantheaded Vedic god. The Brahman priests were bombarded by the crows during a ceremony at the foot of the statue. This was not good. Expensive saris were ruined by poop, and the priests were put off their chant by the dive-bombing at their heads.

So the ashram’s pest control officer, a medical doctor called “Dr. Jim,” was given the order to do something about the crows. He pondered a range of alternatives including

Ghost River Rediscovery Offering outdoor and cultural education programs that promote the rediscovery of tradition and the development of healthy, sustainable lifestyles, Ghost River Rediscovery draws on the strength of Indigenous culture, the wisdom of the Elders, and a philosophy of love and respect for the Earth and all peoples. Summer camps in western Alberta and urban programs in Calgary empower people of all ages and cultures to discover the natural world, the worlds between cultures and the worlds within themselves. ghostriverrediscovery.com

shooting and poisoning. He meditated. He learned all he could about crows. He went into the adjacent courtyard and watched them as they fluffed in the banyan tree.

One evening, he went to the courtyard and sat. When the crows started coming around him, he began talking to them.

The crows had a spokesperson. They conversed. It seems the crows felt that the statue was their territory. They were protecting and defending naturally. The doctor explained about the importance of the statue to his community. The crows agreed to leave the statue for human purposes.

There were no other problems with the crows dive-bombing into the supplicants. Dr. Jim had done his job by merely communicating his people’s needs.

—Nancy Eos SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 9

FLINT AND TINDER

NOT JUST HOWLING AT THE MOON

as Nerburn pulls no punches about cultural legacies and biases, even when he perpetuates misunderstanding.

Part history lesson, part parable, The Wolf at Twilight is a deeply practical, emotionally moving call to remember and honor the relationships that exist between all of creation.

Rooted deeply in gratitude, it brings a modern perspective to Traditional wisdom.

An Indian Elder’s Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows

By Kent Nerburn

346 pages New World Library, 2009 Reviewed by Sharon Brown Reading Kent Nerburn’s The Wolf

at Twilight mirrors one of life’s lessons: nothing is ever just one thing. On the surface this is an autobiographical mystery novel, telling the story of a white Minnesotan who travels to the Dakotas to help an old Indian friend find his long-lost sister. But deeper inside this is a mystery that is shaped by the Great Mystery: chance encounters are more than clues, and what might appear to be a dead end becomes simply another veil to pierce on the way to the truth.

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies and Nerburn finds himself back on the THE AUTHOR, KENT NERBURN

10 Issue 11

Lakota reservation where over a decade before he’d traveled with a tribal elder named Dan. The journey that ensues explores reservation boarding-school shadows, the dark confines of sweat lodges and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills.

While compelling, the plot is not the purpose of this book.

It is simply the framework for a teaching story. The Wolf at Twilight delivers a Lakota elder’s worldview in three-dimensional detail. The book instructs orally, through dialog, in the Traditional way. But unlike so many “teaching stories” that put elders on mystical, reverential

pedestals, this book speaks with an honesty that blows romanticism, sentimentality and stereotype out of the water, fire, earth and air.

This work is the sequel to Nerburn’s earlier, well-received work Neither Wolf Nor Dog. Both works fictionalize real-life situations, people and events Nerburn experienced during his time spent on the rez with a Lakota elder and his extended family. In the newer book, Nerburn continues to explore the cultural and emotional connections between Native Americans and those of this country’s dominant culture. The result is a book filled with powerful observations about how it feels to bear the multi-generational legacy of oppression borne by America’s native peoples, a story told unflinchingly. And it is also filled with powerful observations about what it means to live deeply connected to land and spirit—a story that is told most generously. It’s got wisdom, not platitudes.

It’s funny, filled with the sharp one-liners that often permeate Native conversation. And sometimes it’s painful to read,

HERO, CHANDINI PERERA

Giraffe Heroes Project The nightly news got you down? Think only villains rule the world? You won’t after meeting the everyday people of the Giraffe Heroes Project.

Moving people to stick their necks out for the common good and giving them the tools to succeed, the Giraffe Heroes Project honors the unknown risk-takers among us by bringing their stories to the world. Learn who’s changing the world beneath the headlines—by overcoming fear and listening to their hearts. giraffe.org

AUTHOR AND BOOK JACKET—LOUISE MENGELKOCH; CHANDINI PORTRAIT— PHIL BORGES

THE WOLF AT TWILIGHT,

BORN INTO THE CHAOS OF CHANGE CHILDREN OF THE AMAZON A Film By Denise Zmekhol 72 minutes Interview and Review

by Sharon Brown I am haunted by their singing.

Days after viewing Children of the Amazon, I still hear the children’s voices—pure, lifting into joyful refrain. Then, at the end of the melody, the angelic voices slide, trailing off into a minor key and empty silence.

Exquisite beauty, followed by a dive into the abyss—such is the feeling I carry with me from the film, which at its best captures the poignancy of lost innocence, not just for a generation but for all humanity.

Children of the Amazon is a labor of love by Brazilian writer/ producer/director Denise Zme-

khol, who first traveled to the Amazon in the late 1980s as a production assistant for film crews documenting the cultural changes assaulting several indigenous tribes who had had their “first contact” with the outside world in the ‘60s and ‘70s as construction on the TransAmazonian Highway began.

“It was a very tense time,” says Denise. Hundreds of thousands of settlers, ranchers and loggers had followed the road into virgin forest with deadly effect. In a typical example one village lost 500 of its 700 inhabitants to sickness, and every village elder died.

With them died “forest time,” the rich, enveloping, experienced, rhythmic way of living life as an integral partner of the rainforest.

During those years Denise took hundreds of personal photographs, often of the village children. “They were born to parents who had relied on the rainforest for survival,” she says, “but they were growing up surrounded by a culture that had an appetite for their land and its natural resources.”

She never printed the photos, never told their stories but held them in memory. She returned to the city and spent the next dozen years continuing her work in video, moving up the ranks of commercial and corporate video production. With time the pressures of professional life kicked in. At one point, after 12 days of acute illness (later diagnosed as appendicitis), she reached her limit. “There was too much pressure, too much work, and no meaning,” she says. She knew she had to make a change.

The echo of the children called her. She remembered their faces. And she remembered the

stories of the rubber tappers she’d met, those first “settlers” of the forest, who found life in the jungle saner than life in the cities and who partnered with the indigenous peoples to fight for the preservation of the lands after the arrival of the highway.

She realized that she needed to return to the Amazon, this time to make her own movie.

By intercutting her photos of the children with archival film footage and new video, Children of the Amazon weaves an intimate and evocative portrait, not just of the individual children, although each of their stories carries its own truth, but of modern humanity and our rush to “progress.” As we watch the Surui and Negarote peoples navigate a crash course in “becoming civilized,” moving from stone axes to the free market economy in barely 40 years, we become witness to history as it has unfolded over the last 5,000 years.

We experience the enormity and permanence of choices made.

This film is a tribute to those people—native and otherwise— who continue the struggle to save their forest home. Its beautiful photography and multiple story lines strive to offer insights to a distant and remote land, while simultaneously drawing connections to our own lives. For each of us breathes the same air, walks the same planet and shares the same future.

Children of the Amazon is slated to air on several PBS stations on Earth Day, April 22.

Check for your local listings. To learn more about the film, visit childrenoftheamazon.com

DENISE ZMEKHOL

where you can see pictures of the children, order a DVD or arrange a local screening.

FELICIANA NEGAROTE PHOTOGRAPHED IN MATO GROSSO, BRAZIL IN 1990

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 11

O U T O F T H E F R Y I N G PA N

BY L A R RY M E S S E R M A N

Back then Cleveland was the inspiration for a whole genre of what might be called “urban decay humor.” And no one incident seemed to justify that hallowed status better than what took place on June 22, 1969. Most likely it started when sparks from a passing train dropped into the Cuyahoga River. Full of oil and other pollution, the river quickly caught fire. A couple of railroad bridges were damSUBMERGED BY THE FLOOD OF PROGRESS aged, but far worse to my delicate adolescent sensibility, we became firmly ensconced as the laughingstock of the There were a number of indignities to growing up: the playnation. ground confrontations, the perplexities of sex (which conIt is many years later, and I have gotten pretty far away tinue to entertain!), the unfailing ability of adults to tell you from that burning river, but I am in a funk this particular to do one thing while they did the opposite. I suppose most morning—fallout from a fight with my wife Jessica. She is catching a pre-dawn flight out of our small, regional airyouth suffer bafflement and frustration as they struggle to port and will be gone for five days. When I drop Jessica off make sense of this unbalanced world. But I had an added at the terminal, we glower at each other more than speak. burden: I was from Cleveland.

Possibly back in the time of the ancestors, before there were words to get seduced by, this may have met the prevailing standard for good conjugal interaction. But now it is clearly deficient.

I am taking advantage of Jessica’s absence to do my own little journey. I will go by car, but this is really a river trip. Just a few months before, we settled in Bend, Oregon. Our town was originally named “Fare Thee Well Bend in the River” because of the loop the Deschutes River makes as it passes on its way northward.

Fortunately for the sake of addressing mail and other mundane concerns, it was later shortened. I will follow US 97 as it roughly parallels the Deschutes River on its way north to the Columbia River. Then I plan to continue west onto Interstate 84 as it hugs the southern bank of the Columbia following her to Portland. From there I go north to Seattle, but the Great River (as it is known in many native languages) continues another 50 miles or so on to the Pacific. It’s as though I am tracing one of the daughters to the Great River and then following her in turn as she makes her way toward the Grandmother—the Pacific Ocean.

Within an hour of leaving the airport I begin to snake my way through 100 miles or so of valleys and rich farmland. By now the aftertaste of anger from our domestic dispute has mellowed into sadness with a nice patina of guilt. Any normal person, anyone not suffering from a case of severe “emotional myopia,” would find these farms and ranches beautiful—especially against the backdrop of volcanic peaks like Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, and Mt. St. Helens. But my psychic immunity is weak. I can think only of how such greenery is unnatural in this high desert country. It’s only possible because of the huge tentacles of irrigation equipment poised above the land moving with slow, mindless determination on rows of tires. Massive pinwheels holding hundreds of sprinklers pump great arcs of river water on the otherwise arid land. The farmers and the golfers are happy, but not the salmon. My sadness begins to expand into a deep reservoir of grief.

I have been stewing in the car for nearly three hours by the time I reach the Columbia, and I take a short diversion eastward. Here I find the half-mile long, L-shaped Dalles Dam and hydroLarry Messerman is Co-executive electric plant poised like a massive white fortress across the Great River. A web of power lines Director of the Sacred Fire Commufeeds off the structure and fans out to power homes and business in Oregon and Washington. nity. An initiated Huichol shaman, Whatever angst I felt about irrigated land now has given way to a state of shock (no pun inhe keeps a fire in Bend, Oregon with his wife, Jessica de la O. tended) and awe.

12 Issue 11

DR. TERRENCE MESSERMAN

THE DAMMED

BENJAMIN GIFFORD, OREGON HISTORIAL SOCIETY #ORHI89622

When it was dedicated by a smiling Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957, the Dalles dam exemplified the post-war optimism that seemed to be catapulting America into a future of unlimited prosperity and power. Of course the sobering debacle of American involvement in Vietnam and the dénouement of Nixon’s hubris in the form of Watergate were still years in the future.

At the time, most people saw the dam as a sign of progress: harnessing nature to generate enough power for two million people and flooding a hellish stretch of rapids upstream that would now permit safe boat passage.

That once treacherous stretch of the Great River is what inspired this trip. For as long as 15,000 years, this section of the Columbia was home to a thriving native fishing community. It was known as Celilo Falls to Europeans—from the local Wyam language meaning “echo of falling water.” Here the Great River was squeezed by basalt rock from her usual mile or so in width to only 140 feet. Surging over a series of falls and cataracts, she generated a thunderous sound that could be heard up to two miles away. But when the Dalles dam closed its floodgates in the spring of 1957, that great booming voice was silenced in a matter of minutes.

I stop at a small shoreline park in present-day Celilo. There is no longer any trace of the falls. What I see now is a broad stretch of water moving so sluggishly that it could easily be mistaken for a lake. I wade into the cold waters of the Great

“Three Indians at Celilo River up to my ankles and I offer a prayer.

Falls, circa 1899” by I express great sadness and regret for Benjamin A. Gifford. Born what my people have done. I can think of in Illinois, Gifford moved no justification, nor is it really my place to Oregon in 1888 and was to offer one. How could one even begin? known for his images of Native Americans and the How to account for “domesticating” such Columbia River. a great wild being? How to justify rivers Photo courtesy of the so polluted that they catch on fire? How Oregon Historical Society. to justify submerging the way of life of not www.ohs.org. just one people but many—and all in the name of progress?

Standing in that cold water, I feel exhausted. The enormity of the task seems overwhelming. My well-being, the well-being of my people, the health of this Great River are all part of the same story. Clearly, there is no instant cure, no tidy ending. It will take an on-going effort, and trips like this one are just a beginning. We need the courage to remember what we have done to the land and the rivers and to those whom we swept aside in our eagerness for comfort and wealth. So much has been lost, and it is no wonder that we feel so lost. But as we remember, as we retrace our steps, something begins to shift inside. We cry and we howl in despair. We grieve. And gradually we come alive. And the world comes alive around us. And when the time is right, we will pull the dams down. This I know.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 13

LIGHT & SHADOW

EGO: FRIEND OR FOE LETTING GO OF THE GRASPING “I”

of a strong, self-reliant self-identity is seen as a necessary aspect of our capacity to cope with a challenging world. When we fail to have a stable identity, but live from a wounded sense of self, we experience psychological and emotional difficulties. Much of Western psychology is thus oriented toward helping resolve these emotional and psychological problems so that we have a relatively healthy, functional ego in a rather dysfunctional world.

But when we become involved in some form of spiritual path, we typically receive the message that the ego is actually a major problem; the ego is the root of our suffering and obstructs our spiritual development. We are told either we should abandon the ego—overcome its selfish tendencies—or that when we look for it, there is actually no ego.

How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory perspectives?

In the famous Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, Theseus has the good fortunate to enter the dark and challenging labyrinth securely tied to a thread which will lead him back to the entrance. When we travel through our inner landscapes, it is extremely important that we also have the capacity to return to a normal, functional sense of self in order to deal with the world.

From a psychotherapeutic viewpoint, it could be said that if we lose the capacity to come back to our “normal” reality, then we can end up in deep psychological trouble.

We need an ego to enable us to engage in the temporal world, to give a subjective focus to our attention and to filter what comes through from the unconscious. As a psychotherapist I have seen people travel Rob Preece, author into the underworld and on occasion find most recently of The it extremely difficult to return to deal with Wisdom of Imperfection (Snow Lion, ordinary life. The disruption that occurs is 2006), is a psychotheroften spiritual in nature, caused by a loss or apist, spiritual mentor, disintegration of self or ego. leader of Tibetan meditation retreats, and As a Tibetan Buddhist of many years an initiated Granicero I have also seen the impact of powerful (weather worker) in the Nahua tradition. spiritual experiences that on occasions IN WESTERN CULTURE THE DEVELOPMENT

14 Issue 11

disrupt the psychological stability of a normal sense of self. When this kind of spiritual emergency happens, it can require very skilful psychological assistance to restore a functional sense of self.

The implications of this phenomenon are that if we do not have a relatively stable sense of self, then certain spiritual experiences can be extremely hazardous. How then do we square this need for a stable sense of self with the view that we have to get rid of the ego, go beyond the ego, or that there is actually noself, as some spiritual traditions describe it?

Is the ego a friend that we need or an enemy that is the root of our problems? Perhaps we need a deeper understanding of what the ego is or—for that matter—what it is not and what its function is in our psyche.

Living in the Buddhist world, I have encountered many Westerners who seem to misunderstand the Buddha’s teachings on “emptiness of self” or “no-self,” believing that it implies that we have to totally abandon the ego. But a deeper look at the notion of no-self or the emptiness of self reveals a more subtle meaning.

In Tibetan there is a term Dag-Sin, which means ego-grasping.

It is not the presence of an ego that we need overcome but the presence of ego-grasping, the disposition to contract around and solidify a sense of self as though it were a substantial and permanent thing. This “vividly appearing I” is a sense of “I” that is caught in strong emotional wounds and self-beliefs. When someone threatens us or insults us, we experience a vivid, contracted, solid sense of “me.” This is the ego-grasping that needs to be abandoned. When we search for this solid “me” within our body or mind, we discover it does not actually exist. It is created by the mind’s disposition to contract around a sense of self, as though this solid “me” truly existed.

When we let go of this contraction, a quality of space and permeability begins to open up. We also begin to loosen our grip on the ego wounds that feel “I am not good enough” or “I am unlovable” because we see they are just beliefs. Our sense of self will be more flexible and less bound by emotional wounds and negative self-beliefs.

When we recognize the emptiness of self, it doesn’t mean there is no longer a sense of self, but we will experience that self in a very different way. We will see that the ego is merely a focus of awareness of our normal, subjective place in the world. Without it we would be unable to function; indeed we would go into disturbed or dangerous states mentioned previously.

His Holiness the Dali Lama once said that anyone who takes on the path of the Bodhisattva, who aspires to awaken to serve the welfare of others, needs a strong ego. A fragile or unstable sense of self will not be able to hold the process of a spiritual path that requires a degree of psychological strength. There is no contradiction in this idea because that strong sense of self is not bound up with ego-grasping. Even the Buddha had a strong ego identity that

ANNA PREECE

BY ROB PREECE

Manjushri is a manifestation of the wisdom of the Buddhas and is particularly associated with the wisdom that realizes emptiness. His sword cuts through our ignorance and is called “the Dreadful Laugh.” Painting by Rob Preece

said, “I am eating, walking,” and so on. What he recognized was that it was just a label. Just as we put the label “pizza” on the collection of things that go into making a meal, we cannot find “pizza” amongst its ingredients. That doesn’t mean there is no pizza. In meditation when we look for the “I,” we cannot find it. This does not mean there is no “I.” Recognizing the emptiness of self has a profound effect on our relationship to life; it cuts through the very root of our emotional struggle.

This emptiness does not mean there is no self; the self is merely a focus of attention labeled “me.” It has no more substance to it. But without this sense of self clearly established, we may find ourselves adrift and lost in the underworld. It is then extremely difficult for someone to bring us back.

As both a practitioner and guide of meditators in Buddhist Tantra, it has become clear to me that before a person embarks upon this kind of path he or she needs to have a stable sense of self.

This self does then need to surrender to a deeper, guiding wisdom, and it must gradually learn to serve the welfare of others and of the planet.

This will be the self who can sit around the fire and tell the stories of the journey, who can pass on the experiences, the struggles and insights gained on the way.

D R E A M S O F T H E H O LY

BY BARRY WILLIAMS & RENNATA RITZMAN

WHALE DREAMING

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE NUMINOUS KIND. OVER A YEAR AGO, WE WERE WORKING WITH A WOMAN WHO

told us a dream that truly captivated us with its dense tone of meaning and presence of the sacred. But with every approach we tried, we never felt that we understood it deeply enough to do it justice. After trying to abandon it multiple times, we realized that the dream, itself, would not let us go. It kept calling us back into its complexity because it contained a message that needed

us to give it a voice. We finally realized that the dream may very well be the voice of the Spirit of Nature calling out for a connection with the human world at this crucial moment of impending environmental crisis when life itself seems to hang in the balance. If the Earth in its sacred guise wanted to speak to us, it might come like this.

The dream is quite simple. A huge whale approaches the dreamer in the water, close enough to reveal the presence on its lower jaw of an extensive, incised, Maori moko.

A moko is the ornate, ritually symbolic, chiseled tattoos that both men and women wear, each in their own style and bodily SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 15

D R E A M S O F T H E H O LY

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL AIELLO

placement. This moko on the lower jaw reveals that the whale is female—the embodiment of earth, matter, nature, body, water, depth, birth, darkness, gestation, secret and mystery. Every Maori moko indicates the bearer’s ancestral and tribal origins, birthright, depth of attained otherworldly knowledge, rank, status and participation within the social order. More deeply, the moko emerges in the Maori origin story as a sacred gift from the gods to denote the human connection with the Divine. The god who gives the moko is an unborn child of the Earth Mother, living and moving within her body, responsible for the Jungian Analyst Barry visible scars of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Williams, Renata Ritzman and their son, Raef, are Thus the scarring of the body participates Huichol shamans. They ofwith the scarring of the Earth Mother. This fer healing retreats in New moko, then, comes from the deepest realm Mexico, Northern Canada of the oceanic Earth Goddess. and on Grandmother Ocean in New Zealand The moko, then, is the visible and permanent imprint of the Holy in human life.

Receiving a moko is a tapu, or sacred, ritual of initiation. The process itself is extremely painful, not only from the deep chiseled lines, but also because it is connected to the divine energy known as “the trembling current that scars the earth.”

The patterns are incised into the skin with a jade chisel, the pigment coming from the ash of the great and ancient Kauri tree, itself a relative of the whale as a land form. Thus, a human bearing a moko has a direct connection with the divine, the pattern bearing the energy of the god whose being is deep within the earth.

16 Issue 11

In the dream the whale, a familiar of the depths, bears this imprint of divine energy from within the earth. The moko shows that she comes from and is related to the realm of the gods. In other words, the Holy appears in this dream as a whale.

Pan-culturally, the gods can appear in their animal spirit guises. In the Biblical tradition when Jonah resists God’s calling to him to prophesy and he flees the Divine Will, the whale acts as the instrument and vehicle of the Holy, carrying the resistant ego to its god-connected fate and destiny. The whale as symbol has to do with the great mind in the depths, the invisible god in the unfathomable darkness rising to the surface as a messenger from the unseen world.

The moko on the dream whale shows that it is identified with the human world in its indigenous nature. Thus, the whale shows the dreamer that in her depth she has an indigenous soul which is the same as the god-touched whale, the Holy in its animal guise. The whale is the dynamic of nature itself appearing to the dreamer in order to deliver a message.

The dreamer receives this great message from the depths, delivered through the whale to her human sister, that the earth is attempting, indeed wanting, to establish contact with the human realm. The dreamer is called on to activate her shamanic potential to enter into a living dialogue with the Holy that has sought her out. She must be in touch with her indigenous nature that knows the earth is alive and sacred.

The message that the whale delivers through its moko is not decipherable by the mind. It is only available as a heart understanding, without words. The message is that the Holy dwells in the earth. It is the earth and its creatures and powers. The message is that the earth must be understood and treated as a living being in deep and meaningful relationship with us.

MARVYN MORRISON.

BY BARRY WILLIAMS & RENNATA RITZMAN

LOGS FOR THE FIRE

BY WO O D Y M O R R I S O N

Also, a hierarchy would be created that would affect the sense of unity among the people. The society would change and become command-structured with the majority of members dependent upon the orders of a select few. And, because SOMETHING SIMPLE AS ROWING A BOAT CAN AFFECT the nephew of the chief would not GENERATIONS TO COME. be needed to warn of dangers, the responsibility of protecting the lives WHEN THE SPANIARDS CAME INTO HAIDA COUNTRY in the 1500s, of the society would be held by the person giving orders, thus we first saw the use of thole pins, the fore-runners to oarlocks. depriving the nephew of that crucial experience.

We Haidas immediately saw the advantage of using the oarThe Haida term for “chief” literally means “the big boss who locks—canoes could be propelled quickly with fewer people. cannot give orders.” People followed that person’s lead because However we did not adopt their usage until about 300 years of his proven leadership and his caring for his people as a people. later. The unwillingness to utilize this new technology was not Each paddler was a relative of the “uncle” and was responsible out of ignorance or the fear of change but because we recognized for the maintenance and upkeep of the canoe. It was a family that there are always unintended consequences to using any new enterprise. A Haida maxim says, “Like the Forest, the roots of technology. We saw that it would fundamentally change Haida our people are so intertwined that the greatest troubles cannot worldview and societal structure. overcome us.”

There are two types of societies—command structured and We Haida resisted using the oarlock until the early 1900s common-mind structured. The common-mind society is based when, due to a population crash brought about by disease and othupon cultural imperatives gleaned from thousands of years of er factors, we no longer took our great canoes to sea. We switched experience. Much like flocks of birds and schools of fish that can to using smaller canoes with oars held in place by oarlocks. In change direction instantaneously without any orders, indigenous many cases a canoe that normally required three or four paddlers peoples learn to think alike, to focus all their activities toward a could be propelled by a single person. Now an individual could sustainable society. do things himself. He no longer needed the cooperation of other For thousands of years we Haida had gone to sea in ce- persons. Family relationships began to fade. No longer were we dar-log, ocean-going canoes that were sixty to ninety feet bound together by a common soul (all relatin length. These canoes required as many as 24 to 30 pad- ed by creation) or by cultural imperatives. dlers. The seating was partly by order-of-inheritance rather “Individual liberty” and self reliance are than personal preference. When paddling, everyone faced the greatest threats to the survival of all forward except the chief’s nephew who sat back-to-back with common-mind societies because the focus his uncle. His responsibility was to apprise his uncle of any- shifts from sustainable societies to obtainthing coming from behind—an unusually large wave, or hu- able resources. The economic system of man danger—and to describe special features of the land just the command-structured society is based passed. His uncle had to be able to trust the judgment and upon “relative scarcity.” When something word of his nephew implicitly, for, eventually, that nephew becomes scarce, the price is simply raised. would succeed his uncle as chief.

Therefore, conservation is not possible.

Since everyone could see where they were going, no one need- Someone will buy the last drop of drinked to give orders. For example, when the canoe traveled in very able water, will buy the last salmon, will large seas and an overly large wave came from one side, with- buy the last tuna. In this system money out orders the paddlers all moved to that side of the canoe to equals power.

Woody Morrison serves deal with the problem. Thus, the paddlers moved with one mind In the common-mind society, there are on the board of direcrather than under someone’s command. They utilized the collec- ceremonies for “giving back,” for not taktors of Wisdom of the tive wisdom rather than the judgment of just one person. ing what is scarce. Wealth equals the reElders, Inc., a 501 (c) (3) Since rowing with oars requires that people face backward, sponsibility to share. So, the task faced by corporation that records and preserves indigenous we Haida saw that someone would have to take command, giv- Haidas is to figure out how to make techoral traditions and cultural ing orders about when to stroke, how to turn and so on. People nology serve society, rather than serve the arts in order to regenerate would not be engaged in the same way with the sea since they economic advantages offered by individuthe greatness of culture would be looking at what was behind them instead of what was al liberty. One might say it is the legacy of among native peoples. wisdomoftheelders.com. before them. the oarlock.

WOODROW W. MORRISON, SR.

THE OARLOCK

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 17

BY J. H. BAKER

THE LONE LEOPARD CONVERSATIONS WITH JOHN LOCKLEY, XHOSA SANGOMA

PETER MALSBURY| IPHOTOSTOCK.COM

I had a dream: a man came to me dressed in skins, and I could smell the herbs around him, and he had the most shiny black eyes. On my right was another man, a black man about my age. We were both naked and lying down, which is the traditional way of starting a sangoma training.

18 Issue 11

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 19

THE EVENING

had closed in on the Bristol waterfront. Sitting in a dockside building once used by slave traders and now an upscale British pub, I was talking with John Lockley. He had long reddish blonde hair tied back into a ponytail. He had a thick, distinctive South African accent and an intent gaze. He was a taller man than I and had broad shoulders. I asked how he had been led to become a sangoma, a shamanic medicine man. As he talked, his soft voice was easily heard above the surrounding sounds of the pub. He said that looking back, there were many things that pointed in the direction of this path.

Lockley was born in South Africa in 1971. His Irish mother had been drawn to Africa to study wildlife. Shortly after she moved to South Africa she met John’s father, a third generation Zimbabwean of English descent. At birth John had a whitish mucous coating around his eyes that was striking. His mother said that he looked like an Australian “abo” or traditional aborigine. Many years later his teacher would see this as a mark of sangoma.

John said that in his teens he had very strong dreams. As he grew older he was drawn to helping people. In a deep sense he knew that to understand life he had to understand death. As is required in South Africa, he was conscripted into the South African military where he served as a medical assistant. During this time he saw death and great suffering. He listened carefully when a soldier from the Special Forces talked about dreams and how his people honor the visions and prophecies they receive through them. His own dreams were often intense and often about searching or trying to find something, but one was like a vision. He continued his story.

“This sangoma man had an animal on his arm and communicated by telepathy. Three times I asked him to teach me, and three times he kept quiet. Then he said, ‘I will teach you, but you must realize that there will be suffering.’ I knew suffering; I had seen much. I said to him, ‘If you don’t teach me, there is nothing more I can do with this life.’ He looked at me with those piercing eyes for a long moment. He agreed to teach me—and I awoke.”

Very soon after John had this dream he experienced one illness after another and one trauma after another including broken bones, being swept out to sea, and near death experiences. After each experience he would again get a vision in his dreams of this sangoma man. The illnesses and traumas continued for years, and his searching intensified. He understands now that this dream marked the start of the twelve years of sangoma initiation known in South Africa as the “Twaza.” At one point he traveled to Tibet to intensively study meditation and Buddhism, during which time he thought seriously about joining a monastery, but the African calling proved to be great. He returned to his South African home to study psychology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.

JB: How did you finally meet up with your teacher?

Lockley: During one class at the university, I was listening to a herbalist who knew the traditional ways of the Xhosa [pronounced “clo-za” with a click at the first syllable] indigenous people of South Africa. He made reference to the “ancestors under the river” and the “ancestors under the lakes” and said that these are the places where sangomas got some of their healing guidance. I 20 Issue 11

was stunned. Immediately after the class I asked him to arrange a consultation with a sangoma, a very good sangoma—one that he would send his own family to, and he agreed.

The day I walked into the village the herbalist sent me to I was the only white person among the people. We were in a township, and apartheid had just ended. I walked through the village to meet the sangoma. As I walked with my interpreter I towered over everyone, for the Xhosa are not tall people.

There at a hut was a short, very colorful woman. She was an elder and a revered sangoma of the Xhosa tribe. She told me later that when she saw me, fear came to her heart because she had had a very clear dream the previous night. She was shown a person from another culture whom she was to train to become a sangoma like herself. She told me that, as soon as she saw me, she knew I was the one, and I was a white man.

You know, typically a client goes to the

specialist and tells her his story, but during consultations with Xhosa sangomas, the client remains quiet and the sangoma describes the illness. I sat with her as she described my last seven years of illness and everything was accurate. She asked why I had not come sooner. I said, “Apartheid,” and tears came to her eyes. You see, apartheid went both ways.

She accepted me at that time as her student and told me to return the next day. The following morning, I awoke to find a goat skin carefully placed at the front door where I was staying. This was remarkable because although it was fresh, the dogs had not taken it as they normally would. When I brought the skin to my new teacher and told her the story, she said it was a sign that the ancestors had accepted me for training.

I learned the songs and dance very quickly and naturally—for a white person I was a good dancer! The news of my teacher taking a tall white man as a student spread quickly through the townships. With the taste of apartheid so fresh, there was some curiosity, some reluctance and some hostility. During one visit the atmosphere at a particular gathering was very negative towards me. It was so great that we were very concerned. Before I knew it, my teacher had turned to the people and, in a huge voice, stopped them, saying: “Listen to what I have to tell you! Under the river, we are all the same! Cut my arm— red blood flows! Cut John’s arm—red blood flows!” And the people understood her. She was, and is, a very powerful sangoma.

Many times I traveled around with her to villages and ceremonies. There was a time when I had just finished a very powerful dance at a ceremony in the township. An elder, who was a prophet, came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Today I have seen something. Today I have realized something. Today I see that white people have spirit. I never knew this.”

JB: You mentioned that this path is, in many ways, part of your lineage?

Lockley: Yes. My grandmother in Dublin was a great dreamer and prophet. Her name was Mammy Kelly, and at times she could see glimpses of the future. But the old Irish line or lineage, as far as dreaming is concerned, had been broken. I now see that in order for

this lineage to survive, we had to go to a place where the dreams are respected. I feel that this is why my mother was called to Africa.

Through my own dreams and training in shamanism I carry my family’s tradition forward.

JB: You have been doing work in the UK for a few years now. Could you describe that?

Lockley: I am instructed by my dreams and my visions to bring forth a particular way of working with plants, working with the ancestors and working in ceremony to help facilitate people’s movement toward their own ancestors and spirit guides. I’ve offered various workshops designed to guide people. The participants are offered a traditional herbal face wash made of a number of local plants and are shown some very basic techniques based on rhythm, song and trance dancing. These are techniques used by the Xhosa to develop contact with the ancestors. It is not to be confused with shamanic training.

We also focus on dreaming. In our tradition we are great dreamers. That is the way we journey. The dreams that we are talking about are the dreams where you connect with your ancestors, your spirit guides. Dreams are where you are shown. You are given visions about your destiny and about your job in the world, and that job is unique to you. You see, when you do the job that is unique to you, the Xhosa say that you “shine.” The job of the sangoma is to clean people so that they shine and find their true jobs in this world.

JB: Can you speak more about the ancestors?

Lockley: The Xhosa and Zulu word for ancestors is “Izinyanya” (eye-z-ahn-ia), which means “the silent, hidden ones.” The way we see it, every person has three sets of ancestors. The first two sets are your blood ancestors, those on your mother’s side and those on your father’s side. These two sets are the foundation of every human being. They literally run in your blood.

We refer to the third set as the “adopted” ancestors. They are made up of the spirits and past peoples from the traditions that you are attracted to. They include various spirit beings, spirit guides, animal spirits or totems—really any group that you do not have a direct blood

connection to. In my case my ancestors on my mother’s side are Irish, on my father’s side English and my adopted ancestors are from the Xhosa and the Tibetan peoples.

UNDER THE RIVER, WE ARE ALL THE SAME! CUT MY ARM—RED BLOOD FLOWS! CUT JOHN’S ARM—RED BLOOD FLOWS! JB: You are showing people a pathway that is Xhosa in nature, and you are saying that regardless of the person’s background, this pathway may be used to connect with the ancestors of that individual.

Lockley: That’s correct. These teachings, as my teacher has pointed out, are beyond culture, religion and political persuasion.

JB: Could you talk more about the “people under the water?”

Lockley: The people under the water are a very deep part of our training. It is the place where sangomas go to receive their training. That world is similar to ours, but to get there you must go through a sacred doorway. You need to have a calling, an invitation and a teacher. I shall relate a story to you.

I am friends with a fellow sangoma. She is of the Zulu tradition. When her teacher was doing his final initiation as a Zulu sangoma, it was by the sea. The community was singing songs and walking toward the sea. Now, in the Zulu tradition if the trainee walks into the sea, the people are not to stop him or her. And they are not to follow. They are to turn around and wait. They are not to shed any tears. So, they were all singing and playing drums, and this man turned and walked into the waters—further and further, until they could see him no more. The people returned to the beach and set up camp, trusting SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 21

JB: For people who have studied other traditions what would you say about mixing parts and pieces of traditions?

Lockley: You know, I started work with the Zen tradition, and I still practice, but I have honored the Xhosa tradition by only working and studying with my teacher. When you focus on one specific tradition, it builds up spiritual ability and power. I have met people who work with one person one weekend and somebody else the next; then three weekends later they do another workshop.

All I can say is that my work is to wash or clean peoples’ spirits. In that way people can move, or begin to move, towards their ancestors or towards their spirit guides. For instance, people may dream they must work with a Tibetan teacher or with a Huichol or Lakota teacher. Then I feel that I have done my job.

If they dream of a teacher, then they should work with that person, and they should honor that relationship. You see, these workshops are showing a simple technique to deepen the connection to your dreams and ancestors. They are to help you find your path. If people are searching for their directions, this might help. And I will say that, as the lessons from their dreams start to deepen, they need to honor the teachings and guidance that they are getting, wherever they may lead.

JB: For a variety of reasons, some cultures are reluctant to share their teachings.

22 Issue 11

How do the Xhosa feel about your sharing your understanding of dream work?

a term that means “the one who holds the lightning rod.” The lightning rod is what conveys the power of the ancestors. And too, the Xhosa way of doing divination is slightly different in that we get visions and “see” what’s happening with people.

Because of my path, I was instructed to learn the Zulu method of throwing bones as

Lockley: I have discussed this in depth with my teacher, Mum Gwevu, and her husband, Tata Sukhwini, who is a clan leader and tribal elder.

As my teacher has said, even to her own people, “In our bodies, we are all the same,” and so they are very supportive of using these Xhosa techniques to help open the doorway for Westerners to connect to their ancestors. I have also talked with the local community of sangomas and they are supportive as well. My teacher points out that if this is what my ancestors are asking me to do, then it is what I must do. This is sacred work, and it may be that one day I will ask people to help with work in the townships of the Xhosa people.

I might add that I am not sharing deep sacred information. Yes, these are core principles; however, it is not shamanic training. In this culture the teacher does not make a person a sangoma. The ancestors make a person a sangoma.

My teacher told me, “John, I will JOHN LOCKLEY teach you 20 percent; the other conducts “Ubuntu” and 80 percent will be shown to you workshops maintains his healing in dreams.” Even though I asked practice in England. many questions at the beginning, He will be conductmy teacher never gave me an- ing workshops in swers. She has always waited for the United States in the fall of 2010. www. me to come to her with a dream. african-shaman.com.

It is the dream that opens the door. When she could see that the JEFF BAKER lives in ancestors had given me certain Asheville, NC. He a member of the information, then she knew that is Sacred Fire Commushe could talk of these things. It is nity and a student of the ancestors that open the door.

Plant Spirit Medicine.

JB: Is there a difference between shamans and sangomas?

Lockley: It is interesting. I am known as a traditional African shaman. The word sangoma is a Zulu word that literally means “people of the song” because we use rhythm and song to go into trance and to connect with the ancestors, the ancient ones, the spirit guides in this world and in the next. Actually, the Xhosa word for sangoma is slightly different from the Zulu. It is

well. The reason for this is that I am known as a “Lone Leopard.”

Leopards are solitary, and many sangomas have the term in their given name. My Zulu sangoma name literally means “House of the Leopard,” and my job is to go into the wilderness where there is not much spirit, where people do not know the ancestors and do not know how to connect with them.

THE EVENING HAD TURNED TO DARK, and the pub was loud and less inviting. As John and I walked beside the waters of the old port, home to merchant ships of the slave trade, I reflected on the path that this man had been led to. From his familial stock of ancestors, it seemed clear that he was to play a role in the healing of communities that were reeling from the effects of apartheid, as well as to bring some of the indigenous wisdom of those proud people back to these distant lands. For this work the title “Lone Leopard” sounded about right.

LEON NTLEKI

in the ancestral ways. They waited and waited.

After more than two hours had passed, he emerged from the sea with a sea snake draped around his neck. When the people asked what he had seen, he told them of the river world and the people that met him and instructed him. This man could see the future. He could connect with the ancestral world. He became a very famous sangoma with many trainees.

Sangomas must use their gifts wisely. And should sangomas forget, should they become arrogant or self-serving, the gifts will be taken away from them. You see, the people under the sea can give very powerful things. Every sangoma has to be initiated by the people under the sea. We are known as diviners or people who work with water.

Poetry

Laugh Your Way Home

By Mokasiya

There is little time left now for sharing your nights drama rest the pain the sorrow of your thoughts on a cloud of unconscious forgiveness stop trying so hard to be fully aware of conscious suffering digging out the old broken weapons of guilt, blame, betrayal, and shame share the star field of your singing voice write love poems to grasshoppers, frogs and sunspots dance barefoot on the earth spinning, spinning, until you know nothing about the illusion of gravity then anoint your neighbors feet with the brush stroke of your hair paint passion fruit in the heart of Mystery

Mokasiya lives with his divine partner in the driftless area of southwest Wisconsin where he carves pipestone, creates outdoor art and is composing his next poetry book, The Shaman’s Dream.

and laugh, laugh, laugh your way back home.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 23

the

huichol THE

sacred land AND THE

LAST YEAR I WALKED without a guide through these arid mountains and burning canyons, and I found myself near death from thirst and exhaustion. Today I am traveling with a Huichol Indian family watching how they move through the landscape. Young children, mature parents and aged grandparents are comfortable in their easy strength. They know the location of every waterhole and fruiting tree. In the midst of what to me is an intensely dangerous place they are at home, happy and laughing. I suppose they should feel at home. After all, this is their homeland, the Sierra Huichola of Mexico. Their ancestors have always lived in this land, honored it and loved it.

Years ago I began to honor and love this land also. I was having dreams of one of these rugged peaks; it was helping me in my healing work. When he heard my dreams, a Huichol Shaman determined that I was called to the ways of this land and its people. He introduced me to my teacher, and I began an apprenticeship as a marakame or shaman.

Now I am a marakame myself, but having lived my life far from here, I have spent a lot of time in cars. I have not traveled on foot, sitting around the fire every night to hear the stories of the places I was passing through. So I have a lot to learn. It is this that brings me here with this family. The purpose of the journey is, in part, to help me know the landscape better.

Rounding a curve in the trail, I see the tall

straight rock I dreamt of last night. It stands like a sentinel near the entrance to a deep canyon. The grandfather of the family—my guide on this journey—stands slightly off the trail speaking to his young son in their ancestral tongue. I stop next to them and wait for a pause in the conversation. “Don José, what is the name of that guy there?” I ask, waving in the direction of the rock. “Yes,” he says, “I was just telling my son here the story of who he is and how he got here. His name is Tsi’ka.”

Now he tells the tale in Spanish so fractured that I can’t follow it. It’s obvious, though, that he is very familiar with this character and his antics in the Time Before Time. Later, I will come to find out that along our trail there are about three hundred such places, each with its name and story. The old man knows many of them.

It is not just rocks that are known by name among the Huichols. The Sky is Tatei Werika Wimali, Grandmother Young Maiden Eagle.

The Wind is Our Elder Brother, Tamatsi Párika Tamoyeka. The Sea is Tatei Haramara, Grandmother Ocean. Fire is a Grandfather, Tatewarí. Growth is a Great Grandmother, Takutsi Nakawé. And spiritual guidance is provided by the Blue Deer as Our Elder Brother, Tamatsi Kauyumari.

The Huichols know the inhabitants of their world by name, and the names speak of relatedness and respect: Grandmother, Grandfather,

INSIDE THE SONG OF THE WORLD

by eliot cowan

Great-Grandmother, Elder Brother.

Corn, the staff of life, is not merely a crop planted by humans; it is a divine presence, a goddess, a Grandmother—Tatei Oteganaka.

As it is sown and grows, it has a different name at each stage of development: Echiákame, corn being sown; Neikame, sprouting corn; Wenima, corn one-forth full size; Wirema, corn one-half full size; Toroima, corn threequarter size without ears; Ritaka, corn with ears or developing ears; Jariema, full-height corn; Kupaima, corn with hard ears and silk; Tupiema, corn whose ears have opened; Xaupiema, corn ready to be picked; Huichima, corn stalks ready to be cut. These are commonly the names of people born when the corn in the fields reach each stage. A person called Echiákame would have been born as the corn was being sown; Neikame was born as the corn was sprouting, and so on.

The names show that for the Wixarika (I’m now going to use their proper name, rather than the term “Huichol” which was invented by outsiders) the landscape is composed of family: rocks, wind, sky, rain, ocean, sun, earth, fire, plants, animals, corn–-all are elders.

And elders are to be respected, to be listened to, to be learned from. The Wixarika take care to be on good terms with their elders. They speak to them, they ask them for help and they give offerings of gratitude for help received.

The elders who comprise the world are seen as SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 25

emanations of the Divine—as the many faces of sacred Mystery. In English we would call them “the gods.”

It is practical to have good relationship with the Earth, the Rain, the Wind, the Corn, the Fire, the Mountains, the Forests and the other gods because they give what is needed for the life of the people.

How can the people be in good relationship with the sacred landscape? The Wixarika have a lot of wisdom about that because they have been working on it since the beginning of time. Those who worked on it before our time are dead, but they are certainly not gone.

The human ancestors too are part of the landscape. They watch over the living as the stars in the night sky. Their soul essence, captured and condensed into rock crystal, is carried in the medicine baskets of the shamans. The sacred ceremonies, songs and stories of today were long ago given to the ancestors who passed them down from generation to generation.

Among the Wixarika the embodiment of the ancestors is the marakame or shaman, who is called by the gods to help the people live in a good way. He or she speaks with the gods directly, as a living ancestor.

Part of the marakame’s work involves healing and counseling to correct the imbalances that bring about illness. Here is an account of a healing told me by an old marakame. It is a very old story—older than the man who told it. He inserted himself and his cranky personality into it, but it is a true story nonetheless.

You did not do the ceremony of thanksgiving for the harvest this year, did you?’ He admitted that he had not. “‘Alright,’ I said, ‘If you will agree to do it as soon as possible I’ll see if I can find some help for the child.’ He agreed, so I sucked the corn kernel out of the boy’s heart and gave it to my nephew. “‘He should be alright now,’ I said, ‘but if you need me, come see me again in the morning.’ I went back to bed. The father did not come back in the morning, and the boy is a healthy young man today.”

THINK WHAT YOU WILL about the diagnosis, but notice two things: the cure was successful, and for the Wixarika being in good relation with corn is not just a noble sentiment: it is a matter of life and death.

The marakame is healer and counselor and

When my teacher, don Guadalupe González, came to this country for the first time, he was interested to hear “what the gods are saying in California.” I took him to a particular mountain, which he gazed at for a minute or two.

Then he gave me a long account of spiritual lore about the place and how it had been approached by local indigenous peoples. Finally he said, “This is a very good place. I could come here and spend the night. About one or two o’clock in the morning a ball of fire would appear in the sky. I would grab it with my feathers and put it in my medicine basket. Then I could use it to heal people.”

Our guide on this journey was a white man of about my age who had spent his entire life learning about the mountain. As we were leaving the place, I asked him if he wanted to know what don Lupe had said about it. He was indeed interested, so I gave him an account.

“That’s incredible!” he said. “It’s just what the Indian grandmothers around here have told me. But the most amazing thing is….” He paused, looking a bit embarrassed. “Well I’ve never told anybody this because I didn’t want people to think I’m crazy, but I’ve been seeing those fireballs in the night sky since I was eight years old!”

On another occasion don Lupe gave me a view of the importance of sacred stories in Wixarika life. After recounting a seriously abridged version of “How Possum Stole Fire,” he said, “To really tell this story one begins about seven o’clock at night. It’s not over until almost sunrise. Many things are explained. The different gods and who they were in the First World.

My father used to tell me these stories on the pilgrimage to Wirikuta. We used to go on foot; it took a whole month to get there. At night one sits around the fire and explains all these things. All the animals, the sun, moon, wind, water and earth. Who were they in the First World? Were they people or not? How were they changed into the things they are today?

The stories go on until nothing in this world is left unexplained.”

Like other indigenous peoples, the Wixarika recognize certain special places in the living landscape. These are mountains, springs, deserts, caves and so on that to the

About one or two o’clock in the morning a ball of fire would appear in the sky. I would grab it with my feathers and put it in my medicine basket.

“I WAS SOUND ASLEEP late one night when one of my nephews came to my house and called me: ‘Pardon me for disturbing your rest, uncle, but I come laden with worry. A scorpion has stung my baby boy, and I fear he will not live to see the morning unless you come to help.’ I grumbled that I was not eager to go and maybe fall into a canyon in the dark, but he had a flashlight and kept insisting, so I went.

“When I got there the child was in bad shape. I looked at him with my feathers, and I saw a kernel of corn in his heart. I turned to his father and said, ‘You are not in a good way with the corn. That is why your son was stung.

26 Issue 11

also a teacher and archive of the sacred songs that help people relate to the sacred landscape.

The Wixarika sense the landscape itself as a song sung into existence by the Divine. Many ancient traditions proclaim that the world is a manifestation of sound vibration. And some of the most current scientists, such as the string theorists, agree. But the Wixarika don’t just theorize about the song: they hear it and understand the lyrics, too. When you or I look at a mountain, for example, we see an object made up of other objects: rocks, dirt, trees and so on.

When a Wixarika looks at a mountain, he does not see an object, he feels an expression. Like a song it touches him and stirs his emotions. He understands what is being sung.

untrained eye look like other nearby features, yet the shamans see something strikingly different: beautiful, multicolored sacred portals presided over by impressive god forms and attended by animal, mineral and ancestral human guardians. When these special places are approached according to the ancestral protocols, the sacred doorways open, the pilgrims are purified and prepared, and after several yearly pilgrimages they receive blessings.

Pilgrimages involve much sacrifice: lengthy periods of fasting and sexual abstinence, long periods away from home, physical hardship, exposure to danger and lots of expense. Yet it would be practically unthinkable for a man or woman living in the Sierra to die without having made at least one 5-year cycle of pilgrimage. The marakames get their healing powers and other abilities at their pilgrimage sites.

Others go to the sacred places to ask Divine for what is needed to fulfill their lives: health and prosperity for their families and fields and a feeling of connectedness to community, homeland and the Divine.

To maintain this connectedness there is a full calendar of seasonal community fiestas – one for almost every month of the year. These are elaborate, expensive, multi-day affairs. By the end the people are exhausted, broke, sometimes drunk, and at peace. Outsiders often despair at this penchant for fiestas, feeling that it impedes modernization and progress. They fail to see that impeding modernization and socalled progress is precisely the point.

An old story tells how the sacred places gifted the people with the hunt, agriculture, good weather, shelter, clothing and tools. Then, beguiled by the mind’s promises of an easy life, the people stopped listening to the voices of the gods. They forgot they were part of the sacred landscape, and they became subject to envy, jealously, fighting and loneliness.

Regular immersion in ceremony keeps the people from going astray once more. The ceremonial centerpiece is the song of the attending shaman which goes all night and sometimes more than one night. The marakame loses himself in the song, channeling the commentary of the gods about the life of the community. All this brings the people back to Divine wisdom. It is the regularly prescribed antidote for the tendency of the human mind

to get carried away with its fear-driven efforts to control the world.

Our society’s efforts in this direction have destroyed much of the sacred landscape, building roads, damming rivers, felling forests, mining minerals, driving plants and animals to extinction, dispossessing and slaughtering indigenous people. All this is meant to keep us safe and comfortable. But where is the comfort? Our people are ever more depressed,

This is not to say that modernity has made no inroads. In fact the first roads into the Huichol Sierra were built some 30 years ago. Some people today favor more roads being built. Others feel that bulldozing the sacred landscape can bring only calamity. In the last three or four years the first electric power lines have appeared in some communities and with them has come television. Now the young in those communities are no longer sitting around the

anxious, alienated, dependent on drugs. And where is the safety? We are beginning to face the reality that our society cannot survive and the survival of humanity itself is in question.

The Wixarika don’t go very far down the road to self-destruction. The sacred places, the ancestors, the shamans keep reminding them that they are better off spending their time as the ancestors did, on sacred song, sacred stories, and sacred offerings. They are better off knowing that the sacred landscape, when fed and watered with human gratitude, provides a good life for them and their children. It provides food, fuel and shelter.

It shows them who they are, where they are, who they are with, and what is to be done. It gives them the joy of continually rediscovering that they are part of it from the beginning of time to the end.

fire listening to the shamans at night; they are sitting indoors watching stories of violence and conspicuous consumption from New York and Los Angeles. But the Wixarika have stayed true to their place in the sacred landscape for hundreds of thousands of years. I feel time is on their side. The electronic invasion started just as the culture that launched it began its death rattle. Meanwhile from their homes in the mountains and canyons, the Wixarika will continue to pray for the continuance of their way of life: Take care, my gods, Of what we have made for you.

Take care of all that has happened So that time does not erase What has persisted After this much sacrifice.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 27

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 29

Back in 1966

when he was six years old, Cristobal Gonzalez, a Huichol shaman-in-training, learned to tell the stories of his people. But instead of words, Gonzalez was taught to speak with yarn.

As a child his parents moved from place to place in central Mexico until they settled in Tepic and created a home. Gonzalez, on those early journeys, saw many sights, but the ones that most drew his eyes were works of art, “paintings” created from brightly colored strands of yarn pressed onto boards coated with beeswax or resin. The yarn paintings explained the stories, the beliefs, the cosmology of his people—the Huichol, an indigenous group based in central Western Mexico whose current population hovers around 26,000.

It so happened that Gonzalez had an uncle, a man named Cario Vincente, who practiced yarn painting as a craft and trade, and Gonzalez spent time watching him work. On the outermost edge of each painting there was a border, a multi-colored frame of yarn several strands wide. Guided by his uncle, Gonzalez began to provide the borders to Vincente’s paintings, pressing the threads into the wax-covered board with his eager, young fingers. Seeing his nephew’s skill, Vincente helped Gonzalez draw a few images, which together they turned into yarn paintings. His uncle sold them to buyers from the U.S. With their sale complete, Vincente told Gonzalez, “I want you to learn everything from scratch.”

And so he did. Gonzalez learned to apply the beeswax to the board and then, with a knife, smooth it flat. He studied the art of the rellado, an instrument similar to a compass used to render images on the wax foundation, images that would be filled in with yarn. He practiced how to set the yarn into the wax, pressing with his thumbs and first three fingers—one-two onetwo one-two—until the images sprang to life.

And he was schooled in the symbolism of the images: the blue deer, Kauyumari, the sacred 30 Issue 11

vessel of Spirit; the nierika, the portal that exists between this world and that of Spirit; the eagle, aguila, one of Spirit’s sacred messengers; and peyote, hikuri, which, when used by a Huichol shaman in a ceremonial manner, can open the door to visions and dreams.

Gonzalez was already familiar with a shaman, or marakame—his grandfather. Gonzalez had participated in many ceremonies during childhood. And so, while studying yarn painting with his uncle, he watched his grandfather lead ceremonies. He was trained for five years in the practice of shaking the rattle, an instruction some children receive. With ancestral teachings passed on from uncle to nephew, from grandfather to grandson, Gonzalez, at 16, told his father he had made a decision: he wanted to become a marakame. As a career, he chose yarn painting.

Now, at the age of 49, Gonzalez supports himself and his family—a wife, one son, three daughters—through the craft he learned as a child. The work he produces—filled with vivid representational images of humans, animals and deities that speak of the connection between the human realm and the spirit world—can accurately be described as visionary. All of his yarn paintings are visions either seen in dreams or induced by peyote. As a marakame-in-training, he takes physical journeys under the guidance of practiced marakames to search for this sacred substance. Together in ceremony Gonzalez and the others make traditional offerings before partaking of the peyote, awaiting the visions that follow.

Gonzalez brings those visions and dreams back to his artist’s table where he weaves them into a painting, producing pieces that, in a manner akin to Cubism, depict a scene from multiple points of view.

His yarn paintings, he says, begin with a period of high intensity. He works constantly for eight, ten hours a day, his passion occupying him through the daylight hours and well into the evening. During this phase he cannot stop: the images come on too strongly to deny. Each thought, each visual gives birth to the next, and he receives them, drawing them with the rellado, setting them down in yarn. His wife and children, aware of his process, bring him food and drink. Once the initial inspiration has subsided, he works fewer hours a day, but with no less focus. His artistic journey ends, depending on the size of the work, anywhere from two weeks to a month after he began.

Woven into the very fabric of each yarn painting, among the eagles and deer, the serpents and candles, the sun and mountains, resides a story, a summary of which is written in marker on the back. Yet when he gazes at his work, Gonzalez sees the story within the story, the inspiration that gave birth to his creation.

What follows are the stories Gonzalez tells of his own yarn paintings. In his words not only can the cosmology of the Huichol be found, but also the voice of an artist who seeks to deepen his connection to the realm of Spirit.

THE CORN GODDESS The ancestors live in another world. All the ceremonies the Huichol do are for the ancestors. If the Huichol stop their ceremonies, like the ceremony to plant the corn, the ancestors will be upset because they need to eat too, in the other life. It is why the Huichol do the ceremonies—so the ancestors will come visit them.

Here is La Diosa de la Mais, the Corn Goddess. Wearing a blue crown, she stands inside a tuki, a sacred temple, during the corn-planting ceremony. Outside, a marakame sings to the gods and the ancestors. Even though the marakame can’t be seen, the marakame is there. The deer antlers, running down the left and right side, show the marakame. When the ancestors hear the singing, they come back

and visit. They can become any animal—a deer, a wolf, anything. A deer watches from on top of the tuki.

In the ceremony to plant corn certain offerings are given to the corn—corn mixed with water, corn mixed with chocolate, with deer blood, sacred water and tequino, a fermented corn beverage. Each offering is carried to the tuki in a little container where it is painted onto stalks of corn.

Women conduct the corn planting ceremony. As the women gather around, the marakame sings. Then the marakame says, “Mujeres, viens aprende las velas”—“Women, light the candles.” They

light them. There are many, many, many, many, many, many, many candles. The women burn copal, a tree resin that acts as incense.

The fragrance pleases the gods. The marakame, with a tool called a muvieri, or a sacred wand, brings the wind. The wind brings the deer. The marakame places the wind inside the tuki.

The Corn Goddess has arrived.

Many thanks to Laura Lenor Sanchez Andrade for her excellent two-way translation of my conversation with Cristobal.

32 Issue 11

THE WIND TREE

First, before the light was born in this Mother Earth, animals were the gods and goddesses and marakames, or shamans. When the sun came, the strongest animals survived. The serpent went into the caves, the eagle flew into the sky, the deer went to the mountains.

Each animal went to its own place.

When the sun comes, it flies in the sky above the Picacho Mountains, with flames under its arms. When the sun comes, it becomes an eagle, with its wings outstretched. In the eagle’s chest sits the face of the sun. The eagle and the sun, they are the same. In the Picacho Mountains there stands a sacred tree, the Wind Tree. The Huichol call the tree Quieri. The tree receives energy from the eagle, its green leaves sitting next to the eagle’s left wing. The eagle flies above the roaring flames of Tatewarí, Grandfather Fire. The fire’s energy rises like arrows. The marakame, the shaman who wears the hat, knows that the sun has arrived. The marakame begins to pray.

Some marakames make a pilgrimage to the Wind Tree. The tree represents the deer, the serpent, the eagle, the wolf. The marakame feeds the tree with sacred offerings. A marakame may also carry a mask of a deer and hang it near the Wind Tree or hang sacred arrows, las flechas, near the tree. At night, during the pilgrimage, a marakame may dream of the portal, called a nierika, to the realm of Spirit. The nierika can reveal how the Wind Tree becomes a serpent because all things are connected.

Inside the Picacho Mountains live deities, known as quakueris, beings who may have deer antlers or yellow rays of energy rising from their heads and bodies. They breathe the energy of the mountains. Around the mountain peaks blue flames of energy tipped in red rise up to the sky. The marakame can see how the energy comes out of the mountain.

After the marakame makes the offerings, he or she goes to a place in the mountains and sits. Then she walks a little further and starts dreaming about what is going on here—like meditation. The deities of the mountains come down to the marakame. The deities become deer and start talking to the marakame, who receives all the knowledge.

The marakame takes a sacred wand adorned with feathers, a muvieri, and absorbs the knowledge. It is like the wind. When he receives the knowledge, the shaman takes all the knowledge and power and puts it in a special box, called taquatzi, which holds the sacred wand. The shaman becomes the wolf.

This wolf is the knowledge, the knowledge that goes into the muvieri. They are the same.

The muvieri and taquatzi start talking and moving. They are alive.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

As the sun rises, the marakames, the people who take the peyote, they see the light and they say, “Oh, it is coming!” The sun’s brightness fills everything. The doorway to the other world is opening. Wisdom and knowledge will follow. Peeking out over the horizon, from the four corners of the painting, appear the face and rays of the rising sun.

Grandfather Fire, Tatewarí, with its flames—yellow, orange, blue— sits in the sacred center. It is el fuego todo, the fire that can become everything—the deer, the eagle, the serpent, the peyote—since all are connected. From the flames of Tatewarí rises the deer, the sacred messenger. The deer shows itself to the marakame carrying knowledge, a red star set on his forehead.

But the peyote carries this knowledge, this power too. The deer can reveal to the marakame where the peyote cactus lives. Everywhere the deer jumps—poom, poom, poom!—peyote grows. The power of the deer and the power of the peyote, they are the same.

The peyote’s power surrounds Grandfather Fire, Tatewarí, in a circle;

the power rises up to meet the sun and its rays. Seen in the rays of the sun, the deer inhales and exhales the peyote’s power. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. The deer does both: it is the same thing. Passing from deer to deer, and out into the world, rays of energy, seen as lightning bolts beneath the glow of the sun, connect the deer to all around them.

Watching it all, absorbing the knowledge that fills the air, the marakame sits in a visionary state. The portal to the spirit world has opened. Like the deer, the marakame breathes in and breathes out, the sacred knowledge flowing in, flowing out. The marakame, while sitting outside of the sacred fire looking into its flames, also “sits” inside el fuego todo, in the center of everything, connected to the deer and the sun and the peyote and Tatewarí, surrounded by a ring of knowledge. In the air small, sparkling yellow globes dance—the energy of the peyote’s vision.

This is the beginning of the pilgrim’s journey.

THE EAGLE SHOWS THE WAY

The gods always come to the marakame and show the way to find peyote through a messenger: a deer, a serpent, an eagle. This is a sign for the marakame to follow.

Once I went out with a group of marakames on a search for peyote. We had yet to find anything when we saw an eagle in the sky. Then there appeared another eagle. The eagles began to fight. They spiraled down through the sky until they reached the ground. Then they sank below the ground, going under it. These were real eagles. This is the way they fight. It’s a sign that the peyote is there. For the people that see it this is a gift.

While the peyote cactus can be seen above ground, the peyote button, which the marakame ingests to embark on a journey, lives underground like the eagles that fight. To remove the peyote button, the marakame must use a knife carefully so as not to disturb the root. When taken in a ritual manner, a peyote button opens the nierika, the portal to the realm of Spirit.

Here, eagles high in the sky arrive as messengers to the marakame. Spiraling down beneath the ground, they reveal the location of the green peyote button. The whirling energy that surrounds the green peyote button also lives inside the eagle, swirl-

ing in its center and on its legs, swirling above its talons, because la aguila es peyote: the eagle is peyote. They have become one and the same. But the deer is peyote too, and when the deer arrives, the energy inside it reaches out to touch the energy arising from the eagle’s talons.

A marakame must make offerings before removing the peyote button. The marakame sings prayers. The marakame says, “Thank you.” Above ground, next to where the peyote cactus dwells, the marakame lights candles. Little holes are dug in the soil next to the cactus into which are placed las flechas, sacred arrows made by the marakame [represented in bright yellow and red at top center]. For the person who makes these arrows, symbolically, these arrows are that person. There is no difference.

These things, they become alive. The sun comes up, and the marakame sees the peyote floating. All around the marakame the energy of the world opens up, blossoming like the petals of a flower, sparkling. This is the connection. Surrounding it all, holding the energy and the eagle and the deer and the peyote, is Grandfather Fire, Tatewarí, with its flames of purple, blue, red and orange.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 35

THE SERPENT’S BLESSING

In the center sits Grandfather Fire, Tatewarí, its purple flames emitting a golden yellow light. The firelight illuminates the deer, the one whose footsteps reveal the peyote to the marakame. Atop the deer’s head, between its antlers, sits a little blue crown. This is the energy, the knowledge that the deer has come to share with the marakame.

Wisdom is coming from the deer. The deer feeds the fire. The deer is

36 Issue 11

the fire. And the serpent is the fire too. They are all one.

Just as the deer is peyote, the deer also represents corn. Some corn is light purple, and the deer connected to the corn is the same color.

The deer inhales and exhales the power of everything; the power of everything inhales and exhales the deer. The energy of the deer, the fire, the peyote, the serpent—together they act as a nierika, a portal to the spirit world.

THE HUICHOL ART PROJECT The Huichol Indians have lived for countless generations in remote hamlets, high in the Sierra Madre Mountains of western Mexico.

They are a people never conquered by outsiders; their sacred traditions and connection to the gods have been uninterrupted since earliest times. Their lives center around sacred rituals and tradition, and everything from planting corn to embroidering clothes is done in a sacred way. Their artwork is alive with their experience of the Divine.

In the early 1990s, as Eliot Cowan began his learning with Huichol shamans, he was struck by the transformative beauty of this sacred art.

He also saw its economic importance to the villagers—artists could derive income from a meaningful endeavor rather than have to migrate to find work in pesticide-polluted tobac-

co fields or toxic urban factories. To find markets for their beaded jewelry, yarn paintings, woven belts, bags, and beaded animal figures, artisans traveled day after day, taking 12-hour bus rides to reach the city plazas where they spread their goods on blankets for sale. Sometimes they sold little. Sometimes they were robbed on their return.

Eliot was moved to buy a little art and bring it home, where he sold it to family and friends.

People were electrified by it. They asked for more. Eliot started reserving one suitcase exclusively for art. Then it was two. Friendships formed. Trust developed. The Huichol Art Project (HAP) began to emerge.

Since its inception, HAP has found buyers for almost $200,000 worth of art and bead work. This income returns directly to the Hu-

the artist

CRISTOBAL GONZALEZ

Green peyote buttons swirl with power and knowledge. The peyote buttons carry power to the deer and Tatewarí both, and they carry the deer’s power and Tatewarí’s power out into the world. Like all things, they are connected. The deer and the peyote, they change, one into the other. The energy that helps them change forms looks like rainbows.

Before the marakame cuts free the peyote button, he places close by each peyote cactus las flechas, the sacred arrows that are the marakame. As the marakame prepares to cut the peyote, or sometimes before the marakame even finds it, the wind—seen as purple swirls of energy—rises up. This is the wind that is moving everything. When the marakame cuts the green peyote button from the rest of the plant, the knife leaves straight lines in the peyote plant, revealing lines of colors—yellow, red—close to the roots. The rays of the sun shine in the four directions.

One morning, my cousin, who is a marakame, and I went searching for peyote. We followed the footsteps of el venado, the deer. When we found the peyote, we lit our candles. We gave thanks and sang our prayers. I cut the peyote button free from the cactus. I turned it over in the palm of my hand. I saw the straight red lines on the bottom of the button that my knife had revealed.

But then the button changed in my hands. The straight lines started to move. They twisted themselves until they became a serpent, in a spiral. The straight lines had turned into la serpiente de cascabel, the rattlesnake.

My cousin and I watched it happen.

My cousin turned to me and said, “This is your luck.

The gods have blessed you.”

Then we prayed and gave thanks for this beautiful gift from the gods.

ichol hamlets. Eliot travels two, sometimes three, times a year on buying trips to purchase art directly from families in Nayarit and Jalisco.

Today, HAP is a part of the non-profit Blue Deer Center, a healing retreat center and home for ancestral traditions in Margaretville, NY. The project is run completely by a team of dedicated volunteers. While the operation is still small enough to know each artist and vendor, the project hopes to increase its markets in order to expand its ability to buy from more families. Except for a small markup to cover shipping, 100% of proceeds go directly to the Huichol.

HAP has many quadro (yarn paintings) by Cristobal Gonzalez in its extensive inventory of beaded works and art. For more information, contact huicholart8@gmail.com

FORGIVING COLUMBUS CAN A 500 YEAR- OLD WOUND BE HEALED?

By Deanna Jenné

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BETH WHITE Read more about Beth White on page 6.

THE LAST GLOW OF DAYLIGHT shows pink on Mt. Sopris. The Utes called him “Old Ancient Mountain Heart Sits There” when they lived here a little over one hundred years ago. For the Utes this is a holy mountain, though the name is nearly forgotten. They question whether they can bear to open up a relationship with this sacred place when they don’t live here any longer.

Their language is getting close to extinction; few speak the words because the words are deeply relational to the land itself. When I first met Mt. Sopris, only thirty years ago, the land still had large ranches and beautiful meadows along the Crystal and Roaring Fork Rivers. Today, the place is dotted with McMansions, shopping centers, cars and a four lane highway, all in support of the Colorado ski industry. There’s not any room for the Utes to come home.

How could they speak the true, ancient name of this holy mountain?

Now, at his foot, my husband and I tend the sacred fire whose flames have been burning since Thursday, lit only once and tended by many. It’s now 5 PM on Saturday, and in the wintry temperatures of the Rockies this Fire’s flames reach into the night to take over the sun’s work of the day.

38 Issue 11

DONNA CASTAÑEDA,

AZTEC DANCER FROM DENVER, COLORADO

G

randfather Fire has called forth and has been invoked by representatives of ancestral traditions that come from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Argentina.

Fires have been burning simultaneously up and down the spine of the Americas, supporting us here at the Heart, in Carbondale, Colorado. At the “Eleventh Hour,” a Native Gathering of the Americas has congregated to fulfill a dream of “healing all wounds between the peoples of the world and Mother Earth.” These people here are working to establish the “International Foundation for the Advancement of Indigenous People” and the “Commission on Forgiveness” to move away from confrontation and violence.

As dreams go, it takes many villages, continents of inspired people, to fulfill a dream of this magnitude. Dr. Ramon Nenadich, a Taino Indian from Puerto Rico, had this dream some 20 years ago after a mysterious illness nearly took his life. After western medicine couldn’t find anything wrong with him, he surrendered to indigenous healers. And, as death can place a person on the precipice of one’s path and purpose, Dr. Nenadich heard his calling, a voice telling him to gather the nations of indigenous people of the Americas. Today, the unfolding of his purpose brings forth yet another message for the indigenous and non-indigenous of this gathering.

This message now is to forgive Christopher Columbus. It is no coincidence that his people, the

40 Issue 11

Tainos, met Columbus upon his arrival in 1492.

Dr. Nenadich’s message calls for people to get on one of two trains. He says, “One [train] is going to the abyss with no driver, and other is the train to salvation which is going slowly and stopping all the time and wants all people of good heart to get on board. The train of darkness is directed by evil, selfishness, greed, violence, hatred, anger, ego, insanity. That’s the predominant society on the planet today. This [one] is about weapons and arms, economic and political domination. The train of salvation is the one of divine light, forgiveness, humbleness, reciprocity, understanding and love, and the driver of that train are the indigenous peoples. We invite all good people to get on that train. None of the weapons of the other train can be used, the train of destruction on which most of Western Culture has been riding.”

In council around the sacred fire the native peoples, younger and elder representatives from 16 countries, collaborate about the next morning’s break-of-dawn forgiveness ceremony. For some the question is whether they are ready to do this. Some wounds are still very raw. The northern tribes were displaced from their homelands just a little more than a hundred years ago.

Meanwhile, Clifford Duncan, Northern Ute Elder and descendent of the land in which this fire burns, leads the procession of Ute dancers to the Lakota drummer’s song. Aztec and Supai dancers follow. Simultaneously, a sweat lodge is

held at the vapor caves, the place of ancient hot underground healing waters that come from the volcanic action beneath the Rockies close to the Colorado River.

My fire tending duties done, I sit in this cave in total darkness with twenty others. The song of prayer fills me, and I feel our prayers go into the vapors, into the womb of Mother Earth and back into the waters to be heard by the spirit of all life and to heal the wounds of time. We are on our third round led by Kenny Frost, an Elder of the Southern Ute Nation. The heat challenges me, but I breathe slowly. I am honored to be here; I have dreamed of being here with the Ute people. A movie runs backward in my mind of my own life and the past 500 year’s cycle of destruction. I ask myself if the council at the fire tonight will consent to conduct the Ceremony of Forgiveness.

I’ve been to this cave many times before to pray and purify, but tonight my thoughts go to this healing for all of our relations, for the descendants of the original peoples. This time is a pivotal moment in our history, and our lives have the chance to change forever. It is said that ghosts of the past will be released and the spirit of Columbus will be free, which brings the indigenous and non-indigenous to peace. In his opening address to the Gathering this morning Mr. Duncan said, “Let’s do what we have to do.”

What does it mean to forgive when you can’t come home? This is the question my heart asks

ficial “National Sorry Day” each year for the mistreatment of their aboriginal peoples. Peoples of New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Nicaragua have received public apologies. Has it made a change? I think so. I see the aboriginals getting help, but it’s a long road to recovery. Some of the world’s most severe and long-standing conflicts have been relieved by compensation and apologies by public officials and governments.

It will take time for the Utes to bring forth the ancestral name of Mt. Sopris. More apology and reckoning must take place, I believe, for apartheid still exists in many parts of the world, including the United States. I wonder and feel that possibly my own suffering of fifty years could also be released.

Being born and raised white on the Flathead Salish Kootenai Indian Reservation in Montana left me in pieces. At eight years old I looked at the color of my skin, and there was a “knowing” that we (non-Indians) had done something very wrong. My life’s purpose is to make right out of wrong for my indigenous and non-indigenous Brothers and Sisters. I remember this knowing so clearly. I see now that I had to experience the hatred and affliction we—myself and the Indians—suffered living there, marginalized, in poverty, while drugs and alcohol became our escape

LEFTMOST: JAIRO MOZART FROM THE POTIGUARA TRIBE IN BRAZIL GROUP: CEREMONY BY THE FIRE DEDICATED TO MOTHER EARTH CENTER FRONT: CALIXTA GABRIEL, MAYA FROM GUATEMALA, LEFT: ELLEN HOLLY KLAVER, INTERPRETER FROM BOULDER, CO MAN IN BLUE PANTS: DR. RAMON NENADICH AT CEREMONY DANCER: DONNA CASTAÑEDA DANCING

when I consider Mr. Duncan, his family and his people who belong to the land called the Roaring Fork Valley.

How does one forgive the atrocities of the past—a past that has brought forth near annihilation in the present? An entire civilization is ready to collapse; what will forgiveness do to save the world? My heart says it’s the only thing that will. I know that out of death and destruction comes life. This is one law we can count on, the Law of Nature. The people must see that we don’t own the earth: we are the earth. Then we will rebuild with reciprocity to Mother Earth.

Forgiveness means to me acceptance, not to condone an action but to accept the action as being part of the Great Dream. The depth of acceptance is a spiritual path in and of itself.

Where there is a wound in our psyches and in our bodies, there is a corresponding wound at the same site in the culture itself and, finally, in Nature herself. When we face the truth of our present-day actions, our ancestors’ actions, we heal, Mother Earth heals. In a truly holistic society all worlds are understood as interdependent, not as separate entities.

Forgiveness is the greatest healer of all, say many. Australia now acknowledges an unof-

and addiction. I had to know the pain of being a minority and the need to rise out of oppression and face the truth of the holocaust; I had to be “awake” for my purpose in life. I could not afford to dillydally in the American Dream.

When I rolled out of there at seventeen years of age, I had a lot of forgiveness to do. I was angry with my family, my teachers, with everyone— but probably not any angrier than anyone else.

My younger years were peaceful here, but by the time I was a teenager in the early ‘70s the American Indian Movement (AIM) was catching on like wildfire, and people were beginning to awaken to what they had lost. AIM brought fear to our lives each day as we were stalked, called vicious names, spat on, beaten up. My eldest brother suffered gang violence, chain whippings and humiliation. I was constantly called out to fight other girls, so I secretly carried a sock full of rocks in my pocket to use as a defense weapon.

My brothers and I took our rage out on each other at home because we were outnumbered and ineffectual elsewhere.

My parents seemed blind. Who could blame them? They put roots down here, and my grandparents farmed this land since the ‘40s. They looked to the “American Dream” for their salvation, while I searched for spiritual connection by way of the Earth. I was saved, not through my Christian upbringing but as a child who listened to the hawk’s voice, who dreamed of the Bear Clan and its protection over me. I looked into SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 41

the sacred mountains for guidance and waited each spring for my familiar Meadow Lark to sing its song; I thought, “my song.” My father tried to understand this and my mother was too frightened and worried to see me for who I was.

At the foot of this sacred mountain and here in the womb of Mother Earth I have the chance to heal the wounds of the past. This is my soul’s ancestral homeland. I am accepted at this gathering of nations, acknowledged for my own indigenous heart.

Now in the cave Kenny Frost asks people to voice their prayers. Mine is similar to the Hopi Prophecy and to Dr. Nenadich’s cry for people to get on the train to salvation. I pray for hearts to open, for people to make the choice to get on this train of forgiveness, humbleness, reciprocity, understanding and love.

As I pray, the film rolls back to when I was a kid in school. The history lessons taught of Christopher Columbus’s heroism as he “discovered America” and how it became a national holiday (holy day). This story prepared us for the pilgrim’s story of landing at Plymouth Rock, so we celebrated Thanksgiving in honor of them.

The story and celebration of the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ, swiftly followed.

How does a child fit all of this together, I ask myself? This history and religion was the foundation of my heritage and none of it made sense. At 15 years old I declared that I no longer believed in what I had learned, and I left the 42 Issue 11

Catholic Church. I knew the indigenous people were spiritual people and that they lived with a connection to the earth that went beyond believing in scriptures in a book, and I knew that God had not abandoned them.

This I knew in my heart and I expounded on this to my family.

But, as a child, little did I know the real history. In 1095, at the beginning of the Crusades, Pope Urban II issued an edict, the papal bull Terra Nullius (meaning empty land), which gave the kings and princes of Europe the right to “discover” or claim land in non-Christian areas. In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued the bull Romanus Pontifex, declaring war against all non-Christians throughout the world and authorizing the conquest of their nations and territories.

By the time Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492, this Doctrine of Discovery was a well-established idea in the Christian world. It granted Columbus the right to perform a ceremony to “take possession” of all lands he “discovered.”

In 1493 Pope Alexander VI, issued the bull Inter Cetera which granted Spain the right to conquer the lands that Columbus had already “discovered” and all the lands that it might come upon in the future. The Christian Empire was strengthened by the Pope’s wish to convert the natives of these lands to Catholicism. These edicts treated non-Christians as uncivilized and subhuman and therefore without rights to

any land or nation. Christian leaders claimed a God-given right to take control of all lands and used this idea to justify war, colonization and even slavery.

Ironically and perhaps even schizophrenically, the United States was founded on freedom from such tyranny, but the idea that white people and Christians had certain divine rights was nevertheless ingrained in our young nation’s policies. The slave trade, for example, and centuries of violence against black people depended upon the idea that non-Whites were less than human. The theft of Native American lands required a similar justification. Growing up I felt less than human “knowing” what I knew.

In 1823 the Doctrine of Discovery was written into United States law in the Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh. In this case the Court ruled that the US held “the ultimate right to the soil.” This ruling stripped Native Americans, as well as African Americans, Mexicans and many others in North America and abroad, of all rights to their independence. They lost their lives, liberty and land in the name of United States expansionism. Soon thereafter, the 1830 Indian Removal Act was written as law. The effects of Manifest Destiny (another name for the Doctrine of Discovery) continue today as we

move toward progress and push original peoples around the world out of their homelands and to the brink of extinction. Genocide has not stopped. Isn’t it what we’ve wanted? Isn’t it all in the name of progress, the Great American Dream?

Columbus is an archetypal force. He’s part of the Great Dream that has carried forth a hunger and greed for land, wealth and control. The catastrophic results continue to this day, and for this a ritual of forgiveness or “acceptance” is necessary to begin the “new age.” How can the original peoples of the land I build my home and community on dance this dance of forgiveness?

Outsiders, native people from the Americas, have gathered to do this dance on the land so recently taken from the Utes. Are they, the Utes, being pushed to forgive too soon? What needs to happen in this valley, in the State of Colorado, in the Nation before forgiveness can be real?

This morning Philip Whiteman, Jr. of the Cheyenne River Reservation sang the song that “came through my father and my grandfathers [and] was sung by [my ancestor] Sitting Bull just before the Battle of Little Big Horn.” He talked about the earth paint used on the face of a warrior as a mirror for the enemy. “The warrior would say to the enemy, ‘What you do to me, you do to yourself.’ When soldiers attacked our people, when our people went out with their earth paint and eagle whistles, [they said] what you do to us you do to yourself.’” He went on to

say, “Today we’re still confronted FAR LEFT: KENNY FROST, Earth. We Indigenous People all SOUTHERN UTE READING with the same battle that took THE EVENT PROGRAM MAN have the same purpose. We can IN BLUE JACKET: ELMER place in 1872.” confront darkness not with weapGONZALEZ, KUNA FROM RECEIVES HEALHis message is loud and clear PANAMA ons but with love. In these difficult ING FOR THE HEART to me. My mother was born near MOUNT SOPRIS: “OLD times that are coming we need to ANCIENT MOUNTAIN that battleground. Once, I looked HEART SITS THERE” TWO double our prayers.”

KUAOYOLOTZIN out over the beautiful tawny fields CHILDREN: Dr. Kawan Sangaa “Woody” FRAGOSO, AZTEC DANCER FROM MEXICO, AND LITTLE where the fallen peoples’ spirits BROTHER LUIS (KIAHUI) Morrison, a Haida elder from Britwandered on the land of this mas- FRAGOSA ish Columbia, gave us a perspecsacre and thought, “They can’t tive on forgiveness: “Columbus rest.” And I think to myself that the Ceremony was an integral part of Prophesy, a test. So, do of Forgiveness will heal this eerie reminder of we continue to mire ourselves in our buckets of that holocaust and all the many others along the misery over this thing, or do we climb out and “spine of the Americas.” regain our respective identities of Peoples who Whiteman also said that because of “the in- live ‘with the land’ rather than ‘off the land’ and, dustrial culture—what it’s done to the land and reclaim our natural wisdom—the wisdom that earth that we live in today and how we’ve adopt- comes with our having lived with this land for ed its lifestyle—we contribute to the destruction over 100,000 years? of Mother Earth and all living things. Today, I “In our minds we have killed Columbus inpray that the historical trauma that we face and numerable times.... Let’s take care of that Spirit the insanity that comes along with thinking that so that it can complete its journey and we can we own Mother Earth—that we may heal from remove ourselves from our bucket of misery, that sickness. We are all one. We are all Broth- release the weight of five centuries of oppresers and Sisters of Mother Earth, and the Creator sion, and return to our place as natural elements owns us.” of Mother Earth’s habitat. As mired peoples, I think of Jorge Coronado, a Mayan elder who we have learned to think in terms of ‘moving addressed the audience this morning. He said, “I ahead.’ However, we are going nowhere except send you a greeting from the Council of Elders where our Spaceship Earth is taking us... much of the Yucatan. A dark light penetrated and it like the fleas fighting over who owns the dog. We destroyed nature. We Indigenous People live in need to return ourselves to the ‘River of Time.’ harmony with nature. I sing a song, a prayer to The passage of time is like sitting in a river with heal the earth. For us, sin is destroying Mother my back upstream; time flows past.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 43

A Busy and Productive Gathering

“Stop looking over our shoulders trying to see our past. It is in front of us for us to be constantly reminded of who we are and what we have become under the influence of the ‘Dark Sun.’” In all fairness I must say that even as far back as Columbus there were religious and political leaders, as well as ordinary citizens, who knew better and worked against racism, colonization and slavery. There’s always light in the darkness. There are always people with open hearts and indigenous souls that rise in defense of what’s right and good.

At sunrise the next day about a hundred people come to the Ceremony of Forgiveness of Christopher Columbus. They smoke the chanupa, the pipe of peace, at the foot of Mt. Sopris.

My friend Fred “Lightning Heart” Haberlein, a Koyemsi, Keeper of the Hopi Prophesy, who lives just up the canyon from the vapor caves, speaks at the Ceremony about forgiveness in this way: “We have to remember that Christopher Columbus would have been different if he could have been different. We can’t change what God has given us. We must forgive. Forgiveness is the most powerful act; it frees you up, it frees up the circuits of energy. We are approaching the new age and we cannot start the new age without forgiving the old age. The Avatar of the Age was Christ. He said, ‘I came to replace the old law, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’

“There’s an endless cycle of revenge that has gone on for generation after generation. Christ said that he’ll pay the price; he said the price is paid now through my sacrifice; he said, so forgive yourselves. ”The Hopis say, ‘Now is the time of choice.’

What will drive this watershed down one side or the other is the emotional release of the past. If you choose for you and me, then we will move forward forever. But, if you choose for you or me, we will go into fear and we will not move into the new age. This is what will drive this watershed. We can make these choices in small ways, like being kind to people in the streets, or while driving, or in the grocery stores and/or in big ways, such as through politics and religion.

We must move together.”

However, Haberlein warns, “In our society we 44 Issue 11

In December, 2009 the XI Native Gathering of the Americas convened in Carbondale, Colorado.

Roughly 100 delegates representing indigenous nations from the top of Alaska to the tip of Argentina attended. This gathering was another step toward the realization of Dr. Ramon Nenadich’s dream of uniting all the native peoples of the Americas in common interest and mutual respect.

The Gathering’s central theme, “Healing all wounds between the peoples of the world and with Mother Earth,” was fulfilled by the special ceremony on December 6 for Forgiving Christopher Columbus’s spirit. The delegates also agreed to establish a Special Commission of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Reparation at the local and international levels. The Commission will begin a serious and profound dialog between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples so that the mistreatment, marginalization and colonization of indigenous peoples can be brought to an end. In recognition of the current ecological crisis brought about by the fierce exploitation and pollution of Mother Earth, the Commission will also provide a forum from which indigenous voices can be heard so that humankind can make a shift of consciousness to prevent further deterioration.

The Gathering also created the International Foundation for the Advancement of the Indigenous Peoples and established Autochtone University with campuses throughout the Americas. The delegates agreed to meet in Cayambe, Ecuador this spring to ratify the outcomes of the XI Gathering.

Finally, the indigenous and non-indigenous delegations agreed to establish an alliance to foster new ways of relating based on equal respect and common understanding. Contact Centro de Estudios de las Américas, PO Box 5211, Cayey, PR 00737. bayworld.net/indigenous

can’t be too glib about forgiveness either. There are many who have suffered in all parts of the world that will have a harder time with forgiveness, such as those whose daughters have been raped, their fields and homes bombed, loved ones killed. We must end this cycle of revenge.

We have to remember that it’s a harder choice for some, but forgiveness is essential for life to continue on the planet.”

Clifford Duncan is not at the Ceremony of Forgiveness this Sunday morning. Mt. Sopris is shrouded in clouds with the hard blowing wind bringing in a big storm. Mr. Duncan began the long drive back to his home on the reservation because Douglas Pass is treacherous to cross in a storm. However, on a deeper level, the traditional Utes are a very formal people who listen to their ancestors and the Mother Earth for guidance. I believe the land, the mountain, the river, the sky and weather beings were all speaking this morning to him, saying that the timing of this ceremony isn’t quite right for him and his family. A storm like this tells them it’s time to hunker down and stay warm and safe. When it’s over, then it’s time to listen and make ceremony.

It can’t be forced; one must listen to the signs.

And after all, it’s been only a generation for Mr. Duncan since the forced exodus and “trail of tears” from these ancestral homelands his people flourished in. They too suffered greatly on their way to the reservation in Utah and perhaps the wounds are still very raw for them.

As I write this, I hear from my past the singers from many nations that gathered at the powwow in my hometown on the reservation, a 15 minute walk from my home. This powwow, or

Gathering of Nations, began in 1917. Somehow, I know that they come together to pray and dance, which in turn pleases the ancestors and helps maintain a world in balance. Our homemade teepee comforts me as I lie awake listening to the nightlong drumbeat.

I look deeply into my own wounds now and know it’s time for me to forgive. This indigenous way and indigenous heart is in my blood and bones. I realize that I’ve never been an outcast with no god or gods. I’m not homeless, and my soul is awake from the deep sleep of trauma, and the fear of not belonging is no longer real. I forgive myself for holding on to the pain and suffering my brothers and I sustained as outcast children on the rez, for we all—Indians and Whites alike—suffered dearly.

As I write this, I hear our Elder Clifford Duncan apologize in his opening address to the people at the gathering because he had to tell how the holocaust happened. I call him on the telephone to get permission to write his opening address to the Gathering for this article, and I ask him what I can do for him in exchange. He asks me to look in antique stores in town for an old antique coffee grinder. He describes the features he wants because his grinder broke and he really likes this kind. He says, “That’s what you can do for me.” I realize that forgiveness for him will need some time, time to listen to the ancestors, to the mountain, to the land and then the ceremony will come alive. It will happen in the right time for Mr. Duncan. That’s his way.

Thinking about the lakes above me on the Grand Mesa, I gather my offering bag and snowshoes and go to say hello and to give thanks for

CLIFFORD DUNCAN

ALL INDIGENOUS PEOPLE ARE AFFECTED TO THIS DAY

In his Opening Address to the XI Native Gathering of the Americas, Northern Ute Elder Clifford Duncan calls for an apology for the Doctrine of Discovery ON DECEMBER 5, 2009 over a hundred Native Americans gathered in the ancestral home-

lands of the Utes for the XI Native Gathering of the Americas in Carbondale, Colorado. Clifford Duncan, a Northern Ute Elder of the Fort Duchenne Reservation in Utah was asked to give the opening address. Clifford Duncan is recognized throughout the states of Colorado and Utah as the Ceremonial Leader of the Utes and a Holy Man. He is an acclaimed speaker and a historian of his people and is often consulted by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management as well as by independent archeologists about the spiritual significance of Ute sacred sites in Colorado and Utah. Three years ago he called forth a powwow to reconcile the Meeker Massacre of 1879 in Western Colorado. This is now an annual event where the Ute people are able to return to their former hunting grounds and mingle with the townspeople and Western Slope folks who live there now.

Mr. Duncan began the opening address by praying in his native Uto-Aztecan language. Like all people who are connected to their ancestors, Mr. Duncan acknowledged his Ute people

FORGIVING

COLUMBUS

and all of their relations: the Paiute, Comanche, Shoshone, Bannock who are all a part of this Nunic Lingua as well as those who lived in the Great Basin, from Southern California to the northern part of Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and Montana. Mr. Duncan welcomed all the Native peoples of the Americas, from the north of Alaska to the tip of Argentina, who were represented at the Gathering. He also acknowledged the nonindigenous peoples present. He then began speaking of his people and of the path that brought them and all the Native representatives to that place.

IT IS MY ESTIMATE that we arrived in this area 2,000 years ago, breaking up into small bands called family units. The High Rockies were a favorite place for the Ute Bands. They lived here. My mother was Upachika, and my father was Tabaguache. They lived here. They came up the river from Moab, Utah to Grand Lake, to Estes Park, to the north across the mountains. They were the White River Band.

To the Southeast we have the Uncompagres.

From Denver north to Cheyenne to south Raton Pass in New Mexico was the Ute Nation, and we’re in the center of it now.

About 128 years ago we were removed from this land to the reservations. The people that lived in this area here now live in Utah—I am there at Fort Duchenne Reservation; the Toya live in Cortez, Colorado. In Ignatio, Colorado are the Southern Utes. There are many sacred sites here, and they are still being used.

They’re the connecting points of all ceremonies on the reservations today. There are a lot of burials here; these remains are also our connection to the land in a spiritual way. It is from here that I say, “Welcome.”

When I was a boy I grew up in a home of what I refer to as “total emersion.” There was no English spoken in that house, no electricity and we slept on the floor. That’s how I grew up. I am thankful for all of that today because it gave me my language. It also embedded in me my ceremonial ways; a deeper relationship, the teachings from my people come from there. For that, I’m very thankful.

I would like to touch on how all of this happened, how we were removed. I hope in no way I offend no one.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 45

God appointed a person, a man named tions. Chief Ouray was married to Chipeta. People. Our people in the past are different.

Abraham. He said Abraham must go and re- When Chipeta was a little girl she was picked Even in the way we think. In our language move all the heathens. This is in the Bible. up by a raid; she was Kiowa, adopted. This was there’s been a process of assimilation. “Hello,” You’ll also find that God appointed a man a way the Federal Government utilized people “What are you doing?” or “How are you donamed Peter to be the tie with this world and to get signatures, the way they used people. ing?” That’s what we say nowadays. We lack God. It is upon that, Christianity was born.

In order to take the first step to heal the the word “hello” in our Ute language. There In 1452 the Pope created a document called relationship we have with our people and was no “goodbye” or no “hello.” We picked the Doctrine of Discovery. It’s simply worded Mother Earth we must go back to the day up with our relationships from where we that Christianity should replace all other re- they signed the Doctrine of Discovery and left off. ligions of the world. They should be removed remove it. Then the people from that time All living things have a spirit: trees, anior destroyed if you have to. on will be free. They have to apologize to us mals—all living things, even water. Most When Christopher Columbus landed on to make it right. It was not our fault. Some people would say there’s nothing there. the shores, the island of the Western hemi- decisions made in the Supreme Court were That’s true for them; they’re made to besphere, he did a ritual, and it was this docu- based on religious issues. One cannot mix lieve this. But spirit-inclined people say, ment that he used. It was from that day un- religion with state. It is there, this issue, “Yeah, they are here.” I cannot sell any of til now that we lost our freedom as Native when it comes to Native American people. that or give any of that away because I’m an Americans. All indigenous people are affectThis is step number one, or one of the be- Indigenous Person. ed to this day. All colonizers that came here, ginnings. We all have to learn how to walk With this I want to close my statement that had Christianity, used that document. on this earth. When people gather here like here. Enjoy yourself. Whatever needs to be When they possessed the piece of land, they this in unity it’s a beginning: our relationship done, let’s do it. When I ask my grandson said that Native Americans “just occupied” with the earth and with the people. how far is God, he reaches out with his hand that land. That is how it was read.

I want to welcome all of my brothers and and says, “He’s that close.” We are all God’s The constitution of the United States in sisters from different countries—Indigenous children, all one people. Thank you very one little phrase says, “Congress has plenary power over Native Americans.” That comes from the religious doctrine but controls The Crimes of Christopher Columbus Native Americans today. We are October 12, the anniversary of Columbus’s first encounter with native people, has been celebrated as made to believe we are sovereign a national holiday in the USA since 1971. The remnants of the indigenous populations of the Americas units, but it is not true. When regularly protest this holiday not only because it celebrates the invasion of their lands, the destructhey removed the Cherokees in tion of their cultures and the extermination of their peoples, but also because Columbus—credited 1830, they used an act passed by as the one who “discovered” the Americas and brought civilization to the New World—exhibited uncommon cruelty, even by the brutal standards of 15th century Europe.

Congress, The Indian Removal Greeted with generous hospitality by the Taino of Hispaniola during his 1492 voyage, Columbus Act. The Cherokees went on the kidnapped 25 men and women as trophies for the King of Spain. Only seven survived. He returned Trail of Tears to “Indian Country.” in 1493 with 1500 men-at-arms, war hounds, horses and artillery fully intending to conquer and subOkay. It’s that very same law jugate those gentle and friendly people. An unspeakable catastrophe followed. In his thirst for gold and other goods Columbus directed the public torture of men, women and children and the exterthat removed us [the Utes] from mination of villages. He rewarded his captains with native women and children to rape and shipped Meeker Colorado, when we were thousands to Spain to be sold as slaves. removed to Utah. But the excuse Within five years, the estimated 3,000,000 people of Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and the Dothey used was that we killed a minican Republic) were reduced to 100,000. Within fifty years, virtually all the Taino and Arawak people of Hispaniola were gone. The atrocities were so astonishing that Columbus was arrested and superintendent. The Federal Govreturned to Spain. His subsequent release by King Ferdinand speaks more of the king’s lust for gold ernment did things not right from than it does for the innocence of Columbus. the beginning, appointing someColumbus’s legacy is not one of bringing enlightened civilization to the New World, for many far one like Chief Ouray and paying superior civilizations already existed in the Americas. Rather, Columbus set a precedent of utter dishim $1000 per year to get his regard for the rights and lives of indigenous people and cultures, especially when they stood in the way of profit—a precedent that unfortunately still informs our actions today. signature so the Utes could be reFor further reading see: Las Casas, Bartolomé de. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. moved. The Utes never appointed Edited and Translated by Nigel Griffin. Penguin Books, 1992. // Loewen, James W. Lies My Teachhim to be a chief. Chief Ouray had er Told Me about Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong. New York: The New a boy who was taken by the ArapPress, 1992. // Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. Plume, 1991. ahoes and raised by Arapahoes.

There are no direct descendents of Chief Ouray on our reserva46 Issue 11

Poetry

Earth Song

By Katharine Dancing Heart Gregg

A woman with a trowel for a hand is learning to share with the moles who tunnel nightly through the garden.

Breathe, Breathe, they whisper.

Overhead the sky recedes northerly in thin clouds and the birds rise southerly.

She feels the direction of the earth is down— how the root recalls its liquor, how ground compacts around water.

Already the blanched garden has been cut and hauled to the brush pile; only its dark geometry remains.

On her knees she lifts out wedges of dirt.

Hurry, Hurry, the chill warns.

She drops in the round white bulbs, presses dirt onto their heads.

Resting her ear on the ground she listens.

She hears them sigh, Sleep, Sleep.

K. Dancing Heart Gregg has an MFA from Vermont College. She has published in literary magazines and has a manuscript circulating.

SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE 47

still ZAN JARVIS

48 Issue 11

A life of complication

seems difficult to avoid. We think of it as a modern malady, but I suspect humans with their noisy brainpans have always found life too busy.

Literature certainly suggests that we in our time have no franchise on the hurly-burly.

One day in the early fall I found the motion of my life had overwhelmed me. I was drivingand-swearing, talking on the phone, working on the computer or running from one obligation to the next every hour of the day. My evening meditations gave me relief, but the results wore off by the time work began the next day. My thoughts ran uncontrollably toward the next duty to be fulfilled or they blathered at me in endless monologues about people, things and situations that existed elsewhere. My head was a crowded mess.

The space between my ears hadn’t always been so full. I remembered how spacious my mind felt after a 10-day meditation retreat, how the luminous light of the Rocky Mountains could deliver me to the present moment, how the simple wonder of sunsets could bring me to stillness. Where had I lost my peace of mind?

I had a sharp longing to simply stop.

Several of my friends had completed four-day fasts. Under the guidance of a spiritual teacher they went to an isolated place in nature and sat inside a circle by themselves without eating or drinking. As appealing as that seemed to my besieged mind, I wasn’t sure I could sit in one place four minutes, much less four days. I would have to start small.

I knew a spot in the woods where I had stopped to rest more than once. I decided to sit on that large flat rock at the edge of a little creek that wound around the base of a rough stone bluff.

Even though the trail ran right past this spot, the creek bed was lower and somewhat shielded by bushes from whoever might hike past. I decided I would stay on that rock for four hours.

The autumn day of my trek dawned sunny but with a chill in the air. I packed my purple backpack with a water bottle, a hat, gloves and a fuzzy scarf. To shield my backside from the cold rock I included a scrap of thermal mat I had found discarded at Ghost Ranch Campground the previous summer. I left behind my other usual accompaniments: a journal for writing and sketching, the little Apache spirit flute and the magnifying loop for exploring tiny insects and flowers. I would need only my bare, unaided attention. My one concession was my watch. As a modern American I wanted to know when I had won, when I had conquered my four hours.

A slight nip in the air pinked my cheeks as I walked down into the trees. I jumped the rotting oak that blocked the path and skirted the ruins of the old cabin that always fueled fantasies of a life lived apart. Only the squirrels scuttling through the leaves to bury acorns and the birds chirping in the fall sunlight kept me company. Even though I had not visited in months, my footing felt familiar, almost as though the rocks and roots beneath my feet rose to greet me.

As the limestone bluffs came into view, something inside that had been too tight relaxed. I scurried over the bank down into the creek bed and found the flat rock.

Once I settled on my thermal pad, I felt a small irritation. There was nothing to do. Well, wasn’t that the point?

“Just open your eyes. Open your ears. Open up all your openings,” I told myself.

(s t i l l )

A little downy woodpecker drilled the dead oak next to me, spiraling up and down the trunk in its search for insects. A brilliant cardinal flitted into the yellowing bush on the opposite bank. We take the cardinal for granted. How exotic that scarlet beauty must have seemed when Europeans first glimpsed him among the branches!

Autumn drought had depleted the little stream, so it spoke in only the slightest gurgle.

Since I love the voice of water from the smallest drip to crashing waves, the low chortle of this creek delighted me.

Distant voices approached, not from the trail but from the woods further down the bluff. In a rough rustle of the greenery three teen boys marched into view, spewing a cloud of brave swears as they walked within ten feet of where I sat.

I felt amazed that they couldn’t see me.

True, I was wearing a soft green, quilted coat that blended into the greenery, but my white face was turned in their direction. I felt they had to see me at any second. They did not.

They moved to the bluff and began inept pawing at the overhanging rock. Since none of them could get purchase on the face, a barrage of excuses laced with more curses followed. Then, boasting of successes on other cliffs, they moved on, never guessing I had been their witness.

Lovers were the next visitors to my retreat.

They held hands as they emerged from the woods into the late afternoon sunlight, speaking softly to one another. Their eyes shyly flitted away from each other’s gaze, then flicked back with the inevitability of a compass needle pointing due north. They did not see me, but then they could not see any part of the world except in their beloved’s eyes. So sweet.

Unexpectedly, the girl led them off the trail and they walked straight toward me in single file. When the girl almost tripped over me, I moved just a little.

50 Issue 11

“Oh!! You scared me to death!” she said to me.

“What?” he said, still thinking they were alone.

“There,” she said as she pointed to me.

“Where?”

“That woman.” She pointed again.

“Hello, there.” When I spoke, he jumped in surprise.

“Oh, hello.”

“Pretty afternoon.” I tried to normalize his experience with a nicety.

“Oh, yeah. Pretty…” He still seemed confused as she led him away.

In this society our motion defines us. At parties the first question we ask each other is, “What do you do?” No one inquires, “Can you sit still on a rock in the woods?”

Science says everything vibrates. All these solid-seeming things and bodies are mostly space interspersed with vibrating particles, or waves. Each person presents his or her own vibratory experiences to others. We habitually attune our minds to some vibrations and screen out others. We learn which ones to pay attention to based on what others tune in to and on what vibrations benefit us most. When our thought pattern slows, so does our vibration. Compared to the buzz of normal living, a person who moves and thinks slowly hardly seems to be there at all.

I sat on my slab thinking these lofty thoughts when a little movement reminded me I was living in my head again. What had agitated my peripheral vision? Without moving my head, I cast my eyes to the creek bank.

There. A little scrap of fur kicked up the leaf litter and ducked under a boulder. What was it? I waited.

Again, the animal moved. A slick tan chipmunk, striped in brown wiggled among the rocks. He didn’t see me. He stopped on his hind legs to rub his ear with his front paw, very much the way you or I might do the

same thing. Then he ducked under a rock.

For several minutes I didn’t see him.

Then a little nose poked out from under a rock not three feet from me. He had taken a route under the boulders to a place where the stream swirled to form a little pool. He took a drink, then abruptly jerked his head up and looked around. His life depended on reading his surroundings accurately, so he knew something was up. He could not see me, though, because I sat very still watching him and breathing as little as possible.

He went back to drinking his fill but couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something.

He sat up again then ducked back under the rock. In just a few seconds his nose came out from his hiding place. Then he stuck his head out and, sensing nothing, came out, but this time not to drink.

The little brown body flexed and he jumped onto a rock in the middle of the stream. He stood high as he could on his hind legs and sniffed mightily, opening his little chest. He looked hard in every direction. He reminded me of a little child with his first puzzle. Except for a smile growing on my lips, I did not move.

He must have had an idea where I was because he again jumped to a rock, this time not a foot from where I sat. When he sat up this time, I could see his little heart beating swiftly under his breastbone. It felt extremely intimate to be so close to one of God’s tiny creatures. His expression, as he looked at the big mystery that was me, seemed worried. I decided to give him a break.

I moved. I could almost hear him think, “I knew it!” He ran for his life as I chuckled a little to myself.

Alone again, I began to look around me at the tall trees, the huge boulders strewn down the path of the creek and the everlasting cliffs towering above me. A crawly tingle worked its way up my neck.

What if some being so huge I couldn’t see it was watching me? What if I seemed to that watcher as tiny, flighty and blind to reality as that chipmunk seemed to me? What if the Great Mystery trembled a little just then with its own cosmic chuckle at my blindness?

Yikes! Two hours more to go…

Fortunate to live near woods replete with wildlife large and small, ZAN JARVIS also has the good luck to work as a massage therapist with a number of lovely people who show her the best of humanity.

HEALING, GUIDANCE & COUNSELING

LIFE RESOURCES

Poetry & Healing Writing Women’s Retreat MAY 14 - 16, 2010

Come find your words to heal. Safe group environment using spiritual works from many traditions. $245 (US). Register by 4/30/2010. $80 room & board. Mount St. Mary’s Abbey, Wrentham, MA Facilitator: DiannaVagianos Miller 203-913-5548 diannavmiller@gmail.com

Dan Sprinkles

SACRED FIRE COMMUNITY FIRE CIRCLES

Fire is the energy of warmth, connection and transformation.These fire circles hold a ritual space for people of all paths and traditions to connect with each other and the world through the sacred spirit of fire.

SHAMANIC HEALING: MARAKAME, GRANICERO, LIFE COACH

Feeling anxious, trapped or ‘stuck’ in your life?

“The Enemies of Learning” program puts you into an appropriate relationship with the mind & restores a sense of wonder and of life-long learning. Blue Deer Center, Margaretville, NY USA 845-810-0200 enemiesoflearning@gmail.com

Kathy Reid PSM, REIKI MASTER, LMT, DOULA, PBI SPECIALIST, STUDENT MIDWIFE

Experience the profound healing of the plant people. Offering Plant Spirit Medicine, Reiki, Massage, and other birthing services in Salt Lake City, UT plantspiritmedicine-ut-co.blogspot.com 970-623-1297 plantspirithealing@gmail.com

Sherry Morgan EXPLORING THE PHENOMENON OF PRAYER

My gift is in helping others connect powerfully with the divine through prayer and from there to pray effectively. I offer workshops, personal coaching and companion prayers.

860-656-6817 (USA) 250-483-5273 (Canada) sherry.morgan@primus.ca

SkyFox

Eastern U.S. GA | CARROLLTON

NY | BOICEVILLE

The Community Fire Circle of Carrollton Georgia invites you to come join us around the fire! Stir Ancient connections with the natural world. Share our hearts and lives. Deepen our spiritual connections.

Sherry Boatright 770-854-5551 sherryboat@Bellsouth.net

Are you longing for a sense of community? A place to share your heart with others in a sacred space where you can feel safe and heard? We welcome you to join us at our monthly fire!

Claire Franck 845-657-2929 clairefranck@gmail.com TN | SUMMERTOWN

SC | FLORENCE

The Community Fire Circle of Florence South Carolina invites you to come join us around the fire! Stir Ancient connections with the natural world. Share our hearts and lives. Deepen our spiritual connections.

Annie King | Second Saturday of the Month 843-665-1340 annieking@sc.rr.com

The Community Fire Circle of Summertown Tennessee invites you to come join us around the fire! Stir Ancient connections with the natural world. Share our hearts and lives. Deepen our spiritual connections.

Susan Skinner 931-964-2452

Western U.S.

MA | BROOKFIELD

CA | SANTA MONICA

Fire moves you to a different place.The Brookfield Massachusetts Fire Circle invites you to join us to share the warmth at our monthly community fires.

Tim Simon & Gwen Broz 508-867-9810 timgwen@charter.net

You have an open invitation. Mark your calendar for the first Friday of every month, rain or shine.

We’ll sit around the fire in community as our ancestors did.

Alan Kerner | First Friday of Every Month 310-452-0658 kerners@aol.com

MA | WESTFORD

WA | OLYMPIA

The Westford Massachusetts Fire Circle invites you to join us at our monthly fires. Come share a song, a joke and your open heart.

Ray Strouble 978-589-0901 Ray.Strouble@gmail.com

The Community Fire Circle in Olympia Washington invites you to join us at our monthly fires.

Come be with the fire and each other.

Peter & Sharon Brown | First Saturday of Every Month 360-943-9373 sbrown@sacredfiremagazine.com

SHAMANIC ASTROLOGY

“As above, so below.”The planets speak to us.

They offer guidance about our life purpose, relationship intent, initiatory opportunities and how to live life in alignment. I offer astrological readings and counseling. Yuma, AZ USA 928-210-5092 foxxita@gmail.com

SACRED FIRE RESOURCES LISTINGS are affordable ads suggested for healing practitioners and facilities, service practitioners, retreat centers and facilitators, small businesses, and cottage industries offering mail order items. We reserve the right to refuse any ad at our discretion, and all mail order products listed in this section must offer satisfaction guaranteed or money back. // Resources Rates: Resources listings cost $35 each for one issue which includes up to 35 words, plus name and contact information. Discounts for consecutive issue insertions are offered: $90 for 3 issues or $100 for four issues. All Resources ads must be pre-paid. Send copy with check or money order payment to: SACRED FIRE ADVERTISING, PO BOX 5445, FLORENCE SC 29502-5445

For more information, email advertising@sacredfiremagazine.com or visit our website at www.sacredfiremagazine.com

Living with Totem:

Sacred Partnership with the World A Class with Eliot Cowan

Whether you know it or not, you have animal spirit helpers. Some have been helping you since before you were born. Others are nearby, politely waiting to be asked for their help.

Patience, gentleness, fierceness, stamina, self respect … whatever is needed to help you fulfill your work and relationships, there is an animal who embodies it and is willing to share it with you.

All peoples have found it helpful to have good relationship with animal helpers, or totems.

They are every bit as useful now as ever in the past.

When you don’t know your helpers you can easily feel that you are facing life on your own. Living with totem, you don’t feel alone, for life has given you allies. You don’t feel like a victim; you have been given what you need to learn and grow in your circumstances.

Living with totem, you find yourself in sacred partnership with the natural world. The way opens to live in gratitude.

With this course you will discover which animals are totems for you. You will be able to receive their help and be in good relationship with them for the rest of your life.

Eneke-Alish Huaute For information about her work and these ceremonies visit

Eneke-AlishHuaute.com or phone (480) 290.6575

Learn about Grandfather Semu online: GrandfatherSemu.org

July 26-30, 2010 Blue Deer Center near Woodstock, NY for more information: 805-967-7853 info@bluedeer.org

NaTIVe aMerIcaN TeachINgs aNd sTOrIes Books by Manitonquat (Medicine story) return to creation Using the history, traditions and prophecies of native peoples, Medicine Story illustrates common human values and offers solutions to the problems confronting people today. $15

The Original Instructions Reflections of an elder on the teachings of the elders. Adapting ancient wisdom to the twenty-first century. $15.99

changing the World Healing ourselves, our families, our communities, our earth.

A vision for achieving freedom, peace, happiness and love, and a truly human society. $15

Wampanoag Morning Stories from the land of the people of the first light before the English invasion. $12

Visit www.circleway.org or call 603-878-2310 for ordering information

FOR SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE READERS

THE

Redrocks Cooperative Featuring special offers on select progressive, environmental, and spiritual publications of interest to Sacred Fire Magazine readers.

Visit us now at

W W W. R E D R O C K S M A G S . C O M / S F

3.85 x 4.72 for Sacred Fire Magazine Revised 8/31/09

FINAL FLICKER

BY K I M S TA F F O R D

WEAVING KIN Sometimes a Bella Coola woman needs a Bella Coola man to leave the coast, step upriver, thread the small streams through forest, and climb into the bare crags to find the lightning-shattered stump of the white bark pine close against the cliff where mountain goats as they shouldered through the slot left slubs, tangled gobs, and long strands of white wool—the man to wander, hunger, seek and find enough to fill a seal-skin bag— and then to turn, in the trance of his quest go down from the crags, stumble through thickets of salmonberry, follow the small streams through forest and meadow, and follow the river to the sea.

Weaving Kin was first published in Open Spaces, vol. 7, no. 4 (July 2005). The poem is reprinted here by permission of the author.

56 Issue 11

until the blanket is broad enough to cover her shoulders and abalone at her ears, her eyes seeing farther than he has gone, but in a direction his gift sent her where the man can see her across the firelight at the winter ceremonial as they listen to the old stories that weave together whale, sea, salmon, river, the small streams, forest, mountain, thunder, all kin joined so that when the time is right, cedar smoke and fur, starlight through the smoke hole, all good gathered and stored in bentwood box and sealskin pouch, nettle net folded, sinew rope coiled, the fingers of the man may comb the long dark hair of the woman, and the fingers of the woman the long dark hair of the man.

The Bella Coola or Nuxalk people have lived in the valley of the Bella Coola River in British Columbia, Canada for many thousands of years.

PERRIN KERNS

Then the Bella Coola man needs the Bella Coola woman to take her spindle stick long as her arm, belted with a whorl of alder wood carved with two salmon swimming round and against the flat of her thigh to spin the shredded inner bark of cedar wrapped with wool until she has enough, ball by ball and skein by skein to dye black with root of fern, and yellow with ripened urine, and pale blue with a secret of her own, and then suspend her yarn over a horizontal pole, each strand weighted with sea stones knocking softly one to another as she begins to weave her kin lineage: square ears of bear, spread wings of raven, eye of eagle and of whale

growing?

As more and more people remember how to live life in balance with the natural world, more and more people remember the importance of exchange, gratitude and reciprocity.

supports

initiatives that honor and sustain traditional knowledge indigenous spiritual approaches because these ancient lifeways foster global balance and healing.

&

Our mission: to help all people re-discover and celebrate their innate and intimate connection to the living world.

A 501(c)(3) charitable organization, Sacred Fire Foundation helps people give back to the sources of traditional wisdom.

Your donations fund programs, initiatives and organizations committed to:

1Restoration & preservation 2Traditional lifeways Projects, events & publications 3

of indigenous traditions, cultures and knowledge including ritual, ceremony, initiation, story, language, art and education

4

that document, educate and communicate traditional lifeways to the world, including Sacred Fire magazine

Community development programs including methods of teaching and building, healing techniques and land management

Your donation is the fuel that feeds our fire.

Please help us warm the world.

Please use the response card in this issue to make your tax-deductible donation. Thank you!